Pink Me!
Pink Me!
Rating: G, Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Word Count: 5,517
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchesters for fun and angst. Sorry about the holes!
A/N: Belated birthday pic/fic for the wonderful pinkphoenix1985
Thanks to Screencap Paradise for the great SPN screencaps, and secret-seer for creating the awesome final montage
Part of The Colour Chronicles
Prelude (mostly pre-series) to 3.11 Mystery spot
Summary: A hunter’s life is all about habits. Some are impossible to break.
Surprisingly, a lot of the arguments in the Winchester household over the years didn’t revolve around guns, knives, and monsters, Dad’s idea of homework, or even Dean’s stupidly retro taste in music. Well, maybe some of the arguments had been about Dad and Dean…
Sam had been fighting a colour war with his brother since he was three. Possibly earlier, if Dean wasn’t lying about always having had to slip him a baby pink pacifier to keep him quiet on the road.
That thing had better’ve been blue or Sam just knew he was looking forward to years of costly therapy as an adult. Had to be blue. Sam couldn’t see John Winchester ever fronting up to a counter with any other colour. Maybe white, or clear. Black? Sam could see that, though he doubted that Chevrolet had widened its product line that much. Please have been blue. Trouble was, Sam also had a clear picture of six-year-old Dean (bringing new meaning to the term juvenile delinquent) deftly “lifting” a pink one for his brother. Yeah, his Dean would definitely have been capable of that, even back then. Oh God. Blue. Blue. Blue?
‘What are you emoing about inside your head now, Sammy?’
Nothing!
Where the heck had his brother come from? Dean was a goddamned Marine savant. Must be genetic. He was so like Dad it was frightening sometimes. Yes Sir! No Sir! Three hundred sit-ups full Sir! No way Sam was ever going to be made into another mindless automaton. Obviously Sam had his mother’s genes and nothing but. It was clear to him that Mom had loved reading and soccer, and had hated the colour pink.
‘Sam?’
Pushy bastard. Sam happily imagined pushing Dean into a puddle. A dirty puddle. A giant, totally scummy, pond.
You’d think by the look of Dean’s footwear that Sam had somehow already managed to go back in time and “Make it so” (to borrow a phrase from the great Captain Picard,) but Dean’s battered running shoes always looked like that.
Sam stared down at his new sneakers. Desperately needed now he was finally starting to grow. Gratefully received, except for one hideous thing…
Brothers. And their ideas of “Totally awesome!” birthday presents.
An enormous toxic sinkhole…
‘Earth to Sam?’ Like that lame joke was ever going improve with weekly repetition.
‘Nothing! I’m not thinking about anything.’ Sam said firmly. He was taking the hard line. When dealing with Dean you soon learned to stand your ground and to never make open-ended statements. Never leave anything open to question. Dean would always find a way to get you.
‘Aww,’ Dean said, oozing false pity.
As if that wasn’t enough of an insult, he was petting Sam on the head. Soothingly.
‘That’s okay, Samantha. I hear princesses still only need to be pretty.’
Bastard. Sam needed a really clever comeback. Just one. Soon.
‘They don’t need brains. Or brawn.’ Dean rolled up his sleeves and began flexing his muscles in his best Arnie impersonation. ‘You can always marry that into the bloodline when you grow up, sweetie.’
Sam shouldn’t be furious. He should be used to his big brother by now. Unfortunately Dean’s continuous snarks weren’t helping his flustered brain to come up with something equally cutting.
When in doubt, or lost for fucking words? Say anything.
‘You’re the one with the golden hair, Dean! That makes you the princess!’
Right. Rules for living with Dean Winchester. Stand your ground. Uh. And always be prepared to run really fast if you have to.
Sam believes it’s only scientific to question everything. That doesn’t make him a nerd.
‘Does too!’
‘Does not!’
Sam is sure that Dean can’t know everything. Pretty sure-he’s still waiting for scientific proof.
Dean thinks Sammy can be an annoying, argumentative, little bitch. His brother will always be a nerd. This he knows for certain. He knows Sam; that’s Dean’s proof.
‘Nerd!’
‘Am not!’
‘Are t…’
Sometimes (pretty damn often over the years,) Dean has accidentally rammed the colour pink down Sam’s unwilling throat.
It wasn’t till Sam left home for Stanford that he realised those incidents were really Dean’s twisted way of testing him.
No one ever said the Winchesters were good at showing affection.
It was an accident when Dean tossed something red (and not damned well colour-fast!) into the washing machine with Sam’s clothes, and half his t-shirts, and all of his boxers erupted in pustulant pink splodges and streaks.
Sam got him back good (don’t ask how, because he’ll take that secret to his grave,) but that still didn’t improve his social position at school for … oh … around three months. Which coincidentally happened to be the time it took for Sam to “lose” or damage beyond all repair on a hunt, all of the aforementioned items. And Sam made sure Dean paid for the replacements.
It wasn’t an accident when Dean started buying cranberry liquid Dial at Walmart instead of his own unscented favourite. It turned out Dean was good at suffering for a cause too. It took a month of bathing in pink bubbles (Dean always used too much-and he was sticking to that story) before Dean broke.
Both brothers counted that event a win for their side.
It was typical of Dean that he also used food as a battleground.
And if Sam was clever enough to hunt down and destroy any tiny bottles of food colouring Dean might have accidentally secreted away behind cans of oil in the garage, or blue-tacked into the curve of the S-bend under the bathroom sink? Well, unfortunately Dean could be clever too.
Tomato sauce did, as Dean said, look really pretty mixed into scrambled eggs. Sam hated the fact that he quickly became addicted to the taste and was forced to ask for them on more than one occasion. Five points to Dean.
Sam took to eating fresh blueberries (the anti-oxidants were good for you) as often as they could afford them, and smiling at Dean through a mouthful of crushed fruit as a suitably culinary (What? He couldn’t cook) form of revenge. It was petty and childish, but every now and then it really grossed Dean out. Point to Sam.
And Sam’s not even going to go into the details of the absolutely un-accidental New Hampshire Christmas debacle of 1998, which started with a simple pink highlighter and escalated to Dean dyeing him blue. You want to know about it? Look it up for yourself.
Even detention (okay unlike Dean, Sam was only ever there by choice. It was boring waiting outside for Dean. So what if he had a habit of accidentally “causing a ruckus” outside and got dragged in for immediate punishment?) wasn’t enough to stop Dean firing a few more shots in the war.
Whenever the teacher eventually fell asleep (Dean was always very careful with the dosage he helpfully slipped into any over-worked teacher’s coffee mug) they ended up ignoring whatever other activities their fellow students got up to (there’s only so many times you can watch Tommy Halliday stick his tongue down Cath Milligan’s throat before you get bored,) and retreating to the chalkboard for games of “Hangman” or “Noughts and Crosses.” It might seem tame from the Winchester point of view, but it wasn’t like they could whip out their knives and guns for a quick competition.
Dean always brought his own chalk. He was particular that way.
‘Life’s about compromise,’ Sam insisted.
After a look at his brother’s deliberately blank face he rephrased the expression. ‘Give a little, get a little.’
‘I’d rather keep what little I’ve got, and get a lot more,’ Dean argued with truly avaricious zeal. Dean was either going to end up the multi-millionaire owner of a string of casinos, or in jail. Or both. Or turn completely into Dad, beard and all. Which was the most hideous image Sam had had in his head since that little matter of the witch in Orlando who liked dead people. For dinner.
‘Compromise. That’s where you try to think more about someone else than yourself.’ Sam had a point to make, and he didn’t have a problem with beating it over Dean’s head if he had to. Sometimes it was even fun.
Dean sniffed. ‘Like that’s going to happen. Twentieth century, Sammy. Be a user, or be a loser. Isn’t that the motto?’
