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Bridging The Past	By : IdrilsSecret Category: Supernatural > Slash - Male/Male Views: 1905 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of its characters. No money is being made from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter 1 – Cracks and Rust

Several months had passed since Cas and I ‘made it official’. I could count on one hand how many times we’d spent the night together. His duty as an angel and my job as a hunter were taking up a lot of our spare time lately. So, when we were free to experience one of those special moments, we didn’t hesitate.
We never met anywhere except within my room in the secret bunker. It wasn’t safe outside of this place. I could let him in and then seal us up tight so no one else could see or hear what we were up to. It didn’t ward off Sam, though. Cas and I had a couple close calls, but I always managed to send him away before my brother came knocking on my door. All I had to do was erase part of the symbol I had hidden behind a Pink Floyd poster on the wall, and Cas could pop out of here without detection.
I had the night off tonight, or rather, I didn’t have to leave the bunker. I was supposed to be doing some research, giving Sammy’s eyes a break from the head-splitting glow of his laptop. He’d left about half an hour ago, taking some time to breathe the fresh air and renew himself. I wasn’t much for using this contraption to do research. Holding a book in my hands, actually flipping pages, that certain smell that a book had, especially an old one, that’s how I chose to do my homework. As far as I was concerned, the internet was only good for porn.
Now there’s something I hadn’t looked into for a long time, not since my first time with Cas. I found that watching it or looking at pictures just wasn’t entertaining anymore, not when I had a gorgeous angel I could fuck. But it had been a few weeks since I’d seen him and, to tell you the truth, I was one horny bastard right about now. I considered it for a moment, then I closed the lid to the laptop.
“Not now, there’s too much work to be done,” I berated myself. I popped another cap off another bottle of beer and drank deep. It was good, but not like whisky. I promised my brother that I’d lay off the hard stuff. I’d have it on occasion, but not around him. He seemed ok with the beer though. The fact was, I didn’t need it anymore. I’d gone through some really difficult shit. The booze numbed me from having to deal with it. It was the coward’s way out, I know, but I just needed to forget about it all for a while, until I could come to terms. Until I hit rock bottom was more like it.
I took another swig of my beer and remembered the day I decided to make that change, to pull myself out of the black ooze that I so blindly dwelt in. It was a really bad time. I didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything. I’d find the roughest bar in whatever town we happened to be in, get drunk, pick a fight with the biggest badass in the joint, and hope he’d beat me to a pulp. The best beatings happened after I tried to seduce the bastard’s woman, especially when he saw that she was actually considering going home with me. That really pissed him off. If he’d only known that I’d rather suck his dick than her tits . . .
Death would have been swift … and don’t think I didn’t consider it. Like I said, I was in a really dark place back then.
My downward slope didn’t happen overnight. It was a long time in the making with lots of little situations adding to the bigger picture. Like anything else, it’s always several small things that eventually lead up to the big disaster. A bridge doesn’t just collapse for no reason. Takes years of cracks and rusty bolts to finally loosen and crumble, and then it becomes too much and … BAM, it all comes crashing down. But no one was paying attention to the signs. It’s just a small crack, they’d say. One bad bolt won’t bring the whole thing down. But you can’t ignore it and hope it goes away.
That’s exactly what I did, though.
It was more than ten years ago. I was young and dumb and … well, you know the rest, and if you don’t then you shouldn’t be reading this. Anyways, I’d been hunting with my dad since I was old enough to do it, but there was a time when I demanded my independence. Sammy was in high school, safely tucked away from the reality of the world, and I was old enough to set out on my own for a while. Dad didn’t like it at first, but he gave in as long as I followed two important rules. I always made sure to check in with my old man, and I didn’t work alone. So, I met someone like me, a young rebel ready to take the world by its hairy balls and shove shit back into the cesspool from whence it slithered. We made a great team, and as crappy as this job could be, I was actually having fun.
