Warnings: Swearing, language, mention of homophobic violence, mention of past domestic abuse, physical violence (in the last part).
Chapter 20: Blank Page
Dean had delayed as much as possible his return home. Delayed as much as possible the moment he would put the key in the lock and enter an empty apartment, probably to find a note from Castiel explaining why he had left. It had already happened once and even if their break up, at that time had lasted less than three days, he didn't keep a good memory of it. He was tired, anxious, tense and the mere prospect of having to fight to convince Castiel not to abandon him was enough to make him want to lean against the wall and spend the night in a deep denial of the external world.
Open the door and smell a burning odor shouldn't have been such a relief. But it meant that Castiel, for some reason Dean couldn't explain, was here. With his face still swollen that he should refrain from kissing full on the mouth, with a t-shirt with long sleeves too warm for the season, with jeans too large that slipped on his hips. There he was, a steaming pan in hand, with the very bored look he always had when he didn't understand something, his blue eyes were red from the smoke when he looked up to Dean. The singer still had his keys in his hand and on the face the outline of a smile.
"I think I burned the steaks." Castiel said, and Dean burst into laughter. He felt like he hadn't laughed for a long time and he had to hold on to the wall to stay upright. "This isn't funny, Dean!" The other grumbled. "I wanted to make burgers!"
Although it wasn't funny, Dean was still laughing when he approached him and took the pan from his hand before placing a soft kiss on his lips. He put the item on the stove and turned off the burner before turning back to his companion to hold him in his arms, forgetting for a moment that the slightest touch could be painful, hence the oversized clothes. Castiel hugged him back, holding back a groan. For a minute they didn't move, each nose buried deep in the neck of the other, soaking up with the familiar smells, before the smoke make them cough.
"Why are you still here?" Dean asked softly, a hand still wrapped around the neck of Castiel.
The latter smiled softly, looking a little confused. "You thought I was going to leave?"
Dean nodded. "Because of this..." He said, brushing the still bruised brow of the young man. "I couldn't blame you if you decided to... get away until things subside."
"It crossed my mind." Castiel confessed. "But only because the idea that it happens to you gives me murderous thoughts."
His hand was on the wrist of Dean now, his thumb stroking the thorns of the rose that wrapped around it. Dean could feel his hair slowly raise at that touch. Years after it was amazing to see how the slightest caress could still do the same effect as the first time, how it was enough to bring back memories of them behind the bars, glued to each other against a dirty wall, kissing as if it were the most important thing of the earth. It still was in fact, but embedded in the mass of their other problems, they tended to forget it.
"And you're still here?" Dean asked again.
"I'm still here." Castiel answered, approaching to kiss him gently again. "Because I know how much it would hurt me to leave you, and I don't want to inflict that kind of pain to you." He paused a moment to look at his lover. "Few people have the chance to truly love. Even fewer are those who know they are loved, and I have this luck."
It happened rarely, but occasionally, Dean felt like his heart became a big balloon full of tenderness and began to make leaps in his chest. It was exactly the feeling he had when anew pressing Castiel against himself to kiss him again, until neither one nor the other have breath anymore and had to part of a few centimeters, just enough that he still feel his lover's lips move against his own as he whispered: "Some things are worth fighting for, aren't they?"
Suddenly, Dean took a decision and dragged him as much as he pushed him towards the door and into a taxi despite the protests of the accountant.
"But my burgers!"
"We'll stop to eat somewhere, yours were already screwed."
Castiel grunted but said nothing, he didn't even ask where they were going. One way or another he would find out soon enough and he liked the feeling of unknown and imminent surprise he had in the pit of his stomach. They didn't talk about Dean's visit at the hospital, nor the fact that Castiel had obviously not gone to the doctor and winded up a few minutes later in the shop of their appointed tattooer. Rufus knew them well by dint, as he knew all his customers and he grumbled after Dean for not having made an appointment.
"Not coz you're a so-called rock star..." He mumbled while washing his hands.
"C'mon Rufus it'll take you half an hour watch in hand!"
The tattoo artist rolled his eyes and motioned for Dean to settle. Castiel had his eyes fixed on the tip of the dermograph that he couldn't even see moving while the calm and steady hand of Rufus stretched the skin of the inside of Dean's arm to slowly draw the letters and ink them correctly.
"A particular reason for the location?" He asked.