‘Right, because you’re such a born…’
‘Careful!’
‘… user,’ Sam finished, making his choice for optimum effect. Although, with Dean you could never be certain.
Dean grinned. ‘Yup! That’s me. Gonna use it, not lose it.’ The unsubtle wordplay didn’t distract Sam from Dean’s hips twitching to an unknown beat under the table.
When Dean launched into “Hound Dog” Sam cringed. It was a toss-up between making an emergency dash to the drug store across the square for earplugs, and the ingredients for a homemade bleach eyewash, or remaining to see if Dean was actually crazy enough to get up and work what he believed to be his natural rhythm up and down the aisle for tips. Sam stayed. That was a mistake. Wrong decision entirely.
Sam thumped his head repetitively up and down onto the table in front of him. It was almost calming until he realized he’d unknowingly synched with his brother’s performance.
‘I give up!’ he moaned into the uncaring Formica surface. Tables were cruel. And hard.
‘Does this mean I win?’ Dean asked cheerfully.
Fucker was back. Grin translated into an all-out smirk. Guaranteed he’d cleaned everyone out of their loose-change, and maybe the odd bill or ten. His ego wasn’t going to get any smaller after this. Though, on a positive note, if Dad didn’t get back on time, they now had enough pizza money for the next week.
‘Of course not!’ Sam replied quickly. ‘This isn’t about winning or losing. Compromise, remember?’ Can’t let him beat me.
‘I remember, kiddo. “Life’s all about it.” That was your concluding argument, wasn’t it?’
‘No! That’s the whole point. We don’t need to argue, we need to…’
‘Com..prom…ise,’ Dean drawled with irritating slowness.
‘Yes.’ Thank goodness he was getting somewhere, because he was still hu…
‘So, ready to compromise … or die, bitch?’ Dean asked.
Sam glared at his hateful brother. He knew his tricks. Dean was getting ready to steal…
Grabbing his plate closer, Sam took a long, steadying breath. Time to teach big brother a useful lesson in sharing.
‘If we could just come to a mutually beneficial…’
‘Compromise.’
‘Agreement,’ Sam bit out. ‘We could…’
‘Live happily ever after? That sounds more like marriage.’
Sam choked back an irritated huff. Dean was blinking suddenly dewy eyes-How the fuck did he do that?-fluttering his hands, and squealing, ‘But, Samantha, darling. This is so sudden!’
Sam considered the sharpness of his fork, then his knife. Damn Dad for leaving them alone this long. This always happened. Surely the penalties for fratricide weren’t that harsh for teenagers?
‘Relax! I don’t want to marry you, Sammy. Hell, I don’t even want to date you!’ Dean leaned back in his chair, hands now raised in mock surrender.
Next thing Dean’d be attaching a paper napkin to a straw, and waving that merrily at him while a carefully selected strike team snuck around and ambushed him. Dean fucking Winchester, King of the blinding white “Who me?” smile of innocence.
Uh huh.
‘What do you want?’ Sam asked with understandable suspicion.
‘I want to eat the rest of your pie, before you bore it to death.’
‘It’s an injustice!’
Sam tunneled his head down inside the neck of his sweatshirt to smother his snicker. He didn’t know what had set his brother on the warpath this time, but it was fun to watch when he wasn’t the target.
Obviously his hoodie wasn’t soundproof like he’d hoped, because Dean started yelling, “Die, traitor! Die,” while whacking him on the head with his English textbook. Clearly Sam needed to scour the town’s thrift store for thicker and more protective clothing a.s.a.p. because…
‘Ow!’
Dean spent the next few minutes demonstrating his capacity for unique invective.
Sam spent the same amount of time dodging, while thinking that it was a shame Dean hadn’t been offered the chance to take a verbal make-up exam rather than a written one. Surely he would have aced it on pure originality?
Not that his brother should have had any problem passing the take-home exam seeing Sam had been the one to write the damned thing for him only last week. Which raised one nagging question. Okay, less of a question and more an ominous portent of doom. Shit. Sam could see it all now, and it wasn’t good of the “Let there be light!” kind; it was bad, very bad. Apparently, being omniscient didn’t stop Sam from needing to hear the truth for himself though. Sometimes Sam was a martyr to the scary cause that was Dean Winchester.
‘I told you to copy it out in your own handwriting,’ Sam announced virtuously. Not my fault! It wasn’t like cheating was the worst thing Dean had ever been accused of at school. Take the time he got caught with Carol Dwyer and Liz Ford in the girls’ showerbl…
‘I did!’
‘Word for word, Dean. Did you copy what I gave you? To the letter?’
‘Mmmn… Sort of.’
‘Sort of exactly, or sort of completely different?’
‘But yours was boring! I just added a little … spice.’
Dean was waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Unfortunately they were more indicative of a pair of miniature hamsters massacring the Chicken Dance after three bottles of Ripple than a subtly salacious inference of literary creativity.
‘It was for Mr Schraeder. He’s an English teacher. He doesn’t need spice. He just wanted 2,000 words in plain, un-spiced English on symbolism in “Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare doesn’t need condiments, Dean!’
‘Wasn’t Shakespeare that needed it, it was you,’ Dean muttered sourly.
‘Don’t bite the hand that writes for you, Dean.’
‘Like I don’t do your chemistry and physics homework all the time too!’
‘That’s different, Dean. I look like I understand science. Nobody even thinks about doubting my integrity.’ Possibly Sam’s ethics had become more fluid over the years, but growing up with Dean? How could they not? Besides, regardless of what Dean said about its usefulness on a hunt, in what universe was he ever going to need to know how to blow things up? Books, words, English? Now that was an exciting (injury free) career to really aim for.
‘Yeah, you do look like a math … uh … an omni-mathy thing, dude.’
‘A polymath, Dean?’ Sam asked in amazement. Where the heck had his brother ever even heard that term? Oprah? Reruns of Jeopardy!?
‘Whatever,’ Dean shrugged carelessly as if to deny he’d ever opened a dictionary voluntarily. ‘But looking like a nerd isn’t the reason you get away with cheating on your weak subjects, it’s your bangs and fucking dimples, you idiot!’
‘Are you jealous of my hair, Dean?’
‘No! I’m not a chick!’
Oops. Time to calm Dean down. Again. ‘Just because you look like you know cars and girls…’
‘Which I do!’ Dean said proudly, earlier insult to his masculinity instantly forgotten.
‘That doesn’t mean you don’t usually con your teachers even better than I do when you want to, Dean. You’re the one who taught me how to lie with a smile at school.’
‘Little shit!’ Dean said fondly. ‘It is a useful life skill you know.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam answered. But just because Dean was right most of the time, it didn’t pay to let him know it with equal frequency. Dean was hard enough to live with already.
‘So, exactly what kind of spices did you add to my … uh … your essay, Dean?’
‘Too many?’ Dean replied dubiously.
Sam skimmed the pages Dean handed to him. Mr Schraeder hadn’t held back; Dean’s messy spiked writing was almost obliterated under a sea of red emendations. Oh my God!
‘Uh, Dean?’
‘Yo!’
‘Romeo and Juliet “got it on,” at the school dance?’ Sam finished incredulously.
‘Yup.’ Dean leaned over helpfully, and pointed to a paragraph that Sam had luckily missed on first glance. ‘See? I even put in a bit about how spiking the punch can lead to all sorts of consequences, and said that they should be sure to practice safe sex.’
Sam had no words. Well, he did, but they were safely trapped, along with Shakespeare’s condoms, in a shocked bubble of Tequila in the back of his brain and weren’t going to be capable of getting free for hours.
‘I…’
‘Do you think I can ask for a recount?’ Dean asked. He was boinging hopefully up and down on the bed next to Sam.
‘As your court-appointed legal advisor, I would say that’s probably not your best option,’ Sam finally found the strength to say, watching Dean deflate sadly in front of him.
