Making Things Worse

Who: Gabe and Dean
Where: Phones, then the park
When: Evening

Today had been a mess. That was all Gabe knew to say about it. A complete and total mess, and amidst that mess, he'd apparently missed a phone call. A very important one that he'd been waiting on long enough that he'd figured it wasn't going to happen. But Dean had called, and so Gabe moved his plans with Drea to Wednesday. Once home, he shut himself in his room, took a seat on the bed, and rang back. His fingers tapped nervously as he waited for someone to pick up.

After leaving the message for Gabe, Dean hadn't let his phone out of his sight. In fact, he'd given himself several silent lectures about not calling the guy again and again and hassling him about it. So, as it was, he answered the call before the second ring. "Hi?" he asked, sounding possibly a little breathless. Tried not to sound nervous.

"Um, hi," Gabe said, trying not to sound awkward about this entire phone call. "This is Gabe." And... that's about all he knew to say at this point. Fabulous! "Is this Dean?" He was assuming it was, but he didn't want to say anything until he was sure that someone else hadn't answered the guy's phone. That would definitely suck.

"Yeah... Yes it is," Dean told him, then decided that he should really plough onwards with this whole thing, whilst trying really hard to avoid the 'why I didn't call' part. "Look - sorry for not getting back to you sooner, but things came up. You good to talk now, or... What ever you want, mate, seriously," he told the other guy, not entirely sure how to go about this, but willing to do whatever it took.

"I'm good to talk now," Gabe said, having prepared himself for this conversation before dialing the number. His mom was in the kitchen, the door was shut, and he was safely on the other end of the phone line from Dean or Lullaby, neither of which actually felt like a threat, other than the fact that Lullaby was dead. "I guess I'm just... curious now. How one goes from being dead to... not dead."

Dean paused. "I - look, did you want to meet somewhere for this?" Dean asked, realising that his paranoia was still running rampant and he'd prefer to be able to see the guy face to face, see his reactions. "I'll answer whatever questions you have," he added, nervous without reason. No, he knew the reason - it was Thia's talk of hunters that had him owrried that someone else might be listening in on the call, despite what he'd said about not being scared of Gabe. He wasn't - but he was wary of what scared people would do.

Now Gabe was the one that was uncomfortable. He felt safe in his home, whereas Dean wanted to meet somewhere and... talk? Gabe knew that was what he'd asked for, but now it just seemed excessive. "It's okay," Gabe said, backing up in the conversation. "I don't need to know. I just didn't know if it was common and-- Can we just forget about the whole thing?" He knew he was jumping around here, but everything would just be easier if he could forget about it all. It wouldn't happen, but after listening to Claire go on about Josh and Lullaby and how that made her feel, he was back to wishing that Lullaby was really dead. Or maybe he just wanted to stick his head in the ground some more...

Dean didn't say anything for a moment. "Erm, no - I don't think we can," he said, slowly. "Seriously, mate - I saw you the other night, you were freaked out. And you were going on about how you couldn't forget about that. So... No. I don't think we can just 'forget about it'."

Well, shit. Gabe sighed. He had nothing to say to that, possibly because he knew he wouldn't forget, even if he could put it out of his mind. And he had been freaked out, and he seriously thought he was well within his rights to be so. "Okay," he said finally. "Where do you wanna meet?"

"Wherever you like," Dean told him, not paranoid enough to feel the need to specify where they were going to meet. And he was assuming in this that Sophie would let him use the car again. But if she didn't then, well - he was taking it anyway. She could ground him later, he was leaving the country in a few days, after all.

Gabe wasn't sure where one went to discuss things like this, but he had the feeling that public places like restaurants weren't going to work. "Is Trowbridge park okay?" he asked, feeling like that was public, but not too public. He was still new to these things and really didn't know what was appropriate and what was not.

"Sure - it'll take me about five, ten minutes to get there, but I can go now," Dean said, already heading downstairs, grabbing the keys off the table. Okay, so he wasn't actually asking about the car - it was just there, nobody was using it, fallout was later.

"Meet you there, then," Gabe said, figuring that if his mom was cooking dinner, she wouldn't be needing to drive anywhere right this minute. Taking the car out for a bit shouldn't be a big deal. He was glad to find it wasn't, since he really didn't feel up to walking to the park at this point, though once he arrived he kind of wished it had taken him longer. He still didn't understand why they had to meet in person to discuss this. If it was so urgent, then why did Dean wait so long to call him in the first place?

