A/N: Hello there, my readers. This is not my first fanfic. Please, still go easy on me, I have no faith in my writing. Harhar. Anyway, usual rules apply- constructive criticism, unless you want a constructively soul-wrenching reply. I sleep with one eye open.
Just kidding.
Anyway, this story(warning alert) includes child abuse, mentions of sexual abuse(possibly slight, possibly more than slight), 9/11, gay men falling in love, sex, romance, overly protective relationships, a shit ton of heartbreak, John Winchester's life, and things as such. If you have a lot of trigger warnings, I suggest not reading it.
Anyway, so yeah, that's all.
Mainly this story is about a bunch of bad things happening to good people, coping with said bad things, and only getting sort of happy about it. Yep.
I'm bad at rating things, so let's just say that you were warned about what's to come, and it will remain at 'T' until explicit parts come into play. Yep. That's it.
Also, the rest of the story won't be written in the weird second person, only in the prologue and other times as such.
Full Summary:
Does it ever rain in Kansas?
Rarely, if ever, and when it does it pours and crazy wild winds turn you in brand new directions. Dean Winchester finds himself being consumed by thoughts about the world. Sam's growing up, and he realizes that he's going to have to, too. Hopefully later than sooner. For now, though, there's Castiel with his blue eyes and weird dark hair, and when they're together, Dean can't breathe. Will he hide from the storm, or will he let it pour?
You hear people talk. They talk all the time, about anything and everything, and they do it for no reason other than the fact that they're allowed to. It's in the law, for Christ's sake, so yeah, people talk. There's a difference though, between hearing people talk, and hearing people talk about you. When it's about you, you can feel it. The sly glances that move over your slouching body at the grocery store. The loud voices suddenly growing hushed when you walk into the room. The quiet sighs that women and teenage girls do, when they dream of having a future with you, and worse, 'understanding' you.
Regardless, they're all saying the same thing; 'John Winchester is gone.'
When they're not talking about you, they're lying. They're spreading bullshit about hope and tomorrow, what outlook you should have on life, and everything on the wide, philosophical line in between.
Well, here's some advice that's really worth listening to;
Forget what they tell you in elementary school. There is no hope for your future; you never had any actual control over what's to become of you. You're never going to be president. Your chances of your horribly named garage band making it big time are slimmer that Paris Hilton's waistline. Really, you'll probably end up working at the Burger Barn down the street until you're 48, and pull your back after trying to flip the patties in some impressible manner. You're married by then, but you've got a thing for the younger girl that moved next door, and your wife notices. She's frustrated, but she won't tell you that. Either because it wasn't your fault that you fell out of love with her long ago, or she blames your romantic slump on the fact that you got laid off. Again. How was she to know that you never had a romantic bone in your body?
You get drunker than you did in your teen years, which really is saying something, because you were probably wasted more times than not in those years. Mostly though, you feel more alone than ever. You revert to the anti-social behaviors that you had back in high school; the same ones that convinced you to quit football, and school while you're at it, and go after the GED you never quite finished up on. Although you still occasionally attend one of now dirt-old Coach Henriksen's barbeques, it's only because he knew your dad before he disappeared.
John Winchester is gone.
You hate thinking about your dad, because he really did ruin your life. I mean, after the early death of your mother, he's been a wreck and a drunk, and you've been raising your little brother on your own since you could tie your own shoe laces.
John Winchester is gone.
Him leaving last year was both a gift and a curse; a gift because there was no more need to sneak around the house, no worry about getting caught and dodging bottles and a curse, because although this was true, the steady flow of income you once had from his retirement check and occasional hours at the same garage you work at today are gone. The worst part is that you ended up saying goodbye to the aforementioned brother leaves high school and heads off to some fancy, way-too-expensive college. You don't bother to keep in contact with him because you don't want to hold him back from the life that you know he deserves. That kid is going places, and you're stuck here forever.
No matter how much you promise yourself it doesn't matter, you will always feel hurt and jealous, and the reasonable part of you that says you did this to yourself is struck down by the overbearing thought that you never had control over your future in the first place. Therefore, there is no reason for you to be let down by all that has happened.
You think about your dad often enough, only because you're afraid of ending up just like him, and you think that, by now, you are. You drink, and you yell at your useless wife who spends too much money and time on keeping the grey out of her hair, instead of on the three year old crying from the living room floor. There's no hope for you, but she isn't blind to the attractive-enough new doctor in town that's been eyeing her at the bar the past couple of nights she's went out. You stare at your kid, thinking how strange it is that he has blue eyes when your wife and you both have respective green ones.
That's when you realize you're exactly like your dad, and you hate life, and before you know it, you've pulled up to the bridge crossing over the river you may have once brought your brother to go fishing at, and you jump in.
Your wife marries the doctor. Your kid has no memories of you without a bottle in your hand. Your brother and his new family are the only people that attend your unceremonious funeral.
You won't be missed.
This was what you were expecting, accepting of even, once you got over the fact that you aren't as great as the first three years of your high school career made you believe you were. The first thing you did was quit the football team, and notifying coach Henrikson of this, and that he shouldn't have to worry over you nor your horribly indecent grades anymore. You do this via text, because you can't bear the thought of going over to his house and announcing this to his face.
After that's finally done and over with, it's time that you officially tell all of your 'friends' that you never liked the stupid, drink-mandatory and sexually explicit parties, and you will no longer be attending them. Your social status drops incredibly, and your girlfriend breaks up with you (looks like she won't be your future unfortunate uncaring wife in your stars). All you need to do is march into the office and tell the counselor you quit. This is it. You're giving up high school, because it's just not important, and going after your GED. At least, until you're old enough to quit working on that, too, and you can start full time at your uncle, who isn't actually your biological uncle's garage.
