(no subject)

[oselle]

This Birthright story is entirely baylorsr's fault, with her cute little comment to my "Room Service" story about Casey sitting up and smoking and going through files of lost children and yada yada yada. So let's all thank baylorsr for being the troublemaker that she is.

I'd also like to send a shoutout to my microscopic buddy, cryptosporum for making me so sick for the past two weeks that I was confined to my house and laptop.

Paradise

 

The motel is named Paradise. Casey could stay someplace better, much better – there are good hotels in the city center and decent chains not far from here but he always finds himself in places like the Paradise when he travels alone.

He puts his bag down and takes off his coat. After a few seconds of fiddling, the window heater kicks on with a noisy thunk, exhaling warm air that smells of cigarettes. He sits down on the bed and counts the cigarette burns in the bedspread. Four. He lights up himself and adds his own smoke to the room's miasma.

He turns on the television and watches it listlessly. The traces of yesterday's bad headache are clinging to him, a faint buzzing inside his head. He felt so sick on the plane that he holed himself up in the bathroom until the flight attendant rapped on the door to ask him if he was all right. When he got back to his seat he sat there clutching the airsick bag, waiting for his medication to work. He must have looked pretty green because the woman next to him asked to change her seat. He finally settled into a semi-conscious doze, imagining that Zeke was with him, holding his hand.

Now the local news is on. The anchor reports an Amber Alert for a girl who went missing from a local shopping mall. Casey sits up in bed and roots through his bag for his notebook and a pen. These stories usually wind up with a body being recovered, some pervert getting marched off by the cops. Sometimes the kids just come back. But sometimes they're never seen again.

Casey reaches back into his bag and pulls out his files and the envelope of clippings that go with them, clippings and microfilm printouts, some of them from newspaper stories that are years old. Missing children. Unusual clusters of deaths. Foster care abuses. When a kid from the clippings turns up in one of the files, he highlights the name in his notebook, with a little "d" next to it, for deceased. Now he writes "Jennifer Sherman," the girl from tonight's Amber Alert, in the notebook, adding the city and the date. He opens a file, one of the latest, lights up a cigarette and gets down to his work.

*****

Casey adds two new burns to the bedspread over the next hour and a half, muttering "shit" under his breath each time and stamping out the smoldering hole with his hand. It's late and his eyes ache from straining to read the files in the room's sulfurous light. The headache is pressing insistently at the front of his skull.

He puts the plastic ashtray on the nightstand and kicks the files off to the empty side of the bed so he can lie down. The television flickers bluely through his closed eyes, but he doesn't want to turn it off and have no company other than the thunking of the heater and the occasional splash of headlights on the window. He peels down the bedspread enough to expose the pillow and turns his face into it, breathing in stale smoke and dryer-burn.

Casey jolts awake some time later, a nightmare breaking up behind his eyelids. Blood, there was blood, a lot of it, his own; he can't remember the details and doesn't try to, but the image of bloody bandages remains with him, and the smell of surgical disinfectant and wounds. He reaches out to the other side of the bed, grasping frantically before he realizes there's no one there and he sits up in bed, not knowing where he is, paralyzed by the old sense of panic and confusion. The present slowly slots itself back into his mind, piece by piece.

Casey makes himself breathe deeply and tells himself that he is all right, even though he knows he is not all right, it has been years since he was anything close to all right, and he will never be all right again. Dr. Stanley laid it all out for him more than two years ago, that even with the treatments and medication there would always be moments like this, moments of slipping. That's how Casey always thinks of it – slipping, like walking on ice and suddenly losing his footing, sliding away, slipping under the black water. Casey has been slipping a lot lately, and he knows that he should go back to Montana, rest. Get himself together. Wait for Zeke to come back. But then they would know he's sick, then Zeke would know, and would want him to stay in Montana. Or would want them to leave, both of them. And sometimes Casey wants that, wants it so badly that it shames and angers him.

"Okay, okay," he mutters, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He needs to eat something. Zeke always made sure that Casey ate but Zeke isn't here and Casey has been letting things like eating and sleeping fall to the wayside. Has been letting them slip.

He puts on his coat and stuffs the room key in his pocket. Outside it's dark, and late. He has no car, not trusting himself behind the wheel, so wherever he's going he has to go on foot. He buttons his coat and starts walking.