"Yep. But only he can understand." Dean answered, pointing Castiel with his thumb. Castiel actually didn't understand, but he said nothing.
An hour later, Dean had kept his promise and had bought burgers on the way which they had eaten seated at table in the apartment of the Winchester. Two hours later, Castiel was lying in Dean's bed and the singer Dean handed him a pill and a glass of water that he refused, shaking his head.
"It makes me have nightmares."
Dean placed glass and medicine on the bedside table and slipped under the sheets, his presence was familiar and comforting, away from the jolt Castiel had had when undressing to shower. His torso, hips, arms had taken a green and purplish hue in places, he had been surprised that the jet of hot water doesn't actually hurt him. He looked like a painting stained by rain.
"What kind of nightmares?" Dean asked very softly, one hand already in the wet hair of his companion.
"I don't remember." Castiel turned on his side carefully to be able to watch him. The light was still on, but the day had been long and Dean had eyes heavy with fatigue under his long lashes, he seemed already almost in a dream. "But you were not here, and that's what woke me up. I was afraid you really were gone." The hand in his hair tensed gently, pulling him to Dean for a long kiss which would have ended less quickly if the position hadn't been so uncomfortable for Castiel. The other pushed him gently into his pillow until he was again lying on his back, his lover astride over him. Castiel winced apologetically while Dean leaned over him to kiss him again.
"I can't do anything tonight."
"I know. For once we'll do it my way."
Castiel smiled. "You say that like I subdue you."
"Not at all." The singer smiled as he passed a hand under the elastic of Castiel's sweatpants. "On the contrary, I love what we usually do." A kiss, a caress. "But this time sweetheart, you won't prevent me from taking all the time in the world."
"Don't call me like that." Castiel grouched.
"Oh yes. This time, just this time you won't stop me to do that either." Dean responded. He had gently pulled up the t-shirt on the belly of his lover and was laying light kisses where the skin was still intact. "Because that's what you are, the heart that makes me live, the love that supports me, the being that I cherish most in the world." He raised his head to look at Castiel. "Please."
The young man sat up enough that their faces are very close to each other. "You have no idea how much I love you." He whispered. He ran a hand on Dean's cheek, his thumb brushed the piercing on his lip for a while before he kiss him again. Then, contrary to his habits, he let his lover do what he wanted, half-undress him, caress him so long, so softly that he barely felt his hands on his skin. He barely felt his breath accelerate while Dean took care of him, they didn't produce many other sounds than the rustle of sheets, the slip of their skins against each other and one or two casual sighs. Castiel would have liked to return the favor, to also immerse his lover gradually into a torpor of pleasure and well-being, just with caresses and whispers of love. He knew himself to be incapable of doing so, too impatient to take -like Dean- the time to make him come without a single muscle in his body seem to contract. It was deep night when Dean pulled the sheets up on them with a satisfied smile.
"But you?" Castiel asked lazily by chancing a hand to the crotch of his companion. Dean kissed him, his tongue tasted like sweat.
"'T's okay. I don't need more."
"Want, maybe?"
Dean shook his head, he settled comfortably next to Castiel. He knew the location of each of his bruises by dint of having circumvented, surrounded them by kisses and caresses. That night and for the next few others, he couldn't sleep head against the ribs of Castiel, arm across his hips but he would simply mold himself by his side, forehead resting against his shoulder, one arm between them and their fingers intertwined.
"Just that, that's fine." He sighed. He felt really good. A strange mix of exhaustion, relief and satisfaction. His freshly tattooed arm hurt him a little and would soon begin to itch, but he smiled, thinking of the tattoo.
Castiel was already falling asleep despite the absence of the weight of Dean's arm on his stomach or the tickling of the singer's short hair on his chest. And suddenly he understood the location of the tattoo. Inside the arm that Dean passed over him to sleep, mirroring the tattoo he had himself on the hip. "Worth fighting for." He fell asleep before he found the courage to turn to kiss him one last time, but he pressed Dean's hand a little tighter.
##
When Sam found his brother in the living room the next morning, this one was turning keys in his hand for an hour already, waiting for a sign or indication of what to do.
"That's the keys of dad's car." He said, handing it to his brother. Sam took them, puzzled.
"Why are you givin' them to me?"
"The hospital called this morning, Dad wanted us to have them. They confirmed that he wouldn't walk again."
