Break Your Heart
They first kiss on the dance floor of a small club downtown, where the music is too old and too loud, and where it smells of alcohol, sweat and puke. It isn't romantic, not at all, but he doesn't care about that. He doesn't care about her name either. All he cares about is that her hair is dark and messy and her sparkling eyes remind her of Cas.
Fate, or something that remotely feels like it, lets their paths cross again, in a coffee shop just two or three blocks away from the club. In the daylight, she reminds him of Cas even more, and he feels a sharp sting in his heart.
Nevertheless, he buys her coffee and learns her name, and when she smiles a bright, contagious smile and writes her number down on a piece of paper ripped from her sketchbook, he almost feels like he might be able to forget Cas one day.
He doesn't – not ever – but when he's with her, the pain lessens and he feels like he can finally breathe. He doesn't love her, and he knows that, but he keeps telling her so, and she keeps believing it, because she has no reason not to. She doesn't know about Cas or about the broken pieces in his chest that he calls a heart, so for her, they are just a girl and a boy who met and fell in love.
She learns the painful truth anyway, no matter how hard he tries to keep it from her.
It is their first anniversary, and he wants to do something special. It starts out just the way he planned it, dinner at a nice restaurant and then cocktails in a bar. But when he goes to the bar to get her a pink cocktail whose name he can't even pronounce, he sees him and his blood runs cold.
He looks just like the last time he's seen him, messy black hair and a wide smile. He's even wearing that goddamned trenchcoat, but when he raises his head and their eyes lock, his smile vanishes.
They stare at each other for a few seconds that feel like an eternity, and he can feel all the wounds ripping open once again. When he finally manages to look away, he leaves the bar like he's fleeing from something, and maybe he is.
She follows him outside and sits down next to him sidewalk.
"Are you okay?", she asks, gently, carefully.
He just shakes his head, and then the words start flowing, and he tells her everything. About Cas and how he broke his heart, all those months ago. About how he's still mourning this loss and how he's still grasping for Cas at night and feeling disappointed when he only feels her.
When he's finished, none of them talks for a very long time, and it's him who breaks the silence once again.
"I'm going to break your heart, you know."
He looks at her, that temporary replacement for the boy he loved, still loves, and he knows it's the truth. He will break her heart, just like Cas broke his. It's inevitable, but strangely, she just smiles.
"I know.", she says. "I knew right from the start. You never loved me."
"I…", he starts, but she interrupts him. "It's okay. Break my heart as many times as you want. And I'm going to love you for as long as I can."
He looks at her for a very long time. She is gentle, and nice, and friendly, and caring, all the things he isn't, not anymore, and he knows she doesn't deserves this, he knows he should tell her to leave as long as she still can.
But when he finally talks, the word that leaves his lips isn't "Leave".
It's "Okay".