SO FAR SO GOOD

Faraday’s drunk. As shit.

It’s pretty hard going for a daoine sidhe who’s been drinking hard for nearing two centuries. He’s managed it pretty good, with the help of a couple of bottles of cheap whiskey, and some determination.

Fairy heroin.

He slams back another mouthful of booze, licks the last traces of it from his lips. Dean’s got this tone to his voice, like humour that’s been stretched just a little too tight, but Faraday can’t even begin to pretend. He’d always thought that his fae blood had no real hold over him, save for those quirks of luck and his unfortunate way with butter.

    Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

When he speaks, his words are slurred, heavy.

“Kickin’ the habit can kill you, y’know.”

Okay, that does bring a smile to his face (quick as anything, and gone with the huff through his nose). He takes the deck of cards in hand and shuffles them; once, twice, four times before setting it back on the table they occupied. 

     “Don’t you find the card the first time?” But he’s leaned forward, attention rapt as he glances from deck to Faraday. Yes, he knows the gist of a card trick, but admittedly, he hasn’t seen very many.

For obvious reasons.

     “Why do you need four chances?”

“I haven’t done it in a while. C’mon, give a guy a chance.”

He flips the deck, begins sorting through the cards, look of intense concentration on his face. He’s muttering as he goes -- no, no. Aha! No wait, never mind. That’s not it. Nope.

i’ll do a thing

He knows how to smile (but his lips press into a tight unamused line, all the same). 

Still, he does as he’s told, placing the card somewhere in the middle pile once he’s sure the other isn’t looking. “You already look like an idiot.” But he knows better.

(and maybe, there’s a small curve at the edge of his lips)

“That was cruel,” he says, wounded like he means it and hand pressed over his heart, until another bright smile dances onto his face, instead. “But true. Alright, here we go. Lord, don’t fail me now.”

With a waggles of his fingers and a dramatic flourish or two, he sets the middle pile on top of the left, covers it with the right.

YOU’RE ALIVE

Tentatively, he reaches for a card– hesitates for a moment, before plucking one out of the deck. He draws his hand back, keeping it’s face away from the man’s eyes, and glances down at it before lifting his gaze back to Faraday.

             Six of Clubs.

“I’d say don’t tell me, but you don’t seem very forthcoming anyway, so.”

    A shrug, eyes rolled to the heavens, as though asking what’s     a man to do? He sets the deck down on the table, splits it in     three.

“This works like, half the time. Probably. I’m either gonna look awesome or like a total idiot. Alright, put the card anywhere in that middle pile. Anywhere you like. Maybe crack a smile. It’ll help the magic.” He bares his teeth in case the man has literally forgotten how to smile, gives an encouraging nod, pushes half-coherent words out from between them.

He’s trying not to smile, and doing a damn good job of it too. 

        “…–”

   “ -- well don’t get too excited.”

It’s like trying to get blood from a particularly stubborn stone. Still, Faraday’s got a way with people, and he’s worked with less. Cards are shuffled once, twice, fanned out in his hand.

The very mention of Sam, drops his gaze. Sam was suppose to be noble– fighting for others, for a cause greater than himself… and he bound his loyalty to the man for it.

                                           ‘Maybe, we all die.’

     “Sam kept his intentions secret.”  He put the lives of those that followed him, at risk– some giving their lives completely, to a vendetta. “But Goodnight… he knew.” 

He’d observed the way they acted around one another– friends, until a look or a word spoken, quieted the smile on Goodnight’s face, to something that looked like doubt.

“Sam Chisholm was a no good son-of-a-bitch who got a lot of good men killed,” Faraday says, easily. “Vasquez included, and I liked that Mexican.”

Faraday doesn’t remember the names of the men from Rose Creek who’d died fighting for a little patch of valley soil that had been empty and abandoned fifty years later anyway. They were only humans. Maybe they were good ones, maybe they were decent husbands and loving fathers, but Faraday hadn’t been interested in them. Vasquez, though...

Bullshit? Bullshit’s good. They can work with bullshit. Please, please, please, let it be bullshit.

“Okay, so…so there’s no way it’s a daoine sídhe thing, right?” Forgive his terrible accent. But that still leaves them with having to figure out what the hell is wrong with Dean. “I mean, have you ever…—y’know, you’ve been with Dean for some time, could it——could that be a factor?”

Is it an exposure thing? It better not be an exposure thing. Because if it is, then Dean is screwed.

He’s never been able to translate fear properly.

Most often, it spikes into adrenaline, recklessness. Into pushing back at whatever threatens to scare him, and it’s not much that does, these days. But this, this thing that he can’t wrap himself around, that he can’t grapple into submission long enough to confront, it tempers fear instead to anger.

He jerks the gun up on muscle memory, but manages to catch himself at the last second, the shot going high over the guy’s shoulder and embedding into the hotel wall beside him.

“It’s like every last one of you sons of bitches have a death wish.”

His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that it hurts. 

