"Just the gas?" the attendant at the cash register asked Dean, adding the full tank he'd just pumped to the total.
Dean had his wallet out, pulling out two bills, when his eye fell on the display of candy next to the register. He slid two bright-yellow packages of peanut M&M's over into the center of the counter. For Sammy. "And these," he added.
Sam was re-folding their well-worn map and tucking it back into the glove compartment by the time Dean made it back to the car and handed Sam the two bags of candy. "We good?" he asked, nodding to the map.
"Yeah," Sam answered, breaking into a grin and meeting Dean's eye, easily communicating an unspoken thanks." Just get back on I-94 for a while. We've got a ways to go till the next turn."
Dean nodded and started her up, cranking the volume a few notches on Zepp. Sam tucked the packages under the seat for later. Then he leaned back and dug into his pocket, pulling out his slim, white and silver device, unwound a pair of white headphones and plugged them into his ears, giving the thing his full attention and tuning Dean out.
Sam's iPod. Dean didn't even want to know what douchey crap he loaded it up with, and he tried not to feel slighted by the fact that Sam would rather listen to it than participate in their traditional back-and-forth over who got to pick the music. Dean would always win, it was a foregone conclusion, because Dean always drove. As kids, Dad had queued up the tunes and they had both whined it from the back seat - at least until Dean's taste in bands had matured and he realized his old man was actually a connoisseur of all the greats. But it shouldn't have surprised him when Sam gave up and simply started bringing his own music to the party, in fact he wasn't entirely sure what had taken Sam so long.
He looked over at his brother, so typically serious, so Sam, and smiled. Sam looked up and quirked an eyebrow, taking out one of his earphones. "What?"
"Nothing. Just... you, with your douchepod, is all."
"You have to be a jerk about it?"
"I don't have to be."
Sam rolled his eyes and reinserted the earbud. They drove in companionable silence for miles, each wrapped up in their own music. Dean drummed his hands on the wheel, playing along with the earnest enthusiasm of a sold-out performance, as if Bonham himself depended on him to keep the beat. He leaned over into Sam's space, hands clutching the wheel and elbows locked with his arms extended full-out, belting out his favorite part of the chorus, "Ramble on! And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song!"
He couldn't help but notice that Sam was ignoring him. Not just in the usual, practiced way in which he was used to being ignored by his younger brother, but Sam was just sitting there staring at nothing, his eyes distant and blank, the iPod cupped loosely in one hand as if forgotten. Dean glanced down at the display, at the highlighted song, something he didn't recognize, then back up at his moody brother.
Sam finally noticed Dean's attention on him and shifted self-consciously.
"Which boy band is that?" Dean teased. "Are you a Belieber, Sam?"
Sam smirked, but it was half-hearted. There was no teasing back. Something was wrong. Dean changed tactics. "Why so much emo?"
"There's this song that…" He ran a thumb absently along the smooth surface of the iPod. "Nah, forget it. It's stupid."
"What?" Dean pressed. "Tell me."
"Do you ever have a song that just, I dunno… hits you a certain way? The words, I mean?"
"Yeah, 'course. All the time."
"Okay, well. Can I play you something?"
Dean grinned mischievously, trying to diffuse Sam's mood and reassure him at the same time. "Are we about to have a 'moment'?"
"I'm serious, Dean."
"Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Sure, play me your song. Unless it's douchey. Is it douchey?"
"You'll probably think it is." Sam opened glove compartment and found the iPod adapter, which he pushed into the Impala's cassette player, letting it slide into place with a click. "I don't even know if you'll get it."
Dean noticed the hesitation in Sam's voice, the way he nervously fiddled with the jack plugged into his device, a thing that looked so obscenely delicate in Sam's oversized hands. His giant little brother, Sam. Gentle giant Sam, so careful with everything. With everyone.
"Play it," Dean said, sincere this time. Whatever song Sam wanted him to hear, he wanted to hear it, no matter what kind of terrible alterna-crap or coffee-shop nonsense he was going to be subjected to. If it was important to Sam, it was important to him.
Sam glanced at him uncertainly, then pressed play.
The lyrics started almost at once, after just the briefest of intros. A man's voice over guitar, raw and honest and inescapable.
Naked and wretched and retching on a hotel bathroom floor somewhere in the city.
Three days not sleeping, not eating, not feeling good anymore, drenched in sweat and self-pity now...