His name was Aiden Somers. He was originally from out west somewhere, blonde hair … that short messy look, blue eyes, good looking like me. Had a tough upbringing, in and out of juvie, normal stuff for kids like us. We met through a mutual friend. Aiden’s specialty was vamps. He hated the sons-of-bitches. I learned a lot from him, especially how to find their nests. The thing about Aiden, though, was that he almost enjoyed it too much. It was a game to him. That’s a lesson my dad taught me early on. Never get cocky with the job. But Aiden, it was like he could do no wrong. He got the bastards every time. Watching him was like reading a book you can’t put down. I really got excited when we worked these things together. And by morning, the nest of vamps was exterminated. We would get in and get out, pure magic. Still, I couldn’t help but think that he was looking for something more, like destroying a nest wasn’t good enough. He still hadn’t found what he was searching for.
Our adrenaline was through the roof after a job, and we’d get a case of beer and head back to whatever roach motel we were staying at. Then we would drink and talk until the excitement wore off, and sleep away the rest of the day. This one time, in particular, we were pretty well wasted, and started talking about relationships and stuff. We found out that we both lost our virginity at the same age, and agreed that it was impossible to have anything normal. When you didn’t stay in one place for very long, there was no chance of meeting anyone to connect with. Things went from there, and the conversations got heavier. I’ll admit it. I was attracted to him, and I started making subtle hints. I felt comfortable enough with Aiden that if he discovered my true sexuality, I didn’t think it would matter to him. As we talked, we discovered we had a lot of stuff in common, and by the time we finished the last of the beer, we were naked and rolling in the sheets.
I woke up the next morning with my head splitting in two, but sated to say the least. Aiden lay behind me, his body contoured to mine, an arm draped around my waist. It was the first time I felt normal. I knew this was something more than one night. We never would have taken things that far if it was any other situation.
I hated to move and wake him, but I had to take a leak. So I moved Aiden’s arm up and over, trying not to move to fast. Then I scooted to the edge of the bed and got up. When I came out of the bathroom, he was awake, sitting up on one elbow, watching me. No one had ever looked at me like that before. It warmed my skin, sent blood rushing to places much lower.
“Hey,” I said with a nervous smile.
“Morning,” he smiled back. Then he patted the mattress, inviting me back. That was all I needed to know that we were good, and that what we had done the previous night was mutual.
I climbed back under the sheets, and Aiden and I laid side by side, staring at the ceiling. Until now, we had been nothing more than best friends and hunting partners. Now what would we talk about?
“Did I ever tell you how I got into hunting?” he asked, stretching his arms up, and taking hold of the headboard.
I glanced at his chest, the rippling of his stomach, and the fine dusting of gold hair that trailed from his navel and disappeared beneath the sheet. “No.”
“It was eight years ago,” he started. “I was twelve, a nerdy little kid that liked to keep to himself. I got picked on a lot in school because I was so quiet.”
“Hard to imagine you as quiet,” I laughed softly.
“Yeah, well, I was different then, I guess. I had a shitty home life. My dad was an abusive asshole. Used to hit my mom on a regular basis, and when he was through with her, if he still had the energy, he’d come after me.”
“He sounds like a real prick,” I agreed. “So what happened? You run away or something?”
“Or something,” he muttered. He released the headboard and flipped onto his side, resting his head on my chest. I put my arm around him, twisting his unruly hair around my finger. Aiden smelled good, like cedar and bergamot. I memorized it so that whenever I smelled it, it would bring me back to this time. When he was settled, he started again. “One night he just didn’t come home. My mom wasn’t even worried. He was gone for a week without word. When I asked her, she just smiled and said that he’d be back.”
“Did he come back?” I asked enthusiastically.
“Yeah man, he came home but he was different. He was calm, kissed my mom on the cheek, told her he’d missed her. He walked by me to go into the living room, stopped and ruffled my hair, smiling wide. He was … normal, the way I’d always hoped he’d be, but I knew men like him didn’t change. A few days went by and he was still the same. My mom was ecstatic, saying that he’d turned over a new leaf. I wasn’t buying into it, though.”
“Sounds fishy to me,” I said.
“My dad was a kind of handyman, went wherever he could find work, that sort of thing. Before he changed, he would come home with dirt under his nails, stains on his knees, smelling to high heaven. Afterwards, he came home clean like he was when he left in the morning. I knew something wasn’t right.”
“Let me guess,” I interrupted. “Shape shifter.”
Aiden lifted his head to look at me. “How’d you know?”
