until there is nothing left of us [1/?]
BREAK OPEN UP YOUR HEART FOR ME
[verse] established dean/castiel, sam, bobby, ofc. rated pg-13. ~7,000
Two months and sixteen days after the world stops, they drive North.
(c) title from a world completely of our own by dandelion wine
a/n: first segment in until there is nothing left of us [ masterpost/more info]. endless thanks to thevinegarworks for listening to this idea from the beginning.
Break open up your heart for me
Dean wants beautiful white light, black raging oceans to tear down blue mountains, for the sky to turn blood-red and grey, for things to end so suddenly and as he expected. He wants destruction, he wants no choice, he wants to live again so he can watch it all finish.
He gets none of this.
He gets a scar on his chest that's beautiful and purple-red, smooth and straight-cut across his skin; now he has stories to tell, a fog that lifted after he spent months and months chasing ghosts and black eyes. Now, he gets to see what he has done to this world and, now, he watches something turn sideways, fall, pulling him down with.
Dean has a brother who thinks he's to blame and an angel that chose to stay behind.
He doesn't know what he is yet.
-
They're still at Bobby's two months later because Dean's busy, working at nursing old wounds, Sam's wondering which way the road could take him, and Castiel wants to stay.
“I've got to get out of here,” Dean tells Castiel one morning and Castiel nods and Dean's sure he's saying yes, he's sure.
The world is a little shaken, still walking on edge with swollen seconds of the almost forgotten, tip-toe, dancing around things they can't explain because now they're scared, aware of it and Dean thinks he should laugh, but he finds himself dancing with them.
“Go somewhere, anywhere,” Dean says and Castiel smiles at him (quiet and tangled) because he can.
Castiel will spend these mornings, when everything is lost and slow and a wonderful colour of blue when the sun stops rising and the sky is only a reflection of a rolling sea, in Dean's bed, his hands twisted in Dean's hair, telling him stories of angels and kings, of far away lands and fairy tales that don't haunt Dean in his sleep. And Dean will make him stay, covering them in heavy patchwork blankets, abandoning light, blocking out the sun, blurring the sound of birds and the world realigning itself, fixing and breathing, and these mornings, Dean will only see the blue of Castiel's eyes, so much like the sky, like the sea.
“Where do you want to go?” Castiel asks and his fingers rest on Dean's cheek, thumb brushing under his eye and Dean thinks of going back in time, not to change anything, but to see his life in reverse, to see what things would look strange and frightening, what he would finally understand when it passed too quickly the first time, and he will find that what he had always missed, what he will always miss, no matter how many times he goes back, will be his salvation.
He knows he would take Castiel with him, see it all over again and know it in a new way together.
Dean wonders where Castiel could go, what far corners of the world Castiel hasn't seen, maybe forgot in the heat of fires, in the deaths of brothers and sisters, in being caught behind human eyes and seeing everything through small glass windows. He wonders where he could take Castiel, how far they could go before they ran out of gas, out of air, out of reasons to keep running, their feet bruised and bloody and broken raw, their skin dark brown from a sun that had almost never remembered them. Dean thinks he could take Castiel anywhere and if these places changed, then Castiel would know.
Yeah, they'll go anywhere. They'll go everywhere. Dean wants to see everything, with his own eyes, not stuck inside pictures or movies, and he'll live it. He'll live.
So, Dean shrugs with nothing to say. He smiles, because it's that easy, that fair and right, and Castiel smiles back.
Castiel kisses the corners of his mouth and pushes the covers down to their feet. Soft pale yellow sun floods over them, takes them whole, bottles them up in air and light. Dean turns over, folding the pillow over his head. Castiel runs his fingers over Dean's elbow, the bed shifting and dipping when he swings his legs over the side and stands.
“Where are you going?” Dean asks.
There's the smell of old fire smoke in the room, of fresh wet air, of warm breath and clean skin. The taste of Castiel lingers at the back of Dean's tongue, but the air is too cool, the world too bright, and he won't move, not now.
Dean hears soft knowing in Castiel's voice when he says, “Somewhere.”
-
Bobby takes off his cap, rubs his hand over his head.
“So, where are you thinking of going?” he asks.
Castiel is sitting in the bay window, his legs curled under him, a book in his lap. He hasn't said anything all day and Dean knows it's only because Castiel manages to lose footing when he reads for too long, forgetting how to say words out loud, how to say anything to Dean besides the stories he has in his head. Dean watches him these days with a wild curiosity, drawn to a better, angry-soft centre that they can't know yet and Dean sees this in Castiel: an arrant understanding that he seems to find in letters and numbers on frail pages of old books. It's something Dean finds in Castiel, takes from him and uses it himself when necessary, but never really knows. He's just copying, repeating, imitating what he thinks could be right.
So, this where they're going: to that unknown middle. They don't really know where it is.
“We're not sure yet,” Dean says.
Bobby just nods.
-
They've got nothing to their names (not that they had much, mostly less now) and they're okay with that.
Sam packs up the Impala with whatever he can find in the house, whatever he can get his hands on and it's not like anything is lost; mostly burned a lot of what they had to stay warm when the heat stopped and the ice storms settled in a couple weeks before the end. So, it takes Sam hours to fill one box with odd-shaped things they don't need. Dean catches him packing one up with crumpled newspaper, empty except for the book he had at the bottom. And Sam shrugs and says he's sorry but Dean doesn't know he would be.
Bobby's been in his living room most days, sorting through his towers and lines of books, stacking them in a pile near the door. He won't let them in, has a system, runs them out of his space with a book to back of the knee, and he won't be disrupted. Dean will hear him muttering all around the house, refusing anything to drink or eat besides toast and whiskey. Want you out of here already, he'll say and Dean will laugh; Four months is enough god damn time to baby-sit you three. But he gets quiet when they walk back out of the living room and Dean finds himself unable to leave the house until he hears Bobby talking to himself again.
Dean's in the front yard, burning heavy things and unknown things and paper things in an blue-rust oil barrel, and he's stopped drinking, taken up doing useful things with his hands, hauling scrap metal and wasted, dirty nothings to a deep pit near the end of the junkyard until his fingers blister and bleed; Bobby never asked him to, but Dean doesn't mind keeping his mind off of everything else and how it's all ended without him ever knowing, without any warning.
It's going to take them a few days to pack up, treasure hunt across the house, armed with boxes and bags, with oblivious eyes that think they can already see empty spaces and oceans.
“Where's Cas?” Sam's standing on the porch, a cardboard box in his arms.
Dean's been out here all morning and he can only look through a smoke-haze to see clearly. “In the attic, I think.”
Sam nods. Shuffles down the steps and disappears behind the car. Dean looks back down at the barrel. Pokes the embers and ash with a stick, pushing the larger charred pieces around.
“You really want to do this?” Sam asks.
Dean doesn't look up. “Do what?”
“Leave it all behind,” Sam says. “You know, hunting and the life and--everything.”
Dean doesn't say anything. The trunk shuts with a soft click. Dean hears Sam walking back up the porch, gravel crunching under his feet. A wind from the west snaps at them, picks up the smoke and embers blows it back in Dean's face.
“You're giving up the only life you know,” Sam says and his voice carries, drifts across the yard, through the smoke and yellow sky.
“Well, didn't you?” Dean asks.
He sees Sam smile, through the smoke and through the way that Sam has been locking himself away for days. “Yeah, I guess you're right.”
-
It's two months and sixteen days after everything has ended and when something else has begun that they leave. Dean made sure to throw his map into the fire the night before, buried it with other things he was ready to forget, only looking now for an open road he's never driven before.
Bobby's waiting in the doorway, his cap pulled low over his eyes. The day is hot, buzzing with cicadas and the low, fast rumble of the Impala's engine.
“Thanks, Bobby,” Dean says. “For everything.”
Bobby grunts in the way that Dean knows all too well, in the way he does when he's hiding, rubbing his thumbs into his eyes. “Just remember to keep in touch, okay?” He takes Dean's hand in his and his hands are rough, warm and bruised. “Wherever you are.”
