August 5, 1997

like it weren’t the whiskey what he were tryna savour

The appearance of the Impala in combination with Dean’s increased and vaguely explained absences had an unexpected consequence in regards to John. He interpreted the car as Dean’s new strategy for scoring chicks, and Dean found himself making extra room in the easy excuses John offered him. He suggested that Cas wanted to pick up girls and brought Dean along to bars and dances to do so, gradually normalizing the amount of time he spent with Cas and laying the groundwork for further deceptions.

John had no reason to suspect that the majority of their time together was divided alternately between increasingly passionate intimacies and extremely focused GED preparation.

It wasn’t a crime for Dean to have a friend and almost looked normal for him to have some company beyond Jo. Most of the guys Dean went to high school with were getting drunk with their buddies in the middle of nowhere, trying to get girls but more often repelling them through their immature antics.

Dean lived in a different reality. Cas drove his bike to the ranch and Dean said they were going to have a bonfire down by the river, which they did. They walked far, far from sight of the house and cleared an area in the evening-damp grass. Dean built up a bonfire, and as it took he fell back with Cas into the blanket they brought, kissing and touching and gasping into one another’s mouths. With the stars above them and the running river beside them and the crickets grinding out a melody all around them. Someone’s dream of a summer night: heavy darkness, unhurried time. Not a moment, but eternity.

Dean lay with Cas, gazing across his chest at the burning campfire. They exchanged lazy kisses and murmured words of affection. The world smelled like a ripening August, like dew and tall grass and the last fragrances of sun-warmed river rocks lifting into the night.

He was only here and only now. He couldn’t imagine the future and he didn’t want to. He turned his nose towards Cas’ chest and breathed in the scent of his skin. He heard and felt the beat of Cas’ heart in his chest. He bumped his forehead against Cas’ jaw, against the dark stubble there. Everything existed only here and nothing would last.

He ran fatalistically. If the end hovered nearby, invisibly in reach, Dean had to take what he had now.

He wanted to be closer to Cas and so he unbuttoned his shirt and kissed down his chest. He let Cas tangle his fingers in Dean’s hair. He tugged down the waist of Cas’ jeans and Cas asked, “Dean?” then Cas begged, “Dean.”

Tonight they were undiscovered, unencumbered. They had not been divided by disaster or time. One day Cas might tire of him, or fate might separate them, or John might kill him for how he loved.

Tonight the taste and smell of Cas overwhelmed him. The new weight against his tongue, the bone-deep gratification of making Cas lose reason. The promise that no one but themselves knew of these secret ecstasies. With every day that he fell deeper for Cas, he turned a corner. Further from the safety net of the familiar. Further from the pretense of predictability.

They would last as long as their subterfuge did.