[FIC] Last Fair Deal Gone Down for baba_o_reily
Gift type: Fanfic
Title: Last Fair Deal Gone Down
Author: skullage
Recipient: baba_o_reily
Rating: nc-17
Warnings: language, violence, homophobia, sex, angst, alcohol use,
Spoilers: none.
Wordcount: 4,500
Summary: High school AU. Two months in the same town feels like two years.
Author notes: 1. I tried to incorporated all three prompts (absent father John, sarcastic middle-school Sam, and fisticuffs), although there’s no mention of Christmas, so I may have missed the point. I hope you like it, this was a lot of fun to write. Also, I’m sorry if the ending seems a bit rushed, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
A/N 2. The lines the future’s uncertain and the end is always near from The Door’s Roadhouse Blues; you can mistreat me here, babe, but you can’t when I go home from Robert Johnson’s I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom; if the son refused to shine, I’d still be lovin’ you from Led Zeppelin’s Thank You. Title from the Robert Johnson song of the same name.
---
Two months in the same town feels like two years.
There’s a fire in your blood akin to the summer heat and it thrums for the open road, beats the steady drum of your heart. Everything is clearer without the sun in your eyes and no ghosts on your tail.
Strange faces and stranger people you meet every day stick in your mind, with no ribbon of tar to blur them out, same diners and streets and a class timetable you have to pay attention to. Same grudge in your dad’s voice you can’t tune out with the tv. It’s all you can do not to hightail it out of here anyway.
There are lines on John’s face from running too long. The decision was made, a house already picked out before you even thought to argue. Even if you wanted to say something, the blind hope on Sammy’s face, the small smile on your dad’s knocked the wind out of your sails; no one expected a fight, and you didn’t want to rock the boat.
Two months, and John hasn’t smiled since.
He disappears more often than he’s around, and you don’t say a thing.
The knife sleeps under his pillow, slipped under yours when he’s not there, like a parting gift, or a truce. You want to ask what the point is, if you and Sammy are here and he’s off hunting memories; if it’s easier to let you look after yourself, because he never knew how to.
The only thing that stops you is the anger that deafens like a silence, powerful in the ways you will never be. So you keep your mouth shut, and pretend it’s the last time every time he walks out the door.
+
Jo’s the first person in this backward town you meet who isn’t completely bent, but she’s still crooked. Tank-top half tucked into her apron, a sliver of skin shown over her hip, hair flipped over one shoulder; she’s carelessly, perfectly pulled-together.
Daughter of your dad’s friend, for what its worth, and you’re not surprised you hit it off. Two bloodlines of bastards and hicks, born in blood with a rifle in your hands; her gait says small-town, her speech educated, soft on the ears, soft to the eyes, but there’s a hardness to her gaze that you’ve seen in her mothers, your fathers. It might be in yours too.
She points her brown eyes at you, and the edge disappears when she smiles. “The Roadhouse is where we all hang out.”
You reply, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near, and she laughs, because she gets it.
Your fingers itch for a switchblade, or the Desert Eagle stowed safe in the pick-up’s trunk, and John’s got the only key. Figures you’ll do something stupid like get bored and climb the nearest clock tower, and just like that he locked up your life, the extensions of yourself, in the only home you ever had.
Jo shows you the arcade, the girls and their short skirts that barely hide tan lines and skin too young to damage. Takes you to the bridge, and there you throw rocks at the pigeons that disappear in a flutter of whoops and wings into the creek bed below.
There’s anger in you, too: restless, just like you are.
“You’ll fit in around here,” she compliments. You don’t want to believe it, so you just flip your collar up like a shield, no pistol in your back pocket to hide behind. Answer, “Your mom keep tabs on the whiskey?”
--
This town is too small for you, no room to move between friendly faces and the Sunday fair on Main Street.
At this time of day the park is deserted, and that’s where you meet Castiel. He appears through the line of heat on the horizon like a mirage, dressed too formally for the season. The name eludes you, but the clothes stick out in your memory.
His presence offends you for reasons you don’t want to understand; the sun bears down until you’re suffocated and burnt, but he’s not even sweating.
“Hello, Dean.” His voice is an earthly rumble that raises your hackles, but you don’t have the energy to be on edge. “May I join you?” He waits for your response, poised and attentive, like he’s got all the time in the world and you’re worth waiting for.
“Who’re you?” you demand instead of moving. The bench is big enough for two, but you’re protective, and right now it’s all you have.
The way he’s standing, the sun shines behind him, illuminates a silhouette and shadow that falls over you; he’s careless too, tie half undone, shoulders slumped, hair tussled. You wonder what secrets he’s hiding in that streaker’s coat, and if they’re worse than yours.
“My name is Castiel.”
He doesn’t belong here either, you can tell. The city hangs over him like a film, lingering smell of new air and expensive coffee - all the places you blew through as a kid that couldn’t contain you or your destiny. This town is smaller, but it’s the same.
You want to tell him to get lost, that you’re not looking for new friends. Something tells you that he’s not either, and your objections die on your tongue. He stares at you with a curious scrutiny until you shift and glance away, and he takes this for consent.
You’re always biting your tongue, always sticking your foot in it. There’s no compass without the road, no arrow to point you in the right direction. Even your father’s voice of reason can’t override the reckless thoughts that don’t solve anything.