“You touch Sam, I’ll kill you.”

When he raises his hands in a placatory gesture, he somehow manages to look mildly offended at the same time. It’s a skill.

“I don’t want to touch any of you,” he says, easily. “You’re all grubby, and you smell like iron.”

      “I don’t frolic.” He’d, for the most part, existed between both worlds, kept far enough from humanity to not be noticed, and yet close enough to watch the world change. Cities were built where towns had been dust, even Rose Creek and all the blood shed upon it, had been paved with stone and metal.

                        (and ignoring the dead)

      His people, or what was left of them, began to flourish in the new ways, and he watched that too, from just outside of it all.

     “You had your secrets– we all had secrets.”

“Yeah, you don’t say.”

Even after a week, when tongues had loosened and something like friendships formed, Red hadn’t exactly been forthcoming, despite Faraday’s non-stop pushing. Imagining Red frolicking isn’t exactly an easy task, but Faraday’s pretty dedicated. He manages it, and snorts a laugh.

   “All of us, huh?”

He knows there was something about Goodnight, about Billy. The others, Jack and Vasquez, he’s not so sure. Then again, it’s a moot point; they’d died, either way. No answers forthcoming from that direction.

Faraday is asleep.

Thinking about it, Dean’s not sure he’s ever really seen him sleeping. Every time he’s seen Faraday loose and lazy and eyes closed, he’s cracked open an eye just as Dean has concluded he must be dreaming, like the mere thought of himself in Dean’s mind is enough to wake him.

But now, he’s out. His skin is pale, almost yellowed, bruising dark circles under his eyes. Unease lies heavy in the set of his brow, in the way his fingers are curled tight on the pillow, and Dean swears to god that a shuddering breeze plucks at the back of his neck when Faraday murmurs in his sleep.

I don’t feel so good, he’d said, wan and swaying, after the giddy, adrenaline-spiked laughter had died down and they’d brushed the glass from their hair reassured themselves that She was gone, a few near-black drops of blood clinging to the grass the only trace that she had ever been there. 

The moment that the headache had hit had been tangible one. Faraday’s face had tightened all at once, something in the air growing still and heavy, like the humid calm before a storm.

     (Dean thought it was another glimpse of Faraday’s magic, the      world reacting to his suffering. He didn’t realise it was exactly      the opposite -- that the world had turned away from the fairy,      that the wind and the trees and the sky and the rain had       recoiled from the gun-metal and exhaust and radio-static in his      veins.)

Dean had driven like a madman to get him home, get him somewhere safe, and Faraday had staggered when he’d climbed out the car, knees buckling, and yeah, it had been scary. Even when he’d grinned weakly and thrown out some bullshit line about Dean making him weak at the knees.

But Cas had only frowned slightly and said I think that you should go to bed, and had been sufficiently serious to address Faraday by name. Not Faraday or even Joshua; some curling, maddening collection of syllables that Dean could never recall even right after he’d heard them spoken, let alone pronounce. His fae name. Faraday had told him it meant the sound of starlings in first flight, or rather that it was the sound of starlings in first flight, or perhaps it was the world’s expression of its feeling of starlings in first flight, and Dean hadn’t even pretended to understand.

But Cas had been calm enough to quiet the edge of desperation to Dean’s worry and leave it manageable, and Faraday had wobbled off and fallen onto Dean’s bed without a word or a hesitation.

And he’s been asleep for hours, now. Dean had removed his shoes, careful-slow, but Faraday hadn’t even stirred. He doesn’t stir, either, when Dean shucks his own shoes and his jeans and crawls himself onto the bed, too, slides himself under a heavy arm and curls close.

Faraday smells different, and familiar all at once. Takes Dean a moment to realise that he doesn’t smell like Faraday, he smells like the Impala: like worn leather and rock salt and the open road.

Dean sighs, breath gathering warm against Faraday’s collarbone, and eases a hand over the fairy’s ribs.

Faraday shifts, and sighs, and pulls Dean a little closer without waking.

[ HI FRIEND!

Welcome to the fandom, enjoy your stay, don’t mind the gay cowboys everywhere - and sorry this ask took me so long to answer, I’m travelling for work at the minute and also just super busy, hence my slight silence.

It’s a pretty small rp fandom. Myself I write with:

@poorlikeness @knivesnothingtoit @isaidgoodnight @aculling @followedadifferentpath

But I’m a slut for blogs and do write others as well, hence perhaps my not being as active as I could be. I’m sure there are a few more I’ve seen around, but not much, I don’t think the rp fandom is all that active. We try. We’re busy little bees who regrettably have a lot of shit to do.

I don’t think I’ve seen a Jack Horne, Sam Chisholm, or Teddy Q around, or a Bogue. I’m hoping to hit this blog hard next week when work stuff has calmed down, hopefully get a bunch more writing done, and i will drag my friends with me so help me god (looking at u tagged up there, u know it) whilst we also write everywhere else because we’re whores for each other’s writing.