Chapter 7: Duct tape and safety pins

Warnings: Swearing, mention of past domestic abuse, mention of child/teenage abuse, mention of character deaths, more or less graphic depiction of character deaths.

This chapter mostly relates possibly triggering events. Besides, it's related from a still mourning character's point of view, so it's really not happy. If you don't feel comfortable with those, then please skip to the third part, or skip the entire chapter.

The ride leading them to St. Louis would last several hours and Madison had taken advantage of a break to sneak into the band tourbus least crowded than the roadies's. Charlie was in the front seat next to Dorothy and Kevin and Dean were watching a rerun of Project Runway. Sam was reading on his bunk, Madison pushed him with her fingertips for him to make room for her.

"What are you reading?"

The tour had become over the months a book swapping which only Kevin and his classification system managed to keep a track of. An orgy of paper, a literary gang bang in which everyone had to revise their expectations downward or rarely upward in hopes of stave off the boredom. In one month, Madison had had in her hands more erotic magazines than throughout her life. Actually most of the time she had to return the magazine three times before realizing who was where on the pictures. The totality of A Song of Ice and Fire series was scattered here and there in the different bus, along with the Liquor series from Poppy Brite which had, originally, been Dean's bedside book. Kevin's philosophy collections shamelessly mixed with Kathy Kelly's romances as well as a good third of Stephen King's books. She sat next to Sam, raising his arm to see the book cover.

"Farenheit 451? Well above what goes around here." She commented.

"Cas forgot it when he left."

"And don't lose my page, I didn't finish it!" Dean yelled from the lounge area of the bus.

Sam nodded, carefully replacing the bookmark where his brother had paused. Madison settled more comfortably and he placed the book between them. They read the first and the second encounter between Montag and Faber and stopped when the old professor gave him the atrium and their vehicle stopped its route to refuel.

The bus emptied of its occupants except Sam and Madison discussing on what they had read.

"Tell me, if that's not indiscreet, what's a smart girl like you doing here?" The drummer asked, gesturing the bus and the whole tour in general. The smile of the young woman froze and she pulled away from him. "Sorry" he apologized immediately. "I didn't mean to.. That was indiscreet..."

"You apologize a lot for a bad boy." She joked.

"I try not breaking the ranks too much. So you're going to tell me or not?"

Madison nodded but took a moment before starting to speak, she looked tense and uncomfortable. "There's not much to say. I was secretary in an import export company, I had an apartment, a cat, a boyfriend. The ideal life. And then something happened with Kurt. That's the name of my boyfriend, well, ex."

"Something went wrong?"

"He was jealous, began to follow me everywhere, to send threatening letters to all of the men I knew, including my boss. He locked me in the apartment one night so I did not go to a reception of my work."

"Wow... Excuse me but you had found a real asshole!"

Madison nodded. Sam waited in vain that she spoke again.

"What were you doing with him?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, it's not like he introduced himself, like, "Hi, I'm possessive and controlling and I like to punch people. Wanna be my girlfriend?" "

Sam nodded. "Yeah, well, I guess we all make mistakes."

"Yeah, well, mine's wanted by the police. But I had been with him for two years, you don't easily turn your back on it." Sam made a dubious pout. "Actually" Madison started again. "I was too insecure to leave."

"I find that hard to believe."

"And yet that was the case... However, things change, life changes when your man beats you up one day in the street and you end up in hospital." She wasn't looking at Sam anymore now, not sure that she'd be able to face her memories if she saw any emotion on his face miroring hers. Months after she was still afraid and sometimes at night she would turn around on a figure or a gait that reminded her of Kurt and her pulse would quicken.

Sam didn't say anything.

"But then it hit me. I could keep feeling sorry for myself, or I could take control of my life. I chose the latter. I dumped Kurt, resigned and left as far as I could go."

Sam was still silent, but he took Madison's hand into his and she wondered if he was aware that he was stroking her palm with the tip of the thumb.

