May. 10th, 2016 12:12 pm
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you have reached the inbox of Kate Galloway. Leave a message.
status: [ available ]
location(s): [ spiral 2, house 1404 // the clinic ]
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dedikatedyou have reached the inbox of Kate Galloway. Leave a message.
status: [ available ]
location(s): [ spiral 2, house 1404 // the clinic ]
text. voice. video. action.
ITS..... PERFECTLY.... FINE.....
Except there is no something's anymore.
But he's guilty as fuck for saying it in the first place, for letting the words drop, and he scrubs his mouth before pouring another shot and souring the taste in the back of his throat. The bitter feeling that he's left Sam and Cas out in the for the benefit of earning a little pity.
And pity? Is not what he wants. No, he wants answers, he's desperate to know. To understand. To get a grip on himself with fingers that don't keep slipping. ]
Not like we're alone, right? [ Except he near chokes on the words and it's stupid, he feels stupid, and he wants to get up and walk away because of it. Find where the gravel notes of his voice have wandered off to and shake the life out of them for betraying him and his confusion, for pedaling out the pain of his self hatred and leaving nothing in its wake. ]
I know Sam likes place more than I do- nothing wrong with that.
YES... YES... IT IS... nnngh
(She knows the underground, this place and its limitations and walls, is a problem now, but it took months to understand that. Months to even realise that her restlessness wasn't just her typical need to do things, but something deeper that clawed at her insides, begging her to get the fuck out.) ]
He always been like that? [ Good at finding the bright side, she means. The query comes out before she even thinks about it, stumbling across her tongue in that way words do after this many shots, where thoughts flow like water between brain and mouth.
She pours them both another, tequila splashing up and out of the glasses with the kind of careless abandon that comes when you've lost track of how many shots down you are. At least it's only a couple of drops that escape and flow over. ]
HOW DID THIS BECOME AWFUL
You mean the, uh- [ He waves a hand before pulling a shot glass near, already lining up another lime, preparing himself for the downpour of booze, the numbing waves he needs right now to drown out the static noise that's raining down in the back of his mind. ]
Optimistic puppy dog thing? Always looking up, always gonna get better, just look on the bright side? [ He's not sure why he's trying to offer her something here, like showing baby photos out of his back pocket that he does not possess of a little brother he wants to give the world to. Whatever makes you happy, Sammy, whatever gives you what you need most, Dean would give him the world and then some if he could. And so he gives what he can before he downs a shot, because taking care of Sam, even without taking shit, is easy. He can do it asleep, with his eyes closed, dangling with his life on the line. Sam is what he knows when he doesn't even know himself and it tinges him with an ease he can't begin to find anywhere else right now. ]
Yeah. Always. Pain in the ass when you're stuck with him in a car for sixteen hours straight but hey- some days it gets you through even when you hate it.
because what is actually working through your issues in therapy???????
It would be impossible to deny that Kate wants to prod Dean about Cas, just a little, because she likes Cas and has no reason to dislike Dean either, and she wishes she were even half as good at advice and fixing things as Dagny or Faith or even Diana, who could untangle interpersonal problems like she was playing Cat's Cradle - easy little plucking movements and gentle words. But she isn't, and even now the promise not to say anything about her conversation with Cas lingers quietly in the back of her mind.
So. Sam. Who is far easier to talk about, and - under the haze of alcohol - who she can't help smiling over, just a little, at that description. Optimism is something that does, somehow, kind of grow on you, even if you can't quite give into it yourself. That whole balance shit that people talk about, probably. Can't look at the shit all the time, or something. ] It's nice. [ It reminds her a little of Faith, in that same we can change things, make them better way. And that actually worked. Mostly.
Kate's fingers can't help but glide to her ear, to her piercings, fiddling with the bar she placed back in after finishing work; an old self-conscious habit that's even more obvious after a few drinks. ]
PFFF THERAPY
But talk of Sam is like offering cake to the hungry - giving something good where it's needed. He may have had issue with Sam and women before, in Purgatory where Amelia became what Sam craved more than saving his life, but this isn't Purgatory and this is Amelia and right now he can't find it in himself to be upset or jealous that Sam has something that's somehow easier than what he's trying so hard not to look for.