"Fine - I'll see you there, by the main entrance, right?" Dean told the other guy, getting into the car.

"Sounds good," Gabe said before hanging up the phone. Five minutes later, he was there, waiting nervously, his hands in his jacket pockets.

Dean walked up. He wasn't good with names - Gabe's he only had because Thia had mentioned it earlier on. But faces - that was something different. He remembered what the guy looked like as he headed over. "Hi - thanks for coming," he said, his hands equally in the pockets of his leather jacket.

"Welcome," Gabe said, turning as Dean spoke to him. This felt entirely different than the confrontation outside of Babylon, that was certain. "So... What now?" he asked. When it came down to it, he didn't actually care that Lullaby wasn't dead, so long as all the rest of the dead stayed where they were. One he could deal with. Masses? No way.

"We start at the beginning," Dean said, having tried to think about it on the way down. "With the important stuff - she's not dangerous. She's not a threat to you," he told her. Not like I could be, he thought, but he kept that to himself. He'd proved what he was capable of, after all. He didn't like it - he hated it. He didn't want to be that guy, but hadn't he shown what he was capable of? Even if the thought of it made him want to throw up?

"Okay," Gabe said, able to swallow that much now that he'd calmed down. It was Lullaby, and she'd never seemed threatening before, so... If she was really still Lullaby, he couldn't quite imagine her being a threat to him now. Unless she was infectious. Or wanted to eat him. Which Dean was saying wasn't the case. "So... what is she?"

Dean was tempted to tell him that it didn't matter - that all that mattered was she wasn't a threat and that the only thing that was important was that he didn't tell anyone, because people? Didn't understand. Because people were sheep, because people got scared, they told other people, who told the wrong people and gossip spreads and hunters were around and shit would come down and she was just a small girl afraid and afraid of being alone and she hadn't asked for any of this and she didn't deserve it and this had all happened to her and she knew that when she was killed she should have died and now she couldn't but it wasn't her fault and she was just so scared now. But, of course, Gabe was people, wasn't he? And Dean didn't know the first thing about him. Or even if he knew anything about anything. "She's Lullaby," he told the guy, using her real name for possibly only the second time in his life. "Just like she was before. She's the girl you knew, only something was done to her that she had no control over. And then someone shot her dead, having made sure that she wouldn't stay that way. She had nothing to do with that. She's still the same girl, only now - the world thinks she's dead and it's really really important that they continue to think that, okay? There's nothing wrong with her, but people? Some people - there are people in this world that - they wish harm on, well, anything that's not strictly human. Hunters. She, I - we. There's a threat there."

Gabe heard the 'we'. In fact, it was the 'we' that stuck in his brain and made him take a step back. Dean hadn't said that he was a threat, but the way this entire thing was being handled made him uncomfortable. It wasn't like Drea, who had made him promise not to tell and shared a special secret with him. Or like Claire, who could shoot rainbow sparkles across the room and knock over his pictures. This was a guy who continued to not explain things to him, who Gabe finally realized wasn't there to talk to him, but to make sure their secret was safe. "I'm not a hunter," Gabe said. "And I don't know anyone who is."

"How do you know?" Dean asked him, seriously. "You might know. Or you might not - but the next person might know. Anything you want to know - I can help you with. I will help you with, but you need to appreciate, she's sixteen, she's scared, her life has just been turned upsidedown." And that was what he cared about. The rest, for Dean - he'd do what he could, but Thia was his number one priority. She was where his heart lay and he'd do whatever it took.

"I haven't done anything to her and I don't plan to," Gabe said, trying his best not to be insulted by the idea that he would hurt Lullaby. This wasn't making anything better. In fact, he wasn't all that sure why they were having this conversation. "What do you want?"

Dean paused, then nodded, happy that he'd put that out there and the guy hadn't bitten. Thia had been so afraid that Gabe would tell someone, but, seemingly, he'd taken in on board. He hadn't. Which was good. He'd felt the need to put the threat out there, to judge, to not trust, because the potential consequences were so dire. He'd prefer to be threatening and scary, he wasn't out to make friends. But, if the guy was trustworthy, then that was cool. And so, Dean backed down, satisfied. "Sorry - I just... It's been a bad week." And then some. "What do you know? About the rest of the world?" he asked.

