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You're sitting in a bar with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but jesus christ what is even wrong with you tonight, you don't want sex or a cheeseburger or even Jack Daniel's, and the last time you felt like this?
Was when you sold your soul to bring your brother back to life.
The last time before that? Was when your father sold his soul for you and left you all alone with the most cryptic orders, saying that you might have to kill the brother you'd die for, the brother you've given your entire life over to protecting because that was just your job.
And you were wondering if it was just that you don't want to go have sex with some random person in a bar. You were wondering if it was just that you look at Castiel — at this angel who so inexplicably chose to believe in you, both before and after he got on the track to free will, who's not snapped at you once about your last adventure, even though you got his favorite sister killed.
You were wondering if it was just that you can't keep pretending like you don't care about the stupid bastard, because you do; and/or that you can't keep pretending like he doesn't draw you in like nothing you ever thought you'd feel and make you want to do all kinds of demeaning shit like sing sappy love songs to him or maybe write your own, because he does.
(Maybe not sappy. Maybe not sentimental. Because dammit, you are not fourteen and your life's soundtrack is not Taylor Goddamn Swift. You'd at least have the class to sing him some fucking Queen or something — but the point still stands.)
Except it turns out? You did all your wondering for nothing. You're looking at Castiel right now and feeling nothing. You can't remember feeling anything all day. You're not sure you even felt anything yesterday, for that matter. You felt something for the first time in hours when the waitress set your dinner down, and all that was?
The only thing that burst out in your chest and unfurled, seeping and curling up into all your nooks and crannies?
Was revulsion.
Hot and sick and twisting around your lungs until it feels like a miracle that you're even breathing. All of it rushing over you in this wave of fuck, no, fuck fuck fuck, get away from me, like your body can't even stand the sight of food.
Your stomach's empty — or close to it, because it occurs to you out of nowhere that you had to force yourself to get through breakfast and still only finished half of this morning's bagel with cream cheese (goddamn it, though, they ought to just call that a carbs-and-fat sandwich). and it occurs to you that you worked through lunch instead of eating it — but you're not lying to yourself in thinking that you aren't hungry. There's no growling or gnawing around your insides. Hints of it, maybe, but not as much as there should be.
Sure, there's the old familiar voice, the one that sounds like you but not. Sure, you've got it hanging around the back of your head and chastising you, telling you not to eat, telling you that you can't eat, telling you that you're barely holding on to what little scraps of good you have so don't you dare fuck it up by eating something — much less something this awful for you, and decidedly not something that you'd actually enjoy.
But aside from that? You're just not hungry. You've got no desire, that you can feel, to eat anything.
Still, you pick up the burger because that's what a normal, well-balanced person would do.
That's what someone would do if he weren't fucking sick with himself for even ordering this thing, for even thinking that he needed this much food. (Never mind thinking you needed this much bad food, this much wrong food.)
That's what someone would do if he didn't have his dick tucked uncomfortably into a pair of too-small pink panties, if he didn't have them cutting into his waist, his skin, or riding up his ass-crack and scratching at him like nobody's fucking business, or acting like the little lacy ruffles along the leg-holes made everything better, like they're kissing at his skin so why's he fucking complaining.
(Then again, maybe you're complaining because you're just the sort of head-case who has an internal monologue argument with his fucking panties. Maybe they should think about that.)
Eating your fucking burger like a normal person is what you'd do if you didn't want to scream at Cas that you love him, and if you didn't have this itch to scratch the back of your throat and see if you can still make yourself throw up (as though you've absorbed the calories and gotten back on the way to being a chunky, awkward, weird-looking kid all over again just from looking at the burger and the fries around it), and if you didn't have echos of Dad's voice racketing around in your skull and telling you how much of a failure and a chubby eleven-year-old disappointment you are.
(yeah, because leaving kids alone in motel rooms to fend for themselves with tomato soup, Funyuns, and Lucky Charms sounds like a totally sound plan.)
