[spn] David (Part 2/2)
David (Part Two)
Supernatural, Mature (but not explicit), Castiel!Emmanuel/OMC, 17k
( Part One here w/notes)
Emmanuel does not go to Nebraska on his own with Mrs. South.
In the morning, when she is suddenly on their doorstep again to pick him up, Emmanuel is packed for an overnight stay and David kisses him again in the foyer as Mrs. South politely admires the window boxes, but when they part, he can't quite let go.
"Wait," he says, pulling Emmanuel back from the doorway, "just wait." In moments he has a bag packed and a coat and shoes on and he hasn't even combed his hair or showered or shaved but he offers to drive and Mrs. South insists on sitting in the back seat. Emmanuel smiles at him as they pull out of the drive, then combs David's hair down with his fingers.
It's a quiet four-and-a-half hours and a quieter lunch with Mrs. South not quite knowing where to look. She's about the age of David's mother and she keeps her hair a peculiar shade of auburn that matches her nail polish, and when his father had been alive she and Mr. South had come over to play canasta and eat peach cobbler with ice cream, and it had been an awkward evening, the night she brought her daughter to meet David.
In Alliance, Nebraska, David sits in a small hospital waiting room. There seems to be only one other group in with him, a family. The adults speak quietly or look through magazines. A few children orbit like restless satellites. There's coffee and it's terrible and the man in the mirror when he finds a bathroom looks tired and lost.
Emmanuel is alone when he returns from the room. He says that Mrs. South would like to stay longer and has a ride back to her sister's and that they are welcome to stay, but they get a room at a Days Inn and David expects Emmanuel to be tired for some reason, but he's the one who falls asleep after they lie down and after Emmanuel tells him about Mrs. South's niece and the car accident and how she had cried, and after David kisses him, and kisses him.
They pick up Mrs. South early the next morning, welcomed to breakfast that they decline, and Melissa, Mrs. South's niece who is home and standing on legs that shouldn't hold her upright, cries again when she thanks Emmanuel, and though David can't understand everything she says for the way she mumbles it into Emmanuel's shoulder, he hears the word "miracle" and it's more than enough.
_____
Emmanuel wants to start with the prayer list at church, but enough doors are shut in his face after what he offers, and enough people start to look at him, sometimes both of them, strangely, that David has to explain that perhaps he's better off helping elsewhere, farther from home.
Word travels and at first they are all some friend or relation of Mrs. South, who gives him a car, a fifteen year old Chevy Malibu that used to be her daughter's. David has to put new tires and brakes on it and it won't be long for a new transmission, but it carries him across the state and then out of it, again and again.
Soon there are strangers calling, and Mrs. South must have started giving David's number because suddenly he's keeping Emmanuel's schedule, calling him on the road to tell him where to go next.
David has never gone with him again since that first trip to Alliance.
_____
The second time God speaks to David it is in a dream about Emmanuel. He has had rather a lot of them, especially since Emmanuel first started sleeping next to him. The first one had involved Jeopardy. A few times he's chased Emmanuel up a bell tower. There was one he does not like to remember that was in a hospital waiting room, cold tile and Oprah on the wall-mounted television. But this time they are only in his bed, naked and tangled, gasping, laughing.
.
In reality, they have never been this way. For all the kisses, and touches, David could not justify it.
In reality, he has not seen Emmanuel in almost two weeks.
But in the dream he is warm under David's hands, sweating where they touch, and that smile is there, dream-visible in the darkness, until someone over his shoulder clears their throat and the room brightens, lighter and lighter, past too-bright.
It's the bearded man and he has his hands in his pockets, waiting patiently.
"Are you God?" David asks, once he's climbed out of bed, trying for some modesty as he covers himself with his hands and Emmanuel and the dream (the other one), fade away behind him.
Maybe-God smirks, but it is somehow a solemn expression. "I see you remember me." He says.
"So you are God?"
The man shrugs. "I'm a storyteller."
"Is that supposed to be the same thing?"
"You don't have to hide from me, David," the man says with a smile, ignoring David's question. "Yourself or what you want."
"I shouldn't--"
"You're not a doubting man. Not really."
"Could I ask, then..."
"Why you? Why of all seven billion possible people on the planet did it have to be you?"
"Yes," David says.
"Because you're very special, David. You're something very rare."
"What am I?"
Probably-God shrugs. It's like watching a mountain wink. "You're a decent guy."
"That's it?"
"More or less. That's it."
"Well..." and this is the question he doesn't really want to ask, or even really want the answer to, "what is he?"
The man who David is sure must be God shakes his head and smiles and David knows he doesn't have to fear the answer, whatever it is.
"I said that he would need you and he does. Even now. He still does. Give what you can, David." There is a hand on his shoulder again and just before David feels like falling, God says, "You won't have the opportunity for very much longer."
______
David wakes to a presence in the room. There is a moment when he thinks he must still be dreaming, but when he turns on the bedside lamp it is not God standing next to the bed.
"Emmanuel? Are you alright?"
Emmanuel stands just outside the circle of the lamplight, in a thin t-shirt and his pants and tennishoes, car keys still in his hand. He's frowning and when he finally answers David it is quiet.
"I'm sorry I woke you."
"No, it's okay," David squints in the light that wouldn't be bright except that he's been sleeping, and sits up, "I'm glad you did."
"I wanted to come home," Emmanuel says.
He was in Omaha when David spoke to him that morning, having just arrived at the home of an elderly woman named Susan, whose husband had called David two days before, voice thin and warbly. He'd been doubtful and then grateful, and David had read the address off to Emmanuel over the phone. He could tell he was in the car, he could hear the road, probably pulled off to the side, David hoped at least. He is always in the car when David calls. Then he'd read off an address for a man in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where Emmanuel was meant to be after Omaha, but here he is. Home.
"Is everything okay?"
"I just wanted--"
Emmanuel's arms are cold when David stands and touches them. "You're freezing."
"I'm not cold."
"C'mon," David says, takes the keys from Emmanuel and sets them on the bedside table, tugs him by cold fingers to sit on the bed, pulls the blanket around his shoulders and kneels to pull off Emmanuel's shoes. "Have you been wearing your jacket?"
Emmanuel shakes his head. "I think I left it in Nebraska."
David pulls off his socks. "What happened?"
"She passed away."
The light of the lamp illuminates only half of Emmanuel's face, so when David looks up he can't quite read what's there. "Who?"
"Susan. Mrs. Grayson."
"You couldn't help her?"
"I don't know."
David stands and sits next to him on the bed. He's heavier than Emmanuel so Emmanuel can't help but lean into him on the mattress, but he thinks it's more than that. "What do you mean?"
"When I got there, she had already passed. People were already crying. Mr. Grayson was very nice, though. He thanked me anyway. Why would he do that?"
"Because you came. Because you cared, I guess."
"But I did nothing. I fixed nothing."
"You would have, if you could have."
"I'm not sure that I couldn't have. But I didn't think that I should do that."
There's nothing that David can say to that. He isn't capable of it. Instead, after a while, he stands and pulls Emmanuel to stand with him, and unbuckles Emmanuel's belt and pushes his pants down and Emmanuel steps out of them, then climbs into bed after David and they lie down together. David rubs at Emmanuel's arms to warm them, across his back to soothe him, holds tight to soothe himself.
"Was that right?" Emmanuel asks after a while.
"I'm sure it was."
"Everyone kept saying she was in a better place."
"We have to hope so."
"Before Omaha I was in Wichita."
"I know." He remembers that call, too. A frightened young mother and a baby girl with a heart defect.
"She was so small. She smiled at me."
He kisses Emmanuel's temple, still cool against his lips.
"Before that I was in Memphis."
Memphis had leukemia. He was getting married at the end of the month, if he survived for it.
"He asked if I wanted to be his best man."
David laughs, small and quiet, and he can feel Emmanuel smile against him.
"Should we get you a suit?"
"I said I didn't know where I'd be, but I thanked him. And then his girlfriend kissed me, but not the way that you kiss me."
"I hope not."
There is a long stretch of nothing, just house sounds and breathing and then, "I don't think I want to be gone so often, David." He sounds a little guilty, but something uncoils in David's stomach that he didn't even know was wound so tight.
"Selfishly, I'd like that."
David still hasn't turned out the light, so when Emmanuel leans up and looks down at him, he can see the intent clear on Emmanuel's face, eyes dark and lips parted and he can feel breath across his lips along with Emmanuel's thumb, tracing them before he leans in and with eyes closed David tilts his head a little, letting Emmanuel take and take.