"I didn't know shit until Saturday," Gabe said, "Except that those... shadow things attacked." But he'd been attempting to pretend that was a one-off experience. Running into Lullaby had changed that drastically. "Now it seems like... everyone knows something but me." Except maybe Kyle. Gabe was still weary of mentioning anything to him, seeing as how he'd managed to avoid everything else. "I guess... people tried to tell me. I just didn't really believe them because I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."

"Doubt that's the case," Dean said, giving the barest hint of a smile. "But, okay - you know the word 'hunter', at least, which means that you must have known that there were people out there like that," he pointed out. "Because, seriously - most people don't hear 'hunter' and think anything other then, maybe, what? Deer? Something like that. Not people who go after people, at least," he pointed out since the guy's only reaction to Dean's bringing up a hunter was to say that he wasn't one.

Gabe sighed and crossed his arms across his chest. "I kind of... put two and two together," he said, realizing only now that he'd started to assume that there were people out there who hunted supernatural beings because Dean had said there was. "I don't know any. Or I don't think I do, like you said. But after I found out about Lullaby..." Gabe rubbed the back of his neck, looking away, then back to Dean. "I dunno... I keep meeting people that know things."

Dean raised an eyebrow, trying and failing to stamp on his rampant paranoia. He'd been called overprotective. Several times, in fact, but he couldn't get rid of that, and he wasn't entirely sure he want to. "As a result, or...?" he asked.

"Yeah," Gabe said, not sure how to explain it, except that he immediately felt he should. "I didn't go home after the mask. I went to the ice rink and fell asleep there. I ran into one of my friends and we talked and... I didn't tell her about Lullaby, but I found out she was something." When he finished talking, he realized how round and round he'd gone, except he really hadn't told Drea anything, and he wasn't about to give away her secret. "And then I talked to Claire."

Dean nodded along to that until the moment that Claire's name was mentioned, though, really - there were lots of Claire's in this world. Really there were lots of 'Claire's' in this world, surely. Just because he knew Joshua was dating someone of that name. It still gave him pause. But, more than that. "Mate - seriously - you know... About your friend. You don't know me - you know what I was just saying? That goes for your friend as well. There are bad sorts out there. Be careful who you talk to. If people trust you, you know?" He'd killed a guy for that, this last weekend. He didn't want to ever have to risk doing that again. If that meant rampant paranoia, so be it.

So now was when Gabe was glad he'd talked to Claire just a few hours ago. Because otherwise he couldn't have completed the circle. "Claire talked to Josh. Who already knew," Gabe sighed. "And I wouldn't have told her, except I trusted her and I was having a minor meltdown. And she wouldn't have talked to Josh, except she didn't know he knew and she felt like he should know that his girlfriend wasn't dead. But he did know, and they did break up, and so he lied to her to cover up the truth and all sorts of bullshit and--" Gabe shut his mouth and rolled his eyes. "I trust her. Not you. Not Josh. And she won't tell anyone."

"Except that she told, didn't she? She fucking told Joshua," Dean pointed out to him, his anger rising quickly. He'd never been one for subtly and he'd always suffered with snap reactions. "What part of 'don't tell anyone' did you not get?" Dean asked him, stepping forward. "Or the part where I gave you my number - the part where you could have called me if you were freaking out?" Okay, so he'd been in a great deal of pain, but he could have picked up the phone if it had rung. "And of course Joshua already knew - he's always already known! He lied to protect a girl's life - even if she'd already died. It's not bullshit, it's safety. Do you not get how serious this is? You tell one person - you kinda mention it to another. Like you kinda mentioned your friend to me. You know what that wrong kinda can do? You say you don't know what's what in the world - that you don't know what's out there. Well I can tell you. It's blood. And death. And pain. And it's waiting to find you. Or your friends. Or your friends' friends and it'll follow them back to their families and it'll be your fault. All your fault, because you said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Because you've said yourself that you don't know. So, I'm telling you - you don't say shit about anything, okay? Not a fucking word. Not about her, not about your friend, not about any of them. Because shit happens and people die. And there's no such thing as trust. And this isn't about fucking relationships. This is more than that and sometimes some things are just more fucking important," he said, ending his rant, though he knew that if Thia was around, she wouldn't be able to see him for the blackness which must be surrounding him right now.

