Folsom Prison Blues (1/11)
Title: Folsom Prison Blues
Author: adeerfriend
Rating: NC-17
Genre and/or Pairing: Destiel AU
Spoilers: If you know who Cas is, you're good.
Warnings: none
Word Count: ~25k
Summary: Dean Winchester is convicted for murder in the first degree and incarcerated at Folsom Prison. Serving a life sentence, Dean meets Castiel his new cellmate.
Also read on DW and FF.
It would be just Dean Winchester's luck that his life's legacy would be that he would be forever known as the 'Johnny Cash Killer'. Not because he murdered the country music icon, or even because he resembled the man. It was because when the media asked him why he had committed the heinous act of murder in the first degree without so much as a trace of denial or remorse he had answered 'just to watch him die'. Those stupid words would haunt Dean for the rest of his miserable life. It didn't help that the murder took place just inside of Reno's city limits, and then a cruel twist of fate had him sentenced to live out his life in Folsom Prison. It was fucking poetic really.
Of course, that wasn't the real reason why he had shot that son of a bitch down in the desert. But when the feds had finally caught up with him, he was tired, dehydrated and maybe going a little crazy after being on the run for close to a year. The man who Dean had gunned down was Reno's resident psychopath who preferred to go by his ridiculous made-up fairy-tale name Azazel. Anybody else who had been unfortunate enough to meet him face to face called him Yellow Eyes. When Dean was just out of pull ups Azazel had been experimenting with arson. Old Yellow Eyes had been courting John, Dean's dad, because he was interested in having a former Marine in his ranks. John, to his credit had refused, unleashing the wrath of Azazel on him and his family. A few weeks later, Dean had woken up to smoke and barely got out of the house with his brother alive. His mother hadn't been as lucky.
From that point on, the Winchesters were a united force dedicated to freeing the world from Yellow Eyes. Staying in one place was no longer safe and they were forced to jump from motel to flea-ridden motel. Considering the circumstances, it was a miracle that Dean and Sam had been able to graduate high school. Sam had even gone off to college to pursue a law degree. He had said that he wanted to bring Azazel to justice in a legal manner. Dean thought that Sam just wanted to escape their twisted, fucked up family, and he couldn't exactly blame him. After Sammy left, the hunt for Azazel had gone into overdrive. As his notoriety grew through the state, it was harder to keep tabs on him. More than once it seemed like he turned into smoke and disappeared into thin air.
But then, two years ago, they had cornered him in a warehouse outside of Tulsa. They had killed his driver and his bodyguards, and mistakenly thought he was alone. It wasn't until two shots had rung out and both Winchesters hit the ground did they realize they were wrong. Azazel's first mistake had been to cross Dean Winchester for the second time; his second was leaving him for dead. Because if Dean was one thing, he was a stubborn mother-fucker and he wasn't going to let a bullet to the chest prevent him from revenge. John died at the hospital only an hour after the shooting, drugged out of his mind and raving about how Azazel was really a demon wearing a human so he could walk the earth. It wasn't pretty.
It wasn't long until he was out of that hospital like a bat out of hell, cruising up and down the country for the man who had murdered both of his parents and nearly killed Dean. Either Azazel had been getting sloppy or he wanted Dean to find him, because it had taken less than a month for Dean to track him down. Apparently he was running some sort of job in Reno, a very Ocean's Eleven type of gig. Except with considerably more bodies ending up in the desert. One thing led to another, and it ended with Azazel eating hot lead outside of a 7-11. Unfortunately for Dean, there had been one unusually alert homeless gentleman who had seen the whole thing. Otherwise, there was a chance he could have gotten away with it. But the police quickly put the dots together and figured out that the gunman was none other than Dean Winchester, the boy who had been wronged by Azazel twice over. Figuring out who had done it was one thing, catching him was another. Dean was no virgin when it came to living off the grid, and he had managed to disappear entirely for about ten months. Then shit hit the fan.
