Chapter 8: Sunflower

The evening was warm and humid, too much to stay locked inside the bus.

Most people who stayed outside the hall during the concert were roadies. A singing tour quickly becomes repetitive when you're not on stage and you don't necessarily want to hear it several nights in a row for almost a year. Most of those who stayed outside the tourbus waiting for the end of the show were smoking and talking in groups of three or four, sometimes sharing a beer or a late sandwich.

Dorothy didn't smoke. She already had too much difficulty in standing the smell of stale tobacco on her colleagues to imagine inflicting it to her permanently. Leaned against the bus of the band, she was watching people.

Most of those around her saw without bothering to watch. Dorothy knew which roadie was stuck with a cold for three days, which had a sick child, over there in Los Angeles where they were almost all from. She knew who had made bets on Sam and Madison, and who would be the first, after the tour, to sell anecdotes to the highest bidder tabloid. And all that she hadn't need to ask, she had just concluded, observed, analyzed.

For now, she was looking at Madison who was helping one of the youngest roadies to complete a crossword puzzle in the glow of a flashlight and the unpredictable car park lighting.

Dorothy never revealed to anyone the results of her observations, everyone was entitled to their privacy after all, but she was interested in Madison because the young woman was interested in Sam.

From her position at the wheel of the bus, for several months, Dorothy had come to know the Winchester brothers and to appreciate them.

She hadn't need extraordinary observation skills to find their relationship touching. If Sam had a tattoo of a wolf on his back it was because Dean always had his eyes on his little brother, ready to protect him if necessary. Fact that Dorothy thought very funny insofar as, of the two, Sam was the most impressive. She loved to hear them cast tasteless jokes from one end to the other of the bus and the way they had to set about playing music spontaneously together. This happened most of the time when they were only the two of them in the bus and then they would exchange in a low voice, words, ideas, lyrics of which Dorothy, behind her wheel, would sometimes catch a few echoes. She had been around the two boys well enough to have a fairly clear idea of their personalities. Without knowing their past and without be interested in it, she could see the gaping holes in their souls from which they got a music she found very sad.

Dorothy didn't like sad people. And Madison, tonight, was sad when she approached the driver by handing her a sandwich. She took it without saying a word and without great desire. They talked about unimportant things, without interest just to pass time. People were beginning to leave the hall, presaging the end of the concert and Madison started to think about the drums she'd have to disassemble and store very soon.

"It's not really the better idea to get attached to him, is it?"

"To Sam?" Dorothy asked as if she didn't already have the answer. Madison nodded. "He's not a bad person."

"How can you tell?" Madison laughed.

"He has sunflowers in his eyes."

Madison shot her a curious look and Dorothy smiled, crumpling the packing of her sandwich between her fingers.

"My grandmother said that people who have sunflowers in their eyes are always looking toward the sun, toward the good side of things, and that someone staring at the sun cannot be satisfied with their dark side."

"Your grandmother was a philosopher." Madison noticed, smiling.

"Or rather she has Amerindian ancestry. I guess it played a lot in her philosophy and what she taught me."

"Do you think he's dangerous?" Madison asked again staring at the people who were coming out of the theater in more or less compact groups. She had absolute confidence Dorothy's sincerity and observing skills, much more than in her own judgment which, history had shown was not a safety model.

The young woman took her time to answer, weighing every word to not harm Sam. She liked that kid. She liked the way he was fighting against himself to become a better person, the blind trust he had in his brother, and the kind gaze he had over the world most of the time. But there were things in both Winchester that Dorothy would have preferred being able to ignore. A large dark side that seemed to stick to their heels and bog the ground wherever they went and whatever they did. Quite honestly she couldn't paint an idyllic picture of Sam Winchester.

"I think he sees himself as dangerous, and he wants to protect the people he cares about from the threat he represents."

"What threat?"

"You heard his story. He thinks the people he becomes attached to will eventually suffer like him or because of him. He thinks that getting attached to people only leads to suffering."

"So he doesn't get attached."

Dorothy nodded. "He didn't tell you his whole story, there are things he hasn't said to you."

"Like what?" Madison asked.

"I don't know. I observe, I'm not psychic. But if you want to know if he's dangerous, if he might hurt you like Kurt, I think that's what you need to know."

"That's compatible with the sunflowers?" Madison to escape the oppressive topic.

