The Last Guys on the Bench // Part 1
So. This is it.
Dean waits for the blow, readying himself for the too-familiar sensation of claws slashing through cloth so easily before they pierce skin and organs and leave him in a bloody, messy heap right here on Purgatory’s dirt, and he’ll be over and gone and done, just done -
That end never comes. It’s just him in the clearing, surrounded by these dark woods and those crimson eyes in the distance that move too quickly. He can’t focus on the shapes attached to the red pinpricks of light, but honestly, that’s probably a good thing.
“Cas,” he whispers out loud, again, after a little while, less plea and more prayer. “Sammy?” A whisper meant to reach across some other dimensions to find his brother. His gut churns, thinking of Sam and Kevin and maybe Meg if they’re friggin’ lucky - God, when did Meg on their side turn into good luck - armed with nothing but lettuce and oranges and oh God, Baby’s still on Earth, in a battle royale against a very pissed-off Leviathan horde that’s still got just about every advantage imaginable.
“Apologies for that,” comes Cas’ grumble from behind Dean. It’s gotta say something about how fucked up Dean’s life is that the rustle of wings and someone popping in behind him actually slows his heart rate down to manageable levels.
“Wh-where the hell did you go?” Normally, he’d pretend he wasn’t totally freaked out by Cas vanishing and didn’t yelp Cas’ name into the darkness, as clear a noise as a hammer driving a nail down into wood. But there’s not much point in pretending, not now.
Cas’ brow furrows. “To attempt to locate a beer for you,” he answers, voice completely serious. Dean sputters, because he’s honestly not sure if he’s kidding or not. Cas has a weird sense of humor lately.
(“Come and be one with the bees,” he’d told Dean, who was understandably distracted by all that fucking skin and the roaming, twitchy little bees all over it, when he’d shown up perching on the front of Dean’s crappy stolen car. “Also the butterflies. They are so beautiful.” Well, that’d explain the long yellow smears of pollen across his arms and abdomen, at least. His voice had been so deadpan, Dean couldn’t tell if what he said was supposed to be a joke. And truthfully, he wasn’t sure if Cas making jokes or being serious about that particular idea was a scarier thought.
It was only after Cas pouted at Dean, who’d been left slack-mouthed, and disappeared that Dean realized he was more relieved than anything. Even weirdo bee-obsessed pacifist Cas was still a living Cas, after all. And not with Meg, either. What? It was a safety issue.
Also, he had been pretty goddamn relieved Cas’ legs were tucked up so Dean hadn’t seen… anything too personal outside of his stomach, way too much thigh, and a flash of hipbone so sharp he could watch a bee crawl up the line of it. Not that he had been looking.
Dean can tell you this much, though: junkless is out as an insult from this point, whoo boy.)
“You didn’t - did you get a weapon or something?” If Cas doesn’t want to fight, well Dean’s not happy but he’s fine with it, but he still feels something approaching emasculated without at least an impressive machete. Cas could probably get him a revolver made of gold if he really wanted, or a fucking sword, yeah.
“You don’t need one. I was merely scouting.” He places a pretty impressive knife in Dean’s hands, anyway. Cas would still understand his weird manly need for weaponry.
“What?”
“Dean, you don’t understand,” Cas sighs, like he has already had too much of Dean’s bullshit. “I mean, I didn’t understand at first and I apologize for telling you otherwise, but it all makes sense.” His smile, with all its teeth, still kinda freaks Dean out. “There are no insects here, though. Such a shame.”
“What makes sense?” Dean fights the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake. He hates that the more adrift Cas goes, the more he wants to haul him back in, and in the worst ways. Pain will bring him back because pain was the default for all of them; it’d pop the puffed-up balloon of Castiel’s new self so easily. Only, how do you hurt an angel, anyway?
Cas’ smile goes Joker-wide. “The beasts here will not attack; they are frightened of us. We are the monsters here,” he tells Dean. “You and your brother are responsible for putting so many of the creatures that inhabit Purgatory here, and I - I…” His blue eyes go hazy, and Dean fears him fucking passing out, which just seems wrong -
“Cas!”
“I took these souls; they were all inside me,” Cas says, at last, rather glumly. He finds a log a little bit of the way out of the clearing, and sits on it, head cradled in his palms. The pose is remarkably human, and a little too vulnerable; Dean saw Cas grab Dick Roman’s head and all but rip it the fuck back, after all. “They remember.”
