Chapter 12: Family
"I'm not sure it's a good idea Channing." Mrs. Tran said, tightening her jacket around her, looking up at the billboard overlooking the entrance of the hall where the symbol of Free Will spread out in white on black above the tour name (The Hellhound Tour inspired her absolutely nothing positive).
She was ready to lay blame of her defection on the travel fatigue even if she didn't feel any, except maybe her tense shoulders and neck creaking when she made a sudden movement.
"Of course it is." The girl next to her protested. "He'll be delighted to see you."
Linda envied Channing'sconfidence, herself wasn't so sure about it. She even doubted that Kevin wasn't currently actively regretting having invited his friend to his concert. Muffled vibrations reached them from inside the hall and she wondered at what volume they were playing in there for her to hear them so far? The places should have been deserted but in front of the doors and their surroundings, she couldn't help looking at the knots of young people sitting on the floor chattering, laughing, eating and for some even sleeping, wrapped in sweaters who almost all sported Free Will's symbol or words, their faces hidden by large hoods from which she could only see a nose, a fringe, and too often piercings and some closed eyelids with an outrageous makeup.
"The concert only begins in five hours, what are they doing there?" She muttered for herself as much as for Channing.
"They are waiting to have good places." The girl replied distractedly, she had her phone to her ear and motioned to Mrs. Tran to follow her to the back of the hall. It wasn't a good idea, not at all, she was convinced of that. To surprise Kevin wasn't a good idea.
The obsessive thought accompanied her to the tourbus parked in a half circle on the back of the hall forming together like a patio where a few people were sharing cigarettes (or whatever it was, Linda Tran didn't want to know).
Kevin went out by the back door of the hall with the gait he had as a child when he refrained from running because he had just been reprimanded. She could see his smile from where she was, and the almost imperceptible movement of hesitation when he saw her.
It was a bad idea.
The smile didn't fade and Kevin ran exactly as he did when he was a child and she would pick him up at school. He didn't threw himself to her arms, probably only because he was aware that he was no longer four feet and that he might knock her over.
"Mom!"
Channing was smiling and Linda could almost hear her thinking "I told you so!" as she hugged her son against her, surprised (slightly) to find thathe smelled nice. A light lemon scent. For a second they said nothing more as he held her against him, and she took a few seconds to savor the word mom that had just blurted out of him. She had loved that word at the second he had looked at her in the eyes, with the very solemn expression of babies and, his little fists clenched firmly, had pronounced the two syllables as if he had trained for days to make her this gift.
"What are you doing here?" He asked all smiles before wrapping an arm around Channing's shoulders to drag her toward him and kiss her on the cheek.
"Your friend thought it would be a good idea for me to come." She didn't add "so I know how you earn your living" it seemed irrelevant.
"She was right."
"I'm always right." Channing pontificated.
Kevin took each by the hand and got them to follow him in the hall jabbering, asking them if they had had a good trip, if they had found the hall easily, if they had eaten already, if...
Linda wasn't really listening to him, she was watching him. She knew for the piercings. The scars were difficult to hide even if he withdrew all the jewelry every time he came to see her. But she had never actually seen the spacers, the shiny metal ball on his chin, or the many rings in his ears. Part of her kept saying that it was Kevin's body, that he did whatever he wanted of it. But the major part of her being painfully wondered why he was inflicting this to himself? What incomprehensible aesthetic pushed that being who had once called her "mom" with all the love in the world to voluntarily harm himself so much?
In the corridors that Linda would have imagined darker and less occupied, Kevin greeted people who had at least twice his age with smiles and short words. He seemed at ease. More comfortable than she had seen him in a while. Perhaps this was due to the outfit. He pefectly blended into the background, in jeans and black sweater of a label that probably evoked something to Channing but nothing to Linda. She suddenly felt old and inappropriated despite her son's hand tightened around hers. He wore a leather strap on which she deciphered "show must go on" in silver letters somewhat faded by the use.
They entered the room itself, it was spacious, well lit and again, Linda was surprised by the smell. It smelled neither sweat nor stale contrary to what she had believed. Instead there was like a floral trace in the air that she didn't know if it was perfume or deodorant. Channing was bouncing up and down, obviously excited.
