Simple Pleasures ~ Chapter 10

Dean felt the click of the key in Levi's ignition as he turned it backwards slightly, then all the way. The beast's growl whimpered and died, leaving Dean to stare out at the invisible list of his misdeeds, the deaths of over a dozen kids tacked on to the bottom some thousand yards off. Pedestrians laughed at who knows what, but he heard the screech of broken bumper that dragged on the asphalt when Dean towed the last car back to the Yard, like an insect pinned to a collector's board.

Death liked pinning things, Dean mused. It didn't care if you were obliviated after your final moments, went to a heaven or hell, lurched your way to the River Acheron with the weight of an untold life under your tongue; it just pinned you down and demanded you give up your species name, you meaning. Of course, life doesn't have any meaning, so Death was trying to make sense of the senseless, catching lives and pinning them down, categorizing them according to varying levels of who cares. Even Death was futile.

Words captured these thoughts and carried them to Dean's thinking world, but as his stare shifted from the distant finish line towards the Café across the road, something flickered in his wordless darkness. It was a small crack, a feather of light that convinced him to step out into the cold, cross the street, and enter the rancor of the Obolus Café on a Sunday morning.

Men in pastel button downs and women donning the same, slightly spiraled hairstyle mulled around the front of the café, eagerly discussing things that carried as much worth as Dean did. Kevin and a bald black man frantically served customers their strange orders. Dean almost moved, to ask them where Castiel was, but he caught sight of a table in the back corner of the café where Meg and another woman sat with three gray teenagers that seemed fuzzy around the edges.

Dean pushed through the crowd to the back table, whereupon a desaturated girl said, "Oh look, another one."

He stared for a moment before looking over at Meg. "You find your soul-mate?"

"Hah hah, Robocop, but I'm kinda busy right now and so is your boyfriend, so if you don't mind-"

"Dude's gay?" said an almost muscular, gray boy with handsome cheekbones. "Gross amn. Hate fags."

Dean's heavy eyes hovered on the boy for a moment. He wore a sweatshirt with lacrosse sticks pasted on the front and a smile that had never had to live with someone telling him no. Dean's guilt drenched heart lightened faintly.

"And I hate entitled douches that talk in two word sentences, so we're even. 'Sides, he's not my boyfriend."

The third kid, a thin boy with dark skin and glasses, smirked. The he-man wannabe's face twisted inwards.

"Well you're not telling me I'm dead, 'cause I'm not!" The girl snapped, though her shoulders were shivering. "Yeah, how do you like that you dick! You're just a- a big, fat lipped moron! Like, just a washed out jock or something!"

"I think I've got too much class to be this one's soul-mate," Meg said. "And just because you don't call someone your boyfriend doesn't mean they're not your boyfriend."

"Wait, really? 'Cause this Russian transfer student, Vlad, oh my god he is like so hot, he and I were in his car this one time after his wrestling meet—"

"Meg, what have you done? Now she won't shut up." the other psychopomp said, throwing her head down on the table.

"Isn't this Cas's job?" Dean asked.

"You mean your boyfriend's job? Haw hah, nailed it!" Wannabe said.

The other psychopomp made a finger gun, placed it on her temple, and pulled the trigger. "I can't do this Meg. It's not fair. I want to do the bang. Why can't I do the bang?"

"Because we're surrounded by innocent little mortals who'd lose it if you ripped into these ghosts-in-waiting, Ruby." Meg's gaze shifted slightly before she said, "Take 'em, any of them, just get them away from me, intern."

Dean turned and nearly smacked Castiel in the chest. The barista sighed, shoulders hunched and deep lines setting into his forehead. "How are you Dean?"

Dean opened his mouth, but instead he shared his distant stare with Cas for a few moments until blue-eyes nodded solemnly.

"Fags!" Wannabe called out, smiling at the offended looks of a few customers. "These two fairies are fags!"

"The divine do not discriminate based on who someone falls in love with; why do you think you ought to?" Castiel replied.

"Hah, right. The bible says-"

"You know the Holy Bible? Excellent. Let's discuss it. I particularly enjoy Genesis 9:24."

Ruby's hand clenched, and the wannabe shot into a standing position with a yelp. Without lifting her head she reached over to Castiel, who made a fist, touched his to hers, and tugged his hand like holding a string, prompting the teen to start following him.

