#deancas edit

In Dean’s arms, Lisa giggled and twirled the two of them around. Dean barely registered it. He swiveled his head back and forth, keeping his eyes on the familiar man as if they had been magnetically bound to him. He was the prizefighter from the underground rings. Dean had seen him a handful of times over the years, but not recently. Since the last time, he’d bulked up, and his skin was tanner, but that might have been the warm lights hitting his face. They made his shadow stretch tall and high on the wall behind him.

Images of the first time Dean had laid eyes on him flashed to the forefront of his mind.

The giant going down in a bloody heap like David slaying Goliath. The way the prizefighter’s chest rose and fell in labored breaths. The blue eyes that swept across the frenzied crowd to latch onto Dean’s as the police pulled him away. The shock of the East River’s frigid waters when Dean launched into them.

He could feel those same waters now. Choppy and laced, dark, all-consuming. His skin numbed.

He watched the prizefighter raise the cigarette pinched between his fingers to his dry lips, watched his mouth wrap around it and the way his chest ballooned while he took a drag.

Then, just like on that night a few years ago, the prizefighter realized he was being watched. Those same blue eyes raised toward Dean’s. He lowered his cigarette and exhaled, the gray smoke puffing from his mouth and dissipating in a cloud around his face. He pressed his jaw together, forming a solid line beneath dark stubble, and he stared back unflinchingly.

Dean’s body was moving on its own. He was only vaguely aware of the way Lisa pressed against him, of the way they swayed and twirled. He looked over her head, barely realizing that his mouth was hanging open.

He didn’t know what this staring contest was, or if the prizefighter recognized him, too.

The prizefighter’s cigarette was burning to nothing where it hung at his side, raining ash down on the marble floors.

It had to be you, wonderful you, it had to be you!

Dean hadn’t registered that the song had ended and they’d stopped dancing until Lisa said, “Okay, now I’m ready for that drink.”

Dean kept the prizefighter’s blue stare, assessing him, trying to anticipate his next move. If he’d break left or right; if he’d try to back Dean against the ropes or wait for Dean to come to him. With such calculating eyes, Dean knew the prizefighter was doing the same to him. He tightened his jaw and dipped his chin, bracing himself for the inevitable incoming blow.