He had forgotten the dream, but something in the shape of Emmanuel's mouth against his own reminds him, first of the good part, the sweating, laughing part, with skin and hands and nothing between them but warmth. Then he remembers the man and what he'd said about how little time they might have left, and although perhaps he should not put too much stock into homely, bearded dream-Gods, the last time he'd let himself have that kind of faith he had found something remarkable.
His hand slides down Emmanuel's side and then up again, beneath his shirt, pushing it out of the way until they're just skin on skin, until he whispers "you wanna take this off?" against lips, chin, and Emmanuel nods and leans up enough to let David help him pull it off over his head. It leaves his hair messy and leaves him looking down at David with just that hint of a smile and then David's sitting up, too, and pushing Emmanuel down, rolling them over and there's still cotton pants and cotton underwear but everything else is gone, David's reservations, his hesitation. It's replaced with the soft slide of palms and the warm press of lips and breath that quickens when David moves just so between Emmanuel's legs and Emmanuel says "oh" like he's just figured out the answer to something.
"Is that okay?" David asks, and he gets a yes and another yes, and hands slipping beneath his waistband, stronger than one would assume, pulling David's hips down again and again and lips that say yes, and David, and yes.
When they're catching their breath and staring at the ceiling, kicking off sleep pants or underwear from around knees or ankles, Emmanuel says, "That was sex," a bit like wonder, and David has to laugh a little. When he looks over, Emmanuel is smiling.
"Sort of," David says.
"I like it."
David laughs again, sighs when Emmanuel takes his hand.
He wakes just a little later when Emmanuel pulls the kicked-off covers back over them. "You were shivering," he says, and David's only just awake enough to feel lips against his own, and then everything's so much warmer, and the second-to-last thought he has before he goes back under is that he'll have to check the lamp for a short in the morning, and the last is that he hopes, just a little, that morning never quite comes.
_____
A week later, after a trip for Emmanuel to Muskogee and back, and nights spent warm and close, learning and exploring each other, Emmanuel asks David to marry him.
They're squatting in the Lundgren's tree house during a neighborhood barbecue to celebrate Mr. Lundgren's new job, and Emmanuel has no ring but he gives David a stone from the river, smooth white with a pink blush, and he knows they can't legally but that doesn't matter to him.
"You love me," Emmanuel says, a comic book still spread across his lap as the last of the Lundgren boys descends the ladder, leaving them alone. David smiles because Emmanuel hadn't been concerned by the company of the three boys when he asked the question, made the statement, and because while it's presumptuous it's also true.
"I do," he says.
Emmanuel smiles. "And I love you. In many of the films I've seen, people don't say it when they mean to, and someone dies or goes away, and they either never say it or it takes many years, but I don't want to wait that long."
It's the mention of time that finally makes David's smile falter. "What if you ever--what if when you recover your memories, you remember that you're already married?"
Emmanuel nods, a matter-of-fact acknowledgement of the possibility that makes David's throat close a little.
"I think we would have to deal with that when we came to it, but for now I believe this is right... and I think that even if I could remember my life, you would still be the best part of it."
They climb down the ladder to a chorus of applause and congratulation, the boys having told the part of the story they knew, and David and Emmanuel's faces telling the rest. Someone tells David that his father would be proud, and although somewhere inside him a voice reminds him that he won't have long, he tries not to listen, and in his and Emmanuel's joined hands, the river stone grows warm.
_____
The third time David talks to God, he knows it is a warning. The air smells of cut grass and the late summer sun is bright but cold. The man who is God stands on their lawn where Emmanuel is mowing but Emmanuel doesn't see him, just as he doesn't see David step off of the porch to meet his dream visitor.
"It's a nice day, David," God says, though it sounds like an apology when he looks at his feet.
David nods, "We've had a few nice days." He twists the gold ring on his finger with his thumb, it's become a habit. He likes to feel it there. It's been almost two months.
God smiles but it's uncertain. "I know. I'm glad."
The sound of the mower dies and they both look to Emmanuel who bends to pick something up, too small to see. He looks up, into a tree, then back to the still, small thing in his hand. After a moment there is movement, fragile wings against his palm, and then the young bird is up and away, new life in its song. Emmanuel watches it.
David can't ask when or how, but he knows then that it will happen.
"Have you always looked out for him?" he asks instead.
God nods.
"Will you always?" He can only manage to say it because it's a dream.
The God-man smiles. "You've been really good for him."
It's the other way around, of course, but David doesn't think you're meant to argue in these situations.
"Just tell me you'll keep him safe."
"He's not meant to stay safe, David, or else he could stay with you."
Dream or not, the lump in his throat is too big, and he gasps around it. "You're not the God I thought you'd be."
"He's not meant to stay safe, but he will go on."
The mower starts again but David can hardly see. He wipes his eyes and somehow now the man looks more smug than sympathetic. David wonders what happens if you dream-punch your creator. "To where?"
"You can't worry about--"
"Where, goddammit? You tell me!"
God has the decency not to smile. "Where he has always been. Not a place but a time. A very long time. You can't measure it, David."
David shakes his head, wipes away tears, braces for the familiar fall into consciousness even as God reaches out.
Somehow 'forever' is harder to hear.
______
The next afternoon, David has a real visitor. He's making dinner when Paul Lundgren knocks on his door, wearing a sweater vest that's almost comical, and asking where to find Emmanuel.
"He's in Colorado Springs, but he'll be back by dinner."
Paul nods, steps past David into the house. "Business?"
"Yeah.... Anything I can help with?"
Paul shakes his head, walks around the living room like he's looking for something. He pokes at books on the shelves, inspects the smooth, pinkish stone in a glass box on the mantel, and sniffs (actually sniffs) at a carving of a bird that Emmanuel made on a Sunday afternoon, sitting on the porch with curls of pine falling between his feet and David sitting next to him, watching the thing come into shape.
"Lot of carpentry work in Colorado Springs, is there?"
"As much as anywhere, I guess...." David says, and maybe that's the thing, the reason why Paul's standing in his house, acting so strange so early in the afternoon when he should be at work. "Your work okay?"
"Oh, yeah." Paul smiles but it's not one David's ever seen. He puts the bird back on the mantle as if it's offended him. "Peachy."
"Good... uh--"
"Say, you mind if I wait around for Emmanuel?" It sounds friendly but rings false. Still, he knows Paul. There must be something wrong.
"Sure... I was just peeling some potatoes if you want to come into the kitchen. Something to drink, maybe?"
Paul smiles, something David recognizes and for a brief moment it puts him at ease, but then the laughter starts, high and unsettling. "You're quite the little housewife, aren't you?"
"Excuse me?"
"Peeling potatoes and baking pies, I bet. You just need a frilly apron and a rolling pin." Paul steps closer, leering. "Of course it's no wonder you've got him playing house, with that pretty mouth of yours. I bet you know just how to use it."
It's like a slap in the face, those words from a man he's known for years. "Have we got some kind of problem, Paul? Have you been drinking?"
Paul grins, manic and huge. It seems to fill the room, the house, lashing out like a threat. "You've got a problem alright," Paul says, gleeful, and the rest happens in a blur.
Paul moves fast, faster than David, especially since David still can't believe it's happening, and though Paul is smaller and a head shorter and David knows how to defend himself, there's something unnatural in Paul's strength, as unnatural as his laugh, his speech, the sulphuric smell around him when he pushes David to the floor too easily.
David pushes back, gets in a few swings but Paul's fists land like sledgehammers, he knows bones are breaking, ribs and cheek and maybe his clavicle, then hands are on his throat and he's losing air, light, and maybe it's the approaching unconsciousness or a trick of sunlight through the drapes, but the last thing he sees before he sees nothing, are Paul's eyes, cold and black and empty.
____
When David regains consciousness it is to pain and shadow and an unsettling quiet. He jerks fully awake, straining at the ropes binding him to the chair, and a sudden and excruciating breath as he searches the room. He can taste blood and he's half blind. It takes him a moment to realize this is because one of his eyes is swollen shut, but from what he sees with the other, there's no sign of Paul.
He doesn't know how long he's been out, or if Emmanuel could have come home or if Paul could have attacked him as well. It's the thought of Emmanuel that makes him try harder at the ropes, digging into his skin.