‘But I bet Angus Newman $20 I’d get an A!’ Dean protested. ‘I just added some flavour to it.’
‘Well, apparently your flavour sucked,’ Sam couldn’t resist saying.
‘Don’t it make my brown eyes, blue.’
‘Bluuuuuuu…uuuuue!’ Dean sang irritatingly along, one beat behind Crystal as the truck stop pumped out WDVX’s 12-hour “Country Women, Country Magic” marathon outside into the muggy Tennessee air.
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Sam said with a puzzled frown.
‘What doesn’t?’ Dean interrupted his wailing to ask.
‘Her eyes changing colour. That’s not scientifically possible.’
‘Course it is, Sam!’ Dean scoffed. ‘Yours were blue when you were a baby. Then they turned… what colour do you call that anyway? Khakhi? Mud?’
‘Hazel!’ Sam snapped as Knoxville’s own caravan radio station-“89.9 on your all country dial!”-belted out an appeal for its listeners to “hang on to your cowboy hats because big sister Loretta is coming right up after this important message…”
‘Hmpf!’ Dean snorted. ‘Right, well one day yours just turned…’
‘Hazel,’ Sam repeated with a glare.
‘Hazel. Like that!’ he said with a snap of his fingers. ‘It was like magic…’
Oh God, he was off again. Singing. Now Sam was glad Dad had shunted them back to the car after their piss break, refusing to let them “rage through the candy aisle like the pack of sugar-crazed teenagers they undoubtedly were.” Sometimes Dad could be a real grouch. Sam hoped Dad brought back Twinkies anyway. If all else failed he could stuff one in Dean’s mouth and get some peace for a few minutes.
‘Babies don’t count!’ Sam argued. He knew it happened sometimes but couldn’t remember how and why it occurred, so he wanted to gloss right over that exception to the rule and get back to his point. He could always look up the facts later to casually drop into a conversation with Dean.
‘Nope. You’re right. Even you couldn’t count till you were four, and then only until you ran out of my fingers.’
Aaaaaagggghhhhhhhh!
Sam forced himself to ignore the person who clearly wasn’t related to him at all. ‘She’s not a baby. So her eyes can’t change colour. Unless she wears special contacts, or…’
‘Or maybe she was in a terrible accident, and she had an EYE TRANSPLANT!’ Dean broke in with ghoulish glee.
I was adopted. That’s the only answer.
‘The song’s about a dog, Dumbo.’ Dean thwacked him on the forehead. For emphasis. Because his big adopted brother was evil like that.
‘Huh?’
‘Guy that wrote it? Had a dog with one brown eye, and one blue eye.’
‘It’s not about romance at all then?’
‘Nope. Dogs.’
‘Huh! So, how’d you know that?’
‘Bobby.’
‘Samuel Winchester!’
Oh God. Dean said he’d be asleep for hours yet, after that hunt. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This is all Dean’s…
‘Is this a Cadillac?’
‘No, Da... Sir!’ Why the Hell did I take that bet?
‘Is my name Mary Kay?’
‘Sir! No Sir!’ How’d Dean win anyway? I could have sworn he…
‘Is this a water-based paint?’
‘Sir! Yes Sir!’ Like Dean would let me use anything else on “his” baby, even for a bet. Thank you, God.
‘Bucket. Water. Sponge. Go!’
‘Yes Sir!’ Fuck. Least he could do is send Dean out to help. It was his idea anyway. Not that I can break “The Code.”
‘Wow, Sam. He didn’t kill you. Do you ‘spose he’s sick ‘cos he really shou…’
I can break Dean though. Later, when he’s sleeping…
‘Dean! In here, now!’
‘Sir! Yes Sir!’
Hah! Gotcha!
Um… I’m sure this said water-based…
‘Dean?’
‘What, Sammy?’
‘Why do…?’
‘Dean?’
‘Yeah, Sammy?’
‘Why does…?’
‘Dean?’
‘Yes, Sammy?’
‘Why do birds fly?’
‘What?’
‘Birds. Why? I mean, how do they fly?’
‘Wings, Sammy.’
‘Nooo. I know wings. More than wings.’
‘Oh. You want to know how birds stay up in the air?’
Sammy nodded. Dean knew everything. Besides, the children’s library closed at 4 p.m.
‘Ah… gravity!’
‘Gravity?’ Sammy thought that was apples. And apples fell down, not up.
‘Gravity holds us down, and pushes things with wings away … up. I mean if there’s such a thing as gravity, there has to be an opposite thing, right? That’s scientific. You like science, don’t you, Sammy?’
Sammy nodded eagerly. Science was cool, just like Dean.
‘So, there’s this… um… force called anti-gravity, and it holds things up.’ Dean was sweating, which was odd because Sammy didn’t feel hot at all.
‘Anti-gravity?’
‘Yup. Anti-gravity.’
Huh. Okay, that explained birds, but…
‘What about planes, Dean?’
‘Daaaaaaaad!’
‘Dean?’
‘What!’
‘Why do people see colours differently?
‘What?’
‘We’re doing this chromatics experiment at school.’
‘And?’
Sam was beginning to take Dean’s hunted look personally. What was wrong with always wanting to know things?
‘Well, you can prove that dogs can only see black and white. And you can test if someone is colourblind. But there’s no scientific way to find out if everyone sees every colour exactly the same.’
Dean frowned, and kicked the ground beside the Impala. ‘The dirt’s brown, and this grass is green… okay it’s more a kind of yellow because it’s summer, but that flower’s pink, and the motel is blue with dark blue awnings, and your tongue is really red because you’ve been eating strawberry Popsicles, and…’
‘And you don’t see the problem?’
‘There isn’t a problem, Sam. Colour is colour. What’s to question?’
‘The question is, how do I know when we look at that wall that your blue and my blue are the same?’
Dean stared at the motel, giving the wall due consideration before punching Sam on the shoulder. ‘You’re my brother, Sam. Of course we see the same blue.’
‘Dean?’
‘Jesus, Sammy! If the next question out of your trap is “Why do birds suddenly appear?” I might just have to kill you.’
Even before he could walk Sammy wanted to be just like his big brother. Dean wore jeans? Sam had to wear jeans. Black trainers? Ditto. Red t-shirt? Red t-shirt.
Sammy didn’t see why Dean kept calling him a copycat, before helping him on with his red … green … blue … check shirt.
Eventually even Dad gave up on trying to un-twin them and reluctantly did his best as both his sons grew out of their clothing to trawl the second-hand stores for things that looked as similar as possible.
If this spread from clothes to every part of their lives? Well, Sammy didn’t see the problem. When he grew up he was going to be just like Dean. Dean was big. Sam needed all the help he could get to catch up.
One morning Sammy was standing on the chair in the bathroom when he noticed something wrong. He looked at the toothbrush in his hand. He looked at Dean’s.
‘Daaaaaaaaad!’
Dad had limits.
Dean had a big boy brush. Sammy didn’t.
Sammy refused to brush his teeth. There might have been screaming involved.
Dad didn’t budge.
Dean looked kind of sorry for Sammy.
Sammy gave in. He brushed.
And Sammy waited patiently till Dad told him he was finally old enough to have a proper toothbrush. Sammy didn’t bother telling him he’d secretly been using Dean’s since forever. Sammy copied smart from Dean too.
When Dean led Sammy down the supermarket aisle telling Dad that this was something that big boys handled without their Dad’s help, Sammy was content. Right up until Dean pointed at a lime green toothbrush hanging on the rack. It looked nothing like Dean’s. And it was green!
‘No!’ Sammy knew a lot more words than that. But that was the only one he needed right now.
‘But it’s cool, Sammy.’
‘Green.’