And that smile: it's so obvious and it makes Dean shake his head, lingering on just how much of a matchmaker he isn't, but he can still offer tidbits. Give his brother away as best as he can, tease and torment and still say the good shit. ] It's annoying. [ But his words lift upright, almost jovial, amused at his brother for being the man he is and for himself for being something opposite. ]
But someone's gotta like it.
[ The key missing word there being: you. You have to like it, you get to like it because he knows you do. The hair tuck, the nervous gesture, it's all there and Dean doesn't push because he's not one to talk right now (or ever) but it's there. He isn't blind. ] Not like I know where it comes from either, but hey- he's pulled me outta more trenches than I can count. Even with the feel good talk.
no one needs things like /therapy/ or /grief counselling/ those have n e v e r worked...
Well. There's also the obvious.
But looking at the good and the bad and trying to concentrate on the former sounds far more simple than it is. There's no cure-all for the kind of issues that lurk deep in memories, waiting for the moments where everything stills and lurching, making it impossible to remember any of the good things.
So, one distracts oneself with alcohol. Or, on days like today, drinks until one starts thinking about all the reasons one usually distracts oneself.
And then distract yourself from those, too.
(There was a point in here. She's pretty sure it disappeared with the last shot she had.)
Kate would thank Dean for not mentioning the betrayal of her facial muscles or her fingers as they seem determined to let themselves be seen in ways she normally has under lock and key, but she doesn't do more than let her face rearrange into something more neutral and glance away for a moment. Marc was good at that too - pulling her out of bad situations; less with nice words and inspiring speeches (he was never all that optimistic either; more determined and practical, personable when he needed to be) and more literally, but all the same. ] Someone has t' do it. [ Be optimistic, drive the others insane with their incessant sunny outlook. ] World would be boring otherwise. [ It's one of the few things she believes, even when everything feels like it should be grim. People should be different, have different views and opinions. Different ways of getting to places, even if those places are the same.
(If Faith says we can do it, we can change things!, Kate says we have to do it, or no one else will and Alicia is I want to do it, for me.) ]
they're too uh. UH. UHHH. SPEC..IA..L.. FOR THOSE?
Dean almost laughs, though the sound ends up wrecked and broken, as if Dean can't help thinking about the times when he hasn't been around to do it. The times when he's endured a lack of optimism and Dean has had to ride on his hard follow through alone, his dire need to keep pushing simply because it's the only thing he has. To slam bodily his way through life, pummel and claw and destroy and what the fuck is he destroying now other than himself? He can't stand it, this hatred, this deep seated need to push himself so far over the edge that there's nothing left to save, and he knows he clings to the things he has to keep him grounded.
To Cas, to Sam - they are his life rafts, all the time, they are his only bright spots and someone has to do it. Someone has to be there for him to hold onto and he thinks - remembers dreams - knows what it is to have nothing there to sink his fingers into, imagines a world without their voices tinged within it. ]
Hell yeah, course it would be. Not like I want him to stop. Wouldn't be Sammy if he wasn't bein-- [ Everything that Sammy always is. Stubborn and forthright and giving; genuine and his little brother and all the things he is not combined into a man that Dean tries so hard to let go of. ] Y'know. All that he is.
[ But right now, it all just wraps around and falls back onto Cas and Dean stares down at the table, looks at his tequila might it might reach up and strangle him and he downs it anyway because no matter where he is, no matter what he does, all Dean can feel is the loss. Their impending absence like the rumble of a stormcloud and he shoves as hard as he digs tooth and nail, trying to hold on to the sacrifices he's given to keep his family held together taught. He is terrified of their loss, of their nonexistence, and Dean tries to quirk a smile into place, though it's worried and carved into sorrow. His mistakes, he think, they just run too damn deep. ]
Wouldn't change the kid for the world.
THAT... IS ONE WAY OF PUTTING IT...
(He didn't. He should have. It's still her fault and her failure. Her fault for acquiescing and keeping all these things between them - she could have alerted someone, anyone. It didn't even have to be the family friends that took them in, just someone who could deny his wants better than she ever could.
He got what he wanted and she did things she was too good at and ignored her own wants in the process.)