“My dad and I hunted one once.”
“Did you see it morph?” he asked with utter curiosity.
“Yeah. It was weird. I was new to hunting and seeing it shocked me.”
He had a far off look as he remembered, and continued with his story. “I followed my dad out to his work shed, hid outside in the bushes, and peeked through a window. He was just standing there, in front of his bench, staring straight ahead. Then he rolled his neck like he was stiff, and it happened. It was like he faded from himself into a stranger,” Aiden said speaking from memory. “Even his clothes changed.”
“And you’d never seen anything … supernatural before that?” I asked.
“No, never, except in movies and shit.”
“Yeah, well, it’s nothing like that.” Sometimes I wished I was watching a movie. Then when it was over, I could walk out of the theater and everything would be ordinary. “So what did you do after that?”
“I went to my mom, told her I thought something was wrong with dad. She ignored me, said I just couldn’t accept the fact that he had changed. We got in an argument, and eventually she confessed to her involvement with my dad’s ‘recovery’. She met someone through some battered women’s association or something. They said they could help with some kind of tough love crap. They said it was an intense and aggressive program, but he would come home changed … good … cured. She wasn’t going to do it, afraid of the repercussions my dad would put on her if the program didn’t work. They convinced her that it would, that she had nothing to worry about, and she finally agreed. They would have to essentially kidnap him and take him to some undisclosed place, strip him of everything and all contact for a week, and when he came out of recovery, he would be healed.”
“And that was the week he was gone,” I said, repeating the earlier part of his story.
“I thought it was all bullshit. Maybe they had something on him, said they’d have him thrown in jail if he didn’t comply or something like that. It was all just too weird. And then I saw the shape shifter, only I didn’t know what the hell I’d seen at the time. I started looking into stuff, reading books and whatnot, trying to figure out what was going on, what that thing was, because it wasn’t my dad. I even went to the local head shop, and some voodoo place. This guy heard I was asking around and found me, asked me some questions. He said what I’d seen was real, and gave me a book, like an encyclopedia of monsters, in exchange for everything I knew about my mom and dad, and this place she went to. A few weeks later, I met the guy again. He said his name was Riley. He was a hunter, and it was his job to get rid of the shifter. He also told me that my real dad was probably dead the moment they took him.” Aiden paused from his story, real pain furrowing his brow as he revisited old memories.
“Hey, you alright?” I asked when he didn’t pick up his story again. He turned his head so that his chin was resting on my chest and he was looking me square in the eyes.
“I never told anyone this before, but I was glad my dad was gone. I was glad I had a few weeks to know what it was like to have a caring father. That thing might have been a monster, but he had given me a glimpse of normal, and it was nice.” Aiden buried his face in my neck and I held him. I don’t think he’d ever dealt with his feelings before, and I didn’t know why he was telling me, especially tonight, our first night.
“Hey man, you didn’t know, right? You were hoping your dad finally decided to straighten up his act,” I said, trying to justify it.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he finally said, lifting his head and rolling to his side of the bed.
“What ever happened to the shifter?” I wondered.
“Riley took care of him. The shifter didn’t come back, and neither did Riley. My mom thought my dad ran off with some other woman. A couple years later, with no father figure, and my mom checked out, I started getting into trouble. Riley heard about it, came to town to check it out. I don’t know if he felt responsible or what. I met with him, and he let me ask him all kinds of questions about what I’d seen and what I’d read in the book. He didn’t sugarcoat anything, told me straight up what was going on in the world around us. I was intrigued, especially to know I’d actually lived under the same roof with one of these things. One thing led to another, and Riley took me under his wing, started teaching me everything he knew. When I was fifteen, he took me out on my first hunt. I was hooked, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
If I knew anything, it was that hunters that paired up and became close usually stayed together. The fact that Aiden wasn’t hunting with Riley anymore made me wonder. “What happened to your mentor?” I asked.
Aiden got real quiet. He sat up, legs hanging over the edge of the bed, his back to me. His palms rested on either side of him. I could see his fingers bunching up the sheets. It was still a rough subject apparently. “He’s dead,” he whispered. “Vamps.”
