casperdisaster | IC Inbox (Hadriel)

i might yeah

is it alcohol or shenanigan related?

alcohol. im all outta shenanigans

you bring alcohol and i'll bring extra shenanagins, you can spot me back later. meet at bar or someplace else?

gettin kinda sick of our bar, but im not sure ive got anywhere better

oh!! oh!!! bridge!! we can look at the creepy eyeless cave fish!!!

hey ok im sold, ill be there in twenty

i'll meet you there!

Noah brings the shenanagins that he can think of - which isn't much, as his supply of glitter glue is running low.

He none the less arrives as quick as he's able with his skateboard (modified with said glitter glue and duct tape, 'FUCK' written in sparkly pink cursive on the underside) and extra glitter glue in his pockets, as well as some stale bread to throw to the creepy eyeless cave fish. They're so awful. Throwing bread at them is super fun.

"Dean?" he calls as he approaches, in case Dean is already there and hears a person approaching and gets spooked. Never can tell with the actual action-y types.

Of all things, Dean could do with a good dousing of glitter glue, let's be real.

But boy, does he ever hussle to the bridge - as best as he can at least, his bottle of whiskey in tow, a fresh one considering the way he's been pounding through them lately. All his empty bottles keep seemingly disappearing though, an oddity he's only vaguely aware of when it comes to whether or not he's being judged for his habit but he doesn't give a rip, he can't be bothered to stop and consider whether or not someone is tracking his habit.

Instead he just gets to the bridge and hunkers in to stay, only having a few moments before the roll of a skateboard skitters to a stop and a voice can be heard coming up from the distance. Dean lifts his chin and strains forward, waiting for Noah to make his appearance.

"Hey, over here-"

Noah kicks off the edge of what was probably the sidewalk once, rolling up to Dean before he stops, stomps on the edge of the skateboard and kicks it up into his hands.

Skateboarding, swimming. The body isn't the one he lost but it remembers what that one did. Not that he's gotten to try the swimming. Some of the cave fish like meat, according to their resident animal whisperer, and Noah is not about to test that out.

Instead Noah empties the contents of his pockets on the bridge next to Dean - three glitter glue pens (bright blue, gold, pink). When he sets down his bag he takes out a few small rolls of stale bread to add to the pile.

"The cave fish eat it. Some of them do," Noah explains. That done, he hunkers down next to Dean. He doesn't pick up the exacts right away, but he can feel the distress coming off of him in waves.

Ah, well. Noah had kind of expected there might be something wrong.

"How you doing?"

A smile flickers into place for a moment as Noah kicks his skateboard into his hands before he proceeds to watch the kid empty his pockets, trying to scavenge out something akin to a laugh at the odd assortment he drops. As if he grabbed the first things he saw before leaving the house. He's not sure what the glitter glue pens have to do with anything, but at least the bread makes sense - he's all for the idea of feeding the fish for some odd reason, though he can't parse out why and doesn't feel like trying to.

Maybe it sounds soothing. He doesn't know. At this point, he's willing to take just about any distraction offered and run with it without question.

Nodding a bit as he listens, Dean peers on over into the water, as if all the fish might come surfacing in an instant. But he's looking back after a moment, cracking open the bottle of whiskey on cue. As if it's already calling his name, begging to have its entrance made, inserted into the moment because right now he just can't go without.

"I dunno. Been better. You?" It's easy to volley back the question while he takes a swig of booze, eyebrows lifted from behind the bottle. He even wants to talk and he's still trying to hide, an ingrained method of communicating fogging him over and making it that much harder to find a way to form necessary words.

While Dean drinks, Noah grabs one of the small rolls and begins to tear it into smaller pieces to throw into the dark water below. He can't talk to the fish like Amos can, but it seems like if food appears they will eventually too. Or he'll just be littering in the river.

Whatever works, right? Any way to pass the time.

He's not sure at first if he should press the issue or to give on the push back. Unsurprisingly he chooses the second option after a few seconds of thought. Noah always bends to the incoming winds, it's just in his nature.

And sometimes people are more willing to talk if you spill your problems first, to know that you're not in better shape.