Dorothy smiled. "People are complex. You can be someone good and optimistic and be plagued by your demons. Sam is a good person, except that him, he doesn't know that."

Madison was thinking about the words of her friend while disassembling drums and charging it an hour later in a hardware truck. She decided to chase these thoughts away from her head when returning to the hotel in the company of other roadies, tried to drown them in the shower, to suffocate them in her pillow, unsuccessfully. The same questions kept coming, the same futile and irrelevant interrogations until she faced the fact, in the middle of the night, that she wouldn't be able to sleep.

She put on her sweater and pants and went down to the lounge open 24/24, her socks produced only a vague rustling on the thick carpet. Some hotel guests were sharing an after-dinner liqueur with loudly laughs in a corner, and a bartender with a tired look served her on the counter a too hot tea she let cool, skimming one of the magazines hanging on all the coffee tables of the lounge.

"Insomnia?" Sam's voice asked while the drummer perched on the stool next to hers. She would have jumped if she hadn't been this much aware of his presence, she had heard him arrive to the muffled sound of his boots on the carpet and his presence was like the shadow of a big blanket. Elle nodded.

"Too much ideas tumbling out."

"Same here." He said by putting his old leather notebook on the counter. A pen whose top was all eaten dangled there, hung to one of the spirals by a roast string. The notebook had certainly seen better days. The leather cover was stained, scraped, bent and folded in odd angles. Yet Sam passed his hand on with a sort of incongruous respect before opening it where a bookmark made of an old Brazilian bangle with colors faded for having been worn too much indicated the last song written.

Madison swallowed the first sip of her tea, distractedly turning the pages of her magazine, noting here and there a perfumery article she would try once back in LA. Sam had sprawled as usual on the counter, his head resting on his bent elbow, tapping nervously the pen on the paper of the notebook.

"Not inspired?" Madison asked, turning toward him.

"I am. But I don't have the words. Nor the music." He sighed, straightening up. He pulled the magazine of the young woman to him and burst into a laugh. "Breast: objective pleasure? Seriously Mads?"

She frowned, smiling over her cup of tea. "It's not like I had written it!"

"That'd be all I needed! I hope you don't need that to educate yourself!" He teased by frankly pulling the coated paper to him. He put his elbows on the counter, cheeks in his hands, his shoulders lifted in an odd angle to read the article aloud, pausing regularly to laugh. Madison was laughing between sips of tea and she suspected him of trying to make her laugh while drinking so she would choke. When he returned the magazine, she realized that the obsessive thoughts had left for a while, that since he was close to her she just felt her mind in peace.

And it was at that moment, when he looked up at her, his face half hidden by his long bangs that she saw them, deep in his eyes, just a flash of yellow around the pupil, like two sunflowers on the green background so clear that it seemed blue or gray depending on the light.

She must have looked particularly silly because he stopped laughing of a sudden. "Something's wrong?" He asked as if he was already reproaching himself for his last joke.

"Dorothy was right..." Madison whispered. She moved aside the bangs from Sam's eyes to look at them more carefully.

"About what?"

She was looking from so close that she had to guess that he was smiling at his eyes wrinkling.

"You do have sunflowers in your eyes."

She suddenly realized that she still had her hand on his cheek and she was standing close enough to feel the laundry smell of his shirt. She swiftly stepped aside praying very hard not to blush (who blushed after fifteen years old?), and took a sip of tea to put up a front. Sam was smiling with all his dimples and pushed the leather notebook to her.

"I think you got something." He said while standing up before laying the pen on the blank page. She looked down at his hand, the one on which he had tattooed Jess' name. She didn't see him lean over and jumped when he laid a small kiss on her cheek.

"Good writing Mads. Good night."

When her heart finally stopped to pound wildly, he was gone. She still had the notebook in front of her. She set about writing.

##

The next concert was at Madison and Sam had had a lot of fun all day, teasing the young woman that she has a city named like her.

"And a movie too." She eventually said, exasperated, at the end of the day. "And a siren. And a street in approximately every city... Now if you're done taking the piss out of me I got work to do!" She grumbled. Sam raised his hands in the air and let her unload equipment while he was going in search of someone else to annoy. Life on tour was much less exciting after a year and they were all starting to get tired of restaurants food, hotel rooms or sleeping curled up in the tourbus bunks. Just a few months earlier, they'd have go out exploring the city before the concert and party after. But now they all had only one desire, to go home and sleep.

