Fic: Why don't you try counting sheep?, 41/44 in Oz
Why don't you try counting sheep?
2,000 words, SPN Dean/Castiel slash. Spoilers for all of season 4.
Thanks to lackadaisy.
Continuing my Welcome to Oz series. Master post of links here.
Dean never thought a day would come when he’d run out of
Why don't you try counting sheep?
Day 390
Dean never thought a day would come when he’d run out of Sudoku puzzles.
He tries going over ones that he’s already finished, but it just isn’t the same.
Day 413
Dean drinks a lot. Everyday, in fact. He'd worry about destroying his liver but hey, he's in Limbo, so what does he need it for anyway?
Day 435
Dean's starting to forget things. Little things mostly, like whether to turn a faucet knob left or right, and the name of the first girl he ever kissed, and what his favorite color is.
It isn’t until looking at Castiel’s things doesn’t generate any particular response that Dean starts worrying.
He takes Castiel’s neatly hung clothing in the closet plus the laundry from the hamper and tosses it all into a giant pile on the floor. Dean buries himself in it for a whole day and tries to absorb all the tiny lingering scents of him.
Day 436
Dean starts taking a minute out of every day to just focus his mind, to try and remember all the things that matter to him. It helps-he thinks-but it doesn’t seem to fully stop the way his memories are sliding away from him.
Day 453
Dean drives around a lot. There’s no where to go, but it’s soothing to have the leather upholstery around him and the rumble of the engine in his ear. It reminds him of Sam, and better times.
There’s a gas station in town he can go to if the Mustang needs more juice, but he usually doesn’t need to visit it since every day at midnight the car reappears in Dean’s driveway with a full tank of gas. It doesn’t matter if during the previous night he plowed it into a tree, drove it into a building, or sunk it to the bottom of the lake.
Day 477
Dean doesn’t know why he’s surprised to find what seems to be a fully functional sewage system underneath Mountaindale. It comes complete with truly foul smelling sewers, a water treatment facility, and what appears to be some kind of aqueduct. It’s all moderately interesting (mostly because it’s the first new thing Dean’s seen in over a year) but the stench finally gets to him and he has to go topside again.
When he pushes aside the manhole cover and the fresh air hits his lungs, it tastes like the first good thing he’s felt in a long time.
Day 498
Dean starts burning more and more things. He never really had any special interest in fire before-not when he was alive (bad memories of mothers burning to death aside) or in Hell (setting fire to people wasn’t exactly the most imaginative way to torture someone down in the Pit). But now, fire is something to do.
He discovers fairly early on that he has a limited amount of kerosene and, surprisingly, a very limited amount of matches and cigarette lighters as well. He has a whole lot of buildings, fields and trees ripe for the burning and the puzzle becomes: how many things can he possibly destroy with his available resources?
It’s like a game, really.
Dean works his way up from rather modest efforts (three or four houses) to truly impressive stunts that would make any pyromaniac weep. He manages to set ablaze two residential developments, a cornfield, and the whole downtown area in one night after spending the whole day doing prep work.
He’s pretty sure it’s physically impossible for him to burn the entire town down before it regenerates, but he gives it his best shot.
Day 529
Dean sometimes thinks about what Sam would say if he were here. Probably unhelpful shit like, "Put on some damn pants, Dean," or, "Candy and chips for breakfast again, Dean?"
But the thing is, Sam’s always been a hell of a lot smarter than Dean, and if he was here, they’d be out of Mountaindale in two seconds flat.
Dean hopes Sam’s alive out there. If he was the praying type, or had anyone left to pray to, he’d pray for it. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t, so... he doesn’t.
Day 548
Dean starts climbing trees, which loses its appeal pretty fast. There are only so many climbable trees in Mountaindale with branches that can support a grown man’s weight, and he locates all thirty of them within a week.
Day 555
Dean moves onto climbing buildings. He always thought climbing up the side of tall rocks was the defintion of pointless and boring, but since he’s already given whittling a shot, he figures he shouldn’t turn his nose up at anything else.
