Jimmy first notices Amelia in English class. She's the one always raising her hand to answer something or other, and ninety-nine times out of one hundred she's right. At first he tries to keep up with her, but as she's ridiculously gifted and he still has to concentrate to spell 'definitely' right, he learns to content himself with watching her go.
The teacher tells them one day that they'll be doing their next presentation in pairs, and gives them the rare luxury of choosing who they work with. Jimmy immediately turns to his best friend, but Carl's already making apologetic faces as he crosses the room to stand with Graham, because Carl is a filthy traitor. Jimmy scowls and begins the desperate game of trying to grab somebody before it's too late and he has to be the kid standing alone at the front, smiling awkwardly as the teacher asks 'does anyone else not have a partner?'.
He's nearly given up hope when a beautiful blonde girl taps his arm lightly.
"Hey, do you want to work together?" Amelia says like it's nothing. Maybe it is nothing for her, but talking to Amelia tends to make Jimmy forget every vaguely intelligent thought he's ever had- and indeed, at times, the entire English language.
"Yep," he says. "Yep, sure, that sounds good. Yep." Stop talking, Jimmy, he thinks desperately.
"Okay," she giggles. Everybody settles down in their groups and Jimmy alternates between trying not to look at Amelia and trying to look at her casually, like he's a normal human being who can function in society. So far, it's not going too well. He's lusted after girls before, sure, but at fifteen years old he thinks this is the first time he's really, properly liked one.
"So, Macbeth," she says.
"Eugh, yes. It's rubbish, isn't it?" he says enthusiastically. "Really boring."
"It's my favourite Shakespeare play," she says apologetically, because she is absolutely the kind of person to have favourite Shakespeare plays. She's probably got well-thumbed poetry anthologies by her bed and plays Scrabble to relax. She's so far out of his league that he's surprised she even knows his name.
"Right, sure. Um, me too."
She smiles at that. "It's okay if you don't like it. It's not everybody's thing."
But he wants to like Shakespeare. He wants to have something in common with her, wants to have something more to say than 'man, your hair is pretty'.
"Tell me why you like it," he says. And she does, and while he tries to listen, he finds himself struggling to focus on her actual words and not just the musical lilt of her voice. Her hands fly and her eyes are wide and excited as she talks, and he starts to wish he had that kind of passion for the play. Or for anything, really.
"You make it sound so cool," he says when she runs out of steam, blushing and muttering apologies about 'getting carried away'. "I should give it another try. I wish I didn't... I just find it kind of hard to understand," he admits.
Amelia smiles shyly. "I could help. I mean, if you wanted."
And that's how he ends up getting English tutoring every Tuesday afternoon from Amelia Reynolds, and when he finally kisses her two months later he still hasn't learned a damn word of Shakespeare.
"That one hurt," Nick complains, a fair amount of time after the most recent healing began.
"What, it took you that long to figure it out?" Jimmy grunts. The skin on his hands is beginning the laborious process of turning from black to scarlet to pink to… skin-coloured. It's going to take a while.
"I could hardly mention it earlier, could I?"
"Why not?"
"I didn't have a tongue."
"I still think you could have tried," Jimmy says mildly. His eyes roll back in his head as a blister collapses back into his skin. Healing burns is never fun. Jimmy hears Nick muffle a shout and knows he's going through the same thing.
"Sorry about the, you know," Jimmy says once the pain has receded enough to let him talk, "burning."
"Right back atcha," Nick says, sounding a little surprised. They've never said anything like that before, because what's the point? It's not this is their fault, not like the fighting is really them. For some reason, though, Jimmy feels the urge to keep on going.
"And the stabbing."
"And the shooting," Nick adds on.
"And the, uh, goring."
"And the biting."
"You bit me?"
"You didn't notice?"
"I was distracted."
"What, so distracted you- ow, fuck!" Nick shouts, rolling onto his side and pulling his knees up to his chest. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
"You okay?" Jimmy calls out when there's a break in the swearing. Another blister collapses on his own body and he bites his lip to try and avoid adding to the noise.
