A/N: ok! This is sort of going to be an angsty sort of fic as you can probably tell. If you have problems with the following please think twice about reading further.
List includes -Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, Homophobia (at times... like once... oops), and/or Murder.
There won't be any self harm so dont worry about that. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy it! :)
Lick Your Lips
Chapter 1
Home Is Where the Heart Is
He couldn't even remember the entirety of the day he was arrested. Faint memories surfaced providing small glimpses into a dark room with concrete floors and the metallic taste of blood lingering in his bruised mouth. Not much else stuck with him. Perhaps the delicate scent of rain, or maybe even the smell of lavender, but it didn't matter; Remembering wouldn't get him out of his eight months at South Ridge institution.
"Eight months…" he thought to himself. That's two hundred and forty-three days. Two hundred and forty-three days without his brother Gabriel, or his single sized bed caked with crumbs and bad memories to fall back on at the end of the day. It seemed like too much.
Castiel grew quite in the back seat of the police car. Now that he thought about it, the feel of the crusted seat in which he sat sent shivers through his body as he continued to see double due to the lack of drugs in his system. He knew better than to hope for one of his brothers to show up and save him, but the hope still burned no matter how much reality he threw at it.
That day was hard. The hardest day he had ever faced. Harder than his first overdose, and harder than any beating his father could dish out. Withdrawal kicked in hard, and throwing up twice in the police car and three more times in his small cell in a run down precinct left him wishing he had died in that sealed off room with the smell of rain hanging over him.
With wrists burning from lacerations left by handcuffs, Castiel lay against the cement ground of the cell as he strained to remember what had happened that rainy day, but instead thought of his trial.
"Maybe I'll die," he thought. "Maybe I'll just fall asleep and not wake up."
But he wasn't so lucky. He never was and he never would be.
"Castiel N. Age twenty-five." The judge spoke with a booming voice that shook Castiel's confidence.
"This is the third time I've seen you in my courtroom," he said. "What am I going to do with you?"
"You could let me go," Castiel suggested, but his attempt at humor only landed him scornful looks from both his appointed lawyer and the judge that loomed over him.
"Is it true you do not remember the events leading up to your arrest Mr. Novak?"
"Yeah."
"Absolutely positive?"
"Yeah," he had replied, and it was not the answer the judge was looking for, but for the first time in his life, Castiel had told the truth.
"Due to the circumstances… I sentence you to eight months at South Ridge Rehabilitation Center," was the judge's final verdict.
Castiels heart sank into his stomach and burned as he swallowed hard. He expected prison, and so had his overworked lawyer.
"I'd rather go to hell," Castiel stated, but he was met with a shake of the judge's head, and the strike of a mallet on its wooden podium. Suddenly, Castiels lawyer leaned in close to his ear, and gently placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You wont have to look far for hell where you're going," he warned.
Five days passed since the trial and Castiel was in the hospital the entire time. No one visited. Not a single brother. Not even Gabriel showed up, that is until the sixth day of diets consisting of stale bread and watered down soup had passed.
Gabriel was not happy, and Castiel's amnesia proved to be a bigger problem then he had originally thought.
"You've got to be kidding me Cassy. You can't even walk down the street without fucking up," he had yelled.
"That's not true," Castiel replied calmly. "I just… can't remember what happened."
Gabriel looked down at his younger brother with heavy tears swimming in his eyes, but he did not let them fall. He didn't want to see his brother hurt any longer, and he knew what he had to do to protect him.
"When you're out of South Ridge, don't come back," he said, and Castiel's heart dropped even further into his stomach.
"Where else will I go?"
"Anywhere that dad isn't you hear? Just don't come back."
"Gabriel please," he begged. "Please."
"Don't fucking come back." Gabriel finished, and the words stung Castiel deeper than the IV drip burning into his arm.
"You'll just let me fucking rot then..." he had stated rather than asked.
"Just- Just don't come back." Gabriel repeated. He turned and walked out of the bleak room, leaving nothing but a painful emptiness that Castiel knew he would never forget.
Being escorted to a drug help facility in the back of a police car was the last thing he wanted. The sting of Gabriel's warning to not come home after his eight months at Hell made him sink deep into the rough seat as he peered out the window and into the rain. Grey sky's released a downpour that beat against the metal roof of the car so hard Castiel thought that it might tear through it, but surely enough, the car twists and winds its way through broken streets and emerges at South Ridge institution.
Large chain link fences surround the facility, and men with short hair and rough skin stand guard, each supporting their own clouds of smoke between yellow teeth as they watch Castiel roll up in the back of his battered police car. The policemen driving step out of the car to speak with the guards, and Castiel feels that his wanting to go to prison really was a better thing for him.
He looked down at his hands as he quickly lost interest in the conversation the officers and guards were having. Mist sprayed his face through the door left ajar from the officer who failed to close it properly, and the cold made a long suppressed memory claw its way to the surface of his mind.
His first overdoes. Black dots danced across the room, and he lay paralyzed for a moment, maybe more. Gabriel, he remembered well, Gabriel had come to found him, picked him up, dragged him all the way home, and ran cold water over him from their rusted shower for what felt like hours. He was sixteen, and his brother twenty. It was a day from hell. He could still smell the pipes and musty water as his heartbeat grew stronger. He loved Gabriel, and Gabriel seemed to be the only one one who loved him, or at least he thought.
"Don't come back," he had said. The words replayed in his head over and over again, and the pain was still all too fresh.
"Don't worry," he said aloud. "I wont."
A knocking on the fogged window beside him made him jump in his seat. Old scabs rubbed against the inside of his orange jumpsuit causing blood to gently trickle down the side of his arm against the door. Looking up and out the window, he saw the officer that drove him to the mouth of Hell standing just beyond the door.
He threw the door open, causing Castiel to fall on his shoulder on the cement at the officers feet.
"Up!" He shouted.
Murky water soaked through Castiel quickly as he lay in the rain with his hands behind his back. His hair became black with rainwater and his jumpsuit clung to him as the officer bent down and gripped him by his arm over an old bruise.
Castiel winced as he was pulled to a sitting position, then to his knees, then to his feet.
"Scum like you should rot in places like this," the officer said. For some reason, Castiel knew that he didn't use the word 'scum' to represent him as an addict. Perhaps it was for something darker, something from the days earlier that he couldn't remember. What was it about that night that had everyone so riled up?
"Fuck you," he sputtered, and the officer's response was a hard tug of his arm in the direction of the chain link fence. He threw him to the guards and turned without a word.
The smell of smoke washed over him as he closed his eyes and stumbled up the stairway that lead to his knew home for the next eight months.
No light from the sun pierced through the clouds on that day, and it was certain that Castiel could not see any light in his future.