"I was afraid he'd find me if I stayed too long in one place, so I looked for the least stable job possible. That's how I ended up here."

Dean and Kevin went back in the bus escorted by Charlie. They heard Dorothy's door slam by closing up. Madison waited for the bus to set off again and for the others to be settled before turning back to Sam again.

"What about you? How did you end up in the star business?" She asked to divert the conversation from her.

From the lounge she heard Dean's laughter but the singer made no move to turn around, knowing that his brother wouldn't answer if he had an audience of more than one person. Sam ran a hand through his hair, banged his elbow against the upper bunk, grumbled, delaying the time to honestly answer the question. Finally, with a sigh, he turned to display his back to Madison and pulled up his shirt, revealing the tribal wolf tattoo that stretched on his hip, and, above, between his shoulder blades the outline of a teddy bear, a torn ear from which stuffing came out, one of the button that served as eyes dangling at the end of its yarn, the belly resewn with big stitches. The toy was placed on a ribbon on which she had to squint to read "Duct tape and safety pins inside".

"Yesterday I told you about the first one. The teddy is the second one. The wolf, it's Dean."

Madison brushed the tatto with the tip of her thumb. The wolf stretched from his right hip to the middle of his back, legs going up along his spine, nose in the air as if he was about to howl at the moon. He was in profile and only one of his eyes was visible, mint green.

He let his shirt and faced her again. He held out his left arm, the one almost entirely covered with flowers and indicated a magnolia in the crook of his elbow.

"This one, I got it two years after, when I finally beared to think about her. It was her favorite flower."

The story was coming disjointed and without apparent logic, but Madison said nothing. She would understand at the end, like in those police novels where you don't know the name of the murderer until the very last page. But he stopped and didn't spoke for a while, massaging the magnolia on his arm with his thumb.

"Why "Duct tape and safety pins"?" Madison asked softly. This particular tattoo was strange, it seemed more personal than the others, less aesthetic. Perhaps the sentence, perhaps the teddy bear that seemed out of a children's book, a bit out of place among the others. Sam took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment as if to gather his thoughts.

"Because that's how I am inside. It's long and complicated to explain."

"I have time, and I'm smart. Maybe I can understand."

He smiled.

"To understand, we must go back quite far. And it has nothing to do with your question about the star business."

Madison leaned back in the bottom of the bunk, Sam's pillow behind her back and stretched her legs out to lay her ankles on the drummer's thighs. She spread the gray curtains that obscured the small window to look outside the road stretching under their wheels.

"As I said, I have time."

Sam started to tell. He was well aware that Kevin and Charlie were listening. That unless he formally forbid her to, the bassist would tell everything to Dorothy later. But after all, as childishly painful as the story was, he didn't have to hide it as if he was ashamed of it. Did it really have to come out today? Like that, years after? While a bleak landscape passed through the window of the purring bus that took them around the whole country? With the feet of a girl he barely knew on his knees? In the presence of people who were now his family and who had accepted him without never asking him more questions than the ones he could stand to respond to?

The answer was obviously yes.

He thought before starting the story that life wasn't like in the books. That important things didn't occur in a large melodramatic outcome full of grandiloquence and fancy words. They occurred just in time, or at the most inappropriate moment. On a Missouri road.

That didn't make it less difficult to tell and the words wedged in his throat, cut his tongue and hurt his lips by crossing them for the first time. But he realized, as he pronounced them, that it hurt him less than he had expected.

1990

"Dean!" Sam's small pleading voice said. Dean shook his head.

"No Sammy! You perfectly know we can't!"

Sam tightened his little arms strongly around the puppy which yelped of discomfort and squirmed to lick his face. Sam laughed and loosened a bit his grip on the animal. He was seven, had a big smile full of dimples and stars in his eyes. Two of these facts didn't happen every day, and from the top of his eleven years of age, Dean began to foresee that it wasn't normal. Sam should have been like the puppy he held in his arms, shuddering, happy.

