Fic: Jonah of Dalhart (Coda to 4:16)
Apr. 26th, 2009 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleTitle: Jonah of Dalhart
Author: Oselle
Genre: Gen, het
Pairings: Dean/OFC of the one-night stand variety
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, Dean-centric, joyless sex, drinking and drug use
Spoilers: Through episode 4:16, "Head of a Pin"
Word Count: 4,584
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made in the writing of this story.
Summary: Dean gets out of the hospital after the thrashing he took in "Head of a Pin" and decides he needs a little space. Castiel disagrees.
The first time Dean woke up his vision was unfocused. He saw a blue wall or a blue ceiling and he was aware of that and of forced air moving in and out of his lungs and of the faint itch of the strap that held the tube in his mouth. The second time he was sedated and he couldn't move and he was seeing things or hoped he was seeing things. The third time he saw Sam and Sam bent over him and said that he'd told the police Dean had been mugged so if anyone asked that's what he should say or probably just say he didn't remember anything. He lay there and stared mutely at Sam and thought that Sam touched his face or his head and then he was out again.
He finally woke up for real and a day later they came to take out the ventilator tube. The nurse braced her hand against his chest and the doctor told him to breathe out hard and the tube scraped his throat when it came up and hardly looked big enough to warrant all the gagging and the nurse wiping his chin and Sam bringing him water from the bathroom. He didn't think it had hurt as much the last time but that had been a long time ago and things had been different then. He had been different.
He didn't know where Sam was when Castiel came to talk to him and by the time Sam came back Castiel was gone and Dean had dried his face and gotten himself together and he didn't say anything about it to Sam. The next afternoon they released him with a bag of pillbottles and a pamphlet on head injuries and a card for a follow-up appointment that he was never going to keep and Sam drove them back to the motel where he'd been staying. Dean sat on one bed and Sam sat on the other with his back against the headboard and his shoes on and he picked up the remote and started surfing channels and Dean said, "Sam. You don't have to stay."
Sam glanced at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You got something to do, go do it."
"What do I have to do?"
"You want to see Ruby. Go see Ruby."
"I don't need to see Ruby."
"You didn't find me on your own and you didn't..." He stopped and cleared his throat. He was still hoarse and his throat and jaws ached. "I know about Alistair and what you did. You saw her. You've seen her. So just...you don't have to lie to me about it."
"Dean..."
Dean flapped a hand at him. "Look Sam, I'm just gonna dope up and hit the sack. So just...go if you gotta go."
"I'm not going anywhere," Sam said and turned back to the television.
Dean got up and crossed to the bathroom. His head hurt fiercely and he had to walk slowly and he knew that Sam was watching him. He went into the bathroom and shut the door and dumped a bottle out of the pharmacy bag and his hands were shaking and the pills were rattling and he knew Sam could hear it. He muttered fucks to himself and stuck his hands under his armpits and stood there and then tried again. This time he got the lid off and he took two pills and drank a glass of water and used the toilet and went back out to the bedroom. Sam was still sitting there like he was going to sit there. Dean stripped down to his underwear and climbed under the covers and turned over and the splitting misery in his head receded like an echo and he fell asleep.
* * *
When he woke it was dark and the television was off. He said, "Sam?" and no one answered. He turned onto his back and lay there in a drifting nausea and listened to the tidal whisper of traffic on the interstate. Footsteps creaked across the ceiling above him. The television muttered in the next room. He raised up on his elbows and reached over and turned on the light and looked around the room. The curtains were drawn and it was past nine o'clock and Sam was gone.
He got up slow and got dressed slow. He had to sit down to pull on his jeans because his balance was off. They said that would go away. Sam had taken Dean's bag out of the car and it was there on the floor still zipped closed and he picked it up and shouldered it. He went into the bathroom and stuffed a couple of the pillbottles into his pocket and turned off the light and left.
* * *
He thought no one in their right mind would pick up someone who looked like him but then a Ryder truck slowed down with its signal on and stopped a few feet ahead of him and he walked up to it and opened the door and climbed in and pulled the door shut.
The driver put the truck in gear and merged back into the traffic. "How far you goin?"
They were on the northbound lane and Dean said however far north he wanted to take him and the driver said that would be Dalhart and Dean said that was fine.
"Can you gimme somethin for the gas?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
It was raining now and the driver turned on the wipers and Dean could see the man looking at him from the corner of his eye and knew what he was going to say even before he said, "What's the other guy look like?"
Dean sat there and thought about it. Then he just said, "I don't know."
The driver didn't say anything to that. After a while he said, "It's coldern a witch's tit. First day of spring my ass. So much for that global warmin, huh?"
"Yeah."
"This time a year it always feels like it's never gonna get warm out. Then before y'know it yer bitchin about the heat. Happens every year."
The red taillights streaked across the asphalt and refracted onto the smeared glass and the tires of the big trucks churned up a smoking mist and the wipers beat and squealed on the windshield. "Maybe not this year," Dean said.
"How's that?"
"Nothing," Dean said and he turned his head and closed his eyes.
* * *
"So what's the other guy look like?" she said and Dean had to smile at her even though his face hurt as if the bones in it had all been knocked about a quarter of an inch out of place. "Let me guess," she said. "That's the two hundredth time you heard that question so far."