Sam sat next to Dean on the couch, turning the keys between his fingers. They were all warm from the hand of his brother.
"I should feel bad." He started slowly. "If if we hadn't argued that night he wouldn't be there."
"That wasn't your fault."
"I know. This is the problem... I don't actually feel guilty, or feel pity. I feel bad, but that's only because I don't feel bad for him." Sam sincerely hoped his brother would understand his babbling because he couldn't even put words on his feelings. He remembered the shock, his blood turning to ice when hearing the news of the accident, how the news had shaken him to the point that he snub Madison. Then the sensation had faded, vanished in a strange relief and now the only thing he thought when learning the disability of his father was "well done". That was wrong. That was not how a son should react, but he couldn't feel anything other than relief.
"What do we do of the car?"
Sam gave him the keys with a shrug. "It's only a heap of junk, sell what you can, and make a small cube of the rest so we don't talk about it anymore."
Dean frowned. "This car is almost dad's entire life."
"Yeah. This is the life of the one who told me all mine that I wasn't worthy enough and I didn't have the right to live the way I wanted. Make a little cube of it, seems like a good compensation."
Dean lowered his head on his hands clasped around the keys. "How did we get there Sammy? Don't you think we may also be at fault in this? It takes two to make an argument, right?"
Sam bit his lips a moment before shaking his head. "Maybe I'm at fault. But you? You tried to comply to his demands for years and it didn't prevent him to despise you even more than me."
"He has different opinions from mine but is this a reason to let him die by himself?"
"Are you fucking kidding me? You're going back into that room and you'll watch the face of your man and then we'll talk about letting him die by himself or not."
Dean clenched his fingers around the keys in a flash of anger and nodded slowly. Yet this very afternoon, he was in front of the garage that had retrieved his father's car, the keys still clenched in his hand and the silent presence of Dorothy beside him.
"I don't get why you asked me to come?" She said while they were led to where the wreck was parked. Dean shrugged.
"You have a better knowledge in cars than me."
"If you're to make a can of it, I don't see the point."
From the right side, the car seemed in good condition. The left side was only a twisted scrap heap where Dean was sure he could still find some John's blood. The door had been torn off to extract him and was lying on the ground in the dust. The framework still smelled of burned tires.
Dean looked at it for a moment before sliding on the seat which was twisted at an odd angle and the dashboard which had been slightly staved in. There was no more windshield. The passenger side door creaked when Dorothy opened it and sat next to him.
"It's shady." She commented.
"It's all that remains of the life of my father."
"Don't dramatize, he's not dead." Dorothy grumbled.
"He loved that car and he'll never be able to drive it again. It's a bit like I didn't do music anymore." Dean replied thoughtfully. The windshield was dirty from the accident and he resisted the urge to lean to clean it with his fingertips. "Do we have the right to throw on scrapheap one of the favorite things of a human being just because it means nothing to us?"
Dorothy didn't answer, it was one of those moments of personal reflection where any intervention was unnecessary. She just looked at him furtively, waiting for him to untie the thread of his thought.
"I lost my virginity in the back of this car." Dean spoke again. "I guess it should count in the equation. That and all the times Sam fell asleep against me in the backseat. The first time I was allowed to sit up front. We almost grew up under this roof." He turned to her. "Do you think we can fix it?"
She examined more carefully the state of the car, the dented roof, the hood almost ripped off, the steering column that she thought was good for change. "It would cost more than to buy a new one."
"But is it possible?"
Doothy sighed. "Yes, it is. But I don't get why you'd want to keep it? What does it mean to you?"
"A reminder." Dean said after a moment of silence. "A reminder that you cannot blame someone for something this person didn't choose."
"I don't follow you."
Dean put his hands on the steering wheel, turning it slightly as if he was negotiating a bend on an invisible road. "My father is old school, he likes old records, old cars, and has values that I consider invalid. But he didn't choose that. He didn't choose what he considers as normal like I didn't choose to be abnormal in his eyes."
Dorothy frowned, puzzled.
"You don't ge to choose what you are Dorothy. I didn't choose to love Cas, or to be tall or to adore my brother. And my father didn't choose to be the way he is. We shouldn't blame people for things they can't choose."
"Whether we choose or not, it's our actions that define us." She retorted. "We can blame him for the way he treated you and still treats you. He got Cas beaten up for God's sake! There are things I don't approve and yet I don't try to destroy them!"