"Dad will never agree, you know that Sammy!"

Dean hated being the voice of reason because somehow it wasn't for him to do that, for him to see the smile of his little brother wither as he reluctantly let go of the puppy.

"But I had found a name for him already!" He whined. "I'll take care of him Dean I promise! Dad won't even know he's here!"

Dean pursed his lips. The puppy was cute and was beginning to curiously sniff the bottom of his jeans. Dean crouched beside Sam to pet the animal which put its paws on his knees and held out its nose to sniff the new hand that was caressing it. They were in the middle of the street, next to the large box that had contained the small puppies that someone was trying to get rid of. This one was the last, he was skinny with big ears and black round eyes. If it had had a fringe, it would have looked like Sam and this one thought wrenched Dean's heart while he was gently scratching the animal behind the ears.

"We can't Sammy." He put the whimpering dog back in its box and took his brother by the hand to drag him away.

Sam's attitude changed in the following days. Dean hadn't mentioned the puppy to John, just as his younger brother. Yet the child was less thoughtful, a little more open, more smiling. Dean thought he had made a new friend at school. Sam was pretty good at making friends. And probably someone who lived in the neighborhood because Sam would regularly do homeworks at the end of the street at the Harvelle's. Dean was happy with this change in behavior, but still curious. He secretly followed Sam one day. He didn't realize right away what he saw. Looking back years later after Jess' death, he thought it was extremely revealing of Sam's personality. But the 11 year old Dean only saw his little brother pushing the Harvelle's doorway and be greeted by a small ball of golden hair and yapping. The animal was wearing a collar and giving Sam an enthusiastic welcome as if it belonged to him.

Later, presented with a fait, Sam told him, his hands clasped between his knees that he had proposed to Jo to adopt the dog in exchange for all of his pocket money.

"He was going to die in the street Dean!"

"Daddy won't be happy if he finds out!" Dean warned.

Sam frowned and slightly straightened up on the bed where he was sitting. "I've done nothing wrong! This is Jo's dog and I have the right to do whatever I want from my pocket money! And if she doesn't mind that I play with her dog where's the harm in that?"

Dean sighed.

"I couldn't let him die alone in the street Dean. I didn't want him to be alone too!"

And Dean hadn't protested. That very day he had realized how weak he was in front of his little brother's sad eyes. How hard it was to fill all by himself the more and more frequent absences of their father, and how Sam needed to be loved.

How had they managed to keep the secret for so long he had no idea. But when Apple (Sam had called the dog like that because he thought he had the same color than the big yellow apples Jo's mother used to cook Dean's favorite pies) had died two years later, hit by a car, Sam had been inconsolable. So that even John, who though paid little attention to his sons since they were in age to dress by themself, noticed. When he knew the whole story, he looked coldly at Sam and Dean was sure he was about to yell at his brother. But he just shrugged. "This is a lesson you're going to have to learn very quickly my son. To love is expose yourself to pain."

It was probably one of the wisest things that John had transmitted to them. But being nine years old, the little boy who had just lost his dog didn't understand that John spoke from experience, having himself lost his wife long ago. He only knew that the pain he felt would inevitably return sooner or later. Because he loved Dean more than Apple and Apple's death was already horrible. What would happen if he lost Dean someday? And he loved his father too. And so far nothing had come to prove that John was wrong.

Love was to expose himself to the suffering and there were some pains that Sam didn't feel able to endure. Like it or not, grieving are many in a lifetime, Apple was only the first one. Then came the daily grievings, the mundane pains that seemed insurmountable at the moment. Gradually, Sam got used to the idea that love always brought suffering. Dean kept trying to tell him it was silly to believe that, to tell him he couldn't help loving, but Sam tried anyway. And he succeeded pretty well.

And then there was Jess.

