03

MILO DOESN'T MIND CARS so long as they aren't moving when he's inside of them.

Both Anais and his older sister, Valerie, are aware of this and are doing their best to pretend Milo isn't currently doubled over in the backseat of Valerie's car — a vehicle which is as shockingly small as it is shockingly red-with his head between his knees.

"So, I heard you've started your own business kind of thing," Anais says to Valerie as she draws mindless and strangely calming circles on Milo's back, "Are you doing professional readings now?"

"I am," Valerie replies a little too brightly, "the pay is pretty shit but it's better than nothing. Plus, I'm a sucker for hearing other people's life stories."

Contrary to the other mediums in her and Milo's extended family, Valerie has the ability to read auras. When trying to explain this strange concept of these personal energies to Milo — the only non-psychic aside from his late father in their immediate family — Valerie had resorted to using oddly specific metaphors.

"Think about it like this," she had said, "You're the glass prism and the aura reader is the light. The refractions of lights that the prism produces — the rainbow that forms — that is your aura. All the deepest parts of you broken down into fragments, fused together and drawn to the surface to form one cohesive energy."

Milo feels like too much light has been shone through him. What he had seen and felt back at the diner had made him feel exposed. Some unfathomable part of him had been torn from his grasp and brought to the surface like re-opening a wound he didn't know existed.

"How are you doing, Mi?"

Milo lifts his head to see Valerie glancing at him warily in the rearview mirror, her eyes betraying the concern that the rest of her easy-going expression otherwise conceals. Milo thinks of Anais's bleeding face, of the wall of sound and light pressing against his ears and eyes, of the pale Iverson boy opposite him on the bathroom floor, of the fact that Valerie's immensely citrus air freshener is probably going to give him another migraine.

And then there's the faint scar across his collarbone that's pulsing in a sort of distant ghost of pain.

"Fine," he mutters.

"You are an awful liar, Milo Atticus Piers," Anais admonishes, pausing her gentle massaging to jab Milo in the side. Milo lets out a hiss, casting her a dirty look.

"I'm serious. I'm good," he says to Valerie, glaring at Anais. "I don't see why you needed to come pick me up,"

Even Milo isn't convinced by his words.

"Exactly one-third of the people in this car are convinced by your bullshit right now," Valerie says flatly.

A red light cuts through the evening's darkness and Valerie brings the car to an abrupt stop. The road ahead is clear, but Milo draws a sharp breath. He holds it. Waits. He presses his thumb to his wrist. His pulse beats rapidly beneath his skin. It's faint and barely perceptible but it's there. Still there. The light flickers to green and they shudder back into movement.

He breathes again. Anais takes his hand and squeezes.

"So, what happened exactly?" Valerie asks. "Migraine again?"

The pain Milo had experienced at the diner was nothing like the small, erratic migraines that had plagued the last year of his life. This time had been by far the worst, bad enough to make him hallucinate...

Had he been hallucinating?

Milo quashes the thought. Of course he had been. Nothing he had seen could have been real, hell, he's probably still dreaming now. He wouldn't have obligingly stepped inside a vehicle unless the situation demanded it, and a headache's hardly demanding.

"Let him breathe, Val," Anais says gently, "Now's not the time for twenty questions."

Milo's too tired to even thank her. His eyelids feel as though they're lead.

God, he thinks, I need some sleep.

- ✧ -

Head still pounding, Cas reaches for the rim of the nearest sink to haul himself up off the bathroom floor.

Ignoring his protesting muscles he forces himself to stay standing, gripping the cold ceramic bowl with pale hands and paler knuckles. Still tasting the metallic tang of his own blood, he spits unceremoniously into the sink, slowly and deliberately wiping his mouth with the cuff of his white sleeve

He looks in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes stare back, the dark crescents beneath them marring his skin with dull shadows formed by too many sleepless nights. His blanched hair, devoid of any colour, is slick with sweat.

"You look like death, Sinclair."

Harrison's right. He feels like death too.

Absently, he presses his index finger beneath his jaw. His pulse tap, tap, taps beneath his skin; slowly, but present all the same.

Cas thinks about Harrison and the others in this moment, in the very same diner, but somehow worlds away. He thinks of them talking with easy smiles and money to burn, eyeing up girls like items on a menu, claiming territory in the form of vinyl booths and cheap dollar stores like it's their birthright.

They are kings. The world is their throne. Their kingdom. They are untouchable.

Cas turns away from the mirror. His sigh is deep and weighted with too many thoughts. He combs his fingers hastily through his hair, draining his thoughts away until his mind is blank.

But one still remains. He tries to push it aside, but it's already buried itself into his subconscious.

Against his will, he thinks of the hallucinations, of the remains of that killer headache. Of the boy who came stumbling into the bathroom, just as he had, hands clutching his head desperately, trying to escape something inescapable. It was like seeing a reflection of himself, only with wilder hair and far less resemblance to a living corpse.

What had gotten to him the most was the sharp stab of pain that had resounded in his own head at that very moment. It came so suddenly and so immensely that Cas had bitten down on his tongue to keep from crying out. But then the pain had ceased, and all too suddenly.

He should stop thinking about this.

He focuses instead on the song playing through the bathroom's tinny speakers. Something about a river flowing and falling in love. He's pretty sure it's Elvis, but the song ends before he can care to decipher it. Forcing himself to walk to the door despite his unsteady legs, Cas pushes past the door and re-enters the neon hellscape.

And he is a king once more.