“Yeah, Bobby,” Dean says and he feels a weakening panic in his chest, feels the rush of leaving and not looking back and he doesn't know why it hurts now (because he is living it, all of it now, and it's just going to be behind him and he'll leave it there and, yeah, it does hurt, it hurts to know that he's telling himself not to come back). “You know I will.”
Bobby grins, lopsided, just the corner of his mouth curling up. “Yeah, you better.”
-
Dean wonders where he could stay if he went West, if he followed his tires to the ocean, settled down on a beach and slept his nights away under the stars. He wonders if Sam misses California, if Castiel would be able to taste the sea-salt in the air. He wonders if he could adopt childhood dreams that were never his, set out for Hollywood and work his way up, climb ladders, get places, know people and he would be famous and wear sunglasses all the time for no reason.
He thinks about going East, back to Indiana and Ohio, the places he always knew, up into New York, see what real people used to live like. He thinks he'd be okay with making it rich, standing in Times Square and watching the streets fill with crayon-yellow taxi cars. Sam would grow his hair long and they would spend their nights in hotels with high windows and silk bed sheets and drink scotch out of glass tumblers. Castiel would talk about how the lights never fade and Dean would see them, too, and he would be okay with that, he knows.
But he goes North. He hasn't been this way in years, up to where nothing seems to exist and to the unknown places that people usually go, that they talk about, that he wants to see but never does.
So, they go north on the I-29, cross the state line before noon, driving straight through Fargo by the time the sun starts drifting back down, keep going, passing by flatlands and grain silos, brown-yellow trees and they rush under a sky littered with thin white clouds. Sam's in the front seat, his feet on the dashboard, chin resting on his knees, and he looks like a kid again, wearing a bright blue t-shirt, laughing at the jokes Dean tells. Sometimes, Dean will glance in the rear view and see Castiel looking back at him, his eyes quiet, and they don't say anything, don't need to, and Dean likes this.
They reach the border where a man in Pembina stops them, points them off the road, down an angling street towards the centre of town where the fading yellow-pink of the sky is broken by red and blue lights, bright flashing white signs, orange reflective streamers hanging from stop signs; it's a rainbow, colour cut and scattered across the grey.
“You're heading into Canada?” the man asks.
Dean rubs at his eyes. “I guess we are.”
“They're not opening the border until morning. We've got food and cots at the high school.”
They spend their night in a gymnasium full of strangers with white, welcoming faces. They eat bologna sandwiches with mustard, drink clean, warm water and Sam picks at the crusts, letting them pile on the plate resting on his lap. Dean takes them from his plate and eats them when Sam isn't looking, but Sam knows.
(Dean falls asleep in the corner closest to the double-wide doors, Castiel leaning against his shoulder, eyes wide and tired still. When Dean wakes up in the middle of night, thrown into darkness, confused by the only light being the flickering red exit sign, he feels the familiar weight of Castiel against his chest, his arms wrapped around Castiel.)
In the morning, Dean knocks knees with Sam on a small cot and they never say a word while Castiel wanders among everyone, asking them their names and where they're from.
-
When they cross the border, a woman tells them to go West, where the air is still clear, where the soil hasn't been poisoned and people are still living.
“It's no good around here,” she says, looking out across the empty fields to dark blue clouds gathering on the horizon. Her skin is tanned, pulled in the wrong places, and when she turns her head, Dean sees the purple-red scar, still fresh, on her neck. “Just bad memories.”
Dean takes her advice and turns west in Winnipeg, into angry grey clouds that mean rain, but he sees monsters. He keeps driving, wanting to reach the ocean, to see the West hidden behind mountains to here now, where people have said that time moves only when they do: he doesn't think he can handle any more bad memories.
-
The land plays tricks with them. It rises in heat waves, scattered with tiny bumps that they call hills, grey dead trees on the lip of the ditch, growing around a barbed wire fence rusted black. They might see the end, might see buildings and houses and artificial light, but they drum over the last few miles, they think, and it goes on and on.
“It can't be this flat,” Sam says.
Dean's used to fires and buildings and rivers and trees. “It's not that bad. At least we can see where we're going.”
“I like it here,” Castiel says.
It's not that it bothers them, not really. They're just not used to so many clear skies.
-
The sun is settling into the lap of the earth, moving across the sky with gold and blue and red. They've passed through towns without lights, without people, and it's not as distressing as the abandoned towns they found before, the ones that burned and collapsed at their fingertips.
They'll call it ugly, other people can call it ugly, and it might be, but it looks like normal, like what the world should be and Dean's starting to think he could stay here.
They've got miles and miles behind them that Castiel has been marking off on the backs of his hands, the smell of rain that Sam keeps the windows rolled down for and Dean can hear music over his radio again, the static-cut of high dark voices and songs he doesn't recognize slipping under his skin. More than time and streets and shadows cast by a great yellow sun stretches out and Dean feels it in his fingers, hears it in the way Sam talks slow and sure and knows Castiel feels it too because he'll always know.
And they're out here and some would say they're lost, but they're only looking.
-
Sam slaps his hand against the dashboard when he sees the light a couple miles off the road.
“Over there, Dean!”'
Dean hasn't heard the tires kick up dust like this in years and, yeah, he's a little grateful for the dry-heat hanging in the air.
-
Light pours across their feet when the front door opens. Dean staggers back when the woman steps out onto the porch, tall and sallow-skinned, dressed in a black silk overcoat, fixed with absent long-lost beauty that resonates in her heavy shoulders, her birdlike bones, her painted purple lips, the brightness of her sunken eyes.
“Hi, uh--” Dean starts. He stops. He looks at Sam and Sam looks back at him.
The woman drags on her cigarette, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Yeah?”
Sam shrugs his shoulders and looks to the woman, smiling, gentle, giving something away like bad news. “Look, we're sorry,” he says. “We don't mean to impose, but we just drove here from the border and we really need a place to sleep.” Here, the woman blinks at them, her eyes wandering over Dean and Sam's faces, finally settling on Castiel's, who's standing behind Dean, staring off towards the road. “We were wondering if we could just stay here for the night,” Sam says. “There doesn't seem to be anyone else around. We could pay you and--”
“Your money's no good here,” the woman interrupts. She taps her cigarette, leaning against the door frame, looking at them through her eyelashes.
Sam glances at Dean, agitated. “Okay, well, but could you just allow us one night? We just--”
“We're really tired, okay?” Dean says. He's blunt and angry when he just drives and never sleeps. Castiel touches the back of his neck, gently, fingers running through his hair and Dean closes his mouth.
“And we're not murderers or thieves or anything.” Sam says it when he shouldn't have and he laughs it off, awkward and loud like he does. “We won't get in your way and we'll be out before morning.”
She looks up, her chin jutting out. She hums to herself. Dean reaches for Castiel's arm, pulls him closer and Castiel stumbles into him, his hands on Dean's back.
“Are you done now?” she asks, cocking her head to the side. She holds her cigarette up and it flares in the dark, in the sudden rush of wind. The smell of burning fills the air.
“Uh, yeah,” Sam mumbles. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I've got no room in here but there's a small house a mile down the road that belongs to me.” She crosses her arms and looks down at her feet. “You can stay there.”
“Thank you so much,” Sam says and Dean nods. Castiel is staring back down the road.
She toes the door open, revealing a narrow hallway with green walls. They don't move. She grunts and says, impatiently, “Well, come in. I was just about to make supper.”
-
All the walls in the house are green, all the windows thrown open and smudged with fingerprints and oil, sheets of blank paper littered across tables and chairs, the house thick with warm air and the smell of dry grass. She moves among the discarded side tables, the chairs stacked near doorways, picking up things on her way--porcelain cats with yellow eyes, coffee cups with pink lipstick stains, a paperback book with the pages folded in--setting them down minutes later on the staircase, near the radio, on a window sill.
Dean follows her around the small house, hands running across the washboard railing, feeling the bound perfection of a home not his own.
Her name is Audrey, she says, when she pulls a stool up to the open linen closet door and starts looking through the sheets. She says she's been here alone since her husband cut out three years ago, taking the dog with him too, and she only stays because she couldn't think of where else she could go. She hates the silence, the quiet, the emptiness of the prairies and how she lost everyone she's known since she was a young girl. But she stays because she has to.
