Chapter Text
PART 1: THE FATHER
‘The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself’.
Ezekiel 18:20
A Chevy Impala slept in the parking lot of a rundown diner off the highway. In lieu of a passenger, the seat held a stack of well-worn books. All great, or at least good. All American, or close enough. Walden, On the Road, Jesus' Son. Thoreau, Kerouac, Johnson. The driver kept Whitman, Palahniuk, and Ginsberg in the trunk with his father’s guns. Dean, the driver, had huddled himself into a corner booth of the diner. There he planned to eat his last meal.
Deep-fried, burger grease slid in one slick, snail trail down Dean’s fingers and forearm. It was comforting, familiar. As a mechanic, he spent his days coated in the stuff. A greased-up beef burger with a side of burnt fries and tar-black, bitter coffee. It represented the trajectory of his life well enough. Greasy, burnt, bitter.
The idea of dying in Kansas was depressing but the thought of dying anywhere else felt wrong. For a while, Dean had planned to move to South Dakota. That didn’t matter anymore. No one was waiting for him in South Dakota. No one was waiting for him anywhere.
Dean had taken two weeks’ worth of vacation days and booked a motel in Nowheresville, Kansas. He needed time to decide which of his father’s guns he was going to use to do it. He had already considered the irony of using the Winchester rifle and decided against it.
The shotgun would be overdramatic and the pistol felt too common. If he was going out, he was going to do it with a bang. The revolver felt like the right level of theatricality. He could die like a cowboy in a shitty western film. He could do it at high noon. It’d be funny, in a morbid sort of way but he couldn’t wait until noon. Hell, he couldn’t wait until morning. He needed to do it tonight. Dean was still figuring out the logistics of his plan when a man slid into the booth across from him.
“Hello,” The voice was deep. There was a strange twang to it. Dean was good with accents. He’d travelled around enough as a kid. He could tell you which state someone had grown up in within a few sentences. If he was lucky, he would be able to tell you the city, or thereabout. This accent was something different. It was both familiar and foreign.
The man across from him wore an oversized trench coat, a bargain bin business suit and a loosely knotted tie. He looked like the kind of guy who turned up late to corporate meetings with two coffees and an apologetic smile. A small backpack was slung haphazardly over his left shoulder.
“Hey, man?” Curiosity shook Dean from his stupor but his greeting came out as a question.
The man met Dean’s gaze with narrow eyes. He inhaled deeply and began his onslaught of words.
“I’ve been hitch-hiking with a man who I believe has unsavoury intentions. He was meant to drop me off a county ago. I told him you and I were old friends and I wished to say hello,” The man uttered to Dean, his eyes shifting around the diner. The cracks in his austere demeanour began to show.
Well shit, hello to you too, Dean thought before his mind caught up with the other man’s words.
“You don’t feel safe with this asshole?” Dean clarified, looking to another man three tables over who was watching them from the corner of his eye. Shifty eyes, late-fifties, hands shaking with withdrawal trembles. Not the kind of guy you’d like to sit next to on the bus, let alone travel with. What had possessed the guy to hop in the car in the first place?
“I believe I could overpower the man if such a situation arose but I would rather avoid it. I am also carrying very little money on me. I plan to sit here for a little while longer, then head towards the bathrooms and slip out the back exit.” The guy had a plan, Dean would give him that, but it didn’t sit right with him.
“Where’re you heading?” Dean asked, an idea already half-formed in his mind. It would ruin his evening’s plans, but he still had some kinks to work out anyway. Would he leave a note for Sammy? He probably should but what would he say? There was always tomorrow.
“Nowhere, anywhere,” The man confessed.
Dean considered his options. The man across from him could be a convicted killer on the run from the law for all he knew but what the hell? It wasn’t as if Dean had been in the mood for self-preservation anyway.
“Looks like we’re heading in the same direction. I could take you if you wanted.”
The man seemed oddly welcoming to the idea despite the success of his last hitch-hiking experience. Dean wondered if he was naïve or an optimist. Dean wasn’t what one would describe as welcoming or trustworthy. He was a body of rough edges covered in plaid and leather. He looked like the type of man you’d find at a dive bar at ten in the morning.
“It’s always nice to have company,” The man replied and stood, looking to the bathroom tilting his head for Dean to follow.
Alright. It wasn’t how Dean would have made the exit but it did send a message. He waited for the man to get a few steps ahead before he followed, taking the back exit past the bathrooms. He was glad to be away from home, glad no one he knew would witness what looked like him retreating for a quickie in a public bathroom with a guy. Dean had standards. He’d at least make it to a shitty hotel. He’d heard stories about truck stop glory holes and diner bathrooms. It was a breeding ground where STDs met and mingled. Not to mention the fact that Business Suit was a man. Better to not dwell on that.
“I’m not usually the Irish goodbye kind of guy,” Dean smirked once the two had retreated into the open air.
“I’m not Irish,” The man spoke tilting his head, resembling a confused puppy. Genuine confusion, lacking in pretence or sarcasm. Honest to god confusion. Who the hell was this guy?
“It’s a saying, man… You got something I can call you?” Dean asked as he realised, he’d never gotten the man’s name.
“Castiel.”
Dean has never been eloquent. Dean’s words much like his personality were blunt force trauma to the innocent bystanders around him and this Castiel guy caught him on a bad day.
“Your parents must have loved you giving you a name like that,” Dean spoke.
Castiel’s face contorted, a flipbook of emotions flashing over his face before it settled on a look halfway between the aforementioned, kicked puppy confusion and narrow-eyed indignance.
“I believe my parents were rather indifferent to me,” Dean’s face must have been less than the mask he had intended it to be as the man felt the need to continue.
“I have lots of siblings. I’m very much the middle child. I suspect most aspects of my personality were drowned out by my more rambunctious siblings. It’s a biblical name, my parents had a theme, I guess. Some of my other brothers are Gabriel and Michael. I believe once my parents got to me they were running out of ideas.”
The comment made Dean laugh. It was a surprised and guttural noise he hadn’t heard in earnest for months. He directed Castiel towards his car by placing a hand on the small of the man’s back before scolding himself and pulling it away as though Castiel’s mattered trench coat could sire flesh.
“I’m calling you Cas. My parents had a theme too. My mum loved Kerouac. So, you can call me Dean.”
“I can’t say I know much about Kerouac.”
“Man, I can’t say I know much about the bible. It’s all a little over my head.”
“You don’t believe in God?” The way Cas asked it wasn’t like any of the other people who had asked Dean the question before. There was no judgment in it, no pressure for an answer one way or the other. He seemed genuinely curious about the answer.
“I don’t dwell much on it. If God exists, I don’t know if he would believe in us.”
“Sometimes I worry about that,” Cas states his face momentarily closing off, deep in thought. Dean bumped his shoulder against the other man’s wanting to draw him from his stupor.
“I’ve got a copy of On the Road, In my car. You can read it on the way. I’ve got a motel room booked, so I’ll have to pick up some stuff from there. After that, you can point us in a direction, and we’ll keep driving until we find the place you want to settle.”
“We may be driving for a while,” Cas admits, moving the pile of books from the passenger seat to the empty back seat, dumping his backpack with them.
“I’ve got nowhere to be.”