671. There Are Different Types of Love....
(Taken shamelessly from mememaker's 126. I can love you in so many different ways. Because I looooove mememaker and this was one of my favorite memes.)
This meme deals with three types of love, angsty, sweet, and twisted! Please note that there are triggers abound!
- Post your characters and include preferences (if any!)
- Others reply.
- Go to RNG and enter numbers 1-3 ( Read more... )
This meme deals with three types of love, angsty, sweet, and twisted! Please note that there are triggers abound!
- Post your characters and include preferences (if any!)
- Others reply.
- Go to RNG and enter numbers 1-3 ( Read more... )
All in all it's not looking good for these people- not even Dean would do something that crazy... Which really makes him wonder why Sterling's so gung-ho about it. It's definitely strange. Cas makes to down his drink but isn't quite fast enough; the flavour hits his tongue and he makes a face, swallowing what had made it into his mouth and placing the glass on the table for now. He's not the one who needs loosening up anyway. He does refill Sterling's glass, however.]
That sounds pretty unfortunate for them. What's your plan?
[He actually knows Sterling to come up with decent plans, though he's unsure that even a tactician as skilled as he is could manage to pull this off without getting the entire camp killed on the way. He's ignoring the obvious question, for now; they'll get there eventually. Until then he'll just put those hard-earned small talk skills to use.]
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[There was something about the way he said it, something in his expression that meant his genius plan was useless. Of course, one had to wonder exactly how Sterling thought that he could manage that particular plan, anyway. Sterling had never really talked about what he'd done before all of this, about who he was, despite the typical bonding over horror stories. His stories weren't the sort that promoted bonding. No one except Cas- maybe Dean- even knew his first name. Simple fact was that as much as people might hate him now, he'd been even more of a jerk before the Apocalypse.
He downed the second shot and exhaled, shaking his head. Normally, he'd be putting up more of a fuss about the seriously subpar alcohol on the table, but, tonight he needed something -- anything -- to take the edge off, heat that numb feeling out of his body. He winced, but didn't actually complain.]
Pulling that off would involve Dean actually listening to me, which means it's hardly worth mentioning. Leaves going around, hoping we don't hit too many croats and we get there in time, and then figuring a way to get them up the side of a cliff. Which isn't going to be particularly fast or defensible.
[Sharp frown, swirling the empty glass in his fingertips, as if he hardly even noticed it was empty. His focus wasn't here, it was on that camp, it was on trying to come up with a better plan, something fool-proof. Sterling liked nothing lost, everything gained, but he was working with what he could scrimp now.]
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[Cas doesn't even know what that means, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't the slightest bit intrigued, even if the other man's tone suggests that it's not really an option at all. He doesn't miss the subtle change in Sterling's voice when he says her, either, but he's waiting on asking about that, for now. He has to wonder who this person could be, though... A wife? Ex-wife? Sister? ...Does Sterling even have any living family? Cas assumes as a rule that when people come here alone, they're alone; he can't imagine anyone, even Sterling, leaving family behind... Whatever the case may be, and as curious as he is, he's going to focus on what seems like the least personal subject for the time being. He doesn't want to push to hard too fast, he knows from experience (Dean) that that's pretty pointless.]
Too many variables. Military, croates, terrain... We'd never make it.
[Cas may not be the best strategist here, but he's far from the worst, and he certainly knows enough to recognize a death trap when he sees one. It's obvious why Dean is against this-- there's just no way. Or if there is, he isn't seeing it. Running a job... He's unfamiliar with that phrase, and he hopes Sterling elaborates. Aiming to help that along, he polishes off the rest of his drink and pours another before nudging the bottle in Sterling's direction.]
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Running a job. We con the military.
[That smile that curves his lips, it's not just the most like himself that Sterling's looked since he'd walked through the door tonight- there's something bright and sharp and vibrant and almost seductive in the way those last four words roll across his lips, and his tongue slips after them. It might be the most alive the man's look since he stepped foot in the camp. It passes, of course, as he sighs and recollects that he'd have to get Dean behind this, get the man to listen to what he tells him. Hah. It might be his best shot, but ]
I could do it with you, Dean, and some pretty thing that makes heads turn and knows how to be whatever pretty lie the man she's sleeping with needs her to be. The redhead. Mary? Marigold? Her.