"Stomach," Nick groans, cautiously unfurling. "Better now."
"I'm sorry," Jimmy says again.
"Don't be," Nick says, brushing it aside. "You can't help it, man."
"Guess not," Jimmy says. Deep inside him, something uncomfortable begins to stir.
Nick tries his hardest not to drum his fingers against his leg, because he's standing at the altar and that's simply not appropriate. Where's he supposed to put his hands? He doesn't know how to wait patiently. The eyes of everybody he cares about and everybody Sarah cares about are on him, and he feels too big and too clumsy and seriously, where does he put his hands? He can't exactly put them in his pockets. He wishes he was in jeans.
But then Sarah comes out, and he forgets everything else. The dress that sucked the life out of his paycheck for nearly a year clings to her chest and flows freely down her legs, floating as she moves. A collective 'ahh' rises from the audience as she walks forward, her father by her side. He winks at Nick, who grins back before letting his eyes slide over to his fiancée's face. Her makeup is flawless, her dark hair glossy with not a strand out of place.
He never forgets how beautiful she is, but sometimes it still takes him by surprise.
She stands in front of him and he wants to ask if they can skip the rest of the ceremony so he can just kiss her right here, right now. Pretty much the only thing stopping him is how happy she looks, like this is everything she's ever wanted. Neither of them can stop looking at the other, to the point where the vicar has to call "Nick?" twice before either of them notice.
The vows are standard. They debated personalising them, but he wasn't comfortable with the idea of talking like that in front of an audience. She understood.
He repeats the words mechanically, feeling vague guilt for not paying more attention to such important promises. He knows that he means every word he's repeating- he's already worked his way through his mandatory pre-wedding crisis- and so he lets his mouth handle the mechanics of the thing while his mind fills itself with Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.
"You may now kiss the bride," the vicar says. The audience bursts into thunderous applause, and Nick looks from the faces of his sister to his friends to Sarah's family to Sarah's friends and then finally to Sarah, beaming at him with glistening eyes and looking utterly radiant.
He cups her chin in one of his hands, still seeming so large against her small frame, and yet somehow fitting perfectly. He pulls her close and kisses her and she tastes like mint and rain and new beginnings.
Nick is plunging a knife into Jimmy's stomach, over and over again, when the thought comes unbidden.
"So what did you do for a living before you took your gold badge in Angel Handling?"
It's not a thought so much as a memory. It's a fragment from a conversation with Jimmy, though he can't say exactly when it occurred. The knife stills, confusion over the recollection temporarily overpowering his rage.
"Uh, mostly drinking," Nick replied. Jimmy snorted before crying out in pain.
"Alright?"
"Elbow," Jimmy got out. Nick sucked in a sympathetic breath.
"They're the worst."
"No, knees are."
"You kidding? Give me knees over elbows any time."
"I'll keep that in mind."
The lucidity is unfamiliar, ice water in his face. Jimmy's takes advantage of Nick's moment of weakness to tug the knife from his own wet guts, flipping them so that his legs are locked around Nick's middle and the blade they're wrestling over pushing towards his jugular. The fury takes over again and Nick fights to regain power, snarling and digging his nails into Jimmy's flesh until blood starts to trickle down the backs of his hands.
"How about you? Exciting career?"
"I sold ad time for AM radio."
"Enchanting."
"Tell me about it."
"Still, it's gotta be better than being some angel's pullover."
"Yeah, mine wasn't much fun."
Nick snorted at that. "What?" Jimmy asked.
"'Mine' was Lucifer. Hear that name anywhere?"
"Obviously."
"Tell me, was it linked with anything good?"
Nick freezes in place again and Jimmy doesn't waste any more time. He cuts at Nick's throat, again and again and again until he's carved his way inside, and then the blade is scraping against Nick's trachea and then, suddenly, air isn't making it to his lungs and he's choking and Jimmy's still cutting and-
"Time out!" the demon shouts. The aggression evaporates from them both and they drop to the ground, Jimmy dragging in painful breaths and Nick trying against reason to do the same. "This round to the Bible-fucker, I think," the demon hums, and it leaves them to heal.
