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Dean is wearing a tux. The material is heavy against his skin, so heavy it hurts. He can’t put a word to the material, all he knows is the weight of it. He claps wildly.
Except, you aren’t supposed to do that, are you? You wait ‘til the end of the show. So Dean sits on his hands and, yes—feels the velvet seat. Velvet. It’s plush and pleasant but strange under his palm. He looks up at Sam and smiles—his face feels tight.
Sam is on a stage. He’s playing a…a violin. The sound is…is…thin, maybe. It reminds him of crying, but something higher. Less like earth than crying. It goes up and down, the sound of Sam’s music, and sometimes is very low and Dean thinks it’s in his stomach, he might be able to feel it there, but when it soars up, it’s in his throat. Music, this is what it does, Dean thinks. It’s beautiful, it’s supposed to be beautiful. It hurts.
The room is—like a—an opera house, Dean supposes. That’s what they’re called, isn’t it? The walls are the color of guts and blood mine, but they don’t shine the same way, so Dean chances an exhale. Gold vines work their way up the walls, and Dean can’t decide if they’re real or just a pattern someone put over the color of the walls to make them, you know, prettier. He wants to walk to the edge of the theater and press his face against the elaborate design. Maybe it would feel like velvet. Maybe it would smell of…of…
Smell is the hardest. You don’t notice smells unless they’re amazing, awful, or absent altogether. Everything had a smell, Dean thinks. Water had a smell. Televisions had a smell. Hotels. Sam—Sam definitely had a smell. He still does, Dean thinks. He shudders.
The one he remembers is hospitals. Hospitals are all his least favorite scents—sterile disinfectant, chemicals of all kinds, the underlying smell of decay and death. Dad. He remembers it, so strongly his nose wrinkles and his eyes water. So strongly that the lush gold-and-guts colored waver, and impeccable white and chrome threaten to take their place, but instead, Dean thinks of the smell of old things. Not metal. Books. Curtains. Bone. Old things. Rot. It’s elusive, but it’s almost there, and that’s enough.
Then there’s Sam. Dean could not forget his brother’s face, no matter how they try to drag it away from his grip, no matter how Dean wishes he could let it go. Soft wings of brown hair drifting over Sammy’s hazel-brown eyes, similar to his own but not his own.
“What do you see, Sammy?” Dean whispers, but his voice is like dust. He doesn’t know what’s busted: his ears, his throat, or his brain. Most likely, all three.
Sam’s sporting a tuxedo too, and it’s awkward blocks of black and white across his wide frame. Dean isn’t quite sure anymore what they’re supposed to look like anymore, but he knows black and white—something about penguin suits. Sam’s looks like his was made by an idiot blind man with 6 fingers. Some parts of that ain’t far off, but here they are and Dean’s not prepared to pick this apart. His mind is so tired already.
The song, Dean thinks. Sam’s gotta be playing a song.
Sam’s staring at him. He’s stopped, the quavering noises of his music have drifted away. No, please.
“Please, just play,” Dean wishes he could say.
“I’ll play,” Sam says, “if you can tell me what to play.”
Dean thinks. The…the songs…he can’t…doesn’t know…
“I’m bad with titles,” Dean croaks hoarsely. “I don’t know what things are called. Just..play…”
Sam shakes his head, with a blank expression. “Think, Dean. Show me a song.”
Sing? I can’t sing, Dean says, giving up on speaking. The walls are beginning to go away, washing away like its raining. Water on skin. Somewhere, maybe there’s notes of music on a…piano? No. It’s a thump, just a dull thump. Dean’s heart. He hates it. I don’t remember words to anything, I don’t know anything, Sammy, please—
And suddenly Sam’s next to him, shushing him. Taking Dean’s face in his hands. Skin. Yes, he knows this feeling. He leans into it, biting his bottom lip near bloody.
“You don’t have to sing. You don’t need words,” Sam urges. “Think, Dean. Give me a little tune.”
The thought that occurs to Dean is so damn silly, he can’t bring himself to answer Sam. But then Sam’s expression twists a little into that pout that Dean has never, ever been able to refuse.
He brings his lips together, tries to bring in enough air, and a small, weak and wobbly sound escapes his lips.
Sam smiles.
Dean’s eyes tear open. They leak, his face is wet—the taste of salt, is there any others anymore? The slick feel of water, yes, this he knows. The beige walls have not changed. He has not changed. Nothing has changed. No smells. No sights. No sound, until…
He licks his dry and peeling lips. He tries to whistle. His moist lips form a perfect, tiny “O” and triumphantly Dean whistles.
And the sound is absorbed by the room before it reaches his straining ears.
Dean screams, he thinks, but there’s no way to be sure.