Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
SEATED AT THE DESK IN HIS DORM, CAS is a king chained to his throne, with insomnia jangling the keys.
Aside from the scrawled notebook that lays open before him, there's an old analogue radio crackling with incoherent static, the dials staring back at him like a pair of eyes.
Sleep whispers in the recesses of his mind.
Cas' head has started to pound and the window before him rattles relentlessly in the wind. It's been almost a week since the diner incident yet Cas still finds his absent thoughts straying back to the event. He thinks of the boy who stumbled in not long after him in the same dishevelled manner; dark curls stuck to his forehead slick with sweat, bloodshot eyes and a vacant gaze. A mirror of himself.
Almost.
As the radio continues to crackle, Cas adjusts the dials experimentally, listening carefully to the restless white noise for the voice. It's been almost a year since he had heard it. He doesn't know why he keeps trying.
It's getting harder to trust his own brain these days.
"Sinclair, my man!"
Cas starts at the suddenness of the address. This voice does not come from the radio, but rather, somewhere behind Cas. As he turns reluctantly in his chair, sealing his fate of engaging in unwanted conversation, he finds himself in the company of Victor Kahn, an olive-skinned young man of considerable height and considerable hair that with a little more gel could probably graze the top of the door frame.
"Oh. It's you," Cas mutters bitterly, immediately turning his back to the unexpected guest.
"Ah yes. The teenage magniloquence," Victor muses, leaning against Cas's door with a rakish thousand-watt grin. "I missed you too, ghoul boy."
Victor is the certain kind of upper-class youth that gets their sneakers professionally cleaned and throws the word 'magniloquence' around in casual conversation. The kind that's only recently fallen into fortune and still isn't quite sure what to do with it all. With Victor recently accompanying his father on a business trip to Seoul, Cas had been left with a dorm to himself for the last three weeks—a luxury that had expired all too soon.
Victor pauses and Cas suspects that he's waiting for him to ask about his trip.
Cas doesn't ask him about his trip.
To Victor's credit, he appears unfazed and powers on jovially, "You crashing here again for the summer?"
Cas gives a curt nod.
"Your decision, or your folks?"
"Not your concern."
"Of course it isn't, I'm just a curious bastard," Victor replies breezily, absently twisting the expensive watch that hangs from his slim wrist. "Which I'm afraid you'll have to get used to."
Cas puts down his pen. "You're boarding?"
"Sure am, old sport."
"Your decision, or your folks?"
"We came to a... mutual agreement."
Closing his eyes, Cas pinches the bridge of his nose. Maybe this is a just an unpleasant dream and he'll wake up at his desk again. Alone. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but dreams always have their way of warping memories; distorting reality.
But this isn't a dream. This is not what he wanted. This not what he needs. What does he need?
Sleep, he thinks, I need some goddamn sleep.
Cas is about to vocalise this when his attention is drawn to a conspicuous grey duffle bag crammed behind the sofa in the common area of the dorm — a duffle bag that definitely wasn't there five minutes ago.
Following his gaze, Victor purses his lips for a moment so brief that Cas wonders if he had imagined it.
"As we are on the topic of mutual agreements," Victor says with a little too much zeal, "let's make one of our own, shall we?"
Shifting his eyes from the suspicious bag to his primitive radio, Cas raises a brow. As badly as he wants to know what's in the bag, he knows Victor's secrets are not a one-sided exchange — and Cas definitely isn't in the business giving out any of his own.
"You keep out of my shit and I'll keep out of yours?" Cas offers.
Victor beams, but Cas doesn't miss the slackening of his shoulders. "Couldn't have said it better myself."
Cas holds out a hand and they seal the deal with a firm Iverson-bred handshake. When they release, Victor unceremoniously wipes his palm on his slacks.
"Pleasure doing business with you," Cas says drily.
Victor shakes his head, "No, no, the pleasure's all mine." He draws himself back to standing, his hair actually touching the door frame now, and gives a two-fingered salute. "Godspeed, man."
Out of habit rather than any sense of companionship or camaraderie, Cas returns the gesture, though with much less enthusiasm.
Victor pivots as if to leave but pauses mid-rotation, gesturing to Cas' school shirt strewn lazily across the floor. "Some parting wisdom, while I'm feeling generous; use cold salt water before you wash that. Works like a dream."
Before Cas can ask what the hell he's talking about, Victor closes the door firmly behind him.
As Cas returns to scrawl a note on his book he remembers the conspicuous smear of blood on the cuff of his shirt's sleeve.
