Author: Oldach's Dream
Summary: "...you went and morphed this into some sort of, philosophical...thing. I was just being a smart-ass." Anyone ever wonder what the brothers actually talk about during those long hours in the Impala? Here's one idea.
Disclaimer: If they were mine...well, read on, these are the kind of conversations they'd be having.
Rating: T for a little bit of naughty language.
A/N: I started this one day in a moment of boredom and I've been debating whether or not to post it - it just seemed too silly - but I finished it, and I figured, hey, what the hell? So, enjoy, and let me know what you think: )
Of Chickens and Aztecs
"What came first, the chicken or the egg?"
Sam was snapped out of his trance-like state by the sheer unexpectedness of the words. And, "Huh?" was the only response he could muster.
"The chicken or the egg." Dean repeated patiently. "I've always wondered, and you went to college."
Dean's logic was absolutely flawless in the respect that no one would ever be able to argue it; it was just truly and uniquely Dean's. Sam had spent the better part of nineteen years living with his brother, and he was still sometimes caught off guard.
"I skipped that seminar." He retaliated. If Dean could have Dean's logic, then Sam could certainly create his own brand of dry responses.
It was a system about fifteen years in the making.
"Well, what do you think?" The elder man had been silent for a whole thirty seconds after Sam's last quip.
"What do I think about what, Dean?" He played dumb, knowing it wouldn't make his brother give up, but hoping it would portray a particular message for him.
"What do you think came first?" He repeated again, with not even a tinge of annoyance. "The chicken or the egg?"
"Is there some kind of subtext here I'm not getting?" Sam inquired. Perhaps Dean's downstairs brain had come up with some new form of sex analogy.
"Not that I know of." Dean pretended to ponder it for a few moments, and then shrugged. "Nope. No subtext. Can you answer the question now?"
"I don't know." Maybe the simple truth would make Dean's pointless ramblings cease.
"Guess."
Maybe not. "No."
"Why?"
There was one affective way to deal with dense, stubborn people. Brutal honesty. "Because it's a pointless question."
"So?" Alright, maybe not so affective.
"So…" Sam let out an exaggerated sigh. "Why should I try to answer a question that has no point, no goal, no nothing?"
"'Cause you want to entertain me." Dean flashed a grin and Sam couldn't stop the slight smile that donned his features.
"No," he responded, "I really don't."
A moment of nothing but the quiet hum of a guitar solo filtering through the speakers. "Please?"
"The chicken!" Sam decided in exasperation. "The chicken came first, happy?"
"Yeah, thanks bro." Dean grinned again and Sam shook his head, Dean was quite an enigma sometimes.
"Hey Sam?" His older brother started again, only a minute or two later.
Sam bit his lip and considered not answering. Should he really encourage this?
"Sam?" Dean tried again after a moment, and the taller man sighed.
"Yeah?"
"Where'd the chicken come from?"
Sam closed his eyes and tried his best not to shout. "I don't know." He gritted out.
"Oh." Dean paused. "Can you guess?"
"Did you get possessed or something?" Sam half yelled, half vented. "Why are you pushing this?"
"I'm bored." Was his shrugged off response.
"Then daydream or something." Sam said. "Or start a real conversation."
"A chick flick moment." He said dryly.
"No," Sam shook his head. "Just anything other than this."
"Okay." But Dean was silent after that and Sam began to feel guilty, if only marginally.
"Fine," he said. "The chicken came from a tribe of Aztec warriors."
Dean's face screwed up for a second, before he adapted a curious expression. "Why did the Aztecs want to create chickens?"
"They were hungry." Sam said, and recalled briefly how what a good bull-shitter he'd always been, if given the right circumstances. He blamed his father for that.
"Didn't they have other animals to eat?" Dean's voice was honestly inquisitive and Sam wondered if his brother was humoring him, or if it was some sort of semi-genuine curiosity.
"Of course they did, but it was all animals and meat – they wanted the eggs." Sam decided.
"Yeah, okay." Dean nodded, agreeing silently – yeah, that made sense. "But how'd they make the chicken?"
"Magic." Sam said.
"How did they know it'd crap out eggs?" Dean inquired, excepting the previous answer easily. "For all they knew, the harmless looking chicken thing could shit… like, demon monsters or dragons or something."
"They had to take a risk."
"Just for eggs?" The doubt was unmasked.