"One ninety ninth."
"Well I have a hard time comin up with original material at this time a night." She looked at the clock over the counter. "Make that mornin. You wanta eat somethin or you just comin in outta the rain?"
"No, no..." Dean said. He picked up the plasticked menu. "I'll order something."
"You don't have to," she said. She had a plain and pointed face and pale skin and light eyes the color of polar ice. She leaned over and said, "You just wanta sit here and drink coffee for two hours that's fine. It ain't like we're gonna get a run or nothin."
"I could go for a cup of coffee," he said. "Why don't you get one for yourself, too?"
"I'm not really supposed to."
"Who's gonna know?"
"The cook's an asshole."
"Fuck him." He threw a few twenties on the table. "Split the tip with him."
She looked back towards the kitchen and her ponytail slipped over her shoulder and then she looked at Dean and said, "All right."
He took two pills while she was gone and she came back and put thick china mugs of coffee down on the table and sat down across from him.
"What're you takin?"
"What?"
"What prescription?"
"Oh...just..." he gestured at his face. "Something for this."
"Percocet? Percocet's good, I was in a car accident a few years ago and that was like the magic bullet."
"Pretty much."
"What's your name?"
"Dean."
"Oh, I like that. I've always liked that name. Sounds like the name of someone who knows what he's doin."
"I don't know what I'm doing."
"Generally speakin or just now?"
"Both."
She tapped a nail on her mug and said, "My name's Amy."
"Okay Amy." His eyes dropped from her wheyish face down to her open collar. She was wearing a silver cross around her neck. "That's pretty," he said.
"Oh," she said. She hooked her thumb under the chain and zipped the cross around on the end of it. "Thanks. I've had it forever. Are you a Christian?"
Dean looked out the window and shook his head and bit his lip and then looked back at Amy. "I ah...I believe in angels."
"So do I!" she said. "I believe that God assigns an angel to watch out for every one of us, no matter who we are. Rich or poor, famous or nobody, black, white, whatever. When I was little I thought I could see mine."
"What did he look like?"
"She. It was a she and she was beautiful, like you'd expect an angel to be. All white and golden and she had beautiful long hair and wings and..." She stopped and stared at him. "Are you laughin at me?"
"No," he said. He put his hand over his heart. "I swear to God, Amy, I'm not laughing at you."
She grinned and said, "Yes you are. You're laughin at me. Well you go ahead and laugh, mister, cause she was my angel and she was beautiful and she took care a me and you're just jealous."
"Yeah, I am," he said. "I wish I knew more angels like that."
"Why, what're your angels like?"
He sat there and looked at Amy. Outside a car drove into the parking lot and splashed through a u-turn and drove back out. There was no music or radio playing in the place and all he could hear was the cook banging away at the grill as if an army of customers was piled up for hash browns and grits and bacon. He thought about Uriel and Anna and of Castiel sitting in his hospital room with his tragic face and his wrinkled overcoat, saying things whose meaning he himself didn't know. How weak they were for all their bluster and threats and how scared and uncertain and imperfect.
"They're a lot like me," he said.
"Well," she said with a smile. "You're not so bad."
He drank his coffee and Amy stirred hers and balanced the spoon on its end and twirled it one way and the next. She looked out the window for a while. There were no cars in the parking lot and it was still raining and there were no cars on the access road going past the diner and in the distance the sodium arcs loomed over the empty onramp and the quiet interstate.
"How'd you get here?"
"A guy dropped me off."
"You're never gonna get another ride tonight."
"Looks that way."
"Where're you tryin to get to?"
"Someplace that's not where I left."
She nodded. "You got anyplace to go tonight?"
"I figured I'd sit here till it stopped raining. Try to get another ride. Go up into Dalhart and get on a bus or something."
"You got anyplace to sleep?" He shrugged and made a vague gesture at the diner and she put the spoon down on the napkin and reached across the table and touched his hand. "My shift is over in fifteen minutes. I think you should come home with me."
"I don't think that's a good idea, Amy."
She leaned in towards him and said coyly, "Why not?"
He was starting to feel detached and cloudy from the pills and he bent forward and whispered, "Because I've got angels watching over me."
She smiled. "Well, hell, Dean. Might as well give em somethin to look at."
* * *
Amy disappeared in the back and came back wearing a purple corduroy jacket and a brown bucket of a pocketbook and they went outside and ran through the rain and got in her car and sat in the parking lot while the rain hissed on the roof. They drank schnapps from a bottle she mined up out of her purse and smoked a joint and after a while they started messily kissing and he was halfway on top of her when she pushed him off and said, "I don't wanta do this here."
"Why not?"
"Cause I ain't fourteen, that's why. Let's go home."
"Sure."
She crawled through the dark wet streets, leaning forward until her chin was almost on top of the steering wheel and squinting through the windshield while the wipers whacked back and forth.
"These wipers're makin me dizzy," she said. "I hate drivin in the rain."
Dean was almost asleep when they pulled into the driveway of a sagging clapboard house on a lightless street. Strange plastic shapes littered the front yard and Dean stumbled over one of them and went sprawling into the porch post and Amy laughed and grabbed his arm and pulled him up the stairs. The house was dark and not warm and had a burnt and greasy smell. A middle-aged woman was asleep under an afghan on the couch and the television droned low and washed the room in blue light.