Kevin probably more than any other.

Sam found him revising his scores in the tourbus. He was missing a note every other time and seemed preoccupied.

"Something's wrong kiddo?" Sam asked, perching on the small table of the bus where the cellist sat. Kevin raised his bow from the strings thoughtfully.

"Don't you have anyone else to bother?" He gnashed.

Sam shook his head with a happy grin. "Charlie's with Dotty, Dean vanished and Madison just sent me packing."

"Seems to please you."

Sam shrugged. "You didn't answer me."

"Everything's okay." Kevin lied. Sam could always see when his friend was lying because he always avoided his gaze.

"Yeah, but still?"

Kevin sighed and shrugged, turning a page of his score before resting his bow on his instrument. For a moment, only whole and high notes disrupted the silence. Sam sat on his bunk.

"You know, you should tell her."

Kevin raised his eyebrows in question. "The girl. You should tell her you love her. Life is short."

The young man grinned almost as unpleasantly as his good nature would permit. "You had a sudden revelation?" He teased.

"Not sudden." Sam replied quietly. "But I don't know if you saw my brother lately? He's been afraid of losing Castiel. Damn I was afraid of losing him too. It makes you reflect, to think that life is very short in the end. What do you risk telling her that you love her? It's not as if you saw her every day."

Kevin put his bow on the table.

"Unlike you and Madison."

"I'm not in love with Madison."

"Not yet." Kevin had spoken in the tone of observation and Sam looked at him, puzzled, for a moment. The conversation he thought he was leading so far had just turned against him and he wondered to what extend the young man was right?

What barrier was left to cross before feeling for Madison the same as for Jessica? How had he come to love his girlfriend much so that even dead he still considered her as such? And how could he come to love someone else? He stood for a moment in silence, nose wrinkled in a confused facial expression which greatly amused Kevin.

"As I said. It's not that simple, Sam."

"Of course it is."

The young man got up to catch the bag of his cello and store it inside. He hauled the instrument on his shoulder and turned to his friend. "No, it's very complicated and very dangerous on the contrary. But if you want to prove me that I'm wrong, then please do."

Sam watched him getting off the bus, wondering if he had said something wrong again? There still remained three hours before the concert and he had nothing better to do except maybe hitting his drumsticks on every flat surface but the desire was missing. He moved on Kevin's still hot seat and pulled out the leather notebook from its storage under one of the cushions of the bunk before opening it where Madison had left the bookmark when she had returned it a few hours earlier. She'd looked even more tired than usual, her eyes so deep in her eye sockets, complexion so pale that she seemed almost dead. She also would reach the end of the tour with relief.

He was surprised to find a full song on a double-page spread in the notebook. The paper had been crossed out out beyond belief, but the final words were clearly detached from trials and errors. She had named the song "Sunflower". The rhymes weren't very good and Sam had to retype the song in pencil on a new page before going back over sentence by sentence. He tried not to notice that the song was about him. He was used to it. Almost all the songs written by Dean were about him.

But this time it was different, and this time it meant something Sam didn't want to hear. Madison had written, clearly imitating the dark style of Free Will's lyrics. She had written about him and for him. It showed two levels of attachment to which Sam refused to think while he went back over, word by word the lyrics written by a foreign hand and while a rhythm was forming in his mind.

He felt Dean entering the bus more than heard him, guessed the slight "thump" of his brother's phone thrown on his bunk and his heavy steps along the corridor of the bus.

"New song?" The singer asked, sitting in front of him. Sam nodded. His hair fell into his eyes, but he didn't want to lose his concentration, the words had something obvious, they began to flow with a frenzy that he adored. They overflowed from his pen, from his page, flew between his fingers, froze in his head like the obviousness of something that you always had right in front of your eyes without ever actually watching it.

He gestured to Dean to bring him his drumsticks and the singer recovered his guitar in the closet at the same time. He settled half on the table and waited for Sam to give him the beat.

Sometimes, the music came by itself, they started to play together, recording themselves out of principle. Most often their improvised compositions were second-rate. Sometimes they were fantastic. Once in a while it was the words that came first. Before the beat, before the guitar notes, before Charlie adds the bass that underpinned the whole, before Kevin improves the composition with his strings.

Sometimes it was the rhythm that came first, driving them on the way to a new song on which they put the lyrics, just as a matter of principle.

