SPN FIC: Ghost in the Machine
Title: Ghost in the Machine
Spoilers: None
Genre: AU, For Keeps 'verse
Summary: A few years after the events of Thursday, Castiel drops in for a friendly visit interrogation.
Warnings: damaged!Sam, life-after-the-wall
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox.
Author’s Note: This takes place after A Lullaby for the Boys We Used to Be. but it's not essential that you read it first as long as you have a basic understanding of how this 'verse works. If nothing else, I would at least read Thursday first.
Sam was sprawled in the dusty yard, face turned up towards the mid-summer sun, arms and legs all akimbo, except for the one perpetually attached to the amulet. His cat, a small, black, tuft of fur that Dean alternately called, “Cat,” “Hey, Cat,” “Sam’s Goddamn Cat,” and, when he was in a good mood, “Kitty,” burrowed into the dip of his stomach.
Dean watched from the shop as Sam lazily reached up with his free hand to scratch behind the kitten’s ears. He smiled. Summers were quiet. Sam did better in the summer, spent so much time outside that his skin turned bronze and his hair took on those light golden highlights, like liquid sunlight poured over his head. Sammy liked the summer, so Dean liked the summer.
“Sammy,” Dean hollered, wiping greasy hands on a tattered rag, “Go lay under the tree, man, you’re gonna give yourself a fucking heatstroke.”
Sam lifted his head, squinted at Dean, then went back to what Dean liked to call “preening” in the afternoon sun. “Dude, you’re gonna get a sunburn and you’re gonna peel and it’ll be gross and I don’t wanna hear you bitching about it.”
Sam drew one leg up, drug his heel through the withered grass of Bobby’s front yard like it took all the effort in the world to perform this one simple task, and then stopped.
“Now the other one, Sasquatch.” Dean liked to think, at times like this, that Sam was being difficult just to annoy him. That thought made him feel warm and gooey inside. It made him feel good. It made him see Sam as Sam and not as some faded ghost. He ducked back into the dim coolness of his garage. On the far wall, a tall, solid guy with a thick red beard and curly, though thinning, ginger hair, pulled a Miller High Life from his mini-fridge and handed it over with a grin.
“Tryin’ to save the few firin’ braincells your brother’s got left, huh, Singer?” he said with a chuckle.
Dean took the beer with an irritated glare. He didn’t throw these guys out anymore. They just kept coming back. And truth be told, they weren’t mean, they just lacked tact. A lot of tact. But they were good for business, better than taking out an ad in the paper, the way their mouths waggled because sure, Dean Singer worked miracles with the rusted out hulks of old beauties, but he was a helluva guy too, and in towns like Sioux Falls, shit like that tended to be the big dealbreaker in business decisions.
“He’s fine. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes for the words to sink in.”
Dean heard a noise, then. A noise that Red certainly didn’t hear, or if he did, he wasn’t acknowledging. Dean hadn’t heard this particular sound in years, not since-
“Sammy?” Dean turned back towards the door, ignored Red’s startled, “what?” and stopped just after the threshold, blinking in the sudden brightness, his beer suddenly heavy and too wet, slipping in his hand, “Sam?”
Sam was sitting up, stiff as a rail. The hand around the amulet clenched so tight that his knuckles turned white and the other, so firmly closed around the small cat that she mewed unhappily in his lap. His eyes hovered over the dusty yard, wide and panicked. Dean crossed the yard in a few long strides, knelt beside Sam and sat his beer on the ground, cautiously bringing his hands up to grip Sam’s shoulders.
“What’s wrong, Sammy?”
Sam’s eyes scanned the yard, left to right, past the front porch that Dean had finished repainting last week, yellow, much to Bobby’s chagrin. He wanted to do the whole house in blue and yellow. “I don’t give a shit what you do,” Bobby said, “But if I come home and it’s fucking fushia, your asses are on the street.”
He looked past the house, past the first pile of dead cars, past the gray cinderblock fortress of Dean’s shop, where Red hovered uncertainly in the doorway, asking, “Everything all right?”
There was a pile of tires and a tree where Dean had parked the Impala in the shade because black leather seats were a bitch when it was already ninety-something degrees outside.
Sam’s gaze hovered over the Impala, past Bobby’s old Camaro…then quickly shot back to the Impala.