The only downside to the plan is that it's going to take a little longer than you were hoping for, because school doesn't start up for two more weeks.
Summer is hell and heat, and being stuck in a place like Lawrence, Kansas isn't any better. Your brother is whiny, because school is coming, and he can't find a pair of pants that fit right. He's in the middle of a ridiculously fast growth spurt, and he's already outgrown your hand-me-downs. You hate telling him to cut the legs off for shorts, and make do with what he has, because you're too worried about saving money for his future at college. That's what this life requires though, and you can only hope that one day he'll understand that you only ever had good intentions for him.
Life is rough, and Kansas is hot, and you know exactly where you're headed- straight to rock bottom, where you'll sit against the stones of regret with none other than your missing deadbeat of a father. You've grown up hallow and empty, but you can't bring yourself to care, until, maybe, one day, you look up at the sun, and feel hopeful for once in your seemingly miserable life. The feeling and the sun won't last long, though, because soon it'll be busy pointing its rays in the directions of people who are more deserving of the light than you are. Maybe it's shining for that younger girl who lives next door, the one you kind of had a thing for. Maybe it's shining on the kid who remembers you as nothing more than a drunk. Maybe it's for someone else. Maybe it's for…
'Cas'. 'Castiel'.
You've always hated your name, but the abbreviation of it makes life just a little bit better. You still don't know what was going through your parents' heads when they decided to name you after the angel of Thursday. They always were religious though, and you consider yourself lucky that you didn't get stuck with a name like 'Uriel'. Fortunately, that name belongs to your older foster brother, and he takes more of the bullying heat at school than you, and that's that.
Someone else has it worse than you. It's a known fact. Somewhere else in the world, some kid actually is suffering. They don't have money to spare on stupid things, like that fancy MP3 player you bought last week. They don't have food to put on the table. They don't have good old fashioned family morals. There is no apple pie, there is no friendly, motherly smile waiting for them in the kitchen after school, and most of all, there is no happiness.
You think that just maybe you deserve a little credit, because life hasn't exactly been fair to you either. Ever since you're mother and father passed in the utterly horrible 9/11 flight, you haven't exactly been sure of what's ahead, or what to make of life, or what you want to happen. You feel kind of dead, kind of like the world just took your one chance, and now all you have left is the remains. You'll never visit New York again. You'll never look at airplanes the same. And let's face it, you still wake up from vivid images of what once seemed like safe metal, predictable travel methods, careening into one of those tall, twin buildings. Sometimes you can hear screaming if you're in a deep enough sleep. Often enough, just the vision of smashing metal is enough.
Is it some kind of test? Is God, the person, nee, the force your mother and father taught you to have so much faith in, testing you?
Things have gotten out of hand. You beg God to make it stop, promising services and masses, and acts of blind faith, but nothing works. You can't help but to think 'what if it never works? Then what?'
Do you waste your life away in the care of people who never actually wanted you, but the money you entitled them to? The ones who don't actually think you'll be going to college, and really only expect to see your face bright and early on Sunday morning?
When you first met Crowley and Naomi, they seemed like perfectly good, perfectly nice people. They both had hard working jobs. They brought pictures of outings with their other smiling foster kids. They were hope and promise, and just what you had been hoping might knock on your door someday soon. When they called you into the living room to talk, you were surprised.
They smiled, so charmingly, and promised a nice house, a nice life. They were religious, and attended church on Sundays like you remembered doing with your parents before their untimely death. Although you buy straight into their shiny lies, it didn't take long for you to realize that these people most certainly did not have your best interest at heart. Now the dreams that you had had of spending a happy life with the two smiling, God's honest people that had come to rescue from the orphanage life were turned into nightmares, filled with threats and violence, drugs and intolerable life choices.
Life was church every Sunday morning, because the family was religious after all, but nothing like the sweet and trusting way you were used to. Life was being picked on at school for the weird suits you showed up in, because Naomi thought they made you look nice. Life was avoiding Crowley at all costs, because you no longer liked the way he smiled at you, the way he looked at you. It was carnivorous, like you were a piece of meat, like he hadn't eaten in weeks. Life was the broken lock on your door that you struggled for hours with every night, just to get it to work, because you were afraid of what would happen if you didn't. Life was not meeting your foster brother, Lucifer's, eyes at the dinner table, because if you did, you might mention that he's been shooting heroin in the basement for the past four months, maybe longer. Life was attempting to avoid Lucifer, period.
Life was a group of minors with angel names, which lived together only because Naomi was a Bible-thumping lunatic that believed strongly in God, and much more strongly in his 'Holy Blood'.
That was the trick to getting into the Hellhole of a state home. You had to be named after an angel, you had to have a certain, corruptible aspect to you, and you had to fall for the smiles. Apparently, you qualified. Looking back on it later, you realize that you are all those things, and probably will be for the rest of your life.
Your younger foster brother, Gabriel, explained that to you on day one. The boy has no innocent happiness, no carefree nature as a thirteen year old should. Apparently, though, he's been here since he was twelve, and you figure he's one of the people who have it way worse than you do.
You do deserve that credit though, because life hasn't been exactly easy on you. You may have bought that fancy MP3 player, but that had been with the money you had saved from Christmas time, the only time in the year that your new parents care to waste time and money on you, and only because New Year's Eve is the day that the caseworker shows up on the stoop to make sure everything is going accordingly. Your foster family may be sickeningly rich and well-known, but that didn't necessarily mean that you got a claim to a part of it. You may have been there for God, moved without verbal complaint from a happy God-worshipping life, to a crazy God-obsessive one, but that doesn't mean he was there for you. Certainly, he isn't here now.
Still, someone, somewhere, has it worse than you.
" Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people." –Carl Jung