‘Uh, yeah?’ Dean looked at Sammy’s stubborn face. ‘It’s like an awesome slime green, Sammy. I’d buy one that colour if I didn’t already have my blue one.’
Huh. ‘Blue!’
‘We can’t get you the same colour, Sammy. What if we got mixed up?’
So what?
‘Germs, Sammy.’
Huh? ‘But I’ve already got…’ Um. ‘We could put my name on it!’
‘Now that’s just silly, Sammy, when we can get you any other awesome colour you like.’
‘But I like blue!’
‘Shit!’
‘You said the S-word! I’m telling Dad.’
‘I’ll buy you candy if you don’t tell. Right after you pick out a toothbrush.’
Sammy wasn’t stupid. Sammy also liked candy.
‘Come on, Sammy! Pick a colour. Any colour.’
Sammy eventually found one toothbrush that was exactly the same as Dean’s, apart from the colour, which was this stupid girly pink. Then he found another that was the same blue as Dean’s but the handle was different. He hadn’t realised toothbrushes were so complicated.
Dean sighed. ‘I’m going to tell you a secret, okay?’
Sammy nodded. He liked secrets almost as much as candy.
‘Sometimes it’s best if things don’t match.’
Huh?
‘We can have different colours. Like blue and pink. They go together.’ Dean held the two contrasting brushes together. ‘Don’t you see, Sammy? You can’t have one colour without the other.’
Sammy wasn’t so sure about that.
‘You know how Batman and Robin have different uniforms?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘See? They’re partners, but different.’
Hmmm.
‘And how Clark Kent wears glasses to hide that he’s really Superman?’
Ummm.
‘It can be our secret Sammy. We can always have exactly the same type of toothbrush, like a symbol that we’re brothers, but they have to be different colours to fool the baddies!’
Oh. That was clever. That was why Dean was the big brother. Sammy would never have thought of that.
‘Okay, Sammy?’
‘Okay. Um, Dean?’
‘Yeah, Sammy?’
‘Who are the baddies?’
‘Sssh!’ Dean whispered. ‘You never know when they’re watching.’
As they zig-zagged their way cautiously through a possible mine-field between them and the exit, Sammy didn’t see why he couldn’t have kept borrowing Dean’s toothbrush for the rest of their lives.
It certainly would have been easier than getting used to pink.
Dean was known to take jokes to ridiculous lengths. Sometimes that almost got him killed. More often than not it was Sam who wanted to kill him. Slowly.
After the dreaded incident that must not be named (starts with “N,” rhymes with “Hair”) Sam could have been accused of also going to extremes.
Well, you’d grow your hair as long as was possible (in a military household) after your brother made you BALD, wouldn’t you?
Hell, yeah!
Dean, naturally, also never knew when to let anything alone.
‘But it’s so pretty! And wavy.’
‘Would you call those kiss-curls, or bangs, Sam?’
‘I can ask Dad to make a detour to the salon, if you need to get some more special shampoo, Samantha honey.’
‘Can I call you Cousin It? But you’ve got exactly the same dark glasses!’
‘Sam! Grab that box of cereal. No, that one. It’s got folate and all those other things girls need.’
‘So, what about braids then? Much more sensible on a hunt, and we could get you some nice ribbons…’
‘Oooooh! Scrunchies!!! Sam, look! Hundreds of them. It’s like girly heaven. Hmm… green … purple … oh I like the blue one, but no, you’re right, that’s not your colour. Maybe it works like a lucky dip. Hang on, I’ll just shut my eyes, have a good rummage and see what the Gods send us.’
Killing. Slowly. Very, very slowly.
‘Pink! What were the chances of that, Sam? The Gods must like you.’
After he killed Dean he could start on the Gods too. Or maybe he’d let them off with a warning. Sam was sure Dean had been cheating.
‘What? You don’t like the stars? But they’re so sparkly! Talk about prima donnas. I think it must come with the hair,’ Dean confided to the bemused shop assistant.
The shop assistant who… Shit! Went to school with them… And was pretty much the captain of the goddamned gossip team.
As of tomorrow, Sam’s high school career was over. As was his life. Right after I kill Dean.
‘No stars? How about velvet then, Princess?
‘Why can’t people sort things alphabetically?’
Definitely not something Sam ever expected to hear coming out of his brother’s mouth.
‘Christo!’ he whispered because that weird smelly lady behind the counter was fiddling suspiciously with her hearing aid. Oh no, she was… Eww!
‘Shut it, Sam.’
‘You shut it.’
‘Well, hello Dolly Parton! Sweetie, I think your boobs are awesome, but you’re in the wrong place… Freddy Fender… Simon and Garfunkel Should be under “S” not “G” … Ben E. King … L … L …. L … Mario Lanza … Peggy Lee … The Lovin’ Spoonful All right, I guess “The” doesn’t count … The Mamas and the Papas? Ditto … Where the fuck? Got to have some somewhere … Waylon. Should be under J… Z? … Aha! Got…’
‘Ow!’
‘Sammy, what in Hell were you doing trying to climb up on my shoulders?’
Sam pointed.
Dean coughed. ‘Dolls?’
Um. How could he explain without sounding like a complete idiot? ‘Yes.’
‘You want a … doll?’ Dean’s voice rose to a dangerously high pitch. ‘But they’re for girls. And they’re all naked. Maybe they’ve got a nice G.I. Joe around here somewhere. I’ll go ask. Fucker better be wearing his uniform. I don’t need any more shocks today.’
Sam shook his head violently.
‘You don’t want a boy doll? You want one of these dolls?’
Sam nodded. Nothing he was going to say was going to make sense to Dean.
‘Dad should never have let you play Barbies with Chrissy Hinemann when you were four. I told him. He just thought it was funny. Hah! Who’s laughing now? Not me!’
Despite his complaint Dean was reaching up to the shelf above the boxes of old cassettes and records he’d been rummaging through.
‘Don’t know what I did wrong… Oooh! How about this one? Blonde? Brunette? Sorry, no redheads in here, Sammy. Hey! I found a boy doll. Oh thank God it’s not naked too.’
Dean was holding the doll gingerly at arm’s length. ‘Is this a Ken doll, Sam? He looks kind of gay. You’d think Barbie would have gone for something a little more butc…’
‘What, Sam? You don’t want Ken? You do? You what? You want them all?’
Uh huh.
‘Fuck! You’re going to be the death of me, Sam.’
Sam grinned.
‘Just as well they’re on sale, Sam. Otherwise we’d have had words later.’
‘Ma’am? You got any … uh … fuck … doll clothes out the back?’
‘And you know, Sam? Once we leave here, don’t let’s ever talk about this, okay? There are some things I just don’t need to know.’
What could Sam say? That they all looked so sad tossed in that cold metal basket, in this dusty junk shop in the middle of Nowheresville, Alabama. Abandoned when their owners moved on to something newer and better. Sam didn’t understand that. You had something. You loved it. And you didn’t ever let it go.
‘No more pink!’
‘None at all?’ Dean queried mournfully.
‘No. You know I hate it. My favourite colour’s always been blue.’
‘We can’t both have the same favourite colour, Sam.’
‘Yes, we can.’
‘Yeah, I guess we can,’ Dean said.
‘So, blue then?’ Dean asked.
‘Blue,’ Sam said firmly.
Dean looked at the enormous range of products on display, before reaching out to quickly grab two absolutely identical blue toothbrushes off the shelves. ‘There, done!’
‘See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?’
‘Speak for yourself, blue boy.’
‘It’ll be fine. You’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine, and…’
‘It won’t be confusing at all,’ Dean said.
‘Deeeean?’
‘You better not be using my brush again, bitch!’
‘So, pink then?’ Dean asked.
‘Pink,’ Sam said firmly.
Dean was right. You couldn’t have one colour without the other.