Sam interrupted his story to swallow the lump in his throat. Talking about her had become less difficult over the years, but it was still painful. It always brought the same images behind his closed eyelids. Her smile when she saw him in the morning, her dancing approach in the street, and the ghostly feel of her fingers pressing against Sam's cheeks when she drew him to her to kiss him. Sometimes when he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could almost seem to smell her perfume again.

He cleared his throat and tried to resume his story.

"Dean wrote his first song when he was twenty years old and I was sixteen, I think. I was already a little jerk at the time."

"You aren't..." Madison protested but Sam silenced her with a nod.

"Oh yes. All of Lawrence cops know who I am, believe me. And it was always Dean who picked me up at the station. He probably didn't yelled at me as many times nor as strong as he should have, and I was long to understand that it was because he didn't hold me solely responsible for my bullshit."

Madison smiled. "I don't know any teenager who doesn't make any bullshit."

"You didn't know Dean, then. All he didn't do, I did a hundredfold." He rose cautiously to get their notebook. Somewhere in the locations reserved for cards, remained one of the few evidences of that time. He handed Madison a picture of him. He couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen. He was thin, hair even longer than now, and someone had photographed him playing with a dog standing on its hind legs and almost as tall as he. Madison examined the picture for a while. Whoever had taken it had to be either very good or very in love with Sam because from the old shot emerged something desperately joyful and tender.

"I was seventeen. I had run away from home. The girl who took this picture certainly still has a target with my face in the middle. Dean knows what I did to her, and if you wanna know what kind of asshole I was at the time you can ask him. I honestly thought he was going to beat me when the cops came down on me and that he picked me up at the station and quite honestly I would have deserved it. And instead he locked up in the garage and he wrote a song. Well, the beginning of a song."

"What did it say?" Madison asked.

"He made sure your heart looks as good in black and blue, as my soul in bloody hues."

"Juste that?"

Sam nodded. "Just that. As far as I know he never found anything else to write about. And even back then I understood that he was talking about our father." He turned to her with as few expressions as possible on the face. "My father never laid a hand on me, not once, even when I would have deserved it. And I guess you could consider that it was a proof of his concern for me, but when Dean came for me that day, he still had a scar on his lip and leftovers of a black eye. If you ask him he'll tell you he caught himself on a wall or he has been mugged in the street. I know when he lies, and believe me, he lies."

Madison said nothing for a moment, digesting the information, then "Does Dean still see himself like that? As a soul in bloody hues?"

Sam considered the question for a moment before answering. "I think so. I also believe that he thinks that Castiel can remedy it."

"What do you think?"

Sam chuckled without joy. "All I can tell you is that I received enough blows to know the marks they leave aren't only black and blue. Even in the heart." He said. "It's because of that, the tattoo. Duct tape and safety pins. This is the only thing that keeps me up most of the time."

Madison didn't comment when she saw him mechanically massage the multicolor lotus on his forearm. She wanted to cry and hold him in her arms. She didn't do so. She handed him back the photo he carefully put away in the notebook.

##

Dean had pricked his ears up, as Kevin and Charlie to hear his brother's story. He admired the synthesis, the almost clinical clarity with which Sam outlined the facts. He probably had learned that during his years at Stanford. To be specific, concise.

Yet Sam let aside a whole part of the story, one he probably had no desire to expose and Dean could understand. He spoke of Apple, his running away, and after a long silence, he began to talk about Jessica.

He had rarely mentioned her in the five years since her death. First, because the subject was too painful, and then because it was useless to reopen old wounds. He had written songs about her, for most too personals to go out of their leather book. He had a tattoo of her name on the knuckles and the magnolia that had been the favorite flower of the girl. But he had hardly ever talked about her.

"I wasn't a good guy when arriving at Stanford." Sam said. He had put his elbows on his knees, imprisoning Madison's ankles between his thighs and torso. He was looking at the ground as if the floor of the tourbus was a fount of memories.