"That's my mom," Amy whispered. "She always sleeps down here. TV helps her sleep."
"Your mom?"
"Relax, sugar, I'm street legal."
They crept past the couch through the living room. To the left a pink nightlight burned in the kitchen. Amy started up a dark and squeaky flight of stairs and Dean could feel the slide of threadbare carpet beneath his boots. The stairs were too narrow for them to go up side by side so she took him by the elbow and led the way up the stairs and then blindly down a black hallway to a room where she closed the door and clicked on the lamp beside the bed and turned to him. She took off her jacket and let it fall on the floor and he did the same thing and then they were kissing again. Drunk, wet, sloppy. She pushed up his shirt and pulled it over his head and she ran her hands up his arms and then she pulled back and said, "What's that?"
He glanced down at the burn on his shoulder and said, "My guardian angel."
"Huh?"
"Forget it," he said and plucked her hand off the scar and put his hands on her face and walked her back towards the bed until her knees hit it and she fell onto the mattress. She scooted herself back on her elbows and she unbuttoned her jeans and he shucked her out of them and she did the same to him and then she was under him, warm and smooth and naked and smelling like schnapps and smoke and fruity hairspray. He thought she might be expecting a wild ride that he wasn't in any condition to provide but she was quiet and soft and gentle in bed and when they were finished she crossed her legs around him and stroked his back while he lay there with his face against the damp crook of her shoulder and she ran her fingers through his hair.
"Still rainin out," she said.
"Mmm."
"You gonna stay?"
"You want me to go?"
"No. Stay here. I'll make waffles for breakfast."
"Okay." He rolled off her and onto his side and she curled up behind him and laid her arm across his waist and he closed his eyes and listened to the rain on the window.
* * *
He was too drunk and drugged to dream about anything and a child's voice woke him from a black and soundless sleep.
"What is it, baby?"
"I had a bad dream."
"Go get your grandma, honey."
"No, I want to sleep in my bed."
He felt Amy roll over in bed and heard her sigh. "Okay, honey, go on in your room, I'll be there in a minute."
"Okay."
Dean lay without moving and gave silent thanks to somebody that the kid hadn't toddled in while he was banging her mother. Amy caressed his shoulder once and then she got up and the mattress sprung back from her weight and he heard her getting dressed and she left and closed the door behind her.
* * *
When he woke it was barely dawn. He sat up in the bed and looked around the room. He hadn't paid any notice to it before and now he saw that it was just big enough for the bed and a dresser and on the dresser were framed pictures of children, a little girl and a bald baby. He put his hand to his head and he sat there. When the vertigo passed he got up and he picked his clothes up off the floor and got dressed and he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. It was very quiet.
The ol' walk of shame, he thought. He passed a room where there were two lumpy shapes in the bed and a child's foot sticking out from under the covers and Sponge Bob curtains over the window and he made it to the bathroom at the end of the hall. He took a piss and washed his face and drank cold water out of his hands and stared at himself in the mirror.
He stepped out of the bathroom drying his face on his shirttail and heard a froggy noise off to his right and he looked that way and saw the bald baby standing up in a crib with what looked like a full diaper dragging down the seat of its blanketsleeper. The baby stared at Dean and gummed the cribrail and then scrunched up its face and started to whimper.
"Hey," he said from the doorway. "Shh." He glanced into the other bedroom but no one in there was close to awake and he went back to the baby's room. The baby's face was turning red and the room stank of babyshit and the baby jumped up and down.
"Okay, okay," Dean whispered. "Stop bellyaching." He flipped the baby onto its back and stripped off the blanketsleeper and the diaper and the smell of it made his throbbing head pitch. He hadn't changed a diaper since he was seven years old and he hadn't missed it.
"Jesus," he said. "You stink. You stink worse than Sam stunk." He went back into the bathroom and tossed the mess into the wastebasket and fumbled around in the early halflight until he found a box of diapers and he cleaned off the baby with a wad of toilet paper and slapped the diaper onto him and zipped him back up in his sleeper and the baby rolled over and pulled itself up on the cribrail.
Dean bent down to the baby's eye level "How's that, shittypants?" he asked but the baby was gaping wide-eyed at something over Dean's shoulder and Dean froze where he was and felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. "Cas?"
"Yes."
Dean closed his eyes. "What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?" Dean looked over his shoulder and Castiel said, "Did having sex with that woman make you feel better?"
"It didn't make me feel worse."
"You don't look better."
"Thanks," he said. He straightened up and turned to Castiel. "What are you doing here?"
"Your brother is looking for you."
"Is he?"
"He will be looking for you."
Dean grinned. "You know what I love about you, Cas? That pathological honesty. It must be really fucking inconvenient, never being able to lie."
"Why would it be inconvenient?"
Dean stared at him and then shook his head. "Never mind."
"You can't stay here."
"I wasn't planning on moving in."
"Dean," the angel said. "You have to go back."
"Back where? To what?"
"You know what you have to do."