“I take it the thrills of the public education didn’t interest you today.”
The heat must have melted your brain, because you can’t think of a response -- and who the fuck talks like that, anyway? His voice rolls over you, heavy, warm, surprisingly quiet while cars pass in the distance and his eyes bore into you through the haze of your hangover, and melt the last of your headache.
The heat dulls your senses, and sweat beads on the back of your neck; the amiable silence between you and Castiel stretches to fill the shadows at your feet, shifting as he alternately studies you and the muted scenery, and you fidget with the zippo in your pocket.
Already you can feel your guard slip away. Must be a spell, because a minute ago you were too restless to sit still; now your legs are leaden and all the hours of sleep you didn’t get last night are piling up.
“What can I say?” you reply, after a lifetime of poised silence and answers just out of reach, “I’m rebellious like that.”
He pulls an open bottle of Coke from his coat and hands it over without lessening his gaze; you don’t hesitate before you take it. As the liquid eases the scratch in your throat, and he watches the precipitation slide over your fingers, you think with no small amount of irony, what a beautiful start to a friendship.
+
The keys are on the coffee table when you get back, strategically dropped on an envelope of money to tie you over until only John knows when. It’s the only note to say he’s left, only indication he’ll be back. He always is, and the emptiness of the apartment is in itself a reminder.
John’s last words echo back at you from the green laminate in the hallway, the flecking paint of the walls.
Look out for Sammy. I won’t be gone long.
Couple days at most.
Look out for Sam.
You don’t know when it became John, not dad. Somewhere between the weapons training when you were nine and midnight stalks around the neighborhood, in search of what disturbs the quiet balance of peaceful, suburban sleep; or maybe it was when your father traded meaningful words for a brief pat on the shoulder, and that became your sense of direction.
It’s too much to think about, and even the apartment is stifling. The microwave clock reads three-thirty, so you grab the keys and head back out.
Sammy’s noticeable from half a block away, a shaggy mop of brown hair to disguise himself and slumped shoulders you’d pick out of a crowd. Right now it’s more a line-up, the kids in their back-to-school clothes and shuffled feet as the paddy-wagon soccer moms drive up to haul them away.
He’s waiting for you by the curb as you pull up, impatient like there’s no time left; his life ending, and he’s just sitting in the grass, watching the minutes roll by. Cars.
Whatever.
He piles in, all awkward limbs for his size and throws a questionable look your way. No surprise your dad’s gone again, but there’s an edge to his tone as he comments, “Dad left you the Impala?” Incredulity, and the shadow of what passed over his face the first day you set down here - happiness, you think.
“We ride in style.”
It’s you, Sammy, and the road, together, and it fits. The fire under your skin simmers at the thought.
--
You wake up in a foreign place, blinded by the sun through a crack in the window. For a moment it’s the highway reflection in the middle of nowhere, blacktop you can cook an egg on that stretches endless, formidable and familiar.
The moment passes and you’re back in the Roadhouse, smothered in patchwork and the morning humidity. Floorboards creak beneath you, the rusted springs of the bed crying out in protest as you shift, make a note of your surroundings, pat yourself down to make sure your effects are still in place.
Your phone beeps a warning, alarm, thirty minutes before school.
You’re always one step ahead, too restless to wait; in this sleepy town you’re the outlier.
Jo comes down the stairs as you’re about to go, weathered and sleep-weary, haunted like a soldier’s wife. Like on the other side of the door there’s a war about to swallow you up, and she’ll be the only one left to mourn you.
You must still be drunk, because the thought makes you laugh.
She doesn’t ask you over again, though you can tell she wants to. Wants you to stay, though you can’t. Meet her mom, even though you already have. Make an honest woman out of her, but neither of you really knows what that means. Be the father that stuck around.
Open like a book, and she trusts you. It’s sick and laughably pathetic, but you like it anyway - the time before they leave, the power of having people who trust you. They move on, in time, when they realize just how damaged you are.
“See you at school,” she calls, and then she’s gone, leaving only the lingering scent of perfume
on your skin. She’s smarter than the others.
+
By the time you head back to the park you’re awake and sober. Too hot even for your leather jacket and school is too much to take.
Castiel is already there, occupying the same bench like he never left.
He’s a surprise in himself.
“No school today?” you ask by way of greeting.
His eyes are soft when he looks at you, and he waits until you stop in front of him before he replies. “I was feeling--” he pauses, mouth parted as he contemplates -- you, the words, the meaning of life, you can’t tell, “--rebellious.”
You’re corrupting him already. It feels good.
He turns away for a moment, picks a beetle from the ground, and its colors flash red and green like Christmas in the sun.
The restlessness surges again. There’s nothing in the park for you to vent on, save for Castiel, and you’re not that shitty. “Let’s go for a ride,” you suggest, and you can’t help the thrill you get when he perks up.
You leave the park and the school behind it in the Impala’s rear view mirror, driving through side streets and past the brewery on the outskirts of town until you’re back at the apartment, practically busting down the front door that jams every time you close it. Castiel and his odd comments about nursery rhymes you’ve never heard and tribal practices in Borneo that fit so well with his odd demeanor and alien eyes follow you up the stairs.
