forthedog | They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?

I'm on edge. I can't pretend I'm not. After two months, I finally felt like I was getting a handle on this place and now...

What I had to offer, a knowledge of a place like this that not everyone had, has been flushed down the fuckin' toilet. With each person that trickles off the train, claiming they're going home to an apartment they've lived in for years -- some their whole lives -- that feeling of being all in this together slips away.

Now, things I haven't dealt with in six fucking years are suddenly important, and for all the growing up I've done in the last half a decade, I feel completely fucking unprepared.

At the knock on the door, I get up, walking barefoot to the door and looking through the peephole. For all that things have been fucked up, I find myself fighting back a smile.

Opening the door, I huff out a laugh and say, "Hey."

"Hey, yourself." He shoots Neil a slightly crooked smile--everything doesn't exactly feel okay again, looking at Neil, but it's like an anchor. He might be completely out of his depth here too, but at least it's depths he wants to be in.

His gaze flickers up and down Neil's body--half unintentional and half Jesus-can't-help-myself--and to the apartment's interior. "You gonna invite me in?"

"'s still weird, havin' you knock," I admit, stepping back to give him room to slip through the door.

I reach and touch his arm on his way past, half to remind myself that he's solid. Real. I don't know how long it'll take for me to trust it. Maybe I never will.

"Kinda think that isn't the weirdest fucking thing around here right now," he says, shooting Neil a look over his shoulder--fighting the urge to stop at that touch and let it linger, even through the roughly patched leather. The jacket feels like armor. Not for the first time, he wonders just what it's protecting.

"I'm pretty sure I came here to ask you out. How the hell's that for weird?"

"'n' go where?" I ask, a smile stretching wider across my lips. He's right, the weird shit's piling up, one after the other, and it's hard to really sift through it all.

I shut the door, leaning against it. Down the hall, someone shuts their door, and then I hear a pair of footsteps walking toward the stairs, one heavier than the other. Someone laughs and it's a child's giggle. A young girl. That might be the strangest thing of all.

Edited 2012-06-04 17:14 (UTC)

"You care?" He glances at the window, the little snatches of glittering night that he can see through the blinds.

The city's alive. He can't find that anything but unsettling.

"There's a Chinese place a few blocks away. I know," he adds dryly, "because they put a fucking menu in my mailbox."

Barking out a laugh, I say, "Yeah, okay. Sure. I could eat."

And it's been years since I've had decent Chinese. Even on those rare occasions we got food like that, on the island, it's not something I always reached for, for whatever reason.

"You buyin'?"

"I did the asking, I figure I kinda should." He makes a face. Money. He hadn't realized until now just how much he's gotten used to not needing it--not on the Island, and then even in the Realm, outside Santiago City, it had been completely useless as trade.

"Never gonna get used to this."

"I dunno. Might be nice. I never been on a date where the guy paid before," I say, and it feels good, being able to tease him, just a little. I step into my boots, grab my wallet, my keys and my phone, and then say, "You ready?"

I dunno if he's right, 'bout never getting used to this. I think a person can get used to a lot of things, given time.

"Date," he mutters, raking a hand through his hair. "Fucking Christ. Yeah. Yeah, let's go."

The world outside is crowded and loud and, if he's honest, more than a little unsettling. And maybe it's just a mark of who he is right now that it only makes him want to plunge into the middle of it.

That and the company.

"What, you wanna call it somethin' else?" I laugh, stepping outside and locking the door behind us. Now there are actually people around to fucking steal my shit. After years of not giving a damn, it's difficult to pick up the habit again.

I head toward the stairs, jingling my keys in my hand 'til I finally slip them into my pocket. I'm nervous, and I figure there's not much chance of hiding it.

"I don't wanna call it anything," he says, moving alongside Neil, shoulders close to brushing but not quite. Once there would have been so many things he could have done here--reached down and taken Neil's hand, laid a hand against the small of his back, shoved him back against the hallway's wall and kissed the fuck out of him and not cared who saw.

But for the first time in he doesn't even know how long, those don't feel like total impossibilities.

"Names for shit just makes everything more complicated."

"I dunno, it seems pretty fuckin' complicated without 'em," I point out with a snort of laughter, my knuckles grazing the back of his hand, and it could've been an accident.

But it wasn't.