*****

The streets here remind Casey of East St. Louis, where he got lost once many years before. Like most of the memories of his sick years, the ones of East St. Louis are swirling and confused, images seen through a rain-slicked window. He remembers the darkness of the streets, the alleys and the chain-link fences topped with wire, how he walked until he was exhausted and beyond terrified, finally hiding himself in a phone booth where he silently and agonizingly pleaded for Zeke to find him. In this memory only Zeke stands out clearly. Zeke found him, as Casey knew he would. Zeke found him and took him home – to whatever place they were staying in, anyway – took him home on a city bus. Casey remembers that bus ride vividly. Zeke held his hand all the way home, his clothes smelling of cigarettes and sweat, and Casey laid his head on Zeke's shoulder, breathing him in, filled with indescribable relief.

Casey is shaky on his feet and the sense of slipping that he woke up with has not left him; twice he has to stop and remind himself where he is. He considers going back to the motel and ordering a pizza but then he thinks about the droning television, the smoke, his files spread out on the bed and the remnants of his blood-soaked nightmare and he doesn't want to go back there. It is cold out and at least that is something – it feels clean and real on his face and it steadies him.

Casey walks on and finds himself on a street whose shops are still open despite the late hour. It's the usual rundown collection of adult video stores, body piercing parlors and bars; sandwiched between one of the bars and a newsstand is a fluorescent storefront with a neon "Fried Chicken" sign buzzing in the window.

The white glare hurts Casey's eyes and the greasy smell makes his stomach lurch. Besides the fry cook in his stained apron, there is no one in the place except a kid who stands with one elbow propped against the wall counter, drinking from a Styrofoam cup. He glances at Casey and then looks away, bored.

Casey can't deal with the chicken so he orders french fries and a soda. The cook fills his order wordlessly. Behind him, Casey can hear the popping sound of the kid tearing his cup into strips.

Casey sits down at a sticky table that's littered with straw wrappers and ashes. He clears a space for himself. Outside, cars pass sporadically.

"Hey," someone says. Casey looks up and sees the kid who was standing by the counter.

"Do you mind if I sit here?"

Casey glances at the two other tables. They are both empty.

"Just for a minute," the kid says. Casey shrugs.

The kid pulls out a chair and sits down. He looks young – eighteen maybe, but certainly no more. Probably less. A slouching stoop makes him look shorter than he is; his rangy frame is padded by a gray hooded sweatshirt and green military jacket. He has heavy-lidded eyes and a tousle of dark, finger-combed hair. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his jacket. Chipped polish clings to three of his fingernails.

"Mind if I smoke?"

"No," Casey says.

"Want one?"

"That's okay." Casey goes back to looking out the window. He rolls the wrapper of his straw up into a little ball.

The kid takes a drag on the cigarette and releases it in a long spout. Casey watches him from the corner of his eye.

"What are you doing here?" the kid asks suddenly. Casey looks at him.

"What?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Getting something to eat."

The kid glances at Casey's untouched fries. "You're not eating."

"Guess I wasn't hungry."

The kid barks out a smoky laugh. "That's smart. You don't want to eat anything here." He cocks his head at Casey. "No one comes here to eat."

Casey meets the kid's sleepy eyes.

"Why do they come here?"

The kid leans back in his chair. He looks out the window for a moment, then at Casey, a curtain of smoke hanging between them.

"Are you hustling?" he asks conversationally.

Ah, fuck, Casey thinks. Fuck. His head pounds. The kid leans towards him, his forearms on the table.

"If you're hustling, you want to go somewhere else. Go over to Ninth Street or something. Me and Carl hustle this block."

"No," Casey says. "I'm not hustling. I'm not even from around here."

The kid considers this. He looks Casey up and down, then smiles. He takes one of Casey's french fries and eats it, relaxing back in his chair.

"Okay, sorry about that. Just checking, you know. Gotta look out for my interests."

"Sure," Casey says. "Look, if it's all the same to you, I'm going to go and sit over there."

He starts to get up and the kid suddenly leans over, his hand out.

"Listen, um…I really am sorry about that. I'm sorry. Maybe you could just sit here for a few minutes and just talk, okay? Or pretend to talk? 'Cause it's goddamn cold out and this guy…" He twitches his head towards the fry cook, "Is gonna kick me outta here if I don't order something."

The kid looks very young. Sixteen at most, Casey thinks, the age he was when his parents sent him away. Not any older than some of the kids in his files. He sits down and the kid smiles.

"Thanks, really. Thanks."

Casey nods and eats a french fry. It's gone cold and it tastes like old grease. They sit together in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. The kid smokes. Casey tries to eat, hoping it will make him feel better. His vision is starting to waver around the edges. He holds on tightly to a corner of the table.

