It was easy to lose track of time living the way they did. For Sam, not so much; he tried to keep his nose in the daily paper and an ear to the ground for how Normal People were living their lives. But Dean, he could go a week not knowing the calendar had turned another month. He was happiest on the road, and the thing about the road is that she's as long as she is, and doesn't give a shit about your meeting on Tuesday.
Sundays, though... Sundays were special. The air was softer, the road stretched longer, and the engine purred sweeter on Sundays. They begged Dean in lilting voices to slow down, take his time, and enjoy the sounds drifting from the radio.
On Sundays, not even the sudden gust of angel appearing in the passenger seat could phase Dean.
"Hello, Dean," the talking magic act greeted, same as always.
"Right on time." Dean smiled. A friend at his side and a lump in the back seat; the Impala even seemed to hum contentment.
Except, today, that sleeping pile of bones in the back wasn't the giant baby brother it usually was, replaced instead by a homeless vampire.
"Where's Sam?" Cas had asked last week. Dean had shrugged it off.
"The three amigos," he'd joked. "Back together again!"
"Is Benny okay?" the angel asked this week, inspiring Dean to glance in the rearview at the pile of coats hiding his fangy friend.
"Just tired," he answered. "'S been a long week." Cas nodded his acknowledgment.
The pair sat in contentment for some minutes while Dean drove, Benny's soft rhythmic snoring barely audible beneath Metallica celebrating the open road. Dean was taking every available opportunity to introduce Cas to pop culture, though what information stuck in the angel's mind was a bit hit-or-miss. It was nice to share, anyway, and though Cas had early expressed a profound lack of understanding for modern musical conventions, he was happy enough to soak in the sounds that had shaped Dean's adolescence.
"You wanna pick somethin' out today, Cas?" Dean asked, turning down the volume as Don't Tread On Me wound up. It might have been a test if it were anyone else. It might have been a test of a different sort just for Cas, though not the kind with a right or wrong answer. It was odd, spending so much time with someone but not knowing their musical taste. It was odder still to learn that, insofar as music Dean had, Cas had none.
"I'm fine listening to this, Dean-"
"Fine listening to...?" he prompted. Cas sighed.
"...Metallica."
"Yes!" Dean grinned with pride. "Nah, I'm bored of this one, put something else in." He hit eject on the tape player; the machine stole its last kisses of the cassette before letting it go. "I got a few tapes in the glovebox, most of 'em under your seat, just pick something out."
If you want to catch a brief glimpse at someone's life, open their glove compartment. At most, it only needs to hold their registration, operating manual, a flashlight, and, if they're particularly literal or live somewhere cold, a pair of gloves. Maps are handy but unnecessary, though you can usually count on the person with a variety of maps in their glovebox to be dependable. Most people use theirs as an overflow basket. The essentials are in there, absolutely, but so are receipts, some empty CD cases, agendas from last year's board meetings, hastily scrawled phone numbers on envelopes, obsolete phone cords, prescription bags, traffic tickets, and a general reflection for the messes in the driver's life that they just can't be bothered to deal with.
Dean's glove compartment bordered on the pristine. It held a map book, his cell phones, and, as promised, a handful of cassettes: AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Asia, AC/DC again. Castiel perused his options and shut the glove box, absently noting the clunk the map book made as it slid into something plastic and hollow. He'd missed a tape? He pulled the door down again and felt around blindly at the back, touching phone, phone, spiral binding, phone, ah, there it was. He looked down at an old, dust-covered cassette case, old enough that the clear plastic had a musty yellow tint to it. Dean glanced over at the hold-up, letting out a breathy laugh when he saw it.
"The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed! Are you serious? 'S been... Wow, years!" He laughed again. "Go ahead, put it in."
It started playing with a minute left of Monkey Man, of course. Just as it always had. Not by way of bad tape, but by very (im)precise rewinding.
Twenty odd years ago, John Winchester joked with his boys. "Mick Jagger's not actually a monkey, boys, don't worry."
"I'm a monkey!" Sammy piped from the back. Dean sneered.
"Monkeys don't ride in cars," he chided. "Monkeys have to walk." Sammy stuck his nose up.
"Monkeys live in the trees," he informed his brother, "so I'll live in the trees, too!"
