The Wild Ones: Chapter Two
The city crawled by as the man drove Castiel in the direction of a motel he'd been to before, that he'd stayed at one time when he was flush. He said nothing-just watched the man out of the corner of his eye, taking stock of him. He made note of the way the man scanned their surroundings without pause, the way his lips moved now and then in a slow and rhythmic way that Castiel intuited had little to do with any language he knew. He watched the quiet tension in his shoulders; it ran all the way down to his hands as they gripped the steering wheel. Everything about him hinted at danger. Castiel wondered who he was. Enforcer? Driver? Drugs, though, probably. There was something about him that made the hair on Castiel's arms stand on end.
Finally the covert staring caught the man's attention. He glanced over, canting a half-smile at Castiel as he pulled into the lot. Castiel looked away immediately, but of course it was too late.
"You familiar with this place?" he asked.
Castiel tried to find the trick in the question.
"Yes." That elicited an unreadable expression on the man's face, so he tried, "Yes, sir."
It was only half as snide as he'd been aiming for, and actually ended up sounding pretty respectful and no small amount afraid. He couldn't decide whether or not he was okay with that.
The man's brows furrowed. "That's not..." But he trailed off as he pulled the car into a parking spot. He stopped the car and stepped out. Castiel struggled for a minute with the door, but the man came around and opened it for him before he could get it. Castiel froze, startled, but shoved his hands into the pockets of his thoroughly inadequate jacket, got out, and walked past.
He followed the man into the room in silence, waiting for some kind of cue. The man turned on the lights and locked the door behind Castiel, then went to the table and sat at it.
Castiel stilled at the door.
The man nudged the other chair out from the table with his foot. "Have a seat.”
Castiel didn't move.
The man frowned. “Castiel, come on. You're already here. You want the six hundred? Come and sit.”
“I want you to tell me what you want,” Castiel said, more steadily than he'd anticipated. The door wasn't fully flush with the ground and cold air chilled the soles of his feet, partially exposed by his disintegrating shoes.
"I want you to sit," the man said, with a firm tone that could either have been him talking to Castiel like an errant child or forcing himself to calm down; neither sounded like a good option. "And talk to me. I want you to hear me out. And I want you to breathe before you pass out."
Castiel obeyed the command without thought, realizing as soon as he did that he hadn't been breathing. On shaking legs he walked over to the small table and sat down, keeping his eyes on the man the whole time. He crossed his arms over his chest. Once he'd sat down, he stared at the table.
He was going to die, he realized with a detached sort of calm. He had, as an estimate, two hours. Maybe three. More if he wasn’t lucky, less if he was.
Yes, pickpocketing had been a very good career decision for him. He was going to be murdered the first time he tried it.
"I'm not going to hurt you," the man said. Castiel startled at his voice. His expression was somber, his hands spread in a way that Castiel was sure he thought would appear harmless. It only served to emphasize how big they were, the ropy muscles of the forearms they led to. "Hey. I won't. It's okay."
Castiel didn't say anything. He wasn't totally sure what he could say that would make it less likely that this man would murder him, so he was going to err on the side of silence.
Castiel was concentrating on keeping his breathing steady. The man was staring at him, like maybe the power of his surprisingly puppy-eyed gaze would force words out of Castiel.
It didn't, though.
He looked like he was about to say something when a knock came at the door.
The man stilled.
"Don't move."
The tense command resonated weirdly in the small room, and Castiel didn't think of disobeying.
The pounding on the door grew more insistent as the man got up and crept towards it. Castiel heard a familiar voice: "Cas?"
Brady. Castiel felt his mouth slip open in surprise, but that cautious, wary expression on his kidnapper's face didn't falter.
Brady's voice came again. "Cas!"
The man walked back to Castiel, and his voice was low and insistent as he said, "Stay here. Get under the table. I don't care what you see or hear, you don't move, do you understand?"
"That's my friend." Castiel had to try, even though he already knew he wasn't going to win this fight. He could hear the preemptive defeat in his own voice. "Look, he was supposed to be my lookout. He's just worried about me. I'll tell him I came willingly. I'll tell him to go.”
He expected one of a few possible expressions to cross the man's face: anger, irritation, maybe amusement. Not grief. Castiel blinked hard and tried to keep his breaths long and slow when the man said, "That's not your friend, Cas."
It was stated as fact. That is not your friend. Castiel felt his hands begin to shake. Whatever this was, he was unprepared.
“What?” he said, his voice shaking, too. “No, no, no, sir, no, I know he's not a good...influence, but he's my friend. He'll leave you alone. Just let me explain to him. Please, sir.”
The man's stepped into his space and Castiel retreated quickly, allowing himself to be guided beneath the table.
"Cas, stop." He ducked his head when the man gestured for him to do so, and pulled himself more fully beneath the furniture. "Please. I promise I'll keep you safe. Just do as I say."