"Do you know that passage about Noah? No? What a shame. Granted, Leviticus 18:22 flies in the face of that passage, but Ruth 1:14 and Samuel 20:3 to 20:14 thoroughly put the matter of same-sex love in the category of 'humans don't know the things they claim to know.' So let us discuss the Holy Bible and what it means about certain a boat ride."

The barista's words were polite, but Dean grinned at the tone that was anything but. The bewildered youth followed Castiel back to the kitchen, the crack in Dean's dark sprouting a few new lines.

"And then there were two," Meg said with syrupy malevolence.

"You don't like us, we get it," the thin kid said. "Can't you just… leave us alone until what's his face comes to get us?"

"She can," Ruby replied, lifting her head up to look at him. "But I'm your guide, so you're stuck with me until I pass you off to the conductor."

"…You mean Cas?" Dean asked.

"No, the little cockroaches scuttling around inside the wall – of course I mean Castiel—"

The dead girl, who had not stopped talking about the dark haired beauty Vlad, shrieked, jumped away from the wall, and knocked over her golden mug while sending the thin boy's mug flying until he snatched it and spun away from her. The girl threw herself away from the table, trying to run into the increasingly annoyed crowd of Sunday café goers, but she stopped only a few feet away, her limbs snapping back as if tied to a puppet-master's cross. Her shriek of disgust shifted to outright terror. Meg grabbed her and pulled her back towards the corner, but the girl wouldn't stop screaming. Ruby got up and walked with Meg towards the storage room, the boy lurching after them, and headed up the stairs carrying the flailing girl out of view. The screams continued until Dean heard a door slam, and only then they were muffled. The onlooking crowd stared at him with worried eyes.

"Uh… my cousin, she doesn't take text break-ups well."

A few people continued to stare, but most simply nodded and added the news into their dry conversations. Dean smiled and nodded weakly for a few moments until he was no longer stared at, then sighed and rubbed his eyes.

"It's been like that all night," he heard Kevin say. Dean looked over to find the psychopomp leaning across the counter. "Ah… you'd probably prefer I not talk to you, right?"

Dean shrugged. "Nah, at this point I can take a human voice from anywhere, pulse or not."

Kevin blinked once before saying, "Thanks… I think."

After a few moments of pressing silence Dean cleared his throat and said, "So, uh… the kids have been…?"

"Calling them a nuclear explosion of angst would be an understatement."

Dean's feather of light dimmed.

"Were you… one of the guys that went out there?"

"Yeah," Kevin said. "Me, Uriel, Ruby, and a few others… None of them were ready to go."

Dean nodded slowly. "They're just kids…"

"Just because someone's young doesn't mean they can't walk Death's path peacefully." Kevin snorted.

"You were their age when you became… this." Dean surmised. Kevin's jaw locked and he inhaled deep. "That's as close to a yes I'm gonna get," Dean said.

There was another wail from upstairs.

"I should probably get up there," Kevin said, but the manila envelope. Dean shook his head to get the image out of his head, and heard himself saying, "No, I'll handle it," the same that he told his mother on the phone as he walked up the front lawn. The Imapla's engine flared in the garage before it shot out the driveway and into the road, his father cursing and knocking over the trash cans before gunning away. Dean swallowed hard and turned back to the front door where he could hear his brother screaming.

Dean stood at the bottom of the Café's steps, looking up at the aging yellow walls and the sobbing sounds they carried. He took his first step carefully, then jumped the rest, opening the screen door before pushing through to the living room. A ripped open manila envelope lay on the rug. He picked it up, turned it over, and read "Stanford Law School" on the front. He heard a thud and shatter paired with his brother's shouting beyond the door to the kitchen.

Dean held the handle to Castiel's bedroom, trying to make out the words behind the wailing, but it was no good. This time he knocked before entering, and did so once he heard the thin boy say come in.

Scattered papers made the kitchen's linoleum slicker than it already was, so Dean called out to his brother while trying not to slip and break his face.

"Go away Dean!" Samuel shouted back, sounding like he had a puffy nose.

"Dude, what the hell did you do?"

"Hah, right," Sam barked back. "It's always something I do, always wrecking the family, but I just can't help it. Maybe I want the damn thing to burn down, end the show and this shit."

"You always push him when you know he's pissed—"

"I NEVER PUSH HIM, DEAN! NEVER!" Samuel shouted as Dean slipped and caught himself on the kitchen counter. "HOW MANY FUCKING PARENTS PULL A GUN ON THEIR KID FOR GETTING INTO STANFORD LAW?! HE'S INSANE, HE'S A MONSTER!"