Somewhere, over the sound of his own breathing and struggling, he hears a voice, two voices, on the porch. He twists his whole body, sending the chair he's tied to in a half turn, loud in the room and certainly outside it. Pain blooms through his chest and he almost can't see past it, but when he opens his good eye again he does see the men on the porch, one Paul Lundgren, the other a stranger, looking straight at him through the curtains.
The stranger reacts quickly once he's put the scene together, his motions a blur of steel and blood and something impossible that flashes briefly, then Paul Lundgren, friend and neighbor, tumbles limply down the steps and off of their porch.
David doesn't know if he should be relieved or more frightened that Paul is dead, but the pain in his chest burns anew and darkness overcomes him once again. Then there's nothing at all until there is Emmanuel's voice.
"David? Please, David, wake up."
Emmanuel's presence, even more than his voice, is a blanket of calm concern, a soft membrane that David must breach if he wants to breathe again. Consciousness trickles back slowly and with it, a sensation like being pulled up from beneath the ground, through rocks and roots and grassy soil, up and out. Everywhere. He feels light, like dust and thought, then it all starts to shift, rearranging precisely into the shape of a thing called David. When this passes, he feels only the chair beneath him, Emmanuel's hand on his own, and the heavy weight of Emmanuel's gaze.
“Emmanuel?”
“Yes, David. Can you stand?”
Emmanuel helps him up, though he doesn’t need it. He could stand until the end of time for as glad as he is to see that Emmanuel is safe.
“He was looking for you,” David says, bracing himself for the pain that the breath and standing will cause him, but it does not come. He realizes, too, that he can see with both eyes and that he tastes no blood. He looks down at himself, at the blood drying on his shirt, thinking of that feeling like being reshaped. “You…“
“Yes,” Emmanuel looks apologetic. “I did. I hope that’s alright. You wouldn’t wake up.”
David suddenly remembers months back, newly-healed Mr. South looking across the sanctuary like Emmanuel was something to be feared, revered. He finally understands that look, but he only says, “Yes, of course," and then, "Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, David.”
“Paul?”
Emmanuel looks down. “Not as lucky.”
There’s a shuffle of feet across the room and for the first time David notices the stranger from the porch, the man who’d killed Paul Lundgren. He steps forward automatically, placing himself between the man and Emmanuel, even as the man raises his hands and Emmanuel takes David's arm to stop him.
“Easy, pal,” the stranger says, “I’m not the bad guy. Not this time anyway.”
“What did you do to Paul?”
“Paul? Who-oh. Yeah. Well, whoever Paul is, that wasn’t him.”
He’s got a look, a tone about him that David doesn’t like, but he believes him, especially when Emmanuel steps around to shake the stranger’s hand and introduces himself and David. There’s something there that seems like a lie, but it’s not about being good or evil.
“Husband?” the stranger, Dean, asks, seems surprised, but not in the usual way.
“I saw its face,” Emmanuel says. “Its true face.”
Dean nods. “He was a demon.” He says it so matter of fact, like there’s no doubting their existence.
“A demon walked the Earth?” Emmanuel asks, as incredulous as David feels.
“Demons,” Dean corrects. “You don’t know about-?”
Why would he? David wants to ask, wants to tell Dean there can be no such thing, but he knows the deliberate ignorance of that statement, when a few months ago he believed there was no such thing as Emmanuel, and anyway, he’s too distracted by what he sees on Dean’s face, what he hears in Dean’s voice, and the way that Dean can’t seem to stop staring.
Dean knows Emmanuel.
“Why are you here?” David asks him, breaking the strange silence and Dean’s concentration on Emmanuel. “Because of the…” he gestures toward the porch.
“No,” Dean says, but David only earns a moment of his attention before it shifs back to Emmanuel. “I came for help. I heard about Emmanuel here, that he can heal people up.”
Emmanuel looks down, almost embarrassed. David feels very distant to the conversation. “I seem to be able to help to a certain degree. What’s your issue?”
Dean’s face softens, saddens, and he doesn’t seem like he could be the same man who stabbed Paul Lundgren just moments earlier when he says with a shaky voice, “My brother.”
_______
Emmanuel is upstairs packing a bag when Dean steps into the kitchen where David is leaning against the counter, wondering how this is supposed to work, how he’s going to explain the body of his neighbor hidden in his bushes, how he’s supposed to just let Emmanuel leave, how to say goodbye when he knows (he just knows) it’s for good.
“You know, for what it’s worth,” Dean says, “I’m sorry about your, uh… Paul.” He leans against the door frame, hands in his pocket like he does this every day. He might for all that David knows. “You can call the police when we’re gone, explain everything. Except for the demon thing, of course. I'd keep that to myself. You can even give them my description. Should keep you out of trouble.”
He reminds David of a dream he’s had, of a God he wanted to silence with his fists.
“You think I’m worried about trouble?”
Dean shrugs. “You should be. He might not have been the only one of those things to hear about Emmanuel. There could be others.” He pushes off of the wall, digs into his pocket. “Here.” He holds out a charm on a leather cord. “That’ll ward off possession anyway. Can’t do much for the beatings. I mean, you look like a prizefighter, but you know their strength now. Salt helps too.”
“Salt?” David takes the necklace, shaking his head.
“Make a line at the doors, windows.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“’Fraid not.”
“Who are you?”
Dean shrugs again. “Nobody worth saving, but Sammy, that’s my brother, he is.”
There’s a faint noise upstairs and David looks up, as if he might see through the floor.
“I’ll bring him back,” Dean says, as if reading his mind. “Just as quick as I can.”
David looks at him, watches him for a long, silent time. Dean’s not quite his height, not many people are, but he’s not at all intimidated when David steps closer, doesn’t flinch. In fact he stands a little straighter, shoulders rolling back. Dean either believes what he says or he’s a good liar. David wishes he could believe it.
“David?” Emmanuel says softly as he joins them, looking from one and then to the other and Dean just backs away.
“I’ll wait in the car.”
When the front door closes behind him there is just the faint hum of the house, and the silence of what seems suddenly like a void between them.
Emmanuel sets down his bag. “He’s right, you know. I’ll be back.”
David can only nod.
“I’ll keep my coat on.”
He smiles at that in spite of himself and Emmanuel takes it as some cue, steps forward and into David’s arms that close around him without thought.
“You’re frightening me,” Emmanuel says against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” He is. He really is. “Don’t be. You’ll be alright, I know it.”
“I believe you.”
“I love you.”
“I know. I love you, too.”
“Don’t let this Dean guy get you into trouble.”
“I won’t.”
“Call me when you can.”
“I will.”
“I love you, Emmanuel.”
“You said that already.”
“I know. I don’t want you to forget.”
_______
They take both cars, Emmanuel's and the old black Impala that Dean drives, so that they can park the Malibu a few towns over and David can say that Emmanuel never came home. He waits two hours before he calls Jack, who doesn’t even believe David at first, then spends the afternoon at the station while police search his house and meticulously photograph the bushes where they find Paul's body. He describes Dean in great detail, claims shock as his reason for not calling sooner, and only gets to go home because he promises to be back the next day and Jack believes him.
David doesn’t sleep, not even after Emmanuel calls later that night, the sounds of a noisy truckstop in the background. He says that he’s fine, and that he hasn’t forgotten.
In the morning, David cancels his appointments and goes back to the station and tells the same story two dozen more times before he can go home again and wait. He's missed two calls, one from mid-morning and a voicemail that says Emmanuel is well, that they drove all night, and another later that day saying that they’ve picked up someone else, a woman, that everything’s fine, though Emmanuel sounds strange and uncertain.
That evening he makes dinner but doesn’t eat, calls Shirley to say he won’t make it to practice, keeps their conversation brief so as not to tie up the phone, but there are no more calls.
It’s nearly midnight when he climbs the stairs, half asleep and soul-deep weary. But he passes their bedroom door, walks instead to the guest room where many of Emmanuel’s trinkets and inventions, drawings and poetry still wait, more patient than David. He sits on the bed, remembering that first night, Emmanuel confused and curious and helpless. David had wondered if he was an alien. He tries to laugh at that, but fatigue won't let him and it turns to a sigh, head in his hands, phone on the bed beside him, until the bulb in the lamp unexpectedly flickers and dies, and something touches his shoulder.
"Hello, David."
David stands but Emmanuel steps back, out of reach. “How… what’s happened to you? Why are you covered in blood?” He’s wearing a trench coat that David’s never seen, spotted in dried blood but there’s something even more strange… something different.
“It’s very old blood. I’m not harmed.” Emmanuel's voice is deeper than usual, and there's a sorrow in his brow that David doesn’t recognize.