Then Dean saw what Sam saw and growled, “What the fuck are you doing here, Cas?”
“I require your assistance.”
“No.”
“Dean-“
“No. The W-,” Dean almost said Winchesters, caught himself, glanced at Red, and swallowed the familiar name, “We’re retired. “
Castiel was unperturbed, “It is of the utmost importance.”
“It’s always of the utmost importance, Cas. So, no. No way. I don’t even want to know.” Dean slid his arm around Sam’s shoulders. He was tense, muscles coiled, ready to bolt. Dean watched him closely, braced for a meltdown, “You need to go, Cas. I don’t even know what you were thinking coming here, just popping in on us, on Sam. What the hell, man?”
Red stepped forward, arms crossed over his thick chest, “Look, maybe you should go.”
Castiel sighed, “That would be unwise-.”
“Well, maybe you should make it wise, huh?” Red drew himself up so that he looked menacing in addition to large, and Dean groaned inside. Sam shuddered and hefted the kitten against his chest. He forced his gaze downward, muscles locked in position. Dean smoothed his hair back and tried to catch Sam’s eyes. Sam refused to look up. Dean looked at Castiel, whose own gaze was impassive, his stance rigid and firm. Dean had forgotten how solid he was, how he could convey that sense of hugeness, imperviousness, even in the skin of poor average Jimmy Novak.
I am roughly the size of your Chrysler Building…
Dean found his voice, “Red.” He grabbed Red’s thick arm, “Hey, man, can you just take Sam inside for a bit? There’s some Pepsi in the fridge. He could probably use a drink. Right, Sam?”
Sam was silent. Dean and Red hefted him up and Dean waited for a struggle when Red took his elbow, was pleasantly surprised when the struggle never came. Red shot Castiel a dark look and asked Dean, “You gonna be alright?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. Just an old friend.” Dean forced a smile that he hoped looked carefree or bashful or embarrassed. He wasn’t sure what it actually looked like. He hadn’t conned anyone for anything in years, not even peace of mind. He was out of practice. It must have shown, he thought, because Red raised his eyebrow the way he did when Tony Pickett told one of his stories-that-was-more-fiction-than-fact. “Really,” Dean said, haltingly earnest and plainly fraudulent, “It’s okay. Gimme a holler if Sam gives you any lip.” He grinned wider, forced a laugh, because everyone knew that Sam Singer never gave anyone any lip about anything.
Dean watched them cross the hot yard. He waited for Bobby’s door to slam shut before he turned to Castiel and let the dopey grin melt off of his face, “Make it quick and get the fuck out. Don’t come back here unless you are summoned and if you kidnap me while I sleep, so help your feathery ass, I will end you.”
“Sam looks well.”
The statement caught Dean off-guard. He narrowed his eyes at Castiel, “Well enough. What do you need me for, Cas?”
“Sam…has experience that you lack. I need to speak with him.”
“No way.”
“Dean-,”
“In fact, we’ll make that the second on our list: bother Sam and I will end you.”
“I will not bother him, Dean, I just need--,”
“No. Sammy’s in a good place right now, okay? We’re even taking a fucking road trip next month. So, whatever you need, you can just go somewhere else...Please?”
Castiel hung his head. Dean held his breath and hoped that maybe he had won, that it had just been as easy as asking. Then Castiel raised his head, an expression of utter regret plastered across Jimmy Novak’s face, “I’m sorry, Dean.” He sidestepped the eldest Winchester and moved purposefully towards the steps of Bobby’s front porch, the tail of his duster hanging limply in the thick air.
“Castiel!”
Castiel stopped, spun gracefully. Dean could smell his own sweat, pooling in the small of his back beneath the old Skynyrd t-shirt, the one with the hole near the bottom hem. He could smell his own slightly unpleasant stink: equal parts grease and sweat. His shirt clung beneath his arms, across his shoulders, his belly; but Castiel was immaculate, even beneath his layers.
Dean wrung his hands, uncharacteristically nervous. He never really expected Castiel not to listen to him,“We go to Dairy Queen on Thursday nights. There’s this girl who works in the window named Callie. She calls him ‘Sammich’ and gives him extra hot fudge and he blushes every fucking time, Cas. He’s starting to understand again.”