Dean scrambled into the dining room, finding the table knocked over, a punch hole in the wall, and his brother growling in the corner with a fast bruising left eye.

"Jesus," Dean said under his breath, staring at the black tendrils bleeding out of the girl's shadow on Castiel's bed, silhouetting her as a crouched, crying heap. Meg ran out of the room saying, "Fucking Unicorn's taking forever," as Ruby yelled, "It's just death! It's not the end of the world, just get over it!"

"Just get over death? Did you actually just say that?" The thin boy asked.

Ruby stepped back. "Well what am I supposed to say! I'm a delivery girl, not a therapist!"

Dean winced. He'd asked his brother what he had done to deserve the black eye. Dean stepped towards the shadows and said, "Hey… hey, girl, hey it's gonna be okay-"

"Go away!" She cursed at him, still hunching over.

Dean frowned but took a step closer. "Nah, really, it's-"

"I SAID GO AWAY!" She screamed, flipping her head around to glare at him, but there were no eyes. In their place were dark holes and thin, clawing fingers creeping onto her cheeks and forehead.

"What's happening?" The thin boy yelled.

"She's going ghost," Ruby sighed, as if the office photocopier was jammed again.

Dean shuddered for a moment before saying, "No. I'm staying right here until you're doing okay."

"YOU DON'T KNOW ME! YOU CAN'T HELP ME!"

"You won't know that unless you give me a chance," Dean said.

"A chance to do what?" Sam snapped. "To defend him? Because, let me guess, he's family. What the hell is it with you and that word, do you even know what it means?"

Dean picked Sam up and threw him against the wall, ready to knock out his little brother's other eye, but he hesitated. His brother relaxed into a punching bag's slouch, looking at Dean like a dare. Another few breaths. Sam perked one eyebrow and lifted his chin, so Dean hit him, hard enough to move his cheek but that was it.

Dean let go of Sammy, who staggered a moment but held his ground.

"You listen to me you little bitch: Family is family, and you do anything for them, you got that?!"

"Hah, right," Sam spat. "You mean you do anything to them. And hey why not? They can't run away."

Dean stepped away from his brother as his throat tightened, naming the dare he'd just seen, the dare he saw in this girl, willing to run away into the dark and never turn back. Her chin was high and determined. She'd been punched by something that was never supposed to touch her like that. It was Death pinning her to his board.

"What's your name?" Dean asked, carefully taking a seat on a part of the bed that hadn't fallen into her creeping ink.

"…Kristina," She said, pulling back towards the pillow.

"I'm really tired, Kristina, so, uh… If I go talking stupid or pass out or something, just hit me, kay?"

She said nothing at first. Eventually she nodded.

Dean nodded too. "Have you ever done something so stupid that you just keep repeating it over and over in your head, like a movie that got stuck or something and just loops back to this one bad scene all the time, and you can't… you can't turn it off? It just eats at you?"

"…What are you talking about?"

He rubbed the back of his head. "Ahhh, God I don't know. This is new territory for me too, but… I'm trying to help."

"You suck at it."

"Hey, I'm just starting, gimme a break," He said. "And sucking's better than doing nothing or yelling, y'know?"

She shifted her head slightly towards him. "…I guess."

Dean nodded. And sat there. Quietly. What should he do next? "Uh… look, I can't say I really know how this whole… ghost thing works, but if I'm right then… it's pretty shitty."

"Pretty shitty? I'm dead! I'M DEAD! I NEVER… I never," the tendrils crawled closer to Dean and onto Cas's nightstand as her skin paled more. "It's not right, it's not fair! I'm not supposed to be dead! I was… I was supposed to go to the championship this year! I never even took it in the vag 'cause I was too scared I'd get preggers-!"

"OKAY, too much info there," Dean said with wide eyes. He looked up for a moment; Ruby was glaring at him while the boy cowered in the corner. "But, hey, you're right, it isn't fair. It's damned fucked up that this happened… that I let it happen."

The ink shuddered angrily. "…What do you mean you let it happen?"

"…I was the guy who was supposed to pull you guys out of the crash last night," Dean said, his throat tightening again, his mind mixing the train wreck and the explosion of the family dining room. "But I fucked up. I wasn't fast enough or smart enough to pull you guys out. And… it sucks. I'm sorry."

