Ficlet: Between (Dean/Cas, gen more than slash)
Dean's back hits the wall, and he feels something crack, jarring and sharp. He falls to the floor, mind awash with shock and panic. It's cold cement, and somehow that helps. Not hot. Not vapor. Not metal and chains and the soft, skin-like membrane between them...But Alastair is there, right there, and reaching towards Dean's face with a hand like taloned nightmare, and he's so weak, so weak, only lasted forty years, failed his father, failed.
Always failing. Can't protect Sammy anymore, can't, not from Lillith, not from Ruby's sly smiles and snakelike hips.
The hand comes closer - and then withdraws, and he can breathe again. There's light from behind Alastair, light that makes his heart hurt because he knows it. It calls to him from that point between, between the darkness of hell and the darkness of the grave. That point of nothingness that he wants so much to remember, because he knows it was a taste of heaven.
Castiel thrusts a knife into Alastair's chest, his eyes blue flame, and for a moment Dean feels light. He swallows thickly, his mind trying to puzzle out exactly what he's feeling, but there's pain in his chest and he still can't get up and Alastair is fucking smiling, and Castiel slams back, and no. No, no, no.
Dean is used to fear. He's used to the rush of it, when it's almost fun, the adrenaline. He's used to the dull buzz of it in the back of his mind when he's waiting, used to how if he looks at it too closely it grows and grows and blocks out everything but itself. He's used to the sharp pain of it, sickeningly familiar these days, when Sam isn't in the hotel room.
But what he feels now, as he sees Alastair grip Castiel by the throat, is more than he's ever felt before. He feels as if Alastair's hand is gripping and squeezing the sun itself, ready to extinguish it entirely and plunge the world into darkness, not just for him, but for everyone, as if without that slight man in the tan trench coat the world would lose some of its beauty. It is fear and guilt and loss all at once, and as Alastair's voice pulls across his skin like a razor just too dull to cut, pulling down and away into darkness, as the blue grace of Castiel's eyes begins to dim, he can't do anything but sink into nightmare.
**
He wakes in the hospital. He hurts all over. His eyes feel too dry - like he's cried all the fluid in his body, but the familiar pinch of an IV in his arm tells him that no, he's alive, not a withered husk.
Blue eyes meet his, and for a crazed moment it makes sense - his eyes are dry because he is staring at the sun.
He lets out a shuddering breath, and that same lightness that caught him when Castiel had appeared earlier suffused his skin. It only made his bruises darker and his cuts sting, but he recognizes it now. Like the man sitting at his bedside, like the wings that he can feel, stretched around him like a shell, like the handprint on his shoulder, it shouldn't exist. It doesn't belong in his world.
It's hope. And he knows, he knows, he cannot be worthy of it.
Always failing. Can't protect Sammy anymore, can't, not from Lillith, not from Ruby's sly smiles and snakelike hips.
The hand comes closer - and then withdraws, and he can breathe again. There's light from behind Alastair, light that makes his heart hurt because he knows it. It calls to him from that point between, between the darkness of hell and the darkness of the grave. That point of nothingness that he wants so much to remember, because he knows it was a taste of heaven.
Castiel thrusts a knife into Alastair's chest, his eyes blue flame, and for a moment Dean feels light. He swallows thickly, his mind trying to puzzle out exactly what he's feeling, but there's pain in his chest and he still can't get up and Alastair is fucking smiling, and Castiel slams back, and no. No, no, no.
Dean is used to fear. He's used to the rush of it, when it's almost fun, the adrenaline. He's used to the dull buzz of it in the back of his mind when he's waiting, used to how if he looks at it too closely it grows and grows and blocks out everything but itself. He's used to the sharp pain of it, sickeningly familiar these days, when Sam isn't in the hotel room.
But what he feels now, as he sees Alastair grip Castiel by the throat, is more than he's ever felt before. He feels as if Alastair's hand is gripping and squeezing the sun itself, ready to extinguish it entirely and plunge the world into darkness, not just for him, but for everyone, as if without that slight man in the tan trench coat the world would lose some of its beauty. It is fear and guilt and loss all at once, and as Alastair's voice pulls across his skin like a razor just too dull to cut, pulling down and away into darkness, as the blue grace of Castiel's eyes begins to dim, he can't do anything but sink into nightmare.
**
He wakes in the hospital. He hurts all over. His eyes feel too dry - like he's cried all the fluid in his body, but the familiar pinch of an IV in his arm tells him that no, he's alive, not a withered husk.
Blue eyes meet his, and for a crazed moment it makes sense - his eyes are dry because he is staring at the sun.
He lets out a shuddering breath, and that same lightness that caught him when Castiel had appeared earlier suffused his skin. It only made his bruises darker and his cuts sting, but he recognizes it now. Like the man sitting at his bedside, like the wings that he can feel, stretched around him like a shell, like the handprint on his shoulder, it shouldn't exist. It doesn't belong in his world.
It's hope. And he knows, he knows, he cannot be worthy of it.