Except that all of these things are the story of your fucking life, and they won't leave you alone in this moment.
And maybe it's something about this town — maybe there's some other renegade angel hanging out with the Cupid, playing with people's emotions and making them miserable because he can — but this shit's been nagging at you for a while anyway. Definitely since Anna went Dark Side on you and tried to kill your brother. But even that's not really accurate enough for you.
Maybe this has all been an issue since Carthage, since Ellen and Jo went up in smoke for nothing. Except you were "forgetting" to eat every so often by that point. You were mostly regular when Bobby got stuck in his chair, but even then, the urges not to eat were there…
You can't actually remember when this started. You want to say that you were better — you were eating fine before Hell, then eating mostly fine immediately after, then this slipping back into your old habits just slammed into you right now from out of nowhere, like a two-ton nuclear warhead of getting weak and sick all over again.
And this is wrong, you think, not even managing to summon up a husky voice for your internal monologue, like the one that's attributed to Sam in those weirdo internet stories that you absolutely haven't ever read, much less multiple times, much less commented on under the shield of virtual anonymity.
It's wrong that you're feeling all of this, but you are, and now you don't know what to do about it. You only know what feels right.
You need to eat this burger, but you can't. You won't. You shift in your seat and shove the thing away. Brush it off as not being hungry, snap at Sam for questioning this because what the fuck does he know? Nothing, that's what he knows.
Nothing. Exactly nothing. Sam doesn't know anything about everything you've ever done to yourself — all the times you've dared yourself to keep going on a three-or-more-day spiral of not eating anything even though you couldn't really tell where reality ended anymore, all the times you've had your hand plunging so far back into your throat that you worried about getting it back up.
Sam's never even questioned any of that. You want to believe he's at least noticed — but if he'd noticed, then surely he would've said something, right? Christ, it's worse than how Becky still doesn't believe that no, really, the two of you have been trading emails for years, that you knew exactly who she was as soon as she said samlicker81 and that you've known her since she went by ravendor-seeker.
(and seriously, though: the fact that you can use zeppelimpala as a screen name and all everyone ever thinks is that you're a hardcore fan of the pseudo-fictionalized version of yourself? how they can do this despite how you only post fics in a different fandom, not the one that's creepily obsessed with you and the details of your fucked up life?
(well, except for the demon blood and the sexuality crisis you had the first time you turned tricks with a male john to send Sam money while he was at school and all the times you've made yourself sick on purpose. except for what happened to Layla after you got done ruining her life, and what happened to Sarah after flirting with Sam got her introduced to your world, and whether or not Lisa and Cassie are okay when you're not around to watch their lives fall apart out of some association with you. so, basically, except for all the details that actually matter — thanks for leaving all that out, Chuck.)
that anonymity's a blessing and a fucking jackpot for getting away with the shit that you can't talk about to anybody else and not having it traced back to you. not even by your geek genius little brother — but on the other hand, it's so fucking lonely that it makes you want to scream, because nobody really knows you at all, and the one who comes closest is currently sticking his perpetually mussed up head into your burger.)
(not that Sam would even believe it if he figured out it's you who's been writing the epic-length ongoing saga of Doctor Sexy and Doctor James Kirk Thompson, the earnest and secretly hurting submissive pediatric surgeon, who's not as sexy as everybody else at Seattle Mercy General, but Doctor Sexy loves him anyway. Sam would never believe you wrote it on your own.
Sam thought you learned about Vonnegut from SparkNotes, even though you've replaced those paperbacks several times over the years but still can't bring yourself to part with all the old ones, even though they're falling apart. Sam would probably just demand to know who you plagiarized this fic from, then call you a dick for "refusing to come clean and apologize."
And it's not that you don't love the stupid kid, because you do and you always will — but he's still the guy who thought you could only like English classes because you wanted to nail the teacher, or because you could see the girls' phys ed class out the window. He's still the guy who couldn't believe you aced a Physics class because they don't have oral exams for science classes, Dean, and I definitely mean that as an innuendo.