“How did you get all the way back here so fast?”
“That’s not important.” Curt, cold. almost as alien as that first night. “I wanted to thank you, David.”
“For what?”
“For taking care of me.”
“Of course, Emmanuel-“
“That’s not my…” Emannuel pauses, looks away, and David understands.
It’s worse than just losing him. It’s worse than not knowing, he thinks. It’s worse than waiting to see.
“You remember,” he says. He doesn’t have to ask.
Emmanuel nods.
The bed creaks beneath David's weight as he sits again. He feels heavy enough that it should break.
“I wanted to thank you,” Emmanuel says, stepping closer now that David is sitting,“and to tell you goodbye.”
“We already said goodbye.”
“Yes. But I want you to know-“
“I don’t want to know your name, if that’s it. Don’t tell me if you’re leaving.”
Emmanuel’s hand twitches at his side, a gesture of helplessness. It’s all that David can see. He won’t meet those eyes again, not in his lifetime.
“I appreciate you,” Emmanuel says. The tone and the overcoat make it seem so formal. “I appreciate your assistance. I didn't deserve it.” Then the silence stretches. The clock ticks. David watches the floor as Emmanuel shifts his stance, waiting for something. “I’d like to help you in the future if I can… should you need me.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“I’ll leave this.” There is the sound of paper being folded but David doesn’t look up. “You can call me. I will come if I am able.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“Yes,” Emmanuel says with certainty, then there’s a pause before he steps forward. David thinks he should pull away from the hand that slips gently into his hair but he cannot. After a moment Emmanuel says, “If I could forget again…”
“But you can’t.”
“I cannot.”
“Just stay out of trouble, like I told you.”
“I will try.… Could I ask a favor, David?”
“Yes.”
“Keep me in your prayers.”
_____
A few hours after Emmanuel leaves for the last time, David finally sleeps, exhausted and heart sore. It's fitful sleep that doesn't last, but there is enough time for dreams of black eyes and bloody things and police stations flooded with dark, icy water.
In a few days David starts to work again. Being busy helps. He still isn’t sleeping well but he eats sometimes and that helps, too.
In a few weeks he can sleep through most nights, and he stops seeing shadows everywhere.
In a few months he sells his house and most of his things and packs his jeep with his clothing and some of his father’s things and a box of carvings and stones and drawings of shore birds and a slip of paper folded tightly, never opened.
He never walks by the river again. He tells Shirley goodbye and she hugs him and says he’s too thin and to take care. He tries to give Mrs. Lundgren what money he thinks he can spare but she won’t open the door when he knocks on it, and mails the envelope back to him when he tries that way.
He never sees Emmanuel again.
In a year, for the first time, he thinks about taking off the ring, but when he slips it halfway off his finger there is a pale band in the shape of it, and he fits it back into place.
Two weeks later, the leather cord holding the charm around his neck breaks and he throws it out.
Eight months after that, he meets a librarian.
_____
Standing in a library in Billings, Montana, he’s being carefully appraised by a dark-haired woman behind the desk. He tells her he’s with Allen Electric.
“Someone called an electrician.”
“Well I’d hope so, seeing as you’re here…” she leans in to read his shirt, “…David.”
“I got a call from Greg… I didn’t get a last name.”
“You don’t need a last name, sugar, I’m just sorry it wasn’t me that called.”
She’s gone for a moment and returns with a man who looks a few years David’s senior, blonde but maybe already going grey, who smiles and shakes David’s hand like he already knows him, and says, “Thank god you’re here."
Greg leads him to the basement, to a long dark aisle lit only by the light from a distant high window.
“It’s the weirdest thing, but when I opened this morning, this whole section of lighting was out. Not one but all of them. It could have been longer than that, we don’t come down here often, but no more than a couple of days. I figured it had to be a breaker, but none had tripped. We had maintenance in but the new bulbs won’t work either.”
David pulls out a flashlight, shining it up at the drop ceiling for any signs of water damage or smoke.
“I’ll see what I can find.”
“Wonderful, thank you. I wasn’t sure if you’d come all the way from Hardin. I almost didn’t call you.”
“I don’t usually make it out this far, no. How’d you hear about me?”
“Well your name literally fell into my lap. Your card, I mean. Out of a book. Someone must have been using it as a bookmark. We find all kinds of things.”
“What was the book?” David asks, though he doesn’t know why.
Greg pauses, thinks, his brow all concentration above his glasses, then his face lights up with memory. “Tree houses.”
“Tree houses?”
“You know, how to build them.”
“Yeah.”
“Well….” Greg hesitates for a moment and the silence lengthens, but when David looks up again Greg only says, “I’ll be up on the second floor if you need me. Gloria will know how to find me.”
A ladder and a few minutes tells David the problem, but not how, because it’s not faulty wiring, there simply is no wire. It’s vanished. He suggests vandalism to Greg who shakes his head and says it doesn’t seem possible, but doesn’t argue when David quotes a re-wire. He doesn’t have everything he needs to do it just then, so he says he’ll be back the next day. Greg says that’s good, because he’s not sure the good people of Billings can go much longer than that without access to the archives of the Sheep Farmer’s Almanac, years 1841 to 1952.
The next day, Greg appears at the bottom of his ladder after David’s been there for hours, asks if he would like to take a lunch. David almost says no. He’s sweaty and dusty and he’ll just finish by the end of the day if he keeps working, but Greg has a bag of sandwiches and they eat them in the study cubicles on the other side of the basement, where the lights are on a different breaker.
When the work spills over into a second day and a second lunch, Greg asks about the ring.
“I was,” David says, spinning the gold band on his finger, “but he left.”
“I can’t imagine how,” Greg says, quiet and sincere.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Two days later, Greg, who knows his own name and eats at regular intervals and doesn’t frighten him, who makes him laugh and wasn’t sent to him by a God he hardly thinks of anymore, even though he prays every day, calls him again and invites him to dinner.
David accepts.
______
EPILOGUE
The last time David speaks to God it is in an airport in Nevada.
“Just this, sir?” God asks when David places a pack of chewing gum, a bottle of water, and a chocolate bar on the counter. He’s just as tall as God remembers but he’s grey around the temples and there are laugh lines around his eyes that suit him better than the frown, the anger of when they last met.
“Do I know you?” David asks.
“I don’t think so. I’ve just got one of those faces.” God smiles, scans the chewing gum and the register makes an excited beep. The water and chocolate follow. “That everything?” he asks.
David’s still looking at him, squinting and tilting his head sideways.
“Sir?”
“You're making that confused puppy face again,” someone says, stepping up to the counter, hip to hip with David, and presents his own bottle of water and a book.
“These, too,” David says, pushing the book and the water toward the scanner.
“Yes sir,” God says. “You two heading out?”
“We’re going home,” the man who isn’t David says. “We’ve been visiting the in-laws. Well, his brother and the wife.” He has a kind face and full features framed by glasses, the beginning of a beard with even more grey and deeper laugh lines.
“Sounds nice. Where’s home?” then, “That’s twenty-four-sixty, sir,” to David.
“Montana.”
“Cold this time of year?”
“Colder than here.”
“Everywhere’s colder than here.”
“Are you sure I don’t know you?” David cuts in.
God smiles. “I don’t know. I meet a lot of people in my line of work. Name’s Chuck.”
David nods, too serious, scratching his own five o’clock shadow and there’s a flash of gold on his finger. God knows it’s not the first one he’s worn. “Have you ever been to Montana? Colorado? New Mexico?”
“I’ve been a little of everywhere.”
“It’s just…” David says but it trails to nothing.
“Well he’s David and I’m Greg,” the man who isn’t David chimes in, “and now we all know each other, but we’re going to miss our flight if we keep up this reunion.”
“Here you go,” God says, handing over the bag of their purchases. “It was nice to meet you Greg. David.”
“Likewise,” Greg waves.
“Yeah,” David says, turning to walk away.
“Have a safe trip,” God says, and it isn’t a suggestion.
“You too… I mean, you know what I mean.”
God smiles. "Happens all the time. Maybe I’ll see you again some time, David.”
“Yeah, maybe,” David says, but Greg’s pulling him by the hand toward their terminal and soon he disappears into the crowd and there’s another customer with a stack of magazines and an inflatable pillow and a spoon with NEVADA engraved into the metal. At the last moment she adds a single serving packet of Tylenol.
“Nice day?” God asks her.
“Not really,” she says.
"Don't worry," God tells her, and smiles, "it will get better."