"It's kinda weird. Like, totally fucked but I'm... kinda happy I guess? My friends went home for a few days then came back. Like months passed while they were gone for them though." Noah sighs, deeply. He pauses throwing the bread into the river. He already explained the 'dead back home' thing to Dean, at least, so he doesn't have to turn this into a long story. He holds out his hand for the bottle.

"I got to tell one of them that he's never going to see me again. I'm gone for good where he is in his timeline. After this place? No more Noah."

Dean's pretty sure it doesn't count as littering as long as the food eventually, what- dissolves? Who knows, he isn't judging. But he's only half paying attention to the feeding of the fish in the way he told himself he should be, in that it somehow matters just because he wants it to. God, why can't this just be about feeding fish, why can't it be simple, why can't he stop hurting for long enough for something small and trivial to be just that without Dean trying to cling to it like a liferaft.

Watching as the bits of bread get tossed into the water, Dean takes a second swig before he finally looks back and starts listening to Noah speak, insteading choosing to hang on to his words. It's like an offering, this passing between them, and Dean is more than happy to take what's being given here as a first step.

He's not good at sharing first, at saying I have a problem, at asking for help. He doesn't know how to hand himself over on a platter without feeling like a shit head, knowing he has no right to pass around his problems without reason. And so, somehow, it's easier when it's a shared experience, when it's not just him begging off his pain like a desperate attempt to rid himself of a second skin that just doesn't fit right. And so Dean listens because it's all he can do, cringing a bit at his words as he hands over the bottle when Noah silently asks.

"Shit, seriously?" Dean's not sure which part of this sounds any better than the rest, though at least he's happy - that at least makes up for the crappy parts of it. "Time going weird never makes that thing any easier." It's halfway mumbled from experience, but this isn't his story, it's Noah's and he's firmly paying attention.

"How'd they take it?"

Noah gives the sad smile that says 'not well' but probably 'well enough, all things considered'.

This place at least gives them time for the goodbyes his friends didn't need to know they had to make.

He takes a drink from the bottle before answering, coughing at the burn of the whiskey. Noah's not a whiskey drinker by nature, he prefers candy-colored and flavored liquors that hit like a freight train but taste like an ice cream sundae.

Then he takes another drink, then hands it back over. Well, it's warming him up fast enough. Taking the bread up again, Noah tears what's left in half and offers half to Dean, looking out at the water. There's little shadowy movements there. Probably the cave fish. Noah's kind of hoping it's just cave fish. Who knows what other horrors could be lurking here?

Something had to kill the people that came before them, right? God, that's an unpleasant thought. He's going to ignore it for now.

"We're going to make the most of what we have. I gave my life to him anyway - I wasn't supposed to die that day, he was, but I was murdered so... I gave him a second chance. That's kind of awesome, isn't it?" It isn't sarcasm, Noah's question. He couldn't remember everything before, but he wanted to believe that if he had a choice he would have chosen to save his friend.

Turns out it was his choice, and he did.

"They're alive, they're - they're not happy, but they've got a chance to be. A future. You know, a little bit ago, we got these - these mirrors. Old timey hand mirrors, you know? And they showed futures. They were... our most hopeful future. I guess what we wanted the most, in accordance with what we believed was actually possible. Mine came true."

The alcohol doesn't make Noah chatty, he's chatty anyway, and it does feel good to unburden himself with the two-birds-one-stone deal of showing Dean that he's got nothing to worry about in doing the same.

The bit of tears to go with the sad smile, well, he'll blame the booze and he figures Dean will not call him out.

"Kind of fucked, huh? The others, they had futures where I was somehow alive again. Mine was the only one that showed me dead and - and almost gone. I guess even when I couldn't remember, I still knew. There's no coming back from that. But they got through it. And they're gonna be okay."

He turns to Dean again, smiling. It's a sad smile, but the sadness is a familiar friend by now.

"Your turn, so I don't feel like a dick."