He's still the guy who told you to listen to Dad and just drop out of school already, because let's face it, Dean: your skill-set's mostly limited to hunting, fixing cars, and being a jerk to people, and it's not like you want to be at school anyway.)
And Sam's giving you this disbelieving smirk right now, as you tell him once again that you're just not hungry so why can't he drop it.
Worse than that: he's grinning at you like a fat cat in a canary cage. Glancing up from his salad with a quirk to his lips and an arch of his eyebrows like, who do you even think you're kidding, Dean? I mean, we all know you'd be a huge fat-ass if you didn't have hunting around to keep you fit, if you didn't have to run from some new ghost or monster every week. Besides, you're over thirty and your metabolism's bound to be slowing down. getting kinda pudgy, picking up a bit of middle-age spread's nothing to write home about, happens to everybody—
but maybe it wouldn't be happening to you if you ate salad and worked out, like I do. went for a jog or did some yoga or something. and hey, maybe Becky's fanfic versions of you would actually look like you if you were actually interested in keeping your weight down.
And worst of all, you know that Sam's probably not thinking that for real. You know that he's probably just concerned and only being a patronizing dick about it because that's what he does when he forgets to pay attention to how he comes off to people. and everyone's been stressed out about everything in the world lately, so you can't blame him for taking a night off of sparing everybody else's feelings, for expecting you to get that he's trying to say he cares about your sorry ass.
You know this because he's your brother and even if he doesn't know the full extent of your bullshit problems, he'd never do that to you.
He's done it to you before, or things like it anyway. He's acted like Dad ever treated the two of you the same, like anytime Dad didn't, it was all over being pissed off at Sam for being different and having a mind of his own. He's acted like he has any idea what all you took from Dad, every smack and every punch and every verbal assault that you absorbed without question, just so Sam wouldn't get it half as bad, just so Sam could pretend like you had a father and not a drill sergeant.
He's stomped around, all high and mighty, taking it for granted that he's always had it the worst of everyone. Taking it for granted that he knows everything about you when he doesn't know about all the times you went out to Palo Alto for his birthday, but left without saying a word because he was so happy, pretending to be normal, and you couldn't bring yourself to spoil it for him.
When he doesn't know (let's just say for instance) that Bobby caught you puking on Sam's sixteenth birthday and wanted to drag you to the ER until you broke down on his shoulder, crying about how you weren't sick, except for in the head, and you promised to get a handle on this, on how broken and weak you are, as long as Bobby didn't ever tell anyone, ever, especially not on that specific day because you would not ruin the only sweet sixteen your brother would ever get?
But the past is the past. Sam's grown up, and he wouldn't pull that kind of shit on you now. You hope he wouldn't. You trust that he wouldn't.
And you try focusing on Cas, because he's so much better a focus than all this history that's packing itself into a moment, that's lounging around in your mind like it fucking owns the place — but it's so weird to see him eating. Angels aren't supposed to eat.
And he startles. And he looks up. And he looks at you, narrowing his eyes with that look he gets that's a mix of pensive and suspicious. And you want to ask him what his problem is, because there are people and they'll hear you and you're already a freak enough for being the only guy at your table who isn't eating. You don't want to add some obnoxious confession of, I don't know if it's love, but whatever we're doing? It's not just sex to me anymore. It's something different, and it's special, and you make me feel all of these things I can't explain to anybody, to the heap of bullshit in your life.
And lucky for you, Cas opens his mouth — your heart holds still and your breath catches in your throat and you hope against hope that he's going to ask something of you, that he's noticed how not-right you're feeling and how not-right you're acting, that if he can't tell you that he loves you, then at least, he can do something to show he cares—
But the only words that leave his stupid, pretty mouth are, He's here.
"He" meaning, "Cupid." Meaning work, and the case, and nothing to really do with you at all.
Whatever. It's probably your fault for thinking that your problems mattered.