"Jess, she was a good girl in every respect. She earned credits by volunteering at the administrative office, that's where I met her. I won't tell you the whole story, that'd be pointless. But she got me out of drunk tank way more often than you can imagine. I think the cops in Palo Alto knew us all in the end. She made me stop fighting in bars. Well almost, let's say that she improved me much. She thought that I was worth something and by dint I ended up believing it too."

Sam looked up to watch the young woman, he was nervously wringing his hands and she nodded slowly to motion him that she was still listening.

"It went on for my two years at Stanford. And I really fell in love with her. I had bought the ring, I wanted to marry her." He had a lump in his throat as Madison, and further in the bus, the others had lowered the TV sound so they could hear him. He didn't realize, deep in his memories.

"We were living together and an evening Dean broke into our home. I hadn't seen him since I had left home, and she convinced me to go out for a drink with him. It took us more than a drink to tell two years of life, and when we went back at the end of the night, there had been a fire."

Dean clenched his teeth when he heard his brother. They both remembered the firefighter sirens, the panic in the eyes of Sam discovering it was his building that was burning, his frantic search for Jessica among the survivors wrapped in blankets despite the blazing fire a stone's throw.

"She didn't make it." Sam said in a lower tone. He was now massaging the letters tattooed in white on his knuckles, one on each finger: J.E.S.S. "I have no memory of that day. They didn't want to let me see the body, not until the funeral parlor had taken care of her, and even after that... A burned body is never a pretty sight."

Madison nodded and moved closer to him. He had lowered his head so low that his forehead was almost touching his wrists. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders, waiting for a development that couldn't come. She had bent her knees, her ankles still trapped against Sam's stomach, and together they had to look like a strange sculpture in the frame of the bus' bunk beds.

"I don't even know how long I stayed prostrate. Dean called our father a few days later. We were under house arrest during the time of the police investigation and he didn't know how to get me out of my bed. The only answer he got from my father was that a man worthy of this name faces his problems alone."

Madison frowned.

"But he should have understood, I mean... You had just lost the love of your life!"

Sam turned to her with a thoughtful look. He had to twist his neck in an odd angle to see her and even then she had half her face hidden by his bangs. "You think Jess was the love of my life?"

"I think that tragically losing a still keen love is necessarily like losing the love of his life." She replied. "And whatever your father have thought, it was his role to be near you to get through this."

"Dean's the one who was near me. My father eventually talked to me."

"What did he say?"

"He said "Remember Apple"."

Madison didn't answer but she pursed her lips so hard that Sam didn't need much imagination to know what she was thinking. He felt her nails sink slightly in his shoulder as a supporting sign.

"And you did." It was a statement.

He nodded. "Shouldn't get attached to something you can lose." He said by gently pushing her in order to straighten up. She pulled away from him, enough to rest her feet on the ground.

"But everything can be lost. Things, people, life..."

"I know. So I don't attach myself to anything, this way whatever I lose it'll never be a tragedy again."

Madison pursed her lips. "Even Dean?"

Sam shook his head. "It's different, you can't stop loving someone you loved all your life."

"What about your drums?"

He shrugged. "What does it matter?"

"Your songs?"

"Once they're written, they don't matter."

"What about this?" Madison asked again, putting her hand on his arm over the lotus tattoo.

"Memories. Memories shouldn't matter either." He was talking very low now, as if telling his story had exhausted him.

"But they do."

He nodded, leaned against the back of the couch, closing his eyes. Madison was seeing again in her thoughts the tattoo in his upper back, where nobody could see it unless he wanted to. The shredded teddy bear, the big sew where its heart should have been and the phrase below. "Duct tape and safety pins inside."

That was how he was seeing himself and so he had chosen to be. She wanted to cry suddenly and realized that apart from the purring of the motor and the vibrations of the bus there was no sound around them. She caught Dean's eye beyond the short hallway leading to his own bunk. He slowly looked away. Seated next to each other, Kevin and Charlie turned their attention to the now nearly mute TV screen and one of them turned the sound up as to give them a moment of intimacy.

