fic: Fragments
Title: Fragments
Author: uselessplayback
Rating: PG
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: Season 4
Warnings: angst
Word Count: 11,248
Summary: Dean felt like he’d been dropped into the middle of a video game, the kind that cleaned up the bodies after the player’s character left the room.
Notes: Thanks to bellajayd for beta. Serious, serious thanks, yo. And also to theparadoxism for her brutal honesty. You are fine, upstanding ladies with epic amounts of patience. Any issues post beta are mine.
The car ran out of gas in somewhere in Utah and the only reason Dean knew the location was because he remembered passing the turnoff for Salt Lake City sometime after he’d navigated his way around the Beast of the Earth and before he’d found a lake full of wormwood.
Nothing was recognizable anymore but he remembered this because the car was the last thing he thought he’d lose, or maybe it was the last thing he’d thought he’d hold onto, but it had failed him in the middle of nowhere. He’d thought about finding a gas station. Maybe somewhere there was a final stronghold of humanity holding onto a couple of gallons of fuel that he could get with some degree of normalcy, but he found that he couldn’t kid himself at that point.
When the car stilled and wouldn’t be coaxed to move any further he just sat there, it could have been minutes or hours but Dean couldn’t propel himself into action. He’d stared out the windshield at the bleak, dusty road empty of everything now except the weather beaten shells of things that once held life and power.
When Dean grew tired of this, he hadn’t even bothered to get out of the car; he’d just thrown himself over the seat into the back, curled up and fell into an uneasy sleep that carried the echo of Sam’s voice, distant, distorted and barely comprehensible. In his dreams, Sam’s voice echoed through the empty desert as if from somewhere far away.
It was as if the sky spoke and it spoke with Sam’s voice.
When Dean woke it was dark, the light of the moon glinting off the surface of an abandoned car somewhere in the distance. Dean climbed out of the Impala and packed as much as he could safely carry.
He ran a hand once over the night cool metal of his car one last time, feeling the drag on his fingers before letting his hand drop against his thigh. The slap of flesh on his jeans echoed loud in the empty silence.
“I’ll come back, baby,” Dean promised the Impala, but he knew it was a lie.
--
Dean looked behind him only once. He didn’t know why, maybe it was some strange desire to see the marks of his progress on the landscape. When he did look back, the sand he’d torn under his boots was smooth as if he had never touched it.
--
When Dean thought about the Impala, he didn’t actually remember driving to Utah only being there. He could no longer even remember why he had come in the first place, not the job he must have been here to do, not splitting up with Sam or even why he’d done it in the first place. These were things he knew he had to figure out but, even as he asked himself these questions, the answers slipped from his mind and, eventually, he could no longer remember he’d had questions.
Dean didn’t miss Sam.
He had missed Sam once, remembered the fierce ache of something ripped out and still bleeding. He only missed Sam now when he thought about it, like remembering something you had to buy at the store.
Sometimes, Dean didn’t remember Sam’s face and those days were good days.
--
Dean had started west, two bags crossed over his chest a bulky awkward weight jarring against his thighs.
Sun beat down on him from a clear, pale sky as dusty as the ground and the jeans that covered his aching legs. He was no longer aware of what he saw as he walked, just motion and the sound of his footsteps that were as jarring to his ears as the weight of the bags were to his shoulders. He was so intent on putting one foot in front of the other that he didn’t notice the sound of a second pair of feet keeping time with his until Castiel spoke.
“There is shelter a mile from here,” Castiel said, quietly and yet too loudly, dusty like the ground and the sky. “You should rest, Dean.”
Dean blinked but didn’t respond and Castiel said nothing more. Dean watched his boots push at the ground, watched Castiel’s impractical shoes as they gradually took on the color of the sand and didn’t notice he was being herded until the ground changed shape and texture and the sound of his footfalls echoed in different tones.
He paused and looked up, finding himself in a room lit by a small window with tattered curtains and a pane of glass was broken and scattered on the floor. There was a mattress in the corner covered with stains from a lifetime of abuse and the dust that had made its way through the broken window.
Castiel led him over to it and he went, stumbling and aching.