Castiel nodded, “I am glad.” He turned back towards the half-painted house and Dean felt his uncertainty bubble into something slick and dark: a promise that he could only ever find the determination to keep for Sam.
When Castiel reached the bottom step, Dean yelled, “You know what I’m capable of, Cas. You really wanna bring that down on yourself?”
Then the storm door slammed open and Sam bolted out, ink-stained and trembling, one hand clutching a wad of hastily torn notebook paper. He thrust the wad into Castiel’s hands and raised his now unoccupied hand to shield his eyes from Castiel, Dean suddenly realized.
Red appeared on the porch, a streak of black marker across the bridge of his nose. He wrung his hands, large and meaty and also streaked with ink. He apologized, “He marked up Bobby’s table pretty good before I could find the paper…”
“It’s okay,” Dean said absently, slowly filling the space between him and Sam. He glanced over Castiel’s shoulder as he passed, at the wrinkled paper, wild with Sam’s scrawling. He couldn’t make much of it, couldn’t determine if it was some sort of spell or map or written testimony. It wasn’t English, clearly. It wasn’t Latin or Sumerian or any of the other tongues Sam could once write so fluidly. Castiel shuffled the papers and Dean caught something that might have been Enochian, but he couldn’t even begin to decipher its meaning.
Castiel slowly lowered the fistful of papers and squinted at Sam, still shielding his eyes with the hand that wasn’t clenched around the amulet. “Is this true, Sam?”
Sam said nothing.
For the first time, Castiel seemed to wilt in the heat, “Thank you.”
“What’d he say, Cas?” Dean looked at Sam, “What’d you say, Sammy?”
Castiel turned, walked back across the yard.
“Castiel!”
He didn’t stop and Dean was torn between his desire to chase after him, or stay with Sam. He watched Castiel disappear around the corner of the shop before adding, “Man, next time bring a pizza or something. We don’t work for free!”
Sam tentatively lowered his hand from his eyes, squinted at the brightness of the yard and leaned into Dean when he slid a sticky arm around his shoulders.
“You okay, Sammy?” Dean waited for Sam to say something back, because he would never accept that Sam never would, then continued, “Yeah, you’re okay. I bet Cas is real sorry he just dropped in like that You know how he is.” Dean shot one final look towards the direction Castiel left before moving forward, gently guiding Sam up the steps, “Let’s go see what you did to Bobby’s table, huh?”
Red held the door. Dean stepped over scattered newspaper and the shattered remnants of a glass with sticky amber cola pooling among the ruins. He dropped Sam in the nearest chair and watched him clench a blue marker in his hand, carefully marking a series of anti-possession symbols from a dozen different sources across the soft skin of his inner-arm. Dean groaned inwardly, sharpie was a bitch to scrub off.
Red huffed as he wiped up the spilled soda, “I tried to stop him. He got me too.”
He showed his left arm, decorated in similar, though far less meticulous marks as those Sam was working on, “Who was that clown. I ain’t never seen him around.”
“He’s harmless.” Dean dropped the glass in the trash can, “Mostly. You can head out, Red. I’m gonna get Sam cleaned up and get to work on this table before Bobby gets back and” helps me figure this out “shits a brick.”
“You sure? You sure that guy isn’t going to come back?”
“Nah, man, seriously. Go home. Thanks for helping out.”
Red shut the door gently and Dean pulled a chair up next to Sam. Sam was carefully marking up his other arm. It was stretched in front of him like a warm canvas. He had let go of the amulet. Dean wished he knew what that meant. He leaned close and squeezed the back of Sam’s tan neck, asked, absently, “Where’d your cat get off to?”
Sam’s nose twitched in concentration as he inked a thick star over the blue veins in his wrist.
“I’m proud of you, Sammy. You did good today.”
Sam raised his head as he finished the line of symbols on his arm. He blinked dark, intelligent eyes at Dean and Dean held his breath, willing Sam to say something. Anything.
Sam wrapped one large hand around Dean’s wrist and tugged, twisting until the paler skin of his inner arm faced the ceiling. He bowed his head once more and Dean looked away when the first ticklish touch of the felt-tip marker brushed the sensitive skin beneath his elbow.
Dean sighed and rested his chin on Sam’s shoulder, “How come you never tell me things?” His gaze travelled to the frantic scrawls decorating most of the surface of Bobby’s kitchen table, “Then again, maybe you’ve been telling me things all along.”