"Fuck you," Gabe snapped, his temper quickly mounting to match Dean's. "If she was in such danger, what the fuck was she doing at a party? You talk about safety, and she's running around in public. You're lucky I'm the only one who saw her and you don't even know that. Anyone could have. I could have turned and walked away, and been telling everyone I know, but you know what? I didn't. If she wants to be somewhere that no one will know her secret, then why's she still in Marquette? It's not my fault she got seen. It's her own damn fault, so don't put all this on me." He couldn't believe the way Dean was blaming the life of everyone around him on his ability to trust people. Maybe he wasn't trustworthy, but he knew how to keep something quiet when it mattered to him. And from what had occured so far? Lullaby didn't matter that much. Maybe to Dean, but not to him, certainly not when he was feeling threatened. "If one of my friends gets hurt? Because you decide to open your mouth? I'll make sure the entire school knows Lullaby's alive. You can count on that."

Dean stepped in, Almost before Gabe had stopped speaking, and grabbed his shirt by the collar, pulling the guy to him. "You do anything to her - anything and I swear I..." He made himself let the guy go, his right fist curled by his side, ready to swing if necessary, every part of him bristling. "You think I'm a threat? To your friends? Mate - you're the fucking threat here. Not me. You're the one who'll tell a virtual fucking stranger that one of your friends, who hangs out at the ice rink, is something special. You're the one who just made it possible for someone who might want to to track you, to follow you, to watch you and figure you out. To track her. And you're lucky I'm not that guy. Right now, I'm not the threat to people - you are."

Gabe was beyond hearing that he was a threat the moment Dean put his hands on him. He understood it, at least partially, but he was too busy hearing about what Dean could do to Drea. And so the second Dean stopped talking, Gabe swung his fist, blind with rage and intent on making sure that Drea was safe, no matter what it took. "Don't you fucking touch her," he snarled.

Dean had been ready to take blood for this since Gabe had first dared to threaten Thia. He'd been ready for it and the fist didn't come as a surprise. He half dodged it, taking it on the shoulder instead of the chin, his fist already coming round. The words that followed it didn't make sense to him, but that wasn't important. Right now, that had ceased to matter, the moment that violence came into it as Dean followed through with a left hook to the guy's stomach.

This was by no means Gabe's first circus. He knew how to take a hit, he knew how to keep to his feet, which was really all that mattered now. Gabe swung again, throwing himself into it in an effort to take Dean down. Maybe, if he could pin him... Maybe he could make sure his friends were safe.

Dean fought back every step of the way. He'd scrapped for a large amount of his life, he knew how to handle himself in a fight and this one meant the world to him. He would have done anything to avoid it, he hadn't wanted this - but the guy had threatened Thia and if there was one thing that wasn't going down in Dean's life, it was a threat to Thia. And if he had to beat that out of the guy, he would. He felt the impact of a fist to his cheek, and for a moment the world spun, but he threw himself bodily against the other teen, shoulder first, in an effort to drive him back even as he manged to keep his feet against the counter attack.

The element of surprise wasn't with him at this point, and Gabe stumbled backwards, attempting to keep his balance while staying in the fight. That wasn't quite what happened, though, as he felt himself ram right into something hard and solid. He cursed at the pain, his vision dark for only a second as he reached for what turned out to be a tree. Right. Bracing himself, he prepared to jump back in, intent on taking Dean down. It didn't matter what they were fighting about at this point, so long as he came out on top.

There was a part of Dean that wasn't on top right now, that was no longer driving, that was grateful that he'd specifically come to this meeting unarmed. He hadn't intended for this to end like this. He'd never viewed Gabe as a threat. And even if he had, he never wanted to go there again. Maybe that was why he'd left the gun at home. Because he knew, if it came down to it, if it was about protecting someone he cared about, then he would go to extreme lengths. That was something he didn't want to have to consider. And having only his fists to rely on meant he didn't have to consider it right now. It wasn't an option. The only option was the strong right hook to the other guy's face, feeling the impact against his knuckles even as he blinked the blood out of his left eye.

After the blow the back of his head against the tree, a hit to the face put Gabe on his ass, flailing for a moment to keep any potential threats away. He sat up, breathing hard as he climbed to his feet, the world still spinning around him. Licking his lips, he tasted blood, only then realizing that his lip had been split. "Stay away from her," he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. He'd keep this up till one of them stayed down, if that's what it took, but with his vision not all that great and his head pounding, Gabe was more concerned about keeping Drea safe.