Dean made no protest when Castiel removed the bags from his shoulders one at a time and put them carefully on the floor.
He watched, numb, as Castiel considered the bags and bent to open one, making a satisfied noise when he found a bottle of water and a packet of something that Dean vaguely remembered being food. Castiel turned and considered Dean who stared back vacantly, exhausted. Castiel opened the bottle and dropped the packet back into the bag before handing the bottle to Dean.
“Drink,” Castiel said and Dean brought the bottle absently to his mouth.
The water was warm, thick and metallic as it ran down his chin when he missed his mouth, but he drank and let Castiel take the bottle back before it could fall to the floor from his nerveless fingers. Dean felt Castiel’s hands on his face, smoothing the water from his chin and moving to Dean’s shoulders, pushing him down onto the mattress. Dean went eyes dry and gritty watching the ceiling tilt as Castiel pushed him down. Castiel was murmuring something, low and insistent, but Dean didn’t hear him. Then Castiel’s hand came up, cool and dry, and gently covered Dean’s eyes.
Dean let his eyes close, listened but did not hear Castiel’s voice telling him to sleep and a hundred other small things that weren’t important. He let himself drift under Castiel’s hand and, somewhere, fell asleep.
--
When Dean woke, Castiel was examining the window as if he were trying to figure out how to put it back together from sand, running his fingers along the jagged edges curiously. Dean shivered, still cold from sleep and drew in on himself.
“You know,” he said, voice hoarse from sleep and disuse. “I liked the world a lot better before it ended.”
“I know,” Castiel told him sadly.
Castiel looked smaller than Dean had remembered him, diminished in some way and infinitely tired. “I can’t stay long,” Castiel said, he hadn’t looked at Dean once since Dean had woken.
“I didn’t expect you to,” Dean told him. He moved to stand and winced as his muscles protested. “How’s the war going?”
Castiel turned to Dean with an unreadable expression and looked at him for so long that Dean wondered if he’d asked the wrong question.
“We are winning,” Castiel said finally without inflection and Dean laughed, a sick sound with no humor.
“Yeah? It sure doesn’t seem like it,” Dean said.
“No,” Castiel said, one side of his mouth quirked in a half smile as devoid of humor as Dean’s laugh had been. “It doesn’t.”
And Castiel was gone. Dean shivered in his absence.
--
Dean walked for days and saw no one.
He’d thought once that he would miss them, all of them; their noise, color and motion, the smells and discarded trappings of things that spoke of humanity and civilization. Instead, he found a bizarre sort of peace: endless, quiet and lonely.
--
He found the remains of a town two weeks later. There were hundreds of signs that people had lived here once, had died here and left their panic strewn about in scraps that hung limply from signposts and streetlamps, flopped around on the ground or just sat, slowly decaying. There were no bodies and that was almost worse.
Dean found a store that looked like it might have held food at one point, caught a glimpse of himself in the window and grimaced. He spent the next few hours rummaging through the debris to collect supplies and another hour on vanity. His hair was too long and he was sporting a serious caveman beard that had to go.
When he left, his hair was shorter and the beard was gone. He’d acquired a straight razor and some girly compact because it was the only thing with a mirror he could find that wasn’t broken. He was clean with new (or newer) clothes and it was a little regrettable that, now that he was clean again, he was going to walk back out into the dust and undo all of the work.
--
After more days of nothing but the crunch of his boots against the ground, Dean heard a faint noise, tinny and distant. The sound tugged at Dean’s memories the closer he came to the source, notes came together from random pieces as his boots ate up the distance. He hadn’t heard any noise besides the ones he made himself in so long that he didn’t recognize the sound for what it was until he was almost on top of it and, when he finally did, he wished he had decided to walk in another direction.
On the hill he approached, an ice cream truck lay on its side smelling sharp and sweet of confections that had known better days. Its call to neighborhood children echoed eerily out over the vista.
Dean walked past it and tried hard not to listen but the tinny notes assailed him and, though he walked faster, he heard the music for a long time.
Miles away, he saw smoke billowing up from the ground in dark, heavy clouds too far away to cover the sun, they hung just out of reach like some kind of formless floating sculpture.