Dean pursed his lips, nodding. "I'm not excusing his actions. Or him for that matter. He judges me, based on what I do and with whom I do it without trying to understand who I am deep down. And I don't want to make the same mistake."
"What makes you better is that you have the will to understand him, whereas he doesn't care and I think that everything related to him should end up in the bottom of a very deep hole." She grumbled, crossing her arms.
Dean smiled. "I don't think so. There's a margin between what you are and what you do and it's this margin that defines you more than anything else. You are less defined by your feelings for Charlie or your fierce determination to ignore it than by the gray area between the two."
Dorothy shot him a surprised and dirty look to which he responded with a smile. "I'm more observant than I look. I know how it is disturbing. I know what it's like to have believed your whole life to be somebody and finding out one day that you were mistakening on yourself."
"I wasn't mistakening. I know who I am and what I am. I am someone who refuses to be defined only by the person with whom I sleep. All these labels, hetero, gay, bi... I refuse to have one cause after it forbids you to change. I want the choice, and I want the freedom to fight against something that I don't like."
"See? Exactly what I said. Your convictions or your actions define you less than the leeway that you allow yourself between them."
Dorothy didn't reply, locked in a sulky silence.
"You think your will alone would be enough to change your attractions? Looks like you think you can cure yourself of something that isn't a disease." Dean sighed, leaning his elbow on the door that creaked.
Dorothy shrugged. "I'm just saying I want to be able to choose who I love."
"I don't think that's possible." Dean said softly. "If it were I would have fallen in love with someone other than Cas. Ideally a nice and pretty girl not too troublesome." Dorothy let out a snort that Dean ignored. "But it had to be him. And however I tried it changed nothing. Whatever name you put on it. It's him I want to hold in my arms when things go wrong, I retain silly details about him, I'm scared for him and I'm scared I'll never see him again. It would be easier if he was someone my father and society accepts, but it had to be him. And to be honest, I wouldn't wish someone else."
The subject seemed closed for several minutes when Dorothy didn't answer.
"I didn't choose. People you find attractive, those you love, you have no choice, you just find out that it's like that and you have to make do. It's been hard for me to admit it, so I guess for my father it's almost impossible, and I'm not better than him if I feel entitled to blame him for it. So I'ma keep the car. I'll keep it to remind myself to be tolerant, even with what I don't understand." He ran his hand distractedly on the dashboard. "Yeah, I'm keepin' it."
In the taxi that brought them back to the city, Dorothy was looking through the window the buildings passing, thinking back to what Dean had said.
"I retain stupid things about her. And sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I didn't see her anymore." She said softly halfway through. Dean nodded on the other side of the seat. "Yet I'm hetero."
"So what? It's just a label you chose before knowing that you didn't want a label. What does that change?"
"Everything."
"No it doesn't. It changes the way you define yourself, how people will perceive you. But it doesn't change who you are."
Dorothy smiled. "That's what Sam told to Madison about his tattoos."
"For once he knows what he's talking about, and he's right." Dean assented.
"How was it, when you understood for Castiel?"
"Frightening." Dean answered immediately. "And just after, it was liberating. Cause I thought I was someone else and I realized nothing had changed. I'm still me, I just know myself a bit better than before."
"You should make a song of it."
"Hell, I should make an album of it."
"I'd listen to that album."
Dean made a detour to the recording studio before returning home. He stood before the still blank board for ideas that taunted him the past few days, a marker in hand and stood on tip-toe to write the highest possible: "It doesn't change who we are."
After a time of reflection he erased a part of the sentence with the fat of the hand. "Who we are."
It was a first approach, a first inspiration that made him smile, a familiar feeling of excitement began to twist his belly and he smiled when leaving the studio, his phone to his ear.
"Cas? I have an idea... I have a common thread, and I'm going to need you on this one!"
##
Madison's apartment was nothing remarkable apart from its blond perfectly waxed wooden floor on which she had asked Sam to walk barefoot or in socks. His toes left small wet traces before disappearing when he crossed the room to join her in the kitchen. The yellow curtains gave a soft and warm atmosphere the room, barely disturbed by the distant echo of children playing in the pool on the other side of the street.