Climbing up the side of any building turns out to be a virtually impossible task. Brick, aluminum siding, wood-it doesn’t matter what it is because none of the vertical walls are meant to be scaled by anyone who hasn’t been bitten by a radioactive spider.
Day 568
What Dean does get a kick out of is getting onto the roofs of buildings and seeing the neighboring area spread out below him. He starts with the easy to reach roofs at first, the ones with stairwells and fairly horizontal roofs he can walk on. Even the vertigo is kind of a rush now, the dizziness and heart-pounding a welcome break from the usual dull monotony that fills his days.
He gets more and more creative, starting to try to find ways onto roofs without easy access points. He starts lugging around ladders, climbing onto balconies, and finally, crawling out windows and balancing precariously on ledges.
The first time he falls, it’s only from two stories up. He lands on grass and it hurts like a motherfucker; he’s pretty sure he’s broken something because his leg is twisted at a seriously disturbing angle. But before his very eyes, the bone magically sets itself back in place and all he’s left with is some minor cuts and bruises.
Dean begins to climb taller and riskier buildings, sometimes letting go just to see how he’ll fall.
Day 575
After about ten falls or so, the pain disappears and Dean stops feeling anything beyond a light pressure on impact. His body still breaks and bends in bizarre ways, but he doesn’t feel any of it-not even when his bones and muscles magically reset to brand new again.
He starts to feel like a cartoon character.
It makes him wish he had a cartoon companion; someone to chase around who'd drop anvils on Dean.
Day 591
Dean dreams a lot these days. When he’s asleep and when he’s awake-half the time he’s not sure which is which, given his newfound propensity for hallucinations.
The nightmares about Hell terrify him of course. But it’s the ones he has about breaking free from Limbo to find Castiel and Sam and Bobby all dead and gone that make Dean truly contemplate saying yes to Michael.
Day 602
Dean decides to stop eating for a few days. The first day isn’t too bad-unpleasant, but bearable. The second day starts to hurt like hell and really tests his resolve. By the fourth day, Dean’s delirious with it-more delirious than he already was to begin with, somehow-and about ready to give in. He doesn’t, however, managing to lock himself in the bedroom before his will gives out completely.
He wakes up partially dressed on the floor (a shirt but no pants or underwear, bizarrely enough), and the devouring hunger in his stomach is gone.
Day 606
A few days pass before Dean realizes that his need to consume food in order to sustain him has been completely removed.
He misses it.
Day 621
Dean spends one day gathering up every single bottle of alcohol in the whole damn town. He sits down in the Jacuzzi with the bottles all around him and begins to drink.
After about eight cans of beer and one bottle of wine, Dean throws up all over the floor and a little bit into the tub. He doesn’t let that get in the way of drinking though, and two bottles of wine later, he passes out, head sinkng slowly below the water.
Day 622
Dean wakes up in an empty tub, naked and feeling fine. He gets up, puts on a pair of underwear, and goes downstairs to find a bottle of beer. After downing it all on a completely empty stomach, he feels nothing-not even a tingle of alcohol in his system.
He drinks a few more and still nothing is affected-not his motor coordination, vision, or speech. Three bottles of wine, six more beers, and no vomit later, Dean realizes that he might as well be drinking water for all that alcohol affects him now.
Day 650
Dean has another dream where he gets back to Earth and everyone’s normal except for the fact that they spontaneously burst into song. Ear-splitting, tone deaf song.
He’s listening to a whole diner serenade him about how they failed their health inspection five times before he wakes up.
Day 678
It happens one day when he’s swimming in the lake.
At its deepest, the lake is probably only fifty feet of clean blue water. He’s somewhere right below the surface when he has the sudden urge to try and touch the bottom of the lake. So he takes a deep breath and begins his descent.
Somewhere past ten feet, his ears and sinuses begin to feel the uncomfortable pressure. At about thirty feet, his lungs are burning, wailing for him to turn back. Dean ignores all the discomfort and keeps going, diving towards the lakebed even though his head is getting light and achy, and his chest feels like it’s about to explode.