"Hey, where are you from, anyway?" the kid finally asks. "You said you weren't from around here."

Casey thinks about Ohio. Montana. Minnesota.

"St. Louis," he says. "East St. Louis."

"Don't know it," the kid said. "I'm from Montrose. It's about two hours from here. Nowhere, really." He puts his hand out suddenly. "My name's Jamie."

Casey shakes Jamie's hand cautiously.

Jamie smiles. "What's East St. Louis like? I've been thinking of relocating." He glances out the window. "Business sucks."

What's it like? Casey thinks. I don't know what it was like. I remember a room and Zeke was gone and then it was dark and I was lost. Zeke found me. I knew he would. He could always find me when I was lost. He sees himself on the bus, Zeke holding his hand, Zeke's jacket scratchy and real against his cheek.

"I think it's a lot like this," Casey says.

"Oh well, that's no good."

Casey laughs faintly. "Not really."

"Why are you here…I mean, why are you in town?"

"Work," Casey says.

"What sort of work?"

"I um…" He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead and thinks of work, his real work and what he does on his own. The files, those files spread out on the bed in the motel. "I look for lost children."

"Are you shitting me?" Jamie asks, laughing.

"No."

Jamie goes quiet. Casey rubs his forehead and the back of his neck and he's thinking about Zeke, holding his hand on the bus, Zeke who could always find him, whether he was lost in East St. Louis or in the scarred terrain of his own head, Zeke's hands, Zeke's voice, the solidity of Zeke's body and presence when everything else kept slipping away.

"Do you ever find them?" Jamie asks, and Casey looks up, not understanding. Jamie is gazing at him soberly, not laughing now.

"These kids, do you ever find them?"

"No. No I don't."

Zeke could always find me, he always found me when I was lost. When I was lost…

"Why not?"

"Because they're…they're already gone. It's too late."

"Yeah," Jamie says. "I know."

You don't know. You think you know what's out there but you don't, you don't know how…how lost…

"Um…" Casey says. "I think I should…" He tries to get up, but he's suddenly dizzy and he's slipping, has slipped, he's under the black water and the frozen surface is far away, receding.

"Hey," Jamie says. He puts his hand on Casey's arm and Casey doesn't pull back.

"Are you okay?"

"I have a headache. I get headaches." Jamie's hand stays on his arm, real and solid.

"Do you want some company?" Jamie asks. Casey looks up. Jamie smiles and slides his hand down to cover Casey's.

"I think you need some company," he says softly. He turns his hand under Casey's and weaves their fingers together. Casey stares at their linked hands.

"Okay," Casey whispers, and it seems as if the word has come from someone, somewhere else.

"Do you have any money?" Jamie asks. Casey nods.

"I know a place where we can go."

They stand up. They go out onto the street. Casey stumbles a little and Jamie puts an arm around his shoulders and holds onto him.

"Easy," he says. "It's dark." Casey leans against him.

Jamie takes him around the block and down concrete steps. He shoulders open a door that leads into some sort of basement. There's a bare lightbulb outside the door but it's dark inside. The floor is gritty beneath Casey's feet. A staircase leads up into blackness. It's like the places where he and Zeke stayed, like East St. Louis, where Casey got lost and Zeke found him.

Casey lets Jamie put him against the wall. He lets Jamie unbutton his coat. He reaches for Jamie, wrapping his arms around him, and Jamie tenses for a second before letting out a small, surprised laugh.

"Yeah, okay," Jamie says. He slips an arm around Casey's waist and pushes up against him. The full, sudden contact of that embrace makes Casey moan from deep inside his chest. He clutches at the back of the green army jacket and presses his forehead into Jamie's shoulder.

"Jesus, take it easy," Jamie says into Casey's ear. He laughs again and his breath is warm and wet. He rubs the back of Casey's neck and then tips Casey's head back and kisses him with a wide-open mouth and Casey isn't in East St. Louis, he's in Minnesota, in Minnesota at Christmas. Zeke kissing him, kissing the side of his face, from his mouth to his temple, three, four times, hard enough to roll Casey's head back into the pillow. Zeke on top of him, an arm around his waist. Zeke's hand around his. A spring creaking in the sofabed when Zeke shifts, when Zeke kisses him. It's all right, Casey, he says. It's all right, it's all right and Casey feels so safe, so safe for one charmed, fleeting moment.