"Right, so why the fuck make it worse?" Out on the stairs the evening air is refreshingly cool, and the city seems twice as bright as it normally does. For a moment he hesitates, feeling an odd jerk sideways--somewhere there might be a world where the Realm never happened. Where none of this did.

Where he just had a life. A normal life in a normal city.

"You adjusting to the new neighbors okay?"

"Fuck no," I admit with a snort of laughter, "What, are you?"

I mean, I guess I'm adjusting as best I can. I'm not like, terrified or anything stupid like that. It's just pissing me off more and more, and yeah, it's kinda creepin' me out, too.

"They seem human," he says, which is the extent to which he's willing to commit. "They seem completely fucking harmless. So no. I'm not." He pulls back one side of his jacket to reveal his gun, strapped to his side in a way that's more hidden but still accessible.

"Dean thinks some may be demons. I dunno. But right now I don't trust any of 'em."

"Said the same sorta thing to me," I say, one corner of my lips twitching when I get a look at the gun strapped to his side.

"I think he might be losin' it. I mean, assumin' he was even halfway sane when he turned up here."

"What, 'cause he's ready for something to jump out and fucking bite us?" He shoots Neil a look, shrugging his jacket back into place again. "Pretty sure that makes him saner than if he assumed everything was totally fine. Or did you forget last weekend?"

"No, 'cause he nearly shot a kitten in an alley while I was talkin' to him, the other day. And I haven't seen him in a while. I know him. There's a difference between him bein' wary and bein' crazy fuckin' paranoid," I point out, arching a brow at him.

Edited 2012-06-07 16:22 (UTC)

"Kind don't think it's all that big a difference, half the time." And yeah, as they make their way down the street and he sees the odd person here and there, the odd passing car, what he feels is arguably paranoia.

And it's saved his life more than once.

He glances over at Neil again, hands shoved in his pockets. "What d'you mean, you know him? I guess..." He considers, trying to brush dust off hazier memories. "I guess he is kinda fucking different. Besides just not remembering."

"Far as he knows, his brother's been playin' host to Lucifer for like, years. The two of them never did well without each other, man. It'd be a miracle if he wasn't completely bugfuck crazy," I say, walking alongside him, our shoulders brushing against each other every few steps.

"He's been through Hell. Literally. He... he asked me to help Sam. Says he doesn't have it in him to do it. Doesn't have enough humanity in him for it."

Edited 2012-06-09 04:57 (UTC)

He listens in silence, and when Neil is done he's silent for a few more minutes, and then he laughs for a few more minutes after that, hard and more than a little bitter but genuinely amused all the same.

Hell. Isn't that something.

"You're a fucking freak magnet," he says. "You really are. Jesus Christ." He swipes a hand down his face and wonders vaguely if there was ever really a time when he felt normal at all.

"I don't think he knows," he says, quieter. "Dean. What I did."

"Fuck off," I say with a bark of laughter, nudging him lightly in the ribs with my elbow.

But then, my laughter dies and something in my gut twists. I can never really get a handle on how I'm feeling, one moment to the next. It's exhausting.

"Sam won't tell him. He's all about sharing and shit, or at least he used to be, but not about this. Not... not right now."

"I kinda figured when I didn't have to run for my fucking life," he mutters, kicking out at the pavement. It's a ridiculously childish gesture, and he feels childish, helpless and stupid and no better.

He should be used to the idea of living on borrowed time.

"How're you gonna help him, anyway? He's... I dunno what exactly he's so fucked up about. I know there was a demon involved. But he's carrying around the whole fucking world on his back and he doesn't wanna put it down." His mouth twists sharply. "I think I get how he feels."

"He started the apocalypse. He's the one that released Lucifer from Hell, and I'm pretty sure he knows that, now. But, I dunno. He always... He takes on everythin', like it's his weight to bear. He's always been that way. Dean went to Hell for him, and he couldn't stop it. Instead, he took up with a demon, and she fucked with his head for six months straight. Anyway, it doesn't even fuckin' matter, they've always been fucked up. I don't even know where the hell I'd start."

Be a friend to him, but that's all I've got. I'm not even sure how the hell I'm supposed to do that.

It's probably a mark of the degree to which he's internalized the Island that he accepts this without question, without doubt. It feels true. And all he has to do is think of the haunted look in Dean's eyes. In Sam's.

That look that had first pulled at him.