He doesn’t comment on your weirdness, or the state of the apartment building with its cracked walls and chemical stink like you expect him to.
You’re never sure what to say, too afraid of saying too much. When you look at him, you get a feeling like vertigo; the sea-sick roiling in your stomach that precedes a fatal fall.
“I can’t figure you out,” you mutter. It’s more an accusation, but he doesn’t take it that way.
“There’s nothing to figure out,” he replies easily. You want to believe he’s lying.
You want to believe he’s not everything he appears. It means he might not be scared of you, if he knows who you really are.
The apartment is a mess, three days’ worth of dishes on the floor and jeans stuffed between seat cushions. When Castiel enters after you, you cross your arms, lean against the counter, daring him to say something. He doesn’t even notice; just picks a cd up from the table, sticky with coffee rings and mud from your boots, and proclaims “My brother has this one.”
Stupid things pop into your head. His tie is half-undone from tugging at it in the heat, shirt askew, a sliver of reddened skin over his exposed shoulder you didn’t notice before. In the cool darkness of the apartment, it’s all you can think about.
He doesn’t ask to listen, just switches the discs in the stereo, and before you can blink he’s spread out on the floor, one ear pressed against the speaker to soak up the soft cadence of Johnson crooning, you can mistreat me here, babe, but you can’t when I go home.
There’s something so off about him being here, more than the clash of his stark white shirt and the flecked mould-grey of the carpet pattern; his eyes hold an ancient power that belongs in a museum, fossilized in amber or immortalized in a rock painting. Not here, with you.
You expect an awkwardness he doesn’t exude, as if he, like you, wouldn’t immediately know how to work Sam’s cd player, with hands too used to fumbling for cassettes under discarded food wrappers and denims sun-baked and caked in dirt.
But he’s not like that, not like you.
The details of the past ten years bleed out into the space around you, spaces inside you that widened with each passing mile. You’re all fissures and open roads, the thrill of the hunt to warm your blood because underneath you’re uncomfortably numb.
He doesn’t ask you to join him on the floor, on the blanket of mottled browns and puke greens, just fixes you with his thousand-mile stare like he knows you’re going to. As you slide down next to him, you inhale a scent familiar and intimate, and it sparks memories of another house, a proper house, a canvas of white-washed walls and venetian blinds. You crawl under the coffee table like you used to when you were three and watching John walk out for the first time, seeing with new eyes and a breakable heart.
Castiel turns to face you, and stares at you like your heart is important enough to break all over again.
--
A fist connects with the side of your face so hard you see white, and think the crack that splits the air is the other guy’s fist.
The pain is irrefutable and real, the adrenaline pumping through your blood only an excuse when your own fist smashes into the guy’s nose and you lay him out.
Roy - you think his name is Roy, and he’s a dick who should’ve known better but right now he’s gasping in pain as you reef him up by the collar and start in on him.
Behind you a group of kids gather, their jeers slowly dying one by one as the blood sprays from Roy’s face and flecks the grass, slides in the scars on your knuckles and settles. Your jaw is still aching from the impact, and you think good, it’s about time you vented. This is just the kind of stupid you need to bring the balance back.
A hand reaches out to snag your arm, the other bunched in your shirt to pull you away, but even if it halts your blows you can’t stop fighting. Stop fighting, stop moving, and you won’t know what to do with yourself.
Roy’s words are in your head, your ears - faggot, freak - a hand on Cas’s arm to spin him around, and they’re a part of you now. Roy’s arm gritty and warm in your palm and a warning, back off buddy, before he’d swung and your blood had boiled over.
The sun streams relentless over your arms, your neck, sweat over your heated body; you’re powerful in this moment, solar and endless, your cool rage an extension of you that seeps into the air and stifles like the heat.
In two months, you’ve never felt this alive.
You finally stop struggling, stop fighting long enough to breathe and settle back, survey the white and red picture beneath you. It’s not pretty, but it has its own beauty.
There’s a voice beside your ear, Sam shouting Dean what the fuck?, before the hands raise you
up, out, away, push you across the lawn toward the parking lot.
Instinctively your eyes pick out familiar faces in the crowd, looking for another fight, or an excuse, forgiveness; the boy with the mullet throws the horns up. You spit out a mouthful of blood in acknowledgement and stumble on.
It’s not until you’re at the car you realize Castiel is the one pushing you - you’d lost him beneath the blood pounding in your ears - and Sam’s going off, his voice only a notch under hysterical, bug-eyed and furious.
“What the hell were you thinking, Dean? Christ, that kid is seriously hurt!”
You’re not looking at him, his small hands hooked into your jacket, fourteen year old body
framing yours against the searing metal of the car. Blood coats your fingers; you can feel it run
down your hand, but you’re not looking at that either.
You’re looking at Castiel. The silent fury in his ancient eyes reverberates from him, through you,
louder than the heartbeat in your ears. It’s terrifying.
He says nothing, lets his power speak for him.
That was stupid. Reckless.
You need to be more careful.
I can defend myself.
The weight of his gaze is too much, too real for the flayed nerves under your skin and on your
sleeves. He’s seen the real you, the monster in the Dean-suit. Only a matter of time; you won’t
blame him for leaving too.