Sam found Madison's apartment incredibly calm and took refuge there for a week to escape the blank pages that he couldn't blacken and the time that flowed day after day, getting them closer to the fateful moment when they would have to submit Crowley a project for which they had no beginning. But for now, there were only Madison, sitting cross-legged on a chair in the kitchen, a cooling cup of tea beside her as she distractedly scrolled through job adverts on her computer.
"I think I found something." She said, pointing to one of the ads.
"I don't really want you to go."
"I don't really have a choice. And it's a three-week mission next month, I'll be back before you had time to miss me."
"I doubt that." He said with a smile. He pulled the cup to him and absentmindedly dipped his lips into it before rejecting it to Madison with a disgusted face.
"Did you find inspiration?" She asked, retrieving her drink.
He shook his head. He was sprawled on the table, chin between his folded arms and was squinting a little to look at her between the strands that fell before his eyes. "No." It was difficult to talk with the chin glued to the wood of the table. "I can't get anywhere. I feel like an unplugged printer."
Madison giggled and got up to move her arms around the neck of the drummer and lay a kiss on the top of his head.
"It'll come back." She promised. She seemed to believe it, not to just say that to comfort him. She had slipped a hand under the sleeve of his shirt to cover with her fingers the sunflower tattoo on his shoulder, and with the other she touched the lotus on his arm. "You're the one who taught me that one way or another things always get better." She murmured into his ear, pressing him against her. He smiled and squeezed her hand into his.
"You know why I love you?" Sam smiled.
"Surprise me."
"Cause you're the most positive person I know!"
She winced against his neck and he felt her eyelashes tickle him when she closed her eyes. She was rocking him gently, him still sprawled on the table, her still behind him, her arms passed around his shoulders.
"We've both been through much worse situations than this one. And we got back on our feet again. It's easy to be positive when you're sure that there's a happy ending that awaits us somewhere."
"You think we'll have a happy ending?"
"I hope so. And waiting for inspiration, take me to the movies, or anywhere. I want to make the most of you before leaving."
##
The little phrase on the board taunted Sam. It watched him toil in his notebook without finding any line to write and seemed to mock him. He saw the days pass without anything progressing and inactivity weighed on him in addition to worry him. A week had already passed and Crowley wouldn't give them extra time for lack of inspiration. But all he had written so far was worthless, and when he sat behind his drums, only mediocre and uninteresting rhythms came to him. Well might they ganged up, it didn't change anything. The only song they had in stock was "Sunflower" and they had agreed to keep it to themselves. They were up shit creek and the little phrase that Dean had written on the board kept reminding him of that.
The day before, a man had followed them down the street and he knew that Madison had noticed too, the man wasn't a journalist and Sam had noticed the tension in the shoulders of Madison though she hadn't talked about it. He put his drumsticks on their support with a grunt and stretched. On the other side of the glass, Kevin gave him a curious look, and Sam shrugged.
"I hope you're doin' better than me."
The young man shook his head. "Sincerely not... how do you want me to compose anything? I have no lyrics to cling to, not even the guideline of what we want to do with this album... We're screwed man."
"Let's keep a little optimism here!" Charlie grunted, looking up from her bass on which she was softly suffusing futile chords.
Kevin winced. "You know that when you're reduced to quote Star Wars it's means we really are in deep shit?"
"I always quote Star wars!"
"Yeah well, we're kinda always in shit." Sam muttered.
Nothing came to contradict this statement throughout the day, leaving them all frustrated and annoyed when they parted. Dean would sleep at Castiel's again tonight, and Sam with Madison. On the way back he seemed to drag his frame against the tide, and he hated it.
The strange guy was still there, smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, apparently waiting for a taxi. Sam didn't pay much attention to it and pressed the intercom for Madison to open to him. She hadn't changed from her tracksuit, a sign that she hadn't been out of the day. He bent to kiss her on the doorstep without this actually light up his mood, it was nice anyway.
"Productive day?" Madison asked, resettling behind the screen of the computer she had just left.
"Apparently as much as yours."
"Hey! Everyone is entitled to a day of pure laziness once from time to time."
"The problem is that we'd like to work and we're getting nowhere." Sam grumbled, wallowing in the sofa facing the TV off. "By the way, there's a guy outside since yesterday, one of your neighbors?"
Madison didn't answer. Sam looked up at her and saw that she had her head bent over her screen, clearly ignoring him. "Mads?"
"That's Kurt." She mumbled.
"Kurt... as in your ex Kurt?"