In a moment of weakness he went to gas station to pick up some Hostess cupcakes before scouting out the security camera situation. The clerk didn't recognize Dean until after he was out of the store, but the damage was done. The feds got a fresh lead on the Winchester case, and were cornering him like a dog. He couldn't take two steps without creating a trail for the FBI to follow, so he had to stay in the area. It turned out that those cupcakes would be the last thing Dean Winchester would buy as a free man for a very long time. After that, he was forced to live off the land, which in the high desert of Utah wasn't a hell of a lot. But he was able to keep it together for close to a month and a half. He lost more weight than he should have and resembled an old leather bag at some times, but he was alive and out of the clutches of the law.
The last couple of weeks of Dean's freedom weren't exactly ideal. Most of the time he was barely staving off hunger and the hallucinations of Yellow Eyes were becoming all too frequent. So when he darted out on Route 84 after following a particularly tasty looking squirrel, it wasn't too surprising when he got hit by a Prius. If Dean had to think about it, the most embarrassing part of his capture would probably be that a car that had to be plugged into the wall had taken him down. It was shameful. He was quickly taken to the hospital by the nice Mormon grandmother who had hit him and the ER doctors recognized him almost immediately. They bandaged him up as much as the cops would allow, and then he was released to be taken into custody. Outside of the hospital was a media shitstorm. Word had gotten out that the man who had been on the run for close to a year for the murder of one of the most notorious criminals in the United States was in a hospital outside of Salt Lake City. And Dean was a reporter's wet dream. He was handsome, charming, and best of all he had spent his entire life hell-bent on revenge. He would later be accredited with single-handedly keeping the newspaper industry on the western seaboard afloat for entire year.
And outside of that county hospital in Utah, he looked the part of the life-hardened murderer. The hospital had allowed him to shave his scraggly beard, a fact he was eternally grateful for, but his hair was dry and bleached blond from spending so much time out in the sun and his face heavily freckled and peeling in some parts from a particularly bad sunburn. His clothes hung a little too loose, even after the hospital had given him an IV which had done wonders for his sanity. But his eyes, his eyes were the part of his appearance that the over eager interns at every newspaper office in the country would write sagas about. They made men and women alike around the country suddenly fancy a trip to the southwest and maybe start sending letters to the prison to get to know this man a little better.
"Mr. Winchester! Mr. Winchester! Is it true that you shot William 'Azazel' Banks in Reno last year?" An attractive female news anchor asked Dean, thrusting a microphone right under his nose.
"Yep. Shot that bastard right between the eyes. And in a few other places." He answered easily, grinning as if he wasn't surrounded by FBI agents with his hands cuffed behind his back.
"Why? Why did you shoot Azazel, Mr. Winchester?"
"Why?" Dean asked like it was the first time he had thought about it. "I shot him just to watch him die."
And of course, the rest was history. If Dean Winchester hadn't been a household name before that comment, he was after. The story absolutely blew up, and his constant one liners and absolute absence of guilt gave the news outlets reports for days about the enigmatic murderer. At the beginning of his trial, the reporters had tried to get the other side of the story out of Sam but were denied at every turn. Dean promised them unlimited interviews until the day he was convicted, but they were to leave Sam out of it. That was the one constant. Time and time again they were told that Sam Winchester had absolutely nothing to do with it. There was no reason for Dean's actions to affect Sam's life.
The trial, as expected, was a zoo. Most of the news outlets didn't even pretend like there was going to be another outcome to the situation. Dean had admitted upfront to the crime time and time again, despite the words from his lawyers. There wasn't any question to if Dean was going to be charged with murder, it was just a question of where he would serve his time and if he would end up on death row. Or even if the judge and jury would consider Dean's deed a gift to the nation and shave a couple of decades off his sentence.