The ink shuddered again, but stayed still. "Why're you telling me this?"

"'Cuz… see, this talking thing? Talking about why I do stuff? Expression and shit? I'm really bad at this, but, man… you just died and I was part of the reason why. Life's not fair and death sure isn't either, but you deserve better than a lame-ass, cop-out answer like that, so I'm gonna fix this for you if I gotta sit here talking shit out till I kick it too."

Her shadow's tendrils curled and shrank a bit. "…You don't even know me... I mean, like, even my mom doesn't listen to me."

"…She should have," Dean said, holding back his shaky joy that she hadn't lost it when he told her he'd basically let her die. Kristina said nothing for several moments, long enough for Dean to notice the thrum of conversations downstairs. He looked across the bed and found her shadow mostly retracted and the claws no longer flowing from her eyes. Black tears flowed instead.

"That thingie you said, the… like, repeating something all over and again," She said. "Yeah, I know that thing."

"Blows," He said.

"Yeah," she replied. Dean looked up for a moment and saw the thin kid was watching them carefully, huddling himself.

"I'm thinking… and hey, this is just a hunch, but… I think that mind thing fucks with us. Like… it makes us crazy, a bunch of scared, bitchy, closed off jerks who don't listen when we should or reach out when we should or just… God… let things the don't matter go. And if it makes us nuts when we're alive, maybe that's what—"

"Makes you ghost," twiggy said.

"Yeah, what he said," Dean nodded. "So you gotta… let those repeating things go. Unless you wanna be a ghost I guess—"

"Oh, no she doesn't," Ruby said. "Ghosting over means your soul catches on fire which, in case it's not obvious, isn't pleasant. You loose sentience and wander around the place you're pissed at till you forget why you're angry and then roam the world till one of us finds you and throws you into the deepest pit of hell."

"Snap," twiggy breathed.

"Égui; look it up sometime," Ruby smiled.

"She's creepy," Kristina whispered.

"No kiddin'," Dean replied.

"So… how do I… just let things go?" Kristina asked. Twiggy nodded, shaking as he inched towards them with his arms drawn close to his body.

"By just doing your normal thing, Dean," Sam sneered. "You all let me go years ago when mom decided she loves you more than me,"

"The fuck man, don't talk-!"

"Every birthday, every baseball game, field trip, everything Dean, she always drops whatever she's doing to come be mommy, but I never got that."

"Wha-? You're wrong, there've been LOADS of times that she-"

"Name one. Name the last time you guys got together for my birthday."

"…Hey, it's not my fault your b-day's in the middle of finals season—"

"Yet my college friends somehow gave me a cake this year. Where were you, Dean? Where was mom? Where was dad?"

Dean wanted to smack his little brother again, but the blinding light of egocentrism dimmed, and in the darkness he found that he could only remember candles in pies. Dean got pies, Sam got cakes, and all Dean could see were pies. His mom would wish him a happy birthday after he blew out the candles, and she'd glance at the other boys and wink at Dean, telling him how much she loved him and always would, always reminding him that his secret was safe with her. Pies were full of tasty secrets and safety, while cakes were light and boring. Dad got cakes too, but for birthdays where Sam was present… Dean could only remember pies.

Sam leaned in close to Dean with a look of drunken anger usually reserved for their father. "Eight years. You wanna let me go when I go to law school? Just do what you're doing."

"Letting go," Dean murmured. " S'when you see something bigger ahead of you than what you're riled up about. Those things that get stuck on repeat in your head… maybe it's not just the bad things, but also good things that fuck with us. I've done a lot stupid things, and run them over in my head all the time, wishing things were different, but I do the same with things that… well, were good. But both of them keep me from, like… just being right now, seeing what jobs I gotta do and how to do them. When you see that… you let go of the things holding you back."

The room was quiet for a few moments until Ruby said, "Holy shit, what are you?"

"Tired, but awake," Dean replied.

A familiar metallic bang echoed up to Castiel's room from the storage room, followed by two sets of thundering footsteps. Dean looked to the door way as Castiel rocketed through the door, slipped on the rug, and barreled over into the wall. Meg appeared in the doorway with a glower but her eyes widened when she saw Kristina. Cas scrambled to his feet with the help of the thin boy and started towards the bed, but he looked at Kristina, and then Dean, and his sweaty jaw dropped.

"You're… all right?" Castiel asked, eyes darting between the girl and man.

