|| Re-Introduction: If You Need Him, He'll Be There Again ||

[surfaceshine]

[SPOILERS for Supernatural up to 5x22 in this post, and likely in the course of play with my Dean.  Sorry.]

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[surfaceshine]

Walking isn't really calming Dean, but then again, he's not very excited right now either; he's nothing at all outside of wary, a state of being which only sharpens when he finally makes it out of the trees and finds himself... nowhere he recognizes.

At first glance the Mansion raises the hair on the back of his neck, and he's learned not to ignore that, ever; it makes him uncomfortable without his knowing why, but not really alarmed. That's not unusual. He's survived enough by this point that his own sense of self-preservation, never very great to begin with, is nearly nonexistent. He could probably be staring down pretty much anything but a pack of hellhounds right now and not be actually alarmed. The damaged buildings and peculiar structures around the main house, though, get a longer look from the hunter, and those do disturb him a little bit.

He hesitates only a few moments, though. It still all feels safe enough, and if he were philosophical, maybe he'd have more to say about that. Instead he just checks how his Colt is sitting again, pulls his leather jacket tighter, and starts forward again.

He spots Shadow coming, but there's no reason for any kind of outrageous reaction. He doesn't look quite right for Tennessee, maybe, but Dean's car won't start and it's pretty damn cold out here and who is the remaining Winchester to judge about people he needs to ask for the use of a phone? So he lifts a hand back, adjusts course, and doesn't slow again.

"Hey," he calls, voice gruff with disuse, when they're close enough. "Sorry to be tromping all over your land, here, but I'm stuck on the road back there."

[abadland4gods]

The guy who's walking over looks.... he looks incredibly normal. Well, normal, to Shadow, just means he looks like he's from twentieth-century America, which he certainly seems to be. He's got spare chemical hand warmers in his pockets, but no spare jacket, and it's cold.

Much too cold for what the guy's wearing - that jacket wouldn't keep a mouse warm in this weather, he muses. And no-one's stupid enough to go for a health stroll dressed like that - not even Shadow, so probably not that guy.

"Don't worry about it," Shadow replies, close enough for conversation, far enough for respect. "Bet you're freezing to death - we'll turn around and get you to shelter. It's that way."

He points, then shrugs. He's expecting questions - but he'll deal with them as they come.

[surfaceshine]

The guy doesn't look like he's about to pepper Dean with buckshot or anything, so the hunter goes ahead and closes the distance a bit more. He does glance the way Shadow points, adjusts his own course obligingly, because yeah. He doesn't exactly care right now, but he knows he should, and he's pretty cold.

"Thanks," he says, and means it. "If I could just use a phone or something, I'll be outta your hair." He pulls a face - he'd tried his cell phone a couple times despite there being no one he really wants to talk to on the other end of it anymore, and the dead device is still in his inside jacket pocket. "Reception must be shitty up here. Uh. Wherever here is."

[abadland4gods]

Oh god, yeah, he's really new. No clue what he's into - that he walked accidentally behind the curtain, all that. Oh dear oh dear.

Shadow, inwardly, sighs. He's never had to do this before - handle the first emotional reactions to the weirdness of the place. He'll cope, he decides. Besides, it's not like he can do anything about it.

"You have no idea," Shadow replies stoutly. "Anyway, looks like it's going to snow again, you're better off getting shelter for a bit. And we'll try to figure out where you are when we're not freezing our asses, alright?"

It's fine, really. This is one man who is bothered by very little (mistletoe excluded), and so long as you're not here to tie him up to a tree and make him die of starvation, weathering and thirst, he won't have a problem with you.

And seeing as he has the spare hand warmers... "Here. You might want to use those."

[surfaceshine]

Dean might surprise him; there's not a lot of emotion left in him, and not a lot of weirdness that can top what he's been through in the last couple years of his life. If there is, he's really not sure he wants to know about it, but it's not like anyone's been listening to what he wants for quite some time now. He supposes he'll deal with it.

The hunter glances up at the claim about snow, eying the clouds before deciding that really, he can't tell the difference; maybe it is gonna snow, maybe it's just gonna be cloudy all freaking day, who knows. Not Dean, and furthermore, he doesn't much care. He should probably be a little more wary of backcountry Tennessee properties, but really, he's done the cannibalistic hillbilly thing before and tangled with much scarier things since, and he's still standing. Lucky boy.

Dean accepts the handwarmers, shoves them back into his pockets with his hands, one each side.

"Thanks," he says sincerely, then. Wait. "What'd you mean, figure out where I am? Is this one-a those map says one thing, locals say another? 'Cause I should be about an hour outside of Pulaski."

[abadland4gods]

It may just be a coincidence, but it does snow - beautiful, white, fat flakes tumbling down from the sky like confetti, and Shadow looks up, frowning. Whenever it does, he wonders if it was him, or if the snow came on its own.

Didn’t think I’d focused that hard, he tells himself. Bugger. .