Dean smiled tightly and turned away. He didn't want to look at Castiel so he looked out the window and saw a yard with three trash cans and a tangle of weeds taking shape in the milky light and the rooftops of small shabby houses like this one and above it all a gray sky that bore the sureness of rain. He said, "See, Cas, that's just the thing. I don't." He looked back at Castiel. "And neither do you. And that scares the shit out of me."
"You have to end it, Dean."
"Oh come on," he hissed. "You don't know what that means and I don't know what that means so how the fuck am I supposed to do it? You get any fuckin memos from the boss since the last time I saw you, because you were sure as hell out of ideas then." Behind him the baby started to whimper and Castiel said nothing and Dean smirked and said, "Yeah, that's what I thought."
Castiel blinked and stared at Dean and then he said, "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too. Sorry you got the wrong guy."
"I'm sorry I didn't come for you."
"Before I could break your seals and kick off this whole fuck-up?"
"No," Castiel said. "I'm sorry I didn't come for you. For you." Dean stood there and looked at the angel and Castiel said, "I wish now I had come for you before I was told to. I wish you hadn't suffered for so long. I wish I had known. I am sorry."
Dean cleared his throat. "Well...shit, Cas," he said and the baby suddenly let out a sharp and startling wail and Castiel reached out and touched the baby's forehead and the baby crumpled down silently onto the mattress.
Dean looked at the baby. He looked at the angel. "Did you just zap that baby?" he said. "Did you just fuckin zap that baby?" He turned and bent over the cribrail and felt the baby's pulse. "You're a real dick, Cas, you know that? A real..."
Then the angel's arms were around him in a tight embrace and Castiel's head was on his back. Dean said, "Castiel?"
"Yes?"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm comforting you."
Dean stood there with his arms hanging over the cribrail. He closed his eyes and sighed. "No offense but this is more like getting groped in the john."
"What?"
Dean stood up and shook Castiel off and Castiel took a step back and Dean turned to him. "Okay, Cas?" he said. "You're a guy."
"I'm not a guy."
"Well you're..." He gestured at Castiel. "You're wearing a guy, all right? And there's ways guys do these things and ways they don't." Castiel stared at him with his head in a tilt and a blank look on his face and Dean heard Amy talking about her golden angels and he felt like laughing or crying or maybe doing both at the same time. "You wanna give a little...a little show of support to a guy? You don't grab him from behind like a child molester, okay?"
"What do you do?"
Dean rubbed his face and looked at Castiel. "Okay, come here," he said. He held out his arms and gestured to Castiel and Castiel stepped into the arc of Dean's arms and stood there.
"All right, you can..." Dean put his arms around Castiel and slapped him on the back and then pulled away. "You can do that. That's good."
"All right."
"And if something heavy is going on you can do it twice," Dean said. He put his arms around Castiel and clapped him twice on the back. The angel felt small and slight in Dean's arms. Fragile. Dean stepped away and said, "Got it?"
"I think so."
"Okay," Dean said.
"Let me try it."
"Okay."
Castiel stepped up and put his arms around Dean and clumsily smacked him on the back and Dean coughed and then Castiel clapped him twice between his shoulder blades as if he were burping a baby. Dean winced and said "That's better," and began to draw back and then Castiel grabbed Dean's shirt in his hands. He locked his arms around Dean and held onto him and Dean went still and did not push him away.
"I won't leave you," Castiel said. "Do you understand?" Castiel didn't move. Dean stood there. "He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways," Castiel said and Dean laughed and tried to pull away and Castiel wouldn't let him and he wasn't fragile at all. At all. "In all thy ways, Dean. I'll follow you to hell if it comes to that."
"Cas..."
"You can't run. I know you want to but you can't."
"I wasn't running..."
"What were you doing?"
"I don't know. I don't know."
"You've never run from anything. I know that now. That's why it has to be you."
"This isn't like anything else. It's different."
"No it isn't. Your whole life has brought you here. You and your brother."
"My brother..."
"Will fall if you leave him. Is falling. Will take the world with him."
Dean closed his eyes. After a while he put his arms around Castiel and laid his face against his shoulder. "I don't know how to save him."
"Stay with him."
"He doesn't need me."
"He needs you more than he ever has. So do all of us need you."
"It's not gonna work. Whatever you want me to do, it's not gonna work."
"Yet still you must do it."
Dean pressed his forehead into Castiel's shoulder. He crossed his arms against Castiel's back. Then he said, "Oh my God."
"Yes," Castiel said. He put his hand on the back of Dean's head. "Yes."
* * *
Amy woke and sat up in the bed. She had dreamt of angels though not of any angels that she had ever read about or seen pictures of or believed in. These angels had been weary and ancient and had filled her with an aching sadness that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the edges of the world. She sat there and clasped her hands but none of her simple Sunday school prayers came to her lips because in this place and this time and to those dolorous beings in her dream they all meant nothing. She looked at her daughter and saw that she was still asleep and then got out of bed very troubled and first looked next door and saw that the man she'd brought home wasn't there and then she went into the baby's room. The baby was curled up and sleeping peacefully and smiling and the room had a faint odor in it of lilies or roses. She stood over the baby's crib and put her hand on his back and after a while she was crying though she didn't know why and outside the first drops of rain struck the window and the sky was dark and clouded and lay heavy over the land.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;
nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;
nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
For he shall give his angels charge over thee,
to keep thee in all thy ways.
