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"In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you."
"Novak! Visitor."
Novak. This is a name he hates. But then it could be worse. Just like everything. For four days a new man inhabited their four-person cell: white, short, skinny, hyperactive with long, stringy hair that when clean must have been similar in colour to Dean's hair. He made it his habit to invent as many ridiculous variants as possible on the name James: Jim, Jimmy Two Shoes, Jim-Jim-Jiminiy, and completing the catalog with current favourite, Slim Jim.
Slim is not an inaccurate description of this body, Cas will grant. His ribs protrude, dips between the bones that hollow into deep trenches when he stretches his arms above his head. Muscles stretch sickly across his shoulders, snaking into thin cords to make his biceps and triceps. In the four months since he awoke in Louisville, his body has collapsed into itself. His cheeks are sharp and his hip bones sharper, painful. All sorts of new, sore pressure points have erupted in the last few months. Human bodies apparently require fat and muscles. Without it, they become distinctly uncomfortable to inhabit.
Ae shows signs of the same deprivation, though in her the lack of regular food and sleep does not mean a decrease in body mass. Archeopteryxes, Cas assumes, or perhaps daemons in general, do not suffer starvation as a problem of mass. Rather her scales have dulled, and she has molted some of her feathers from her head, back and tail. At night, suppressed in the silence of their bunk, he massages circles into the bald spot on the side of her head, Ae croaking the soft, scratchy caw of sympathy on his chest.
Slim, then, is an acceptable nickname. Anything else pertaining to James Novak sends shudders through him. How unfortunate that the name listed on the left breast of his orange uniform reads Novak and that is all the guards can be moved to care about.
He exits from the common room, leaving the noises of television and card games behind, and shuffles behind the guard to one of the ante chambers that leads to the less secured rooms of the prison. Inside the chamber, he holds his wrists together to accept the cuffs and the leather belt around his waist. The guard's monkey daemon clips the metal chain trailing off the centre of the belt to Ae's harness. She fidgets under his arm, disliking the close proximity of touch by even another daemon, but remains silent.
That's good. It's rare that they're allowed into this area of the prison, and Cas is curious. The one and only visitor they had was the social worker weeks ago. Her questions were invasive and impossible to answer, but her demeanor had been kindly, her daemon a panting, smiling golden retriever who wagged his tail every time he caught a glimpse of Ae. If she's come back, Cas would like to speak to her, if only to have someone with whom to converse. It's been several days since he said a word at all.
The chains jingle-jangle with each step as the guard leads him out of the ante chamber's second door and down the corridor to the visitation room. The thin elastic on his uniform pants achieves little compared to the skeletal nature of his hips. They slide further down with each drag of the heavy chains. When the guard pauses to key in the code to unlock the door to the visitation room, Cas clears his throat.
"Uh. Hey." It takes the guard time to realise Cas did, in fact, say something, and the guard turns to him a second later with a look of surprise on his bloated, pasty face. "Hey," he says again, and ignores how his throat feels like he swallowed gravel. "Can you pull up my pants? I don't want to commit indecent exposure." The too-wide smile he gives the guard in good will has the opposite effect, but after a pause to scowl and finish the code, the guard reaches around to hike up the waistband above Cas's ass with a sharp tug.
It's better than nothing. And the man's bizarre discomfort is somehow entertaining. Humans are strange and fascinating, no matter the circumstances.
The visitation room is empty when the door swings open, all cubbies unoccupied but for one in the middle. The shadow of the visitor hovers on the metal divider between cubbies. Cas passes the guard, clink-clanging to the seat opposite the occupied chair and shifts Ae from his arms to his lap before he lifts his head to view who sits across from him.
It is not the social worker.
This person has—green eyes, short, sandy hair, delicate, graceful bone structure atop broad shoulders and flannel. This person has a soul the shines like sunlight through a dirty window, tarnished but not dampened, iridescent with imperfection. Beautiful.
Dean has always been beautiful.
Right now, Dean is smiling at him. That smile when Dean is nervous—or sad. Not a happy smile. Not a peaceful smile. Those smiles are extraordinarily rare. Those smiles died with Sam. But it is a smile all the same, and upon seeing it, something in Cas's chest stretches and strains, the most painful sense of longing. His upper body bows slightly towards the glass, seeking out Dean instinctively, despite all the years he's trained himself to stop. Ae gives a soft, thin cry. At Dean's thigh, there's Farb, study and steadfast as always, his wet nose twitching like he could smell Ae beneath all the disinfectant and sterilized air.
Cas must take too long with his staring because Dean starts gesturing pointedly. In her hand she holds a phone. She holds it out and mouths the word, eyes wide and green and intent and alive. Dean is alive.
On the divider next to him hangs on identical black phone. Hands suddenly gone numb and clumsy in the cuffs, fingers buzzing, Cas reaches for it, balancing Ae carefully on his thighs. He holds it to his ear with both hands, watching Dean mirror him.
With a suffocating wheeze he forces out the greeting he has not had cause to say in months. "Hello—Dean."