1. Orange Roughy Part 1 | Part 2
2. The Rainbow Connection
3. Pink Me!
Rating: G, Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Word Count: 5,517
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchesters for fun and angst. Sorry about the holes!
A/N: Belated birthday pic/fic for the wonderful pinkphoenix1985
Thanks to Screencap Paradise for the great SPN screencaps, and secret-seer for creating the awesome final montage
Part of The Colour Chronicles
Prelude (mostly pre-series) to 3.11 Mystery spot
Summary: A hunter’s life is all about habits. Some are impossible to break.
Surprisingly, a lot of the arguments in the Winchester household over the years didn’t revolve around guns, knives, and monsters, Dad’s idea of homework, or even Dean’s stupidly retro taste in music. Well, maybe some of the arguments had been about Dad and Dean…
Sam had been fighting a colour war with his brother since he was three. Possibly earlier, if Dean wasn’t lying about always having had to slip him a baby pink pacifier to keep him quiet on the road.
That thing had better’ve been blue or Sam just knew he was looking forward to years of costly therapy as an adult. Had to be blue. Sam couldn’t see John Winchester ever fronting up to a counter with any other colour. Maybe white, or clear. Black? Sam could see that, though he doubted that Chevrolet had widened its product line that much. Please have been blue. Trouble was, Sam also had a clear picture of six-year-old Dean (bringing new meaning to the term juvenile delinquent) deftly “lifting” a pink one for his brother. Yeah, his Dean would definitely have been capable of that, even back then. Oh God. Blue. Blue. Blue?
‘What are you emoing about inside your head now, Sammy?’
Nothing!
Where the heck had his brother come from? Dean was a goddamned Marine savant. Must be genetic. He was so like Dad it was frightening sometimes. Yes Sir! No Sir! Three hundred sit-ups full Sir! No way Sam was ever going to be made into another mindless automaton. Obviously Sam had his mother’s genes and nothing but. It was clear to him that Mom had loved reading and soccer, and had hated the colour pink.
‘Sam?’
Pushy bastard. Sam happily imagined pushing Dean into a puddle. A dirty puddle. A giant, totally scummy, pond.
You’d think by the look of Dean’s footwear that Sam had somehow already managed to go back in time and “Make it so” (to borrow a phrase from the great Captain Picard,) but Dean’s battered running shoes always looked like that.
Sam stared down at his new sneakers. Desperately needed now he was finally starting to grow. Gratefully received, except for one hideous thing…
Brothers. And their ideas of “Totally awesome!” birthday presents.
An enormous toxic sinkhole…
‘Earth to Sam?’ Like that lame joke was ever going improve with weekly repetition.
‘Nothing! I’m not thinking about anything.’ Sam said firmly. He was taking the hard line. When dealing with Dean you soon learned to stand your ground and to never make open-ended statements. Never leave anything open to question. Dean would always find a way to get you.
‘Aww,’ Dean said, oozing false pity.
As if that wasn’t enough of an insult, he was petting Sam on the head. Soothingly.
‘That’s okay, Samantha. I hear princesses still only need to be pretty.’
Bastard. Sam needed a really clever comeback. Just one. Soon.
‘They don’t need brains. Or brawn.’ Dean rolled up his sleeves and began flexing his muscles in his best Arnie impersonation. ‘You can always marry that into the bloodline when you grow up, sweetie.’
Sam shouldn’t be furious. He should be used to his big brother by now. Unfortunately Dean’s continuous snarks weren’t helping his flustered brain to come up with something equally cutting.
When in doubt, or lost for fucking words? Say anything.
‘You’re the one with the golden hair, Dean! That makes you the princess!’
Right. Rules for living with Dean Winchester. Stand your ground. Uh. And always be prepared to run really fast if you have to.
Sam believes it’s only scientific to question everything. That doesn’t make him a nerd.
‘Does too!’
‘Does not!’
Sam is sure that Dean can’t know everything. Pretty sure-he’s still waiting for scientific proof.
Dean thinks Sammy can be an annoying, argumentative, little bitch. His brother will always be a nerd. This he knows for certain. He knows Sam; that’s Dean’s proof.
‘Nerd!’
‘Am not!’
‘Are t…’
Sometimes (pretty damn often over the years,) Dean has accidentally rammed the colour pink down Sam’s unwilling throat.
It wasn’t till Sam left home for Stanford that he realised those incidents were really Dean’s twisted way of testing him.
No one ever said the Winchesters were good at showing affection.
It was an accident when Dean tossed something red (and not damned well colour-fast!) into the washing machine with Sam’s clothes, and half his t-shirts, and all of his boxers erupted in pustulant pink splodges and streaks.
Sam got him back good (don’t ask how, because he’ll take that secret to his grave,) but that still didn’t improve his social position at school for … oh … around three months. Which coincidentally happened to be the time it took for Sam to “lose” or damage beyond all repair on a hunt, all of the aforementioned items. And Sam made sure Dean paid for the replacements.
It wasn’t an accident when Dean started buying cranberry liquid Dial at Walmart instead of his own unscented favourite. It turned out Dean was good at suffering for a cause too. It took a month of bathing in pink bubbles (Dean always used too much-and he was sticking to that story) before Dean broke.
Both brothers counted that event a win for their side.
It was typical of Dean that he also used food as a battleground.
And if Sam was clever enough to hunt down and destroy any tiny bottles of food colouring Dean might have accidentally secreted away behind cans of oil in the garage, or blue-tacked into the curve of the S-bend under the bathroom sink? Well, unfortunately Dean could be clever too.
Tomato sauce did, as Dean said, look really pretty mixed into scrambled eggs. Sam hated the fact that he quickly became addicted to the taste and was forced to ask for them on more than one occasion. Five points to Dean.
Sam took to eating fresh blueberries (the anti-oxidants were good for you) as often as they could afford them, and smiling at Dean through a mouthful of crushed fruit as a suitably culinary (What? He couldn’t cook) form of revenge. It was petty and childish, but every now and then it really grossed Dean out. Point to Sam.
And Sam’s not even going to go into the details of the absolutely un-accidental New Hampshire Christmas debacle of 1998, which started with a simple pink highlighter and escalated to Dean dyeing him blue. You want to know about it? Look it up for yourself.
Even detention (okay unlike Dean, Sam was only ever there by choice. It was boring waiting outside for Dean. So what if he had a habit of accidentally “causing a ruckus” outside and got dragged in for immediate punishment?) wasn’t enough to stop Dean firing a few more shots in the war.
Whenever the teacher eventually fell asleep (Dean was always very careful with the dosage he helpfully slipped into any over-worked teacher’s coffee mug) they ended up ignoring whatever other activities their fellow students got up to (there’s only so many times you can watch Tommy Halliday stick his tongue down Cath Milligan’s throat before you get bored,) and retreating to the chalkboard for games of “Hangman” or “Noughts and Crosses.” It might seem tame from the Winchester point of view, but it wasn’t like they could whip out their knives and guns for a quick competition.
Dean always brought his own chalk. He was particular that way.
‘Life’s about compromise,’ Sam insisted.
After a look at his brother’s deliberately blank face he rephrased the expression. ‘Give a little, get a little.’
‘I’d rather keep what little I’ve got, and get a lot more,’ Dean argued with truly avaricious zeal. Dean was either going to end up the multi-millionaire owner of a string of casinos, or in jail. Or both. Or turn completely into Dad, beard and all. Which was the most hideous image Sam had had in his head since that little matter of the witch in Orlando who liked dead people. For dinner.
‘Compromise. That’s where you try to think more about someone else than yourself.’ Sam had a point to make, and he didn’t have a problem with beating it over Dean’s head if he had to. Sometimes it was even fun.
Dean sniffed. ‘Like that’s going to happen. Twentieth century, Sammy. Be a user, or be a loser. Isn’t that the motto?’
‘Right, because you’re such a born…’
‘Careful!’