--Psalm 91
Author: Oselle
Genre: Gen, het
Pairings: Dean/OFC of the one-night stand variety
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, Dean-centric, joyless sex, drinking and drug use
Spoilers: Through episode 4:16, "Head of a Pin"
Word Count: 4,584
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made in the writing of this story.
Summary: Dean gets out of the hospital after the thrashing he took in "Head of a Pin" and decides he needs a little space. Castiel disagrees.
The first time Dean woke up his vision was unfocused. He saw a blue wall or a blue ceiling and he was aware of that and of forced air moving in and out of his lungs and of the faint itch of the strap that held the tube in his mouth. The second time he was sedated and he couldn't move and he was seeing things or hoped he was seeing things. The third time he saw Sam and Sam bent over him and said that he'd told the police Dean had been mugged so if anyone asked that's what he should say or probably just say he didn't remember anything. He lay there and stared mutely at Sam and thought that Sam touched his face or his head and then he was out again.
He finally woke up for real and a day later they came to take out the ventilator tube. The nurse braced her hand against his chest and the doctor told him to breathe out hard and the tube scraped his throat when it came up and hardly looked big enough to warrant all the gagging and the nurse wiping his chin and Sam bringing him water from the bathroom. He didn't think it had hurt as much the last time but that had been a long time ago and things had been different then. He had been different.
He didn't know where Sam was when Castiel came to talk to him and by the time Sam came back Castiel was gone and Dean had dried his face and gotten himself together and he didn't say anything about it to Sam. The next afternoon they released him with a bag of pillbottles and a pamphlet on head injuries and a card for a follow-up appointment that he was never going to keep and Sam drove them back to the motel where he'd been staying. Dean sat on one bed and Sam sat on the other with his back against the headboard and his shoes on and he picked up the remote and started surfing channels and Dean said, "Sam. You don't have to stay."
Sam glanced at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You got something to do, go do it."
"What do I have to do?"
"You want to see Ruby. Go see Ruby."
"I don't need to see Ruby."
"You didn't find me on your own and you didn't..." He stopped and cleared his throat. He was still hoarse and his throat and jaws ached. "I know about Alistair and what you did. You saw her. You've seen her. So just...you don't have to lie to me about it."
"Dean..."
Dean flapped a hand at him. "Look Sam, I'm just gonna dope up and hit the sack. So just...go if you gotta go."
"I'm not going anywhere," Sam said and turned back to the television.
Dean got up and crossed to the bathroom. His head hurt fiercely and he had to walk slowly and he knew that Sam was watching him. He went into the bathroom and shut the door and dumped a bottle out of the pharmacy bag and his hands were shaking and the pills were rattling and he knew Sam could hear it. He muttered fucks to himself and stuck his hands under his armpits and stood there and then tried again. This time he got the lid off and he took two pills and drank a glass of water and used the toilet and went back out to the bedroom. Sam was still sitting there like he was going to sit there. Dean stripped down to his underwear and climbed under the covers and turned over and the splitting misery in his head receded like an echo and he fell asleep.
* * *
When he woke it was dark and the television was off. He said, "Sam?" and no one answered. He turned onto his back and lay there in a drifting nausea and listened to the tidal whisper of traffic on the interstate. Footsteps creaked across the ceiling above him. The television muttered in the next room. He raised up on his elbows and reached over and turned on the light and looked around the room. The curtains were drawn and it was past nine o'clock and Sam was gone.
He got up slow and got dressed slow. He had to sit down to pull on his jeans because his balance was off. They said that would go away. Sam had taken Dean's bag out of the car and it was there on the floor still zipped closed and he picked it up and shouldered it. He went into the bathroom and stuffed a couple of the pillbottles into his pocket and turned off the light and left.
* * *
He thought no one in their right mind would pick up someone who looked like him but then a Ryder truck slowed down with its signal on and stopped a few feet ahead of him and he walked up to it and opened the door and climbed in and pulled the door shut.
The driver put the truck in gear and merged back into the traffic. "How far you goin?"
They were on the northbound lane and Dean said however far north he wanted to take him and the driver said that would be Dalhart and Dean said that was fine.
"Can you gimme somethin for the gas?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
It was raining now and the driver turned on the wipers and Dean could see the man looking at him from the corner of his eye and knew what he was going to say even before he said, "What's the other guy look like?"
Dean sat there and thought about it. Then he just said, "I don't know."
The driver didn't say anything to that. After a while he said, "It's coldern a witch's tit. First day of spring my ass. So much for that global warmin, huh?"
"Yeah."
"This time a year it always feels like it's never gonna get warm out. Then before y'know it yer bitchin about the heat. Happens every year."
The red taillights streaked across the asphalt and refracted onto the smeared glass and the tires of the big trucks churned up a smoking mist and the wipers beat and squealed on the windshield. "Maybe not this year," Dean said.
"How's that?"
"Nothing," Dean said and he turned his head and closed his eyes.
* * *
"So what's the other guy look like?" she said and Dean had to smile at her even though his face hurt as if the bones in it had all been knocked about a quarter of an inch out of place. "Let me guess," she said. "That's the two hundredth time you heard that question so far."
"One ninety ninth."