His anger is overwhelming, and finally you look away. You tell yourself you’re not ashamed of
what you are, not afraid to prove yourself, but you’re always the first to look away.
+
When you were twelve you got in a fight with a Rottweiler, one of those German-American hybrids Sam always wanted, back in the day when it was okay to want things like a puppy and a home and a normal family. You convinced Sammy to play truant, wound up almost breaking your leg jumping a chain-link fence. Almost lost your face to the dog that jumped you.
It’d been summer then, too, and with John away, no compass, no voice of reason or cool blue eyes to point out what you were doing wrong. You barely have that now.
The cut above your cheek stings a little, bruised skin still tender as Sam prods at it with inexperienced fingers. John was the one that used to patch you up. It was always John’s silent judgment, loud even over your disgrace and the last of the adrenaline high still pounding through your wild blood.
“Dad’s gonna flip if you get expelled.”
“Nah, they’ll let it slide.” It’s easy to lie to Sammy when you’ve convinced yourself it’s the truth.
“Yeah, sure, ‘cause they tend to overlook kids beating the crap out of each other on school grounds.” He rolls his eyes, and just to annoy him you ruffle his hair.
The reaction doesn’t disappoint, the angered slap of your hand, and in retaliation he jabs you with an antiseptic q-tip and goes back to your check-up.
You’re fine, and he knows it. The other guy is the one in trouble, but the adrenaline has worn off, replaced by a knot in your gut and residual fury. This is how far you’ll go: protect your family, stand up for honor, let the people you care about care for you. Castiel fits in there, somewhere, in the space you can’t comprehend.
You know Sammy doesn’t remember that summer, so like this one, or the dog that snapped at him first, but you’ve got the scars along your ribs to remind you. Scars in old places and divots in your skin, each one its own story, so you’ll never forget.
Still, Sam doesn’t talk about dogs anymore.
--
The stars keep you grounded and guide you through the void of this nothing town you can’t escape from. As the Impala roars down the highway, eats asphalt and spits out the past, you feel something in your chest loosen, the click of all the tumblers in your life falling into place.
Castiel is silent tonight, simply stares out the window as if entranced by the scenery, or affronted by it; you still can’t figure him out.
The speakers exhale a litany of if the sun refused to shine, I’d still be lovin’ you, but the comfortable silence pervades over it, the steady rumble of the engine and the wind whipping past you at forty miles an hour.
The road’s an endless stream of things you don’t say, miles beneath your hands, and it’s home. It’s been too long coming.
You reach a clearing at the side of the road and slide over; the Impala is an extension of you now, that’s easy and comfortable after all these years riding shotgun, carving your sweat and memories and body into her upholstery. She’s sense memory and purpose; even simply coasting or sitting idle, your baby has drive of her own.
Castiel watches you as you park her in gear and turn the engine off, like it’s new and interesting, and you’ll never get over being watched like that. He doesn’t say anything when you switch off the radio and the quiet rings in your ears. The sudden impulse to yell at him, ask him what the fuck he’s doing in the middle of nowhere, demand answers from the one person who might give them to you surges hard and hungry. You want him to get angry - like you’re angry; mad, like you should be when he’s so fucking calm and accepting.
You don’t.
It’s possible you might be growing.
Even at night the temperature is unbearable and cooks your skin against the leather. His gaze is so level and deep you could drown, and you have to look away.
There’s no wind to cool you now, no lazy cricket chirp to tell that time is even passing; a bead of sweat rolls down behind your ear in slow motion, trails through the dust from the road and years of humanity bleached into your skin.
Castiel is new, and foreign, and unbreakably cool against you. When he kisses you it’s soft and light, despite the impossible depth of everything he is behind it.
You want to say you’re sorry, but you don’t know what for. He kisses you again, as if he knows, like he knew you the first time you met. Drinks down your words and leaves you parched.
His taste is alkaline and metallic like the rusted water pipes of every town in every state you’ve ever been to, sweet like you have no right to take. He’s familiar; a breath at the back of your mind and a memory you’d forgotten, and he lets you take. Shifts his weight, presses you against the door and takes for himself.
Soon you’re lost in the sensation, his mouth on yours, hands all over you as they scramble for purchase. You’re both half-naked before you realize he’s stopped, eyes wide, all his cool laid to waste at the sight of you. You kiss him, run your hands over him until he stops looking and feels.
This is your chance to take him apart, to see how he’s wired. He’s so much better than this, than a sweaty tumble in the front seat of a car. You want to make him see that; you want to bring him down to your level.
Somehow, though, this feels more like ascension.
He presses you into the seat, turns you and moves until he’s straddling you, all the while you’re still kissing. Sparks shoot behind your eyes as your rhythms sync; his body pressed into you to draw a long and heated moan that he swallows down too easily.
In turn, you swallow the voice that says it shouldn’t be this easy.
His hands skim over you, breathing life back into you as you kiss, and soon you’re lost in him. It’s a good place to be.
--
Hours later, the high still thrums through you, urges you on, burns steady and powerful through your body. You drive through the night, wide awake and embracing oblivion. You don’t have anywhere to be, but right here, with him beside you, is fine.
Castiel doesn’t say much, not with the weight of all there is between you, just sits silent and accepting, soaking in the sight of road before you. And that’s fine too.