Dean thinks he passes out for a moment-maybe blacks out. But when he regains consciousness, he realizes he’s still floating in the middle of the lake and inexplicably breathing despite being underwater.
“Whoa,” Dean says, and no bubbles escape his mouth when he says it.
Day 699
Dean has a dream that he gets back to Earth and everyone’s been turned into a zombie. Castiel, Sam, Bobby-everyone. He knows that the only right thing to do would be to put them all out of their misery, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
He dreams of allowing Castiel to infect him, instead.
Day 712
One day, after driving around for hours, Dean pulls up inside the garage and shuts the garage door. He sits inside the car and doesn’t take the keys out of the ignition.
He sits inside for a long time, thinking about Sam, and Castiel, and how he’ll probably never see them again in life in or in death-because Castiel was a former fricking angel and Sam always did his best, and hopefully both of them are going to better places than Dean in the afterlife.
Dean can feel himself getting lightheaded and sleepy, so he closes his eyes.
Day 713
Dean wakes up on the floor of his empty garage, totally fine.
Day 722
One day, Dean decides he’s going to drive in a straight line clean across town as fast as he can. He’s going to keep one foot on the accelerator with no braking or turns allowed. It takes him a whole day to scout out a route that’ll allow him to do this, but he finally does.
He pulls up on one end of Mountaindale and readies himself. After a deep breath, he pushes the gas pedal to the floor and takes off like a shot. He whizzes through the town quickly, picking up speed until he’s cresting over one hundred miles per hour, then one hundred and ten. He can see the Cloudtop Overlook up ahead and Dean steels himself: no stopping now.
The car launches out over the edge of the mountain for one terrifying, gravity-defying second-
--before Dean finds himself and the car parked in the middle of town.
He drives to the edge of town and nudges up against where the land stops with the front end of the car, but it’s as if an invisible wall has been erected.
Dean gets out of the car and beats his fist against the wall for a while, but it’s no use. The cracks and bruises in his skin heal, and he can barely feel anything when he slides down to the ground.
Onto the next chapter: What makes a king out of a slave
2,000 words, SPN Dean/Castiel slash. Spoilers for all of season 4.
Thanks to lackadaisy.
Continuing my Welcome to Oz series. Master post of links here.
Dean never thought a day would come when he’d run out of
Why don't you try counting sheep?
Day 390
Dean never thought a day would come when he’d run out of Sudoku puzzles.
He tries going over ones that he’s already finished, but it just isn’t the same.
Day 413
Dean drinks a lot. Everyday, in fact. He'd worry about destroying his liver but hey, he's in Limbo, so what does he need it for anyway?
Day 435
Dean's starting to forget things. Little things mostly, like whether to turn a faucet knob left or right, and the name of the first girl he ever kissed, and what his favorite color is.
It isn’t until looking at Castiel’s things doesn’t generate any particular response that Dean starts worrying.
He takes Castiel’s neatly hung clothing in the closet plus the laundry from the hamper and tosses it all into a giant pile on the floor. Dean buries himself in it for a whole day and tries to absorb all the tiny lingering scents of him.
Day 436
Dean starts taking a minute out of every day to just focus his mind, to try and remember all the things that matter to him. It helps-he thinks-but it doesn’t seem to fully stop the way his memories are sliding away from him.
Day 453
Dean drives around a lot. There’s no where to go, but it’s soothing to have the leather upholstery around him and the rumble of the engine in his ear. It reminds him of Sam, and better times.
There’s a gas station in town he can go to if the Mustang needs more juice, but he usually doesn’t need to visit it since every day at midnight the car reappears in Dean’s driveway with a full tank of gas. It doesn’t matter if during the previous night he plowed it into a tree, drove it into a building, or sunk it to the bottom of the lake.
Day 477
Dean doesn’t know why he’s surprised to find what seems to be a fully functional sewage system underneath Mountaindale. It comes complete with truly foul smelling sewers, a water treatment facility, and what appears to be some kind of aqueduct. It’s all moderately interesting (mostly because it’s the first new thing Dean’s seen in over a year) but the stench finally gets to him and he has to go topside again.
