Exit Music
By vega
Rating: PG-13 at worst. Some profanity, but gen overall.
Spoiler: Up to Skin.
Summary: "You really think we're ever gonna find this thing?"
Disclaimer: If only! The title is also shamelessly stolen from a Radiohead song.
Note: I haven't written anything for years, almost,but the power of the Brothers Dean was hypnotic, so I dabbled a bit. Seriously, just a bit.
"You really think we're ever gonna find this thing?"
"What did I tell you about asking stupid questions? 'Course we are. Now, shut up and listen. 's the good part."
"To what, exactly? It's all screeches and...stuff."
"Dude, it's Metallica. And," -- a whack on the head -- "shut up some more."
On rare days, when the grey cloud isn't shrouding the seldom-seen sun from the sky, he misses smoke like his own breath until he can taste the bitter tang on his tongue and the nicotine burning down his throat. On these irritatingly sunny days, which he hates because he can see the world all so very clearly and it can see him even more clearly, he ends up testing out a pack of cigarette in his hand, twitching like a junkie that he isn't.
He also misses his brother, but that's neither here nor there and also very pointless, so he buys a pack of soap, two razors, and a bunch of M&Ms from the gas stop and returns without the cigarette. Back to another day and his Impala under the sun -- to Dad and his demons in the dark.
Dad's studying the map with all the seriousness. Dean tosses a bag of M&Ms at him and slides into the driver seat. "Where to?"
Dad points at a hazy picture on a zigzag cut newspaper clipping. "Montgomery, Illinois."
Dean nods once and turns on the ignition without asking for directions. It's not like he wants to know how this will end.
"Can I try it? Please?"
Dean throws his brother a speculative glance and lets out a long breath of smoke. "When you're older."
"So, never?"
"Basically."
"Why not? You are doing it."
"I do it 'cause chicks dig it. And you, no, because I say no."
"That so doesn't make sense. And not fair."
In the next five minutes Dean actively demonstrates to his brother just how unfair things can get in life. It doesn't stop his brother, however, from asking pretty much everyday like clockwork. Dean is almost impressed into giving in, until a month later Sammy comes home from school and promptly snatches away the cigarette from Dean's fingers before Dean can even stutter, 'What the fuck?' Sammy doesn't just throw it away, though; he puts it out carefully and drains it with water to make sure it won't accidentally catch fire, and then drops it into the garbage can. Ever the conscientious one, his brother.
"It's not good for you," Sammy declares as he turns around to face him, all adamant, "it can give you cancer. It can kill you."
In view of the fact that they regularly battle things that are considered far more immediately dangerous to both mental and physical health, it sounds absolutely, ridiculously non-threatening, the fact that Dean doesn't hesitate to point this out to his brother.
"Still. You can get cancer."
"And? So? Therefore?"
"I don't want you to get cancer."
You can have all the wards in the world, but nothing can ward off his little brother when he gets all bug-eyed sincere. Exactly two minutes later, he's somehow roped into quitting (swear to the Lord of all gods and mercy, though fingers remain crossed behind his back) and some good portions of the next five years are spent hiding cigarettes from his brother, just because it's oddly fun seeing Sammy get worked up and make a deal out of this, with his tiny lips getting impossibly thinner and his entire body turning into a tangled ball of frustration.
And every single time, Sammy catches him with a cigarette and gives him hell.
Until, one day, he doesn't.
He's bleeding pretty badly, but at the moment the most pressing issue is whether or not to return to his car, therefore risking the chance of dropping blood all over her pretty, pretty seat. The second pressing issue would be that he's hungry, now that adrenaline's worn off and the odd bit of his bravado -- another ghoul all by himself, and damn if those sonofbabitchs aren't hard to get rid of -- has seemingly been rubbed off. And third -- he's supposed to hook up with Dad in, what, oh, five minutes ago and now he'd be worried hell. Which means there'll be hell to pay and an earful to be received.
He reaches the car and catches a glimpse of himself against the moonlit sky on the window. Ah, so here I am. Still. Very much standing. Okay, more like crumbling, but standing, still. And I don't stop.
So you are, still standing. But what, then? Where to? Where're you going? Why don't you just fuckin' stop--
Not for the first time, he's glad that Sam isn't here. Sam, with all his questions and need for the damn answers.
Of course. There's nothing I can give you that you want, no answer that will make you happy. This's all I can do. This's the only thing I know how to do. What the fuck else is there? But, for you? But for you, Sammy?
