[SPN] This Elephant in the Room Better Not Start Singing (PG-13, 1973 words)
Title: This Elephant in the Room Better Not Start Singing
Specs: Supernatural, pre-series, Sam and Dean, PG-13ish
More! at: newredfic.oscillating.net
Many thanks to: The war council! adiva_calandia and layangabi for their feedback, and silveraspen for her remarkable beta.
* * *
You’ve been out of school two weeks and already it’s been nine hundred miles. Dad was waiting outside the day you got out, car already packed up. You’d had to make your goodbyes at lunch, but there weren’t many necessary: you know the rules by now. The two of you sat together in the hour to kill before Sam got let out, but then the ritual without ceremony was repeated and you put another disposable hometown in the rearview. This last one you had lived in four months. Hell of a time to plant your feet in New England, Dad said, but Sam begged to stay with a teacher he liked. Besides, you’d pointed out, there’s always plenty of business in that corridor. Spring turned out to be nice there, once you watched it emerge.
Still, now it’s summer, when all pretense of stability gets crumpled up and thrown out the window. You and Dad and Sam sleep in every time zone you can drive to, the country just another constellation of outskirts motels and other hunters’ couches. You are four weeks away from being fifteen and a half, one small countdown before the bigger one starts. There are things you want to do, things you’re reasonably certain can be accomplished, even in Asheville, North Carolina. But your father has growled “Take your brother to the damn movie, Dean,” and so here you are on a Sunday afternoon, buying two tickets to go see The Lion King.
Dad didn’t say what he needed those few hours for. You know better than to ask. Sam doesn’t care: he holds his excitement like his convictions. Personally, you are mortified to be caught in line for a Disney flick. There’s this seriously hot girl a few places ahead and you can’t stop looking at the slits she’s made up the sides of her cutoff shorts. She’s with another girl and a guy, and there’s something about the setup that tells you she’s the third wheel, but even for a joke, no way are they at the fricking Lion King on its opening weekend.
“I can’t decide what kind of candy I want,” Sam is saying when you tune in to his voice again. “If they have Whoppers, I think I want those. It’s been ages since I had those. Maybe gummi worms if they don’t have them.”
“Dude, chill out.” You interrupt him out of self-defense: this could go on forever if you don’t nip it in the bud. “If you hadn’t been such a little spaz about this showing we could have already hit up the SuperAmerica and gotten the big bags.”
Sam frowns. “That’s not the same. It’s not the same when you steal it, Dean.”
You’ve known guys who work convenience stores. They’ve told you what the gas station pays per unit to order that crap. You can’t get worked up about it. “Aren’t you getting a little old for this stuff?” you say instead, keeping one eye on Hot Legs up ahead.
Sam, eleven for six weeks now, scowls. “No. Anyway, I heard it was kinda based on Shakespeare or something.”
“Shakespeare?” You’d been forced to read Romeo & Juliet at the school before the last one. “Great. This keeps getting better and better.”
“You’re not gonna ruin this for me just because you play stupid about school things!” he bitches. Damn, does his voice carry when he gets pissy. You laugh and clap him on the back too hard, call him “sport” and promise to buy him a jumbo tub of popcorn if he’ll let you off the hook to go see The Crow instead. But he looks up at you, too hopeful to be bratty, and says, “Dad said you had to stick with me,” and that’s when you know you’ve lost.
You buy the tub of popcorn anyway, as well as a box of jawbreakers for Sam. The lobby is plastered with Disney crap, freestanding cardboard characters and strings of plastic jungle leaves and a printed tarp of a savannah scene where you can stand in front to have your picture taken. Sam wants to get good seats, so you take one last longing look at Hot Legs, who kinda catches your eye and smiles as she goes into City Slickers 2, and follow Sam into the dim cavern of Cinema 5. It’s twenty minutes before the previews start, and the theater is playing country radio over a slideshow of local snapshots. Sam is chattering about how awesome the movie sounds. You think about Dad. You wonder what he’s up to.
More people filter in. You tell Sam to take a bathroom check just to annoy the obnoxious mom and her two squalling kids between you and the aisle. A rec league softball game gets played out in heartwarming still life through the projector. Sam scoots back in, skinny enough that no one has to move their knees to let him past. “How much time have we got?” he asks breathlessly. You tell him between mouthfuls of popcorn. He helps you demolish it.