Dean tries not to fall prey to the amusement of the fact that whiskey isn't Noah's drink - now isn't the time for that he knows it and so he stuffs that snicker away, staring out instead into the water. Not everyone has to drink the shit he downs like water, and besides, it's not the point of this, even if getting drunk is the point the Dean. It's all he can seemingly muster right now, all he can manage in the face of not knowing himself, in not understanding.

And he can listen.

So he does.

Head bowed, he takes in Noah's story and lets it roll through his mind. What it is to die, but more importantly: to die for someone else. The feeling of watching your own life seeping away in favor of someone else's, the knowledge that you gave someone another day, another breath, another year. It's a thing that can't be replicated, something that can't be explained in finite terms and yet here it is, so seemingly simple that it makes Dean offer a sympathetic smile.

"It's pretty awesome, yeah." It's a legitimate offering, soft words that Dean manages while glancing over. Because it's one thing to save a life through selling your soul, to bring it back and keep it whole once more, but it's another to simply let the moment roll over you. To be murdered, to have your life taken in someone's stead. They're different stories, similar outcomes, and Dean can only understand what it is to give someone more, to know that you've let someone live, given them a future, their world.

Granted, the mirror thing sounds a touch concerning - magic or a curse or something, Dean doesn't know. But he refrains comment on the mysticism of it, instead letting concern fracture his features as his gaze washes over Noah, just taking him in.

He's not sure it's fucked. Complicated, sure. Painful, definitely. But fucked?

"Sometimes you gotta appreciate just knowing."

It's the best he's got in reply, before Noah turns and looks back to him. In a bad case of the nerves, Dean takes another swig of his drink and looks off at nothing, knowing that Noah's right: it's his turn. Fess up, Dean, you wanted this. You wanted to talk, and now he doesn't know what to say and he all but laughs because he can't find the words to explain after that. It feels stupid and worthless and empty, and he should be old enough to know himself by now.

"I, ah-" Dean hesitates and then loses it, his grasp. Not that he had a particularly good one to begin with, but he had nothing and so he says nothing, licking his lips and trying for words in his head only to come up empty. Instead, he chooses to look over into the shadows of the water, hoping he'll catch something breaching the surface, knowing he's the one who should be offering words from the deep. "I dunno."

Noah gives a thoughtful hum at Dean's non-answer, reaching out to gasp the gold glitter-glue marker and uncap it, writing in careful slow strokes on the ground at the edge of the bridge before the water.

"If you don't want to talk about it, it's okay," Noah says quietly, focusing on the task at hand. Every place needs some good latin graffiti. "But I am a good listener, and it isn't really my job to tell other people's secrets."

That's only a half-truth - If something needs to be said to help a person along he'll do it, but he won't spill them unless he has reason to believe it will help them. He imagines it must be something Dean does want to talk about though, if he called Noah out here. Noah can wait until he works through it, though. Sometimes the journey itself is what matters most.

It isn't that he doesn't want to talk about it - if he still didn't, he would have continued to say nothing. Would have kept kept clamming himself up until his lid popped, until there was smoke pouring out of his ears from the effort it required to keep himself wobbling precariously on all the self deception he was so desperately balanced upon. He knows what he wants to say, and there's a million and one words that are waiting for the right moment. Except Dean keeps telling himself there's never a right enough moment. There's never a right enough way to reveal that he's broken, that he's wrong, that he's not the man he always thought he was.

Staring forward, halfway avoiding Noah's words but still letting them settle on his shoulders, Dean just keeps looking down at the water as if it'll provide the answers Dean can find nowhere else. But that's why he's here, isn't it? Because for some reason he trusts this kid with something he can't even admit to Sam, believes that he won't kick him to the curb for this oddity that he's becoming and he doesn't know why but he needs someone to listen. He needs someone to hear him that won't brush it aside as if it's obvious, as if they know better, as if it's not the big deal that he knows it is. It's not simple, this entire thing, and it's larger than even Dean knows how to cope with.

It sure as hell isn't the apocalypse and yet it feels like one, as if the end of his world is looming just over the edge, the end of his ability to know himself and what it is and who he is against the people he loves.