That would explain why Aiden was specialized in hunting vampires, and why he took such pleasure in killing them. It was in the name of revenge. Dad taught me to never let that one emotion run my life. Revenge would give you tunnel vision, blind you to everything else around you. You could go after something because it caused you harm, but you called it retribution and moved on. But get stuck in a cycle, and eventually it would catch up to you. Suddenly I feared for Aiden. So far, I knew him to break two of my dad’s rules. Whoever this guy was that got Aiden into hunting might have taught him technique, but he left out how to survive emotionally.
* * * * *
The year was 1999. The world population exceeded six billion. Impeachment proceedings loomed over President Clinton after he’d been found screwing around with an intern (he should have thought that one through better). Y2K threatened a global technological meltdown when the clocks struck midnight on New Year’s Eve. People thought their computers were going to crash and the world would be cast into the dark ages. There was something about the numbers switching from the 1900’s to the 2000’s that had people freaked out, something that happened every turn of the century. It was a busy time for the hunting business with a lot of leads running cold. Just a bunch of crazies, but the monsters were partying like it was 1999. Did Prince know something the rest of us didn’t when he wrote that song?
Aiden and I had been partners for almost a year, on the job and in bed. It was the happiest I’d ever been. Not in a million years would I have thought I’d find someone like Aiden, someone I could share the hunt with, share my private life with. We were good together, but we kept our relationship a secret. We didn’t think the other hunters would understand, definitely not my dad or my brother. It was nobody’s business anyways. What Aiden and I did on our personal time was between us and no one else.
I think he calmed a lot, from the reckless killing machine he was when we first met. I hoped some of my collectiveness rubbed off on him. He seemed happy, anyways, and we conducted ourselves professionally.
We’d go after anything, of course, but when it was vamps, Aiden got antsy. He became unconcerned about some of the consequences of his actions, and that was a dangerous situation to be in. That’s how partners got killed, and I’d be damned it that was going to be me. I had learned how to handle him, though. I’d send him in a direction that I was sure would keep him out of trouble, and when I knew we had a clear shot at a kill, I’d call him into the scene. He never caught onto me, and just as well.
So this one time, we found a bunch of vamps and planned our hunt. Unfortunately, I misjudged the size of the nest. It was much larger than I thought, and when I sent Aiden in, he’d gotten himself surrounded. It was my fault. I should have been more thorough. I found where they were keeping him, helped him escape, and we fought our way out, killing creatures as we went. I had already closed off all their exits, trapping them in their own home. Then we lit the place up, burning them all. It was a close call, much closer than I liked.
We made it to Aiden’s car, and I noticed all the blood on his shirt. He was hurting too. It was obvious in his face, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
“What happened back there?” I said in a serious tone. “You were supposed to stick to the plan.”
“And I did until I saw an exit we didn’t account for. I was sealing it up when they overpowered me.”
“You were supposed to keep going. We could have sealed that up from the outside,” I berated. I could tell there was something else going on. “What did you really see, Aiden?”
We got in the car, out of breath, bloody and sweating. I drove because he was in no shape to. The tires screeched as I peeled out of there. Tonight I thought it was best to go a few towns over before we stopped for the night, just in case any straggler vamps weren’t at home for the roast.
When he caught his breath, he spoke. “Alright, alright Dean. You got me. I … I saw … her.”
“Her who?”
“The vamp that turned Riley, my mentor.”
I was confused. “Turned him? I thought you said they killed him.”
“I … I didn’t want to tell you.”
This changed things. For the past year, I thought Riley was dead, and Aiden was killing vamps for revenge. Now I could see the truth. “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” I slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a dead stop, the lights washing over the road in front of us. Smoke from the tires and brakes rose like a mist, and the car rumbled as it sat idle. I took a deep breath and clutched the steering wheel. “Did you know this vamp bitch was associated with this nest?” I asked calmly.
Aiden didn’t answer me, but I could tell by the shock in his eyes that he was only trying to put off the inevitable. “Aiden, did you or didn’t you–”
“Yes,” he answered, and then he shook his head. “No,” he said, changing his answer. “I don’t know. Look, this wasn’t just another nest. This was the one that Riley controlled. I don’t what she was doing there, unless she took back control.”