‘… user,’ Sam finished, making his choice for optimum effect. Although, with Dean you could never be certain.
Dean grinned. ‘Yup! That’s me. Gonna use it, not lose it.’ The unsubtle wordplay didn’t distract Sam from Dean’s hips twitching to an unknown beat under the table.
When Dean launched into “Hound Dog” Sam cringed. It was a toss-up between making an emergency dash to the drug store across the square for earplugs, and the ingredients for a homemade bleach eyewash, or remaining to see if Dean was actually crazy enough to get up and work what he believed to be his natural rhythm up and down the aisle for tips. Sam stayed. That was a mistake. Wrong decision entirely.
Sam thumped his head repetitively up and down onto the table in front of him. It was almost calming until he realized he’d unknowingly synched with his brother’s performance.
‘I give up!’ he moaned into the uncaring Formica surface. Tables were cruel. And hard.
‘Does this mean I win?’ Dean asked cheerfully.
Fucker was back. Grin translated into an all-out smirk. Guaranteed he’d cleaned everyone out of their loose-change, and maybe the odd bill or ten. His ego wasn’t going to get any smaller after this. Though, on a positive note, if Dad didn’t get back on time, they now had enough pizza money for the next week.
‘Of course not!’ Sam replied quickly. ‘This isn’t about winning or losing. Compromise, remember?’ Can’t let him beat me.
‘I remember, kiddo. “Life’s all about it.” That was your concluding argument, wasn’t it?’
‘No! That’s the whole point. We don’t need to argue, we need to…’
‘Com..prom…ise,’ Dean drawled with irritating slowness.
‘Yes.’ Thank goodness he was getting somewhere, because he was still hu…
‘So, ready to compromise … or die, bitch?’ Dean asked.
Sam glared at his hateful brother. He knew his tricks. Dean was getting ready to steal…
Grabbing his plate closer, Sam took a long, steadying breath. Time to teach big brother a useful lesson in sharing.
‘If we could just come to a mutually beneficial…’
‘Compromise.’
‘Agreement,’ Sam bit out. ‘We could…’
‘Live happily ever after? That sounds more like marriage.’
Sam choked back an irritated huff. Dean was blinking suddenly dewy eyes-How the fuck did he do that?-fluttering his hands, and squealing, ‘But, Samantha, darling. This is so sudden!’
Sam considered the sharpness of his fork, then his knife. Damn Dad for leaving them alone this long. This always happened. Surely the penalties for fratricide weren’t that harsh for teenagers?
‘Relax! I don’t want to marry you, Sammy. Hell, I don’t even want to date you!’ Dean leaned back in his chair, hands now raised in mock surrender.
Next thing Dean’d be attaching a paper napkin to a straw, and waving that merrily at him while a carefully selected strike team snuck around and ambushed him. Dean fucking Winchester, King of the blinding white “Who me?” smile of innocence.
Uh huh.
‘What do you want?’ Sam asked with understandable suspicion.
‘I want to eat the rest of your pie, before you bore it to death.’
‘It’s an injustice!’
Sam tunneled his head down inside the neck of his sweatshirt to smother his snicker. He didn’t know what had set his brother on the warpath this time, but it was fun to watch when he wasn’t the target.
Obviously his hoodie wasn’t soundproof like he’d hoped, because Dean started yelling, “Die, traitor! Die,” while whacking him on the head with his English textbook. Clearly Sam needed to scour the town’s thrift store for thicker and more protective clothing a.s.a.p. because…
‘Ow!’
Dean spent the next few minutes demonstrating his capacity for unique invective.
Sam spent the same amount of time dodging, while thinking that it was a shame Dean hadn’t been offered the chance to take a verbal make-up exam rather than a written one. Surely he would have aced it on pure originality?
Not that his brother should have had any problem passing the take-home exam seeing Sam had been the one to write the damned thing for him only last week. Which raised one nagging question. Okay, less of a question and more an ominous portent of doom. Shit. Sam could see it all now, and it wasn’t good of the “Let there be light!” kind; it was bad, very bad. Apparently, being omniscient didn’t stop Sam from needing to hear the truth for himself though. Sometimes Sam was a martyr to the scary cause that was Dean Winchester.
‘I told you to copy it out in your own handwriting,’ Sam announced virtuously. Not my fault! It wasn’t like cheating was the worst thing Dean had ever been accused of at school. Take the time he got caught with Carol Dwyer and Liz Ford in the girls’ showerbl…
‘I did!’
‘Word for word, Dean. Did you copy what I gave you? To the letter?’
‘Mmmn… Sort of.’
‘Sort of exactly, or sort of completely different?’
‘But yours was boring! I just added a little … spice.’
Dean was waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Unfortunately they were more indicative of a pair of miniature hamsters massacring the Chicken Dance after three bottles of Ripple than a subtly salacious inference of literary creativity.
‘It was for Mr Schraeder. He’s an English teacher. He doesn’t need spice. He just wanted 2,000 words in plain, un-spiced English on symbolism in “Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare doesn’t need condiments, Dean!’
‘Wasn’t Shakespeare that needed it, it was you,’ Dean muttered sourly.
‘Don’t bite the hand that writes for you, Dean.’
‘Like I don’t do your chemistry and physics homework all the time too!’
‘That’s different, Dean. I look like I understand science. Nobody even thinks about doubting my integrity.’ Possibly Sam’s ethics had become more fluid over the years, but growing up with Dean? How could they not? Besides, regardless of what Dean said about its usefulness on a hunt, in what universe was he ever going to need to know how to blow things up? Books, words, English? Now that was an exciting (injury free) career to really aim for.
‘Yeah, you do look like a math … uh … an omni-mathy thing, dude.’
‘A polymath, Dean?’ Sam asked in amazement. Where the heck had his brother ever even heard that term? Oprah? Reruns of Jeopardy!?
‘Whatever,’ Dean shrugged carelessly as if to deny he’d ever opened a dictionary voluntarily. ‘But looking like a nerd isn’t the reason you get away with cheating on your weak subjects, it’s your bangs and fucking dimples, you idiot!’
‘Are you jealous of my hair, Dean?’
‘No! I’m not a chick!’
Oops. Time to calm Dean down. Again. ‘Just because you look like you know cars and girls…’
‘Which I do!’ Dean said proudly, earlier insult to his masculinity instantly forgotten.
‘That doesn’t mean you don’t usually con your teachers even better than I do when you want to, Dean. You’re the one who taught me how to lie with a smile at school.’
‘Little shit!’ Dean said fondly. ‘It is a useful life skill you know.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam answered. But just because Dean was right most of the time, it didn’t pay to let him know it with equal frequency. Dean was hard enough to live with already.
‘So, exactly what kind of spices did you add to my … uh … your essay, Dean?’
‘Too many?’ Dean replied dubiously.
Sam skimmed the pages Dean handed to him. Mr Schraeder hadn’t held back; Dean’s messy spiked writing was almost obliterated under a sea of red emendations. Oh my God!
‘Uh, Dean?’
‘Yo!’
‘Romeo and Juliet “got it on,” at the school dance?’ Sam finished incredulously.
‘Yup.’ Dean leaned over helpfully, and pointed to a paragraph that Sam had luckily missed on first glance. ‘See? I even put in a bit about how spiking the punch can lead to all sorts of consequences, and said that they should be sure to practice safe sex.’
Sam had no words. Well, he did, but they were safely trapped, along with Shakespeare’s condoms, in a shocked bubble of Tequila in the back of his brain and weren’t going to be capable of getting free for hours.
‘I…’
‘Do you think I can ask for a recount?’ Dean asked. He was boinging hopefully up and down on the bed next to Sam.
‘As your court-appointed legal advisor, I would say that’s probably not your best option,’ Sam finally found the strength to say, watching Dean deflate sadly in front of him.