It was probably not the best thing to do, and she knew it. She could recognize a stupid decision when she was taking one, but this didn't stopped her from slipping between the wall and Sam's shoulder, moving her arms around him and laingy her head on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry." She said quietly. She didn't see his puzzled look, just felt him slightly moving an arm around her waist in a more comfortable position.

"It's not your fault."

"I'm sorry for making you talk about it. I probably shouldn't have."

"No. I think it makes some good to talk about it. Deep down."

The television had retrieved its normal volume and Madison wondered if it was justified to end their embrace, but Sam spoke again.

"I'd warned you that if you knew my story you'd feel obliged to comfort me with sex." He said in a half-amused tone. She laughed even though it was more awkward than fun.

"In fact you made all of this up just in this purpose, right?"

"Absolutely."

She closed her eyes, settle more comfortably against his shoulder and decided not to move. "There were simpler ways." She teased.

"I know. But simplicity isn't my thing."

They eventually joined the three others before the little television. She hold his hand and he didn't let go.

Later, at the next stop, she returned to her own bus and Charlie and Kevin slipped away for a nap. They were arriving to St. Louis. Dean and Sam were left alone in front of a television they didn't really watched anymore.

"You didn't told everything." Said the older.

Sam shrugged, eyes glued to the TV. "She doesn't need to know everything in one go."

"The others never knew."

"The others never asked."

Dean had an assent pout. Usually the girls who gravitated around Sam were more interested in his status or his physical than his life. Madison was clearly one of the exceptions.

"What you said, about your stays in jail..." The singer started without looking at his brother. "It wasn't you just behaving wrongly, or passing through your adolescent crisis. It was your way to become strong enough to run away."

Sam nodded. "And abandon you. And you know how much I'm sorry for that. I was thoughtless and selfish but I needed to go."

"I know. And no one's blaming you for that."

"I blame myself."

Dean smiled. "This little bro', reproaching myself for everything that's my job!"

Sam gave him a hit in the shoulder, looking at him for the first time of their conversation. "Nah, your job is to worry about me and getting my ass out of slammer." He joked.

"And telling you dad was wrong." Dean acquiesced. Sam returned him a puzzled look, his frown was making his piercing flicker. "He said "If you leave, don't ever come back", and he might really thought it but... If you do another bullshit, if you leave by slamming the door. I want you to know that I will leave it open so you can come back one day."

Sam said nothing for a moment, the forgotten TV produced a background noise which added to the purr of the engine and the bumps in the road.

"You should make a song about it." He finally said. Dean smiled.

"It's planned."

##

It was strange to see just how Castiel had become a part of their lives in a few years. It was as if he was part of the landscape, him being there or not. And knowing him in hospital curiously weighed on each of them. Kevin was unusually silent, Charlie had left her bass exercises that usually rocked them all during bus rides, Dean and Sam shared a grim and worried expression. They all jumped when Dean's phone rang in the late afternoon, a few miles from St. Louis.

The sound was raw and full of noises, and he put the speaker so loud that in the bus they heard the vague echo of hospital noises at the other end of the country. He didn't wonder if it was something Castiel didn't want to share with anyone else. The question didn't even crossed his mind. He was part of his family, all the people present in the bus, even Dorothy on the driver' seat, were part of his family. And they all had as much right as he had to know. They needed to.

He didn't know the voice that spoke and introduced herself as Dr. Talbot.

"I have good news for you Castiel."

Dean felt his heart clench curiously. As if he had so far managed to ignore the problem, to repress the anxiety deep deep down in himself and that it was resurfacing in the strangest moment possible.

"The scanners showed nothing, neither did the marrow biopsy. There are no signs of recurrence of leukemia."

She spoke with clarity and precision but Dean was wondering if he was really understanding the words coming out of the phone, wasn't the distance camouflaging abominable news under comforting words? Charlie had descended from her bunk and had put a hand on his shoulder that Dean took in his by habit.

"So what do I have?" Castiel asked hoarsely.