Nick rolls onto his back and waits to start mending, trying to control his panicky, aborted gulps for air. Mingling in with the pain are the memories, dragging him down like rocks being sewn into his stomach.
"You know, this is actually the second time I've died."
"For real?"
"Uh-huh. Castiel's real good at making enemies."
"I had the fucking devil riding around in me, Jim. Don't talk to me about making enemies."
They don't go to the same college, mostly because Jimmy doesn't go to one. Amelia gets accepted to study Literature and he's never been more proud of his girlfriend when he waves her off on the train. He works with his father in the family shop and she phones as often as she can. Once a month or so, she catches the train down and they spend the weekend forgetting they were ever apart.
Working in the shop isn't exactly interesting, but there are things in life that matter more. Family, for one, and between working with his parents and the regular visits from Amelia, he's got that quota beautifully filled. Now that he's not as busy, he can help out in his local church more often, and it makes him happy to feel so close to God.
One late Sunday morning, he and Amelia are lying side by side in bed with only breath between them. She trails a hand down his chest.
"I miss you," she says quietly.
"I'm here," he points out, and she giggles in that way he loves.
"You know what I mean. When I'm at college. I miss you."
His heart flips over, because a huge part of him wants to beg her to just come back and stay with him forever. It's too selfish and too tempting to think about for too long.
"You love college," he reminds her.
"I do," she says. "But I love you too."
That's the first time either of them have said that. They've been dating for about five years on and off (there was some stupid thing with some stupid boy she met at orchestra which caused the most painful and lonely and generally very stupid six months of Jimmy's life), yet neither of them had actually said those words yet.
The suddenness of the revelation should probably cause them to freeze up, to edge away from each other. It should make things awkward or at least make them more serious. It does the opposite. It fills Jimmy with a bubbling kind of happiness that escapes from his mouth as soft peals of laughter.
"I love you too," he tells her, and he means it.
"One thing I don't get," Nick says. He's got his arm thrown out to the side as the bones slowly reset and is very determinedly ignoring it. He's staring up at the ceiling, which is where they usually direct their attention because there's no blood there yet.
"What, only one?" Jimmy says.
"Okay, one of the many things I don't get," Nick specifies. "Castiel was one of the good guys, right?"
"In the general sense of the word," Jimmy says.
"Huh?"
"It depends on who you ask. But yeah, I'm pretty sure he'd count as on the side of light. Why?"
"How come you ended up down here?" Nick says. "No offence, but I'm guessing you were hardly America's Most Wanted before you drunk a steaming cup of angel."
Jimmy is temporarily distracted by the blood dripping from his hair into his eyes, and has to pause to scrub it out.
"I stole a chocolate bar when I was seven, if that counts," he says, blinking his stinging eyes.
"Really?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"Was it the start of a long career as a petty thief?"
"Not so much. I cried, told my parents and spent a month praying for forgiveness."
Their conversation is less rusty now. Each time they speak they can remember what the other said for longer, hold more words in their head at once, create more complex sentences and remember the start by the time they reach the end. Jimmy wonders if that means things are getting better.
"So go on," Nick urges him. "You. Hellfire. Something's not adding up."
"I think they call it 'aiding and abetting'," Jimmy says. "Castiel wasn't exactly popular upstairs."
"And they're punishing you because it was your middle finger he held up?"
"I'm afraid so," Jimmy says.
"That's not fair," Nick objects.
"Life isn't," Jimmy says. "Neither's death." It's easy to be bitter when a new thumbnail is worming its way out of his nail bed.
"Besides, the same thing happened to you," Jimmy says an unmeasurable length of time later. "I mean, you're not Lucifer."
"Glad you finally worked that out," Nick says dryly. Jimmy elects to ignore this.
"Point is, you were just a vessel. You shouldn't be here."
No reply comes.
"Nick?" Jimmy asks, twisting his head to look. "You okay?"
"Growing back a finger," he says. "Gonna need to be quiet for a while."