‘But I bet Angus Newman $20 I’d get an A!’ Dean protested. ‘I just added some flavour to it.’
‘Well, apparently your flavour sucked,’ Sam couldn’t resist saying.
‘Don’t it make my brown eyes, blue.’
‘Bluuuuuuu…uuuuue!’ Dean sang irritatingly along, one beat behind Crystal as the truck stop pumped out WDVX’s 12-hour “Country Women, Country Magic” marathon outside into the muggy Tennessee air.
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Sam said with a puzzled frown.
‘What doesn’t?’ Dean interrupted his wailing to ask.
‘Her eyes changing colour. That’s not scientifically possible.’
‘Course it is, Sam!’ Dean scoffed. ‘Yours were blue when you were a baby. Then they turned… what colour do you call that anyway? Khakhi? Mud?’
‘Hazel!’ Sam snapped as Knoxville’s own caravan radio station-“89.9 on your all country dial!”-belted out an appeal for its listeners to “hang on to your cowboy hats because big sister Loretta is coming right up after this important message…”
‘Hmpf!’ Dean snorted. ‘Right, well one day yours just turned…’
‘Hazel,’ Sam repeated with a glare.
‘Hazel. Like that!’ he said with a snap of his fingers. ‘It was like magic…’
Oh God, he was off again. Singing. Now Sam was glad Dad had shunted them back to the car after their piss break, refusing to let them “rage through the candy aisle like the pack of sugar-crazed teenagers they undoubtedly were.” Sometimes Dad could be a real grouch. Sam hoped Dad brought back Twinkies anyway. If all else failed he could stuff one in Dean’s mouth and get some peace for a few minutes.
‘Babies don’t count!’ Sam argued. He knew it happened sometimes but couldn’t remember how and why it occurred, so he wanted to gloss right over that exception to the rule and get back to his point. He could always look up the facts later to casually drop into a conversation with Dean.
‘Nope. You’re right. Even you couldn’t count till you were four, and then only until you ran out of my fingers.’
Aaaaaagggghhhhhhhh!
Sam forced himself to ignore the person who clearly wasn’t related to him at all. ‘She’s not a baby. So her eyes can’t change colour. Unless she wears special contacts, or…’
‘Or maybe she was in a terrible accident, and she had an EYE TRANSPLANT!’ Dean broke in with ghoulish glee.
I was adopted. That’s the only answer.
‘The song’s about a dog, Dumbo.’ Dean thwacked him on the forehead. For emphasis. Because his big adopted brother was evil like that.
‘Huh?’
‘Guy that wrote it? Had a dog with one brown eye, and one blue eye.’
‘It’s not about romance at all then?’
‘Nope. Dogs.’
‘Huh! So, how’d you know that?’
‘Bobby.’
‘Samuel Winchester!’
Oh God. Dean said he’d be asleep for hours yet, after that hunt. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This is all Dean’s…
‘Is this a Cadillac?’
‘No, Da... Sir!’ Why the Hell did I take that bet?
‘Is my name Mary Kay?’
‘Sir! No Sir!’ How’d Dean win anyway? I could have sworn he…
‘Is this a water-based paint?’
‘Sir! Yes Sir!’ Like Dean would let me use anything else on “his” baby, even for a bet. Thank you, God.
‘Bucket. Water. Sponge. Go!’
‘Yes Sir!’ Fuck. Least he could do is send Dean out to help. It was his idea anyway. Not that I can break “The Code.”
‘Wow, Sam. He didn’t kill you. Do you ‘spose he’s sick ‘cos he really shou…’
I can break Dean though. Later, when he’s sleeping…
‘Dean! In here, now!’
‘Sir! Yes Sir!’
Hah! Gotcha!
Um… I’m sure this said water-based…
‘Dean?’
‘What, Sammy?’
‘Why do…?’
‘Dean?’
‘Yeah, Sammy?’
‘Why does…?’
‘Dean?’
‘Yes, Sammy?’
‘Why do birds fly?’
‘What?’
‘Birds. Why? I mean, how do they fly?’
‘Wings, Sammy.’
‘Nooo. I know wings. More than wings.’
‘Oh. You want to know how birds stay up in the air?’
Sammy nodded. Dean knew everything. Besides, the children’s library closed at 4 p.m.
‘Ah… gravity!’
‘Gravity?’ Sammy thought that was apples. And apples fell down, not up.
‘Gravity holds us down, and pushes things with wings away … up. I mean if there’s such a thing as gravity, there has to be an opposite thing, right? That’s scientific. You like science, don’t you, Sammy?’
Sammy nodded eagerly. Science was cool, just like Dean.
‘So, there’s this… um… force called anti-gravity, and it holds things up.’ Dean was sweating, which was odd because Sammy didn’t feel hot at all.
‘Anti-gravity?’
‘Yup. Anti-gravity.’
Huh. Okay, that explained birds, but…
‘What about planes, Dean?’
‘Daaaaaaaad!’
‘Dean?’
‘What!’
‘Why do people see colours differently?
‘What?’
‘We’re doing this chromatics experiment at school.’
‘And?’
Sam was beginning to take Dean’s hunted look personally. What was wrong with always wanting to know things?
‘Well, you can prove that dogs can only see black and white. And you can test if someone is colourblind. But there’s no scientific way to find out if everyone sees every colour exactly the same.’
Dean frowned, and kicked the ground beside the Impala. ‘The dirt’s brown, and this grass is green… okay it’s more a kind of yellow because it’s summer, but that flower’s pink, and the motel is blue with dark blue awnings, and your tongue is really red because you’ve been eating strawberry Popsicles, and…’
‘And you don’t see the problem?’
‘There isn’t a problem, Sam. Colour is colour. What’s to question?’
‘The question is, how do I know when we look at that wall that your blue and my blue are the same?’
Dean stared at the motel, giving the wall due consideration before punching Sam on the shoulder. ‘You’re my brother, Sam. Of course we see the same blue.’
‘Dean?’
‘Jesus, Sammy! If the next question out of your trap is “Why do birds suddenly appear?” I might just have to kill you.’
Even before he could walk Sammy wanted to be just like his big brother. Dean wore jeans? Sam had to wear jeans. Black trainers? Ditto. Red t-shirt? Red t-shirt.
Sammy didn’t see why Dean kept calling him a copycat, before helping him on with his red … green … blue … check shirt.
Eventually even Dad gave up on trying to un-twin them and reluctantly did his best as both his sons grew out of their clothing to trawl the second-hand stores for things that looked as similar as possible.
If this spread from clothes to every part of their lives? Well, Sammy didn’t see the problem. When he grew up he was going to be just like Dean. Dean was big. Sam needed all the help he could get to catch up.
One morning Sammy was standing on the chair in the bathroom when he noticed something wrong. He looked at the toothbrush in his hand. He looked at Dean’s.
‘Daaaaaaaaad!’
Dad had limits.
Dean had a big boy brush. Sammy didn’t.
Sammy refused to brush his teeth. There might have been screaming involved.
Dad didn’t budge.
Dean looked kind of sorry for Sammy.
Sammy gave in. He brushed.
And Sammy waited patiently till Dad told him he was finally old enough to have a proper toothbrush. Sammy didn’t bother telling him he’d secretly been using Dean’s since forever. Sammy copied smart from Dean too.
When Dean led Sammy down the supermarket aisle telling Dad that this was something that big boys handled without their Dad’s help, Sammy was content. Right up until Dean pointed at a lime green toothbrush hanging on the rack. It looked nothing like Dean’s. And it was green!
‘No!’ Sammy knew a lot more words than that. But that was the only one he needed right now.
‘But it’s cool, Sammy.’
‘Green.’
‘Uh, yeah?’ Dean looked at Sammy’s stubborn face. ‘It’s like an awesome slime green, Sammy. I’d buy one that colour if I didn’t already have my blue one.’