There’s this doofy, long-ass preview for the next animated feature, which doesn’t even come out for a year, where you have to sit through five minutes of some blonde guy getting totally castrated with a bunch of nature crap and swirling leaves. The movie’s supposed to be about Pocahontas, but whatever. Any woman who thinks she can make rocks glow from the inside and waltz into a den to snuggle bear cubs is either retarded, insane, or the kind of witch you really don’t want to tussle with, no matter what kind of rack she’s got. Sam doesn’t want to hear any of it, though: he shushes you like a granny, and when that doesn’t work, he punches you. Finally the drawings onscreen stop frolicking through waterfalls and belting out mystical power ballads. The room goes dark all the way. Sam is breathing through his mouth, rapt. You slouch down with the empty box of popcorn between your legs. The movie starts. The ticket stub says only an hour and a half. Please, please let it be true.
You’re quiet for the whole length of the film. All around you, kids are shrieking with laughter or parents are sniffling at the dramatic parts. Sam reacts with all the others, but for the most part he’s just enthralled. You weren’t expecting this from a stupid Disney flick. The father dies onscreen. The son runs away. The whole countryside catches on fire.
Sam has enough sense to get out when Elton John starts singing over the credits. He enthuses about the movie all the way outside, where the late afternoon sunlight blinds you both, and the colors are all washed out for a few minutes. Dad is supposed to be waiting in the car to pick you both up, but there’s no Impala in sight, so you and Sam hang out. Sam monkeys around on the rails lining the handicapped ramp, the questions constant: What was your favorite part? Who was your favorite character? What was your favorite song? A good twenty-five minutes of this and Hot Legs comes out with her two friends. You shoot her a grin on principle, and the guy shoots you a dirty look. Huh - guess you were wrong about the third wheel thing. Sam crinkles up his nose after them, and you have to laugh. Give him a year or two: if he’s not too much of a freak, he’ll understand.
Dad keeps not showing, and the minutes keep ticking away. You wonder if it’s worth risking his wrath to just walk back to the motel: Asheville’s not big enough for you to be that far from anything. Even as you think it, you know it’s a dumb idea. You were given an order. He won’t know where to find you if he shows up and you’re both gone. Intentions mean jack - there’s no such thing as forgive and forget when it comes to your dad. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the reflection of the theater’s glass doors, hair shaggy and skin going tawny from the sun. You have green eyes like Scar and big feet like Mufasa. It should surprise you that you've logged the names of all these fictional animals, but that's training kicking in, automatic recall that you can't switch off.
“I think we should run away,” Sam announces, frustration making him at least half-serious.
“Yeah,” you snort, “‘cause that always ends well.”
“We know how to do it,” he insists. “We could make it work.”
You shake your head. “Hakuna matata only works when you’re a warthog, dude.”
Mist is starting to pool in the mountains, blue clouds rising up like breath beneath the stark outline of the ridge. The first tints of sunset color the horizon. Asheville is high up on a hill, and you can see for miles. It’s striking enough that you don’t even start humming The Who.
“If we were in the Pridelands,” Sam pipes up, “what animal would you be?”
You could blow him off, but you need to keep cool for both of you because Dad still isn’t here, so you shrug. “I dunno. A leopard maybe. Or a hyena, that’d be pretty cool.”
“No,” says Sam fervently. “You’d be a lion.”
You pick at the ragged hole in one knee of your jeans. “Everyone thinks they’d be a lion.”
“We’re not everyone.” You catch his eyes on you, serious and intent. “Dad would be a lion,” he insists.
“Yeah, well, that’d still make you a pain in the ass.” In reality, lions are a disappointment. They’re bullies and scavengers. It’s a stupid question. You swipe at his dangling foot. “You’d be Zazu, never shut up.”
People are starting to line up for evening showings. You join Sam perched on the ramp railings. It’s a pretty good view of the valley from here: mountains are usually country to be passed through, but you like the foreignness of them, after so much time on the plains. You scan the roads. Somewhere down there is Dad. He’s out with the Impala, picking up who knows what for what the hell ever, and his two kids have been waiting longer than the length of the movie they came for. Sam is gazing at the burrito place across the way, but there’s food back at the motel and you’ve spent most of the cash you were given. People are glancing at you as they walk past - just a night out at the movies. You’re fifteen and a half, give or take. You want to be able to do things.
“Six months,” you snap, startled by how the anger burbles out. “I’ll have my license for real then. No more of this under the radar crap.”
Sam stares at you a moment, tracking past where you stop short. He tilts forward, not big enough against the long drop of the hill. “Should we try and call the room? Maybe he went back there first.”
Just out of your mouth, and it feels empty already. You get mad at him, you need your threats, but you’d never leave. You’d never. This life isn’t a damn cartoon. “No,” you tell him, squinting into the bright wound of the western sky. “He’ll come here. He said he would. Just a while longer.”
Sam nods, but he keeps on watching you. Kid’s still young enough to believe everything you say. Got to be careful around him.
Another hour, you decide. Then you really will start walking. You and Sam sit together as the red sunset drains into the mountains. Cross that bridge when you come to it. Just a while longer. Until then, you know the rules, and you’ll be ready to go when he comes.