“Something like that,” he says tiredly. “Look, buddy, I’m happy to help out, but not so much to be responsible for you if you get sick.” Seriously, he’s a nice guy, but not all that nurturing - it’s more a matter of not knowing how than not wanting to. He does try, though. Just ask Katniss.

And as one of those annoyingly flat snowflakes falls on the tip of his nose, he sighs, then brushes it off. Shadow will always miss the simpler life he had - his job as a personal trainer, his wife, and the double dates he used to go on, with Laura, Bobby, and his wife.

That this simple life is gone forever, though, he knows - you can’t go back to it when people died, and your wife died with your best friend’s cock in her mouth. You can’t go back once the curtain’s been lifted, and you know gods walk the earth and ride crazy carousels into oblivion.

Hiiiii hope you’re doing well! Not online yet, still at work, just taking a moment to send you a tag, because I can. ^^

[surfaceshine]

Dean, midwestern born in a winter month and vagrant ever since, doesn't pay the new snow any mind whatsoever except to note his guide's apparent displeasure with it. It's the note of weariness in Shadow's voice that gets his full attention back, and the hunter studies him sidelong. He doesn't stop walking, shrugging instead.

"I won't get sick," he says simply, because of all the things Dean has had to worry about in his life, a frail immune system has never been one of them. It'll take more than this, he figures, because that's just his luck. Dean shrugs again, pushes a little bit with a mild lie that's only a lie because he has absolutely no intention of calling in a tow truck unless it's Bobby Springer. "Look, I just need to know so I can give directions to whatever shop I can get hold of. I'm not leaving my baby sitting out there longer than I have to."

[abadland4gods]

That makes Shadow pause. And Dean looks anything but the family man, so he concludes (correctly, for one, but it's consistent with his casting as a Genius Bruiser), that he may be talking about his car.

“I understand,” he replies. “And I hope we can get you going soon enough. We'll get you a proper coat and stuff, as long as we're getting inside.”

Not that the leather doesn't look good - but it's inadequate for current temperature, and Shadow figures, if this guy is going to try to get the hell out, he'll probably need to be properly covered, seeing as the fishbowl will have him going in circles for a bit.

A pause, then. A sigh.

“If I say we're behind the curtains, does that mean anything to you?” He's too honest, he knows he'll have to explain eventually, so heck, it'll have to be now.

[surfaceshine]

It's strange that Dean always looks somewhat more like a dangerous stranger than a family man; there was a time he would've liked one of his own. Hell, there was a time he would have like his own, mother and father and little brother, two pushy men at constant loggerheads, a partner he could trust at his back; he supposes he's back to the other now, and maybe he'll want that again when he wants anything at all.

Hearing Shadow's first appeasement doesn't do much to ease Dean's mind, but he goes ahead and nods anyway; it's the sigh that gets him an expectant look, and the question that gets him an odd one.

"Do what now? I don't see any drapes," he replies smoothly, but though the wariness never left him, there's something about how Shadow says it that sharpens Dean's attention. He doesn't recognize the phrase, but there's something going on around here anyway; the Impala doesn't just die on him like that and, damn it all, he's been through enough by now that he knows when something strange is going on.

Not always what it is, but something.

[abadland4gods]

Oh crap. Inwardly, Shadow is cursing, hard. Outwardly, he looks just the same, because that's the kind of man he is. Stable until the end.

“Behind the curtains,” he repeats. He can't sense anything about Dean being a god, but then again, he couldn't about others either, not until they showed him their true faces. Even Zorya Polunochnaya seemed all but normal, until she gave him the moon to hold for safekeeping.

He's got a coin in his hand, as always - and now he's playing with it, to find his words.

“This... wherever you think it is, it's not it. I walked here from Oxfordshire years ago. Never found a way out. And you certainly didn't drive from the Midwest, all the way to the old continents, did you?”

He's trying to explain, realizes he's doing a terrible job.

“I sound nuts, don't I?”

[surfaceshine]

It's been a rough couple years; things that may have sounded nuts even to Dean before he went to Hell barely make a scratch now. Being an unwilling part of a biblical prophecy will do that to a man, among other things.

The coin is a fidget, a tell, and Dean glances at it without really knowing what it means; he already knew there was something up here, he doesn't really need the extra confirmation.

"A little," he admits, a shrug in his voice as well as the rise and fall of his eyebrows. He's absolutely steady behind that, though. "But I've heard a lotta crazy in my time. You should lay the rest on me. What's behind the curtains mean?"

[abadland4gods]

At this point, they’re probably almost t the Mansion, and Shadow shrugs, keeps walking for warmth, though his intent is to explain what he can without actually mentioning Odin and that whole world-tree debacle.

No-one likes to discuss how their own father used them as a fountain of youth, after all. Wednesday, you damn vampire.

“It’s a way to say, the other side of the surface of things,” the ex-con replies. “So for instance, if you’ve spent all your life thinking all there was to it is, well, sleep, work, and life in suburbia, you’re about to get your mind blown out.”

An apologetic pause, a shrug.

“So yeah. What do you know about American gods?”