Fic: Three Postcards Written in Farmington, New Hampshire
Title: Three Postcards Written in Farmington, New Hampshire
Words: 1,315
Genre: Gen, Friendship, pre-slashy(ish),
Rating: PG
Characters: Chuck, Dean, Cas
Spoilers: General up to and including season six.
Disclaimer: Obviously, I own nothing. Really nothing. The kind of nothing that exists in vaccums and bad translations of Sartre.
Summary: Someone thinks that Cas and the Winchesters need a little less angst in their lives. Fortunately, he's a writer.
A/N: Thought it was about time I wrote something less darn depressing. This is utter foof, complete foolery, but I quite enjoyed writing it, and I'm thinking I might write it some sequels. I dunno. Could be fun.
In Farmington, New Hampshire a young man with a pen behind his ear walks into a diner with no name on Mechanic Street. The bell above the door rings with his arrival. He orders a black coffee in a soft, shy voice, and pulls three post cards out of the pocket of his coat. These he sets in a row in front of him on the counter and studies intently. The waitress who takes his order looks down at them, but she sees nothing but blank white squares. She cannot even tell where the postcards are from (though she knows they cannot be from Farmington) only how much they were.
Forty-nine cents apiece.
The young man sits up straighter on his stool for a moment and looks out into space. He takes the pen from behind his ear and taps it against the linoleum in an uneven rhythm. The waitress glances up from behind the counter where she is bending over to pick up a clean, white ceramic mug, and sees something.
It is like counting the number water droplets in the spray of a single crashing wave, what she sees. It is like knowing, for a single instant, the name of every star in the winter sky. It is like being one person in a crowd of ten thousand who all accidentally take a deep breath at the same time. Even though what she sees is nothing, really; it is simple and utterly uncomplicated.
She sees the writer-for a writer he must be-scratching at his stubble, biting his lip and worrying with tired eyes at the empty corner of the diner. His pen is a weight balanced in his fingers. It goes still when his face changes and lights up, as he comes suddenly into the crux of his idea. He smiles brilliantly at her and bends over his postcards, the pen scratching like a chisel. And the waitress (her name is April, if you care to know) cannot tell what is more important, the writer or the pen. One has a great deal of power and the other is along for the ride. She cannot guess which is which.
April leans heavily against the counter and rubs the back of her neck. She's coming off a double shift in twenty minutes, she's exhausted, and for this reason she lets the odd moment drop away. The coffee pot is comforting and warm in her hand; she takes it over to the writer and fills up his cup, sliding the basket of the sugar packets and the little cream pitcher closer for his distracted convenience. He thanks her timidly and then continues to scribble.
April moves away to wash some dishes in the back.
This is what the writer writes:
One hour, twelve minutes and sixty-seven seconds.
Dean and Castiel sit on the edge of Bobby's porch like it's the edge of the world. Dean has a warm beer in his hand that he opened an hour ago and hasn't glanced at since. The wind brushed the cap off the porch and out into the wilderness of rocks and dirt and dying grass, Dean watches it go. Cas isn't holding anything because he's never had much to hold, but his hands are folded politely together in his lap. He is watching the shadows stretch across the salvage yard and breathing in the smell of a coming rainstorm. They are both thinking of absolutely nothing.
It is a moment of in-between.
"How's the war going?" Dean asks eventually. Cas shrugs.
"Alright," he answers without commitment and without really answering. Dean smirks. The bottle cap rolls beneath a busted up Chevy and is forever gone from his knowledge. He turns to Cas.
"You been practicing, haven't you?" he teases. Cas is kicking his feet like a child that can't sit still.
"Sam says that 'small talk' is an important facet of human interaction," he explains. He could sit still. He could sit still here forever-next to Dean, just thumping his heels against the side of the porch-and be happy. He knows this inexorably, Castiel understands forever very well.
The shadows are growing imperceptibly longer. Lopsided shadows from gutted cars and jagged reaching shadows from trees. Soon they will disappear because the wind is chillier, closer, and the clouds will cover the setting sun.
Dean finally takes a long sip from his beer. It goes down like temperate poison, he cringes and sets it aside. Then he tips onto his back, pillowing his head on his arms, and breathes for a while. There is one shadow Castiel didn't account for. It is his shadow, and it falls across Dean's face. The shade is comforting to Dean. It reminds him that Castiel is solid and real. One more thing, on a very short list, that Dean can be completely sure of.
Cas reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone. Dean sits up when he sees it, blinking in lazy surprise.
"Dude, you still have that?"
Cas nods.
"Why?"
Cas shrugs. He flips it open and the screen lights up in the fading light. His service provider is AT&T.
Dean wonders if Cas flies all the way down to earth to charge that thing or if he's running it on Angel-juice. Cas wipes the screen with his thumb, his sharp gaze completely present on that one, two-inch by three-inch space. Three miles away, where Dean can't hear it (but Cas could if he tried), the rain begins to fall.
"I do not know why I kept it," Cas answers belatedly.
Dean lies back down without comment. He reaches into his pocket, while Cas is busy studying his personally redundant technology, and pulls out his own phone. His fingers stab at the buttons and then he puts it away again, humming to himself.
Twenty seconds later, Castiel's phone bings. His eyebrows go up in surprise, and he opens the text message.
It is, of course, from Dean Winchester. Who, in Castiel's contacts, is simply listed as DEAN, right between the only other two names: BOBBY and SAM. The bottle cap, far across the yard now, becomes trapped under the lip of an overturned bucket.
y o u r s t a i r w a y l i e s o n t h e w h i s p e r i n g w i n d. :P
Castiel frowns and leans over so Dean can see his puzzled face.
"My stairway to what?" he asks. And Dean grins up at him, the skin around his eyes crinkling.
"Heaven," he says, and laughs at the joke Castiel doesn't understand. Cas smiles anyway because he likes to hear Dean laugh.
In thirty seconds Sam will come out of the house and tell them that naptime is over because "The Mother of All" is somewhere fucking up somebody's day and Cas has a war to win. But Dean doesn't sit up yet and Castiel doesn't leave. Before that happens they will sit together, forgetting that there is no time for senseless grinning, and soak up every second like sunburn.
Like restlessly tapping fingertips, here comes the rain.
The writing is cramped and fills up all three postcards completely, there isn't room for another letter, another semicolon. That small part of the story is finished.
His coffee cup is empty. The writer sits straighter on his stool and smiles at the empty corner of the diner. The waitress is still in the back and she doesn't see him get up.
He leaves a generous tip and the postcards behind. His step is lighter now, as he walks across the tiled floor, and he looks less exhausted. He pauses with his hand on the handle of the door and looks up to the bell, holding a finger against his lips. When he opens the door, the bell doesn't ring.
In Farmington, New Hampshire a young man with a pen behind his ear walks out of a diner with no name on Mechanic Street.
fin