casperdisaster | IC Inbox (Hadriel)

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."

Okay, give Noah a second here.

"... It's porn, what's there to understand about it?" or not understand, as the case may be.

Okay, okay, that's not the point. Looking back up at Dean through the blonde shag of his bangs, Noah returns to his latin graffiti.

"Nobody's got it all figured out. Even dead people don't, it's just that everything that wasn't figured out stops mattering. Can't take it with you and all that jazz. Think of it like... Cas, Castiel. Think of it like if he was the one having this problem. You'd try to treat his feelings gently, wouldn't you?" Another pause, another word written, "The answer to that is 'yes' by the way, any other answer makes you an asshole."

Dean just sort of makes a cringey face, like he's never really understood that one, but what he's trying to imply here is that Cas doesn't get sex unto itself. Which is- y'know- kind of a concern. But not even something he wants to get into, because he's not going there, it complicates everything a hundred times over and he hasn't even gotten over himself yet.

Sex isn't even on the goddamn table when Dean can't even imagine saying the words to Cas in the first place.

Though, the question comes as a completely - highly amusing, mind you - distraction.

Dean almost laughs, though it's a stilted kind of sound, before he pinches the bridge of his nose. "When do I treat anyone's feelings gently." It's not a question; Dean doesn't tread lightly where anyone's emotions are involved, if only because he likes to pretend his own don't matter most of the time. Which makes it by far easier to tease other people when they feel things - it's all manner of twisted, he knows, but the amusement of it drains away after a second, because if Cas was the one having this problem, Dean would like to believe that he'd tell him to have whatever feelings he wanted.

"Still don't know if it's the word i'd use, but Cas-" He still can't find an easy way to explain too many years of complications, stuff them into one sentence, make all the things they've endured together simple. "He made out with a demon once. I've even seen the guy organize an orgy in another universe, and man- I didn't give a shit. Guy's allowed to do what he wants. It's not up to me to decide for him, that's always been true. I have always tried to give him that, can't say I've always done my best at it, though."

Noah's only really known two demons. One possessed him in a nasty nasty experience and looked like a dachshund sized wasp made of tar. The other was the Alcohol Demon that Noah met here. Noah considers the Alcohol Demon to be his closest friend he's made in Hadriel, but he doesn't really understand how to Human even if he mostly looks like one aside from the fact that everything that's under his clothes is apparently filigree metalwork and he has a freaky eternally smiling mask welded to his face. Or rather it is his face.

Needless to say, imagining either of them making out with someone is a little difficult for Noah to wrap his brain around.

"The point is to treat yourself with the same care and ease you'd give someone you care about. So - no one else gets to decide what it means to be Dean except Dean. And you've got the freedom to switch up what that means whenever you want."

Noah finally caps the pen again with that, graffiti finished. He had to use some of the other colors at the end to make up for running out of the gold.

CAELUM VIDERE IUSSIT, ET ERECTOS AD SIDERA TOLLERE VULTUS.

No one else gets to decide what it means to be Dean except Dean.

Now there's a fascinating concept. Not that Dean doesn't know how to be himself, but it doesn't change the fact that he spent more than half his life trying to be a certain someone. That someone being his father, a man he's been told more than a few times he's nothing alike. And yet he still is, in so many ways, or so he tells himself. Even if he isn't his father's little soldier, he still listens to his father's music, and he still has his father's job, and he still drives his father's car. He still nearly became his father with Lisa and Ben and that's something he hasn't been able to shake in years.

Except- not here. He doesn't have the job here, he's not really much of anything here other than the leftover parts of himself that he's not always so used to. And maybe that's why the drinking is so easy, because it's hard to be without the work and only have himself to deal with. There's no way to avoid a single thing, nothing to hide behind but himself.

Dean makes a noncommittal noise, though he's still thinking pretty damn hard. But at least Noah provides something of a distraction, Dean torquing his head around to read what it is that Noah's written.