--
Dean no longer remembered the last time he’d talked to Bobby.
He tried to hold onto it, like he’d tried to hold on to Sam, but the memory slipped away when he tried to catch it. Dean knew he should remember, that he should be more worried, but he was too tired to reach into his mind and summon it, so he gave up.
It was weird though, sometimes, when he wasn’t really paying attention, he thought he heard Bobby’s voice echoing out over the landscape as if he was speaking from the end of a long tunnel but Dean could never make out the words and the strangeness of the echoes were quickly forgotten.
--
The next time Castiel came, he didn’t so much drop in as drop.
“Shit,” Dean said, backing away and throwing up a hand to shield his eyes from the rain of sand Castiel had raised with his fall.
Castiel coughed and struggled to sit up. Dean shook off the shock of stupor and went to help him.
“Pardon me, Dean,” Castiel said wincing, his voice was more gravelly than usual and he was covered in dust. “I’m afraid I hadn’t expected to land so hard.”
“Dude,” Dean said, getting an arm under Castiel’s shoulder, “I’m just glad you didn’t land on me.”
“I took special care to make certain that did not happen,” Castiel said seriously while allowing himself to be pulled from the ground and watching with interest as Dean tried his best to slap the dust from Castiel’s coat.
Castiel looked pretty bad.
He was pale and unsteady on his feet. Dean tried to walk him to a nearby rock to sit down and Castiel leaned into him heavily, a little dazed. Castiel’s coat was torn and bloodied at the shoulder and a few other places, he had a cut somewhere on his scalp that had bled onto his forehead and had that tacky look that meant it was coagulating. Castiel was actually tripping over himself and Dean had to half carry, half drag him to the rock.
“You okay, Cas?” Dean asked even though it was clear Castiel was not.
Castiel blinked hazily up at Dean and gave the question some consideration. “No,” he finally said and rubbed a hand over his face. “I think I need what you humans call a vacation.”
Dean grunted affirmation and dug into his bag for something to clean the blood off. He had to fight Castiel to get a look at the wounds but he eventually submitted to the attention. He swayed a little in his seat and looked a little like he wanted to nod off.
“Do I even want to know what happened?” Dean asked.
“No.” Castiel said simply and ruined the effect by nearly falling off his perch on the rock. Dean caught him.
“Whoa, there, buddy,” Dean found himself saying to the top of Castiel’s head where it lay on Dean’s chest. Castiel’s hands made a feeble attempt to push himself up, clutching at Dean’s shirt. “Take it easy, okay?
Castiel stopped resisting and allowed Dean to maneuver him to the ground where he slumped gratefully against the rock, pressing his face into the cool stone and coughing when the motion shook loose some of the sand in his hair. Dean watched him for a minute. Castiel looked funny and kind of worked over with his shirt half undone and rumpled like that.
Dean decided he’d better set up a rudimentary bedroll and something to block the sun. He tried to keep an eye on Castiel in case the angel decided to try for another face plant in the sand but Castiel slumped motionless, hands limp at his sides, palms turned up to the sky. By the time Dean had organized anything like a shelter, Castiel was asleep, lips parted taking in deep, sleepy breaths, face mashed against the stone, hair standing at odd angles.
Dean sighed and went over to drag Castiel’s angel ass someplace he was less likely to wake up with a killer crick in his neck. When Dean managed to squeeze his arm behind Castiel’s back and prop him up, Castiel made a sleepy noise of protest and cracked an eye open.
“It’s okay, Cas,” Dean said quietly. “I’m just moving you someplace you can lie down, alright?”
Castiel nodded and his head drooped until he was resting his chin on his chest. Dean chuckled. “Help me out here, man. I promise you can go back to sleep in a second.”
Dean hefted Castiel up. The angel wasn’t much help, he dragged his feet tiredly all the way to Dean’s makeshift lean-to and practically fell onto the bedroll, coughing when this let loose another cloud of sand. Dean laughed and Castiel opened one eye to glower at him.
“Dude,” Dean said, shrugging. “It’s funny when you’re foiled by physics.”