“Too old to start over,” she says as she hands Dean a folded pile of sheets and pillowcases, an assortment of colours in patterns of stripes and flowers and squares. “Never been overly ambitious. The most I've ever done is live through the end of the world.”
She grins at him then, her teeth straight and white in the dim hallway light; Dean looks at a corner wall.
Audrey takes a canvas bag from the closet and closes the door. Dean follows her into the kitchen. He hears someone--Sam, Castiel--walking around the house, the wavering of muffled voices talking loudly through heavy walls, and the house is warm and lit yellow-orange from the candles burning, the lights flickering overhead.
Dean stands in the doorway and watches her move from the stove, stirring the cooking pot of pasta, take the canvas bag and open her cupboards, reaching to the back to dig out cans of vegetables, tins of flaked tuna, and jars of pickles.
“Good thing I stocked up,” she says and Dean nods even though she isn't looking at him. “And that I liked canning when the days got long.”
She sets up a row of canned peaches, pears, pickled carrots, tomatoes and beets. They're vivid rich in the candle light, the preserve in the glass jars pale imitations of the fruit and vegetables inside, and Dean doesn't remember the last time he saw food, real food, that he wanted to eat.
“I've got an extra loaf of bread if you want some chokecherry jam.” She turns to him. She pulls a tin case from her pocket and shakes out a cigarette. “It's really good and I'm not just saying that because I made it.”
“Thank you,” Dean says, because he thinks it's the best thing he could say. “I don't know--how we can repay you.”
The water is bubbling and it sounds like home. Audrey bows her head and Dean sees her smile, something that looks so startlingly real and natural on her lips. She shrugs and puts her cigarette in her mouth and turns back to the stove.
“It's nothing,” she comments. “It's what we do around here. Gotta help each other out, right?”
-
She sits them down around a table built into the corner of the kitchen. The benches are lined with pillows, soft and lumpy, and their elbows knock against each other when she makes them put them down--“Manners, for God's sake,” she says.
Dean smiles at Sam and Sam smiles back.
She makes them talk--who they are, where they're from, what they do, what they used to be. Dean wonders what he could say without anything hurting while Sam answers in half-truths and short sentences.
It's the unfamiliarity of this, of sitting down, of conversation, of normal, that has Dean looking to Castiel for something, anything, to make him hesitant, to make things wrong again, only like they know. And Castiel never bothers to look at him, because he knows, he knows, and he'll run his fingers across Dean's open palm, drawing symbols and circles, and Dean will breathe in, breathe out, like he really needs to make himself this calm and Castiel will laugh.
And when she asks them where they're going and Sam smiles and says we don't know she smiles with him and says, “You're starting to sound more and more like me, kid.”
-
Dean leaves the Impala in Audrey's garage, on her request. She grins, a little possessive and oddly youthful, romantic, and says she hasn't seen one of these since she was his age, maybe older, thinking of days when God was only inside church walls and she can't make any promises not to steal it.
She waves at the them from her front porch, the smell of dry-warmth following them. “Stay as long as you need, okay?” She raises a glass of whiskey at them and drinks.
Dean waves back.
They walk along the road, Castiel carrying the canvas bag of bread and canned peaches, Sam dragging the duffels behind him, Dean with the sheets and blankets tucked under his arm. They say nothing about the noise that echoes back at the them because they all know they're dwarfed by the size of this place, how they can see circles of trees miles away, like teeth, claws of all those left-behind monsters, with the moon this clear, and the sky is just navy-blue, collapsing with so many stars that they've never seen.
Dean likes it out here, where there's no light but the stars and theirs, a flashlight running low on batteries as they jog down a hill towards a small two-storey house with twisted ivy growing around the windows. They get to the front door and Sam moves the flashlight to the lock while Dean looks for the spare keys.
“Whoa,” Sam says.
Dean looks up and blinks. “Oh.”
“That's--” Sam pauses and looks at Dean.
“Different,” Dean finishes.
Castiel moves from behind Dean. Puts his hand on the door, fingers spread. Even in the dark, far apart, Dean knows Castiel's flying.
“It's unique,” Castiel whispers. “I like it.”
Dean grins in the dark for no one to see, feels the key click, shift, unlock and they walk in through the bright cherry-red door that greeted them from the road.
-
They light oil lamps; Dean and Castiel pull the double mattress from the bedrooms upstairs into the living room while Sam rummages through drawers and cupboards for something to burn in the stove pipe fireplace.
They find a bottle of scotch on a bookshelf behind a decorative plate, aged and a delicious colour of brown, that Sam opens while Dean unfolds the blankets, throwing them across the couch and bed.
“No sheets?” Sam asks as he hands the bottle to Castiel.
“Do I look like a guy who knows how to put on sheets?” Dean says.
Castiel holds the bottle to his lips and drinks a little. Dean watches. He doesn't feel bad for laughing when Castiel spits it back up.
-
Sam's telling stories, ones from Stanford, ones that Dean's never heard before and has been asking for years to hear; tells stories about when they were kids, when Dean got caught with his pants around his ankles in the janitor's closet with the substitute teacher; when they were in Maine and Sam broke his wrist and Dean carried him to the hospital, piggy-back, to get a cast put on it.
“You suck at telling stories,” Dean jokes. “You leave out all the good parts.”
“There are no good parts.” Sam kicks him in the knee and takes another drink from the bottle. “Fine, you tell some.”
But Dean has no stories to tell, none that they won't already know, ones he doesn't think he'll tell, not now at least, so he shrugs and retells the plots to movies he saw when he was a kid and Sam laughs at him and Castiel listens.
They eat their way through half a loaf of bread, two jars of pears and one of pickled carrots. They end up burning the little oil that was left in the lamps and resort back to flashlights. Dean's drunk, so he takes the flashlight from Castiel and holds it under his face; he's telling ghost stories, ones they know aren't true, ones they laid rest to before they had their scars to bear and they're laughing because they made it out alive, even after all this time.
Sam falls asleep, sprawled across the couch, a blanket pulled under his chin and Dean doesn't remember the last time he's looked this quiet, this okay, this--peaceful.
Dean's feeling warm around the edges, faint and formless, the scotch settling in his head, making him think strange, safe things with Castiel at his side.
“I like it here, Dean,” Castiel whispers.
Dean looks over. He takes Castiel's hand in his own and presses his lips to the back of Castiel's hand. “Yeah?”
Castiel sighs. “Could we stay?”
“Stay?” Dean looks back the ceiling, the twisted steel-blue. “But we just got back on the road. I thought we were going to go everywhere, Cas.” (He sees the mountains, hundred foot cliffs, waterfalls and roads that cut corners, sharp curves, straddled with oceans and trees like giants; sees them taking their world back as theirs, leaving their hand prints carved into rocks and dirt roads.)
Dean likes Castiel because he's reliable and wrongly important, unpredictable in ways that are irrelevant and annoying, in ways that Dean needs when Castiel frames his face with his hands and kisses his eyes.
“Aren't you tired of always moving?” Castiel asks. He sounds young and odd in the way that is so tired, so human, and it's not as heartbreaking as it used to be. Castiel yawns and Dean smiles into the crook of his arm. “Dean.”
He doesn't really have to think about it. So, he leans over and runs his hand through Castiel's hair, can't help but smile when Castiel's hand covers his, their skin so warm from the fire-heat and tangled in heavy winter blankets.
“Well, if you want to stay, I want to stay,” Dean says.
And it's true, it really is.
-
They stay for a week, sitting in the living room, eating red chokecherry jam on bread, warming up cans of peas and carrots over the fire when Sam can find something to burn, drinking the dregs of the canned peaches and Castiel says it's his favourite, the syrup-sweet taste that has him licking his lips. They don't talk much, sleep most of the day away, and when they're awake late at night, they'll sit out on the back porch, careful of the rotted wood that sinks with their weight, and think out loud about all the places they will go, the things they're going to see and Dean can already feel it.