“And you didn’t tell me? Why? You could have told me the real story, and I would have helped you. How do you know all of this anyways?”
“I’ve been following them, putting out the word, interrogating some of the vamps we’ve come across.”
“Geez, Aiden, what the fuck have you gotten us into?” I rubbed my hand through my hair, then glanced over to him. “Any of that blood yours?”
“No, I’m alright. My ribs are sore, but no bites, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I sat there another minute or so, trying to recollect myself. Then I put the car in drive and we were moving again. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up.”

* * * * *
I drove an hour before I stopped at a motel. I had a feeling this wasn’t over with, and I was uneasy. As I entered the lobby, I looked around to make sure it looked clear, and walked up to the guy behind the counter. “I need a room.”
The man looked like he was in his mid-forties, long hair, beard, beer belly protruding from a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He looked past me to our car parked in the breezeway. I followed his line of sight. All I could see was Aiden’s head leaning back against the headrest, no bloody shirt thank goodness. Then the guy turned his attention back to me, one brow raised skeptically. “Twins or a double?”
“Twins,” I said irritated.
“Yeah right, twins,” he repeated. He took the credit card I gave him and laid it in the tray of an old manual credit card machine. Then he put one of those long carbon papers on it, and slid the mechanism right and then back left. He handed me the paper to sign, and then took a key from the pegboard behind him. He gave me back my credit card, looking at the name on it as he did. Then he pushed the key, with its plastic diamond shaped keychain, towards me. “Here you go Mr. Osbourne,” he said while eyeing me. This guy had been in this business long enough to know an alias when he saw it. He also knew to mind his own business.
We drove around to the spot where our room was, parked and went inside. I opened the door and noticed that the bed was a double. “Douchebag,” I muttered under my breath.
“Mind if I get the shower first?” Aiden asked. He sounded tired, defeated after the day we’d had.
“No, go ahead.” As he walked past me, I touched his arm. He stopped, but he didn’t turn to me. “It’s gonna be ok,” I whispered, and ran my fingers through his hair. He barely smiled and nodded, and then went to the bathroom, leaving the door cracked open. I waited until I heard the water turn on and the shower curtain close, and got on the phone with Bobby. He was the go to guy in the business, and he was like an uncle to me. He was taking care of Sam while dad and I were out working. As far as I was concerned, Bobby was family.
“Hey, Bobby,” I said with a smile in my voice.
“Hey kid,” he said happily. “How’s it goin’ out there?”
“You know … it’s goin’.” I paused. “How’s Sammy?”
“He’s good, Dean. Missing his big brother, but he’s ok,” he said solemnly. With the personal stuff out of the way, his voice turned more business-like. “So, where are you?”
I didn’t even know the name of the town we were in, only where we had come from, but I had a rough idea. “Some small town just south of Des Moines.”
“Oh,” he said surprised. “You’re not far from your dad then. He’s on the North side of the city. So what can I do you for?”
“What do you know about a hunter named Riley?”
“Got a last name? It would help. There’s more than one Riley.”
I shook my head. “No. All I know is that he was in California in the early 90’s.”
“Let me think,” Bobby said. The phone went silent except for the sound of papers flipping. “No one named Riley, but there was a guy named Byron Fischer who had a son named Riley. Does that help you any?”
“Maybe,” I said, the wheels spinning in my overactive brain. “Know anything about them?”
“Well, let’s see. Byron was a hunter. Taught his kid the business at an early age, kind of like you and your dad. They worked the west coast … good people. Then one day, Byron got sick, went to the doctor and found out he had lung cancer. Died about six months later,” Bobby explained.
“What happened to his kid?” I wondered.
“From what I’ve heard, he tracked down his mom. She wasn’t around while he was growing up … heroin addict. I think he hoped she would be recovered and take him in, but nothing had changed. After that, no one heard from Riley for a while. Then one day, he popped back onto the radar. If he’d been hunting during that time, no one knew it. Guess he was flying solo. He wasn’t one to ask for help, kind of an outcast. Eventually he dropped off the map altogether. No one’s seen him since.”
I thought about what Aiden had told me, that some she-vamp turned him. I knew there had to be more to the story, and I was going to find out. “Thanks, Bobby. Hey, I gotta go. Tell Sammy I said hi. I’ll stop in for a visit as soon as I can.”