But instead he's seven years dead and fuck, even when she thinks she's used to no white noise in her head at all, it all comes rushing back. Dreams where he appears in the Colosseum, fighting off Creatures or some random monster of the month, and the noise is just so vivid, so realistic that she wakes up with her chest aching when everything goes dark again. ] I'll- [ The sentence starts and stops before she even really knows what she's about to say, but there's that sibling need simmering - that fuck she really likes this guy need burning just as strongly (the one she thought was non-existent for all but friendship, when there really was no time to concentrate on anything about romance): the ones that say protect protect protect because the last thing she needs (that any of them need) is more loss.
(She is still too damn terrified of that possibility. That she's opened herself up to way more hurt by letting Sam crawl under her skin like this, here where people can be killed over and over again or just disappear into the ether without fanfare or goodbyes.) ] -try and make sure he doesn't. [ Change. Try because guaranteeing that would be impossible.
But she wants to try. She has to try, because this damn place will do everything to change all of them. ]
djafklasd fuck themmmm
[ Dean lifts his head minutely and quirks it to the side and thinks that Sam has changed a hundred ways to Sunday and it's nobody's fault but his own. If he hadn't- if only- if he could've- he should have gone it alone. All those years ago, he should have left Sammy the hell alone, should have let him walk the footsteps he needed to walk to save his life and yet here they are. Dean changed Sam in all the ways he was never meant to be changed and just like everything, all those mistakes, those dripping failures can be traced back to him. He led Sam away from the college, the life of his dreams, and he took Sammy back from all his happiness. All his dogs and his girls and his many lives that should have been led without all his discontent.
Dean warped those paths, Dean got it wrong, Dean changed the world until it was all lost in his hands - he was the righteous man who fucked it all up and nothing will ever take that back the way it should be given. ]
If you're gonna, might as well do it for the better.
[ It's an offering, one of those big brother things. He's not gonna ruffle her hair or tell her 'go ahead, i trust you enough' but it's something akin to that. A willingness to accept this into their lives as if he has any control over it - he doesn't. But he still thinks he has a say sometimes, thinks he can put his foot into the door before it shuts permanently into his face and he doesn't. He has no words, no true offerings, but he can still say his piece. That he doesn't mind it, thinks it's a good thing, a needed thing- Sammy deserves this. This happiness, this piece of mind away from their own breed of devastation.
Sam deserves it because hell, how many times has Dean taken it away? How many times has their life stolen it, refused to give it back, kept them from having the things they could never have dreamed of, never touched. If Sam can glimpse it, can rest his fingers upon it for even a moment, than that's alright. Deserved even, and Dean just wants Sammy to have it, to hold it, to keep it. For long enough to count. ]
seriously how dare they do this????
Well, she still doesn't know if she trusts herself enough to manage something like that. Every part of her that wants to try is still at war with all the old habits and parts that wear distance like armour and only want to concentrate on all the bad things. On the things she couldn't do before so why would it begin now?
But she wants to try more than she thought she ever could. It smoulders deep in her chest in the same way that determination to take on Dagny's apprenticeship did - the kind of thing that makes Kate grit her teeth and try to ignore the warring, rather than anything else. She wants this, wants her own mind to stop overthinking everything and just let them be for a while. Maybe she can stop this self-imposed exile that she's - consciously or not - been doing for years. Be a little bit selfish, but in a better way than usual.
She doesn't bother to say anything to that, just pours them both a shot and downs hers, silent until; ] If anyone I know turns up, tell 'em nowt. [ It's all been so serious that she needs to joke a little. And joking at her expense is a good enough way to do it.
(Seriously though? If Carl or Alicia turn up, she's never hearing the end of it.) ]
this wasn't even supposed to happen!!!
He wouldn't want them any different, not for the world, not for anything. They are all he knows, all he cares for in life, all he steps forward for. To think of them changing is a terrifying thing amongst all other terrifying things and Dean is already scared shitless, scared that he is their ruination, that they will leave because of all that he is. And maybe they will and maybe, at the end of the day, he would deserve every ounce of that.