Dean ended up being found guilty of murder in the first degree and was to spend a life sentence in prison without a chance of parole. The judge sentenced him to be incarcerated at the first maximum security jail with an opening. This, of course with Dean's luck was the infamous Folsom Prison in California. And thus, the name Dean Winchester would always be synonymous with an old country song. Surprisingly, this did not give Dean a whole lot of intimidation points when he first hit the cell block. More than anything he had come across as a pretty boy wannabe gangster who had stumbled his way into one of the hardest prisons in the country. They put him in a single cell for the first couple of weeks for this very reason. The guards were not shy to tell him that his fellow prisoners were taking bets on who'd be the first one to 'tear that ass apart'. But after a couple of incidents in the shower, it was clear that keeping Dean separated was not so much for his safety but for the safety of everyone around him. It also became apparent pretty quick that he was a wily son of a bitch who had a knack for making weapons and using them effectively.
The gangs, the showers, the asshole prison guards, all of this Dean could handle. He was used to fighting and surviving, prison wasn't too different than his life on the outside, just more contained. The limits of what Dean could feasibly handle became pretty fucking clear the day he was told he was being transferred to a double cell. For the first time he was going to have to share a twelve by fourteen room with another man and pray to God that his roommate wasn't in for rape. Dean could protect himself, but he didn't really want to be on high alert 24/7.
So when the door to his new cell slid open, Dean assessed the situation quickly and came up with nothing. His cellmate didn't even bother to look up from his book to see what the deal was. And then the guards left and Dean was left alone with his new bunk buddy. If there was one thing Dean knew about asserting dominance, it was that he couldn't be the first one to initiate contact. He could make eye contact, but no verbal communication.
This frame of mind lasted for exactly two hours and seven minutes. Two hours and seven minutes of excruciating silence in which the man next to him barely moved a muscle. Roughly thirty-four minutes in the man shifted slightly and scratched his left temple. And then returned to nearly statue-like stillness. It was driving Dean up on the wall. Four minutes into the second hour he decided he preferred outright violence and aggression to this. It took another three minutes for him to act on it.
Lying on his back, Dean willed himself to turn towards the other man. The guards had given him literally no information about the man. He could be five feet away from a serial killer for all that he knew.
"I'm Dean."
"I'm aware." The man painstakingly marked his page and placed the book on the ground. Sitting up on the bed, he looked at Dean for the first time. "You were very popular here a while ago."
The first thing that Dean noticed was that he didn't seem like a criminal. More like a grad student or a professor on sabbatical. Definitely not a murderer or con artist. It was all in the eyes; mostly everybody in the prison had cold dark eyes. Constantly calculating and planning. But the man's weren't. It was jarring, like being back on the outside. The second thing he noticed was that the man was very handsome. Almost pretty. Which was something Dean would never cop to in a million years. Dean should have realized right after look at him that he was completely and utterly screwed. But Dean was very good at being emotionally stunted and stubbornness, so he ignored the unwelcome flutter in his gut and plowed through.
"Oh." He grinned. "Guess I'm a celebrity."
The man's lips twitched like he was fighting a smile. "One could say that."
"What do they call you, then?"
"Castiel."
"Castiel?"
"Castiel."
"Huh."
He sighed. "Go on, say it."
Dean feigned ignorance. "Say what?"
"You know perfectly what. I'm aware that it's an unusual name. Many have not heard of it."
"No shit. You mean every Tom, Dick and Sally don't name their kids Castiel? Could've fooled me."
Castiel rolled his eyes. "Alright then, I guess I was mistaken."
"Guess you were." Dean grinned triumphantly at the ceiling. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad. "So what you in for? I'm assuming you already got the 411 on my deal."
His face darkened. "I'm innocent."
Now it was time for Dean to roll his eyes. "Yeah, okay Cas. I forgot how everyone in here is innocent. That's why we're here. We're the ones being protected from the general population."
"I'm serious."
Dean turned his head to the side and found himself on the receiving end of a death glare. "Alright. You're innocent. Do you want to tell me about it?"
"No."
"Of course you don't."
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