"Yeah." Sam said simply.
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"It's dangerous," Dean said, reinforcing the simple fact as if it should be the solution to everything. "Why bother? Eggs aren't like…necessary for existence. I'm mean yeah, sure, they go great with pancakes, but I'm guessing those weren't even around in Aztec time."
"Sure," Sam said easily. "But if they hadn't taken the risk, we wouldn't have eggs now. Meaning you wouldn't even know if they went with pancakes or not."
"They wouldn't exist." Dean said, sounding slightly confused.
"Exactly," Sam waved a hand. "Meaning neither would anything that we need eggs to make."
"Okay," Dean snapped. "I get it, eggs are important. Thank you Emeril." Sam smirked and reddened only slightly. "But that doesn't answer my question."
"Why'd they do it in the first place?" Sam said rhetorically and his big brother nodded. Sam, after a few moments of silent contemplation, shrugged. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" He asked dubiously.
Sam shook his head casually. "Maybe they were just bored."
Dean was silent for a few minutes. "Maybe." He eventually agreed. "Maybe they were just stupid."
"You think taking a risk is stupid?" Sam inquired lightly.
"I think taking an unnecessary risk is stupid." He said. "If everyone in the world just woke up one day and decided 'Hey! Let's try to make a chicken!' - or any new bread of anything, with magic- eventually we'd get some evil, destructive…" Dean trailed off, having difficulty finding the right words.
"One eyed, one horned flying purple people eater?" Sam helped, and was rewarded with a light slap to his shoulder.
"Jerk," Sam laughed, and considered hitting him back, but decided to wait until he wasn't driving the giant heap of metal that could kill them both if turned in the wrong direction.
"You're a bitch," Dean declared, annoyed. "You know what I mean. You can't just decide one day that you wanna create a new species. It messes with the whole freakin' world."
"In a good way." Sam argued. "Without chicken…"
"Yeah, I know, the world would self-destruct; we already went over that part." Dean interrupted impatiently. "I'm just saying…they should have let nature take its course. If chickens were meant to be…"
"Well, what if they were meant to create them?" Sam interrupted.
"Whaddya mean?" Dean stopped, perplexed by Sam's words.
"I mean," Sam continued. "What of they were meant to create them. What if that was nature's original intended course?"
"How would they know that?" Dean barked. "What, they get some divine message from God? Hear voices, or something?" Dean's own voice took on an incredibly fake mystical tone. "Follow the signs...create the chicken..."
He slumped his shoulders and reverted back to his normal voice. "It's a load of crap. They were messing around, and just happened to get lucky."
"You don't know that."
"Ever seen Final Destination?" Dean seemingly veered off the given subject.
"Can we have a conversation that doesn't have a pop culture reference in it?" Sam asked dryly.
Dean smacked his shoulder, and this time Sam didn't stop his natural reaction of flinging out his own hand and hitting his brother's upper arm with a hard flick of his wrist.
"Hey," Dean said, affronted. "Anyone ever tell you not to hit the driver."
"Stop hitting me." Sam said. A pout and a stuck out tongue could have reverted him back to age seven.
"I'll take that as a 'no', you've never seen it." He ignored his brother's toddler-like attitude.
Sam rolled his eyes. "No, I've never seen it." He paused, and just to humor him asked, "Should I?"
"Ah," Dean shrugged. "The first one was alright, but the second two sucked."
"Noted." Sam said. "Now what does if have to do with the Aztecs creating the chicken?"
A moment of clarity in hearing that question spoken aloud could have made both men realize, at last, how utterly and completely idiotic their ongoing conversation sounded. But clarity did not dawn, and the chicken speak continued.
"You say that these Aztec guys were meant to create chickens, like that was the grand design and nothing could stop it from happening?"
Sam grew weary of his brother's factual tone. "Maybe..."
"Well, that's like saying death really can stalk you."
Sam's eyes bulged slightly. "What kinda messed up movies do you watch?" He demanded.
It was Dean's turn to engage in an eye roll. "That's not the point."
Sam gave him a look that read clearly, 'Well, Dean if you wouldn't mind getting to the point...'
Dean sighed. "I'm just saying, it's all about choices, man, not destiny."
"You don't believe in destiny, fate, anything like that, at all?" Sam asked, although he wasn't sure why he was pushing it.