Normally, Dean’s pretty sure he’d make a real inappropriate joke. It’d be too easy with Cas’ comment about the souls being inside him, after all. Only, this situation’s about ten thousand paces off “normal,” thanks.
Instead, he sits next to Cas. It’s probably too close, his side is heavy and warm against Dean’s, but Purgatory’s chill is starting to seep through Dean’s jacket into his skin. He really doesn’t mind. Again, it’s pretty fucking far from normal, and even though he gave Cas a long personal space lecture a while ago, he’s kind of over it. If Dean’s being honest with himself, he and Cas haven’t ever been the definition of normal.
“Do you think there are any board games to be found in Purgatory? Probably not. I should have acquired a pack of cards before we left, somehow.”
Dean can’t help it. He laughs. There’s no joy behind it, but he laughs, even with the red-eyed sons-of-bitches still circling them and making inhuman noises from their blood-clogged animal throats.
*
“So you’re tellin’ me, me and Sammy are the ghost stories little baby revenants tell each other around the campfire?” It’s gone creepy silent in the woods around them. There aren’t even cricket noises; Cas must not have been lying when he said there were no insects in Purgatory.
“In a sense.” Funnily enough, this close, Cas smells like a fire after it’s been stomped out, but the ash still lingers in the air. It’s a clean, woodsy scent; it reminds Dean of the couple of times he went camping with Dad and Sammy and if he ignored the rings of salt Dad put down around their sleeping bags, or the glut of weapons he dragged out from the Impala, he could pretend they were just another normal family, and make Sam think it too. If Dad remembered to go to the supermarket, there were even squishy burnt marshmallows on graham crackers.
“I’m probably included as well. I don’t expect it would make you feel better if I told you that, when frightened, these monsters ran to Eve and the Leviathan to tell them too,” Cas adds.
Dean actually full-body shudders. “No,” he agrees. The big nasties that live here might be scared shitless of the two poor lost suckers, but Dean’s seen it way too often: parents gotta protect their kids.
Still. Tell him that’s not at least a little bit badass. It’s just him and a crazy-ass angel, and all the shit that goes bump in the dark is terrified of them.
*
“We should get going,” Cas says later. Minutes or days, Dean isn’t sure.
His tone puts a deep chill through Dean’s spine. It’s the same voice he used when they first found themselves in Purgatory, firm and commanding. The one that reminds Dean of I can throw you back in.
He never thought hearing Cas use the Batman voice again would be a relief, but Dean’s breath caught in his throat in gratitude when he heard Cas growl out, I remember you in front of that hospital. When Cas came out of his coma his tone was all airy, too distant, not Cas at all, but this is him again. If Dean’s got nothing else, at least there’s that.
“Uh, going where?” Dean has to ask, even as he’s standing up and moving next to Castiel.
Cas’ brow furrows. God, Dean is gonna feel like a moron with the all-knowing angel as his traveling buddy, but he figures he can deal. “To find a way out,” Cas says, as if he already found a map with an easily marked path.
Their footsteps are deafeningly loud in the forest as they walk together. There’s no map after all. It’s just the two of them, the faith they lost a long time ago that things would turn out okay in the end, and Purgatory pressing in thick and endless.
*
Cas looks at Dean and tells him he has to go and look for an exit every now and then, and Dean ignores the jackrabbit thump of his heart every time to only nod.
“I’ll return, and nothing will happen to you, you know that,” Cas tells him, and the heavy insistence of his words circles pleasantly inside Dean’s mind. Dean isn’t admitting it, but it’s everything he’s ever wanted to hear, from everyone. He nods, gruff as possible.
Cas always comes back, though, a flurry of invisible wings with a hard expression etched into his face. Dean doesn’t say anything about it, but he lets himself smile for a few seconds.
*
The landscape shifts. It’s always a forest with a heavy canopy, sure, the ground choked with dead leaves, but it doesn’t stay the same.
Sometimes, Purgatory looks like a painting, one of those styles Dean recognizes but couldn’t name exactly. Sammy was the art history dork, anyway. It’s all rapid flares of paintbrush across canvas, gooey yellow and green and red paint dripping. He looks into the distance and his breath will stick in his throat for just a second, because it’s so beautiful. Terrifying, too - if everything else is like paint, is that him, too? He wants to know who’s twisting the paintbrush with their wrist.