When he pushes aside the manhole cover and the fresh air hits his lungs, it tastes like the first good thing he’s felt in a long time.
Day 498
Dean starts burning more and more things. He never really had any special interest in fire before-not when he was alive (bad memories of mothers burning to death aside) or in Hell (setting fire to people wasn’t exactly the most imaginative way to torture someone down in the Pit). But now, fire is something to do.
He discovers fairly early on that he has a limited amount of kerosene and, surprisingly, a very limited amount of matches and cigarette lighters as well. He has a whole lot of buildings, fields and trees ripe for the burning and the puzzle becomes: how many things can he possibly destroy with his available resources?
It’s like a game, really.
Dean works his way up from rather modest efforts (three or four houses) to truly impressive stunts that would make any pyromaniac weep. He manages to set ablaze two residential developments, a cornfield, and the whole downtown area in one night after spending the whole day doing prep work.
He’s pretty sure it’s physically impossible for him to burn the entire town down before it regenerates, but he gives it his best shot.
Day 529
Dean sometimes thinks about what Sam would say if he were here. Probably unhelpful shit like, "Put on some damn pants, Dean," or, "Candy and chips for breakfast again, Dean?"
But the thing is, Sam’s always been a hell of a lot smarter than Dean, and if he was here, they’d be out of Mountaindale in two seconds flat.
Dean hopes Sam’s alive out there. If he was the praying type, or had anyone left to pray to, he’d pray for it. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t, so... he doesn’t.
Day 548
Dean starts climbing trees, which loses its appeal pretty fast. There are only so many climbable trees in Mountaindale with branches that can support a grown man’s weight, and he locates all thirty of them within a week.
Day 555
Dean moves onto climbing buildings. He always thought climbing up the side of tall rocks was the defintion of pointless and boring, but since he’s already given whittling a shot, he figures he shouldn’t turn his nose up at anything else.
Climbing up the side of any building turns out to be a virtually impossible task. Brick, aluminum siding, wood-it doesn’t matter what it is because none of the vertical walls are meant to be scaled by anyone who hasn’t been bitten by a radioactive spider.
Day 568
What Dean does get a kick out of is getting onto the roofs of buildings and seeing the neighboring area spread out below him. He starts with the easy to reach roofs at first, the ones with stairwells and fairly horizontal roofs he can walk on. Even the vertigo is kind of a rush now, the dizziness and heart-pounding a welcome break from the usual dull monotony that fills his days.
He gets more and more creative, starting to try to find ways onto roofs without easy access points. He starts lugging around ladders, climbing onto balconies, and finally, crawling out windows and balancing precariously on ledges.
The first time he falls, it’s only from two stories up. He lands on grass and it hurts like a motherfucker; he’s pretty sure he’s broken something because his leg is twisted at a seriously disturbing angle. But before his very eyes, the bone magically sets itself back in place and all he’s left with is some minor cuts and bruises.
Dean begins to climb taller and riskier buildings, sometimes letting go just to see how he’ll fall.
Day 575
After about ten falls or so, the pain disappears and Dean stops feeling anything beyond a light pressure on impact. His body still breaks and bends in bizarre ways, but he doesn’t feel any of it-not even when his bones and muscles magically reset to brand new again.
He starts to feel like a cartoon character.
It makes him wish he had a cartoon companion; someone to chase around who'd drop anvils on Dean.
Day 591
Dean dreams a lot these days. When he’s asleep and when he’s awake-half the time he’s not sure which is which, given his newfound propensity for hallucinations.
The nightmares about Hell terrify him of course. But it’s the ones he has about breaking free from Limbo to find Castiel and Sam and Bobby all dead and gone that make Dean truly contemplate saying yes to Michael.
Day 602
Dean decides to stop eating for a few days. The first day isn’t too bad-unpleasant, but bearable. The second day starts to hurt like hell and really tests his resolve. By the fourth day, Dean’s delirious with it-more delirious than he already was to begin with, somehow-and about ready to give in. He doesn’t, however, managing to lock himself in the bedroom before his will gives out completely.