The words caught Dean by the throat and froze all the air in his lungs, holding him immobile, nearly paralyzed, barely able to breathe through the tension. He couldn't help but hear Sam in those words, but it was the ugly, demon-blood addict side of Sam that he struggled to bury and avoid and not acknowledge because he didn't want that to be part of Sam. And here it was now, that Sam, dragged out into the light and willingly exposed.
He risked a glance at Sam, his gentle Sam whose shoulders were hunched in protectively, his hands clasped, his eyes drawn down as the lyrics drove on relentlessly, peeling back layer after layer of shame, word by agonizing word, and it was all there. Everything Dean was sure Sam hadn't wanted him to see.
Breaking, I'm shaking, it's taking a long, long time to come down off this murderous medication.
Trying to remember my reasons for running myself into the ground with such dedication...
Or... maybe it was what he had been begging Dean to see all this time.
"Sam. I..."
"You don't have to say anything. It's just... just a song. You know?"
"But it's not just a song. You still feel this way, with the blood? I guess I thought... after Lucifer... that it just sort of, I don't know, went away."
He could hear how stupid that sounded as soon as he said it, but he really had thought Sam was over it. Why had he thought you could be over an addiction? The muscle along the side of Sam's jaw clenched as he nodded and then shrugged. "I guess you could say it's like being an alcoholic. I just have the advantage of knowing my hangovers could kill me." He laughed at that, sort of. A laugh that had nothing behind it.
"Huh." Dean wanted to say something to fill the silence. He wanted Sam to know that he understood. That he got it, he really, truly did. But somehow, he just didn't have the words. He wasn't good at this touchy-feely crap. It made his insides twist up in knots. But dammit, he wanted Sam to know he didn't need to feel so goddamn alone. He wasn't alone. Sam didn't deserve to feel that way. Not when he...
There was just no way in hell he was ever going to be able to get those words out.
"Sammy, uh... grab the box of tapes for me, would ya?"
With one eye still on the road, having practiced this maneuver countless times, he flicked through his collection of tapes until his fingers landed on the mix he'd put together after Sam left for Stanford, the one he only played when everything was wrong. Usually just him and a bottle when this tape came out. He ejected Sam's adapter and plugged in his own tape. He had to fast-forward through a couple of songs to get to the one he was after. When he got there, he hesitated with his finger over the play button, just for a moment, then pressed it and let the eerie, echoing lyrics fill the cabin of the car.
Hello... Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?
He regretted his decision to do this almost immediately.
All the muscles in his neck and shoulders tensed into a single knot, conscious of Sam's eyes on him, because while he had played this song hundreds of times, Sam was finally hearing it the way he heard it. It left him feeling too vulnerable. Sam simply looked down at his hands in his lap, listening, while Dean wrestled with the urge to reach out and snap the volume off.
"It's just a song," Dean muttered as it played.
"Sure. I know," Sam said. "But... I can see how you'd feel that way. Sometimes."
"Yeah. Sometimes."
"Dean, hey." He looked over, and Sam was looking at him, his brow furrowed. "It's okay."
"Sure." Feeling too uncomfortable, Dean hit eject before the song was over and popped the tape. "Can you put Zepp back in?"
"Not yet. Hang on, I've got one more."
"Aw, come on, Sam. There's only so much sharing I can do in one day."
Sam pretended he hadn't heard, scrolling through the songs on his little gizmo, which Dean had to admit was a lot more efficient than his method of slogging backward and forward through a tape. Not that he usually minded.
"I think you'll like this one," Sam said appreciatively. What followed were a few bars of simple, choir-like vocals and a series of piano chords, and then the lyrics:
It's early in the morning. I'm laughing at the sun. My mirror disappoints me. Am I the only one?
All I need, all-all I need, all I need, all-all I need, all I need, all-all I need
Is you smiling at me.
All I need, all-all I need, all I need, all-all I need, all I need, all-all I need
Is life, love, with you...
"Catchy," Dean said, hearing an unexpected roughness in his voice.
Sam smiled. He reached under the seat for one of the bags of M&Ms Dean had bought him, tore open a corner and offered it across the seat between them.
End
A/N:
Musical credits, in order of appearance:
"Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin
"Imperfect Tense" by Frank Turner
"Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd
"All I Need" by Awolnation