[He refilled his glass, watching the pale gold liquid swirl in the glass as he looked predatory. Sterling might be a jerk around camp, but this was something beneath that, something a little less kosher, a little sharper, a little more inclined to rip out someone's throat and not sweat the details.]
James Sterling from Interpol, working with President Palin's military, to coordinate operations in the interest of ending the ongoing system of crimes against humanity.
[It rolled off his tongue like truth, looking Cas in those blues was almost a dare to disbelieve him. Because this? This was what he did. This? Could work. He downed the shot.]
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[He'd add are you fucking insane to that, but he imagines his tone gets that across just fine. That... Wasn't the idea he'd been expecting. At all. It was the absolute furthest thing from what he'd been expecting. It's so mind-boggling he's actually forgotten what he'd been expecting.]
That's what you did before you came here? You were a con man?
[He doesn't know why he's surprised; in fact, he can easily imagine Sterling being very, very good at his job. Back before everything went to shit and the assumed military orders weren't to shoot first and ask questions never, anyway. If he thought there was even the slightest chance of this working, he might have been able to be convinced to tag along and give it a shot, but as it is...]
They'd kill you on sight, before you even had a chance to speak.
[He downs his drink; he takes no pleasure in blowing holes in plans, but it's certainly preferable to getting himself killed.]
Also, [to add some levity to the situation...] I'm pretty sure her name is Marlene.
[See? He knows some of their names.]
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[Sterling said it with a tone that was reminiscent of Dean's it's-not-a-problem voice. But, Sterling's tone held a hint of amusement, as if he had a card up his sleeve that Cas just hasn't caught onto yet. Which, he did, of course. The alcohol was kicking in, enough so that he could forget that this was an impossibility.]
Oh, no, not at all. I was an Insurance Investigator -- much worse than a conman, and fortunately, also legal. Insurance. People pay money so that in the event that something happens, they get a payout to cover the loss. My job, was to find any way to prevent the company from having to pay. Violation of contract, retrieving stolen items, finding culprits for the crimes...
[It was a job so dirty that not even Hell had an equivalent. Another shot, poured and downed and Sterling was smiling that sharp, predatory, shark-ish smile again.]
Then I conned a group of thieves into making me the President of the insurance company. And after a particularly high-profile return of a 9 million dollar Faberge Egg in the Ukraine, I got invited to join Interpol, which I graciously accepted.
[Smiling, Cas, smiling. Line about the best lies being the ones based in truth goes somewhere in here.]
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I have no doubt you were good at what you did.
[He wonders if it's just the liquor getting to him. He certainly hopes so, Sterling's plans are usually much better and much less suicidal than this one seems to be. Which is only adding to Cas's curiosity, making him wonder who this person could be that she's able to have this effect on Sterling, who prides himself on being above such things, for the most part. He can't really help himself anymore--]
Who is she?
[It's a bit more blunt than he'd intended but, well... Blunt works, sometimes. He downs his drink.]
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Olivia. She's my daughter. I thought.. I thought I lost her three years ago.
[His voice is quiet, ripe with pain and guilt and hesitates in ways that Sterling has never been. But, beneath that is grim, steely determination more fitted for Dean's whatever it takes than Sterling's survival first. But this is different. Sterling loves her. Sham of a marriage or not, Olivia had been special. And he will burn down the world to save her. He swallows, watching Cas, shifts a little. Even to Cas, whom he'd told more than anyone, he'd never even hinted that he'd ever been married, let alone that he had a daughter.]
I can't lose her again.
[Family. Funny that under it all, there's at least one thing Dean and Sterling agree on. ]
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Sterling is silent for longer than Cas had expected, and just as he's finally taking that shot, just when he's about to give getting an answer up as a lost cause, Sterling speaks. Cas nearly chokes on the liquor, just narrowly avoids coughing it up all over the table; he isn't sure he's heard him right, so just to clarify:]
Your daughter?
[He'd never... But... What? If there was any single person on this earth (aside from himself, of course) that Cas could never picture as a parent, it'd be Sterling. While he isn't quite the most self-serving person Cas has ever met, he pretty close to the top of that list... Not that Cas holds it against him, of course, especially given the circumstances-- it's the end of the world, that's pretty much the only way to survive.
If it wasn't for Sterling's voice, and the grief evident on the man's face, Cas might have thought this was just a story, a cover... But in all the time Cas has known him, and all of the nights they'd spent talking over too much liquor, Cas has never heard him like this. It's strange and a bit heartbreaking, honestly.]
