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AS CAS APPROACHES THE CAR he braces himself for... For what? He doesn't know. The heated mix of adrenaline and anticipation makes him feel more awake than he's been for weeks.
Breathlessly, he flings the door open.
The first thing his senses take in is the smell; something sharp that he can't quite place. Then it's Harrison; motionless behind the wheel, his vacant gaze fixated on the car's radio which is blaring the lyrics to some profane, non-descript rap. For a nauseating moment, Cas fears that he's hallucinating again, that this is some imagined, twisted version of Harrison. But the waver in the boy's voice is too real as he says, "I was locked in."
Once Cas decides that Harrison is visibly unharmed, his panic is quickly displaced by frustration.
"What the hell man? You're the one with the keys! I thought you were dying or-"
"Cas, look."
Cas stops short. He follows Harrison's eyes towards the radio. Dripping from the glowing dials is an impossibly black liquid, darker than the shadows cast by the pallid light of a nearby streetlight. The horror of the light-absorbing liquid only increases as Cas watches it drip onto the cup holder with an acidic hiss accompanied by the acrid scent of melting plastic. He notices the seats, their vinyl covers warped and eaten away in places. The car mats have been singed and the buttons below the radio have become indistinguishable from one another. Cas' head fills with images of Harrison at the diner, the very same dark substance spilling from him. From his hands, his eyes.
"It was worse," Harrison continues, dragging his gaze from the ominous liquid to meet Cas' eyes, "before you came."
"What do you mean?"
"While you were gone I couldn't open any of the doors. That... That acid shit just started pouring out of the radio and there was this static sound-" Harrison pauses to put his foot up on the dash, his shoe bearing more resemblance to a used-up candle than a designer sneaker. "I tried to turn it off but I didn't want to touch it."
"So you stayed there waiting for it to burn a fucking hole through your leg?"
By this point, Cas can tell that the situation is beyond logical reasoning. He knows he's avoiding the real question; what was the liquid and where was it coming from? From what little knowledge Cas has of cars and their inner-workings, he knows that no part of the vehicle could have produced this impossible substance.
It looks as though it's stopped flowing at the very least, with only a few sinister drops remaining.
"You would freeze up too, Sinclair," Harrison says lowly, darkly. Cas averts his eyes.
It's true. If it had been him in the car, Cas knows he would have handled things a lot worse than Harrison. Cas pulls himself into the passenger seat after carefully checking he won't be in contact with any residual liquid.
