Chapter Text
There’s a certain kind of rush that takes over your body during a hunt. It feels like you’re closed in a cubicle, big enough not to see its walls, but still small enough that you can feel them crowding you in. And you’re driving a car with no brakes, not knowing if you’ll crash into one of those walls, or you’ll run out of gas before that happens. Diego hasn’t crashed into any of them yet. When his car would roll to a stop, he’d get out, fresh air washing over him, and look over to Dean.
There’s a certain kind of rush that takes over your body during a hunt. It’s not the same rush that takes over Diego when Dean grins at him.
- ●●●●
He’s back in that poisoned dream. Colors dance on his eyelids, painting them like canvas, lips grazing over his own like softest of paintbrushes, more disturbed air than anything else.
He’s free and he still keeps returning to this.
He could count Dean’s freckles from this close. There’s a set of amber colored glasses back in the kitchen, all fancy with sides like brushed diamonds. When Diego was younger, he’d hold them up in front of a window and watch as the light going through them sends tiny, twinkling stars dancing over his skin. They’d get lost in the clutter of little specks of gold over the bridge of Dean’s nose and the arch of his cheekbones.
He doesn’t want to torture himself like this, but he still does.
A quick rap of knuckles on the window glass brings him back from the near-psychedelic illusion and he jerks into a clear sitting position, blinking the colors from his eyes.
Dean waves a Mars bar at him from the outside.
They’ve stopped at yet another Godforsaken gas station in the middle of nowhere, with weeds sprouting from the cracks in asphalt and faded lettering on the store’s front window. To Diego, they all look the same, nonexistent until someone comes in and sprinkles some life from the road over them. Even if he can see a row of houses down the street from this one, and a diner across from it.
He gets out of the car, joints popping as he stretches, and catches the candy Dean tosses him.
“Where are we?” He asks with a yawn, tearing off the wrapper and following Dean to lean against the Impala’s door.
“Elcho,” Dean tells him, biting into his Snickers bar, “Wisconsin.”
Diego hums in acknowledgment, sneaking glances of the arising sun turning Dean’s hair golden.
“We’re sticking around?”
They’ve been driving around for about a week, making their way to South Dakota with no definite plan in mind. Honestly, Diego is more than happy to just spend his time driving mindlessly through the country, though he could do with a change of music choices- there’s nothing wrong with AC/DC, Dean, but at this point, he’s sure he has every song imprinted in his memory forever. But driver picks the music and at the mere suggestion to take a wheel for a bit, Dean looked like he was fighting off an aneurysm.
(“I’ve seen you drive, Diego, you’re a fucking menace.”)
“Nah, just wanted to stretch my legs,” Dean responded, standing up on the tips of his toes to emphasize the point.
“Who did you dream about, anyway? Paris Hilton?” He asks with a joking leer.
Diego keeps his mind and face carefully blank and responds flatly, “Bradley Cooper.”
He’s pretty sure that’s the guy who was “the sexiest man alive” this year. Or was it last year? Personally, the guy’s not so bad looking, but Diego thinks calling him the sexiest man alive is a bit of an overkill. At least if the guy he has in mind is Bradley Cooper. He really doesn’t care much about celebrities unless they’re in some way connected to Allison.
He’s not gonna lie, even without her power, his sister is one hell of an actress and she’s been steadily climbing up the movie industry ladder. It’s impressive, but he’d be more proud if they had parted on better terms.
“Huh,” is Dean’s comment and suddenly Diego wonders if he should’ve been more thoughtful with his response. It was meant to be a joke, but Dean might have taken it as a confession to something more than a dream.
It could have been, of course, but it wasn’t.
Dean shakes his head, “Wanna go grab breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
He’s not sure having an internal freak-out over breakfast would be better than this- but damn, he’s hungry.
- ●●●●
Diego is slurping his way through his cup of coffee, while Dean stuffs his face with pancakes, and observing the scenery when a police cruiser rolls to a stop at the gas station.
He stabs a piece of his omelet and watches two police officers getting out and heading towards the store, the cashier rushing out to meet them. They start speaking animatedly, the cashier going through a series of emotions that Diego can recognize by his body movements only; he settles on waving his arms around in distress, jabbing his fingers at officers.
“What’s that about?” Dean voices, speaking around a mouthful of food in his mouth.
Diego shrugs, not having a clue. He snatches the town’s newspaper from the table to flick through out of boredom and then his eyes get caught on the headline.
“Hey, look at this,” he says, nudging Dean’s ankle with his foot to distract him from his breakfast, “the missing five still not found.”
“Huh? What’s that?” Dean asks, leaning over the table to take a look.
Diego lays the paper on the tabletop, so he can see and starts reading, “Julie Castor and four others disappeared in the span of two weeks, have still not been found. The authorities advise the people to stay in their homes after nightfall and not to go near the forest.”
“That sounds sketchy to me. Does that sound sketchy to you?” Dean asks immediately.
“What, you think we just stumbled onto a hunt?” Diego asks skeptically because that feels too easy. So easy it could actually be possible, damnit.
Dean shrugs, “It costs us nothing to check it out, right?”
Diego can’t argue with that.
A truck loaded with tree logs drives by and he sighs, agreeing.
- ●●●●
“This feels ridiculous,” Diego says grumpily, fiddling with links on the cuffs of his uniform shirt.
“You’re ridiculous,” Dean calls through the bathroom door of the motel room they’ve rented, “if this is a hunt, we need a cover.”
Diego rolls his eyes because that’s literally been Dean’s argument for everything and flops down on the bed he claimed for himself.
“We can be nosy and ask around about missing people without posing as US Wildlife Service,” he calls back.
He might be a hypocrite, complaining about dressing up for a job, but he really hates formal wear (everything that includes a dress shirt and cuff links counts as formal wear).
The door cracks open and Dean pokes his head out to say lightly, “You’re being a real little bitch about this, you know.” He looks over Diego and asks with a frown, “The hell’s wrong with you?”
Diego scrunches up his face. “I don’t like dress shirts. Didn’t like them in my school uniform, don’t like them now,” he admits.
Dean freezes on the doorway, his face doing a strange exchange of expressions, and then asks, “School uniform?”
Shit.
“Uh.”
“You had a school uniform? I thought you were homeschooled. Oh my God, did you- Diego, did you wear a school uniform in your house?”
“Forget I said that,” Diego pleads, his hope sinking as Dean shakes his head, eyes filling up with mischievous, downright evil gleam.
“Forgetting that? No way. Were there shorts? I’m trying to construct an image in my head. What color was it?”
Christ.
Diego presses his lips into a thin line, signaling that he has no intentions of indulging him.
“Did you have to wear a tie? Knee high socks? Aw, don’t be embarrassed, I’m sure you looked fantastic.”
Diego doesn’t dignify that with a response either, giving Dean a glare despite the feeling of heat overtaking his face.
Dean only gives him a cheeky smile as a rebuttal.
“You’re a jerk,” he says at last, taking the silence as an opportunity to get up and flee toward the door.
“Let’s go see what’s up with this disappearances,” he mutters and gets out, Dean’s laughter following him to the parking lot.
“We’ll talk about this later!” Dean calls after him.
“We absolutely won’t.”