Specs: Supernatural, pre-series, Sam and Dean, PG-13ish
More! at: newredfic.oscillating.net
Many thanks to: The war council! adiva_calandia and layangabi for their feedback, and silveraspen for her remarkable beta.
* * *
You’ve been out of school two weeks and already it’s been nine hundred miles. Dad was waiting outside the day you got out, car already packed up. You’d had to make your goodbyes at lunch, but there weren’t many necessary: you know the rules by now. The two of you sat together in the hour to kill before Sam got let out, but then the ritual without ceremony was repeated and you put another disposable hometown in the rearview. This last one you had lived in four months. Hell of a time to plant your feet in New England, Dad said, but Sam begged to stay with a teacher he liked. Besides, you’d pointed out, there’s always plenty of business in that corridor. Spring turned out to be nice there, once you watched it emerge.
Still, now it’s summer, when all pretense of stability gets crumpled up and thrown out the window. You and Dad and Sam sleep in every time zone you can drive to, the country just another constellation of outskirts motels and other hunters’ couches. You are four weeks away from being fifteen and a half, one small countdown before the bigger one starts. There are things you want to do, things you’re reasonably certain can be accomplished, even in Asheville, North Carolina. But your father has growled “Take your brother to the damn movie, Dean,” and so here you are on a Sunday afternoon, buying two tickets to go see The Lion King.
Dad didn’t say what he needed those few hours for. You know better than to ask. Sam doesn’t care: he holds his excitement like his convictions. Personally, you are mortified to be caught in line for a Disney flick. There’s this seriously hot girl a few places ahead and you can’t stop looking at the slits she’s made up the sides of her cutoff shorts. She’s with another girl and a guy, and there’s something about the setup that tells you she’s the third wheel, but even for a joke, no way are they at the fricking Lion King on its opening weekend.
“I can’t decide what kind of candy I want,” Sam is saying when you tune in to his voice again. “If they have Whoppers, I think I want those. It’s been ages since I had those. Maybe gummi worms if they don’t have them.”
“Dude, chill out.” You interrupt him out of self-defense: this could go on forever if you don’t nip it in the bud. “If you hadn’t been such a little spaz about this showing we could have already hit up the SuperAmerica and gotten the big bags.”
Sam frowns. “That’s not the same. It’s not the same when you steal it, Dean.”
You’ve known guys who work convenience stores. They’ve told you what the gas station pays per unit to order that crap. You can’t get worked up about it. “Aren’t you getting a little old for this stuff?” you say instead, keeping one eye on Hot Legs up ahead.
Sam, eleven for six weeks now, scowls. “No. Anyway, I heard it was kinda based on Shakespeare or something.”
“Shakespeare?” You’d been forced to read Romeo & Juliet at the school before the last one. “Great. This keeps getting better and better.”
“You’re not gonna ruin this for me just because you play stupid about school things!” he bitches. Damn, does his voice carry when he gets pissy. You laugh and clap him on the back too hard, call him “sport” and promise to buy him a jumbo tub of popcorn if he’ll let you off the hook to go see The Crow instead. But he looks up at you, too hopeful to be bratty, and says, “Dad said you had to stick with me,” and that’s when you know you’ve lost.
You buy the tub of popcorn anyway, as well as a box of jawbreakers for Sam. The lobby is plastered with Disney crap, freestanding cardboard characters and strings of plastic jungle leaves and a printed tarp of a savannah scene where you can stand in front to have your picture taken. Sam wants to get good seats, so you take one last longing look at Hot Legs, who kinda catches your eye and smiles as she goes into City Slickers 2, and follow Sam into the dim cavern of Cinema 5. It’s twenty minutes before the previews start, and the theater is playing country radio over a slideshow of local snapshots. Sam is chattering about how awesome the movie sounds. You think about Dad. You wonder what he’s up to.
More people filter in. You tell Sam to take a bathroom check just to annoy the obnoxious mom and her two squalling kids between you and the aisle. A rec league softball game gets played out in heartwarming still life through the projector. Sam scoots back in, skinny enough that no one has to move their knees to let him past. “How much time have we got?” he asks breathlessly. You tell him between mouthfuls of popcorn. He helps you demolish it.
There’s this doofy, long-ass preview for the next animated feature, which doesn’t even come out for a year, where you have to sit through five minutes of some blonde guy getting totally castrated with a bunch of nature crap and swirling leaves. The movie’s supposed to be about Pocahontas, but whatever. Any woman who thinks she can make rocks glow from the inside and waltz into a den to snuggle bear cubs is either retarded, insane, or the kind of witch you really don’t want to tussle with, no matter what kind of rack she’s got. Sam doesn’t want to hear any of it, though: he shushes you like a granny, and when that doesn’t work, he punches you. Finally the drawings onscreen stop frolicking through waterfalls and belting out mystical power ballads. The room goes dark all the way. Sam is breathing through his mouth, rapt. You slouch down with the empty box of popcorn between your legs. The movie starts. The ticket stub says only an hour and a half. Please, please let it be true.
