Writings yaaaaay
This is not about ponies. You do not know how hard it is to not write about ponies. I love ponies. My Little Pony returns this Saturday. I am writing about ponies now. DAMMIT. Anyway. Here's a fic, completely unrevised and... You know, I always hated writing in present tense because you very rarely see published words written in present tense. I still hate writing in present tense, but it fit the tone. Or something. Have a bunch of literary terms and shit, everypony. I'm going to eat ice cream instead of fixing this.
(EDIT: Lj why do you keep putting my lj-cut above the random shit I write at the top you meanypants? It interferes with the wonderful aesthetic quali--no, that's BS, it just pisses me off.)
Title: Shotgun
Author: zarii
Rating: PG-13 for swearing
Genre and/or Pairing: ANGST... and Dean/Cas pre-slash
Spoilers: Up to and including 6.22
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~1600
Summary: Any Firefly fans remember how Serenity was considered the tenth character? Well, the Impala's like that. You ride shotgun, she tells.
The highway may as well stretch on forever. It's four lanes, and there are enough cars on it to make the speed limit posting more of a rule and less of a challenge. Tonight they ride with lights on and music off.
"If we'd taken the exit back there we could've avoided the traffic."
"You're doing sixty. It's not like rush hour in LA." Sam can talk about that. He remembers sitting through morning traffic with a Starbucks latte that Dean would call a girly drink. He remembers the stop-start of a freeway that people called a parking lot.
"We're behind a minivan and there's an asshole in a pickup with ram horns so we can't pass. Next time we're taking the exit." Dean knows they won't, next time. It gives them something to talk about though, and it's better than the brooding silences heavy with worry over... Everything.
"So cut him off," says Sam. "You'd cut off a bus full of nuns."
"I did that once." The Impala accelerates smoothly, coming within inches of the minivan's rear bumper, and he pulls off to the right just in front of the pickup. Most nights he wouldn't risk any harm to his baby. Tonight's too quiet. "I think one of them swore at me."
Sam shakes his head, because it's his brotherly duty.
They pull off forty miles later for a bathroom break and driver switch. Sam's in the tiny rest stop bathroom that probably should be condemned and Dean is taking a look at the map with a flashlight, trying to determine whether or not they should try to go another fifty miles or stop halfway, when Cas shows up in the passenger seat.
"I thought you couldn't find us," Dean says, because Cas hasn't gotten the hang of a proper greeting anyway (and Sam keeps asking whose fault that is, like Dean should know if angels learn manners in heaven).
"Your car is not unremarkable." Cas leans over and examines the map for a moment. "The haunting or the werewolf?" he asks.
Dean points to a town on the map. "Haunting. The werewolf?"
"Sixty miles northeast of here." Cas looks away from the map and turns his gaze toward the ugly concrete block which should have biohazard signs all over it.
"Maybe we'll take a look," says Dean. He wonders for a moment if Cas has any input on where they should stop for the night. He wonders why he should care.
"You need rest, Dean," says Cas, gaze now focused on the hunter. Their eyes meet for a moment, and then Cas is gone.
It's probably the best answer he was going to get.
Usually Sam sleeps in the front seat. There's more legroom, he says. Dean doesn't argue with that, 'cause it's true. But there are stitches on his right side, the result of practically being mauled, and it hurts to lean that way. He sits in the back, leaning over with his legs stretched out to the side, and sleeps in a painkiller-induced slumber. Dean doesn't even feel the need to check the rearview mirror every ten minutes, Sam looks so peaceful.
Dean envies him.
He's got his eyes on the road when Cas appears in the front seat next to him.
"Hello, Dean."
"Sammy's sleeping," Dean says, his voice hushed. He can see Cas's eyes flick back for a moment before resting on Dean again.
"I will not wake him." Cas looks out at the road. It's nearly empty at 11 PM in the middle of nowhere. Dean doesn't bother asking how Cas found them this time, because even falling angels can see a black car at night.
For a while, the only sound is the wind around the car and the tires on the road and the gentle growling of the motor.
"Why?"
Cas doesn't look surprised by the question. He doesn't even look confused. He just keeps staring at the road. He's quiet until the next sign comes up on the highway. "Sometimes I'm too alone."
"I can find you another hooker if that's it," says Dean. Cas sighs loudly and leaves, and Dean can't help but think that the sound of wings was a little more frustrated somehow.