Supernatural, Mature (but not explicit), Castiel!Emmanuel/OMC, 17k
( Part One here w/notes)
Emmanuel does not go to Nebraska on his own with Mrs. South.
In the morning, when she is suddenly on their doorstep again to pick him up, Emmanuel is packed for an overnight stay and David kisses him again in the foyer as Mrs. South politely admires the window boxes, but when they part, he can't quite let go.
"Wait," he says, pulling Emmanuel back from the doorway, "just wait." In moments he has a bag packed and a coat and shoes on and he hasn't even combed his hair or showered or shaved but he offers to drive and Mrs. South insists on sitting in the back seat. Emmanuel smiles at him as they pull out of the drive, then combs David's hair down with his fingers.
It's a quiet four-and-a-half hours and a quieter lunch with Mrs. South not quite knowing where to look. She's about the age of David's mother and she keeps her hair a peculiar shade of auburn that matches her nail polish, and when his father had been alive she and Mr. South had come over to play canasta and eat peach cobbler with ice cream, and it had been an awkward evening, the night she brought her daughter to meet David.
In Alliance, Nebraska, David sits in a small hospital waiting room. There seems to be only one other group in with him, a family. The adults speak quietly or look through magazines. A few children orbit like restless satellites. There's coffee and it's terrible and the man in the mirror when he finds a bathroom looks tired and lost.
Emmanuel is alone when he returns from the room. He says that Mrs. South would like to stay longer and has a ride back to her sister's and that they are welcome to stay, but they get a room at a Days Inn and David expects Emmanuel to be tired for some reason, but he's the one who falls asleep after they lie down and after Emmanuel tells him about Mrs. South's niece and the car accident and how she had cried, and after David kisses him, and kisses him.
They pick up Mrs. South early the next morning, welcomed to breakfast that they decline, and Melissa, Mrs. South's niece who is home and standing on legs that shouldn't hold her upright, cries again when she thanks Emmanuel, and though David can't understand everything she says for the way she mumbles it into Emmanuel's shoulder, he hears the word "miracle" and it's more than enough.
_____
Emmanuel wants to start with the prayer list at church, but enough doors are shut in his face after what he offers, and enough people start to look at him, sometimes both of them, strangely, that David has to explain that perhaps he's better off helping elsewhere, farther from home.
Word travels and at first they are all some friend or relation of Mrs. South, who gives him a car, a fifteen year old Chevy Malibu that used to be her daughter's. David has to put new tires and brakes on it and it won't be long for a new transmission, but it carries him across the state and then out of it, again and again.
Soon there are strangers calling, and Mrs. South must have started giving David's number because suddenly he's keeping Emmanuel's schedule, calling him on the road to tell him where to go next.
David has never gone with him again since that first trip to Alliance.
_____
The second time God speaks to David it is in a dream about Emmanuel. He has had rather a lot of them, especially since Emmanuel first started sleeping next to him. The first one had involved Jeopardy. A few times he's chased Emmanuel up a bell tower. There was one he does not like to remember that was in a hospital waiting room, cold tile and Oprah on the wall-mounted television. But this time they are only in his bed, naked and tangled, gasping, laughing.
.
In reality, they have never been this way. For all the kisses, and touches, David could not justify it.
In reality, he has not seen Emmanuel in almost two weeks.
But in the dream he is warm under David's hands, sweating where they touch, and that smile is there, dream-visible in the darkness, until someone over his shoulder clears their throat and the room brightens, lighter and lighter, past too-bright.
It's the bearded man and he has his hands in his pockets, waiting patiently.
"Are you God?" David asks, once he's climbed out of bed, trying for some modesty as he covers himself with his hands and Emmanuel and the dream (the other one), fade away behind him.
Maybe-God smirks, but it is somehow a solemn expression. "I see you remember me." He says.
"So you are God?"
The man shrugs. "I'm a storyteller."
"Is that supposed to be the same thing?"
"You don't have to hide from me, David," the man says with a smile, ignoring David's question. "Yourself or what you want."
"I shouldn't--"
"You're not a doubting man. Not really."
"Could I ask, then..."
"Why you? Why of all seven billion possible people on the planet did it have to be you?"
"Yes," David says.
"Because you're very special, David. You're something very rare."
"What am I?"
Probably-God shrugs. It's like watching a mountain wink. "You're a decent guy."
"That's it?"
"More or less. That's it."
"Well..." and this is the question he doesn't really want to ask, or even really want the answer to, "what is he?"
The man who David is sure must be God shakes his head and smiles and David knows he doesn't have to fear the answer, whatever it is.
"I said that he would need you and he does. Even now. He still does. Give what you can, David." There is a hand on his shoulder again and just before David feels like falling, God says, "You won't have the opportunity for very much longer."
______
David wakes to a presence in the room. There is a moment when he thinks he must still be dreaming, but when he turns on the bedside lamp it is not God standing next to the bed.
"Emmanuel? Are you alright?"
Emmanuel stands just outside the circle of the lamplight, in a thin t-shirt and his pants and tennishoes, car keys still in his hand. He's frowning and when he finally answers David it is quiet.
"I'm sorry I woke you."
"No, it's okay," David squints in the light that wouldn't be bright except that he's been sleeping, and sits up, "I'm glad you did."
"I wanted to come home," Emmanuel says.
He was in Omaha when David spoke to him that morning, having just arrived at the home of an elderly woman named Susan, whose husband had called David two days before, voice thin and warbly. He'd been doubtful and then grateful, and David had read the address off to Emmanuel over the phone. He could tell he was in the car, he could hear the road, probably pulled off to the side, David hoped at least. He is always in the car when David calls. Then he'd read off an address for a man in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where Emmanuel was meant to be after Omaha, but here he is. Home.
"Is everything okay?"
"I just wanted--"
Emmanuel's arms are cold when David stands and touches them. "You're freezing."
"I'm not cold."
"C'mon," David says, takes the keys from Emmanuel and sets them on the bedside table, tugs him by cold fingers to sit on the bed, pulls the blanket around his shoulders and kneels to pull off Emmanuel's shoes. "Have you been wearing your jacket?"
Emmanuel shakes his head. "I think I left it in Nebraska."
David pulls off his socks. "What happened?"
"She passed away."
The light of the lamp illuminates only half of Emmanuel's face, so when David looks up he can't quite read what's there. "Who?"
"Susan. Mrs. Grayson."
"You couldn't help her?"
"I don't know."
David stands and sits next to him on the bed. He's heavier than Emmanuel so Emmanuel can't help but lean into him on the mattress, but he thinks it's more than that. "What do you mean?"
"When I got there, she had already passed. People were already crying. Mr. Grayson was very nice, though. He thanked me anyway. Why would he do that?"
"Because you came. Because you cared, I guess."
"But I did nothing. I fixed nothing."
"You would have, if you could have."
"I'm not sure that I couldn't have. But I didn't think that I should do that."
There's nothing that David can say to that. He isn't capable of it. Instead, after a while, he stands and pulls Emmanuel to stand with him, and unbuckles Emmanuel's belt and pushes his pants down and Emmanuel steps out of them, then climbs into bed after David and they lie down together. David rubs at Emmanuel's arms to warm them, across his back to soothe him, holds tight to soothe himself.
"Was that right?" Emmanuel asks after a while.
"I'm sure it was."
"Everyone kept saying she was in a better place."
"We have to hope so."
"Before Omaha I was in Wichita."
"I know." He remembers that call, too. A frightened young mother and a baby girl with a heart defect.
"She was so small. She smiled at me."
He kisses Emmanuel's temple, still cool against his lips.
"Before that I was in Memphis."
Memphis had leukemia. He was getting married at the end of the month, if he survived for it.
"He asked if I wanted to be his best man."
David laughs, small and quiet, and he can feel Emmanuel smile against him.
"Should we get you a suit?"
"I said I didn't know where I'd be, but I thanked him. And then his girlfriend kissed me, but not the way that you kiss me."
"I hope not."
There is a long stretch of nothing, just house sounds and breathing and then, "I don't think I want to be gone so often, David." He sounds a little guilty, but something uncoils in David's stomach that he didn't even know was wound so tight.
"Selfishly, I'd like that."
David still hasn't turned out the light, so when Emmanuel leans up and looks down at him, he can see the intent clear on Emmanuel's face, eyes dark and lips parted and he can feel breath across his lips along with Emmanuel's thumb, tracing them before he leans in and with eyes closed David tilts his head a little, letting Emmanuel take and take.
