fannishliss

I did that gift meme where I promised to make something for whoever signed up, and this is what I made for bowtrunckle , who first prompted me to listen to Death Cab in conjunction with the Winchester brothers.

This fic is Rated PG for intense brotherly love, but if you have other goggles, you might see the Emerald City green as day.

Death Cab for Cutie owns all their own songs. To spread the demon virus that they are, I encourage everyone to buy their cds -- they will totally burrow into your brain!!

I guess Kripke and the CW own the boys, whereas I only own my Plastic Versions of them. No money is made off any of my fic on this LJ.

Dear Bowtrunckle, I hope you like your ficcy present!!

TITLE:  "Why Sam Winchester Hates Death Cab for Cutie"
spoilery through early s4 only


Two things. One, Sam Winchester is not completely oblivious, and two, Sam, quietly, loathes Death Cab for Cutie.

It’s not the lead singer’s voice (Sam knows he hasn’t got a leg to stand on in comparison with men’s singing voices), and it’s not really his powers as a lyricist. In fact, as a lyricist, Sam sometimes thinks the guy is reading their minds.

Sam remembers putting himself on a Greyhound bus to give himself room to think, and it was no picnic, hit song notwithstanding. God, that song had been all over Stanford, the year Dean came to take him away and everything went to Hell. Sam purposefully never sang along to it, the lines about turning earth too close to the salt and burns he had meant never to be part of again. And “Brothers on a Hotel Bed” absolutely read his mind about the awkward estrangement of that year, the way they just couldn’t seem to get back in step for the longest time, Sam constantly reaching out in his sleep for the girl who’d burned to death on the ceiling, snapping awake to find Dean’s mournful eyes already glued to his face in the dark.

And Dean, God help him. Still so full of the same old bullshit. Making eyes at women, shocked into silence if they responded. Hips hugging Sam’s whenever they entered a room, and Dean didn’t even know it. That’s where Sam not being completely oblivious comes in.

So yeah, Sam hated Death Cab even before their latest release, which somehow crossed over onto the hard rock stations Dean tuned in, all across the country. He had to admit the bass line was awesome. That driving, precise line, relentless against the echoey backdrop of distance, longing, flight, and pursual. But then the guy opened his mouth and it was like Road Trip Year One all over again. Dean’s pleading, heartbroken eyes, staring at Sam whenever he forgot to look away, whenever he forgot to look at the women and play how much he loved the road and the life.

Then Dean went and learned the words without even realizing he was singing Death Cab.

“How I wish you could see the potential, the potential of you and me,” Dean sings, quietly, to himself, while Sam feigns sleep against the window. The song had come out the spring of Dean’s deal, and was still getting pretty strong play.

Dean’s voice, Sam admits, is goddamned beautiful, when no one is listening; high and husky, and like the man himself, heartbroken.

“It’s like a book elegantly bound, but, in a language that you can’t read just yet,” Dean sings.

Sam knows the language. That’s kind of the problem. He’d learned the language at the knee of the boy who’d invented it. A language consisting entirely of longing, loyalty, love, and the deepest need, the most wholehearted self-sacrifice Sam could ever imagine. Sam can absolutely read that language in his sleep – sometimes literally awakening to find his brother curled protectively around him, grasping him tightly, even while unconscious. But it was just, that need of Dean’s, so intense, it terrified him. To be needed like that. How could anyone, much less “the boy with the demon blood” ever measure up?

“You gotta spend some time, love, you gotta spend some time with me,” Dean chants.

Sam knew Dean thought he’d been unaware of how they’d shadowed him at Stanford. True, he’d believed it to be just Dean – he’d been shocked to find his Dad had at least known about Dean keeping tabs on him. But yeah, he knew Dean’s reflection as he passed outside his various rooms. He was not so fucking oblivious. But Sam wondered how many years it would take before Dean saw that he hadn’t been rejecting Dean, he’d been rejecting the unnatural life they’d been given over to at so young an age.

Before he hit thirty, Dean had pretty much died three times, sold his soul, gone to Hell, been tortured into becoming a goddamned torturer himself, and finally wrenched back to life to serve the mysterious purposes of Angels in a war tantamount to the Apocalypse. As Dean said, it either ends sad or bloody,  and he was speaking from experience.

Sam believes him.

He still hates Death Cab, but he’s kind of coming around. Dean hadn’t looked at him that way in  a long time, since before he made the deal. It was as though he’d given everything up, not just his life, his immortal soul, but his every chance at happiness.  When Sam had stopped Samhain with his mind, Dean’s face registered every sacrifice he’d ever made to keep Sam safe and sane, turned to horror and disappointment.

“I know that you’ll find, love, I will possess your heart.”

Sam had realized, long before the hellhounds tore his brother away, that Dean was everything to him, the way he was everything to Dean. And now that Dean was back from Hell, Sam has to find a way to let his brother know—that he really can read that language, that he’s not setting Dean up, again, to be let down easily.

Sam stirs in his seat, sits up, begins to sing along. His voice is too low, off key, but he catches Dean’s eye.

“You gotta spend some time, love, you gotta spend some time with me,
and I know that you’ll find, love, I will possess your heart.”

“What, Sam? You probably love this emo shit, hey?” says Dean.

“Jerk, I only learned it from you,” Sam replies.

A song of distance, longing, flight, and pursual, one that circles and circles, never seeming to end. Sam wholeheartedly, at last, chimes in.



Please friends, read and feedback!  :)