When the dreams of Hell become all too real, he sits by the car. She was never in Hell, never in those dreams. He dreamed of torturing people he knew and people he didn't. People he'd saved, and people who'd died on hunts. Family. And sometimes the rack would all but disappear and he'd see a bright light, sunlight, and then he'd hold his hand up to shade his eyes and the blood would drip down into them and Alistair's laugh would drown out even the returning screams of the damned, and Dean would know he was still in Hell.
But the Impala never was. She's comforting. She's the solid strength behind Dean, and sometimes he thinks he draws on her too much.
It doesn't matter, on nights when he can't sleep, because he can lean against her grill and run his fingers gently over the chrome and let the smell of motor oil and gasoline soothe him, let his memories get buried under the pleasant buzz of alcohol in the pack of beer he's taken from the trunk.
"May I join you?"
Dean isn't surprised that Cas is there. They'd called late at night, when the only results of researching were sore eyes and fifty useless websites. He hands a beer to Cas wordlessly.
The air is humid and the beers aren't cold. It really doesn't matter. The lights on the road and the motel make it too bright to see any stars. Cas points this out, and asks why humans see the need for light pollution.
"They're afraid," says Dean, with a sort of depth to the words that surprises himself.
Cas takes it deeper by asking if they're afraid of the dark or of infinity.
"Ask Sam," Dean says, because he's worn out his profundity.
"I'm asking you." Cas turns his eyes from the blank black sky to Dean's face, and Dean looks back. He thinks there's something infinite about Cas's eyes, how impossibly blue they are even in the dark.
"The dark is a hunter's answer," he says at last, looking down at his fist clenching the neck of the bottle. "Infinity is an angel's."
They drink until the lights on the highway go out.
Sam's off pretending to be FBI and Dean's looking around the town until lunch, when he drives to the diner where he and Sam are supposed to meet up. Sam texts him to say he's caught up with the teary wife of one of the victims and they can meet at the motel.
Dean doesn't want to eat alone. He takes his food and sits in the Impala and calls Cas, because the angel would probably pop right into the diner instead of walking through the door.
"Why?" It's Cas asking this time.
"Sometimes I'm too alone." Dean pushes the hamburger towards Cas. "Eat up. Then you can go back to your scavenger hunt for the big kahuna."
To Dean's surprise, Cas doesn't turn down the food and doesn't wearily say that he's searching for God and it's not a joke.
"Thank you," Cas says.
"Any time," says Dean, but the angel has already left, and Dean is full, but somehow he feels empty.
"Cas... Are you god?" For a few seconds, Dean hopes Cas is, hopes that the angel he's come to see as family is actually god, is powerful enough to free Sammy from the pit, is omniscient and can understand the turmoil without words.
Cas smiles. "That's a nice compliment, but no."
His eyes are dark.
They ride in the Impala in silence for a while, Dean thinking about what he's lost and Cas thinking about what he's gained. Dean asks him what he'll do.
Cas can hear everything. When he was falling, he had learned what silence was. He can hear Dean's breathing and his heartbeat. He can hear the Impala's purrs of content that Dean's driving, but he can also hear her quiet wariness of Cas himself, and her sadness that Sam's not there.
He listens to heaven and says he'll return there. That's where everyone else is, after all.
"So what, you're the new sheriff in town?" Dean asks.
Cas considers this. "I like that." Up in heaven, he can hear chaos. "Yeah. I suppose I am."
"Wow. God gives you a brand-new shiny set of wings and suddenly you're his bitch again."
Cas can hear everything but the words Dean wishes he wasn't too broken to say. "I don't know what god wants." Dean's silently begging him not to go in the only way he can remember, now that he's lost his brother. "I don't know if he'll even return." This is a lie. "It just... Seems like the right thing to do."
Dean's pushing Cas away when he wants him here.
Sometimes he's too alone. He doesn't get a chance to say it, because Cas disappears, probably going up to heaven, and Dean growls, "You really suck at goodbyes, you know that?"
Nobody taught him greetings, anyway.
Cas doesn't lie when he says that most of the time, he'd rather be with Dean. But he doesn't say who he's spending time with instead. He doesn't say how he got into this mess.
Dean doesn't say that Cas should forget it all and stay in the car tonight while the Impala drives for miles in the heart of America. He doesn't ask Cas to stay, because he's never known how. He always leaves by morning. Cas leaves before the end of a conversation, like maybe he doesn't want to hear Dean say it.
The demons flip the Impala onto her back and she lies there like an overturned turtle, suffering. She doesn't know what is happening inside that warehouse.
"I'm your new God. A better one."
His eyes are dark.