And maybe all he wants to hear is a response that isn't quite so sharp, quite so snarky. Quite so painful, against the sharp agony already beneath his ribs that he's fucked up. That he isn't broken for this thing that he's become and for some stupid reason he can already feel hot tears behind his eyes and it's just that stupid. He's just that lost, confused as to why and why now and of course it's Cas, but why. Why is he so sure he's going to lose it all just because of this one singular feeling, this one thing that's so overwhelming he can't come out from underneath it. Because love is one thing to Dean: it's loss, and loving Cas means losing him and he swore it all off years ago. Love was not a thing meant for him, he ruined it all, destroyed it, broke people in his wake and left nothing but ash.

But he couldn't escape this, and Dean rubs a hand across his eyes, furious and agonized, somehow feeling wrath from others that only truly comes from himself.

"Think i'm in love with my best friend."

He spits it out fast and suddenly it's just there, hanging in the air in front of him, and Dean is halfway inclined to get up and walk away in an instant, leave behind the shadow of his words in his wake. Because suddenly he's sure he's shaking, and he takes a longer drink than even he can stand before he heave in a breath and there it is. He said it. And it hurts, that he's done nothing about it, that it's there and it lingers and it's so overwhelming he can't breathe at night any longer. But it's a fact and he's holding it out as best as he can, asking for help without saying the words.

It's such a vulnerable thing to admit, to lay your heart bare like that. Noah's not sure he's done anything to earn the trust he's been given here - for the trust that comes from someone who doesn't trust easily.

It makes him think of Ronan again, of Ronan and Adam and it makes sense suddenly why Noah became fond of Dean so quickly. He can see all the little similarities between his beloved friend and his new one.

"Well," Noah starts, pausing his writing to give Dean his full attention while keeping any kind of judgement out of his voice. It's a difficult balance to reach, acting like it's no big deal while making sure you give it the necessary attention and care.

Really, Noah thinks the angel thing would be more complicated than the guy thing, but everyone is different. "Does he feel the same?"

Dean knows he should be telling this to someone else - or no one at all, maybe - but there is nobody else. Nobody else he can think of who might be able to react the way he needs. Everyone keeps forcing it down his throat as if it should be simple, should be a joke, should be something he knows how to deal with on some obvious level but it isn't. Just like he knows the answer to Noah's question will make it seem that way.

As if it's somehow easy when that's the last thing it is.

He's not gay, he wants to say. It's the only words he wants to give now, that he's not gay, and it makes him feel like an asshole, confused and broken because he knows there's only so many times you can say something before it somehow loses its meaning. Dean just can't find the right words, can't find the things that are meant to help him explain himself when he more often than not says nothing at all. Because it's Lisa and Cassie, it's not understanding how to even deal with love yet alone how it feels to come on the heels of a man. Dean's lost himself somewhere in the mess of it, the terror of it and for a few seconds he starts to shake his head as if it's the answer to the question.

But no, he's just trying to come to terms with being able to stand himself with this, with not automatically spitting out the regrets he wants to say and instead living with the words, struck dumb by himself and scared.

"I think so, yeah." Cas got a goddamn boner he wants to say, of course he wants him, that's been obvious for days now. And maybe he missed the signs before then, maybe his inability to tap into it means he's pushed it all away and god, that's scary too. His mind so badly doesn't want to see love dripping through the cracks that he's shielded himself from it, held up his palms so he doesn't have to admit to himself and yet it's maybe been there from the start, from the second Cas burned his grasp into his skin.

"But it's not-"

It's not easy, but boy that sounds dickish out loud and so the words hang because Dean can't make himself say what he's so sure is already obvious. If it was easy he wouldn't be here, he'd be fucking Cas, be doing something else other than trying to defy the laws of nature with his attempts to crush into every space between his breaths that he's sure he's not gay. He's not. He's really not.

"Hm." That's all Noah says at first, a ponderous 'hm', looking back down at the ground while he resumes his careful writing with as steady a hand as he can manage, brows furrowed in concentration and obvious thought. CAELUM VIDERE IUSSIT, ET begins to take form in the glittery writing. He's going to run out of this marker writing this, but he's had them for a while. It's use them or let the glue dry out unused.