Title: Last Fair Deal Gone Down
Author: skullage
Recipient: baba_o_reily
Rating: nc-17
Warnings: language, violence, homophobia, sex, angst, alcohol use,
Spoilers: none.
Wordcount: 4,500
Summary: High school AU. Two months in the same town feels like two years.
Author notes: 1. I tried to incorporated all three prompts (absent father John, sarcastic middle-school Sam, and fisticuffs), although there’s no mention of Christmas, so I may have missed the point. I hope you like it, this was a lot of fun to write. Also, I’m sorry if the ending seems a bit rushed, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
A/N 2. The lines the future’s uncertain and the end is always near from The Door’s Roadhouse Blues; you can mistreat me here, babe, but you can’t when I go home from Robert Johnson’s I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom; if the son refused to shine, I’d still be lovin’ you from Led Zeppelin’s Thank You. Title from the Robert Johnson song of the same name.
---
Two months in the same town feels like two years.
There’s a fire in your blood akin to the summer heat and it thrums for the open road, beats the steady drum of your heart. Everything is clearer without the sun in your eyes and no ghosts on your tail.
Strange faces and stranger people you meet every day stick in your mind, with no ribbon of tar to blur them out, same diners and streets and a class timetable you have to pay attention to. Same grudge in your dad’s voice you can’t tune out with the tv. It’s all you can do not to hightail it out of here anyway.
There are lines on John’s face from running too long. The decision was made, a house already picked out before you even thought to argue. Even if you wanted to say something, the blind hope on Sammy’s face, the small smile on your dad’s knocked the wind out of your sails; no one expected a fight, and you didn’t want to rock the boat.
Two months, and John hasn’t smiled since.
He disappears more often than he’s around, and you don’t say a thing.
The knife sleeps under his pillow, slipped under yours when he’s not there, like a parting gift, or a truce. You want to ask what the point is, if you and Sammy are here and he’s off hunting memories; if it’s easier to let you look after yourself, because he never knew how to.
The only thing that stops you is the anger that deafens like a silence, powerful in the ways you will never be. So you keep your mouth shut, and pretend it’s the last time every time he walks out the door.
+
Jo’s the first person in this backward town you meet who isn’t completely bent, but she’s still crooked. Tank-top half tucked into her apron, a sliver of skin shown over her hip, hair flipped over one shoulder; she’s carelessly, perfectly pulled-together.
Daughter of your dad’s friend, for what its worth, and you’re not surprised you hit it off. Two bloodlines of bastards and hicks, born in blood with a rifle in your hands; her gait says small-town, her speech educated, soft on the ears, soft to the eyes, but there’s a hardness to her gaze that you’ve seen in her mothers, your fathers. It might be in yours too.
She points her brown eyes at you, and the edge disappears when she smiles. “The Roadhouse is where we all hang out.”
You reply, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near, and she laughs, because she gets it.
Your fingers itch for a switchblade, or the Desert Eagle stowed safe in the pick-up’s trunk, and John’s got the only key. Figures you’ll do something stupid like get bored and climb the nearest clock tower, and just like that he locked up your life, the extensions of yourself, in the only home you ever had.
Jo shows you the arcade, the girls and their short skirts that barely hide tan lines and skin too young to damage. Takes you to the bridge, and there you throw rocks at the pigeons that disappear in a flutter of whoops and wings into the creek bed below.
There’s anger in you, too: restless, just like you are.
“You’ll fit in around here,” she compliments. You don’t want to believe it, so you just flip your collar up like a shield, no pistol in your back pocket to hide behind. Answer, “Your mom keep tabs on the whiskey?”
--
This town is too small for you, no room to move between friendly faces and the Sunday fair on Main Street.
At this time of day the park is deserted, and that’s where you meet Castiel. He appears through the line of heat on the horizon like a mirage, dressed too formally for the season. The name eludes you, but the clothes stick out in your memory.
His presence offends you for reasons you don’t want to understand; the sun bears down until you’re suffocated and burnt, but he’s not even sweating.
“Hello, Dean.” His voice is an earthly rumble that raises your hackles, but you don’t have the energy to be on edge. “May I join you?” He waits for your response, poised and attentive, like he’s got all the time in the world and you’re worth waiting for.
“Who’re you?” you demand instead of moving. The bench is big enough for two, but you’re protective, and right now it’s all you have.
The way he’s standing, the sun shines behind him, illuminates a silhouette and shadow that falls over you; he’s careless too, tie half undone, shoulders slumped, hair tussled. You wonder what secrets he’s hiding in that streaker’s coat, and if they’re worse than yours.
“My name is Castiel.”
He doesn’t belong here either, you can tell. The city hangs over him like a film, lingering smell of new air and expensive coffee - all the places you blew through as a kid that couldn’t contain you or your destiny. This town is smaller, but it’s the same.
You want to tell him to get lost, that you’re not looking for new friends. Something tells you that he’s not either, and your objections die on your tongue. He stares at you with a curious scrutiny until you shift and glance away, and he takes this for consent.
You’re always biting your tongue, always sticking your foot in it. There’s no compass without the road, no arrow to point you in the right direction. Even your father’s voice of reason can’t override the reckless thoughts that don’t solve anything.