"Is that Sam?" She asked, pointing to a sort of giant who was pacing the stage, pointing several things to a helmeted technician who nodded, noting things on a spiral notebook. Kevin nodded.
"Let him finish and I introduce you, he hates being interrupted during soundcheck."
"The what?" Linda asked by automatic reflex.
"The soundcheck." Kevin explained, turning to her. "Once the amps are installed and connected to the sound system of the hall, we test all the instruments to know how the acoustics blares and how to retune them for something good."
She nodded as he deepened his explanation without realizing that his audience may not understand everything. He had always been passionate and she was accustomed, over time, to hear him talk about things that were unknown to her.
"We try the instruments separately and then together. The guys of the hall will also take the opportunity to test the lights and synchronize the screens." He said by designating the huge black squares overhanging them. The giant jumped down from the stage after dismissing the technician and came towards them.
"You could have dressed!" Kevin grumbled loud enough for the other to hear him beyond the distance and the interjections of people around them.
"Had I known that we would be in such pleasant company, I would have taken some off!" The other retorted, advancing with the supple gait of those who have complete control of their bodies. He was wearing old sneakers that had been white some lives before, jeans torn at the knees and a gray tank top with armholes so large that it hung to his body only because of the roundness of his muscular shoulders. Linda Tran saw him approach without pleasure until she saw him closely. He had dimples, large white teeth and bright eyes, tired but full of joy. That wasn't enough to offset the amount of ink he had under the skin. She barely saw the hand he held out, too busy to scan the flowers on his arms, the letters visible by the neckline of his tank top... She couldn't honestly say that she thought it was ugly, but the idea of the pain it must have had engender made her shudder.
"Mrs. Tran I presume?" Before she could nod he passed his hand under hers and put it to his lips without taking his eyes off her. Kevin burst into laughter.
"Every time Sam, you do that every time!"
Sam smiled, dropping Linda's hand and elbowed his friend. "Gallantry is a habit of which you shouldn't make fun, kiddo!". Then he leaned toward Channing to lay a kiss on her cheek.
"I'm not elligible for gallantry?" She winced, trying not to have an automatic smile. He shook his head.
"It's restricted to the people who are most impressive than me." He answered with a smile.
Kevin knew well enough his mother and his friend to have noticed the exact moment when Sam had won them over. It was very funny because it was hard to imagine two more different worlds than Linda Tran's and Sam Winchester's. Yet they seemed to be curiously compatible, his mother's strict suit contrasting with Channing's sweater and the worn out jeans of Sam who detailed them each element of the sound effects after helping them to haul themselves on the stage. He felt a tap on his shoulder and a sound engineer of the hall gestured him to settle for his own balance. He was nervous.
Nervous as before his first recital, as before his first concert or the speech that he had had to deliver in front of the whole school at graduation. But this time the audience was smaller and much more important. He turned his back to the other three, feeling his mother's eyes on his back, and faced the synth keyboard.
"Whenever you want, kid." The sound engineer said impatiently.
Kevin was used to being called kid. From the top of his nineteen years of age, he was by far the youngest of the whole tour. Dean still had to order his beers in some states and Charlie almost forced him to wear a "minor" shirt wherever the age of sexual consent was beyond 19 years (which, curiously represented less states than those where he wasn't allowed to drink). Yet he felt adult. It was probably a feeling that people had the second they come out of the adolescent crisis, and no doubt that in ten years, looking back, he would find himself very childish and very stupid.
He cast out the parasitic ideas from his head and put his hand on the keyboard. He didn't actually play synthesizer, he knew the pieces he needed for concerts but it was much less complicated than the cello. He just had to press the right keys like on a computer. A pre-recorded music was raised to a much weaker volume than he would hear during the concert and behind him Sam and Channing fell silent. Kevin knew they were looking at him and he began to play, testing the chords, eyes following the setlist taped to a box before his eyes.