That's probably a metaphor.

"My best friend is gay," Noah says, finally, only glancing up from his work for a moment, "And he's basically the coolest person ever."

Noah has the lingering feeling no one gave Dean the 'it's okay to be gay' speech, so he wanted to just get that part out of the way.

"But there's a lot more than just 'straight' and 'gay'. Bunch more. It doesn't really define you unless you want it to. Like, geeze, it's 2013. ... Or it was when I left. I think. Liner time is not a thing that really applied to me then so I get a little fuzzy about exacts."

It isn't as simple as just 'well there's no problem, go for it homeboy'. If it was that simple Dean would be back home making out with his buddy on the couch since the feelings are reasonably certain to be returned. That means he needs something else, some kind of cosmic absolution about his own desires.

... Noah's also pretty sure in that case the angel would make it okay, but it's also not happening to him, so he can see how that would complicate things.

Dean can only think that the 'hm' is somehow less ominous than he expected it to be. Less blatant, not the kind of egging everyone's been drowning him in. As if it should somehow be so obvious that if Cas adores him as much as Dean isn't even saying, then he should be back there, fucking his brains out or perhaps not even going to that extreme. He doesn't know, but part of him wants to drop his face into his hands and shake his head until this goes away because he knows how it sounds.

He knows it sounds easy, like people keep making the joke out to be. But no one understands the webs he's weaved over the years, and nobody understands the complications that ride beneath the surface. At the very least, Dean wants to thank god that Noah's going easy on him for knowingly making things as complicated as they've become.

Glancing over though, Dean does manage to cant his head and try to look at what Noah's writing with the glitter glue. He doesn't have a clue - his latin sucks, he only knows exorcisms by heart. The rest is all a mess and he wants to ask what it says but the words won't come yet, his confusion simply hanging in the air with the rest of it. Though- what Noah says has Dean lifting his features and almost laughing. Of course Noah's best friend is gay. Of course he is.

And yet Dean's inclination is still to spit out the rather finite words: I'm not fucking gay.

As if it's an insult, as if there's something wrong with it. There isn't, and yet that's another thing. Dean doesn't have an issue with people being not-straight. He doesn't. Makes him feel a little awkward inside and he's always acknowledged that as a me-against-them kind of thing. But now he has to wonder if it's because he's been all the while, some deep seated self hatred thing that even now springs free unapologetically. He just can't stand the idea that he's... something else. Something other than all the things he always told himself to be.

"2013 for me too." It's the first thing he grumbles, an escape from the point at hand as he drowns himself in another gulp of whiskey and thinks of something, well, a little more pertinent to say.

"Not like I give a shit what other people think, that's not it. I mean, my dad--" He stops there before he goes any further, clears his throat, and acknowledges mentally the fact that his father would murder him. But that's a whole 'nother topic and then some and Dean exhales a puff of air, runs his fingers through his hair.

"My dad's not the point. Man's dead and gone, anyway. Just can't stand thinking that I got it wrong this whole fucking time. Specially when Cas-" He shakes his head, stares off at nothing in particular. "I'm not giving that away."

The next carefully written word is ERECTOS, which under any other circumstances would have Noah giggling. He stays quiet though, listens to Dean's words, to the words bubbling just below the surface, the feelings that are something naturally unrestrained and amorphous and can't find the proper ties to bind them into a saying that makes sense.

"You had an idea of who - of what you were. Now you're finding out that might have been incorrect. Even if it's for something small," AD next, small like the word, "It's still a frightening thing, to not know what you are."

It's not telling someone else their own secret. It isn't a secret to Dean anymore, he just needs someone else to say it aloud, maybe.

"Especially when you're older. Like, there's all this stuff about making it okay for teenagers to wonder who they are, what they are, but you're always kind of expected to have your shit together as an adult. But now you have to deal with the idea that all these people you easily categorized as 'not like me' you'll have to recategorize them all to 'maybe like me'... that sound right?"

Goddammit, Noah.