"Well I have a hard time comin up with original material at this time a night." She looked at the clock over the counter. "Make that mornin. You wanta eat somethin or you just comin in outta the rain?"
"No, no..." Dean said. He picked up the plasticked menu. "I'll order something."
"You don't have to," she said. She had a plain and pointed face and pale skin and light eyes the color of polar ice. She leaned over and said, "You just wanta sit here and drink coffee for two hours that's fine. It ain't like we're gonna get a run or nothin."
"I could go for a cup of coffee," he said. "Why don't you get one for yourself, too?"
"I'm not really supposed to."
"Who's gonna know?"
"The cook's an asshole."
"Fuck him." He threw a few twenties on the table. "Split the tip with him."
She looked back towards the kitchen and her ponytail slipped over her shoulder and then she looked at Dean and said, "All right."
He took two pills while she was gone and she came back and put thick china mugs of coffee down on the table and sat down across from him.
"What're you takin?"
"What?"
"What prescription?"
"Oh...just..." he gestured at his face. "Something for this."
"Percocet? Percocet's good, I was in a car accident a few years ago and that was like the magic bullet."
"Pretty much."
"What's your name?"
"Dean."
"Oh, I like that. I've always liked that name. Sounds like the name of someone who knows what he's doin."
"I don't know what I'm doing."
"Generally speakin or just now?"
"Both."
She tapped a nail on her mug and said, "My name's Amy."
"Okay Amy." His eyes dropped from her wheyish face down to her open collar. She was wearing a silver cross around her neck. "That's pretty," he said.
"Oh," she said. She hooked her thumb under the chain and zipped the cross around on the end of it. "Thanks. I've had it forever. Are you a Christian?"
Dean looked out the window and shook his head and bit his lip and then looked back at Amy. "I ah...I believe in angels."
"So do I!" she said. "I believe that God assigns an angel to watch out for every one of us, no matter who we are. Rich or poor, famous or nobody, black, white, whatever. When I was little I thought I could see mine."
"What did he look like?"
"She. It was a she and she was beautiful, like you'd expect an angel to be. All white and golden and she had beautiful long hair and wings and..." She stopped and stared at him. "Are you laughin at me?"
"No," he said. He put his hand over his heart. "I swear to God, Amy, I'm not laughing at you."
She grinned and said, "Yes you are. You're laughin at me. Well you go ahead and laugh, mister, cause she was my angel and she was beautiful and she took care a me and you're just jealous."
"Yeah, I am," he said. "I wish I knew more angels like that."
"Why, what're your angels like?"
He sat there and looked at Amy. Outside a car drove into the parking lot and splashed through a u-turn and drove back out. There was no music or radio playing in the place and all he could hear was the cook banging away at the grill as if an army of customers was piled up for hash browns and grits and bacon. He thought about Uriel and Anna and of Castiel sitting in his hospital room with his tragic face and his wrinkled overcoat, saying things whose meaning he himself didn't know. How weak they were for all their bluster and threats and how scared and uncertain and imperfect.
"They're a lot like me," he said.
"Well," she said with a smile. "You're not so bad."
He drank his coffee and Amy stirred hers and balanced the spoon on its end and twirled it one way and the next. She looked out the window for a while. There were no cars in the parking lot and it was still raining and there were no cars on the access road going past the diner and in the distance the sodium arcs loomed over the empty onramp and the quiet interstate.
"How'd you get here?"
"A guy dropped me off."
"You're never gonna get another ride tonight."
"Looks that way."
"Where're you tryin to get to?"
"Someplace that's not where I left."
She nodded. "You got anyplace to go tonight?"
"I figured I'd sit here till it stopped raining. Try to get another ride. Go up into Dalhart and get on a bus or something."
"You got anyplace to sleep?" He shrugged and made a vague gesture at the diner and she put the spoon down on the napkin and reached across the table and touched his hand. "My shift is over in fifteen minutes. I think you should come home with me."
"I don't think that's a good idea, Amy."
She leaned in towards him and said coyly, "Why not?"
He was starting to feel detached and cloudy from the pills and he bent forward and whispered, "Because I've got angels watching over me."
She smiled. "Well, hell, Dean. Might as well give em somethin to look at."
* * *
Amy disappeared in the back and came back wearing a purple corduroy jacket and a brown bucket of a pocketbook and they went outside and ran through the rain and got in her car and sat in the parking lot while the rain hissed on the roof. They drank schnapps from a bottle she mined up out of her purse and smoked a joint and after a while they started messily kissing and he was halfway on top of her when she pushed him off and said, "I don't wanta do this here."
"Why not?"
"Cause I ain't fourteen, that's why. Let's go home."
"Sure."
She crawled through the dark wet streets, leaning forward until her chin was almost on top of the steering wheel and squinting through the windshield while the wipers whacked back and forth.
"These wipers're makin me dizzy," she said. "I hate drivin in the rain."
Dean was almost asleep when they pulled into the driveway of a sagging clapboard house on a lightless street. Strange plastic shapes littered the front yard and Dean stumbled over one of them and went sprawling into the porch post and Amy laughed and grabbed his arm and pulled him up the stairs. The house was dark and not warm and had a burnt and greasy smell. A middle-aged woman was asleep under an afghan on the couch and the television droned low and washed the room in blue light.