This time, it was different. This time, when Dean turned the notebook to him, it was the emotion that came first. Just as the day Sam had written "The Woman in White" and as it hadn't happened to them since. The words were from a foreign hand, round and hasty letters, unusual sounding. And Dean smiled. Because it wasn't hard to know who could have written a song about Sam. Apart from himself, he had never met anyone who has as much affection for his brother.

"They say, people with sunflower eyes

Always look at the bright side.

I know a man with sunflower eyes

And he's good and kind,

And can't stop telling lies"

It would be a sweet song, one that'd be sung with minimal light, a symbolic accompaniment. A few guitar bars barely supporting the lyrics, just for them to be listened to and heard. Dean settled the guitar on his thigh and held his sticks to Sam who sat up on the bench and began to hit a slow rhythm on the table.

"He thinks he's a freak

'Cause someone broke his heart beyond return

And he was just a kid,

And he crashes and burn

Every minute of every day

I should keep him away"

Across the margin, Madison had scribbled three sentences that didn't rhyme, and she had clearly not managed to include them to the song. Dean pointed them with the chin to his brother who nodded. "A repetitive pattern in background?" He suggested, still beating time.

"A woman's voice." Sam agreed.

Dean began to mumble the words for himself while swinging his head to the rhythm imposed by Sam, drumming on the table.

"How can you run from what's inside you?

Maybe there's no escape?

Maybe you could be saved?"

Dean changed the chords to find some notes supporting the three sentences while Sam took out his phone from his pocket and laid it on the table to record them.

The creation process was underway and neither would stop playing before having completed the song, driven by a frenzy of rhythms and sounds in which they barely noticed Charlie's bass until the young woman leans back onto the bunk next to them, smiling. The bass sound of her instrument came underlie Dean's guitar and he began to play a tone lower so they could tune up. Charlie wasn't looking at the words, she was just following the rhythm of her friends, and gradually the sound of the chorus formed between the three of them.

"I wanna know what's behind sunflower eyes

Loudest people are the most secret ones

I wanna know the truth behind the lies

And raise your head toward the sun"

Dean was still humming mid-voice, stumbling over the rhythmic, mentally noting the words that should be changed, reworked. He caught Charlie's gaze who nodded gently, smiling. There was an indescribable atmosphere in the bus, something between exaltation and excitement that made them want to smile and bounce up and down. Dean sight-read the rest of the song without ceasing to align the chords, his fingers tensed on the neck of the guitar.

"Kindest persons are the broken ones

For they don't want to hurt anyone

Saddest people smile the brightest

I've been told it's because they don't want to see people

Suffer as much as them."

They had the music, they continued to play just to prolong the moment of grace that they knew wouldn't return. Even when later they would look into writing tablatures, even when they would record the song, even when they would play it on stage dozens of times, this very time right now was going to end and nothing would recreate it.

"Neither of you wrote that." Charlie said, clutching her bass against her, still backed against the bunks. Dean shook his head.

"Madison wrote it."

"You lent her the notebook?" The bassist choked. "Are you kidding me? I'm not even allowed to touch it!"

Sam shrugged, shoved the book and his brother to put his legs across the small table. Dean considered the song thoughtfully while Sam stopped the recording and played it again. The sound was a bit saturated, a little disturbed by the regular tap tap of Sam's drumsticks on the table where he had laid the phone, but still distinct and while listening to it he found himself closing his eyes and smile.

"This is different from what we composed so far." He said softly, his head thrown back as if that could help him to better immerse himself in the song. Dean nodded, but on reflection it wasn't different from their usual compositions. What changed were the songs once the record company had edited them to make them "good," "sales-orientated". Sunflower had something naive that their compositions had lost the last two years since they had signed to a label. It was all genuine feeling and all three carefully avoided to raise the subject, knowing that at best it would make Sam uncomfortable. Dean put his guitar down and looked at his brother until this one reopens his eyes and questions him by a raised eyebrow.

"We won't give them this one."

"Sorry?"

"This song." Dean said, indicating the notebook. "It's for you, it's yours and nobody else but you should have the right to change it. We won't give it to Crowley. Or anyone else, we won't play it, you keep it for yourself. At least for now."

Sam nodded slowly. They both looked to Charlie who pretended to sew her mouth.

"I know a man with sunflower eyes.

Kind and sad

And I want him to look at the bright side."