The command was as impossible to fight as the locked doors, so Castiel curled up under the table, and glanced up.
Oh.
There was a chance that the occult symbol painted on the underside of the table wasn't drawn in blood. But Castiel knew what blood smelled like, and this smelled like blood. Human blood.
He gave a hiccuppy gasp and he stared up at the man, only to find the man staring at him, too. His throat was not amenable to the begging he wanted to do, but evidently his eyes were doing the job because the man said, "It's mine. Okay? The blood is mine. I can't ask you not to be scared and I can't ask you to trust me but I have to ask you to obey me right now. Please, Cas. I'll explain everything, I swear, just do as I say for the next fifteen minutes and I swear to you-you'll be fine."
Fifteen minutes was a long time. A lot could happen in fifteen minutes that could leave him very much not fine afterward. Still, he didn’t like his odds of getting away from this giant who painted motel furniture with his own blood. So he settled back down, hugging his knees to his chest and nodding. The man smiled at him, an expression Castiel could tell was supposed to be reassuring. He unfolded himself to go to the door.
Brady was banging on it, now, shouting Castiel's name more and more frantically. He could picture his friend’s panicked face, the way he bit his lip when he was anxious. Brady wasn't a twitchy kind of person, and he didn't know that Castiel hadn't come with this man of his own free will. It made him wonder if there was something Brady knew that he didn't.
Then he saw something shiny and sharp slide out from the man's sleeve. He stifled a cry, managing to turn it into a whimper as it escaped his lips.
The man heard him. Castiel knew he did. But he didn't stop his progress toward the door, unlocking it with his free hand while keeping the blade behind him. He opened the door.
"Yes?"
"Cas!" Brady tried to shoulder his way past the man, who blocked him easily with an outstretched arm.
"Brady, go, I'll be okay," Castiel cried, shaking with fear and adrenaline. "Please, Brady, go."
"I think you heard him." The man rocked his weight from one foot to the other. Castiel saw the dim yellow light from the lamp reflecting off of that vicious blade. "Go."
Brady's eyes were wide with what looked like terror as he stared at Castiel past the barricade of the man's immovable arm.
"Cas, please-come with me. C'mon, Cas, let's get out of here."
The man shifted his grip on the blade. “I’m pretty sure I said go.”
Brady shoved the man, hard, and it shocked Castiel to see that it worked, if only a little. The man staggered back a step, enough for Brady to slip through and get closer to Castiel, who was shaking his head frantically. Brady ignored him and knelt just beyond the lip of the table. "Come with me, Cas, come on, please. It'll be okay, just come with me."
Castiel couldn't make his tongue work fast enough to warn Brady as the man swept upon him. His towering form folded down until he pressed against Brady's back, the blade resting along Brady's spine.
"Don't make me do this in front of him.” The man’s voice was a low growl, as if Castiel couldn't hear from two feet away.
Brady froze, though for a moment it seemed like he was going to take a swing. His fist was clenched and everything, though he very deliberately unclenched it before he spoke. "I'm sorry, sir, please don't hurt me, just let me take my friend and-"
Castiel saw Brady jolt as the blade dug into his skin a little more. "Cut the crap. You lost. Take it like a man-or whatever-and report back. But leave him alone."
Brady began to cry, then, loud keening noises that Castiel had never heard before, and he’d heard Brady cry many times.
It sounded forced. It sounded fake.
He frowned. He started to creep out from under the table, but a single sharp glance from the man who was holding a dagger to his friend's brain stem was enough to stop him.
"Please, sir,” Brady wept, “please, I've got money, you can have it, just please don't hurt Cas, please don't-"
"Christo," said the man.
Brady flinched at the man’s words-and for just a second Castiel would have sworn his eyes blacked out-pupil, iris, whites and all.
He stared.
Brady stared back, and then all the fear drained from his face-and he began to laugh.
"What are you going to do? Kill me? In front of Cas?"
"Brady, please, just go." Castiel turned his face to the man. "Please, please let him go, I'll do whatever you want, I don't even want the money, just don't hurt him.”
Castiel dug the wallet out of his jacket pocket and threw it out from beneath the table. The man and Brady both ignored it, so he tried again: “I don't know what got into him but just kick him out, he'll leave you alone, he won't go to the police."
Nothing changed in the flinty coldness of the man's face. He didn't even look up from Brady to acknowledge Castiel's words.
"I don't want to do this in front of Cas.” He was loud enough now to make it clear that he had given up on caring whether Castiel could hear him. "But I will protect him."
"Stuck on him already, Sam?" Brady’s words were sharp and his smirk was-off, somehow, cruel in a way Castiel had never seen before. He looked to the man when Brady spoke, and saw that his eyes narrowed at the name, but he didn’t dispute it.
How did Brady know him?
"He does beg pretty, doesn't he? Just wait til you really get going, start hurting him. I've heard it, heard him pray for the hunger, the cold, to stop. Does that do it for you? The prayer?"