Hell with it. He slips into the Impala, his only comfort. He grabs at the ashtray underneath the radio compartment and holds onto a few M&Ms. Chews on them like they're chasers for the non-existent taste of smoke. They melt in his palm -- they taste like relief.
"Where's he gone off to now?"
Sammy asks five minutes into shovel-action, and boy, has he picked a wrong time to start on this. Dean's generally not in the mood to answer questions, and even less when their energy would be better spent on the task at hand, especially if that task involves grave digging in the middle of a wet, murky night, which of course happens far too often as far as Dean's concerned.
Besides, when do they ever know whatever gets into Dad's head? But Sammy keeps asking like Dean would know the fucking elusive shit that is their dad and Dean...and well, at least Dean's got the pretending part down pat. "Somewhere Illinois. Something about a lead. On Mom."
The last bit is added solely for the purpose of shutting up Sammy, because Mom is one thing in their life that's never supposed to be questioned.
Dig. Once. Twice. And pause. "So, is there anything you actually do know?"
Dean contemplates something he's heard once from a TV parenting show thing, something about how whack on the head can kill brain cells. Sammy already has plenty, which Dean's sure is the reason for all the crap of questions inside his little head, so he can definitely afford to lose some more.
Later, his brother will eventually learn to stop asking. And it won't be a victory, Dean will learn even later, when the distance between them turns out to be more than about who's riding the shotgun and who's left manning the backseat, when he sees a half-finished application to Stanford stuck between a demonology text and a Twenty Masterful Essays in the Twentieth Century bought in a cheap used bookstore.
But for now Sammy's irritating enough to warrant a headslap, and that quiets him down for all of five minutes before he asks again: "Are we ever going to find this thing?"
Oh, for the love of all things bad and unholy, if his brother could be any more of an annoying, little -- but then again, the adjective "little" doesn't fit his brother anymore, which only serves to annoy Dean even more. "We sure never will if you don't shut up and shovel."
"Then what?"
"Then we salt the remains and vanquish the god-annoying ghosts of the past, present and future. What the hell, Sammy? We've done it hundreds of times." So easy that Dad left them to do this by themselves and went off to do god knows what by himself. "What do you mean, then what?"
Suddenly, Sammy's looking away, his shoulders sagging. The only thing in this dark that Dean can see clearly is his brother's hand holding onto the shovel handle. It's knuckle-white, his long and bony fingers looking brittle enough to shatter if he were to touch them. Eventually Sammy turns to him again, the shoulders straight and the chin high, but the hands -- they're still so white and bony that Dean suddenly rethinks their daily feast of Big Macs and Snickers, and he's too horrified by the thoughts of balanced diet of having salad everyday that he almost misses the question.
"Are we ever going to find the thing?"
His brother's question is clipped and low, sharp enough with jagged edges to cut him, Dean thinks, into little bleeding pieces if he's been keeping it inside his body for all this long. But Dean has heard what's unsaid and, shit, this is how it is with his brother now. Life just gets hellbulva more difficult when Sammy's involved. There are thinkings involved, plans and emotions, none of which are ever welcome, none of which he can offer.
Dean says, "Sure we are. Then we'll live fuckin' happily ever after," instead of: "Don't ask questions when you know all you get will be lies."
Something in Sammy's eyes fizzles, and for an absurd moment, it strikes Dean that maybe his brother's right to insist on being Sam, that he doesn't look like a Sammy any more, not when they can almost see eye to eye, like this. Not when he can no longer be the older brother with the right answers to give.
The moment's gone as quickly as it appears, and Dean renews his grip on the shovel and nudges his brother with his foot once before turning away. "Now? Dig."
"There's this Voodoo thing. New Orleans. They need someone right away, so told them you can take of it."
It's another irritatingly bright day when it happens. And because it's so blindingly bright, it's difficult to ignore the lines on Dad's face that speak volumes about something that Dean doesn't listen to. That he never has. Today's nothing new. "What about you?"
"Got something else to take care of." At Dean's sharp look, Dad smiles a little, placating. "I'll let you know when I'm back."
There might be questions to be asked. Things to be said. But he can't corner Dad like that, force him to stop on their already choiceless path. Not to Dad. Not to himself. Not now. Not at this point.
"Sure thing," Dean shrugs. "But I'm taking the Impala."
Just as well. When have they ever wanted to stop, anyway?
"Just stop."
"What?"
"Just --" Sam pauses midway, his hand in midair. "Why don't we just -- "
"What, Sammy?"