Novak. This is a name he hates. But then it could be worse. Just like everything. For four days a new man inhabited their four-person cell: white, short, skinny, hyperactive with long, stringy hair that when clean must have been similar in colour to Dean's hair. He made it his habit to invent as many ridiculous variants as possible on the name James: Jim, Jimmy Two Shoes, Jim-Jim-Jiminiy, and completing the catalog with current favourite, Slim Jim.
Slim is not an inaccurate description of this body, Cas will grant. His ribs protrude, dips between the bones that hollow into deep trenches when he stretches his arms above his head. Muscles stretch sickly across his shoulders, snaking into thin cords to make his biceps and triceps. In the four months since he awoke in Louisville, his body has collapsed into itself. His cheeks are sharp and his hip bones sharper, painful. All sorts of new, sore pressure points have erupted in the last few months. Human bodies apparently require fat and muscles. Without it, they become distinctly uncomfortable to inhabit.
Ae shows signs of the same deprivation, though in her the lack of regular food and sleep does not mean a decrease in body mass. Archeopteryxes, Cas assumes, or perhaps daemons in general, do not suffer starvation as a problem of mass. Rather her scales have dulled, and she has molted some of her feathers from her head, back and tail. At night, suppressed in the silence of their bunk, he massages circles into the bald spot on the side of her head, Ae croaking the soft, scratchy caw of sympathy on his chest.
Slim, then, is an acceptable nickname. Anything else pertaining to James Novak sends shudders through him. How unfortunate that the name listed on the left breast of his orange uniform reads Novak and that is all the guards can be moved to care about.
He exits from the common room, leaving the noises of television and card games behind, and shuffles behind the guard to one of the ante chambers that leads to the less secured rooms of the prison. Inside the chamber, he holds his wrists together to accept the cuffs and the leather belt around his waist. The guard's monkey daemon clips the metal chain trailing off the centre of the belt to Ae's harness. She fidgets under his arm, disliking the close proximity of touch by even another daemon, but remains silent.
That's good. It's rare that they're allowed into this area of the prison, and Cas is curious. The one and only visitor they had was the social worker weeks ago. Her questions were invasive and impossible to answer, but her demeanor had been kindly, her daemon a panting, smiling golden retriever who wagged his tail every time he caught a glimpse of Ae. If she's come back, Cas would like to speak to her, if only to have someone with whom to converse. It's been several days since he said a word at all.
The chains jingle-jangle with each step as the guard leads him out of the ante chamber's second door and down the corridor to the visitation room. The thin elastic on his uniform pants achieves little compared to the skeletal nature of his hips. They slide further down with each drag of the heavy chains. When the guard pauses to key in the code to unlock the door to the visitation room, Cas clears his throat.
"Uh. Hey." It takes the guard time to realise Cas did, in fact, say something, and the guard turns to him a second later with a look of surprise on his bloated, pasty face. "Hey," he says again, and ignores how his throat feels like he swallowed gravel. "Can you pull up my pants? I don't want to commit indecent exposure." The too-wide smile he gives the guard in good will has the opposite effect, but after a pause to scowl and finish the code, the guard reaches around to hike up the waistband above Cas's ass with a sharp tug.
It's better than nothing. And the man's bizarre discomfort is somehow entertaining. Humans are strange and fascinating, no matter the circumstances.
The visitation room is empty when the door swings open, all cubbies unoccupied but for one in the middle. The shadow of the visitor hovers on the metal divider between cubbies. Cas passes the guard, clink-clanging to the seat opposite the occupied chair and shifts Ae from his arms to his lap before he lifts his head to view who sits across from him.
It is not the social worker.
This person has—green eyes, short, sandy hair, delicate, graceful bone structure atop broad shoulders and flannel. This person has a soul the shines like sunlight through a dirty window, tarnished but not dampened, iridescent with imperfection. Beautiful.
Dean has always been beautiful.
Right now, Dean is smiling at him. That smile when Dean is nervous—or sad. Not a happy smile. Not a peaceful smile. Those smiles are extraordinarily rare. Those smiles died with Sam. But it is a smile all the same, and upon seeing it, something in Cas's chest stretches and strains, the most painful sense of longing. His upper body bows slightly towards the glass, seeking out Dean instinctively, despite all the years he's trained himself to stop. Ae gives a soft, thin cry. At Dean's thigh, there's Farb, study and steadfast as always, his wet nose twitching like he could smell Ae beneath all the disinfectant and sterilized air.
Cas must take too long with his staring because Dean starts gesturing pointedly. In her hand she holds a phone. She holds it out and mouths the word, eyes wide and green and intent and alive. Dean is alive.
On the divider next to him hangs on identical black phone. Hands suddenly gone numb and clumsy in the cuffs, fingers buzzing, Cas reaches for it, balancing Ae carefully on his thighs. He holds it to his ear with both hands, watching Dean mirror him.
With a suffocating wheeze he forces out the greeting he has not had cause to say in months. "Hello—Dean."