Music helped him to focus and he soon forgot everything that didn't concern the notes adjustment to the volume of the hall. He forgot Channing and his mother and his heart that was pounding a few minutes earlier. He forgot everything that was not the technical language, the lights and the reverberations that he demanded to keep intact.
"When the hall is full we won't hear them." He claimed. He seemed older, more imposing than his nineteen years. Linda put her hand on the shoulder of his son, smiling.
"You've always been good at it." She said softly in observing his hands that continued to play a tune on the keyboard. "Already as a baby you made noise with everything you had to hand. But it was pretty melodious."
Kevin smiled. "You say that because you're my mother."
"And because I love you." She assented. "But that doesn't exclude a certain objectivity."
##
"You know, brother,
It's a lonely road when we're not together
You know, sister,
We can always rely on each other"
"Hello Dean."
The singer looked up from his book, surprised to find Castiel on the doorstep of his green room, a bag on his shoulder and a small smile on his lips.
"I thought I had forbid you to come." He said rising, a finger slipped between the pages of his book.
"I don't like to receive orders, you know that." Castiel said sardonically, dropping his bag to move his arms around the neck of his lover.
"You were supposed to rest!"
"I slept in the airplain. And I'm fine." The young man muttered. "You're going to kiss me or what?"
Dean smiled and leaned toward him, wrapping his arms around the waist of his lover. Whatever he may say, Castiel's inability to stay away from him for a long time was one of the best things in the world. Those kind of surprises made him feel loved and that was pretty much all Dean asked to life. This and...
Castiel pulled away from him, looking surprised and the singer stifled a chuckle.
"Stick your tongue out?"
He complied, revealing the small surgical steel ball on his tongue, a novelty that made Castiel smile. The young man slipped his hands into his dark blond hair to draw him back to himself and whisper: "I also have a surprise."
Dean raised his eyebrows but Castiel shook his head, rubbing their noses against each other. "You'll see later."
A throat clearing made them turned their head towards the door where were framed Sam, Kevin and two women whom they immediately suspected were Channing and Mrs. Tran. They pulled apart and Linda noticed how Dean's hand lingered just a half second longer on Castiel's hip, briefly clutching his sweatshirt before breaking contact completely, as if to assure him of his presence when they would no longer touch. She also saw the tenderness that faded a little too slowly from Castiel's expression as he recomposed a neutral face and was advancing towards them to introduce himself.
Aesthetically, Linda preferred Castiel, his adjusted and well-cut clothes, his clean hair and his notable lack of piercings or visible tattoos. He had a deep voice and beautiful blue eyes that she immediately appreciated. It was a little bit before seeing the little wrinkles that magnified Dean Winchester's green eyes when he smiled while shaking her hand. He had a firm and frank handshake who helped her to override the ring that was in his lip, those on his ears and the green stone above his cheekbone.
She made the remark to herself that, without making him more attractive, the jewelery suited him quite well. They seemed to be part of him, while Kevin and Sam's looked more like a challenge thrown in the face of the world. Dean Winchester looked like a man who knew exactly who he was and had no problem with flaunting it. Kevin him, seemed to try to find himself, to try to resemble this man whom she had heard a lot of good of. Shaking his hand she realized a bit why Kevin was so attached to him.
"You didn't find Charlie?" Dean asked Sam after having made them all sit down and having offered them coffee. Linda made a mental note to teach these boys how to make real coffee before leaving, the one in which she was soaking her lips was revolting. The young man shook his head.
"She doesn't answer the phone and no one has seen her since her soundcheck."
"I'll take care of that." Castiel said, standing up to retrieve his phone in the pocket of his backpack. "She's going to answer to me."
"Oh and why that?" Dean said wryly over his coffee.
"Because everyone answer my calls. You know, if perchance I was dying and I wanted to make a dying wish, none of you would want to hear it on the answering machine!"
Sam and Kevin stifled a chuckle, Channing felt strangely unease and Linda realized suddenly that it really was Castiel. The Castiel whom Kevin spoke of as the most courageous and stupid person in the world. The Castiel who had violated about every federal laws on organ donation to find Dean and who had been the first to put into words what the music was for them all. She heard the voice of her son at the Thanksgiving dinner two years ago.