“I take it the thrills of the public education didn’t interest you today.”
The heat must have melted your brain, because you can’t think of a response -- and who the fuck talks like that, anyway? His voice rolls over you, heavy, warm, surprisingly quiet while cars pass in the distance and his eyes bore into you through the haze of your hangover, and melt the last of your headache.
The heat dulls your senses, and sweat beads on the back of your neck; the amiable silence between you and Castiel stretches to fill the shadows at your feet, shifting as he alternately studies you and the muted scenery, and you fidget with the zippo in your pocket.
Already you can feel your guard slip away. Must be a spell, because a minute ago you were too restless to sit still; now your legs are leaden and all the hours of sleep you didn’t get last night are piling up.
“What can I say?” you reply, after a lifetime of poised silence and answers just out of reach, “I’m rebellious like that.”
He pulls an open bottle of Coke from his coat and hands it over without lessening his gaze; you don’t hesitate before you take it. As the liquid eases the scratch in your throat, and he watches the precipitation slide over your fingers, you think with no small amount of irony, what a beautiful start to a friendship.
+
The keys are on the coffee table when you get back, strategically dropped on an envelope of money to tie you over until only John knows when. It’s the only note to say he’s left, only indication he’ll be back. He always is, and the emptiness of the apartment is in itself a reminder.
John’s last words echo back at you from the green laminate in the hallway, the flecking paint of the walls.
Look out for Sammy. I won’t be gone long.
Couple days at most.
Look out for Sam.
You don’t know when it became John, not dad. Somewhere between the weapons training when you were nine and midnight stalks around the neighborhood, in search of what disturbs the quiet balance of peaceful, suburban sleep; or maybe it was when your father traded meaningful words for a brief pat on the shoulder, and that became your sense of direction.
It’s too much to think about, and even the apartment is stifling. The microwave clock reads three-thirty, so you grab the keys and head back out.
Sammy’s noticeable from half a block away, a shaggy mop of brown hair to disguise himself and slumped shoulders you’d pick out of a crowd. Right now it’s more a line-up, the kids in their back-to-school clothes and shuffled feet as the paddy-wagon soccer moms drive up to haul them away.
He’s waiting for you by the curb as you pull up, impatient like there’s no time left; his life ending, and he’s just sitting in the grass, watching the minutes roll by. Cars.
Whatever.
He piles in, all awkward limbs for his size and throws a questionable look your way. No surprise your dad’s gone again, but there’s an edge to his tone as he comments, “Dad left you the Impala?” Incredulity, and the shadow of what passed over his face the first day you set down here - happiness, you think.
“We ride in style.”
It’s you, Sammy, and the road, together, and it fits. The fire under your skin simmers at the thought.
--
You wake up in a foreign place, blinded by the sun through a crack in the window. For a moment it’s the highway reflection in the middle of nowhere, blacktop you can cook an egg on that stretches endless, formidable and familiar.
The moment passes and you’re back in the Roadhouse, smothered in patchwork and the morning humidity. Floorboards creak beneath you, the rusted springs of the bed crying out in protest as you shift, make a note of your surroundings, pat yourself down to make sure your effects are still in place.
Your phone beeps a warning, alarm, thirty minutes before school.
You’re always one step ahead, too restless to wait; in this sleepy town you’re the outlier.
Jo comes down the stairs as you’re about to go, weathered and sleep-weary, haunted like a soldier’s wife. Like on the other side of the door there’s a war about to swallow you up, and she’ll be the only one left to mourn you.
You must still be drunk, because the thought makes you laugh.
She doesn’t ask you over again, though you can tell she wants to. Wants you to stay, though you can’t. Meet her mom, even though you already have. Make an honest woman out of her, but neither of you really knows what that means. Be the father that stuck around.
Open like a book, and she trusts you. It’s sick and laughably pathetic, but you like it anyway - the time before they leave, the power of having people who trust you. They move on, in time, when they realize just how damaged you are.
“See you at school,” she calls, and then she’s gone, leaving only the lingering scent of perfume
on your skin. She’s smarter than the others.
+
By the time you head back to the park you’re awake and sober. Too hot even for your leather jacket and school is too much to take.
Castiel is already there, occupying the same bench like he never left.
He’s a surprise in himself.
“No school today?” you ask by way of greeting.
His eyes are soft when he looks at you, and he waits until you stop in front of him before he replies. “I was feeling--” he pauses, mouth parted as he contemplates -- you, the words, the meaning of life, you can’t tell, “--rebellious.”
You’re corrupting him already. It feels good.
He turns away for a moment, picks a beetle from the ground, and its colors flash red and green like Christmas in the sun.
The restlessness surges again. There’s nothing in the park for you to vent on, save for Castiel, and you’re not that shitty. “Let’s go for a ride,” you suggest, and you can’t help the thrill you get when he perks up.
You leave the park and the school behind it in the Impala’s rear view mirror, driving through side streets and past the brewery on the outskirts of town until you’re back at the apartment, practically busting down the front door that jams every time you close it. Castiel and his odd comments about nursery rhymes you’ve never heard and tribal practices in Borneo that fit so well with his odd demeanor and alien eyes follow you up the stairs.