"A significant anemia, an incredible number of dietary deficiencies and a lung infection. Basically your body is exhausted like an old man's."

Dean imagined Castiel's puzzled frown.

"How come?" The singer asked, having totally forgotten the speaker on his phone.

"You tell me." Dr. Talbot snapped. "Castiel has just returned from a three week holiday with you. People are supposed to rest on vacation, not getting sick!"

Suddenly, Dean felt horribly guilty. He distinctly saw again the three weeks with Castiel, the little rest they had taken between bus trips, concerts and the nights shortened by the need they had of each other. He saw the fast foods, the more rare restaurants with still similar menus, breakfasts missed to stay in bed for another hour, dinners skipped in favor of a bottle of whiskey or an evening playing on the console Charlie carried with her everywhere. "It's my fault." He sighed, running a hand over his face. "The holidays were not particularly relaxing."

"If I had wanted to rest I would have done so!" Castiel snorted at the other end.

Everyone in the bus could imagine him looking daggers at them and the ornery look on his face they had all seen at least once. Dr. Talbot began to formulate a list of lifestyle rules to follow strictly from now on. The phone didn't retransmit Castiel's exasperated sigh but they were sure that there had been one.

Dean had expected waves of relief, that a weight left his chest. Yet nothing happened, his ears buzzing while the doctor indicated Castiel that she would prescribe him dietary supplements and antibiotics he needed and that he would have to come back for further tests next month. He remembered the concert nights the previous weeks, trying to imagine his own fatigue tenfold by the disease settling slowly to understand the feelings of his lover. He felt guilty for each of Castiel coughing fits of which he hadn't paid attention. Guilty for each minute of sleep he had deprived him, even guilty for not being able to lock him in a sterile bubble to protect him from all diseases of the earth. He had clenched his hand through his hair, elbows on knees, head lowered so much that his forehead was almost touching the table before him.

Charlie passed both arms around his neck and his chest and leaned forward over the seat back for laying a kiss on his temple.

"It's not your fault, Dean. Other than drugging his coffee no one could have forced him to spare himself." He smiled, eyes closed to not cry and Castiel nodded by a groan at the other end of the line. He was alive. He was going to live. It was nothing, nothing serious and they had all worried for nothing.

Before he cut the speaker, Sam and Kevin shouted their get well wishes and Charlie sent the young man kisses from her and Dorothy. She only let go of Dean, reluctantly, when the latter broke away from her embrace of a movement of the shoulders. With an apologetic smile he lifted the phone to his ear and she went away for share the news with Dorothy.

"How's the accountant?" The driver asked without taking her eyes off the road.

"Better than we feared. Lung infection, fatigue, anemia. Nothing a steak and a good pillow can fix, apparently."

Dorothy smiled, which curiously didn't soften her features. "I don't think he sleeps well without Dean."

Charlie shrugged and leaned in the seat, placing her bare feet on the dashboard. "I don't think he sleeps at all with Dean."

"I heard that!" The singer yelled, further in the bus.

"And I'm perfectly right!" She yelled back. The road was beginning to tuck of small houses as they approached the city. Later in the evening it would be a new hall, then another concert somewhere. Everything changed daily in their lives while remaining curiously similar, to the difference of the landscapes that bordered the roads.

"It's weird, when I met Castiel, I could have sworn he was fine." Charlie said quietly.

"He was." Dorothy pointed out.

"You know what I mean."

"I do. But you're wrong to think that he's different from the others." The driver replied with a slight smile.

"Why? Don't you think that having survived such a disease makes you different?"

"Every people you meet is struggling against something you have no idea about, Red. Often it's not visible, and no one talks about it, but everyone is fighting."

"You're fighting?" Charlie asked, turning her head toward her partner.

"Everyday."

"Against what?"

"What 'bout you?"

Charlie turned her attention to the road. "You dodged the question."

"As you did." Dorothy took her eyes off the road for a moment to smile at her and Charlie childishly stuck her tongue out at her.