Spoilers: None
Genre: AU, For Keeps 'verse
Summary: A few years after the events of Thursday, Castiel drops in for a friendly visit interrogation.
Warnings: damaged!Sam, life-after-the-wall
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox.
Author’s Note: This takes place after A Lullaby for the Boys We Used to Be. but it's not essential that you read it first as long as you have a basic understanding of how this 'verse works. If nothing else, I would at least read Thursday first.
Sam was sprawled in the dusty yard, face turned up towards the mid-summer sun, arms and legs all akimbo, except for the one perpetually attached to the amulet. His cat, a small, black, tuft of fur that Dean alternately called, “Cat,” “Hey, Cat,” “Sam’s Goddamn Cat,” and, when he was in a good mood, “Kitty,” burrowed into the dip of his stomach.
Dean watched from the shop as Sam lazily reached up with his free hand to scratch behind the kitten’s ears. He smiled. Summers were quiet. Sam did better in the summer, spent so much time outside that his skin turned bronze and his hair took on those light golden highlights, like liquid sunlight poured over his head. Sammy liked the summer, so Dean liked the summer.
“Sammy,” Dean hollered, wiping greasy hands on a tattered rag, “Go lay under the tree, man, you’re gonna give yourself a fucking heatstroke.”
Sam lifted his head, squinted at Dean, then went back to what Dean liked to call “preening” in the afternoon sun. “Dude, you’re gonna get a sunburn and you’re gonna peel and it’ll be gross and I don’t wanna hear you bitching about it.”
Sam drew one leg up, drug his heel through the withered grass of Bobby’s front yard like it took all the effort in the world to perform this one simple task, and then stopped.
“Now the other one, Sasquatch.” Dean liked to think, at times like this, that Sam was being difficult just to annoy him. That thought made him feel warm and gooey inside. It made him feel good. It made him see Sam as Sam and not as some faded ghost. He ducked back into the dim coolness of his garage. On the far wall, a tall, solid guy with a thick red beard and curly, though thinning, ginger hair, pulled a Miller High Life from his mini-fridge and handed it over with a grin.
“Tryin’ to save the few firin’ braincells your brother’s got left, huh, Singer?” he said with a chuckle.
Dean took the beer with an irritated glare. He didn’t throw these guys out anymore. They just kept coming back. And truth be told, they weren’t mean, they just lacked tact. A lot of tact. But they were good for business, better than taking out an ad in the paper, the way their mouths waggled because sure, Dean Singer worked miracles with the rusted out hulks of old beauties, but he was a helluva guy too, and in towns like Sioux Falls, shit like that tended to be the big dealbreaker in business decisions.
“He’s fine. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes for the words to sink in.”
Dean heard a noise, then. A noise that Red certainly didn’t hear, or if he did, he wasn’t acknowledging. Dean hadn’t heard this particular sound in years, not since-
“Sammy?” Dean turned back towards the door, ignored Red’s startled, “what?” and stopped just after the threshold, blinking in the sudden brightness, his beer suddenly heavy and too wet, slipping in his hand, “Sam?”
Sam was sitting up, stiff as a rail. The hand around the amulet clenched so tight that his knuckles turned white and the other, so firmly closed around the small cat that she mewed unhappily in his lap. His eyes hovered over the dusty yard, wide and panicked. Dean crossed the yard in a few long strides, knelt beside Sam and sat his beer on the ground, cautiously bringing his hands up to grip Sam’s shoulders.
“What’s wrong, Sammy?”
Sam’s eyes scanned the yard, left to right, past the front porch that Dean had finished repainting last week, yellow, much to Bobby’s chagrin. He wanted to do the whole house in blue and yellow. “I don’t give a shit what you do,” Bobby said, “But if I come home and it’s fucking fushia, your asses are on the street.”
He looked past the house, past the first pile of dead cars, past the gray cinderblock fortress of Dean’s shop, where Red hovered uncertainly in the doorway, asking, “Everything all right?”
There was a pile of tires and a tree where Dean had parked the Impala in the shade because black leather seats were a bitch when it was already ninety-something degrees outside.
Sam’s gaze hovered over the Impala, past Bobby’s old Camaro…then quickly shot back to the Impala.
Then Dean saw what Sam saw and growled, “What the fuck are you doing here, Cas?”