“Will do. And Dean … be careful out there,” he said sincerely.
“I will, Bobby.” I hung up the phone just as I heard the shower turn off. Suspicions ran rampant through my mind. Aiden had kept a lot of his story a secret. Now we were together, and I felt it was in my best interest to know what all had happened between him and Riley. I was a part of it now, and I didn’t think Aiden was focused on vampires just because he was good at hunting them. He was hunting Riley.
Aiden came out of the bathroom wearing his pants and no shirt, moisture still clinging to his skin. He went to his bag and pulled out a shirt, struggling to pull it over his damp skin. I went to him and helped him. He smiled and laughed lightly. Our eyes met, and I thought of how gorgeous he was, but how much pain must reside within him. He leaned in to me, kissing me quickly, a smile touching his eyes.
“I’m gonna run out … get some chow and some beer.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed. He seemed a little too steady and put together for someone who just wrestled with the monster that turned his former partner. But now wasn’t the time. I was still dirty, and I needed to clear my head, figure out what I was going to say. He went to the door, and when he turned back, I tossed him the room key. That’s just how we were together, always in sync. “Sure, you’re alright?”
“Yeah, the shower helped. I just need a little fresh air. I’ll be back in a minute. I saw a burger joint around the corner.” Aiden left, and I jumped in the shower.
The warm water felt good. I just stood there and let it cover my body, washing away the dirt and grime. Another job done, but I had a bad feeling about that nest. There were a lot of vamps in there, and Aiden had found that escape route. What’s to say there weren’t others we didn’t know about? I thought we burned a good number of them, but the smarter ones probably escaped. I could almost guarantee that their leader got out. Aiden wouldn’t have been satisfied to know she might or might not have been inside the building when it burned. If she was the vamp that turned Riley, he would want to make sure she was dead. He would have burned her himself.
And what about Riley? The way Aiden told the story, I thought he was an older man, kind of a father figure. I never thought he might be around our age or a few years older. I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure yet. I only had a first name, and I was going on a hunch. But Bobby did say that there were no hunters named Riley in California, except for this guy’s son. It was something, though, and when I talked to Aiden about it, at least I’d have something to compare his story to.
I spent a while in the shower, and time got away from me. As I shut off the water, I heard the door close and lock. Aiden was back. I dried off real quick, wrapped the towel around my waist and stepped out of the bathroom. Aiden was sitting in a chair next to a table, a sack of burgers and a six pack waiting. He was taking a long swig of his beer when he caught sight of me, and slowly took the bottle away from his lips. I saw him swallow hard, his eyes glued to my body. He set the beer down and came to me, hands roaming along my chest, over my shoulders and around my neck. We kissed and it was good. After a year together, we still turned each other on. That had to account for something. Aiden and I were good together … we always were.
One of his hands slipped low, palming me through the towel. My hips pushed forward, filling his hand. The towel fell to the floor, and Aiden fell to his knees. He took me in his mouth, and I gave in to his ministrations. I knew what he was up to. He was just trying to avoid the inevitable. We needed to talk and he knew it, but who was I to argue while in his possession. He worked me up until I couldn’t hold off anymore and I shot myself in his mouth. And when it was over, he rested his face against my stomach, his arms surrounding my hips and held me tight. My fingers slipped through his blond waves, and we just stayed like that for a while. Finally, he released me and looked up into my face.
“I’m sorry, Dean. I’m sorry I haven’t been completely honest with you. I’ve only told you part of the story, and I was wrong to keep you in the dark. You’ve been so good to me. I don’t want to lose you.”
I cupped the side of his face with my palm, feeling the bristle of whiskers sprouting on his cheek. He didn’t shave earlier, and he knew I liked that. “I’m not going anywhere, Aiden. We have a lot invested in this relationship. I want to help you. I want to be there when you need me. But I need to know the truth. I need to know what’s been going on.” I pulled him to his feet, kissed him again and threw on a pair of sweats. Aiden grabbed the beer, and we sat on the bed, the food left abandoned for now. Neither one of us had much of an appetite at the moment. We sat cross-legged, facing one another, but he wouldn’t look at me as he started his story.