Sam sits on the sill of the large bay window in the living room during the day, the window open, his bare feet hanging out into the wild grass and flowers growing around the house. It's summer here with the hot sun branding into the air, fat bees flying in through the open windows they never close, getting stuck in the curtains, in the sheets, and Dean hears them all day, humming between the fabric.
Dean's been sleeping in the middle of the day, making Castiel stay up during the night so he's not left to talk with all his memories on his own. So when he wakes, sometimes Castiel is sleeping too or gone, wandering around the house, maybe outside, through the trees in the yard, catching his hands in the snarls of branches and leaves, coming back to the house with his fingers sticky with sap and smelling like pine needles, stained the softest pale green.
It's the fifth day they've been there when Dean crawls through the bay window and sits beside Sam. He looks at his brother and says nothing. Sam looks up from his book, the paperback cover curled into his hands, and blinks into the sun.
“What's new?” Dean asks. He looks outside with Sam and they're so absurd with this, so indifferent, that it should worry him, but it never will.
“There's a town not too far from here,” Sam says. “It's got people and stores. People starting over.”
“How do you know this?”
Sam smiles and points to west, up the road. Dean looks, expecting to see something. “Audrey told me.”
Dean looks back at Sam. “When?”
“She was here this morning.” Sam looks at Dean now and there's a tentative waver in his eyes. “You and Cas were sleeping. She said you two looked too happy and not to wake you.” But now, now, he's smiling, wide and amused, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. “She says hi, by the way.”
Dean punches Sam in the shoulder. “Shut up.”
-
Castiel's in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, swinging his legs against the cupboard doors. Dean walks in, greeted by the rhythm-thump of skin on wood and Castiel looking at him, surprise in his stare.
“Are you going to talk to Audrey?” Castiel asks while Dean pulls out the last jar of pears from the bag and opens them. Castiel taps his foot against the cupboard door and looks to the hallway. “Tell her we're staying.”
Dean nods, picking a slice of pear from the jar and putting it his mouth. “Yeah. I'll go now.” He shrugs and looks at Castiel and when he does, the light filtering through the curtains catches him, traces him in white sun and Dean finds this fascination--with things that make Castiel so unusual--wicked. “Do you want to come with? Sam's busy brooding on the window sill again.”
Castiel nods, the slip of a smile, lit-match delicate. Dean reaches out, knuckles brushing against Castiel's jaw line. His face brightens and he slides off the counter and runs outside.
Dean sighs and follows him.
-
The air is still outside, smells of honeysuckle and evergreen trees hanging in everything. Dean's walking with his hands in his pockets down the gravel road. Castiel is walking bare foot on the side of the road in the overgrown grass, stumbling along the edge of the ditch, his arms outstretched.
Dean watches him. Maybe he is flying.
“What are you doing?” Dean asks, laughing, when Castiel slips and falls forward slightly.
“Walking,” Castiel says and his voice carries.
Dean grins. “You're strange,” he says.
Castiel glances over his shoulder, his eyes bright. And Dean's heart, it races for the absolution of the lingering elsewhere and for this, this he can't contain, can't let go and, yeah, he needs it. He always will.
-
Audrey's sitting on a rocking chair by the door, a book in her lap. She's been staring down the road ever since they turned the corner, coming into view down the road. Dean turns to walk up the path to house; Castiel turns the other way and walks towards the pasture on the other side of the grid.
“You like it here?” she asks when Dean walks up the steps and stops by the doors. “In the house, I mean.”
Dean looks to where Castiel is standing on a wooden fence, leaning over to reach out to a horse that had wandered near. “He does,” Dean says, nodding towards Castiel.
Audrey chuckles. She picks up the mug beside her chair and holds it in her lap. “And you do whatever he says?”
Dean looks back to Audrey and he thinks he has a dark look on his face, something he doesn't want to have, because she coughs, uneasy, and looks at her hands. “I want him to be happy,” Dean says.
She sighs and it sounds like some kind of truth, some kind of forever that goes on longer and he thinks maybe, maybe she knows exactly what he means, what he knows, what this is for and he's not alone.
“I don't have anything to pay you with,” Dean says. “Well, not a lot.”
Audrey shrugs and stands, stretching her hands above her head. Her skin is bruised and speckled white under her arms. “Like I said, your money's no good here.”
“I can't just live in your house for free.”
“Damn rights you can't,” she snaps. She pushes the chair aside with her foot and walks inside the house. Dean follows, glancing quickly over his shoulder, sees Castiel now sitting on the fence: his lips are moving, his head bending and rising to look at the horse, stroking it gently between the eyes.
“But you can take care of my animals for me.” Audrey's in the kitchen now and Dean can hear doors opening, plates and pots knocking into each other. “And drive me to town when I need to. I don't go often, I don't need much, but I can't drive myself.”
Dean leans in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her, hands back in his pockets. “So I just have to take care of some cows?”
“And pigs and chickens and horses,” she says. She stands up, breathing in, and points out the window. “They're all down in the pasture a few miles behind the house. When the time comes, we'll haul them to town and barter them for gas and food and some money 'cause some people still think it's worth something.” She smiles because she can and Dean is confused by her for only a moment, how simple she can be and how he wants to be too. “Give me half the cut and we'll be fair.”
Dean nods, shrugging. “Okay.”
The warm heat of a hushed summer is drifting in the kitchen and the sky is always yellow from a sun that grows and cracks through clouds. This kitchen breathes in the sound of laughter and the silence that moves on, and they're moving with it. Dean hears the floorboards creak under Audrey's feet as she moves around the room, pulling bowls and jars and pans from the cupboards.
She's stacking cups when she looks over her shoulder, eyes shadowed by the sun. “Are you good with plumbing and stuff?”
“And stuff?” Dean asks.
Audrey waves her hand in front of her face. She reaches for her cigarettes, her hands hovering. “Electricity and furnaces and things like that.” She sighs, looking at her feet. She picks up the tin case.
Dean shakes his head. “Not really.”
“Well you better be a fast learner because that needs tending to as well.” Audrey puts the lit cigarette in her mouth and blows the smoke towards the window. “We're living off of generators and diesel fuel here and that shit breaks down without warning.”
“I can be a fast learner.” But he doesn't think he can; it's the only thing he can pretend to offer. (They could pick up, move on, keep moving until they find something better, but there's the loneliness of Castiel's smile that make Dean's heart ache and he feels like all his words are promises he's meant to keep.)
“Good.” Audrey coughs, tapping her cigarette in the sink. She points at Dean, making him look at her and she's the sort of person who demands attention and only ever asks it and Dean finds he's okay with that. “Now, the house has electricity, running water and sometimes it can be hot when the heater's working right. There's no washing machine for your clothes, but I've got one here, so just bring it over and I'll do it for you. There's no phone or TV or internet or whatever and I can't get it so don't even ask.”
“That's fine.” Dean's smiling and he's not sure why, really.
Audrey nods. She walks over to the corner of the kitchen and pulls open the last drawer on the counter. When she turns back around, she has a key with a blue rubber band around the top. “Here's the keys to unlock the back door if you need it but there's no use locking it up again.” She puts the key in Dean's open hand. “No one ever gets out this far without having the means to.”
-
The key is warm in his hands. He turns it over in his fingers, watching the light reflect off the surface, the feather-weight of it strangely alarming. It clinks against his ring when he flips it over and shoves it in into his pocket.
“Cas!”
Castiel's standing on the other side of the fence. When he turns to look at Dean, he's breathing quickly, and maybe he's not smiling, but there's something better about him, something uncontrollable and ordinary about the look on his face, his hands on his hips, staring off at the sky.
“Come on,” Dean calls. “What are you doing?”
“Running,” Castiel says. The pasture is slick with mud and, Dean notices, Castiel's ankle-deep in it, bare toes curling into the puddles.
Dean walks down to the pasture, leans against a fence post and Castiel grins at him, head tilted to the side. He reaches his hands out, palms up and Dean lays his hands on top of Castiel's.
“Would you like to join me?” Castiel asks.
-
They run back to the house and Dean can feel the world changing for them all of a sudden, turning backwards for them so they have time to make everything okay and he's laughing, his fingers in Castiel's and this is it, this is theirs: this is life, finally.