He had forgotten the dream, but something in the shape of Emmanuel's mouth against his own reminds him, first of the good part, the sweating, laughing part, with skin and hands and nothing between them but warmth. Then he remembers the man and what he'd said about how little time they might have left, and although perhaps he should not put too much stock into homely, bearded dream-Gods, the last time he'd let himself have that kind of faith he had found something remarkable.
His hand slides down Emmanuel's side and then up again, beneath his shirt, pushing it out of the way until they're just skin on skin, until he whispers "you wanna take this off?" against lips, chin, and Emmanuel nods and leans up enough to let David help him pull it off over his head. It leaves his hair messy and leaves him looking down at David with just that hint of a smile and then David's sitting up, too, and pushing Emmanuel down, rolling them over and there's still cotton pants and cotton underwear but everything else is gone, David's reservations, his hesitation. It's replaced with the soft slide of palms and the warm press of lips and breath that quickens when David moves just so between Emmanuel's legs and Emmanuel says "oh" like he's just figured out the answer to something.
"Is that okay?" David asks, and he gets a yes and another yes, and hands slipping beneath his waistband, stronger than one would assume, pulling David's hips down again and again and lips that say yes, and David, and yes.
When they're catching their breath and staring at the ceiling, kicking off sleep pants or underwear from around knees or ankles, Emmanuel says, "That was sex," a bit like wonder, and David has to laugh a little. When he looks over, Emmanuel is smiling.
"Sort of," David says.
"I like it."
David laughs again, sighs when Emmanuel takes his hand.
He wakes just a little later when Emmanuel pulls the kicked-off covers back over them. "You were shivering," he says, and David's only just awake enough to feel lips against his own, and then everything's so much warmer, and the second-to-last thought he has before he goes back under is that he'll have to check the lamp for a short in the morning, and the last is that he hopes, just a little, that morning never quite comes.
_____
A week later, after a trip for Emmanuel to Muskogee and back, and nights spent warm and close, learning and exploring each other, Emmanuel asks David to marry him.
They're squatting in the Lundgren's tree house during a neighborhood barbecue to celebrate Mr. Lundgren's new job, and Emmanuel has no ring but he gives David a stone from the river, smooth white with a pink blush, and he knows they can't legally but that doesn't matter to him.
"You love me," Emmanuel says, a comic book still spread across his lap as the last of the Lundgren boys descends the ladder, leaving them alone. David smiles because Emmanuel hadn't been concerned by the company of the three boys when he asked the question, made the statement, and because while it's presumptuous it's also true.
"I do," he says.
Emmanuel smiles. "And I love you. In many of the films I've seen, people don't say it when they mean to, and someone dies or goes away, and they either never say it or it takes many years, but I don't want to wait that long."
It's the mention of time that finally makes David's smile falter. "What if you ever--what if when you recover your memories, you remember that you're already married?"
Emmanuel nods, a matter-of-fact acknowledgement of the possibility that makes David's throat close a little.
"I think we would have to deal with that when we came to it, but for now I believe this is right... and I think that even if I could remember my life, you would still be the best part of it."
They climb down the ladder to a chorus of applause and congratulation, the boys having told the part of the story they knew, and David and Emmanuel's faces telling the rest. Someone tells David that his father would be proud, and although somewhere inside him a voice reminds him that he won't have long, he tries not to listen, and in his and Emmanuel's joined hands, the river stone grows warm.
_____
The third time David talks to God, he knows it is a warning. The air smells of cut grass and the late summer sun is bright but cold. The man who is God stands on their lawn where Emmanuel is mowing but Emmanuel doesn't see him, just as he doesn't see David step off of the porch to meet his dream visitor.
"It's a nice day, David," God says, though it sounds like an apology when he looks at his feet.
David nods, "We've had a few nice days." He twists the gold ring on his finger with his thumb, it's become a habit. He likes to feel it there. It's been almost two months.
God smiles but it's uncertain. "I know. I'm glad."
The sound of the mower dies and they both look to Emmanuel who bends to pick something up, too small to see. He looks up, into a tree, then back to the still, small thing in his hand. After a moment there is movement, fragile wings against his palm, and then the young bird is up and away, new life in its song. Emmanuel watches it.
David can't ask when or how, but he knows then that it will happen.
"Have you always looked out for him?" he asks instead.
God nods.
"Will you always?" He can only manage to say it because it's a dream.
The God-man smiles. "You've been really good for him."
It's the other way around, of course, but David doesn't think you're meant to argue in these situations.
"Just tell me you'll keep him safe."
"He's not meant to stay safe, David, or else he could stay with you."
Dream or not, the lump in his throat is too big, and he gasps around it. "You're not the God I thought you'd be."
"He's not meant to stay safe, but he will go on."
The mower starts again but David can hardly see. He wipes his eyes and somehow now the man looks more smug than sympathetic. David wonders what happens if you dream-punch your creator. "To where?"
"You can't worry about--"
"Where, goddammit? You tell me!"
God has the decency not to smile. "Where he has always been. Not a place but a time. A very long time. You can't measure it, David."
David shakes his head, wipes away tears, braces for the familiar fall into consciousness even as God reaches out.
Somehow 'forever' is harder to hear.
______
The next afternoon, David has a real visitor. He's making dinner when Paul Lundgren knocks on his door, wearing a sweater vest that's almost comical, and asking where to find Emmanuel.
"He's in Colorado Springs, but he'll be back by dinner."
Paul nods, steps past David into the house. "Business?"
"Yeah.... Anything I can help with?"
Paul shakes his head, walks around the living room like he's looking for something. He pokes at books on the shelves, inspects the smooth, pinkish stone in a glass box on the mantel, and sniffs (actually sniffs) at a carving of a bird that Emmanuel made on a Sunday afternoon, sitting on the porch with curls of pine falling between his feet and David sitting next to him, watching the thing come into shape.
"Lot of carpentry work in Colorado Springs, is there?"
"As much as anywhere, I guess...." David says, and maybe that's the thing, the reason why Paul's standing in his house, acting so strange so early in the afternoon when he should be at work. "Your work okay?"
"Oh, yeah." Paul smiles but it's not one David's ever seen. He puts the bird back on the mantle as if it's offended him. "Peachy."
"Good... uh--"
"Say, you mind if I wait around for Emmanuel?" It sounds friendly but rings false. Still, he knows Paul. There must be something wrong.
"Sure... I was just peeling some potatoes if you want to come into the kitchen. Something to drink, maybe?"
Paul smiles, something David recognizes and for a brief moment it puts him at ease, but then the laughter starts, high and unsettling. "You're quite the little housewife, aren't you?"
"Excuse me?"
"Peeling potatoes and baking pies, I bet. You just need a frilly apron and a rolling pin." Paul steps closer, leering. "Of course it's no wonder you've got him playing house, with that pretty mouth of yours. I bet you know just how to use it."
It's like a slap in the face, those words from a man he's known for years. "Have we got some kind of problem, Paul? Have you been drinking?"
Paul grins, manic and huge. It seems to fill the room, the house, lashing out like a threat. "You've got a problem alright," Paul says, gleeful, and the rest happens in a blur.
Paul moves fast, faster than David, especially since David still can't believe it's happening, and though Paul is smaller and a head shorter and David knows how to defend himself, there's something unnatural in Paul's strength, as unnatural as his laugh, his speech, the sulphuric smell around him when he pushes David to the floor too easily.
David pushes back, gets in a few swings but Paul's fists land like sledgehammers, he knows bones are breaking, ribs and cheek and maybe his clavicle, then hands are on his throat and he's losing air, light, and maybe it's the approaching unconsciousness or a trick of sunlight through the drapes, but the last thing he sees before he sees nothing, are Paul's eyes, cold and black and empty.
____
When David regains consciousness it is to pain and shadow and an unsettling quiet. He jerks fully awake, straining at the ropes binding him to the chair, and a sudden and excruciating breath as he searches the room. He can taste blood and he's half blind. It takes him a moment to realize this is because one of his eyes is swollen shut, but from what he sees with the other, there's no sign of Paul.
He doesn't know how long he's been out, or if Emmanuel could have come home or if Paul could have attacked him as well. It's the thought of Emmanuel that makes him try harder at the ropes, digging into his skin.
Somewhere, over the sound of his own breathing and struggling, he hears a voice, two voices, on the porch. He twists his whole body, sending the chair he's tied to in a half turn, loud in the room and certainly outside it. Pain blooms through his chest and he almost can't see past it, but when he opens his good eye again he does see the men on the porch, one Paul Lundgren, the other a stranger, looking straight at him through the curtains.