Huh. ‘Blue!’
‘We can’t get you the same colour, Sammy. What if we got mixed up?’
So what?
‘Germs, Sammy.’
Huh? ‘But I’ve already got…’ Um. ‘We could put my name on it!’
‘Now that’s just silly, Sammy, when we can get you any other awesome colour you like.’
‘But I like blue!’
‘Shit!’
‘You said the S-word! I’m telling Dad.’
‘I’ll buy you candy if you don’t tell. Right after you pick out a toothbrush.’
Sammy wasn’t stupid. Sammy also liked candy.
‘Come on, Sammy! Pick a colour. Any colour.’
Sammy eventually found one toothbrush that was exactly the same as Dean’s, apart from the colour, which was this stupid girly pink. Then he found another that was the same blue as Dean’s but the handle was different. He hadn’t realised toothbrushes were so complicated.
Dean sighed. ‘I’m going to tell you a secret, okay?’
Sammy nodded. He liked secrets almost as much as candy.
‘Sometimes it’s best if things don’t match.’
Huh?
‘We can have different colours. Like blue and pink. They go together.’ Dean held the two contrasting brushes together. ‘Don’t you see, Sammy? You can’t have one colour without the other.’
Sammy wasn’t so sure about that.
‘You know how Batman and Robin have different uniforms?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘See? They’re partners, but different.’
Hmmm.
‘And how Clark Kent wears glasses to hide that he’s really Superman?’
Ummm.
‘It can be our secret Sammy. We can always have exactly the same type of toothbrush, like a symbol that we’re brothers, but they have to be different colours to fool the baddies!’
Oh. That was clever. That was why Dean was the big brother. Sammy would never have thought of that.
‘Okay, Sammy?’
‘Okay. Um, Dean?’
‘Yeah, Sammy?’
‘Who are the baddies?’
‘Sssh!’ Dean whispered. ‘You never know when they’re watching.’
As they zig-zagged their way cautiously through a possible mine-field between them and the exit, Sammy didn’t see why he couldn’t have kept borrowing Dean’s toothbrush for the rest of their lives.
It certainly would have been easier than getting used to pink.
Dean was known to take jokes to ridiculous lengths. Sometimes that almost got him killed. More often than not it was Sam who wanted to kill him. Slowly.
After the dreaded incident that must not be named (starts with “N,” rhymes with “Hair”) Sam could have been accused of also going to extremes.
Well, you’d grow your hair as long as was possible (in a military household) after your brother made you BALD, wouldn’t you?
Hell, yeah!
Dean, naturally, also never knew when to let anything alone.
‘But it’s so pretty! And wavy.’
‘Would you call those kiss-curls, or bangs, Sam?’
‘I can ask Dad to make a detour to the salon, if you need to get some more special shampoo, Samantha honey.’
‘Can I call you Cousin It? But you’ve got exactly the same dark glasses!’
‘Sam! Grab that box of cereal. No, that one. It’s got folate and all those other things girls need.’
‘So, what about braids then? Much more sensible on a hunt, and we could get you some nice ribbons…’
‘Oooooh! Scrunchies!!! Sam, look! Hundreds of them. It’s like girly heaven. Hmm… green … purple … oh I like the blue one, but no, you’re right, that’s not your colour. Maybe it works like a lucky dip. Hang on, I’ll just shut my eyes, have a good rummage and see what the Gods send us.’
Killing. Slowly. Very, very slowly.
‘Pink! What were the chances of that, Sam? The Gods must like you.’
After he killed Dean he could start on the Gods too. Or maybe he’d let them off with a warning. Sam was sure Dean had been cheating.
‘What? You don’t like the stars? But they’re so sparkly! Talk about prima donnas. I think it must come with the hair,’ Dean confided to the bemused shop assistant.
The shop assistant who… Shit! Went to school with them… And was pretty much the captain of the goddamned gossip team.
As of tomorrow, Sam’s high school career was over. As was his life. Right after I kill Dean.
‘No stars? How about velvet then, Princess?
‘Why can’t people sort things alphabetically?’
Definitely not something Sam ever expected to hear coming out of his brother’s mouth.
‘Christo!’ he whispered because that weird smelly lady behind the counter was fiddling suspiciously with her hearing aid. Oh no, she was… Eww!
‘Shut it, Sam.’
‘You shut it.’
‘Well, hello Dolly Parton! Sweetie, I think your boobs are awesome, but you’re in the wrong place… Freddy Fender… Simon and Garfunkel Should be under “S” not “G” … Ben E. King … L … L …. L … Mario Lanza … Peggy Lee … The Lovin’ Spoonful All right, I guess “The” doesn’t count … The Mamas and the Papas? Ditto … Where the fuck? Got to have some somewhere … Waylon. Should be under J… Z? … Aha! Got…’
‘Ow!’
‘Sammy, what in Hell were you doing trying to climb up on my shoulders?’
Sam pointed.
Dean coughed. ‘Dolls?’
Um. How could he explain without sounding like a complete idiot? ‘Yes.’
‘You want a … doll?’ Dean’s voice rose to a dangerously high pitch. ‘But they’re for girls. And they’re all naked. Maybe they’ve got a nice G.I. Joe around here somewhere. I’ll go ask. Fucker better be wearing his uniform. I don’t need any more shocks today.’
Sam shook his head violently.
‘You don’t want a boy doll? You want one of these dolls?’
Sam nodded. Nothing he was going to say was going to make sense to Dean.
‘Dad should never have let you play Barbies with Chrissy Hinemann when you were four. I told him. He just thought it was funny. Hah! Who’s laughing now? Not me!’
Despite his complaint Dean was reaching up to the shelf above the boxes of old cassettes and records he’d been rummaging through.
‘Don’t know what I did wrong… Oooh! How about this one? Blonde? Brunette? Sorry, no redheads in here, Sammy. Hey! I found a boy doll. Oh thank God it’s not naked too.’
Dean was holding the doll gingerly at arm’s length. ‘Is this a Ken doll, Sam? He looks kind of gay. You’d think Barbie would have gone for something a little more butc…’
‘What, Sam? You don’t want Ken? You do? You what? You want them all?’
Uh huh.
‘Fuck! You’re going to be the death of me, Sam.’
Sam grinned.
‘Just as well they’re on sale, Sam. Otherwise we’d have had words later.’
‘Ma’am? You got any … uh … fuck … doll clothes out the back?’
‘And you know, Sam? Once we leave here, don’t let’s ever talk about this, okay? There are some things I just don’t need to know.’
What could Sam say? That they all looked so sad tossed in that cold metal basket, in this dusty junk shop in the middle of Nowheresville, Alabama. Abandoned when their owners moved on to something newer and better. Sam didn’t understand that. You had something. You loved it. And you didn’t ever let it go.
‘No more pink!’
‘None at all?’ Dean queried mournfully.
‘No. You know I hate it. My favourite colour’s always been blue.’
‘We can’t both have the same favourite colour, Sam.’
‘Yes, we can.’
‘Yeah, I guess we can,’ Dean said.
‘So, blue then?’ Dean asked.
‘Blue,’ Sam said firmly.
Dean looked at the enormous range of products on display, before reaching out to quickly grab two absolutely identical blue toothbrushes off the shelves. ‘There, done!’
‘See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?’
‘Speak for yourself, blue boy.’
‘It’ll be fine. You’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine, and…’
‘It won’t be confusing at all,’ Dean said.
‘Deeeean?’
‘You better not be using my brush again, bitch!’
‘So, pink then?’ Dean asked.
‘Pink,’ Sam said firmly.
Dean was right. You couldn’t have one colour without the other.
1. Orange Roughy Part 1 | Part 2
2. The Rainbow Connection
3. Pink Me!