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But, not only does he think that Cas really wouldn't get the throwaway line anyway, but Sterling owes him more than that. He cares about Cas, cares about him in ways that he tried but could never manage with his wife. This whole thing is suddenly startlingly awkward, but he doesn't shut down, doesn't stop talking and instead focus on getting far too solidly drunk to talk about much of anything. This might not be comfortable, but he'd been the one that asked for something different, something that wasn't just sex. And it makes dealing with this all a little easier since Cas is here. He swirls liquor in his glass thoughtfully, watching the pale gold.]
I was married for a few years, right out of college. Almost funny really, I could con almost anything from anyone, but I couldn't get her to believe I was attracted to her -- she was right, of course.
[Sterling had never been interested in women. He'd written it off at first as usual, until after his marriage, until he'd met this man through a friend at his first job in insurance, before IYS. They'd hit it off, and one drunken night went just far enough to unravel his belief in his own heterosexuality. Sterling shrugged his shoulders, still felt guilty about not being the man he was supposed to be, even if he hadn't been able to help it.]
Olivia was a kid when we split, but I saw her on holidays, a few weekends, things like that. Not that I had a clue about being a father; I taught her chess and how to use people to get what you want. [A small pause.] She still loved me.
[Sterling has a surprised, almost awed tone to his voice. He'd never had any illusions about being good with children, and thought it was more a credit to Olivia than it said anything about unknown talent in that regard. Too proud to ask anyone for help picking out things for his daughter, and yet she accepted him anyway, as if it wasn't his fault her mother had left. He still remembers watching a Disney movie when she'd been about seven and how she'd very seriously and yet without judgement looked at him and asked if the man that came over sometimes was his Prince Charming. She'd always been almost too good at the things he taught her.]
I have to save her.
[Sterling set the glass down with its one remaining shot; really, if he was talking this much, he was clearly drunk enough -- any more and he'd be slurring his words.]
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And sad. Cas has had quite a few crises of identity during the course of his obscenely long life: he's worried about who he is in relation to Heaven; who he is in relation to God; and of course once he'd fallen, who he is to himself, once everything else had been stripped away from him- and he's more or less content with the fact that he truly is Just Cas now. Fortunately, among these crises, sexual identity has never really factored in anywhere- he truly has no preference and he's never had any issue expressing that. Sex is important to him, and as he imagines that must be the case for everyone else he can't imagine the strain that must have put on Sterling's life.
And to have a child thrown in there, well... It's not often Cas feels like he has anything to be grateful for but that's definitely what he's feeling now. Sterling sets the glass down, clearly done with the liquor and Cas does the same- he already has a pleasant fog going and this really isn't the time to drink himself into incoherence.]
You said you thought she-- [He's really trying to be delicate here, it's not exactly his forte... He shifts a bit closer, shoulder bumping into Sterling's.] What happened three years ago?
[He isn't touching Sterling's insistence that he needs to save her with a fifty foot pole, not yet. As much as he wishes this changed anything, he can't see any way that it would... Not without Sterling confiding in Dean this intimate detail of his life, which he really doesn't see happening.]
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He sighs at the question, nods slowly as his body leans into Cas. The man doesn't hold the sole monopoly on seeking physical affection to numb reality, after all. His story about how he thought he'd lost her isn't really spectacular or even unique, but he's willing to tell it anyway. Because it's Cas, because the man is also featured on that very short list of people he cares about.]
It wasn't too long after I got her back-- Her mother fell in with this real classy sort after a while; nuclear physicist involved with international terrorists and unstable regimes looking to get their hands on the technology. They got married, he relocated them to Dubai. One of his business deals went south, my ex-wife was killed, Olivia happened to get knocked clear in carbomb they used to voice their displeasure. He got custody of Olivia, and so I used a group of Hunters-slash-Robin-Hood-types to steal her back, through generally being something of a bastard.
[There was something in the way he said something of a bastard that betrayed that Sterling had actually been possibly an even worse person beforehand, if one could actually quite envision that. And even if it hadn't been overt, he'd apparently known something about the supernatural before things had gotten so bad it was no longer about faith or belief but simple, cold truth. The story from there was fairly typical, he'd been out of town, there'd been an outbreak, a quarantine. With his line of work, taking her with him would have just put her in more danger. And she'd had school and bodyguards. He'd thought it would be enough. And now... She wasn't dead. Sterling was still working through that, honestly.]