"When we--when I found Sam. In the bar." He's speaking slowly, haltingly, staring down at the pavement like he can look right through it. "He's calling it a brawl now and I guess it started that way, but it was... Neil, he wanted me to hurt him. That's why it happened. He wanted me to hurt him and I just wanted more fucking pain, any way I could get it. So we hurt each other."

He shakes his head; one of these days he'll have a conversation with Neil that doesn't end up like two immense and unseen hands wringing him dry of horrible things.

"Sickest fucking part? I'd swear he's only really pissed that I didn't kill him. What the fuck do you do with that?" His voice drops again, almost inaudible over the sounds of the city at night. "What the fuck do I do?"

"I don't know," I whisper, and there's a part of me, a small part, that resents him for telling me. Because what am I supposed to do with it. It took us a long time to get there, but Sam was one of my best friends. He was one person I knew I could always count on. Somebody I knew I could always go to, for anything.

And Mike doesn't even really remember that.

"He gave me this," I say, touching the charm around my neck. "For my birthday, last year. He said it's for protection." The carving was maybe a little clumsy, and it's worn a little, now, but I haven't taken it off in over a year. I've even replaced the cord a couple of times.

Well, I guess it doesn't fucking work, he almost says, and manages to swallow it back down like bile. He glances over at Neil, at the charm, and feels something cold blow against him that may or may not actually be a breeze.

"Don't think I realized," he says. "That you and he were close. I mean, I guess... maybe that's something I should remember?" He looks away again, squaring his shoulders. "Like I said. Freak magnet."

"We were friends at first, I guess, but when he came back that first time, and he was different. Harder, I guess. I dunno... we didn't get along like, at all. Fought about everything."

Even shit we didn't disagree on. Everything.

"Then I guess we stopped." And I'm not sure if it's something Mike should remember. It's not like we hung out a lot, like he came and visited like Dean would do, or that I talked about him. He was just there. Always. 'Til he wasn't.

"Couple of weeks after you... after you died, I got drunk and went and passed out in his bed. He just... let me stay there. I can't even remember if we talked or what but we slept 'til mornin' and then he walked me home. Tom was really freaked out. He asked me if we'd fucked."

I dash a hand across my face before I realize that I've been crying silently for the last half a block, shoulders hunched and my head tilted down.

"I don't know what the fuck you're supposed to do with this shit, Mike. I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do, either."

It's the movement of Neil's hand that catches his attention, that really makes him see. He's spent so much time looking at Neil--him and the memories he carries around with him--and he knows Neil's movements, the turn of his hands, set of his shoulders, gait, cant of hips, arch of spine. And he knows what this means.

He swallows past sudden tightness in his throat, reaches down and catches Neil's hand in his. "Okay," he says. "At least we're there together, I guess."

"Yeah," I say with a hoarse cough of laughter, my fingers curling tightly around his, holding on like it's the only thing keeping me together.

"'m sorry," I mutter, even though I don't know what the hell I'm apologizing for. I sniff, rolling my eyes at the obvious wet, weepy sound of it. Jesus.

"The fuck're you sorry for?" He's stopping suddenly, turning, pressing Neil back against a wall that's all old peeling posters and scribbled-on concrete, and he hears a murmur behind him that he completely ignores. Neil crying has always brought gentle love or hot fury out of him and now it's bringing out a strange mix of both. He reaches up with one hand, traces the tear-tracks down Neil's cheeks with his fingertips, fights down the sudden violent impulse to lick them away.

"Don't you say that," he whispers hoarsely. "Don't you ever fucking say that. Not about this shit."

"Stop it," I grit out from behind my teeth, planting my hands against his chest and shoving him away. "'m fuckin' tired of getting pinned to fuckin' walls lately, okay? Just stop."

My gut twists but I force myself not to look away from him. "I don't want to fuckin' talk about this right now. I can't. I thought... I thought this was supposed to be fucking dinner. Why does it have to turn into this?"

A fucking date. Yeah, right.

"Because we're fucked up," he says, and he's breathing a little hard, and there are a whole host of reasons why this might be. "And we don't get to do normal shit like normal people. I don't fucking know."

He barks a laugh, looks away again, at a passing car, at the changing streetlights in the distance, at distant steel towers. Can't we just make believe. Can't we say that none of it matters.

"Okay." He holds out his hand, mouth twisting into something vaguely like a smile. "C'mon. Promise, no more walls. Let's pretend we're normal. We gotta be able to do that."