-
(next) the dawn was breaking the bones of your heart
masterpost.
[verse] established dean/castiel, sam, bobby, ofc. rated pg-13. ~7,000
Two months and sixteen days after the world stops, they drive North.
(c) title from a world completely of our own by dandelion wine
a/n: first segment in until there is nothing left of us [ masterpost/more info]. endless thanks to thevinegarworks for listening to this idea from the beginning.
Break open up your heart for me
Dean wants beautiful white light, black raging oceans to tear down blue mountains, for the sky to turn blood-red and grey, for things to end so suddenly and as he expected. He wants destruction, he wants no choice, he wants to live again so he can watch it all finish.
He gets none of this.
He gets a scar on his chest that's beautiful and purple-red, smooth and straight-cut across his skin; now he has stories to tell, a fog that lifted after he spent months and months chasing ghosts and black eyes. Now, he gets to see what he has done to this world and, now, he watches something turn sideways, fall, pulling him down with.
Dean has a brother who thinks he's to blame and an angel that chose to stay behind.
He doesn't know what he is yet.
-
They're still at Bobby's two months later because Dean's busy, working at nursing old wounds, Sam's wondering which way the road could take him, and Castiel wants to stay.
“I've got to get out of here,” Dean tells Castiel one morning and Castiel nods and Dean's sure he's saying yes, he's sure.
The world is a little shaken, still walking on edge with swollen seconds of the almost forgotten, tip-toe, dancing around things they can't explain because now they're scared, aware of it and Dean thinks he should laugh, but he finds himself dancing with them.
“Go somewhere, anywhere,” Dean says and Castiel smiles at him (quiet and tangled) because he can.
Castiel will spend these mornings, when everything is lost and slow and a wonderful colour of blue when the sun stops rising and the sky is only a reflection of a rolling sea, in Dean's bed, his hands twisted in Dean's hair, telling him stories of angels and kings, of far away lands and fairy tales that don't haunt Dean in his sleep. And Dean will make him stay, covering them in heavy patchwork blankets, abandoning light, blocking out the sun, blurring the sound of birds and the world realigning itself, fixing and breathing, and these mornings, Dean will only see the blue of Castiel's eyes, so much like the sky, like the sea.
“Where do you want to go?” Castiel asks and his fingers rest on Dean's cheek, thumb brushing under his eye and Dean thinks of going back in time, not to change anything, but to see his life in reverse, to see what things would look strange and frightening, what he would finally understand when it passed too quickly the first time, and he will find that what he had always missed, what he will always miss, no matter how many times he goes back, will be his salvation.
He knows he would take Castiel with him, see it all over again and know it in a new way together.
Dean wonders where Castiel could go, what far corners of the world Castiel hasn't seen, maybe forgot in the heat of fires, in the deaths of brothers and sisters, in being caught behind human eyes and seeing everything through small glass windows. He wonders where he could take Castiel, how far they could go before they ran out of gas, out of air, out of reasons to keep running, their feet bruised and bloody and broken raw, their skin dark brown from a sun that had almost never remembered them. Dean thinks he could take Castiel anywhere and if these places changed, then Castiel would know.
Yeah, they'll go anywhere. They'll go everywhere. Dean wants to see everything, with his own eyes, not stuck inside pictures or movies, and he'll live it. He'll live.
So, Dean shrugs with nothing to say. He smiles, because it's that easy, that fair and right, and Castiel smiles back.
Castiel kisses the corners of his mouth and pushes the covers down to their feet. Soft pale yellow sun floods over them, takes them whole, bottles them up in air and light. Dean turns over, folding the pillow over his head. Castiel runs his fingers over Dean's elbow, the bed shifting and dipping when he swings his legs over the side and stands.
“Where are you going?” Dean asks.
There's the smell of old fire smoke in the room, of fresh wet air, of warm breath and clean skin. The taste of Castiel lingers at the back of Dean's tongue, but the air is too cool, the world too bright, and he won't move, not now.
Dean hears soft knowing in Castiel's voice when he says, “Somewhere.”
-
Bobby takes off his cap, rubs his hand over his head.
“So, where are you thinking of going?” he asks.
Castiel is sitting in the bay window, his legs curled under him, a book in his lap. He hasn't said anything all day and Dean knows it's only because Castiel manages to lose footing when he reads for too long, forgetting how to say words out loud, how to say anything to Dean besides the stories he has in his head. Dean watches him these days with a wild curiosity, drawn to a better, angry-soft centre that they can't know yet and Dean sees this in Castiel: an arrant understanding that he seems to find in letters and numbers on frail pages of old books. It's something Dean finds in Castiel, takes from him and uses it himself when necessary, but never really knows. He's just copying, repeating, imitating what he thinks could be right.
So, this where they're going: to that unknown middle. They don't really know where it is.
“We're not sure yet,” Dean says.
Bobby just nods.
-
They've got nothing to their names (not that they had much, mostly less now) and they're okay with that.
Sam packs up the Impala with whatever he can find in the house, whatever he can get his hands on and it's not like anything is lost; mostly burned a lot of what they had to stay warm when the heat stopped and the ice storms settled in a couple weeks before the end. So, it takes Sam hours to fill one box with odd-shaped things they don't need. Dean catches him packing one up with crumpled newspaper, empty except for the book he had at the bottom. And Sam shrugs and says he's sorry but Dean doesn't know he would be.
Bobby's been in his living room most days, sorting through his towers and lines of books, stacking them in a pile near the door. He won't let them in, has a system, runs them out of his space with a book to back of the knee, and he won't be disrupted. Dean will hear him muttering all around the house, refusing anything to drink or eat besides toast and whiskey. Want you out of here already, he'll say and Dean will laugh; Four months is enough god damn time to baby-sit you three. But he gets quiet when they walk back out of the living room and Dean finds himself unable to leave the house until he hears Bobby talking to himself again.
Dean's in the front yard, burning heavy things and unknown things and paper things in an blue-rust oil barrel, and he's stopped drinking, taken up doing useful things with his hands, hauling scrap metal and wasted, dirty nothings to a deep pit near the end of the junkyard until his fingers blister and bleed; Bobby never asked him to, but Dean doesn't mind keeping his mind off of everything else and how it's all ended without him ever knowing, without any warning.
It's going to take them a few days to pack up, treasure hunt across the house, armed with boxes and bags, with oblivious eyes that think they can already see empty spaces and oceans.
“Where's Cas?” Sam's standing on the porch, a cardboard box in his arms.
Dean's been out here all morning and he can only look through a smoke-haze to see clearly. “In the attic, I think.”
Sam nods. Shuffles down the steps and disappears behind the car. Dean looks back down at the barrel. Pokes the embers and ash with a stick, pushing the larger charred pieces around.
“You really want to do this?” Sam asks.
Dean doesn't look up. “Do what?”
“Leave it all behind,” Sam says. “You know, hunting and the life and--everything.”
Dean doesn't say anything. The trunk shuts with a soft click. Dean hears Sam walking back up the porch, gravel crunching under his feet. A wind from the west snaps at them, picks up the smoke and embers blows it back in Dean's face.
“You're giving up the only life you know,” Sam says and his voice carries, drifts across the yard, through the smoke and yellow sky.
“Well, didn't you?” Dean asks.
He sees Sam smile, through the smoke and through the way that Sam has been locking himself away for days. “Yeah, I guess you're right.”
-
It's two months and sixteen days after everything has ended and when something else has begun that they leave. Dean made sure to throw his map into the fire the night before, buried it with other things he was ready to forget, only looking now for an open road he's never driven before.
Bobby's waiting in the doorway, his cap pulled low over his eyes. The day is hot, buzzing with cicadas and the low, fast rumble of the Impala's engine.
“Thanks, Bobby,” Dean says. “For everything.”
Bobby grunts in the way that Dean knows all too well, in the way he does when he's hiding, rubbing his thumbs into his eyes. “Just remember to keep in touch, okay?” He takes Dean's hand in his and his hands are rough, warm and bruised. “Wherever you are.”