"Sammy, we're in Arizona! Where are there trees, son?" John asked his young goofball, gesturing with one hand to the vast expanse of desert dotted with the occasional cacti they'd all been watching for the past three hours.
"Right there!" As luck would have it, a gas station complete with a very deliberately tended tiny tree out front appeared on the horizon. John just laughed.
"He's not actually a monkey." Twenty odd years later, Dean Winchester laughed, too, reminiscing.
"I am aware, Dean. Monkeys are not yet capable of mimicking human speech patterns." Dean sighed.
"It was a joke, Cas; this time when- Wait, yet?"
"Yet."
Silence pervaded the car while Dean mulled that over and Monkey Man faded out until the only sounds were the crackle of the stereo punctuated by light snores.
A lonely horn sang out over melancholy acoustic guitars, drawing Dean back from a mild existential crisis. He reached and cranked the volume a bit over comfortable levels just in time for Mick Jagger to start singing about missed love connections and for Benny to stir in the back.
"When'd we pick up an angel?" He grumbled, sitting up.
"Hello again, Benny," said angel greeted.
"You can't always get what you want!" Dean attempted to sing.
He was five years old, riding in the passenger seat for the first time. It was his birthday. Sam was asleep in his carseat, strapped in in the back seat of the car. Dean was slurping on a milkshake, another new privilege to come with his new year of maturity. It must have been somewhere near midnight (it was 9:30 PM), he was sitting in the front with his dad sharing milkshakes and his favorite songs. It was absolutely the best birthday of his new grown-up life.
"You can't always get what you want!"
Dean sat in the back seat, keeping his distance from Sam but never once letting his little brother out of his sight. He'd almost got his brother killed yesterday, leaving him alone with a shtriga on the loose. He was ten years old.
Dad hadn't said a word since he'd chewed Dean out back at the hotel, opting to just let the stereo play loudly, and in a way that made him feel even worse, something he hadn't thought possible. He'd let everyone down. How would Dad trust him now? How would he trust himself? How close had he come to not having a brother at all? He hadn't even noticed the tears wetting his cheeks until suddenly they were pulled over on the side of a deserted country road.
"Get up here, son."
They sat together in silence until the tape played itself into oblivion.
"You can't always get what you want!"
Dad had been missing for upwards of a week. Dean had lost touch with him when the voodoo zombie thing started to really pick up (he killed the witch, but he still couldn't tell you what was going on to begin with), but he was really kicking himself for it right then. Logically he knew it wasn't his fault, but damn if it didn't feel that way. He felt a lot like he did after the shtriga incident.
He was heading to California to find Sammy at Stanford. His baby brother was a big lawyer-type now, had been gone for years. It was a stretch, especially since they hadn't talked in most of that time, but he knew Sammy wouldn't ditch Dad like this. At least, he hoped.
It was a long way from New Orleans to Stanford.
"But if you try sometimes! You just might find you get what you need!"
Dean grinned and sighed. "Man, it's been... Years, seriously. Too long..."
"Where are we now?" Benny interrupted the mental walk down memory lane.
"Almost to Topeka. We're already an hour into Kansas."
"Then I'm going back down." He yawned. "Shake me when we get there." Dean turned down the music for him.
Cas and Dean rode wordlessly for the next few minutes. Dean's mind was everywhere but in the present. Cas was enjoying his favorite thing about music: its ability to touch people. His appreciation for the art itself died with Beethoven, but human emotional expression, he thought, would never grow stagnant.
"Sam died." Two heads almost audibly snapped in Dean's direction. "That's the last time I listened to this." Two sets of lungs expelled their contents with relief. Castiel listened raptly; Dean rarely talked about his past when Sam wasn't present.
"I remember, Bobby and I were booking it to South Dakota after we found Ellen's bar... What was left of it. On the way we got to talking about Dad. This was his favorite album that still worked. We listened to the whole damn thing on our way to Sam, twice, never said a word." He stopped to draw a shaky hand over his face.
"And as soon as we get there, the bastard gets himself stabbed in the back." He laughed, hollow. "God that sucked."
"I like this song," Cas said decisively.
"Do you?"
"I do," he nodded. Dean laughed again, this time with feeling.
"If you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need!"