But her comment still makes him almost come up with a laugh, lifting up another shot and almost sloshing the liquid sideways (party foul!) because it's just funny. It just is and he doesn't really know why, the absolute teenager racket of it, the teasing and the flirting and the bubbly not knowing. ]
Believe me, i'm not the type to go around spillin' secrets. [ Down the hatch goes the shot and Dean's starting to feel real damn cozy, like he wants to put his head down and blot out the world, but he shakes it instead and something spins sideways as he drags a hand across his eyes. ] Everybody else can tell 'em for me.
what WAS supposed to happen i mean really
It is daft and stupid and a thousand things she doesn't think she did even as a teenager, back when dating meant three weeks of awkward snogging and eventually breaking up because of some random detail that really means nothing when thought about in any long-term context. But it keeps things lighter than they have been in a long time. In most of this session, at least. ] Fair enough. [ she laughs, mostly because yeah, no one in this place seems to be able to keep a secret too long. Whatever the gods do to elicit emotion, it seems to be all about bringing out those secrets. Old scars and all the rest of it, whatever cliche a person cares to use for those secrets. ] Doubt they'll turn up anyway. [ it could happen, but it's been so long now that she really thinks that this place has decided she's the only chaotic link in her world.
... it's probably right. ]
this....... is a good question
But at least she laughs and that counts for something, right? It means this conversation is supposed to be hurting less, even if Dean still aches somewhere identifiable but he's been aching for days and he just can't shake free. It's a perpetual bruise on his soul from where he's ripped himself away from Cas, from where he's silently pointed out the things he cannot have, and he's doing everything in his power to ignore it, even now. To cling to the necessity of humor because it's all he's ever had. ]
Keep saying that and maybe they will.
[ Because isn't that how life always works? Tell yourself enough times that something'll never happen and it'll pop up eventually, smack you in the face and laugh. But maybe they won't, maybe she's right and he's got nothing of anything to give that doesn't suck, but at least he isn't pouring himself another shot. Yet. Instead angling the bottle in his hand and looking at the remains of the tequila, wondering if it somehow evaporated in their midst. ] But hey, if not- you got more than enough people here to make up for it.
[ He snorts though, because he knows that's bullshit. Knows it doesn't count. ] Even if it's like fuckin MTV around here, I don't know where the hell all these teenagers are comin' from.
i'm full of them.
she's not quite sure when they got through that much of the bottle either, judging by the way she squints at the level of liquid left. apparently shots of tequila go down faster when you're a mess, who knew? but the mention of all the teenagers around this place does enough to make Kate shake her head in amusement. ] You think of a better source of chaos than being a teenager? [ it must be some grace of god that she came here at this age, because her younger self was so much more openly chaotic, openly a mess. and it can't be to do with times, otherwise everyone would be from the same year, right? ]
jdkslfa
But the comment makes him grin - perhaps, unusually. He's the rebel, the asshole, the guy without a plan, and he's laughing about the idea of the mess of teenagerdom. It's weird he knows, and he knows he's off the cuff about it in some screwball way, but Dean can almost think of nothing more ordered than when he was a teenager. Perhaps there was the inevitable chaos, the realm of girls he didn't understand and places he didn't yet know but there was a simplicity in the world in he occupied, in the body he held. His life was his father's and nothing more, and while the happiest of times held order and a life he could not believe in, with regularity he knew nothing more than what his father laid out in front of him.
A better source of chaos? Hell, maybe. The apocalypse. The Mark. He's not sure. But being a teenager? Still earns a grin. ]
I dunno, I can maybe think of a few. But gotta give 'em credit for pulling in a group of kids who know how to keep their head. I mean- just think'a the prom crowd in this place. The Heathers would lose their shit.
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(He didn't. He really, really didn't. She knows they never found out the full story. Just because they knew who ripped their parents' guts from their bodies doesn't mean they got the full story.)
And, somehow, Kate almost thinks that she would have handled this place better at 19 than at 30. Would have just accepted this as another shitty part of life rather than an attempt to drag her away from a life that was looking up - had been looking up for years.