Then, sometimes, Purgatory escalates. It starts like fire across an oil spill, the stench of it unmistakable, before it twists itself into human guts strewn over the ground. At its worse, it’s what he saw inside himself in Hell. And yet it settles into him, like all these sensations have washed over him and settled deep in his skin from a time he can’t remember. Sometimes, Dean’s sure Purgatory knows him, that it’s chewed him up before.
Dean isn’t gonna admit it, but he needs Cas. It’s messy and fucked-up and he should really look into getting some relationships in his life that aren’t freaky co-dependent, but it’s true. He needs him to clamp a hand over his eyes and walk behind Dean, hands on his shoulders or hips to keep him steady (Dean remembers that personal space lecture from years ago, and ha, that’s gone out the window) and walking soldier-stiff, just so Dean doesn’t fall to his knees and crumble apart with all he’s seen. All he sees.
*
“You sure nothing wants to attack us here?” Dean’s asking, just to be safe, a few - it could be hours, it could be days - later. They should get up and start searching for some way out, but they haven’t moved. Cas’ side, the brush of his coat, the outline of his jaw against the darkness of everything else - they are of little comfort, but comforting nevertheless. The sky’s inky black, which hasn’t changed, and Purgatory’s mostly quiet save the rustle of the undergrowth, the snap of twigs when something steps on them, and the growls of Christ-knows-what in the woods.
Cas looks at Dean, as opposed to his hands, for the first time in a while. At this point, it’s kinda weird for Dean if he’s even not getting a freaky intense stare whenever Cas is around. “Why would I lie about that?”
“I just… thought…” Dean nudges a twig with the toe of his boot and thinks about the right way to say what he wants to say. Oh, fuck it, there isn’t really a right way. “I thought you didn’t want to fight anything any more,” he mumbles, only just loud enough for Cas to hear.
He doesn’t know what kind of response he’s expecting. Maybe a sucked-in, offended breath that Cas doesn’t need to breathe, or worse, the angel vanishing in a poof of feathers, leaving nothing behind but his weird half-ash, half-honey scent. Instead, all he gets is Cas’ eyes going wider than normal, and admitting, “I don’t want to fight. It only… ruins things. But I wouldn’t lie about this, Dean. I’d fight to keep you safe.”
Dean’s never been sure what to say to shit like that. It’s so not hearts and flowers and girly shit, which somehow only makes it worse. At least that’s like a warning sign. When Cas hissed things like I gave everything for you, Dean’s response was to beg for Cas to just end him, because he couldn’t deal with knowing he’d caused disappointment like that. He never asked for Castiel’s devotion, not like that; how could he, and how could anyone live up to that, nevertheless him?
Thankfully, Cas himself interrupts Dean’s thoughts. “Would you like some honey?” he asks, brightly, strange glint back in his eyes as he pulls the little baggy out of his coat pocket.
“Sure.” Dean laughs, even. He dips two fingers into the honey and makes a big deal of sucking them off, licking hot and wet over his fingers, because he’s hungrier than he thought. This honey’s kind of flat-tasting, but it’s still sweet and the best thing he’s had since that sandwich. Cas says nothing in response to his noises, just looks, curiosity and something deeper coloring his gaze.
*
Dean’s constantly wound up. His shoulders hunch over at the same time his back goes stiff. His arms twitch out of the need to do something. There’s a thrumming in the trees, right? He’s not just hearing shit. Sure, Cas said nothing wants to attack them here, but that doesn’t mean the guy’s always right.
Dean’s fingers curl around the pretty impressively awesome knife Cas got him, that he keeps latched to his belt. He doesn’t know where Cas got it from, probably some court in the fourteenth century or something just to show off, but it’s still so new to Dean. It hasn’t sunk into the hide of some bad guy, gotten itself soaked in blood.
“Dean,” Cas sighs. Dean realizes he snorted out loud at that last thought.
“Where’d you get the knife?” Dean asks, to break the silence.
Cas visibly brightens at that. “There was a small metalwork factory near the farm in Normandy,” he explains. “I thought you would like it.”
Dean pulls the knife out and studies it, because he hasn’t really paid it a ton of attention yet. Too busy getting distracted by - everything else. It’s halfway between knife and dagger, and he lets out a chuckle at the hilt; it’s a flared wing, feathers astutely carved.
“I do,” he says, at last. “Thanks, Cas.”
As Cas just nods, Dean realizes that the angry chatter in the underbrush, if it ever really existed, is gone. The muscles in his arms aren’t twitching any more, and restlessness doesn’t churn in his head. He breathes out, and lets Cas lead him on deeper into the endless forest.
part 2 >>