“I require your assistance.”
“No.”
“Dean-“
“No. The W-,” Dean almost said Winchesters, caught himself, glanced at Red, and swallowed the familiar name, “We’re retired. “
Castiel was unperturbed, “It is of the utmost importance.”
“It’s always of the utmost importance, Cas. So, no. No way. I don’t even want to know.” Dean slid his arm around Sam’s shoulders. He was tense, muscles coiled, ready to bolt. Dean watched him closely, braced for a meltdown, “You need to go, Cas. I don’t even know what you were thinking coming here, just popping in on us, on Sam. What the hell, man?”
Red stepped forward, arms crossed over his thick chest, “Look, maybe you should go.”
Castiel sighed, “That would be unwise-.”
“Well, maybe you should make it wise, huh?” Red drew himself up so that he looked menacing in addition to large, and Dean groaned inside. Sam shuddered and hefted the kitten against his chest. He forced his gaze downward, muscles locked in position. Dean smoothed his hair back and tried to catch Sam’s eyes. Sam refused to look up. Dean looked at Castiel, whose own gaze was impassive, his stance rigid and firm. Dean had forgotten how solid he was, how he could convey that sense of hugeness, imperviousness, even in the skin of poor average Jimmy Novak.
I am roughly the size of your Chrysler Building…
Dean found his voice, “Red.” He grabbed Red’s thick arm, “Hey, man, can you just take Sam inside for a bit? There’s some Pepsi in the fridge. He could probably use a drink. Right, Sam?”
Sam was silent. Dean and Red hefted him up and Dean waited for a struggle when Red took his elbow, was pleasantly surprised when the struggle never came. Red shot Castiel a dark look and asked Dean, “You gonna be alright?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. Just an old friend.” Dean forced a smile that he hoped looked carefree or bashful or embarrassed. He wasn’t sure what it actually looked like. He hadn’t conned anyone for anything in years, not even peace of mind. He was out of practice. It must have shown, he thought, because Red raised his eyebrow the way he did when Tony Pickett told one of his stories-that-was-more-fiction-than-fact. “Really,” Dean said, haltingly earnest and plainly fraudulent, “It’s okay. Gimme a holler if Sam gives you any lip.” He grinned wider, forced a laugh, because everyone knew that Sam Singer never gave anyone any lip about anything.
Dean watched them cross the hot yard. He waited for Bobby’s door to slam shut before he turned to Castiel and let the dopey grin melt off of his face, “Make it quick and get the fuck out. Don’t come back here unless you are summoned and if you kidnap me while I sleep, so help your feathery ass, I will end you.”
“Sam looks well.”
The statement caught Dean off-guard. He narrowed his eyes at Castiel, “Well enough. What do you need me for, Cas?”
“Sam…has experience that you lack. I need to speak with him.”
“No way.”
“Dean-,”
“In fact, we’ll make that the second on our list: bother Sam and I will end you.”
“I will not bother him, Dean, I just need--,”
“No. Sammy’s in a good place right now, okay? We’re even taking a fucking road trip next month. So, whatever you need, you can just go somewhere else...Please?”
Castiel hung his head. Dean held his breath and hoped that maybe he had won, that it had just been as easy as asking. Then Castiel raised his head, an expression of utter regret plastered across Jimmy Novak’s face, “I’m sorry, Dean.” He sidestepped the eldest Winchester and moved purposefully towards the steps of Bobby’s front porch, the tail of his duster hanging limply in the thick air.
“Castiel!”
Castiel stopped, spun gracefully. Dean could smell his own sweat, pooling in the small of his back beneath the old Skynyrd t-shirt, the one with the hole near the bottom hem. He could smell his own slightly unpleasant stink: equal parts grease and sweat. His shirt clung beneath his arms, across his shoulders, his belly; but Castiel was immaculate, even beneath his layers.
Dean wrung his hands, uncharacteristically nervous. He never really expected Castiel not to listen to him,“We go to Dairy Queen on Thursday nights. There’s this girl who works in the window named Callie. She calls him ‘Sammich’ and gives him extra hot fudge and he blushes every fucking time, Cas. He’s starting to understand again.”
Castiel nodded, “I am glad.” He turned back towards the half-painted house and Dean felt his uncertainty bubble into something slick and dark: a promise that he could only ever find the determination to keep for Sam.