"You know mom, Castiel... He thinks that music saved us all. And I think he's right. I don't know why, but I think he's right."
"So no one has the right to talk about your illness except when it's helpful to you?" Dean teased.
"Exactly." Castiel leaned toward him to lay a quick kiss on his lips, his phone to his ear. Linda heard ringing on the other end of the line while Castiel shook Kevin's shoulder beside her.
"I'll bring her back." He said before slipping away.
##
"When the world comes crash and burn around you
I would do anything to protect you"
She had answered his phone call without telling him where she was but curiously he knew. Probably because they shared the need to hide their wounds far away from the compassionate or painful embarrassed glances they attracted. Castiel found Charlie exactly where he expected her to be: hidden in the dark, set back from the scene between several crates of material. She pulled her booted feet against herself when he stumbled into it. He sat beside her in silence, and she handed him an already well started bag of candy. For a long time neither said anything, just listening to the background noise of the roadies calling out for one another and in long intervals, the echo of a sound adjustment or a Larsen effect that made them jump.
"They are worrying for you out there." Castiel said eventually. Charlie shrugged. "You can't hide here indefinitely." Another shrug. "Charlie..."
"It was love at first sight, you know." She interrupted him. He raised his eyebrows. "Dorothy, I fell in love at first sight."
He stifled a chuckle. "Love at first sight doesn't exist." He said, picking into the bag of candy.
"You didn't fell for Dean straight away?"
"Oh God no. Oh no..."
Castiel mentally repassed his encounter with Dean Winchester and no, it had clearly not been love at first sight. No glitter rain nor slow motion effect to the sound of violins. Just the rancid smell of an old bar with a dusty light, and his voice in a poorly tuned micro. There hadn't been an ounce of romance in the first beers they had shared and not much more in their first kiss. To tell the truth, love and romance had come way much later.
"I totally fell head over heels for her. She was so..."
"Pretty?" Castiel offered.
Charlie shook her head. "Different. Strong. As if she was the only person around to know where she was going. She asked Sam for a cigarette and looked down at his hand to light it with the flame of his lighter. Cas... I had never seen anything more beautiful than this simple gesture. The movement of her hair, and how her eyes never left the flame, I wanted her to look at me the way she was looking at the fire."
"She did so."
Charlie stared at him with the hard look she always had when she thought people were making fun of her. "She did. I saw her look at you when you couldn't see her. Without blinking, without moving her head, almost without breathing, sometimes it was scary to see, like a hawk looking at a prey, except that hawks don't look at mice like that. Not with that kind of admiration."
Charlie had a lump in the throat that she tried to make disappear with a candy. "That didn't stop her to leave me."
Castiel had nothing to respond to that. He probably wasn't the best person to console her. Dean would have had the right words because he had the talent to instinctively know what people needed, what they needed to hear. Sam would have hugged her because it seemed to him that it was the only thing he could do, try to protect the people he loved from the outside world. Kevin would probably have wrapped her in a blanket, made her a hot drink and hidden her in a corner with a book because it was what he did when he wasn't fine. Castiel didn't know what to do except listening to Charlie chewing her sweets. Curiously she was the one to save him with a sigh, pushing the almost empty packet.
"Why can't it be easy, as for you and Dean?"
He bit the inside of his cheeks to prevent to blurt a harsh remark that slipped from his mouth anyway. "You think it's easy?"
"Well it sure looks like it."
"It isn't. It had never been."
"But yet you're... you seem..."
Castiel smiled and shifted his position, bringing his legs under him and turned to face her. "You know what'll happen tonight after the concert? We'll have a slanging match. A big one. And I won't have any way to avoid it because even if I slip out right away he'll leave a voicemail on my phone and whatever I do I know I'll eventually listen to it. And I can tell you exactly what he'll reproach me for. Being stupid and a reckless idiot, that I shouldn't have taken a plane or tired myself this much, that if anything happens to me he won't forgive himself and that I don't have the right to jeopardize my health for something as trivial as a concert."
Charlie smiled because it actually looked like the messages that Dean could leave when he was angry.