Castiel closed his eye and pushed his face more firmly into the bedroll, disarranging his hair even more wildly in the process. Dean sighed and climbed in next to him. Castiel made a small questioning noise as if he didn’t have enough energy to form a complete sound much less a complete sentence.
“If you’re gonna take a nap, I’m gonna take a nap.” Dean said by way of explanation and pushed at Castiel’s shoulder. “Move over, you’re hogging the space.”
Castiel made a small noise of complaint but did as he was told and Dean squeezed in beside him, shifting around to find a comfortable spot. “If this is your idea of a vacation spot, Cas, I gotta tell you-“
“Dean,” Castiel said, irritated and muffled in the bedroll. “Shut up.”
Dean grinned up at the jackets he’d slung up to block the sun, then closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
--
It was dark when Dean woke and Castiel was still asleep, his face now mashed against Dean’s shoulder, one of his arms slung over Dean’s chest.
“Damn, Cas,” Dean murmured quietly, “when you fall asleep, you don’t fuck around.”
He considered getting up but the air had cooled considerably and Castiel was warm. There was, however, the matter of a stone trying to make nice with one of his kidneys that became more irritating the longer he was awake. Dean tried to shift so he wouldn’t wake Castiel and wound up with his face in Castiel’s still sandy hair trying valiantly not to sneeze. Castiel stirred, tightening the arm around Dean’s chest but didn’t wake. The urge to sneeze passed and Dean managed to pry the stone out from beneath his back before he lay slowly back down folding an arm under his head.
One of the jackets had been shifted by the wind and there was a crack in the lean-to’s makeshift ceiling. The sky was clear and the stars looked huge and hazy through the atmosphere.
Dean felt better than he had in days, relaxed and warm.
Having a sort-of person around, even a sleeping sort-of person did wonders for his morale. He’d been starting to think he’d been losing pieces of himself the further he walked. Until Castiel had dropped almost on top of him, he’d been wondering if he’d be able to talk or if he’d ever need to again. It had been so long since he’d had to.
Castiel shivered and tucked himself closer against Dean, sighing. Asleep he seemed more human than he ever did with his eyes open. No human looked at people the way Castiel did, as if everything was new and interesting and, at the same time, old and full of some indecipherable meaning. Castiel was also easier to deal with when he was asleep because, when Castiel was asleep, Dean didn’t feel the weight of Castiel’s expectations following him with Castiel’s eyes.
--
By the time Castiel woke, Dean was half way through cooking a not so wonderful can of something that disguised itself as spaghetti. He’d stocked up on food in the last town he’d passed but pickings were slim and Dean didn’t have a whole lot of preserved items proclaiming themselves to be food to choose from. When he could, Dean hunted, but he preferred to save the ammunition just in case something more dangerous than a wild dog crossed his path. Dean hadn’t seen anything except the aftermath of the things he needed that ammo for in weeks, but it always paid to be cautious.
Castiel looked better for the sleep, Dean decided, when Castiel made his way over to the fire. Even his clothes-the ones he was still wearing at least-looked better.
“Feel any better?” Dean asked even though it was obvious now that Castiel did.
“Yes,” Castiel said and cocked his head, studying Dean.
Dean stared back for a while then turned his attention back to the thing that pretended to be food. He rifled through a bag of jerky and picked out of a couple of pieces and handed one to Castiel.
He eyed it dubiously, frowning.“What is that?” Castiel asked.
“This,” Dean said, “is food. You might not eat but it would make me feel better if I didn’t have to suffer this shit alone.”
Castiel sighed. “Dean, I understand that it’s food but what kind of food is it?”
“This, Cas,” Dean said, waving the jerky for emphasis, “is an ancient piece of preserved beef that has been salted and dried and left to wait until some poor idiot like me needed something that had already been sitting around for months to chew on and still last for months. It’s practically a sacred relic. And this,” Dean pointed to the can warming over the fire, “is something that thinks it’s spaghetti but is really something that I don’t even want to think about.”
“I believe I see.” Castiel said, smiling wryly.
“No, you don’t because these two things are completely different,” Dean told him grinning. “One is the food of the devil,” Dean gestured to the not-spaghetti, “and the other is delicious.” Dean took a pointed bite out of the jerky and chewed, mouth open and grinning and waved the other piece of jerky at Castiel who sighed and took it.