Fuck it, they don't need more to drink at all, but now her mind's scanning through the depths of her younger years and the last of the bottle seems like as good a place as any to find a way to extinguish the thoughts that flare to life. ]
Never did prom. [ It isn't really a thing back home, only seen in American shows and movies. No one dressed up that much for a school disco either, no one saw them as anything less than embarrassing. ]
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The rest? Was a mess. School, girls, puberty - it was something he pushed aside and tried his hardest to laugh at, as if it didn't matter for him in the same way it mattered for everyone else. And maybe it didn't, his life was his and yet to everyone else, it faltered and skipped like a broken record, looked wrong and off kilter. He didn't have a home, hardly had a father, and talked back faster than any teenager should have been able.
But at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was what his father said. That, at least, was simple. And it is no longer - there's no father to provide order and while Dean likes it that way? It still complicates things, even when he looks back and lets the shadows of his father's existence override everything he does. ]
You and me both. [ He almost laughs at that: Him. Prom. What a joke, the very idea of its laughable, even if it's not the whole story. But it still stings in some weird way that his life was never a thing that anyone else could bear to live and it's why he pours out the last of the alcohol into their twin shot glasses and thinks that they need more when they don't. They don't. But god if he doesn't want to return back to his apartment even vaguely sober, his brain not yet fucked up enough to keep him from thinking. ] Might've missed it in the middle of a move, even if i'd wanted to go.
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Looking a bit closer would be enough to see that, despite the others surrounding her, Kate only ever seemed to stick with Marc. That she never seemed to really talk more than a couple of words to most of the people who filled up the spaces around them. That she almost never seemed to speak with Marc - but when you can live in each other's head, what is the use in physically exerting the effort to speak?
It was all a delicate, easily shattered facade of trying to do the same things everyone else does. Of getting drunk at house parties and in parks, playing stupid games that ended with some overexcited boy's hand sneaking a bit too far up a thigh in the corner of someone's living room. Getting kicked out of school discos because your friends spiked the drinks while you smoked in the bathroom.
Kate probably would have gone to prom, if it was at all a thing. How long she would have lasted there, with the awkward dancing and chaperones she imagines... that would be another question entirely.
She tips the last shot down her throat and shakes her head clear of some of the fuzz. Not a lot of it. Just enough to straighten her vision for a bit. ] Prob'ly didn't miss much. [ She shrugs, but it's awkward and exaggerated when alcohol impairs every movement. ] Get drunk. Get kicked out. [ Do it all in something fancier than jeans and a hoodie.
Which sounds like shit honestly. She never liked dressing up even when she was getting paid for it. ]
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Though, it has to be said that Dean knows his childhood was a fucking mess, just like he knows it was in equal measure for Sam. Nothing could have stopped the way his father taught Sammy to hold a gun against the demons that were so obviously waiting in his closet and nothing could have changed Dean's dire need to go on hunts with their father in a way where he was included. How could school have possibly mattered in any of that when Dean was solely obsessed with becoming, one day, the man who raised him.
It mattered enough for him to get his GRE but even that feels a farce - education means nothing to Dean past the sad lie of normalcy, something he lost years ago, and it didn't mean anything to him then either. Just like the idea of prom, it was all idiotic and unnecessary and Kate's words make him actually manage a laugh, the booze opening him up to humor in a way he doesn't usually find. ]
Get high on the back lawn? Yeah, sounds like my kinda shindig. [ Because admitting to even more bad behavior is the best way to make friends. ] Tryin' to think if we even would'a been allowed to go.
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... You here for the fireflies? [ It's hard to keep track of everyone and when and where they all met after a while, and the events blur together without a proper date system. But when speaking of highs it's hard to forget the little fuckers buzzing around her head like some weird halo. ]
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Mostly, Dean just does what he wants. Drugs included.
But he gives a couple of nods at the question before he wrinkles his noses in slight distaste. If only because they came from the gods. ] Think that was right around when Cas and I made it through the door. I gave him mine, he's still got 'em alive and kickin'.
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well, it's her career now, isn't it?
her eyes slip away from the present for a moment, rolling the empty shotglass around on the table. )
They were nice.
( it's been a long time since she hasn't worried about something. )
... He does? Thought they didn't live that long.
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At least not for awhile. ]
Not that Cas ever gets lucky.
[ .... he's so funny. ]
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Sure he could if given time.
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But he very nearly rolls his eyes, that sort of thing that falls flat because he doesn't believe that in the slightest. And he's about to say so. ]
I'd put money on it taking more years than i've got fingers.
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