“Yeah, Bobby,” Dean says and he feels a weakening panic in his chest, feels the rush of leaving and not looking back and he doesn't know why it hurts now (because he is living it, all of it now, and it's just going to be behind him and he'll leave it there and, yeah, it does hurt, it hurts to know that he's telling himself not to come back). “You know I will.”
Bobby grins, lopsided, just the corner of his mouth curling up. “Yeah, you better.”
-
Dean wonders where he could stay if he went West, if he followed his tires to the ocean, settled down on a beach and slept his nights away under the stars. He wonders if Sam misses California, if Castiel would be able to taste the sea-salt in the air. He wonders if he could adopt childhood dreams that were never his, set out for Hollywood and work his way up, climb ladders, get places, know people and he would be famous and wear sunglasses all the time for no reason.
He thinks about going East, back to Indiana and Ohio, the places he always knew, up into New York, see what real people used to live like. He thinks he'd be okay with making it rich, standing in Times Square and watching the streets fill with crayon-yellow taxi cars. Sam would grow his hair long and they would spend their nights in hotels with high windows and silk bed sheets and drink scotch out of glass tumblers. Castiel would talk about how the lights never fade and Dean would see them, too, and he would be okay with that, he knows.
But he goes North. He hasn't been this way in years, up to where nothing seems to exist and to the unknown places that people usually go, that they talk about, that he wants to see but never does.
So, they go north on the I-29, cross the state line before noon, driving straight through Fargo by the time the sun starts drifting back down, keep going, passing by flatlands and grain silos, brown-yellow trees and they rush under a sky littered with thin white clouds. Sam's in the front seat, his feet on the dashboard, chin resting on his knees, and he looks like a kid again, wearing a bright blue t-shirt, laughing at the jokes Dean tells. Sometimes, Dean will glance in the rear view and see Castiel looking back at him, his eyes quiet, and they don't say anything, don't need to, and Dean likes this.
They reach the border where a man in Pembina stops them, points them off the road, down an angling street towards the centre of town where the fading yellow-pink of the sky is broken by red and blue lights, bright flashing white signs, orange reflective streamers hanging from stop signs; it's a rainbow, colour cut and scattered across the grey.
“You're heading into Canada?” the man asks.
Dean rubs at his eyes. “I guess we are.”
“They're not opening the border until morning. We've got food and cots at the high school.”
They spend their night in a gymnasium full of strangers with white, welcoming faces. They eat bologna sandwiches with mustard, drink clean, warm water and Sam picks at the crusts, letting them pile on the plate resting on his lap. Dean takes them from his plate and eats them when Sam isn't looking, but Sam knows.
(Dean falls asleep in the corner closest to the double-wide doors, Castiel leaning against his shoulder, eyes wide and tired still. When Dean wakes up in the middle of night, thrown into darkness, confused by the only light being the flickering red exit sign, he feels the familiar weight of Castiel against his chest, his arms wrapped around Castiel.)
In the morning, Dean knocks knees with Sam on a small cot and they never say a word while Castiel wanders among everyone, asking them their names and where they're from.
-
When they cross the border, a woman tells them to go West, where the air is still clear, where the soil hasn't been poisoned and people are still living.
“It's no good around here,” she says, looking out across the empty fields to dark blue clouds gathering on the horizon. Her skin is tanned, pulled in the wrong places, and when she turns her head, Dean sees the purple-red scar, still fresh, on her neck. “Just bad memories.”
Dean takes her advice and turns west in Winnipeg, into angry grey clouds that mean rain, but he sees monsters. He keeps driving, wanting to reach the ocean, to see the West hidden behind mountains to here now, where people have said that time moves only when they do: he doesn't think he can handle any more bad memories.
-
The land plays tricks with them. It rises in heat waves, scattered with tiny bumps that they call hills, grey dead trees on the lip of the ditch, growing around a barbed wire fence rusted black. They might see the end, might see buildings and houses and artificial light, but they drum over the last few miles, they think, and it goes on and on.
“It can't be this flat,” Sam says.
Dean's used to fires and buildings and rivers and trees. “It's not that bad. At least we can see where we're going.”
“I like it here,” Castiel says.
It's not that it bothers them, not really. They're just not used to so many clear skies.
-
The sun is settling into the lap of the earth, moving across the sky with gold and blue and red. They've passed through towns without lights, without people, and it's not as distressing as the abandoned towns they found before, the ones that burned and collapsed at their fingertips.
They'll call it ugly, other people can call it ugly, and it might be, but it looks like normal, like what the world should be and Dean's starting to think he could stay here.
They've got miles and miles behind them that Castiel has been marking off on the backs of his hands, the smell of rain that Sam keeps the windows rolled down for and Dean can hear music over his radio again, the static-cut of high dark voices and songs he doesn't recognize slipping under his skin. More than time and streets and shadows cast by a great yellow sun stretches out and Dean feels it in his fingers, hears it in the way Sam talks slow and sure and knows Castiel feels it too because he'll always know.
And they're out here and some would say they're lost, but they're only looking.
-
Sam slaps his hand against the dashboard when he sees the light a couple miles off the road.
“Over there, Dean!”'
Dean hasn't heard the tires kick up dust like this in years and, yeah, he's a little grateful for the dry-heat hanging in the air.
-
Light pours across their feet when the front door opens. Dean staggers back when the woman steps out onto the porch, tall and sallow-skinned, dressed in a black silk overcoat, fixed with absent long-lost beauty that resonates in her heavy shoulders, her birdlike bones, her painted purple lips, the brightness of her sunken eyes.
“Hi, uh--” Dean starts. He stops. He looks at Sam and Sam looks back at him.
The woman drags on her cigarette, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Yeah?”
Sam shrugs his shoulders and looks to the woman, smiling, gentle, giving something away like bad news. “Look, we're sorry,” he says. “We don't mean to impose, but we just drove here from the border and we really need a place to sleep.” Here, the woman blinks at them, her eyes wandering over Dean and Sam's faces, finally settling on Castiel's, who's standing behind Dean, staring off towards the road. “We were wondering if we could just stay here for the night,” Sam says. “There doesn't seem to be anyone else around. We could pay you and--”
“Your money's no good here,” the woman interrupts. She taps her cigarette, leaning against the door frame, looking at them through her eyelashes.
Sam glances at Dean, agitated. “Okay, well, but could you just allow us one night? We just--”
“We're really tired, okay?” Dean says. He's blunt and angry when he just drives and never sleeps. Castiel touches the back of his neck, gently, fingers running through his hair and Dean closes his mouth.
“And we're not murderers or thieves or anything.” Sam says it when he shouldn't have and he laughs it off, awkward and loud like he does. “We won't get in your way and we'll be out before morning.”
She looks up, her chin jutting out. She hums to herself. Dean reaches for Castiel's arm, pulls him closer and Castiel stumbles into him, his hands on Dean's back.
“Are you done now?” she asks, cocking her head to the side. She holds her cigarette up and it flares in the dark, in the sudden rush of wind. The smell of burning fills the air.
“Uh, yeah,” Sam mumbles. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I've got no room in here but there's a small house a mile down the road that belongs to me.” She crosses her arms and looks down at her feet. “You can stay there.”
“Thank you so much,” Sam says and Dean nods. Castiel is staring back down the road.
She toes the door open, revealing a narrow hallway with green walls. They don't move. She grunts and says, impatiently, “Well, come in. I was just about to make supper.”
-
All the walls in the house are green, all the windows thrown open and smudged with fingerprints and oil, sheets of blank paper littered across tables and chairs, the house thick with warm air and the smell of dry grass. She moves among the discarded side tables, the chairs stacked near doorways, picking up things on her way--porcelain cats with yellow eyes, coffee cups with pink lipstick stains, a paperback book with the pages folded in--setting them down minutes later on the staircase, near the radio, on a window sill.
Dean follows her around the small house, hands running across the washboard railing, feeling the bound perfection of a home not his own.
Her name is Audrey, she says, when she pulls a stool up to the open linen closet door and starts looking through the sheets. She says she's been here alone since her husband cut out three years ago, taking the dog with him too, and she only stays because she couldn't think of where else she could go. She hates the silence, the quiet, the emptiness of the prairies and how she lost everyone she's known since she was a young girl. But she stays because she has to.