"Brady," Castiel murmured, confused, but the man-Sam?-said, "Shut up," and even though he was pretty sure the man was talking to Brady, he shut up anyway.
Brady tilted his head slowly around so that the dagger now brushed the space behind his ear. He grinned up at Sam.
"Am I wrong? What else could this be about? Because last I heard, you'd taken off from Upstairs without a word. You shouldn’t have a horse in this race."
Sam’s shoulders drew tight and his upper lip twitched into a snarl. “That’s enough."
Brady turned his eyes to Castiel. "You should've run with me when I knocked him the first time. He's a rogue, Cas. He will take you apart until you've forgotten the words to beg for death."
Castiel slid his hand out from under the table to touch Sam's leg, pleas on his lips, when Brady grabbed his hand and yanked.
For another underfed teen, Brady had a hell of a grip, Castiel thought, as though from a distance.
Three things happened in rapid succession.
Brady's eyes turned black again, Sam's eyes began to glow, and he slapped his palm against Brady's forehead, slamming him down against the ground so hard they both slid several feet.
Then the room was filled with light so bright that Castiel cried out in pain before he threw a hand up over his eyes. His cry was drowned out by the sound of Brady's scream of agony.
Then everything went dark and quiet.
Castiel peered out from below a cautious shading hand and saw Brady's body, smoke trickling in tendrils from his ruined eye sockets, still and pale.
That's not your friend.
All he could see, though, was the body of the boy who had kept him warm, showed him where the better shelters were. Who showed him where it was relatively safe to hide from a storm when the shelters were full, held him through the first nights of sobbing terror when he realized that he was really, truly without a home.
All he could see was the body of the only person who’d cared for him in the last four years.
"Brady," he gasped, scrambling out from under the table on his hands and knees, crawling over to the body of his friend. "Brady, Brady, please, no, no-"
"Cas," Sam began, from somewhere behind Castiel, which, most times, would be enough to panic him, but right now Brady was-Brady was-he wasn't moving. He needed help. Oh God, he needed a hospital.
"Come on, Brady, please, breathe." Castiel sobbed, prodding at his only friend's unmoving rib cage. "Brady, please, please, don't do this."
"Cas." Sam's voice was gentle, but firm.
Castiel ignored him nonetheless.
"Castiel, come on, we have to-"
"You killed him," Castiel screamed, turning to him finally. Sam looked miserable, but not shocked, not horrified, not sorry. "You killed Brady, you asshole, you killed him, you killed him, he was my only friend and you killed him-"
"That wasn’t your friend." Castiel continued to cry, so Sam frowned and continued. "He probably hadn't been for a long time. I'm sorry, Cas, I wish he hadn't found us, but this is too important for-"
"What's so important?" Castiel swiped at his eyes furiously. "I would have gotten rid of him, I would have come back, you didn't have to-you didn't-" He collapsed back into sobs, head resting on Brady's leg.
Then Sam touched him, a hideously gentle hand on Castiel's shoulder blade, and Castiel snapped.
He staggered back a few steps and pulled a knife out of his boot-the knife Brady gave him the first night they met. He'd never used it.
The knife was sharp and glinted dangerously in the light of the room-not as bright as Sam's dagger, or whatever it was, but it had an edge to it. It promised a chance. So when Sam approached him, Castiel tightened his grip on it.
"Back. Off.”
"We have to go, Cas," Sam said, as if Castiel wasn't pointing a knife at him, as if Brady wasn't lying dead just behind him. "Now."
"I'm not going anywhere else with you.”
Sam's eyes darkened and Castiel felt a shiver of dread run down his spine, but didn't lower the knife. Sam’s gaze flicked to it once, but the expression that passed across his face was more sadness than fear.
"Don't fight me, Cas, please." It almost sounded like a request.
"Leave me alone!" he snapped, but Sam gripped him by the wrists and he pulled back, his joints protesting. "Let me go!"
"Stop fighting me." Sam’s voice betrayed no strain at all.
Castiel thought rather hysterically that fighting was a generous characterization of his flailing. The grip around his wrists was like iron cuffs.
"Cas. Stop."
Reckless with grief and fear, Castiel threw his head forward into Sam's nose. It hurt like hell and he was pretty sure he heard a crack that wasn't from the man's face, but it startled him enough to release Castiel's right hand.
Which he then used to slam the knife into Sam's heart.
He felt the resistance of muscle and sinew against the blade as it sank in, but it did sink in. His hands trembled and his ears rang as blood raced through his veins at a breakneck pace. He'd never done this before. He'd never wanted to. Four years ago he'd been such a good kid.
They both froze.
Then, with this awful blood-curdling look of apology, Sam slid the knife out of his chest and said, "I'm so sorry, Castiel.”
He pressed two fingers gently against Castiel's forehead.
Castiel managed one more sob before he went under.