"I dunno," Kristina said, rocking sideways slightly. Dean peered at her dry face, gray but with a flush of color, and sighed shakily.

"We're good enough," he said.

A drop of sweat rolled from Cas's jaw down the muscle line on his neck, disappearing in the pit where his collarbones joined beneath his button down, and Dean felt a bit more than good enough. Cas shifted from one foot to another and tugged at his shirt as he straightened his posture, making Dean want to say something else, but he didn't know what. He wanted to say his feather of light was cracking bigger, but that'd make so sense to Cas… in part because it made none to Dean either. Dean grinned slightly; there really was no inherent meaning in life.

"Well then… you deserve a conversation," Castiel said, reaching his hand out to Kristina. "And a boat ride."

Kristina swallowed and said, "I'm really dead, aren't I? This is it?"

"Not exactly… to both of your questions. I'll explain things for you," Castiel replied. Kristina took his hand and stepped off his bed with a normal shadow. Castiel looked at Dean and gave a slight nod of the head to follow him; Cas walked over to Ruby, tapped her fist, and walked towards the doorway. With Kristina in front, Cas held back for a moment, whispering to Dean, "I hope you inform me what transpired after I finish with work… as well as what is troubling you."

"I don't know what I did," Dean said. "I just kinda…," he held up his hand and flapped his fingers and thumb together like a talkative duck. He went on to say, "But really, I think… I'm doing okay on this one, for real."

"Shall I leave you be then? You may rest in my room if you need sleep."

"Sleep… yeah, sound's awesome, but, uh…," Dean leaned on the stair-rail as he followed Castiel down. "Think you'd be up for coffee or tea or somethin'? Just to… hang out for a while?"

Castiel said nothing as they reached the ground's floorboards. Without turning his head he reached behind him, found Dean's hand, and wove his warm fingers into Dean's. Cas rest his hand there for several moments before letting go and nodding. "Hopefully I won't make you wait too long."

Castiel walked with Kristina back to the kitchen. She was scared but unlike Sammy not too long ago, she didn't have the somber glare of an orphan. Dean let his brother go, knowing he'd come back… if he'd just wait long enough, sitting on that stool in the garage, staring at that loud clock, that his brother and father would come back. And even though this girl wasn't going to come back either, his chest didn't twist in pain from passing seconds. He'd done his work… somehow.

Dean looked back up the stairwell, hearing the echoes of the boy and Ruby talking energetically to Meg about something, but the bitter adrenaline keeping Dean standing was starting to fade, and he had no energy or interest in going back up there. As he stepped into café Dean glanced at Kevin for a moment, but the psychopomp was scrubbing at the inside of one of the coffee percolators. Even Kevin always had work to do, some kind of direction… some goal or meaning. Dean couldn't see it, and maybe Kevin couldn't say it, but maybe it was there, hiding from life, hiding from death, manifesting in the kid's acts.

Or maybe he was so sleep deprived that he wasn't thinking straight. Maybe he was? Whatever the state Dean walked through the crowd towards the door, grabbing the phone in his pocket. He stepped into the cold, wet air. Some kind of muddy spring was pushing into Kansas. Dean walked around the white-walled store next to the Obolus on the corner to evade the noise of outgoing café patrons, flipped open his phone, and scrolled through the contacts. The four rings of Sam's phone stung more than Dean expected, but he took a breath and bared it as his brother's voice told reminded him who he was and what to do after the beep.

"Hey Sammy, I, uh… I wanna talk with you. It's not… well, hell, I guess it is… I dunno how to say this but, uh, I wanna talk about the day you ran off to law school. Shoulda been California, man, but… yeah. Just call me back, kay?"

He shut off the phone and slipped it back in his pocket. Dean stared up one way of New Hampshire, then the other. He looked up at the cloudless sky, then down to the gritty tarmac, before settling his gaze on the thousand yards ahead of him. Pick up the pieces and put them back together. Maybe that was his meaning. He could do that. Mechanically, archaeologically, and hell maybe even socially… Dean could put things back together. Maybe he could put himself back together too. He stepped away from the wall, wary of the knocked over one-way sign pointing at him, and walked back to the café for tea.

The cake is a lie.

The pie is a lie.

Also, grad school eats people. It chews on them until all our words bleed out. We get nothing to write our own works, instead surrendering our muses to the acidic, academic juices of research designs and essays. Tis unpleasant. Especially the screaming.

Lastly… guess what chapter's next?
The one with the sex.