The stranger reacts quickly once he's put the scene together, his motions a blur of steel and blood and something impossible that flashes briefly, then Paul Lundgren, friend and neighbor, tumbles limply down the steps and off of their porch.
David doesn't know if he should be relieved or more frightened that Paul is dead, but the pain in his chest burns anew and darkness overcomes him once again. Then there's nothing at all until there is Emmanuel's voice.
"David? Please, David, wake up."
Emmanuel's presence, even more than his voice, is a blanket of calm concern, a soft membrane that David must breach if he wants to breathe again. Consciousness trickles back slowly and with it, a sensation like being pulled up from beneath the ground, through rocks and roots and grassy soil, up and out. Everywhere. He feels light, like dust and thought, then it all starts to shift, rearranging precisely into the shape of a thing called David. When this passes, he feels only the chair beneath him, Emmanuel's hand on his own, and the heavy weight of Emmanuel's gaze.
“Emmanuel?”
“Yes, David. Can you stand?”
Emmanuel helps him up, though he doesn’t need it. He could stand until the end of time for as glad as he is to see that Emmanuel is safe.
“He was looking for you,” David says, bracing himself for the pain that the breath and standing will cause him, but it does not come. He realizes, too, that he can see with both eyes and that he tastes no blood. He looks down at himself, at the blood drying on his shirt, thinking of that feeling like being reshaped. “You…“
“Yes,” Emmanuel looks apologetic. “I did. I hope that’s alright. You wouldn’t wake up.”
David suddenly remembers months back, newly-healed Mr. South looking across the sanctuary like Emmanuel was something to be feared, revered. He finally understands that look, but he only says, “Yes, of course," and then, "Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, David.”
“Paul?”
Emmanuel looks down. “Not as lucky.”
There’s a shuffle of feet across the room and for the first time David notices the stranger from the porch, the man who’d killed Paul Lundgren. He steps forward automatically, placing himself between the man and Emmanuel, even as the man raises his hands and Emmanuel takes David's arm to stop him.
“Easy, pal,” the stranger says, “I’m not the bad guy. Not this time anyway.”
“What did you do to Paul?”
“Paul? Who-oh. Yeah. Well, whoever Paul is, that wasn’t him.”
He’s got a look, a tone about him that David doesn’t like, but he believes him, especially when Emmanuel steps around to shake the stranger’s hand and introduces himself and David. There’s something there that seems like a lie, but it’s not about being good or evil.
“Husband?” the stranger, Dean, asks, seems surprised, but not in the usual way.
“I saw its face,” Emmanuel says. “Its true face.”
Dean nods. “He was a demon.” He says it so matter of fact, like there’s no doubting their existence.
“A demon walked the Earth?” Emmanuel asks, as incredulous as David feels.
“Demons,” Dean corrects. “You don’t know about-?”
Why would he? David wants to ask, wants to tell Dean there can be no such thing, but he knows the deliberate ignorance of that statement, when a few months ago he believed there was no such thing as Emmanuel, and anyway, he’s too distracted by what he sees on Dean’s face, what he hears in Dean’s voice, and the way that Dean can’t seem to stop staring.
Dean knows Emmanuel.
“Why are you here?” David asks him, breaking the strange silence and Dean’s concentration on Emmanuel. “Because of the…” he gestures toward the porch.
“No,” Dean says, but David only earns a moment of his attention before it shifs back to Emmanuel. “I came for help. I heard about Emmanuel here, that he can heal people up.”
Emmanuel looks down, almost embarrassed. David feels very distant to the conversation. “I seem to be able to help to a certain degree. What’s your issue?”
Dean’s face softens, saddens, and he doesn’t seem like he could be the same man who stabbed Paul Lundgren just moments earlier when he says with a shaky voice, “My brother.”
_______
Emmanuel is upstairs packing a bag when Dean steps into the kitchen where David is leaning against the counter, wondering how this is supposed to work, how he’s going to explain the body of his neighbor hidden in his bushes, how he’s supposed to just let Emmanuel leave, how to say goodbye when he knows (he just knows) it’s for good.
“You know, for what it’s worth,” Dean says, “I’m sorry about your, uh… Paul.” He leans against the door frame, hands in his pocket like he does this every day. He might for all that David knows. “You can call the police when we’re gone, explain everything. Except for the demon thing, of course. I'd keep that to myself. You can even give them my description. Should keep you out of trouble.”
He reminds David of a dream he’s had, of a God he wanted to silence with his fists.
“You think I’m worried about trouble?”
Dean shrugs. “You should be. He might not have been the only one of those things to hear about Emmanuel. There could be others.” He pushes off of the wall, digs into his pocket. “Here.” He holds out a charm on a leather cord. “That’ll ward off possession anyway. Can’t do much for the beatings. I mean, you look like a prizefighter, but you know their strength now. Salt helps too.”
“Salt?” David takes the necklace, shaking his head.
“Make a line at the doors, windows.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“’Fraid not.”
“Who are you?”
Dean shrugs again. “Nobody worth saving, but Sammy, that’s my brother, he is.”
There’s a faint noise upstairs and David looks up, as if he might see through the floor.
“I’ll bring him back,” Dean says, as if reading his mind. “Just as quick as I can.”
David looks at him, watches him for a long, silent time. Dean’s not quite his height, not many people are, but he’s not at all intimidated when David steps closer, doesn’t flinch. In fact he stands a little straighter, shoulders rolling back. Dean either believes what he says or he’s a good liar. David wishes he could believe it.
“David?” Emmanuel says softly as he joins them, looking from one and then to the other and Dean just backs away.
“I’ll wait in the car.”
When the front door closes behind him there is just the faint hum of the house, and the silence of what seems suddenly like a void between them.
Emmanuel sets down his bag. “He’s right, you know. I’ll be back.”
David can only nod.
“I’ll keep my coat on.”
He smiles at that in spite of himself and Emmanuel takes it as some cue, steps forward and into David’s arms that close around him without thought.
“You’re frightening me,” Emmanuel says against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” He is. He really is. “Don’t be. You’ll be alright, I know it.”
“I believe you.”
“I love you.”
“I know. I love you, too.”
“Don’t let this Dean guy get you into trouble.”
“I won’t.”
“Call me when you can.”
“I will.”
“I love you, Emmanuel.”
“You said that already.”
“I know. I don’t want you to forget.”
_______
They take both cars, Emmanuel's and the old black Impala that Dean drives, so that they can park the Malibu a few towns over and David can say that Emmanuel never came home. He waits two hours before he calls Jack, who doesn’t even believe David at first, then spends the afternoon at the station while police search his house and meticulously photograph the bushes where they find Paul's body. He describes Dean in great detail, claims shock as his reason for not calling sooner, and only gets to go home because he promises to be back the next day and Jack believes him.
David doesn’t sleep, not even after Emmanuel calls later that night, the sounds of a noisy truckstop in the background. He says that he’s fine, and that he hasn’t forgotten.
In the morning, David cancels his appointments and goes back to the station and tells the same story two dozen more times before he can go home again and wait. He's missed two calls, one from mid-morning and a voicemail that says Emmanuel is well, that they drove all night, and another later that day saying that they’ve picked up someone else, a woman, that everything’s fine, though Emmanuel sounds strange and uncertain.
That evening he makes dinner but doesn’t eat, calls Shirley to say he won’t make it to practice, keeps their conversation brief so as not to tie up the phone, but there are no more calls.
It’s nearly midnight when he climbs the stairs, half asleep and soul-deep weary. But he passes their bedroom door, walks instead to the guest room where many of Emmanuel’s trinkets and inventions, drawings and poetry still wait, more patient than David. He sits on the bed, remembering that first night, Emmanuel confused and curious and helpless. David had wondered if he was an alien. He tries to laugh at that, but fatigue won't let him and it turns to a sigh, head in his hands, phone on the bed beside him, until the bulb in the lamp unexpectedly flickers and dies, and something touches his shoulder.
"Hello, David."
David stands but Emmanuel steps back, out of reach. “How… what’s happened to you? Why are you covered in blood?” He’s wearing a trench coat that David’s never seen, spotted in dried blood but there’s something even more strange… something different.
“It’s very old blood. I’m not harmed.” Emmanuel's voice is deeper than usual, and there's a sorrow in his brow that David doesn’t recognize.