“Everything I told you about him was true. He was a hunter, helped me with the shifter, took me in under his wing and all that. Riley was a couple years older than me, and I was only twelve when I first met him. When we met again later on I was sixteen and just learning about myself. I told you I was picked on in school because I was shy. I was shy because I didn’t understand some of the feelings I was beginning to have, like getting a hard on when I saw a cute guy in a magazine. By the time I met Riley again, I was ready to explore my sexuality, and he was a good teacher. Riley was my first.”
I knew there was something more, but I never thought it went this deep. “You never forget your first.” I would never forget mine. Tommy Jordan … boy’s locker room, after school … tenth grade.
“He was my first in a lot of things. He taught me more about myself than I could imagine. I dropped out of high school to be with him, to learn to hunt, to learn … other things.” Aiden took a long deep drink and shook his head. “You probably don’t want to hear this.”
I reached out and touched his knee. “No, I do. I want to know.”
“I … I fell in love with him. There was no help for it. He was suddenly my whole world. But he had a secret I didn’t know about. He would never discuss his past or where he came from. He just acted like he’d been on his own since the day he was born, like he didn’t need anyone. And sometimes I felt like he didn’t really need me either, especially in the beginning. I was a bumbling fool. But Riley worked me into the business anyways.
I’d been hunting not even a year when he came upon a nest of vamps. I never went up against a vamp before, and I told him I wasn’t ready, but Riley insisted. He came up with a plan, went over it several times with me, and at the last second I chickened out. Riley was pissed. He got real angry, started throwing things. I got scared of him; he’d never made me feel that way before. I begged him to let someone else take the job. He finally realized how frightened I was, and when I told him he reminded me of my dad, he broke down. That’s when he told me his story.”
It turned out my hunch was right. This was the same Riley that Bobby had mentioned. Aiden said he’d been raised by his dad, and that he died of cancer. But where Bobby’s story ended, Aiden continued. Turns out Riley did go looking for his druggie mom, and found her in a squatter’s house. She had marks on her neck that, at first, he thought were injection sites. He tried to get her out of there to help get her clean, but a couple big guys showed up, told him that she belonged to them. Riley figured out quickly that they were vamps, and they were using his mom as a personal donor. The vamps would make sure she stayed high, feed off her, and feel the effects of the heroin. They were vamp junkies using Riley’s mom as the middleman.
He fought them, tried to drag her out, and then the boss showed. Riley’s mom wouldn’t leave. She said she needed them. They took care of her. In a last ditch attempt to free her, the vamp that turned her gave her his own blood. All she had to do was feed, and Riley was the prey. But at the last moment, she couldn’t do that to her son, and she fed on one of the other slaves, and became a full-fledged vamp. Later on, Riley found out that she had dethroned the boss and took over the colony. Knowing her son was a hunter, she gathered her family and they fled.
“And ever since, Riley was looking for her. He said the fact that she didn’t kill him meant that there was still good in her, and he was determined to find her and figure out how to help her. The nest he found, the one I refused to work, turned out to be his mother’s colony,” Aiden said. “Then, I knew I had to overcome my fear and do what needed to be done. I was the only one who Sean trusted to help him capture his mom. A few days later, we went ahead with our plan. We failed miserably.”
“Is that when she turned him?” I asked.
“Not at first. She captured him and used him as she’d been used … for food. I lost him after that. I was too young and inexperienced to go after him on my own. There was nothing I could do. I just let him go. It wasn’t until later that I learned he’d been turned. The vamp I interrogated told me Riley left his mom’s colony and started his own.”
“God, Aiden, I’m so sorry,” I said regretfully. What a shitty way to lose someone. I started getting pissed at this Riley guy. After all, he was the reason Aiden was a hunter. He didn’t have to come back, but he did, and he took Aiden with him, not unlike what Riley’s mother did. “He should never have dragged you into this life, you know that?” I complained, unable to contain my anger any longer. “You had a home. You had family. You could have moved on after all the weird shit. It would have become some horror story, and that’s all. But he came back, and he fed off your fear and your curiosity, and seduced you into this unnatural way of life.”