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One thing in particular catches his attention, though...]
Hunters? So you knew about this stuff before the virus hit?
[That's surprising. There are only a handful of people at the camp who'd been privy to what really goes on after dark before they'd had it shoved in their faces, and he hadn't imagined Sterling being one of them. He wonders what his first experience with the supernatural might have been...]
And so you thought... Until today--?
[It's rare, insanely, rare, for anyone to get a second chance like this... But somehow it just seems cruel, given the circumstances, and Cas thinks it might have been better if he'd never found out.]
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[There's a vague touch of dry humor, old amusement at the fact that the fore-mentioned group of Hunters had apparently at one point at least passingly considered the possibility that Sterling might be a demon. Of course, given the man's demeanor, it's not all that far of a stretch. In a sense, he had had it thrown in his face -- just in a way that predated the virus. He sighs, pulling Cas quietly up against him, his hands slipping underneath the hem of his shirt. Touching is easier than thinking about what used to be, than thinking about Nate and Eliot and Parker and the rest. He misses their rag-tag little group, strange as it is. They'd been useful on more than one occasion, and there'd been that pleasure to their scuffles and that one way or another he always came out on top.]
Not that I ever got into the whole saving the world bit, but I knew enough. Ended up being rather useful once or twice.
[He nods to Cas' question, a quiet assent and a brief pause before he's kissing him, sliding his other hand up into the man's hair. Because this is easy, this is comfort, and because apparently sometimes Sterling is just as bad about touch in place of words. Because he's said so much, and he doesn't quite know what else to say. As much as Sterling has pushed for slow sensuality, he wants-needs-craves the other man against him; everything he's been trying to linger on just the other side of. But this is just too much to take alone, and so he kisses him hard with lips bitter from alcohol.]
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Yeah, the 'saving the world bit' is probably better left to the experts anyway…
[And by experts he means of course those with little to no sense of self preservation and daddy issues a mile wide. He should know, he fits at least half of that description and has been surrounded for the recent past by perfect specimens of 'experts'.
He isn't surprised when Sterling only nods and then leans forward to press their lips together; if he were in the other man's position he'd have stopped talking three shots ago. The hand at the man's thigh moves curl over his waist, thumb stroking soothing patterns against soft fabric as he tilts his head into the kiss. It's saving him the trouble of having to come up with the right thing to say, which if he's honest he's really no better at now than he was when he'd first fallen.
This is so much easier, and so he does what he does best: lets his hands move slowly over Sterling's body and sighs into the slide of fingers through his hair. Shifting in his chair so that he's more or less facing the other man, he leans closer, wraps his hand more firmly around his side. It's really the best he can offer.]
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[There's a hint of humor and sadness there, when the kiss breaks and Sterling mouths words and kisses into Cas' jaw. Of course, with the Apocalypse hitting, Hunters became fast casualties. Someone died and tight-knit groups were torn apart. It had been unfortunate, but that was how it went. It was the end of the world, what about this mess wasn't unfortunate? Leverage Associates hadn't lasted. Not without Sophie. It played out much like he was sure Nate had always known it would: Parker and Eliot survived. Though with the world as it was, it was beyond his capabilities to track them down anymore. Sterling slipped closer, until he was more on Cas' chair than sitting on the couch. Closer. He needed it.]
A bitter alcoholic who could figure out the answer to anything except women, a nerd that could violate anything with an electric current, the most socially awkward person I've ever met, a woman that could lie to anyone, and a man convinced of his own immortality, an annoying lack of understanding for what makes a good plan, and a fondness for cheap liquor, easy women and beating me into bar tables.
[The first and the last had almost definite notes of affection. But that just made him even more interested in the distraction of skin and body and pulling that shirt off of Cas' frame. Well, all of the man's clothes, for that matter, but he was starting with his shirt. Hands palming over bare skin, touching, a low murmur on his lips as he nibbled along a stubbled jaw, as if touch could drown misery memories in pleasure in ways that alcohol just couldn't touch. Sterling was fairly certain that it could, especially given how long it had been since he'd indulged. He flirted with that line; sensuality/sexuality and just how far he wanted to go. This was headlong and needy; needed to not think about any of them for a while. Not his daughter, not dead friends, not lost people that had been more and less than rivals and lovers.]
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