The Soul Burns Brighter Than The Sun

Chapter 14: Glastenbury Mountain

"So you and your officers have zero leads on Lara Jackson's disappearance?" Sam asks the Sheriff, or as Dean thinks of the guy, an incompetent sack of shit.

Sheriff Marsh grimaces. "You know we've been looking into this for several days, no witnesses have come forward, and the last person to see her was her teachers and peers at school."

Dean feels stifled in his FBI getup, his shiny shoes feel too small and the tie around his neck catches on his Adam's apple with every breath he takes. Thank God Eileen and Cas decided to check out the hotel first so that Dean and Sam are on FBI duty together. It feels nice, working with his brother again. The two of them have been split up between Eileen and Cas for a while now, and Dean feels at ease with his gangly brother by his side, even with his monkey suit pinching at his skin.

Dean twists his head, cracking his neck. "Alright, what's the name of the highschool?"

As the two of them leave the Sheriff's station, the door swinging open and blasting them with the winter air, Dean burrows into his FBI overcoat, which is actually much thinner than it looks. The wind whips by them, blowing falling snowflakes into his face. Dean tries not to shiver as he digs his hands into his pockets to pull out the key to Cas's truck.

Shaftsbury, Vermont is adjacent to the known-to-be-haunted Glastenbury Mountain, so when Sam caught whiff of one singular disappearance, he immediately insisted that they all go, in the middle of winter.

Because the thing about Vermont in the winter is that it's gonna snow. And Dean's not suicidal enough to take Baby to a place that's gonna rough up her frame, he can only imagine the salt and gravel pelting at the undercarriage and ripping up her paint on the sides. Dean's not willing to take his precious Baby up a snowy mountain, especially not when Cas offers to take his truck.

The thing about this truck though, is that Dean fucking hates it.

First, the car's got carpet fucking seats. It's like sitting on the goddamn floor, there's nothing cool, or sexy, or frankly, natural about it. The second is that Cas has a cassette box of his own, and it's filled with even more girly pop albums and not one classic rock album. Third is that Dean's been holding a damn grudge against his car. Every time he sees it in the Men of Letters garage, he gives it the finger. Why? Because when Cas came back from the dead, he didn't bother telling Dean he was alive, and instead, hunted down the truck that he hadn't driven in over a year, because god-fucking-forbid the angel with wings has to go without this hunk of fucking junk.

Dean unlocks the car, shivering with the wind, and collapses inside with Sam, who blows warm breath into his hands, rubbing them together. It's damn cold in Vermont, which is having its coldest December in over ten years. Cas's stupid truck reads a temperature of twenty four degrees, which, yeah maybe, if it weren't for the wind chill and the layer of ice covering Cas's windshield that's taking forever to defrost under the blast of the shitty heat from the vents.

Dean swears, then reaches behind the bench and grabs the ice scraper. Bearing the cold again, he gets out to scrape the ice off in long strokes.

Damn Cas and his stupid truck, Dean curses. Damn him and his fucking death wish. Briefly, he wonders if Cas can hear him, and shrugs because he doesn't care if Cas knows he's mad. He should know.

When Sam had insisted that the four of them go to Vermont in the dead of winter, Dean tried his damndest to get out of it. First by reasoning that Baby's not built for the snow, which Cas ruefully shot down by saying they could take his truck. Then, Dean had pointed out that Cas's god awful truck was a two-seater, so not all of them would fit, but Cas offered to zap him and Eileen there while Dean drove Cas's truck for the two day trip with Sam's toxic burrito farts in the passenger seat.