"And?" She asked. She almost wanted him to continue to tell her the story even though it hadn't happened yet.
"And I'll tell him that it's my life, that I'll do whatever I want of it and that we have to die of something anyway. And anyhow I feel good thank you don't need to worry, I'll sleep more next week that's all." He was smiling, imagining the scene which however had nothing funny. It was just an argument they had had so many times before that he had no trouble picturing Dean getting annoyed or the disapproving line of his mouth.
"You're saying that like it's no big deal to know that you'll fight in a few hours..."
"It isn't. Because it's common. We argue Charlie, all couples do, everyone fights at least once from time to time. What holds us together isn't to always agree, it's just to always be reconciled!"
"And how you do that?"
He smiled again. "The first thing you learn when you sleep with a musician, it's the effect that music has on him. I have a special playlist for reconciliations. It works every time."
For the first time he saw her give a faint smile. "I'm not sure it'll work for us." She said thoughtfully. "I think she never had the intention to stay with me after the end of the tour."
"So what you risk to try to change her mind? At the risk of losing her, at least give you the satisfaction of having tried."
She nodded slowly. "You know what's the hardest? Going on stage when you really don't want to."
He nodded even if he didn't really know what it was like. "Can you put what you feel in your music? Use the grief or resentment to play better?"
She nodded. "That's what I do for a week."
"Does it relieve you?"
"A bit, yeah."
##
"You know, dreamer,
How you think we're friends but we're much better
You know, lover,
I miss your arms when they can't pull me closer"
When Castiel and Charlie returned to Dean's dressing room, it was almost time for the concert, they could already hear the crowd beginning to fill the hall. Sam put his arm around the shoulders of the girl after having introduced her to Linda and Channing and dragged her out.
"Where are they going?" Channing asked.
"To get ready." Kevin answered. He smiled at the surprised looks of his mother and friend. "What? Even musicians have working outfits! You'll never see these two on stage in such normal clothes."
Linda frowned, puzzled. It did not seem to her that could be called "normal" the attire in which she had seen Charlie, in torn shorts, wearing a t-shirt too big for her and so transparent that she could make out the outline of her underwears. She didn't even dare imagine what Sam's stage outfit must've looked like. Her perplexity (and the word was weak) must have shown on her face because Kevin and Dean smiled.
"Besides, mom, I'm not sure that the trouser suit is the most suitable outfit for a concert."
Next to Kevin, Channing frantically shook her head, Linda crossed her arms defensively.
"I'm fine as I am young man!" She retorted. "I went to concerts long before you were born!"
"Maybe not that kind of concerts mom."
Linda raised her eyebrows with an amused pinch of mouth. Children's ability to deny that their parents had had a life before them always amused her a lot. Castiel had retrieved his bag and slipped into the adjoining bathroom to the dressing room to change. Linda hadn't expected to see him going out transformed, but obviously, in some people, the clothes made the man. The first thing she saw was the change in Dean's thoughtful and tired face, the smile that stretched his lips and his instinctive movement to catch the young man and draw him to himself that was aborted by remembering that he was watched. Castiel seemed to stand somewhat more straight, but it was probably the absence of his jacket that made him look taller, he moved quietly into a fitted jeans that had the merit to be neither torn nor faded. He had his street shoes in hand and was rummaging in his bag to pull out a pair of blue trainers which Linda wondered if he had chosen them because they matched his eyes? His short-sleeved T-shirt revealed his arms where the first thing she saw was the aging sign of ancient bruises and a tattoo on his wrist that she had to look several times before realizing that it was a dandelion blowed in the wind.
Channing was talking with Kevin and Linda watched Dean help the young man to hook a wristband to the non tattooed wrist with an ease that indicated they had been doing this for a long time.
"I will also attend the concert Mrs. Tran. Do you want me to guide you?" The young man asked politely. Probably too politely for someone who had just metamorphose from a neat and tidy accountant to a… the only word that came to Linda's mind was "teenager". He looked barely older than Kevin, yet also much older. Even when Dean, consciously or not ran a hand through his hair to tousle it with a smile.