“Too old to start over,” she says as she hands Dean a folded pile of sheets and pillowcases, an assortment of colours in patterns of stripes and flowers and squares. “Never been overly ambitious. The most I've ever done is live through the end of the world.”
She grins at him then, her teeth straight and white in the dim hallway light; Dean looks at a corner wall.
Audrey takes a canvas bag from the closet and closes the door. Dean follows her into the kitchen. He hears someone--Sam, Castiel--walking around the house, the wavering of muffled voices talking loudly through heavy walls, and the house is warm and lit yellow-orange from the candles burning, the lights flickering overhead.
Dean stands in the doorway and watches her move from the stove, stirring the cooking pot of pasta, take the canvas bag and open her cupboards, reaching to the back to dig out cans of vegetables, tins of flaked tuna, and jars of pickles.
“Good thing I stocked up,” she says and Dean nods even though she isn't looking at him. “And that I liked canning when the days got long.”
She sets up a row of canned peaches, pears, pickled carrots, tomatoes and beets. They're vivid rich in the candle light, the preserve in the glass jars pale imitations of the fruit and vegetables inside, and Dean doesn't remember the last time he saw food, real food, that he wanted to eat.
“I've got an extra loaf of bread if you want some chokecherry jam.” She turns to him. She pulls a tin case from her pocket and shakes out a cigarette. “It's really good and I'm not just saying that because I made it.”
“Thank you,” Dean says, because he thinks it's the best thing he could say. “I don't know--how we can repay you.”
The water is bubbling and it sounds like home. Audrey bows her head and Dean sees her smile, something that looks so startlingly real and natural on her lips. She shrugs and puts her cigarette in her mouth and turns back to the stove.
“It's nothing,” she comments. “It's what we do around here. Gotta help each other out, right?”
-
She sits them down around a table built into the corner of the kitchen. The benches are lined with pillows, soft and lumpy, and their elbows knock against each other when she makes them put them down--“Manners, for God's sake,” she says.
Dean smiles at Sam and Sam smiles back.
She makes them talk--who they are, where they're from, what they do, what they used to be. Dean wonders what he could say without anything hurting while Sam answers in half-truths and short sentences.
It's the unfamiliarity of this, of sitting down, of conversation, of normal, that has Dean looking to Castiel for something, anything, to make him hesitant, to make things wrong again, only like they know. And Castiel never bothers to look at him, because he knows, he knows, and he'll run his fingers across Dean's open palm, drawing symbols and circles, and Dean will breathe in, breathe out, like he really needs to make himself this calm and Castiel will laugh.
And when she asks them where they're going and Sam smiles and says we don't know she smiles with him and says, “You're starting to sound more and more like me, kid.”
-
Dean leaves the Impala in Audrey's garage, on her request. She grins, a little possessive and oddly youthful, romantic, and says she hasn't seen one of these since she was his age, maybe older, thinking of days when God was only inside church walls and she can't make any promises not to steal it.
She waves at the them from her front porch, the smell of dry-warmth following them. “Stay as long as you need, okay?” She raises a glass of whiskey at them and drinks.
Dean waves back.
They walk along the road, Castiel carrying the canvas bag of bread and canned peaches, Sam dragging the duffels behind him, Dean with the sheets and blankets tucked under his arm. They say nothing about the noise that echoes back at the them because they all know they're dwarfed by the size of this place, how they can see circles of trees miles away, like teeth, claws of all those left-behind monsters, with the moon this clear, and the sky is just navy-blue, collapsing with so many stars that they've never seen.
Dean likes it out here, where there's no light but the stars and theirs, a flashlight running low on batteries as they jog down a hill towards a small two-storey house with twisted ivy growing around the windows. They get to the front door and Sam moves the flashlight to the lock while Dean looks for the spare keys.
“Whoa,” Sam says.
Dean looks up and blinks. “Oh.”
“That's--” Sam pauses and looks at Dean.
“Different,” Dean finishes.
Castiel moves from behind Dean. Puts his hand on the door, fingers spread. Even in the dark, far apart, Dean knows Castiel's flying.
“It's unique,” Castiel whispers. “I like it.”
Dean grins in the dark for no one to see, feels the key click, shift, unlock and they walk in through the bright cherry-red door that greeted them from the road.
-
They light oil lamps; Dean and Castiel pull the double mattress from the bedrooms upstairs into the living room while Sam rummages through drawers and cupboards for something to burn in the stove pipe fireplace.
They find a bottle of scotch on a bookshelf behind a decorative plate, aged and a delicious colour of brown, that Sam opens while Dean unfolds the blankets, throwing them across the couch and bed.
“No sheets?” Sam asks as he hands the bottle to Castiel.
“Do I look like a guy who knows how to put on sheets?” Dean says.
Castiel holds the bottle to his lips and drinks a little. Dean watches. He doesn't feel bad for laughing when Castiel spits it back up.
-
Sam's telling stories, ones from Stanford, ones that Dean's never heard before and has been asking for years to hear; tells stories about when they were kids, when Dean got caught with his pants around his ankles in the janitor's closet with the substitute teacher; when they were in Maine and Sam broke his wrist and Dean carried him to the hospital, piggy-back, to get a cast put on it.
“You suck at telling stories,” Dean jokes. “You leave out all the good parts.”
“There are no good parts.” Sam kicks him in the knee and takes another drink from the bottle. “Fine, you tell some.”
But Dean has no stories to tell, none that they won't already know, ones he doesn't think he'll tell, not now at least, so he shrugs and retells the plots to movies he saw when he was a kid and Sam laughs at him and Castiel listens.
They eat their way through half a loaf of bread, two jars of pears and one of pickled carrots. They end up burning the little oil that was left in the lamps and resort back to flashlights. Dean's drunk, so he takes the flashlight from Castiel and holds it under his face; he's telling ghost stories, ones they know aren't true, ones they laid rest to before they had their scars to bear and they're laughing because they made it out alive, even after all this time.
Sam falls asleep, sprawled across the couch, a blanket pulled under his chin and Dean doesn't remember the last time he's looked this quiet, this okay, this--peaceful.
Dean's feeling warm around the edges, faint and formless, the scotch settling in his head, making him think strange, safe things with Castiel at his side.
“I like it here, Dean,” Castiel whispers.
Dean looks over. He takes Castiel's hand in his own and presses his lips to the back of Castiel's hand. “Yeah?”
Castiel sighs. “Could we stay?”
“Stay?” Dean looks back the ceiling, the twisted steel-blue. “But we just got back on the road. I thought we were going to go everywhere, Cas.” (He sees the mountains, hundred foot cliffs, waterfalls and roads that cut corners, sharp curves, straddled with oceans and trees like giants; sees them taking their world back as theirs, leaving their hand prints carved into rocks and dirt roads.)
Dean likes Castiel because he's reliable and wrongly important, unpredictable in ways that are irrelevant and annoying, in ways that Dean needs when Castiel frames his face with his hands and kisses his eyes.
“Aren't you tired of always moving?” Castiel asks. He sounds young and odd in the way that is so tired, so human, and it's not as heartbreaking as it used to be. Castiel yawns and Dean smiles into the crook of his arm. “Dean.”
He doesn't really have to think about it. So, he leans over and runs his hand through Castiel's hair, can't help but smile when Castiel's hand covers his, their skin so warm from the fire-heat and tangled in heavy winter blankets.
“Well, if you want to stay, I want to stay,” Dean says.
And it's true, it really is.
-
They stay for a week, sitting in the living room, eating red chokecherry jam on bread, warming up cans of peas and carrots over the fire when Sam can find something to burn, drinking the dregs of the canned peaches and Castiel says it's his favourite, the syrup-sweet taste that has him licking his lips. They don't talk much, sleep most of the day away, and when they're awake late at night, they'll sit out on the back porch, careful of the rotted wood that sinks with their weight, and think out loud about all the places they will go, the things they're going to see and Dean can already feel it.
Sam sits on the sill of the large bay window in the living room during the day, the window open, his bare feet hanging out into the wild grass and flowers growing around the house. It's summer here with the hot sun branding into the air, fat bees flying in through the open windows they never close, getting stuck in the curtains, in the sheets, and Dean hears them all day, humming between the fabric.