She nodded, eyes still glued to the screen. Sam jumped to his feet without really knowing what he intended to do and headed for the door.
"Sam! No! That's my problem, let me handle it."
"I just want to talk to him!"
"And I don't want you to talk to him." She protested, rising in turn. "I don't want to get you into trouble, he did nothing wrong, he's just… here, that's all."
"And you don't find that weird?" Sam grunted. He needed to take it out on something and Kurt seemed a good candidate. He realized his had clenched his fists and his chest was contracted. Madison was looking at him, obviously concerned, one hand on his arm as if trying to calm a frightened animal.
"Let me handle it, that's all I ask." She said softly.
He exhaled loudly, forcing himself to regain his senses before looking her in the eyes. "You'd tell me if there was a problem, right?"
Madison smiled. "So you can play the hero? No way! I'm the heroine of the story, big guy!"
"You could make an effort!" He smiled. The knot in his chest was slowly dissolving.
"I make lots of effort Winchester! I just ordered our dinner online and I have a couple of ideas on how to occupy ourselves until it arrives." She said by surrounding him with her arms, chin up to look him in the eye. "Take care of your problems, I handle mine."
"Fine." He said, bending to kiss her. It required more discipline than he had to completely wipe Kurt of his mind, but he pushed him away in a dark corner of his mind and decided not to evoke him again.
The delivery of the the dinner found them in an outfit that didn't allow them to open the door and for a brief moment they both considered to go and open naked before Sam decide to put on an underwear to be half-decent. Obviously it was not enough for the deliveryman who winked at him before leaving.
"I think your deliveryman hit on me."
"Like everyone." Madison commented from the couch. Sam dropped the boxes on the table and joined her, determined to pick up where they had been interrupted but she stopped him with a finger on his thigh.
"You never told me about this one." She said, pressing her fingernail on one of his tattoos. Three words aligned one above the other inside of her thigh, where almost no one saw them, and no one usualy asked him any question. He grinned.
"I thought it was quite explicit." He said, leaning over her. She shook her head.
"Not really. It can mean many things and I want the true meaning." She said, following the words inked under his skin with her thumb. "Never let go"
Sam strangely wriggled his hips to attract her against him and simultaneously lie on the couch.
"It's Dean who says that about me. That I can't let things pass. That I cling to it with all my strength as long as there is hope."
"Hope for what?"
He shrugged. "Depends what we're talking about. But generally, a hope for everything to end well. He thinks it's a criticism, I think he's right and that there's nothing wrong with never let go, never give up as long as you can fight a little." He was thoughtfully stroking her shoulders, his mind elsewhere. "He told me that when Jess died. And then when we had a hard time with our music. I never let go of anything even when I know it's too late."
"It's encouraging then." She said quietly. She laid a kiss on the hollow of his neck, another under his collarbone. "It means that this album you'll successfully get it done by one way or another."
"You can see it like that."
"Believe in the positive half of this couple, you can do it."
##
"You take advices for our relationship from Dean?" Charlie laughed. Dorothy had just told her the conversation she had had with their friend a few days earlier.
"Not really, and it's not funny Charlie, you know it's hard for me."
"It doesn't have to be."
They were sitting down to table around a huge salad at the bassist's. Dorothy had expected almost every settings but not the strange purple and orange fantasy she had before her eyes. She was still struggling to get used to it and daily joked about her risk of seizures through being surrounded by these garish colors. Charlie shrugged answering it put her in a good mood. And they needed a good mood now.
Dorothy had found a new convoy to drive across the country and the days together were limited.
"But it is." She replied by stirring the salad on her plate from the end of her fork. "I can't wake up one morning and realize that I love a girl. A famous one moreover. I talked to Dean because you don't seem to realize in what mess we'll sink!"
Charlie frowned. "If you're alluding to what Crowley said..."
"I'm alluding to it, absolutely." Dorothy lost her temper. "Castiel is right not to want to expose Dean and I don't necessarily want to expose myself either."
Charlie looked offended. "You have no reason to be ashamed of me!"
"I'm not ashamed of you. But I had other life projects before I met you, which didn't involve girls, projects to which it's not easy to give up on like that."
"I don't ask anything from you." Charlie said quietly.
"Shame."
"Why?"
"Because if you wanted to force me to anything, it would be easier to leave you in due time."
Charlie's face had gradually fallen during the discussion and she crossed her arms, her plate still half full forgotten before her.