Dean staggered back, breathing heavily. He caught the words this time and stared at the other guy. "Me? Fuck you - are you fucking deaf or something. Have you not listened to a fucking word I said?" he asked. Since he met Thia, he hadn't said that to a soul, but right now, his back was up too much to care. "I'm not a fucking threat to you. You fucking idiot. Listen when someone tries to give you some good advice, rather than swinging first. You go around telling people that your friend at the icerink. Your girl friend. Has some kind of ability, or is something else? One day, someone - not me, someone else - is going to sit up and take notice. And it might not be the person you're talking to. It might be the guy at the table next to you. Or the girl behind you on the fucking bus." He spat the blood out of his mouth onto the ground. "Careless talk costs lives and all that world war two shit," he added.

"You're the only person I've told," Gabe argued. "You, who talks of stalking her, and taking her down. And I wouldn't have said shit, except you were asking how I knew and for just a fucking minute you seemed trustworthy." But Dean was clearly not, in Gabe's opinion. "I didn't have anything to worry about till you showed up," Gabe said, just a touch calmer as he tried to catch his breath.

"You didn't have to worry, because you didn't have to think about the consequences," Dean pointed out to him. "I've told you time and again that I'm no threat to you, unless you make yourself a threat - go after her and you'll make yourself that threat. You were the one that threatened me. All I was doing was saying that if you go shooting your mouth off about other people's secrets - like you have about your friend. Like you have about T...Lullaby. Who you've told enough about to at least two people, one of whom has told at least one other person, despite you saying she was 'trustworthy', then you become a threat to your friends. Even if you don't mean to be. Look, mate - I'm sorry I have to tell you that what you're doing is being a shit. And if you need to take it out of the messenger, then I can give as many bruises as I take and call it worth it if that gets through to you. But you're lucky that I am trustworthy. And I don't give a flying fuck about your friend. I know more than enough people who have shit to hide - way more than you do, more than enough to mean that I don't feel the need for share time or whatever the hell you feel you need. That's why I gave you my number. That's why I told you to call me if you had issues. Shit like this - it's not fucking easy to handle off the bat. You're not fucking superman and nobody expects you to be." He stopped and took a breath, not sharing the other thought. The thought that the guy was, however, clearly a dick. He was trying hard to be somewhat reasonable for Thia's sake, though he knew it was something he always had difficulty with.

"You told me you'd call me," Gabe said. "And you're a complete stranger to me. I'm not comfortable talking to you, and I'm definitely not now. I'm sorry that when my world seemed to crack you weren't the first person I ran to." Now Gabe was starting to get upset, the fact that he was apparently to blame for everything becoming clearer, especially considering he'd put Drea in danger. "You don't give a fuck about my friend," Gabe said, repeating his words. "And that's the problem. You don't give a fuck about me either. I'm glad this is easy for you to deal with. You can go on with your life and things are somewhat normal. But they're not normal for me anymore," Gabe said, his voice slowly rising. "You're talking about people I care about dying. Getting killed because of me. Because of something I didn't want to know in the first place. I'm glad you could go back into the party, but it's not that simple for me." Gabe took a few steps back, just wanting to get away from Dean now, to go somewhere and be alone. "Why can't you just..." Gabe shook his head. They weren't going to disappear.

"Just, what? I said I'd call and I did - it's been two whole fucking days. Not a lifetime. I'm sorry - I was gonna call you sooner, but you know that shit we were talking about? That whole 'say the wrong thing to the wrong person'? It just happened to me, okay? And it took me out for those two days. So sue me right now if I'm not the most empathic guy around or whatever. Nothing's normal in my life right now and nothing's easy to deal with. And really, right now, please - god, please, if I have to fucking beg... Don't make things worse, man, seriously. Because yes, I'm talking about people you know, I know, we both know, dying. Because of you, because of me, because of... I've been there. You don't want to," Dean told him, losing his grip a little now. "You don't want to see that. I'm just... really. That night? It didn't end with a fucking party. And I wish I could have been you. And I wish I could have just gone home and had your shit to deal with. So just do me a favour and listen to what I'm trying to tell you. Because I don't want you to have to live through what I've been through. And I didn't ask for it either," he finished, having had enough of this. He - he couldn't do it any longer. He didn't know what else he could say. He couldn't help here, he'd fucked it all up again. As always. He just - he needed to get out of here. To get Thia out of here. To get her somewhere safe. He gave Gabe one more look, then just turned and walked away.