But no, really- Dean appreciates this more than perhaps anything else. Though it isn't talking to Sam, it's a start. It's something, and Noah gets it far past the teasing and the torments and the nudges that he should be the one to lend Cas a hand. As if it's somehow this simple thing that he should jump into, this new idea of himself, terrifying and weird and wrong. But not wrong.

Except Dean's idea of the world has always been black or white. It's always been this or that, me or the other. And he always fit into one category, placed himself into a specific box and now he's sure that something's clawed its way inside. Something he never really expected or maybe pushed away harder than he should've. Maybe it was there the whole time - he doesn't know. He can't figure it out and he's spent hours doing everything he can to not think about it. To not investigate whatever deep seated things he's refused to be.

"That sounds about right, yeah."

Dean can barely get out the words, they're tight enough in his throat that he's sure he's going to cry all over again like an idiot, like some failed human in his own right. It's broken, he keeps telling himself, he's broken, and he just can't figure out where the cracks begin if they never fucking end.

"I did the teenager thing already and i'm pretty sure it wasn't as confusing as this shit." At least he's being honest and that's more than where he usually stands, but he's liked Noah from the start and that's something. It's more than he can usually say for people, even if they're half his age but right now he just can't make that matter. Noah gets it and it's a relief and terrifying all at once, but at least he's saying it out loud. At least it's something.

"But hey, one night stands never had to make sense."

Noah grins a little, glancing up.

“True that,” Not that Noah remembers any of his one night stands, but he remembers that he didn’t like to be alone, he remembers being more vibrant, more outgoing, more flirtatious in life. He probably had at least a few.

“Can I offer you some advice?” Noah continues on without actually giving Dean time to reply. Dean asked Noah out here in the first place, this is the price for the listening. “You gotta cut yourself some slack. Cognitive dissonance is no one’s friend. So maybe like… give yourself a blank slate to work with. Everything here,” Noah pauses in his writing to gesture across the water, the caves, the city as a whole “This is extra time. Like a bonus round. Accept that who you are now is different than who you were yesterday, last month, last year. That’s not a bad thing, Dean. Everyone changes as they grow, it doesn’t make you broken. Take it from a dead kid - growing, that’s part of being alive. Who you were before and who you are now, they can both be true.”

Dean probably would've resisted the whole advice thing if he could have. Waved his hands about as if he could, done something to say it was okay, he was good, Noah didn't have to do more than he was already doing. But he's caught off guard with his near inability to speak in the first place and instead just manages to glance over in time, eyebrows raised with something like expectation.

And he earns something that sort of, maybe just a little bit, blows him away.

Cutting himself some slack? That's something that feels like a near impossibility, a thing he can hardly grasp because Dean doesn't know how to give himself an inch let alone a Cas. He's harder on himself than anyone else and he knows it, but it's because he's said it a million times before: he has to be. Nobody should cut him slack, should allow him the mistakes he's made and the shit he's done. He shouldn't be allowed a thing like love ever again, and he shouldn't be handed the world because he doesn't deserve it.

But it's even more complex than that... and yet not at all. Dean watches the sweeping hand gesture and thinks that Noah's right. This place is out of time in a way he's never experienced before. Not like Hell and not like Purgatory but just misplaced, untouched in a way that's oddly confusing. And yet the time of it doesn't matter so much as the fact that it's here in the first place, that he should be able to assess it as an opportunity instead of a failure, a mistake on his part to try to be something he's not.

"Who'd have thought dead kids could actually give the best advice. And i've met a few." It's the best he can do at teasing, because brushing aside the seriousness is all he can manage to do. But it doesn't feel right either and he ducks his face a bit, scrubbing at his eyes, trying for words that mean more when he's so bad at finding them to begin with.

"Believe me, if I could cut myself some slack, I would'a done it years ago. But I just keep thinkin' that I thought I had all this love crap figured out." In that he didn't believe in it anymore, really. "And Cas? Like what, that just makes it three times more complicated, I had to pick the one angel who doesn't even understand porn. But I dunno, maybe it makes sense that it's here. Somewhere different. Too busy dealing with crap back home and it's here I can actually get a look at the guy."

IC Inbox (Hadriel)

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