Haven't I told you already that I'm not making money out of – well, anything at the moment.
AN: A sort-of-but-not-really tag scene to Hollywood Babylon.
Paper faces on parade
You find yourself wishing sometimes – and this is one of them – that your mouth was connected to your brain by a rather less circuitous route than seems to be the case. The route in question bypasses Common Sense completely, skirts the edges of Silence just to see what all the fuss is about and then carries on up Mount Sarcasm straight to the top. From there either Reasonable or Irritated Sam can usually push you back down to the bottom with a few well-chosen words.
It would really be easier on you if you just stayed there in the first place, but easy has never appealed to you particularly. Unless it's female, of course. And even then, you rather enjoy setting out to seduce a girl who didn't want anything to do with you at the beginning of the week. That is an… amour… that deserves the term 'conquest'. That deserves to be remembered. The others are just fun interludes.
But you're digressing.
Right now, you're sitting in the car – The Impala Diaries, you've privately dubbed these frequent post hunt conversations, not that Sam will ever know that – and Sam is looking over at you with an irritated frown on his face and a hint of genuine curiosity in his eyes.
Just a hint though.
"I don't know what you're talking about," you declare unconvincingly. Somehow you really don't feel like letting this turn into a serious entry in the Diaries, oh no, you're going to have as much fun with this as you can.
"Dude," your baby brother sighs, "sure you do. All that back in LA, with the job and the encyclopedic movie knowledge, and the actor guy… why can't you just tell me?"
See, this is what you just meant about the circuitous route. If you'd just thought before gushing in LA, then you wouldn't be having this conversation. You should have just stuck with the same grim, overprotective big brother thing you've had going for months now. But no. You just had to have some fun, didn't you? You just had to enjoy yourself for once. And now Sammy wants to know how you do it. Oh, not the enjoying, he can figure that out for himself, you know for a fact that he's not nearly as uptight as he likes to pretend. He just doesn't like to flaunt it the way you do. But the act you put on, the seamless way you fit into that world, the ease with which you charmed everyone on that set, that's what he's curious about.
"You know, we had this conversation when you started high school," you say, amused.
Sammy huffs. He used to do it all the time when you were kids; lately he's started again. Lately he's been doing a lot of things he used to before Stanford, like drinking coffee instead of cappuccinos, and hustling pool once or twice, and humming along absent-mindedly to your music, be it Immigrant Song or Highway to Hell. The other day he even ordered a cheeseburger. You don't remember the last time he complained about you calling him Sammy, either.
Good times.
"No, seriously," you carry on. "You wanted the Big Brother's Guide on How To Be Popular, remember?"
"I wanted to know how to survive that hellhole without major psychological scarring," Sam retorts. "And I made the mistake of asking you how you did it. In retrospect, I should have realised you were already traumatised by the time I got there."
"I wasn't traumatised!" you exclaim, slightly indignant. Only wusses get traumatised (Dean, son, I know it's hard, but please, just say something... talk to me, Dean…) especially by high school. Besides, it's not like you really spent that much time there, anyway. "But there are some experiences you gotta go through by yourself, Sammy. If you're gonna insist on spending those four precious years of your life in libraries and study halls, then your survival strategy will of necessity be different than mine, as I spent them on the playing fields, and in a couple broom closets."
"Broom clo- thanks, Dean, there's an image I really needed after yesterday," Sam says drily, and you grin as Tara's face flashes before your inner eye. But unfortunately that rather spectacular memory isn't enough to distract you from Sam's words, because here we go with the serious again.
"I just – it's like you flip this switch, and then everything else goes away, and all people see is what you want them to see. I spent four years at Stanford and I never figured out how you just put these masks on like it's nothing, the easiest thing in the world."
"What's Stanford got to do with my – oh."
"Yeah."
"Sooo…"
"So nothing. I'm just curious. It's not like it works on me anyway."
That's God's own truth. He's frighteningly astute when it comes to reading you. It threw you off balance after he got back from Stanford, the ease with which he saw inside you. These days it's oddly comforting, having someone around who knows you inside out. It's like… when you were kids.
Huh. There it is again. Out with the new, in with the old.
"Boxes," you say at last. Sam frowns at you. "What?"
"Boxes," you repeat. "Not masks, boxes. In your head, you know. You put all the – the stuff you don't want coming out into a box, and lock it, and put the key somewhere you can't reach for now, and just get on with whatever it is you're doing. Simple as that."
You take your eyes off the road to look at him; he's watching you. Not doing anything, the hint of a thoughtful frown between his eyebrows, but otherwise just watching.
Finally, you can't take it any longer. "Well?"
He gives himself a little shake, and shrugs apologetically at you. "Sorry."
"What's goin' on in there, then?"
He looks away, a strange, almost regretful look on his face. "What you said about all the stuff you didn't want coming out… I was just thinking."
"Bad for you at this time of the day," you declare. "You haven't had lunch yet or anything."
At last, a grin.
"Just – at Stanford – "
"The stuff you didn't want coming out was Dad, and me, and hunting, and the fact that you can break down a .45 as easily as play pool," you say. The words come out quick and calm and unemotional.
"Dad, and hunting, and the fact that I can break down a .45 as easily as play pool," Sammy answers. "Never you."
The boxes really aren't working for the slight smile that's pulling at the corner of your mouth. Never you. No eavesdropper on this conversation would ever recognise those two words for what they are, but Sam's your brother, after all. You know him inside out.
"It was a two-way street, dude, I coulda rung the doorbell," you tell him.
He grins. "Break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you, you mean," he says.