"You gonna tell me what that means? Or do I have to guess."

Noah will allow the distraction - heavy conversations always need breathing points to them after all. He blows on the words to blow away any stray glitter and nods, reading the Latin aloud before translating.

"He bid them look at the sky and lift their faces to the stars. It's Ovid. One of my favorites, but that was only because I couldn't think of any good dick jokes. Latin's great for those. Ronan's got a bunch."

"You're serious. Why couldn't I learn that kinda latin, all I know is how to exorcise a demon frontwards and backwards."

Dean only sounds mildly offended by the fact that he doesn't know latin dick jokes. Because this is an important thing to be upset by, apparently. But he quirks a slight smile and looks back to the water, managing a centering breath. "Couldn't even tell you what half the shit means, I just spout it off."

Noah has only been sort of involved in one demon exorcism, but that one was a doozie. Latin was sort of involved but them being Latin students had been a thing for a while so that wasn't any more surprising than the cars being involved as well.

"Really? Does it work even if you don't know what you're saying?" Noah asks curiously before adding "I went to rich boy school. I was okay at Latin, but my best friend was great at it. He taught it for a bit."

"Works as long as you say the whole thing and say it right."

He shrugs - the sheer number of times he's performed an exorcism is almost ridiculous, but he doesn't say that because his life is still a mess apart from the whole 'who the fuck am I' ordeal. Everything is complicated and over the years he's convinced himself it's nothing anyone can stand to hear about, let alone should even be subjected to if they're not in the thick of it. Just like every part of his life that he's stowed away, tucked into some other part of himself where it remains hidden.

"Rich boy school, huh. Uniforms and classes and all that kinda shit?" Yes, Dean. There are in fact classes in school that you're supposed to attend.

Noah wouldn't mind, honestly. He would surely worry, but that's what friends do. Still, that badgering can wait until another day.

"Uniforms and classes and all that kinda shit," Noah confirmed. "I was killed in my uniform so I was stuck in it for seven years. Then I died in it here and was stuck in it for a few months again. The second I was alive again I ripped that sweater off and had it burned."

Dean grimaces for more reasons than one, his expression morphing into something nearly apologetic. It's gotten easier, over the years, to deal with death, but it's never easy. It's never fair. But it is what it is and Dean's good enough at handling it casually that he hardly skips a beat.

"Sweater vests should be illegal. Things are scarier than any actual schooling you gotta do." Dean shrugs, casual enough about the fact that he thinks school is all kinds of bullshit. It's just out of range of things that he cares about. "Not that I ever went anywhere that had uniforms, was out of our pay grade."

"It was out of most people's pay grades. Oil barons sons and actor's illegitimate kids, that kinda deal."

Only the bluest of blood for Aglionby, unless you managed to be as smart as Adam Parrish and worked yourself to the bone to make up for the difference on top of that.

"AND really competitive. Anything lower than like a B- and you got kicked out. You had to be obscenely rich even among the rich to get away with failing and still attending. My best friend from home now, his family has the money but he can't stand it. He's not really a uniform school type of person either. Great at Latin, though."

Dean about barks a laugh at all the stats he suddenly feels like he's facing, as if he's suddenly up against the ominous walls of a school all over again, facing down his imminent failures as a student. It's ridiculous and yet funny at the same time to think that people can expect that much out of kids. Or maybe it's just amusing because he was never smart enough, never cared enough to get by. Maybe if he'd tried, but he hadn't, and there's no changing that now.

"Different strokes. Or maybe just different bank accounts, not enough credit card scams in the world would'a gotten me into a place like that. Besides, don't think I saw anything about a C my entire life."

Didn't help that they never stayed in one place long enough for it to matter, but Sammy always made it work when Dean couldn't find it in him. And that's gotta mean something unto itself.

"Never gave enough fucks about school. Got a GED after I dropped out and never looked back."

IC Inbox (Hadriel)

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