"You're still on that?"
"Of course I still am! You expect me to throw myself into this relationship when you know how much it scares me and worst of all, when I'm scared for you."
"Nothing's gonna happen to me!"
"Nothing happened, but it can change, it will. No one is safe anywhere Charlie, and I don't want to be responsible for what might happen." There was a moment of silence and Dorothy looked down at her plate, she had just ruined her appetite. "You know as well as I do that we live in a world that doesn't like when two girls live in an apartment that has only one bed."
"You're talkin' nonsense." Charlie mumble. A her tone, Dorothy didn't manage to determine if she was angry or unhappy, probably a little of both.
"Maybe, but I believe it." Dorothy said quietly. And the hardest thing to admit wasn't that the outside world might condemn their relationship, it was to realize how much she herself would have liked this relationship to be simple. Or just possible. Or just reassuring.
Realize how much she would have liked not having become attached so much to Charlie.
##
As the buses arriving in packets when you no longer expect them, the events precipitated in a few days.
Maybe nothing would have happened if they had managed to get somewhere in the studio, if Dorothy had hit the road later or if she hadn't found a pen in Charlie's apartment. Things would probably have been different if Kurt hadn't been again under Madison's windows a few days later. Or simply if he hadn't approached Madison.
She had turned with a vivacity that she probably wouldn't have had a few months earlier and had pushed his hand.
"I told you to leave me alone." She said. She had almost shoved Sam in her movement and he was now facing Kurt for the first time. He was a normal man, nor frankly threatening nor particularly interesting at first glance. He had the little bewildered look of people who don't expect the reaction they're facing.
"I just wanted to talk."
"We no longer have something to say to each other." Madison retorted, crossing her arms. She had taken a step backward and when Kurt streched his hand to her again, Sam grabbed his wrist. He was taller, stronger than Kurt and the wrist in his hand seemed tiny. He had a brief vision of his fingers gripping the pale skin and the deep certainty that with a twist he could break the joint. He dominated Kurt of his full height.
"She told you to leave her alone."
Kurt was either particularly brave or particularly stupid. Probably a bit of both because he stared Sam down like he was going to spit in his face.
"I wasn't talkin' to you pal."
If he had been less tired, less worked up, he would probably have been able to contain himself. But the first blow was struck before he could register anything and it did good to him. It wasn't so much about finally hitting Kurt that relieved him as releasing the accumulated tension in several weeks. He didn't stop at the first cry of Madison, nor when she tried to take his arm to move him away from Kurt. In fact, he might as well have hit on a sandbag seeing how the other wasn't really trying to resist him. Madison was screaming. "Sam! SAM STOP!"
Kurt had the face bloodied and hardly dared to moan in pain when Sam loosened his grip on his collar and slowly opened his swollen fist. Everything must had happened quickly because people were just starting to get their phones to alert the police. Madison was standing three feet from him with a face he had never seen her. A combination of rage, terror and stupor. She had teeth clenched behind her hands that were clutching her face as if she had been hiding her eyes during his outbreak of violence.
"Clear off." She snarled. A passerby looked at her, puzzled and she repeated her order, this time pushing Sam out of her way. "Clear off."
Sam took a step backward, shocked. "You're taking his side?"
"He's the one on the ground, right?" Madison retorted in a cold tone.
"But... Mads he's the bastard in this affair!" Sam stammered, straightening. Anger was slowly starting to prevail over the astonishment. He was the good guy of the story, right? It was Kurt who used to hit Madison before, not him. Why was she leaning over him when he did not deserve her pity?
She gave him a look devoid of compassion and love.
"And you're the one who feel entitled to hit him for that. You know what I think about that. So now you scram."
He stepped forward ready to plead his case, but she stopped him with a violent gesture of the hand. "I'm serious Sam. You get out of my life now or I'll call the cops."
Someone must have already done that because a siren was heard in the distance. The time gave the impression to Sam to have stopped long enough to print the angry face of Madison in his memory and his cold eyes. Just the time for him to realize what had just happened. He was very cold suddenly and strangely clear-headed and the only thing that came to him was how he had screwed up and a bunch of excuses that would have no impact on her. She had already leaned over Kurt to examine him and began to help him get up again. Sam turned away, onlookers parted to let him pass. When the ambulance arrived, he was already far away and Madison didn't give him a single look while he was walking away.