"That's my mom," Amy whispered. "She always sleeps down here. TV helps her sleep."
"Your mom?"
"Relax, sugar, I'm street legal."
They crept past the couch through the living room. To the left a pink nightlight burned in the kitchen. Amy started up a dark and squeaky flight of stairs and Dean could feel the slide of threadbare carpet beneath his boots. The stairs were too narrow for them to go up side by side so she took him by the elbow and led the way up the stairs and then blindly down a black hallway to a room where she closed the door and clicked on the lamp beside the bed and turned to him. She took off her jacket and let it fall on the floor and he did the same thing and then they were kissing again. Drunk, wet, sloppy. She pushed up his shirt and pulled it over his head and she ran her hands up his arms and then she pulled back and said, "What's that?"
He glanced down at the burn on his shoulder and said, "My guardian angel."
"Huh?"
"Forget it," he said and plucked her hand off the scar and put his hands on her face and walked her back towards the bed until her knees hit it and she fell onto the mattress. She scooted herself back on her elbows and she unbuttoned her jeans and he shucked her out of them and she did the same to him and then she was under him, warm and smooth and naked and smelling like schnapps and smoke and fruity hairspray. He thought she might be expecting a wild ride that he wasn't in any condition to provide but she was quiet and soft and gentle in bed and when they were finished she crossed her legs around him and stroked his back while he lay there with his face against the damp crook of her shoulder and she ran her fingers through his hair.
"Still rainin out," she said.
"Mmm."
"You gonna stay?"
"You want me to go?"
"No. Stay here. I'll make waffles for breakfast."
"Okay." He rolled off her and onto his side and she curled up behind him and laid her arm across his waist and he closed his eyes and listened to the rain on the window.
* * *
He was too drunk and drugged to dream about anything and a child's voice woke him from a black and soundless sleep.
"What is it, baby?"
"I had a bad dream."
"Go get your grandma, honey."
"No, I want to sleep in my bed."
He felt Amy roll over in bed and heard her sigh. "Okay, honey, go on in your room, I'll be there in a minute."
"Okay."
Dean lay without moving and gave silent thanks to somebody that the kid hadn't toddled in while he was banging her mother. Amy caressed his shoulder once and then she got up and the mattress sprung back from her weight and he heard her getting dressed and she left and closed the door behind her.
* * *
When he woke it was barely dawn. He sat up in the bed and looked around the room. He hadn't paid any notice to it before and now he saw that it was just big enough for the bed and a dresser and on the dresser were framed pictures of children, a little girl and a bald baby. He put his hand to his head and he sat there. When the vertigo passed he got up and he picked his clothes up off the floor and got dressed and he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. It was very quiet.
The ol' walk of shame, he thought. He passed a room where there were two lumpy shapes in the bed and a child's foot sticking out from under the covers and Sponge Bob curtains over the window and he made it to the bathroom at the end of the hall. He took a piss and washed his face and drank cold water out of his hands and stared at himself in the mirror.
He stepped out of the bathroom drying his face on his shirttail and heard a froggy noise off to his right and he looked that way and saw the bald baby standing up in a crib with what looked like a full diaper dragging down the seat of its blanketsleeper. The baby stared at Dean and gummed the cribrail and then scrunched up its face and started to whimper.
"Hey," he said from the doorway. "Shh." He glanced into the other bedroom but no one in there was close to awake and he went back to the baby's room. The baby's face was turning red and the room stank of babyshit and the baby jumped up and down.
"Okay, okay," Dean whispered. "Stop bellyaching." He flipped the baby onto its back and stripped off the blanketsleeper and the diaper and the smell of it made his throbbing head pitch. He hadn't changed a diaper since he was seven years old and he hadn't missed it.
"Jesus," he said. "You stink. You stink worse than Sam stunk." He went back into the bathroom and tossed the mess into the wastebasket and fumbled around in the early halflight until he found a box of diapers and he cleaned off the baby with a wad of toilet paper and slapped the diaper onto him and zipped him back up in his sleeper and the baby rolled over and pulled itself up on the cribrail.
Dean bent down to the baby's eye level "How's that, shittypants?" he asked but the baby was gaping wide-eyed at something over Dean's shoulder and Dean froze where he was and felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. "Cas?"
"Yes."
Dean closed his eyes. "What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?" Dean looked over his shoulder and Castiel said, "Did having sex with that woman make you feel better?"
"It didn't make me feel worse."
"You don't look better."
"Thanks," he said. He straightened up and turned to Castiel. "What are you doing here?"
"Your brother is looking for you."
"Is he?"
"He will be looking for you."
Dean grinned. "You know what I love about you, Cas? That pathological honesty. It must be really fucking inconvenient, never being able to lie."
"Why would it be inconvenient?"
Dean stared at him and then shook his head. "Never mind."
"You can't stay here."
"I wasn't planning on moving in."
"Dean," the angel said. "You have to go back."
"Back where? To what?"
"You know what you have to do."
Dean smiled tightly and turned away. He didn't want to look at Castiel so he looked out the window and saw a yard with three trash cans and a tangle of weeds taking shape in the milky light and the rooftops of small shabby houses like this one and above it all a gray sky that bore the sureness of rain. He said, "See, Cas, that's just the thing. I don't." He looked back at Castiel. "And neither do you. And that scares the shit out of me."