Jimmy says that he understands and drops the issue- though, when thinks about it later on, he'd have sworn on his life that all ten of Nick's fingers were intact.
The puppy is looking very pointedly at Nick.
"I don't need a dog," he tells it. It yaps happily and springs from side to side, like hearing his voice is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to it.
"I really don't," he tells it again. "I've never even had a dog." He watches it tumble over itself in a valiant attempt to destroy its own tail. "Always wanted one, though," he comments. He looks at the pet shop door longingly before shaking his head.
"No, no, no. I'd probably end up… sitting on you or something. I'd forget to feed you. I don't even know what to feed you. Some kind of meat. It is meat, right? Because I'm not having a vegan dog."
The puppy stops fighting with itself and looks at Nick, as if to assure him that it would never do such a thing to him.
"I'm not having any dog," he quickly adds before he can get carried away. "Stop wagging your tail, it won't work. No- stop it- don't look at me like that. I am not getting a dog!"
Nick realises with a burst of disgrace that he is talking to himself, out loud, in a relatively busy street. The puppy presses its nose up against the glass and he thinks it actually sighs. There is a definite air of 'is it really taking you this long?' present.
Something cold touches Nick's face, and he frowns. Looking up to the sky, he sees that snow is starting to drift down. A nearby shop is blasting out Christmas carols and as people scuttle by wrapped in scarves and clutching hot drinks, Nick pulls his phone out and dials.
"Sarah?" he says when she picks up. "How do you feel about dogs?"
Nick hurls Jimmy against one of the cavern's huge walls, and Jimmy grunts as his head slams into the rock. Nick springs for him with what looks like a saw but has far too many spikes to be one, and Jimmy raises the club in his hand like a baseball bat.
"- Detroit Tigers."
"Seriously? The Cubs are a much stronger team."
"Did I give you brain damage or something? Rooting for the Cubs is probably used as a torture method somewhere in here."
"Maybe they're not the obvious choice, but-"
"They're not any choice!"
Jimmy blinks in confusion. He remembers the conversation- remembers having it with Nick- and whilst they were fighting, it was only joking, they didn't mean it. So why is he trying to-?
Nick cleaves a large section from his side, and the confusion clears.
It puts a question into Jimmy's head that he's afraid to hear the answer to. He decides to ask it all the same.
"Nick?" he says later, once the fight has ended.
"Hmm?"
"Listen, before this- I mean, when we're not- I mean, when we're, you know-"
"Trying to slaughter each other?" Nick says. He likes to try and be direct, which is something Jimmy can appreciate. Trying to understand a single thing from Castiel's mind was like tuning into a choir of singers, their voices louder than anything on Earth and at just the right pitch to shudder into his cells, to shake him out and stop him trying to listen in.
"Yep, that. How much do you remember?"
"What do you mean?" Nick says after a beat.
"I mean, how much do you remember about who you are? And I am? And why you're trying to…"
"- slaughter you." There is, Jimmy thinks, such a thing as being too direct. The phrasing makes his skin itch.
"I wish you'd quit saying it like that."
"Why? It's the truth, Jim. Gotta be able to handle the truth." Nick falls quiet for a few moments. "Some," he says eventually. "I remember some."
"I get flashbacks," Jimmy says.
"Yeah," Nick agrees. "Lines from conversations."
"Tell me, for you- does it make any difference?" Jimmy asks. Nick breathes out.
"That, my friend, is the million dollar question," he says.
"Mostly I get confused," Jimmy says, "freeze up. It feels like wanting a hot water bottle when you're burning to death, you know?"
"Too damn well."
"You think we could- you know, if we tried to fight it- if we could stop…"
"Slau-"
"Yes, the slaughtering, that. You think we could stop if we tried hard enough? I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel kinda bad over it all."
"Don't get carried away there," Nick murmurs.
"You know what I mean. So, what do you think?" Jimmy says when Nick doesn't continue.
"No idea. Worth a try, I guess." The notion should probably ease the anxiety starting to bubble away in Jimmy's chest, but for some reason, it doesn't.