"We choose our lives Sam." Philosophical Dean, ladies and gentlemen.
"What if the choices we make are our destiny." Was his attempt at an argument.
"What if pigs really can fly, but they just don't feel like it?" Dean's response made Sam out right laugh. Not exactly what he'd been expecting.
"I'm serious," Sam choked through the dying bout of manly giggles. "What if we think we're choosing," his tone was steady again. "But really, fate or whatever you wanna call it, just set it up so we don't have any other option?"
"Come again, college boy?"
"The Aztecs and the chickens," Sam sought as an example. "What if they chose to magically create a new species, because...someone in their tribe was allergic to meat."
"You can't be allergic to meat." Was Dean's automatic argument.
Sam groaned. "Yes you can. Just work with me, please?"
Dean gave a short nod, and the younger man continued. "Now you say it's a choice - an unnecessary risk - but someone's dying without eggs...I don't really see a way chickens couldn't be created."
"They could have found something else for them to eat," Dean said, still trying to work with the small scale of things. "Fruits, berries...fish, something."
"Maybe," Sam gave. "But what about in the winter, when they didn't have those things? Aztec times, remember? No refrigeration or anything convenient like that."
Dean gritted his teeth and Sam, in an odd moment, felt no brotherly triumph at seeing him being forced to at least admit his little brother's points were valid. He just wanted Dean to see where he was coming from, to honestly think about it.
"It was still a choice," he finally settled on. Out of honest belief or simple stubbornness, Sam wasn't sure.
"No, waking up and deciding to magically create an egg crapping bird is a choice. Doing it to save someone's life...that's, well that's kind of like hunting."
"Hunting's a choice." Dean said at once.
Sam bit his lip. "Would you, or me, or dad...would any of us even know about supernatural stuff, if that thing hadn't killed mom?"
Dean was silent, and Sam rushed to fill the empty space his words had created.
"I mean, yeah, we all chose to look for this thing, and kill anything evil that we find along the way. But do you think we'd be doing any of it if we had grown up normal?" He took a moment to let his words soak in, Dean's face was blank. "If mom hadn't died, and dad hadn't raised us to be warriors...we wouldn't be hunters. We wouldn't be sitting here right now. We wouldn't be having this conversation."
"We probably wouldn't even be together." Dean added quietly. "You'd still be at college. Probably married to Jessica by now."
The words hurt, Sam knew they shouldn't after all this time, but he couldn't help it, Jess had been his everything for a long time. He bit his lip subconsciously, turning his head slightly towards the window.
"Sorry," Dean's word a moment later was sincere, and Sam knew that he felt honestly guilty.
He shrugged. "No, you're right." He took a deep breath, and turned his head back, refusing to hide. "We probably would. You might be too, married to someone, kids."
Dean was silent for a second. "But that's not how it is."
And for some reason, the words were almost relieving. "No," Sam agreed, "It's not."
The brothers were silent for another dozen miles or so, before Dean took a deep breath, unable to let the conversation rest. "So you're saying, that if someone didn't die when they were supposed to, death really would stalk them?"
"We have got to rent this movie," Sam half-mumbled. "And I don't know, that seems extreme."
"And created for our viewing pleasure." Dean quipped.
"Yeah," Sam smiled. "That too."
"But you do," the older man went on again. "Think that everything that happens is... Meant to be, or some shit like that?"
It was the first time in the duration of their conversation that his actual opinion had been asked. Up until now, he'd just been arguing for the sake of arguing, and because he felt vaguely driven by a sense of something like maybe that he couldn't completely identify.
Silence dawned for a few minutes, before he answered honestly. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Dean repeated dryly. "After this entire little debate that you started, you don't know?"
"Actually, you started it." Sam couldn't help but point out. "You asked me which came first, the chicken or the..."
"Yeah, I know." Dean bit out, interrupting. "But you went and morphed it into some sort of, philosophical...thing. I was just being a smart-ass."
"Well, who's fault is that?"
"You just wanted to have a chick-flick moment." Dean continued his accusations.
"No I didn't." Sam protested. "I was just thinking out loud."
"Go back to college if you wanna think about that kinda..."
"What?" Sam pushed, amused.
"Stuff." He finished lamely.
"Brilliant."
"Bite me."
"Hey," Sam sounded honestly affronted. "That's my line."
"Cry me a river."
"Bitch."
It was Dean's turn to look conflicted. "You're the..."