When Castiel reached the bottom step, Dean yelled, “You know what I’m capable of, Cas. You really wanna bring that down on yourself?”
Then the storm door slammed open and Sam bolted out, ink-stained and trembling, one hand clutching a wad of hastily torn notebook paper. He thrust the wad into Castiel’s hands and raised his now unoccupied hand to shield his eyes from Castiel, Dean suddenly realized.
Red appeared on the porch, a streak of black marker across the bridge of his nose. He wrung his hands, large and meaty and also streaked with ink. He apologized, “He marked up Bobby’s table pretty good before I could find the paper…”
“It’s okay,” Dean said absently, slowly filling the space between him and Sam. He glanced over Castiel’s shoulder as he passed, at the wrinkled paper, wild with Sam’s scrawling. He couldn’t make much of it, couldn’t determine if it was some sort of spell or map or written testimony. It wasn’t English, clearly. It wasn’t Latin or Sumerian or any of the other tongues Sam could once write so fluidly. Castiel shuffled the papers and Dean caught something that might have been Enochian, but he couldn’t even begin to decipher its meaning.
Castiel slowly lowered the fistful of papers and squinted at Sam, still shielding his eyes with the hand that wasn’t clenched around the amulet. “Is this true, Sam?”
Sam said nothing.
For the first time, Castiel seemed to wilt in the heat, “Thank you.”
“What’d he say, Cas?” Dean looked at Sam, “What’d you say, Sammy?”
Castiel turned, walked back across the yard.
“Castiel!”
He didn’t stop and Dean was torn between his desire to chase after him, or stay with Sam. He watched Castiel disappear around the corner of the shop before adding, “Man, next time bring a pizza or something. We don’t work for free!”
Sam tentatively lowered his hand from his eyes, squinted at the brightness of the yard and leaned into Dean when he slid a sticky arm around his shoulders.
“You okay, Sammy?” Dean waited for Sam to say something back, because he would never accept that Sam never would, then continued, “Yeah, you’re okay. I bet Cas is real sorry he just dropped in like that You know how he is.” Dean shot one final look towards the direction Castiel left before moving forward, gently guiding Sam up the steps, “Let’s go see what you did to Bobby’s table, huh?”
Red held the door. Dean stepped over scattered newspaper and the shattered remnants of a glass with sticky amber cola pooling among the ruins. He dropped Sam in the nearest chair and watched him clench a blue marker in his hand, carefully marking a series of anti-possession symbols from a dozen different sources across the soft skin of his inner-arm. Dean groaned inwardly, sharpie was a bitch to scrub off.
Red huffed as he wiped up the spilled soda, “I tried to stop him. He got me too.”
He showed his left arm, decorated in similar, though far less meticulous marks as those Sam was working on, “Who was that clown. I ain’t never seen him around.”
“He’s harmless.” Dean dropped the glass in the trash can, “Mostly. You can head out, Red. I’m gonna get Sam cleaned up and get to work on this table before Bobby gets back and” helps me figure this out “shits a brick.”
“You sure? You sure that guy isn’t going to come back?”
“Nah, man, seriously. Go home. Thanks for helping out.”
Red shut the door gently and Dean pulled a chair up next to Sam. Sam was carefully marking up his other arm. It was stretched in front of him like a warm canvas. He had let go of the amulet. Dean wished he knew what that meant. He leaned close and squeezed the back of Sam’s tan neck, asked, absently, “Where’d your cat get off to?”
Sam’s nose twitched in concentration as he inked a thick star over the blue veins in his wrist.
“I’m proud of you, Sammy. You did good today.”
Sam raised his head as he finished the line of symbols on his arm. He blinked dark, intelligent eyes at Dean and Dean held his breath, willing Sam to say something. Anything.
Sam wrapped one large hand around Dean’s wrist and tugged, twisting until the paler skin of his inner arm faced the ceiling. He bowed his head once more and Dean looked away when the first ticklish touch of the felt-tip marker brushed the sensitive skin beneath his elbow.
Dean sighed and rested his chin on Sam’s shoulder, “How come you never tell me things?” His gaze travelled to the frantic scrawls decorating most of the surface of Bobby’s kitchen table, “Then again, maybe you’ve been telling me things all along.”