Metallica blasts from the speakers, the night road stretches ahead of them, miles before their planned rendezvous place with Dad, and his brother is suddenly silent. Generally speaking, this means it isn't gonna bode well for Dean.
"Nothing."
Fuck, this really doesn't bode well. "Spit it out, man. What the hell do you wanna say?"
Sam's right hand is tightly curled up on his lap; with his left, he turns up the volume so Dean can barely hear his brother when he says, "Remember when you said once that this is the good part? Maybe I should shut up and listen."
This brother of his, the one who never seems to have a single mean bone in his body, does a pretty mean job with conversation enders, and on the road to Dad, there's nothing but To Live Is To Die between them. Sam no longer asks questions, and Dean thinks his brother, with all his brains and geekitude, must've figured out all the answers. He almost wants to say, if you know all the answers, tell me. Tell me what I'm supposed to say, tell me what I'm supposed to do with you. Tell me why you scare me more than every damned thing in the world.
Almost, but not. You are not supposed to ask when you know all you get will be lies.
He glances at his brother's impossibly thin profile, and at the cigarettes now piled up in the ashtray underneath the radio compartment. Six? Seven? Dean has stopped counting them some time ago.
And two weeks later, when Sam is gone, they don't matter any more.
And, of course, shit always flies together, like a flock of insane little harpies that wouldn't just scatter the hell away.
Two days after Jessica's burned crisp and a week after Dad's officially gone missing, Dean buys two razors, two M&Ms and a pack of cigarette. After a moment of consideration, he picks up a ham sandwich of a sort with lettuce. Rather disgusting looking, but he isn't the one who's gonna have to swallow it – he would just have to shove it down into his brother's throat at one point, is all.
All things considered, it's the statement for what a reformed good boy that Dean Winchester is that the cigarette has been taking residence at the bottom of his backpack for weeks without disturbance. But now he's supposedly and officially dead and the bruise on his brother's neck is too much like guilt, and it's rather natural that for the first time in four years, he picks one up and lights it. His hands tremble, unsteady over the wheel. He hates it, but there are very few things he doesn't absolutely hate right now.
"Dean?"
Dean is half startled to see Sam watching him from the passenger seat, but he shouldn't have been, because when does his brother ever sleep when he says he is going to? "What?" Dean snaps and regrets instantly. His left hand edges toward the shadow of the space between the wheel and the car door.
"Wake me up if you get tired."
Yeah, like that's ever going to happen. "Go back to sleep, Sam."
But he doesn't, of course. Sam's leaning against the seat, hands entwined on his chest and eyes steadily on the ceiling. The bruise on his neck is still stark even in this dark, reminding Dean of the possibility of the end that's always looming around just around the corner. This could've been the proverbial end. No stopping then, because they would've already been very much stopped and surely fucked over and all. Dean tears his eyes off from his brother's thin profile. If we stop now —
No.
If we never. If we never find--
No answer. No question. Don't ask. Don't ever ask.
"I know."
Dean blinks. Turns and watches Sam who is staring back at him. "What?"
"I know," Sam repeats in the implausibly sincere, knowing voice he has. That's the truth, and here it is, it says.
The quiet conviction in Sam's voice suddenly takes him apart, tearing at him in all the wrong places. The fuck do you know, Dean wants to scream. What the fuck could you possibly know, goddammit?
Sam slowly picks himself up. Then he leans across the seat and plucks the forgotten cigarette from Dean's left fingers. "The stuff's bad for you."
The dying cigarette light simmers under Sam's long, bony fingers as he puts it out in the ashtray in all solemnity, like it is a ritual that requires all his body and soul. Dean isn't sure if he should cry or laugh, but since Dean Winchester doesn't do crying, laughing seems like a viable option. He can only barely say, "Quit mothering" because at any moment now, he'll unhinge. He can feel the seams that are already left tattering, and he can't possibly say a thing.
"Wake me up if you get tired," Sam murmurs again and almost successfully curls into a tiny little ball, eyes closed and hands entwined on his chest.
Dean studies his brother's hands, still impossibly bony, too bare to be holding together in one piece. And he studies his own hands on the wheel, holding steady only because of his brother.
He listens to Sam's breathing and knows he isn't sleeping. Not yet. Yet. Yet, there might be a chance tonight. He looks away, at the road ahead, and at his hands that no longer tremble.
The road stretches out all night, and the end is still so long time coming.
.end.