"Bite me." Sam interrupted with a Dean-flavored smirk.
"You're such a little..."
Sam interrupted Dean's grumbling by adding helpfully, "Jerk?"
"Bitch." Dean snapped. "And don't you freakin' forget it."
"Fine," Sam smiled. "But you're a jerk."
Dean smiled as well. "Okay by me." He stopped for a brief minute. "Now, tell me what you really think."
"About..."
"Damn it, Sam." Dean sounded annoyed, but the younger man could tell he really wasn't. "You started this thing, you're gonna damn well finish it."
"These kinda chats aren't really supposed to have ends," Sam dodged. "It's philosophy, there're no right answers."
"But there are solid opinions." Dean didn't waver. "What's yours?"
"I think there's something bigger behind what we do." He finally admitted, just realizing the truth as he spoke. "Maybe not every little decision," it seemed a bit inane to think that destiny interfered with the unimportant stuff, like what kind of hair products someone used. "But our lives in general, yeah, I think we were meant to do this."
"You're saying that mom and Jessica were meant to die." Dean wasn't being accusing, he was pointing something out. Just incase Sam didn't realize what he was implying.
No, Sam answered silently. Not Jessica, that was all my fault.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Maybe. To get dad to start hunting, to keep us going. Maybe that's what my powers are too."
"Cosmic incentives?" Dean said quizzically, as happy as Sam to be pulled away form all talk of the ceiling demon.
Sam shrugged. "Whatever it is, it keeps us going. It helps."
Dean let out a deep breath, an shook his head, as if clearing it of all excess thoughts. "Whoa dude, that's just...deep."
"Shut up." Sam was grinning at Dean's mocking tone.
"No, seriously. Cosmic forces control our lives," he nodded sarcastically to himself. "It's better than the government's subliminal messages."
"You asked." He reminded.
"And now I know..." he looked serious, but wasn't by a long shot. "You have psychic powers because great all-knowing angels of destiny willed it to be so."
"Dude..." Sam was torn between tired amusement and annoyance.
"You can move things with your mind because the world would cease to exist without you playing Ghostbusters." Dean was smiling widely, all hints of seriousness long since gone.
Sam was shocked it lasted this long. His brother had time limits with these kinds of thought processes.
"Okay, okay, I get it." Sam interrupted the spewing mock-filled retorts. "You think every thing that happens is a choice. We control our lives,...yeah, yeah, I've heard it before."
"Well, it's true."
"Opinions are exactly that, ya know," Sam pointed out lightly. "Opinions."
"This is the absolute last time I let you rope me into a philosophical decision." Dean said steadily, and Sam smirked silently to himself.
"Okay."
"I mean it." Dean insisted. "And you're never watching Final Destination. You'll get too many ideas."
Sam just smirked wider. "Whatever you say, bro."
"I mean it." Dean repeated. "Never again."
Sam nodded, and the car was silent for a while. All thoughts of destiny and Aztecs, fire-demons and shining powers gone for the moment. Well, not gone, but securely tucked away in each brother's respective mind, safely out of hearing range.
"Sammy?" Dean spoke some undetermined amount of time later.
The younger man answered wearily, "Yeah?"
Dean took a deep breath. "Are you sure it was the chicken that came first?" The words held great amounts of mock concern.
"Dean..." Sam warned.
"'Cause, I mean, what if it was the egg?"
"Dude..."
"We should really do some research on this, what if we got the whole thing wrong? What if the egg actually just..."
"Just shoot me now, okay?" Sam interrupted.
"You'd go to your grave not knowing." Dean warned.
"I'm okay with that." Sam said tiredly, leaning his head against the seat rest and closing his eyes. "Really."
Dean smirked and continued to taunt him for miles and miles, only ceasing when they finally reached a bar that caught the elder man's interest. From that bar they extracted a new lead, and from that lead , a new job, and from that new job, a new lead, and thus continued the pattern of their lives.
And when that pattern finally comes to an end, when they're forced to turn around and look back on the life they led; the hunts will blend together, people's faces will morph into featureless names, all the bars will have smelled the same and the road will never really have an end. But the conversations about chickens and Aztecs, destiny and fate, life evaluations tinged with humor only Dean could provide; those are the talks that will stick out in their memories forever.
Because usually, it really is all the little things, that end up mattering the most.
End.
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