"I don't wanna pretend to be normal, Mike. I just... I can't keep listenin' to how you hurt one of my best friends because he wanted you to. Because he wanted you to kill him instead. I fucking love you, but I don't know how I'm supposed to be supportive about this. That's what I'm fucking sorry for, okay?" I say, and I don't take his hand right away, even though I still, after everything, want to.

"I know you don't know how things were after you were gone, but he was family, just as much as Dean, and now he doesn't even remember me. It's not like it was with you, or with Dean. He doesn't get that look like maybe he does remember me, it's just right out of his reach. It's just not there. But I'm the one that's apparently gotta help him get better, 'cause Dean fuckin' asked me to. Fuck normal, I just want a fuckin' hour where I don't have to think about it."

He drops his hand away; it doesn't even really feel like it's attached to him anymore. He has these moments, still, where his body feels like an alien thing in which he's trapped, but this isn't one of those. This is just... numb uselessness.

"I'm not sure why you think I can give you that," he says finally. He wonders if his voice sounds as tired as it feels. "And I don't need you to be fucking supportive. I don't want that. I just wanted..." He half-turns away, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I got no one to talk about this with. Okay? He sure as shit doesn't want to, and you..."

He breathes out another shaky laugh, ducking his head. "You always got me. Always. You always understood, even if you hated it. Except for Florence, you're kinda the only one who ever has."

The guilt comes then, and with it, a flash of whitehot anger, sharp and overwhelming and gone almost as quickly as it came.

"Listenin's about the only way I can be supportive, though," I point out, quiet and tired, already, and we've only just made it to the restaurant. I'm not hungry, anymore, but that hardly matters.

"If it was somebody else, it'd be easier, I just..." I shrug. He said he doesn't want an apology, so I swallow it down before it manages to work its way out.

Edited 2012-06-10 01:36 (UTC)

"So forget I said it," he says, and he wishes his own voice didn't sound so fucking dull, and he's wondering all over again if it really counts as a blessing or a curse that he can love someone this fucking hopelessly. "I mean-- I know you can't fucking forget it, just... Just leave it. I'm sorry."

He eyes the entrance--cheerful neon and one of those waving cats--with open distrust. And maybe a little bewilderment. "You still wanna do this?"

"I'm not really hungry," I admit with a cough of helpless laughter, feeling like my stomach's lodged up into the back of my throat. For a moment, I wonder if I can do any of this, at all. If I'm just fooling myself into thinking we'll ever be okay.

I want him to be able to talk to me, but it's like forcing my hand into a fire, every single time. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

"We could just get a fucking drink," he offers, feeling more than a little pathetic. "I'm sorry, really--I'm a fucking asshole. You know that. But we're here, and I just." He lets out a sigh that feels as though it's edging into hysteria, and he hopes it isn't that obvious.

"I wanna be with you. And I'd kinda like to see if I can do that without fucking torturing you." He smiles thinly. "Y'know. Eventually."

Huffing out another laugh, I scrub my hand across my face, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.

"Okay, fine," I say, smiling crookedly, trying not to look too disappointed that this little experiment of ours has already pretty much failed.

He feels his own smile get a little less thin, and a little more sad, and suddenly he's reaching out a hand and running his fingertips down the line of Neil's cheekbone again, the skin there still slightly damp.

"I'm sorry I'm so fucking bad at this," he murmurs. And not for the first time, he thinks he was so much better at it. You'll never measure up.

For a moment, I'm afraid I might flinch away, a reflex after feeling so overwhelmed, but instead I curl my fingers around his wrist, my lips grazing the heel of his hand.

"I'm not real great at it either," I admit, taking a step closer, even though I'm convinced I shouldn't. I keep wanting him to be someone he's probably never going to be. Someone dead. Which is stupid, especially when I love him anyway.

He feels everything in him soften as Neil steps closer, and something in him whispers back you're wrong. You can be better. You have everything you need.

"I love you so much I basically can't stand it," he says, leaning forward and grazing their lips together, barely anything that could even be called a kiss. "'S gotta count for something, right?"

Edited 2012-06-10 03:00 (UTC)

"Counts for a lot," I say, ducking in for another kiss, this one a little firmer, but against the corner of his lips instead of centered.

"Come on. Let's get that fuckin' drink already."

They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?

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