“How did you get all the way back here so fast?”
“That’s not important.” Curt, cold. almost as alien as that first night. “I wanted to thank you, David.”
“For what?”
“For taking care of me.”
“Of course, Emmanuel-“
“That’s not my…” Emannuel pauses, looks away, and David understands.
It’s worse than just losing him. It’s worse than not knowing, he thinks. It’s worse than waiting to see.
“You remember,” he says. He doesn’t have to ask.
Emmanuel nods.
The bed creaks beneath David's weight as he sits again. He feels heavy enough that it should break.
“I wanted to thank you,” Emmanuel says, stepping closer now that David is sitting,“and to tell you goodbye.”
“We already said goodbye.”
“Yes. But I want you to know-“
“I don’t want to know your name, if that’s it. Don’t tell me if you’re leaving.”
Emmanuel’s hand twitches at his side, a gesture of helplessness. It’s all that David can see. He won’t meet those eyes again, not in his lifetime.
“I appreciate you,” Emmanuel says. The tone and the overcoat make it seem so formal. “I appreciate your assistance. I didn't deserve it.” Then the silence stretches. The clock ticks. David watches the floor as Emmanuel shifts his stance, waiting for something. “I’d like to help you in the future if I can… should you need me.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“I’ll leave this.” There is the sound of paper being folded but David doesn’t look up. “You can call me. I will come if I am able.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“Yes,” Emmanuel says with certainty, then there’s a pause before he steps forward. David thinks he should pull away from the hand that slips gently into his hair but he cannot. After a moment Emmanuel says, “If I could forget again…”
“But you can’t.”
“I cannot.”
“Just stay out of trouble, like I told you.”
“I will try.… Could I ask a favor, David?”
“Yes.”
“Keep me in your prayers.”
_____
A few hours after Emmanuel leaves for the last time, David finally sleeps, exhausted and heart sore. It's fitful sleep that doesn't last, but there is enough time for dreams of black eyes and bloody things and police stations flooded with dark, icy water.
In a few days David starts to work again. Being busy helps. He still isn’t sleeping well but he eats sometimes and that helps, too.
In a few weeks he can sleep through most nights, and he stops seeing shadows everywhere.
In a few months he sells his house and most of his things and packs his jeep with his clothing and some of his father’s things and a box of carvings and stones and drawings of shore birds and a slip of paper folded tightly, never opened.
He never walks by the river again. He tells Shirley goodbye and she hugs him and says he’s too thin and to take care. He tries to give Mrs. Lundgren what money he thinks he can spare but she won’t open the door when he knocks on it, and mails the envelope back to him when he tries that way.
He never sees Emmanuel again.
In a year, for the first time, he thinks about taking off the ring, but when he slips it halfway off his finger there is a pale band in the shape of it, and he fits it back into place.
Two weeks later, the leather cord holding the charm around his neck breaks and he throws it out.
Eight months after that, he meets a librarian.
_____
Standing in a library in Billings, Montana, he’s being carefully appraised by a dark-haired woman behind the desk. He tells her he’s with Allen Electric.
“Someone called an electrician.”
“Well I’d hope so, seeing as you’re here…” she leans in to read his shirt, “…David.”
“I got a call from Greg… I didn’t get a last name.”
“You don’t need a last name, sugar, I’m just sorry it wasn’t me that called.”
She’s gone for a moment and returns with a man who looks a few years David’s senior, blonde but maybe already going grey, who smiles and shakes David’s hand like he already knows him, and says, “Thank god you’re here."
Greg leads him to the basement, to a long dark aisle lit only by the light from a distant high window.
“It’s the weirdest thing, but when I opened this morning, this whole section of lighting was out. Not one but all of them. It could have been longer than that, we don’t come down here often, but no more than a couple of days. I figured it had to be a breaker, but none had tripped. We had maintenance in but the new bulbs won’t work either.”
David pulls out a flashlight, shining it up at the drop ceiling for any signs of water damage or smoke.
“I’ll see what I can find.”
“Wonderful, thank you. I wasn’t sure if you’d come all the way from Hardin. I almost didn’t call you.”
“I don’t usually make it out this far, no. How’d you hear about me?”
“Well your name literally fell into my lap. Your card, I mean. Out of a book. Someone must have been using it as a bookmark. We find all kinds of things.”
“What was the book?” David asks, though he doesn’t know why.
Greg pauses, thinks, his brow all concentration above his glasses, then his face lights up with memory. “Tree houses.”
“Tree houses?”
“You know, how to build them.”
“Yeah.”
“Well….” Greg hesitates for a moment and the silence lengthens, but when David looks up again Greg only says, “I’ll be up on the second floor if you need me. Gloria will know how to find me.”
A ladder and a few minutes tells David the problem, but not how, because it’s not faulty wiring, there simply is no wire. It’s vanished. He suggests vandalism to Greg who shakes his head and says it doesn’t seem possible, but doesn’t argue when David quotes a re-wire. He doesn’t have everything he needs to do it just then, so he says he’ll be back the next day. Greg says that’s good, because he’s not sure the good people of Billings can go much longer than that without access to the archives of the Sheep Farmer’s Almanac, years 1841 to 1952.
The next day, Greg appears at the bottom of his ladder after David’s been there for hours, asks if he would like to take a lunch. David almost says no. He’s sweaty and dusty and he’ll just finish by the end of the day if he keeps working, but Greg has a bag of sandwiches and they eat them in the study cubicles on the other side of the basement, where the lights are on a different breaker.
When the work spills over into a second day and a second lunch, Greg asks about the ring.
“I was,” David says, spinning the gold band on his finger, “but he left.”
“I can’t imagine how,” Greg says, quiet and sincere.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Two days later, Greg, who knows his own name and eats at regular intervals and doesn’t frighten him, who makes him laugh and wasn’t sent to him by a God he hardly thinks of anymore, even though he prays every day, calls him again and invites him to dinner.
David accepts.
______
EPILOGUE
The last time David speaks to God it is in an airport in Nevada.
“Just this, sir?” God asks when David places a pack of chewing gum, a bottle of water, and a chocolate bar on the counter. He’s just as tall as God remembers but he’s grey around the temples and there are laugh lines around his eyes that suit him better than the frown, the anger of when they last met.
“Do I know you?” David asks.
“I don’t think so. I’ve just got one of those faces.” God smiles, scans the chewing gum and the register makes an excited beep. The water and chocolate follow. “That everything?” he asks.
David’s still looking at him, squinting and tilting his head sideways.
“Sir?”
“You're making that confused puppy face again,” someone says, stepping up to the counter, hip to hip with David, and presents his own bottle of water and a book.
“These, too,” David says, pushing the book and the water toward the scanner.
“Yes sir,” God says. “You two heading out?”
“We’re going home,” the man who isn’t David says. “We’ve been visiting the in-laws. Well, his brother and the wife.” He has a kind face and full features framed by glasses, the beginning of a beard with even more grey and deeper laugh lines.
“Sounds nice. Where’s home?” then, “That’s twenty-four-sixty, sir,” to David.
“Montana.”
“Cold this time of year?”
“Colder than here.”
“Everywhere’s colder than here.”
“Are you sure I don’t know you?” David cuts in.
God smiles. “I don’t know. I meet a lot of people in my line of work. Name’s Chuck.”
David nods, too serious, scratching his own five o’clock shadow and there’s a flash of gold on his finger. God knows it’s not the first one he’s worn. “Have you ever been to Montana? Colorado? New Mexico?”
“I’ve been a little of everywhere.”
“It’s just…” David says but it trails to nothing.
“Well he’s David and I’m Greg,” the man who isn’t David chimes in, “and now we all know each other, but we’re going to miss our flight if we keep up this reunion.”
“Here you go,” God says, handing over the bag of their purchases. “It was nice to meet you Greg. David.”
“Likewise,” Greg waves.
“Yeah,” David says, turning to walk away.
“Have a safe trip,” God says, and it isn’t a suggestion.
“You too… I mean, you know what I mean.”
God smiles. "Happens all the time. Maybe I’ll see you again some time, David.”
“Yeah, maybe,” David says, but Greg’s pulling him by the hand toward their terminal and soon he disappears into the crowd and there’s another customer with a stack of magazines and an inflatable pillow and a spoon with NEVADA engraved into the metal. At the last moment she adds a single serving packet of Tylenol.
“Nice day?” God asks her.
“Not really,” she says.
"Don't worry," God tells her, and smiles, "it will get better."