Dean's been sleeping in the middle of the day, making Castiel stay up during the night so he's not left to talk with all his memories on his own. So when he wakes, sometimes Castiel is sleeping too or gone, wandering around the house, maybe outside, through the trees in the yard, catching his hands in the snarls of branches and leaves, coming back to the house with his fingers sticky with sap and smelling like pine needles, stained the softest pale green.
It's the fifth day they've been there when Dean crawls through the bay window and sits beside Sam. He looks at his brother and says nothing. Sam looks up from his book, the paperback cover curled into his hands, and blinks into the sun.
“What's new?” Dean asks. He looks outside with Sam and they're so absurd with this, so indifferent, that it should worry him, but it never will.
“There's a town not too far from here,” Sam says. “It's got people and stores. People starting over.”
“How do you know this?”
Sam smiles and points to west, up the road. Dean looks, expecting to see something. “Audrey told me.”
Dean looks back at Sam. “When?”
“She was here this morning.” Sam looks at Dean now and there's a tentative waver in his eyes. “You and Cas were sleeping. She said you two looked too happy and not to wake you.” But now, now, he's smiling, wide and amused, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. “She says hi, by the way.”
Dean punches Sam in the shoulder. “Shut up.”
-
Castiel's in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, swinging his legs against the cupboard doors. Dean walks in, greeted by the rhythm-thump of skin on wood and Castiel looking at him, surprise in his stare.
“Are you going to talk to Audrey?” Castiel asks while Dean pulls out the last jar of pears from the bag and opens them. Castiel taps his foot against the cupboard door and looks to the hallway. “Tell her we're staying.”
Dean nods, picking a slice of pear from the jar and putting it his mouth. “Yeah. I'll go now.” He shrugs and looks at Castiel and when he does, the light filtering through the curtains catches him, traces him in white sun and Dean finds this fascination--with things that make Castiel so unusual--wicked. “Do you want to come with? Sam's busy brooding on the window sill again.”
Castiel nods, the slip of a smile, lit-match delicate. Dean reaches out, knuckles brushing against Castiel's jaw line. His face brightens and he slides off the counter and runs outside.
Dean sighs and follows him.
-
The air is still outside, smells of honeysuckle and evergreen trees hanging in everything. Dean's walking with his hands in his pockets down the gravel road. Castiel is walking bare foot on the side of the road in the overgrown grass, stumbling along the edge of the ditch, his arms outstretched.
Dean watches him. Maybe he is flying.
“What are you doing?” Dean asks, laughing, when Castiel slips and falls forward slightly.
“Walking,” Castiel says and his voice carries.
Dean grins. “You're strange,” he says.
Castiel glances over his shoulder, his eyes bright. And Dean's heart, it races for the absolution of the lingering elsewhere and for this, this he can't contain, can't let go and, yeah, he needs it. He always will.
-
Audrey's sitting on a rocking chair by the door, a book in her lap. She's been staring down the road ever since they turned the corner, coming into view down the road. Dean turns to walk up the path to house; Castiel turns the other way and walks towards the pasture on the other side of the grid.
“You like it here?” she asks when Dean walks up the steps and stops by the doors. “In the house, I mean.”
Dean looks to where Castiel is standing on a wooden fence, leaning over to reach out to a horse that had wandered near. “He does,” Dean says, nodding towards Castiel.
Audrey chuckles. She picks up the mug beside her chair and holds it in her lap. “And you do whatever he says?”
Dean looks back to Audrey and he thinks he has a dark look on his face, something he doesn't want to have, because she coughs, uneasy, and looks at her hands. “I want him to be happy,” Dean says.
She sighs and it sounds like some kind of truth, some kind of forever that goes on longer and he thinks maybe, maybe she knows exactly what he means, what he knows, what this is for and he's not alone.
“I don't have anything to pay you with,” Dean says. “Well, not a lot.”
Audrey shrugs and stands, stretching her hands above her head. Her skin is bruised and speckled white under her arms. “Like I said, your money's no good here.”
“I can't just live in your house for free.”
“Damn rights you can't,” she snaps. She pushes the chair aside with her foot and walks inside the house. Dean follows, glancing quickly over his shoulder, sees Castiel now sitting on the fence: his lips are moving, his head bending and rising to look at the horse, stroking it gently between the eyes.
“But you can take care of my animals for me.” Audrey's in the kitchen now and Dean can hear doors opening, plates and pots knocking into each other. “And drive me to town when I need to. I don't go often, I don't need much, but I can't drive myself.”
Dean leans in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her, hands back in his pockets. “So I just have to take care of some cows?”
“And pigs and chickens and horses,” she says. She stands up, breathing in, and points out the window. “They're all down in the pasture a few miles behind the house. When the time comes, we'll haul them to town and barter them for gas and food and some money 'cause some people still think it's worth something.” She smiles because she can and Dean is confused by her for only a moment, how simple she can be and how he wants to be too. “Give me half the cut and we'll be fair.”
Dean nods, shrugging. “Okay.”
The warm heat of a hushed summer is drifting in the kitchen and the sky is always yellow from a sun that grows and cracks through clouds. This kitchen breathes in the sound of laughter and the silence that moves on, and they're moving with it. Dean hears the floorboards creak under Audrey's feet as she moves around the room, pulling bowls and jars and pans from the cupboards.
She's stacking cups when she looks over her shoulder, eyes shadowed by the sun. “Are you good with plumbing and stuff?”
“And stuff?” Dean asks.
Audrey waves her hand in front of her face. She reaches for her cigarettes, her hands hovering. “Electricity and furnaces and things like that.” She sighs, looking at her feet. She picks up the tin case.
Dean shakes his head. “Not really.”
“Well you better be a fast learner because that needs tending to as well.” Audrey puts the lit cigarette in her mouth and blows the smoke towards the window. “We're living off of generators and diesel fuel here and that shit breaks down without warning.”
“I can be a fast learner.” But he doesn't think he can; it's the only thing he can pretend to offer. (They could pick up, move on, keep moving until they find something better, but there's the loneliness of Castiel's smile that make Dean's heart ache and he feels like all his words are promises he's meant to keep.)
“Good.” Audrey coughs, tapping her cigarette in the sink. She points at Dean, making him look at her and she's the sort of person who demands attention and only ever asks it and Dean finds he's okay with that. “Now, the house has electricity, running water and sometimes it can be hot when the heater's working right. There's no washing machine for your clothes, but I've got one here, so just bring it over and I'll do it for you. There's no phone or TV or internet or whatever and I can't get it so don't even ask.”
“That's fine.” Dean's smiling and he's not sure why, really.
Audrey nods. She walks over to the corner of the kitchen and pulls open the last drawer on the counter. When she turns back around, she has a key with a blue rubber band around the top. “Here's the keys to unlock the back door if you need it but there's no use locking it up again.” She puts the key in Dean's open hand. “No one ever gets out this far without having the means to.”
-
The key is warm in his hands. He turns it over in his fingers, watching the light reflect off the surface, the feather-weight of it strangely alarming. It clinks against his ring when he flips it over and shoves it in into his pocket.
“Cas!”
Castiel's standing on the other side of the fence. When he turns to look at Dean, he's breathing quickly, and maybe he's not smiling, but there's something better about him, something uncontrollable and ordinary about the look on his face, his hands on his hips, staring off at the sky.
“Come on,” Dean calls. “What are you doing?”
“Running,” Castiel says. The pasture is slick with mud and, Dean notices, Castiel's ankle-deep in it, bare toes curling into the puddles.
Dean walks down to the pasture, leans against a fence post and Castiel grins at him, head tilted to the side. He reaches his hands out, palms up and Dean lays his hands on top of Castiel's.
“Would you like to join me?” Castiel asks.
-
They run back to the house and Dean can feel the world changing for them all of a sudden, turning backwards for them so they have time to make everything okay and he's laughing, his fingers in Castiel's and this is it, this is theirs: this is life, finally.
-
(next) the dawn was breaking the bones of your heart
masterpost.