Jamie's mouth is gone and Casey turns to rest his cheek against Jamie's shoulder but it disappears from beneath him. Jamie is sliding down to his knees and his hands are inside the waistband of Casey's jeans, fingertips icy against his stomach.

And suddenly it all comes back. There isn't any East St. Louis, no Minnesota, only a sick, sad weariness and the headache and the basement's cold, garbagey funk and this kid, this boy on his knees before him. Casey closes his eyes briefly and draws a long, shuddering breath.

He puts a hand on Jamie's head. Jamie looks up, half his face lit by the weak bulb outside.

"Just a sec, my fingers are cold," he says.

"No," Casey says. "Stop."

Jamie pauses. "You want something else?"

Casey shakes his head. "No. I don't want anything. Just get up, okay? Please get up."

Jamie gets to his feet and Casey starts buttoning his coat.

"You still have to pay me, you know," Jamie blurts out, and his voice is childlike, his expression almost sheepish. "Twenty bucks. For my time."

Casey pulls out his wallet. He has seventy-two dollars inside and he hands this over to Jamie. Jamie turns the bills over in his hand.

"You sure you don't want me to do…something?"

"Yes," Casey says. He puts away his wallet and buttons his coat up to his neck. "No…go home. You should go home."

"Yeah, right," Jamie says with a smirk, and stuffs the money in his pocket. "Thanks. You're a pretty easy date."

Casey breathes out a dry laugh. He brushes past Jamie. In the doorway, he turns around. Jamie has taken out the money and is counting it.

"Jamie?" Casey says.

"Yeah?"

"Be careful, okay? You don't know what's out there."

"I'm always careful," Jamie says. He smiles. "Keep looking for those kids. Maybe you'll find one."

"I will," Casey says and then he's outside and up the stairs, back on the street.

*****

What Casey remembers of his years with Zeke is dim and changeable but some things stand out vividly, like totems – a key swinging from the rearview mirror, a sudden downpour on the highway, a sweater he wore until it finally unraveled. Entire periods of time are lost to him, but Casey can recall certain days with that same, totemic clarity.

In Minnesota on a high, clear day in November, they took a drive out for no reason except to get out before snow sealed them up in the trailer. That was the day they saw the windmills, and Casey can still remember how the brown grass rippled in the steady wind and the beating-heart sound of the windmills over the long prairie.

They drove home on almost empty roads, as the sun westered and lay coppery over the land, the sky turning purple above it. Casey remembers fenced lots of farm equipment as silent and monolithic as dinosaur bones. Now and then in the distance, grain elevators painted gold by the setting sun. A tiny airport, one orange windsock belling out over the runway. Zeke smoking, hitting the radio buttons as the stations faded in and out.

Night came before they reached home and Casey fell asleep. He woke up not in the car but in bed, and it must have been very late because Zeke was already sleeping beside him. The wind whispered at the window frames but otherwise it was still and Casey could feel the deep silence all around them. He wondered if anyone had really been meant to live in such emptiness, or if those lonely plains had instead been made for them, a place to rest and be sheltered by blowing wind and endless sky.

At the Paradise Motel, Casey turns off the television. He gathers up the files and the clippings and his notebook and puts them back into his bag; he won't look at them again tonight, he won't think about anything that happened tonight. He takes all of his medication, the pills that are supposed to keep him from slipping away, though he knows they won't quell the ache that made him cry out when the boy pressed against him, the longing to be with Zeke and away from all this, to feel once more the safety and peace of those days on the northern plains.

Casey gets into bed and turns off the light. He can't walk away, but for now he will allow himself to dream unrestrained about it all being over, no more places to go or work to do, no slipping, no illness. All of it, over, and then there will be time for high plains and tall grass, for home in a place meant for wind and sky, for enduring rest at last upon the quiet earth.

Comments

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

Wow. This will haunt me, I can tell. Is this the first time you've written from Casey's POV? It's the first I remember. It's a disturbing POV, heart-wrenching. I love the way you've interwoven his memories with the action.

A lovely piece. But so, so sad.

[tempest-415.livejournal.com]

You have then missed some brilliant pieces---check out the Bithright link at the top of the page for more of Oselle's stories from Casey's POV.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I think this is the first Casey POV I've written that takes place after Casey is more or less "cured." I've written a few others that take place before this time. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Baylor's fault

[tempest-415.livejournal.com]

That Baylor has a lot to answer for. A whole lot.

It kills me that you don't get to publish this. It is way too good for the small audience it has.