"Better." The singer said, like for himself, as if he was putting the final touches to a work of art.
Linda nodded. There was something about this young man she didn't really manage to grasp. Even knowing his story, even having him in front of her, Castiel called her to mind more than the members of Free Will, more than Kevin's piercings.
"You're going with them?" Kevin offered to Channing. "I'll change too."
Linda then realized they were holding hands and hid a smile, turning to Castiel.
"Let's go?" He nodded and escorted them to the pit. The place was already full and noisy and they weaved in and out to a location close to the stage. She avoided looking at the people she overtook fearing that they might accuse her of taking a place they'd probably struggle to get.
"Don't worry about them." Castiel said. "Everybody will move during the concert and I would like you to see Kevin as close as possible. He's very... interesting to watch playing."
Channing had a huge grin. "You almost said "beautiful"."
Castiel nodded. "I didn't want for it to be misinterpreted, but yes. He is beautiful when he plays. Sometimes the music transports him and he is trully splendid to watch and to listen."
"Do you come often?" Linda asked.
He nodded. "As much as I can. It makes me feel good."
"Why?"
He took a moment to answer.
"Because..." He started. "I'm an accountant. I don't have a particularly interesting life, but when I'm here..." He pointed at the crowd with a movement of the chin and Linda saw Channing nodding as though she had understood something that still eluded her. "Here I can be whoever I want, I can express the emotions I want, nobody cares. In the worst case some feel the same."
"Yet they don't play Mozart." Linda said by pinching her lips. Castiel made a little irritated head movement.
"Some people are touched by Mozart, others by Free Will." He said, flustered. Then, more gently: "It's the music that matters you know. Sam would say that what matters is to make people scream without touching them. Charlie would say that it is rather to heal their soul and to forget the past. And Kevin... He thinks that the matter is that it makes you pursue your dreams at least up to the sky."
Linda smiled, hardly resisting the urge to touch him, to put her hand on his shoulder as she would have done if it was Kevin speaking.
"And for you, what does matter?"
Castiel was staring into space toward the scene where a roadie was tuning Charlie's green bass.
"Love." He answered. "And hope."
Channing gave him a puzzled look.
"Music brings hope you know." Castiel said for the girl before getting lost again in the contemplation of the empty stage as if talking to himself. "Sometimes it's the rhythm of the drums that rocks you until you fall asleep or wake you up with a start in the morning like a blow in the chest. Sometimes it's just this one perfect line in a song that holds your attention and speaks to you so hard that it makes you drop the razor blade before you cut yourself. Other times it's a guitar riff that carries you away when you don't expect it. And you can't stop yourself from thinking that it's worth fighting for, that life isn't so bad as long as you can rely on that feeling every time you hear that special song."
Linda nodded slowly but Castiel didn't see her, he was lost in his thoughts, in a feeling he hadn't seen coming and was threatening to cut him off. He was away from the madding crowd and the light deodorant scent in the air. "But overall." He continued, this time turning his face to Linda. "It's mainly love that we feel. The Beatles said it better than me, but the important thing is love, always. We all have that song that reminds us of a friend, a relative, a lover and you smile with them in mind whenever you hear it. This band, for me... at first it was nothing more than a second chance, the music of a man who didn't even know he had saved my life. Then it was sex in dark alleys, do not get caught and never talk about our feelings. And then, one morning you wake up and you realize that the only thing you want to see, opening your eyes, is his face on the pillow next to yours. The only sound you want to hear is his voice telling you that the coffee is ready. And when I listened to him singing after realizing that, it struck me. How much it was strange not to be born together when my worst fear is that we could die separated. And all that, it has always been wrapped in music. Music only speaks of love Mrs. Tran, and love only speaks of life."
Linda didn't answer because the lights had gone out, and the cries of the crowd beating in her ears would have covered her words. But she groped for the young man's hand, not really surprised to find it trembling, and gripped it. Strongly.
"But if I fall from grace
You'll be my one escape
After all we used to say
Family doesn't end with blood
It's you I turn to when I need to be hold
It's me you'll all turn to when we'll grow old"