“But if he hadn’t done that, I would never have met you,” he admitted, taking my hand and rubbing his thumb across the back.
“That’s not the point,” I started, still angry.
“I’m trying to tell you that you’re the best thing that’s happened to me, Dean Winchester.” He looked me deep in the eyes, and I knew he was telling the truth. “I want to make a real go of this.”
“We’ve been together almost a year. I’d say that’s making a go of it.”
“Yeah, but it hasn’t really been all us, you know? It’s been a lot of the job.”
I understood what he meant. The job took a lot of our time, even though we were together. There were times when we were just surviving, and not really a couple in the normal sense. “So what are you saying, Aiden? You want to get out? You want a shot at normal? Because I have to tell you … that’s something I don’t think I can do.”
“And why not?” he asked enthusiastically. “What would you rather do, Dean, be a good little hunter and follow in your dad’s footsteps or settle down and be the big brother you know you’ve always wished you could be.”
That stung. Aiden knew my weakness, and it was family. “That’s not fair and you know it.”
“It’s the truth. I know you. I’ve heard you on the phone with your kid brother. I hear the longing to be something more to him than just a phone call. Besides, your dad is the best in the business. He’ll keep up that part of things,” Aiden argued his point.
“What about you? You’ve been on Riley’s trail ever since I’ve met you, and don’t say otherwise. It all makes sense now. You’ve been tracking vamps just so you can find him. So are you saying you can just forget about all of this and suddenly move on?”
“I don’t know. Something happened today, back in that nest. I thought I had found him. I thought I was ready to take him on, thought I was strong enough to do it. I had no idea I’d find his mother instead. I wasn’t prepared for that. But seeing her finally put things in perspective, and I thought maybe he wanted this. Maybe he wanted to become a vamp. Maybe this was the only way he could finally connect with his mom, as screwed up as it all was. So, who am I to take that away?”
“Listen, Aiden, I know you have a past with him, but he’s not the guy you used to know. That person is dead, and all that’s left is the evil. You’re right to want to put him out of his misery. As long as he’s alive, people will die.”
“I know, and for a long time, finding him was the most important thing to me. Maybe your right, Dean. I was shoved into this hunting thing. So I saw something that I couldn’t explain, and I learned things that I never thought possible. But this business has never been in my blood. I thought that it might not be in yours either. This time we’ve spent together has changed me. It’s made me want more out of life, and I want it to be with you.”
What could I say to that? How should I respond? I liked Aiden … a lot. I wouldn’t have been with him all this time if I didn’t, but what he was asking me to do . . .
“I … I don’t think I can give it up,” I admitted truthfully. “I feel like I’m making a difference, like there is something more I need to accomplish. And no matter what you might think, you’re an awesome hunter. You’ve even taught me a thing or two. We make a great team. We’re good together, Aiden.
Aiden looked up at me through his long lashes, and gave me one of his sexy half smiles. “We are amazing, aren’t we?”
I got onto my knees and moved to him. “We can do this.” I unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt. “We can hunt and fuck, and make the best life we can afford.” I ran my lips along his neck. “Let’s forget about this place, move on far from here. We’ll get the hell out of Iowa. Maybe we’ll try Kansas or Indiana for a while, start fresh.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Dean Winchester,” he said, tilting his head to the side as I continued kissing him.
“I think you need more convincing,” I whispered, pushing his shirt off, and working on his belt next. He laid back on the bed and let me undress him. Then I stretched out on top of him, my sweats the only thing separating us. We kissed and writhed against each other. Aiden’s hands dipped into my pants, squeezing my ass and pulling me against him. Then he stopped and looked at me hard.
“So, after everything I told you, after keeping you in the dark all this time, you’re ready to move on?” he asked.
“I’m ready to move on with you.” I kissed him again, long and sensually, and when we parted, our eyes met. “I think I love you, Aiden Somers.”
That night we made love several times, slow and passionately. I fell asleep, sore and sated, with Aiden spooned against my back, contoured to my body, and his arm draped languorously across my waist. I listened to his breathing slow as he relaxed against me.
“You’re something special, Dean,” he murmured into my ear as the late hour dragged me into insentience, the smile not fading from my face.
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Bridging The Past