This is so haunting. Casey is so driven, and so stretched too thin. The fore-shadowing is so painful.

Re: Baylor's fault

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Baylor is nothing but trouble. Look what she's made me do to Casey!

Re: Baylor's fault

[tempest-415.livejournal.com]

Are you completely certain that she's not one of 'them'?

Re: Baylor's fault

[oselle.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not. She IS very shifty.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Beautiful and lonely and aching and so real it's like reading about someone I've known all my life. The descriptions of the motel and the restaurant and the Minnesota landscape are lovely.

no more places to go or work to do, no slipping, no illness. All of it, over, and then there will be time for high plains and tall grass, for home in a place meant for wind and sky, for enduring rest at last upon the quiet earth.

All of it is wonderful, but this touched me especially. Thanks, Oselle.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Ahh, you're welcome. I feel like I've known Casey all my life. Or all his life anyway.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

I have a huge lump in my throat after reading this. I don't think I can pick out the parts that did it to me, it's all of them put together.

So, so lonely. Beautiful.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I had a lump in my throat after writing it, too. And during.

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

Thank you for continuing with the universe. I never miss any of the fics!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you've stayed on board!

[conniemarie.livejournal.com]

Your depiction of Casey struggling on, so lonely and so brave, after he's been inadequately patched together made me so terribly sad. I have a kid on the "autism spectrum", and he has to struggle so hard to just be in this world with his brain functioning in such an off-kilter way. In Birthright, the scenario of these shadowy figures PURPOSELY wrecking Casey's brain so that he will struggle like this forever, even with all the help that could be given, kills me.

I love this universe, and I love this bravest of characters. It brought tears to my eyes to think that he would never have any more peace than he had, half wrecked, in Minnesota. *sob*

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I would love to be able to send Casey and Zeke back to Minnesota AT LEAST ONCE MORE before it's too late. But life just doesn't work out that way. At least Casey had that much peace, and the memory of it.

[merylmarie.livejournal.com]

Lovely work, as always. Poignant, and full of unexpected but telling details.

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for allowing me a glimpse of their life, post-Montana. I know Zeke's not there but he's in Casey's head all the time that I felt ( missed ) his presence so very acutely.

And honey, you CANNOT blame us ( well, some of us anyway ) for thinking slashy thoughts when reading Birthright - it's certainly more than a "slap and tickle" between them there!

Beautiful writing. I think Kripke must have read 'Birthright' - Sam & Dean and Casey & Zeke are so eerily similar in so many ways!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes I know, it's awful. The slash is always there just below the surface and I pretend it isn't. Tease that I am! But it's so much more fun to leave it up to your imagination, isn't it?

The first time I heard the premise of SPN it made me think of Birthright -- just a lot of similarity in theme and setting. It's kind of funny that this last story in the series was written just a month before SPN premiered.

[aliensouldream.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is utterly gorgeous and heartbreaking. I was so sad for Casey all alone on his hopeless quest, hunting for the lost fragments of truth in his life as much as for lost souls. His long-distance devotion to Zeke constantly weaving through his troubled thoughts. The poetry of the two of them amidst the loneliness of the landscape in Casey's memory was beautiful.

Thank you for allowing this to be seen. If there are any more stories between Montana and Mexico, I would be extremely grateful to see them, if you didn't mind.

May I just say that overall this series is one of the most inventively-told and deeply moving stories in the fandom and one of my favorites. I hope you will write in this fandom again someday.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

We didn't write too many stories that took place between Montana and Mexico. I know there were a few really short ones that we never even published on LJ. I did a precursor to this one called "Room Service," did you ever read that (I'm pretty sure everything was Flocked back then)?

I don't know if we'll ever pick up with Zeke and Casey again, but writing these stories over 2004-2005 gave us a lot of pleasure. I know we're both glad that so many people enjoyed coming along for the ride. Thanks for stopping in and commenting!

[aliensouldream.livejournal.com]

I haven't read 'Room Service'! If you wouldn't mind linking me to that, I would so adore. And anything else in this universe, however small. Thank you so much for this series, you're a very beautiful writer! *hugs*

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I'd have to look around for "Room Service." I know it was written not long before this one but I locked everything up and didn't keep a link to it. So if I get time to look for it, I'll unlock it and let you know.

[honeyandvinegar.livejournal.com]

This is lovely. I was referred here by a friend, and I gotta say, it's beautiful. That Jamie-boy is lost, all right. *sigh*

Good story. :)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it, old though it is!