He doesn’t comment on your weirdness, or the state of the apartment building with its cracked walls and chemical stink like you expect him to.
You’re never sure what to say, too afraid of saying too much. When you look at him, you get a feeling like vertigo; the sea-sick roiling in your stomach that precedes a fatal fall.
“I can’t figure you out,” you mutter. It’s more an accusation, but he doesn’t take it that way.
“There’s nothing to figure out,” he replies easily. You want to believe he’s lying.
You want to believe he’s not everything he appears. It means he might not be scared of you, if he knows who you really are.
The apartment is a mess, three days’ worth of dishes on the floor and jeans stuffed between seat cushions. When Castiel enters after you, you cross your arms, lean against the counter, daring him to say something. He doesn’t even notice; just picks a cd up from the table, sticky with coffee rings and mud from your boots, and proclaims “My brother has this one.”
Stupid things pop into your head. His tie is half-undone from tugging at it in the heat, shirt askew, a sliver of reddened skin over his exposed shoulder you didn’t notice before. In the cool darkness of the apartment, it’s all you can think about.
He doesn’t ask to listen, just switches the discs in the stereo, and before you can blink he’s spread out on the floor, one ear pressed against the speaker to soak up the soft cadence of Johnson crooning, you can mistreat me here, babe, but you can’t when I go home.
There’s something so off about him being here, more than the clash of his stark white shirt and the flecked mould-grey of the carpet pattern; his eyes hold an ancient power that belongs in a museum, fossilized in amber or immortalized in a rock painting. Not here, with you.
You expect an awkwardness he doesn’t exude, as if he, like you, wouldn’t immediately know how to work Sam’s cd player, with hands too used to fumbling for cassettes under discarded food wrappers and denims sun-baked and caked in dirt.
But he’s not like that, not like you.
The details of the past ten years bleed out into the space around you, spaces inside you that widened with each passing mile. You’re all fissures and open roads, the thrill of the hunt to warm your blood because underneath you’re uncomfortably numb.
He doesn’t ask you to join him on the floor, on the blanket of mottled browns and puke greens, just fixes you with his thousand-mile stare like he knows you’re going to. As you slide down next to him, you inhale a scent familiar and intimate, and it sparks memories of another house, a proper house, a canvas of white-washed walls and venetian blinds. You crawl under the coffee table like you used to when you were three and watching John walk out for the first time, seeing with new eyes and a breakable heart.
Castiel turns to face you, and stares at you like your heart is important enough to break all over again.
--
A fist connects with the side of your face so hard you see white, and think the crack that splits the air is the other guy’s fist.
The pain is irrefutable and real, the adrenaline pumping through your blood only an excuse when your own fist smashes into the guy’s nose and you lay him out.
Roy - you think his name is Roy, and he’s a dick who should’ve known better but right now he’s gasping in pain as you reef him up by the collar and start in on him.
Behind you a group of kids gather, their jeers slowly dying one by one as the blood sprays from Roy’s face and flecks the grass, slides in the scars on your knuckles and settles. Your jaw is still aching from the impact, and you think good, it’s about time you vented. This is just the kind of stupid you need to bring the balance back.
A hand reaches out to snag your arm, the other bunched in your shirt to pull you away, but even if it halts your blows you can’t stop fighting. Stop fighting, stop moving, and you won’t know what to do with yourself.
Roy’s words are in your head, your ears - faggot, freak - a hand on Cas’s arm to spin him around, and they’re a part of you now. Roy’s arm gritty and warm in your palm and a warning, back off buddy, before he’d swung and your blood had boiled over.
The sun streams relentless over your arms, your neck, sweat over your heated body; you’re powerful in this moment, solar and endless, your cool rage an extension of you that seeps into the air and stifles like the heat.
In two months, you’ve never felt this alive.
You finally stop struggling, stop fighting long enough to breathe and settle back, survey the white and red picture beneath you. It’s not pretty, but it has its own beauty.
There’s a voice beside your ear, Sam shouting Dean what the fuck?, before the hands raise you
up, out, away, push you across the lawn toward the parking lot.
Instinctively your eyes pick out familiar faces in the crowd, looking for another fight, or an excuse, forgiveness; the boy with the mullet throws the horns up. You spit out a mouthful of blood in acknowledgement and stumble on.
It’s not until you’re at the car you realize Castiel is the one pushing you - you’d lost him beneath the blood pounding in your ears - and Sam’s going off, his voice only a notch under hysterical, bug-eyed and furious.
“What the hell were you thinking, Dean? Christ, that kid is seriously hurt!”
You’re not looking at him, his small hands hooked into your jacket, fourteen year old body
framing yours against the searing metal of the car. Blood coats your fingers; you can feel it run
down your hand, but you’re not looking at that either.
You’re looking at Castiel. The silent fury in his ancient eyes reverberates from him, through you,
louder than the heartbeat in your ears. It’s terrifying.
He says nothing, lets his power speak for him.
That was stupid. Reckless.
You need to be more careful.
I can defend myself.
The weight of his gaze is too much, too real for the flayed nerves under your skin and on your
sleeves. He’s seen the real you, the monster in the Dean-suit. Only a matter of time; you won’t
blame him for leaving too.
