Title: Beside the Machinery, This
Author: moveablehistory
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Summary: Spoilers for the pilot and Bugs, but only a little. Slashy/Wincest companion piece/sequel to Deus Ex Machina.

***

The car knows it's a big car. It kind of figures this is a good thing, because sometimes the dean part and the sam (it heard sammy most times, though) part stay with it instead of going to park in the 'motel' – usually if the dean part didn't 'hustle' but the car isn't sure what 'hustle' means. It thinks it sounds kind of like an radiator part, or an attachment or maybe it was one of the special repairs it didn't get very often. Sometimes the sam (sammy?) part has to stick its lower pieces out of a rolled down window to fit properly across the backseat before it turns its motor pieces off and makes that 'rrrrr' sound that usually meant the sam (sammy?) part was idling.

The car notices neither part actually ever turns off its ignition. It wonders what the fuel consumption rate is like for those two.

The car hasn't ever actually seen anything, or tasted anything, or smelled anything. It doesn't know that there are things it could crash into on the side of the road. It doesn't have the proper modifications. The car doesn't know that it's missing anything, and so it thinks that the dean part is an unusually warm engine type thing that steers, and that the sam (sammy?) part is also an unusually warm engine type thing that also steers. At first the car thinks that the sam (sammy?) part is a spare, but then the car realises that it does different things like 'make puppy dog eyes' or 'research information', and so the car decides the sam (sammy?) part is a different model of the same kind.

The car can hear things, because that's how it woke up, and it can feel things because of course everything feels things. The car doesn't think that is unusual at all.

The car doesn't understand about seasons passing. It doesn't know, for example, how long it went without a sam (sammy?) part and it doesn't know how long the john part's been gone. It thinks it might remember the sound of water hitting something called 'ocean', but the car doesn't recall if that was before or after the second to last oil change, or if it ever happened at all. Time is irrelevant, really – only mileage counts.

It knows that there is a thunderstorm out there somewhere right now. It can feel drops on its metal sheeting, feel dirt and dust sliding off a little bit, but it's not sure if the storm already happened and the drops haven't dried yet or if the water was still falling right now. It notices itself slowing down, and a shifting of the dean part and the sam (sammy?) part across the seats. It hears words like goddamn it's cold and get over here then, but it's not sure what those words mean, exactly. It feels the dean part and the sam part fit together, and it thinks that the missing pieces must have gotten shipped in from somewhere, although the car can't recall the usual clinking sounds of installation.

It notices the parts idling for a long, long time, saying words loudly and quietly that the car doesn't understand, shifting and aligning; then the car feels something like engines overheating and steaming or maybe revolutions per minute going up slowly and probably redlining because something must have blown and everything went quiet. The car doesn't remember feeling that before or the deansam part doing that before, and it's not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it was different and important and it didn't seem like anything was broken but fixed instead. The car only thinks about it a little bit more and doesn't worry.

The car doesn't know what the sun is. It can feel sunlight though, sort of, and it knows that most of the driving (the car decides drivening didn't sound as right) is done when it's warm-like out. It feels the parts in the backseat shifting and aligning, and hears words like you okay? and going anywhere? and stay close it's cold and hell never. It feels the deansam part move around until everything settles into place the way it's supposed to; the way it's built.

It hears music again, words strung together like gears saying things like I've felt the coldness of my winter, I never thought it would ever go ...

It isn't very pretty, the car thinks, but it's kind of beautiful.

***