"You have to end it, Dean."
"Oh come on," he hissed. "You don't know what that means and I don't know what that means so how the fuck am I supposed to do it? You get any fuckin memos from the boss since the last time I saw you, because you were sure as hell out of ideas then." Behind him the baby started to whimper and Castiel said nothing and Dean smirked and said, "Yeah, that's what I thought."
Castiel blinked and stared at Dean and then he said, "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too. Sorry you got the wrong guy."
"I'm sorry I didn't come for you."
"Before I could break your seals and kick off this whole fuck-up?"
"No," Castiel said. "I'm sorry I didn't come for you. For you." Dean stood there and looked at the angel and Castiel said, "I wish now I had come for you before I was told to. I wish you hadn't suffered for so long. I wish I had known. I am sorry."
Dean cleared his throat. "Well...shit, Cas," he said and the baby suddenly let out a sharp and startling wail and Castiel reached out and touched the baby's forehead and the baby crumpled down silently onto the mattress.
Dean looked at the baby. He looked at the angel. "Did you just zap that baby?" he said. "Did you just fuckin zap that baby?" He turned and bent over the cribrail and felt the baby's pulse. "You're a real dick, Cas, you know that? A real..."
Then the angel's arms were around him in a tight embrace and Castiel's head was on his back. Dean said, "Castiel?"
"Yes?"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm comforting you."
Dean stood there with his arms hanging over the cribrail. He closed his eyes and sighed. "No offense but this is more like getting groped in the john."
"What?"
Dean stood up and shook Castiel off and Castiel took a step back and Dean turned to him. "Okay, Cas?" he said. "You're a guy."
"I'm not a guy."
"Well you're..." He gestured at Castiel. "You're wearing a guy, all right? And there's ways guys do these things and ways they don't." Castiel stared at him with his head in a tilt and a blank look on his face and Dean heard Amy talking about her golden angels and he felt like laughing or crying or maybe doing both at the same time. "You wanna give a little...a little show of support to a guy? You don't grab him from behind like a child molester, okay?"
"What do you do?"
Dean rubbed his face and looked at Castiel. "Okay, come here," he said. He held out his arms and gestured to Castiel and Castiel stepped into the arc of Dean's arms and stood there.
"All right, you can..." Dean put his arms around Castiel and slapped him on the back and then pulled away. "You can do that. That's good."
"All right."
"And if something heavy is going on you can do it twice," Dean said. He put his arms around Castiel and clapped him twice on the back. The angel felt small and slight in Dean's arms. Fragile. Dean stepped away and said, "Got it?"
"I think so."
"Okay," Dean said.
"Let me try it."
"Okay."
Castiel stepped up and put his arms around Dean and clumsily smacked him on the back and Dean coughed and then Castiel clapped him twice between his shoulder blades as if he were burping a baby. Dean winced and said "That's better," and began to draw back and then Castiel grabbed Dean's shirt in his hands. He locked his arms around Dean and held onto him and Dean went still and did not push him away.
"I won't leave you," Castiel said. "Do you understand?" Castiel didn't move. Dean stood there. "He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways," Castiel said and Dean laughed and tried to pull away and Castiel wouldn't let him and he wasn't fragile at all. At all. "In all thy ways, Dean. I'll follow you to hell if it comes to that."
"Cas..."
"You can't run. I know you want to but you can't."
"I wasn't running..."
"What were you doing?"
"I don't know. I don't know."
"You've never run from anything. I know that now. That's why it has to be you."
"This isn't like anything else. It's different."
"No it isn't. Your whole life has brought you here. You and your brother."
"My brother..."
"Will fall if you leave him. Is falling. Will take the world with him."
Dean closed his eyes. After a while he put his arms around Castiel and laid his face against his shoulder. "I don't know how to save him."
"Stay with him."
"He doesn't need me."
"He needs you more than he ever has. So do all of us need you."
"It's not gonna work. Whatever you want me to do, it's not gonna work."
"Yet still you must do it."
Dean pressed his forehead into Castiel's shoulder. He crossed his arms against Castiel's back. Then he said, "Oh my God."
"Yes," Castiel said. He put his hand on the back of Dean's head. "Yes."
* * *
Amy woke and sat up in the bed. She had dreamt of angels though not of any angels that she had ever read about or seen pictures of or believed in. These angels had been weary and ancient and had filled her with an aching sadness that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the edges of the world. She sat there and clasped her hands but none of her simple Sunday school prayers came to her lips because in this place and this time and to those dolorous beings in her dream they all meant nothing. She looked at her daughter and saw that she was still asleep and then got out of bed very troubled and first looked next door and saw that the man she'd brought home wasn't there and then she went into the baby's room. The baby was curled up and sleeping peacefully and smiling and the room had a faint odor in it of lilies or roses. She stood over the baby's crib and put her hand on his back and after a while she was crying though she didn't know why and outside the first drops of rain struck the window and the sky was dark and clouded and lay heavy over the land.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;
nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;
nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
For he shall give his angels charge over thee,
to keep thee in all thy ways.
--Psalm 91