You’re quiet for the whole length of the film. All around you, kids are shrieking with laughter or parents are sniffling at the dramatic parts. Sam reacts with all the others, but for the most part he’s just enthralled. You weren’t expecting this from a stupid Disney flick. The father dies onscreen. The son runs away. The whole countryside catches on fire.
Sam has enough sense to get out when Elton John starts singing over the credits. He enthuses about the movie all the way outside, where the late afternoon sunlight blinds you both, and the colors are all washed out for a few minutes. Dad is supposed to be waiting in the car to pick you both up, but there’s no Impala in sight, so you and Sam hang out. Sam monkeys around on the rails lining the handicapped ramp, the questions constant: What was your favorite part? Who was your favorite character? What was your favorite song? A good twenty-five minutes of this and Hot Legs comes out with her two friends. You shoot her a grin on principle, and the guy shoots you a dirty look. Huh - guess you were wrong about the third wheel thing. Sam crinkles up his nose after them, and you have to laugh. Give him a year or two: if he’s not too much of a freak, he’ll understand.
Dad keeps not showing, and the minutes keep ticking away. You wonder if it’s worth risking his wrath to just walk back to the motel: Asheville’s not big enough for you to be that far from anything. Even as you think it, you know it’s a dumb idea. You were given an order. He won’t know where to find you if he shows up and you’re both gone. Intentions mean jack - there’s no such thing as forgive and forget when it comes to your dad. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the reflection of the theater’s glass doors, hair shaggy and skin going tawny from the sun. You have green eyes like Scar and big feet like Mufasa. It should surprise you that you've logged the names of all these fictional animals, but that's training kicking in, automatic recall that you can't switch off.
“I think we should run away,” Sam announces, frustration making him at least half-serious.
“Yeah,” you snort, “‘cause that always ends well.”
“We know how to do it,” he insists. “We could make it work.”
You shake your head. “Hakuna matata only works when you’re a warthog, dude.”
Mist is starting to pool in the mountains, blue clouds rising up like breath beneath the stark outline of the ridge. The first tints of sunset color the horizon. Asheville is high up on a hill, and you can see for miles. It’s striking enough that you don’t even start humming The Who.
“If we were in the Pridelands,” Sam pipes up, “what animal would you be?”
You could blow him off, but you need to keep cool for both of you because Dad still isn’t here, so you shrug. “I dunno. A leopard maybe. Or a hyena, that’d be pretty cool.”
“No,” says Sam fervently. “You’d be a lion.”
You pick at the ragged hole in one knee of your jeans. “Everyone thinks they’d be a lion.”
“We’re not everyone.” You catch his eyes on you, serious and intent. “Dad would be a lion,” he insists.
“Yeah, well, that’d still make you a pain in the ass.” In reality, lions are a disappointment. They’re bullies and scavengers. It’s a stupid question. You swipe at his dangling foot. “You’d be Zazu, never shut up.”
People are starting to line up for evening showings. You join Sam perched on the ramp railings. It’s a pretty good view of the valley from here: mountains are usually country to be passed through, but you like the foreignness of them, after so much time on the plains. You scan the roads. Somewhere down there is Dad. He’s out with the Impala, picking up who knows what for what the hell ever, and his two kids have been waiting longer than the length of the movie they came for. Sam is gazing at the burrito place across the way, but there’s food back at the motel and you’ve spent most of the cash you were given. People are glancing at you as they walk past - just a night out at the movies. You’re fifteen and a half, give or take. You want to be able to do things.
“Six months,” you snap, startled by how the anger burbles out. “I’ll have my license for real then. No more of this under the radar crap.”
Sam stares at you a moment, tracking past where you stop short. He tilts forward, not big enough against the long drop of the hill. “Should we try and call the room? Maybe he went back there first.”
Just out of your mouth, and it feels empty already. You get mad at him, you need your threats, but you’d never leave. You’d never. This life isn’t a damn cartoon. “No,” you tell him, squinting into the bright wound of the western sky. “He’ll come here. He said he would. Just a while longer.”
Sam nods, but he keeps on watching you. Kid’s still young enough to believe everything you say. Got to be careful around him.
Another hour, you decide. Then you really will start walking. You and Sam sit together as the red sunset drains into the mountains. Cross that bridge when you come to it. Just a while longer. Until then, you know the rules, and you’ll be ready to go when he comes.