His anger is overwhelming, and finally you look away. You tell yourself you’re not ashamed of
what you are, not afraid to prove yourself, but you’re always the first to look away.
+
When you were twelve you got in a fight with a Rottweiler, one of those German-American hybrids Sam always wanted, back in the day when it was okay to want things like a puppy and a home and a normal family. You convinced Sammy to play truant, wound up almost breaking your leg jumping a chain-link fence. Almost lost your face to the dog that jumped you.
It’d been summer then, too, and with John away, no compass, no voice of reason or cool blue eyes to point out what you were doing wrong. You barely have that now.
The cut above your cheek stings a little, bruised skin still tender as Sam prods at it with inexperienced fingers. John was the one that used to patch you up. It was always John’s silent judgment, loud even over your disgrace and the last of the adrenaline high still pounding through your wild blood.
“Dad’s gonna flip if you get expelled.”
“Nah, they’ll let it slide.” It’s easy to lie to Sammy when you’ve convinced yourself it’s the truth.
“Yeah, sure, ‘cause they tend to overlook kids beating the crap out of each other on school grounds.” He rolls his eyes, and just to annoy him you ruffle his hair.
The reaction doesn’t disappoint, the angered slap of your hand, and in retaliation he jabs you with an antiseptic q-tip and goes back to your check-up.
You’re fine, and he knows it. The other guy is the one in trouble, but the adrenaline has worn off, replaced by a knot in your gut and residual fury. This is how far you’ll go: protect your family, stand up for honor, let the people you care about care for you. Castiel fits in there, somewhere, in the space you can’t comprehend.
You know Sammy doesn’t remember that summer, so like this one, or the dog that snapped at him first, but you’ve got the scars along your ribs to remind you. Scars in old places and divots in your skin, each one its own story, so you’ll never forget.
Still, Sam doesn’t talk about dogs anymore.
--
The stars keep you grounded and guide you through the void of this nothing town you can’t escape from. As the Impala roars down the highway, eats asphalt and spits out the past, you feel something in your chest loosen, the click of all the tumblers in your life falling into place.
Castiel is silent tonight, simply stares out the window as if entranced by the scenery, or affronted by it; you still can’t figure him out.
The speakers exhale a litany of if the sun refused to shine, I’d still be lovin’ you, but the comfortable silence pervades over it, the steady rumble of the engine and the wind whipping past you at forty miles an hour.
The road’s an endless stream of things you don’t say, miles beneath your hands, and it’s home. It’s been too long coming.
You reach a clearing at the side of the road and slide over; the Impala is an extension of you now, that’s easy and comfortable after all these years riding shotgun, carving your sweat and memories and body into her upholstery. She’s sense memory and purpose; even simply coasting or sitting idle, your baby has drive of her own.
Castiel watches you as you park her in gear and turn the engine off, like it’s new and interesting, and you’ll never get over being watched like that. He doesn’t say anything when you switch off the radio and the quiet rings in your ears. The sudden impulse to yell at him, ask him what the fuck he’s doing in the middle of nowhere, demand answers from the one person who might give them to you surges hard and hungry. You want him to get angry - like you’re angry; mad, like you should be when he’s so fucking calm and accepting.
You don’t.
It’s possible you might be growing.
Even at night the temperature is unbearable and cooks your skin against the leather. His gaze is so level and deep you could drown, and you have to look away.
There’s no wind to cool you now, no lazy cricket chirp to tell that time is even passing; a bead of sweat rolls down behind your ear in slow motion, trails through the dust from the road and years of humanity bleached into your skin.
Castiel is new, and foreign, and unbreakably cool against you. When he kisses you it’s soft and light, despite the impossible depth of everything he is behind it.
You want to say you’re sorry, but you don’t know what for. He kisses you again, as if he knows, like he knew you the first time you met. Drinks down your words and leaves you parched.
His taste is alkaline and metallic like the rusted water pipes of every town in every state you’ve ever been to, sweet like you have no right to take. He’s familiar; a breath at the back of your mind and a memory you’d forgotten, and he lets you take. Shifts his weight, presses you against the door and takes for himself.
Soon you’re lost in the sensation, his mouth on yours, hands all over you as they scramble for purchase. You’re both half-naked before you realize he’s stopped, eyes wide, all his cool laid to waste at the sight of you. You kiss him, run your hands over him until he stops looking and feels.
This is your chance to take him apart, to see how he’s wired. He’s so much better than this, than a sweaty tumble in the front seat of a car. You want to make him see that; you want to bring him down to your level.
Somehow, though, this feels more like ascension.
He presses you into the seat, turns you and moves until he’s straddling you, all the while you’re still kissing. Sparks shoot behind your eyes as your rhythms sync; his body pressed into you to draw a long and heated moan that he swallows down too easily.
In turn, you swallow the voice that says it shouldn’t be this easy.
His hands skim over you, breathing life back into you as you kiss, and soon you’re lost in him. It’s a good place to be.
--
Hours later, the high still thrums through you, urges you on, burns steady and powerful through your body. You drive through the night, wide awake and embracing oblivion. You don’t have anywhere to be, but right here, with him beside you, is fine.
Castiel doesn’t say much, not with the weight of all there is between you, just sits silent and accepting, soaking in the sight of road before you. And that’s fine too.