He wakes up partially dressed on the floor (a shirt but no pants or underwear, bizarrely enough), and the devouring hunger in his stomach is gone.
Day 606
A few days pass before Dean realizes that his need to consume food in order to sustain him has been completely removed.
He misses it.
Day 621
Dean spends one day gathering up every single bottle of alcohol in the whole damn town. He sits down in the Jacuzzi with the bottles all around him and begins to drink.
After about eight cans of beer and one bottle of wine, Dean throws up all over the floor and a little bit into the tub. He doesn’t let that get in the way of drinking though, and two bottles of wine later, he passes out, head sinkng slowly below the water.
Day 622
Dean wakes up in an empty tub, naked and feeling fine. He gets up, puts on a pair of underwear, and goes downstairs to find a bottle of beer. After downing it all on a completely empty stomach, he feels nothing-not even a tingle of alcohol in his system.
He drinks a few more and still nothing is affected-not his motor coordination, vision, or speech. Three bottles of wine, six more beers, and no vomit later, Dean realizes that he might as well be drinking water for all that alcohol affects him now.
Day 650
Dean has another dream where he gets back to Earth and everyone’s normal except for the fact that they spontaneously burst into song. Ear-splitting, tone deaf song.
He’s listening to a whole diner serenade him about how they failed their health inspection five times before he wakes up.
Day 678
It happens one day when he’s swimming in the lake.
At its deepest, the lake is probably only fifty feet of clean blue water. He’s somewhere right below the surface when he has the sudden urge to try and touch the bottom of the lake. So he takes a deep breath and begins his descent.
Somewhere past ten feet, his ears and sinuses begin to feel the uncomfortable pressure. At about thirty feet, his lungs are burning, wailing for him to turn back. Dean ignores all the discomfort and keeps going, diving towards the lakebed even though his head is getting light and achy, and his chest feels like it’s about to explode.
Dean thinks he passes out for a moment-maybe blacks out. But when he regains consciousness, he realizes he’s still floating in the middle of the lake and inexplicably breathing despite being underwater.
“Whoa,” Dean says, and no bubbles escape his mouth when he says it.
Day 699
Dean has a dream that he gets back to Earth and everyone’s been turned into a zombie. Castiel, Sam, Bobby-everyone. He knows that the only right thing to do would be to put them all out of their misery, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
He dreams of allowing Castiel to infect him, instead.
Day 712
One day, after driving around for hours, Dean pulls up inside the garage and shuts the garage door. He sits inside the car and doesn’t take the keys out of the ignition.
He sits inside for a long time, thinking about Sam, and Castiel, and how he’ll probably never see them again in life in or in death-because Castiel was a former fricking angel and Sam always did his best, and hopefully both of them are going to better places than Dean in the afterlife.
Dean can feel himself getting lightheaded and sleepy, so he closes his eyes.
Day 713
Dean wakes up on the floor of his empty garage, totally fine.
Day 722
One day, Dean decides he’s going to drive in a straight line clean across town as fast as he can. He’s going to keep one foot on the accelerator with no braking or turns allowed. It takes him a whole day to scout out a route that’ll allow him to do this, but he finally does.
He pulls up on one end of Mountaindale and readies himself. After a deep breath, he pushes the gas pedal to the floor and takes off like a shot. He whizzes through the town quickly, picking up speed until he’s cresting over one hundred miles per hour, then one hundred and ten. He can see the Cloudtop Overlook up ahead and Dean steels himself: no stopping now.
The car launches out over the edge of the mountain for one terrifying, gravity-defying second-
--before Dean finds himself and the car parked in the middle of town.
He drives to the edge of town and nudges up against where the land stops with the front end of the car, but it’s as if an invisible wall has been erected.
Dean gets out of the car and beats his fist against the wall for a while, but it’s no use. The cracks and bruises in his skin heal, and he can barely feel anything when he slides down to the ground.
Onto the next chapter: What makes a king out of a slave