Dean stirred the spaghetti and turned back to find Castiel studying the jerky intently. He brought it up to his nose and smelled it, making a face. Dean grimaced and rolled his eyes.
“Cas,” he said with studied patience. “You put it in your mouth. You do not smell it.”
Castiel studied Dean and tentatively touched his tongue to the meat. Dean made a face.
“It’s very salty,” Castiel pronounced.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Dean said rubbing a hand over his face.
Castiel looked surprised and a slow smile crept across his face. “Yes, Dean.” Castiel put the piece of jerky in his mouth and chewed. It didn’t fit completely and bobbed under Castiel’s nose.
Dean rolled his eyes. “You’re worse than Sam when he was five. He used to. . .” Dean trailed off. “I. . .I don’t know what made me say that. I haven’t even thought of Sam since-not for a long time.”
Castiel frowned and he looked kind of ridiculous doing that with jerky poking out of the corner of his mouth. It was even funnier when he tried to talk, having completely forgotten it was there, and was forced to take it out. “Your brother is alive, Dean,” Castiel said seriously and it made Dean want to laugh because the serious vibe was so at odds with what Dean had just witnessed. He settled on a half smile.
“Yeah, Cas. I know. I just. . . . .” Feel like someone died, Dean wanted to say, like I’m forgetting something.
“You’re still not ready,” Castiel said quietly, he sounded a little disappointed. “I had thought-but that is no matter.”
Dean frowned. “What is that supposed to mean, Cas?”
“Nothing.” Castiel said. “It means nothing.” And Castiel stood up. “Thank you for allowing me time to gather myself. I have intruded upon your hospitality too long, I fear.”
“Cas,” Dean said, so low it was almost a growl. “What does that mean?”
“I told you, Dean.” Castiel said, smiling, but his smile was sad now, all teasing gone. “It means nothing.”
And Castiel was gone, only an imprint in the sand gave proof that he had been there at all.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean swore and considered knocking the can off the fire but he didn’t.
The night was cold and the world was far, far too wide.
--
Dean fumed for the better part of the next day, angry for the first time in weeks. He held onto it, savoring the emotion even as it faded because he suspected it would be a long time before he would feel much of anything again.
--
He ran out of food a week later, too far between towns to stock up. He was running low on water too, so he started to ration it out like he should have done the food only he hadn’t expected to be caught out between stops.
He kept walking because stopping now would mean a slow and painful death and tried to remember the lay of the land, tried to remember where he should be going. Wherever it was, he needed to get there soon.
--
A freak sandstorm caught him off guard and, by the time he’d made it to something that kept the wind and the sand from doing their best to sandpaper his face off, he was covered in the stuff.
It was in everything and it itched.
It drove him crazy, sandwiched under a rock with barely any room to move and everything itched. He found himself cursing, first low under his breath and then louder and louder until he was screaming over the wind, at the wind, at Sam and Castiel, at Bobby and, eventually and especially at God.
“You invisible fucker, if there are sandworms too I will end you!” He screamed. He screamed until the voice grew hoarse and only then did Dean realize that he was crying.
“Fuck,” He said, his voice was rough and swallowing felt like he’d choked down glass. He was down to two bottles of water and he was exhausted.
Hours after the storm ended, he lay there, sandwiched under the rock and didn’t move. He closed his eyes, they stung and his face was gritty with sand and tears. He rubbed at it halfheartedly, gave up, slumped against the rock face and fell asleep.
Dean didn’t move the next day or the next.
He was too tired and hungry to do much of anything. Sometimes he played with the sand; picking it up and letting it fall through his fingers, drawing halfhearted symbols that used to mean something to him. One for protection, the world’s tiniest Devil’s Trap, and eyes.
He drew eyes.
Dark and opaque, wide and intense, he drew mournful eyes like Sam’s and wide eyes over and over until he didn’t even have the energy to do that. He was down to his last bottle of water and still dehydrated. His lips were cracked, a line in the center split open and bleeding. He licked at it to sooth the dryness and savored the sting of pain prodding it with his tongue caused.
He was going to die, that much was obvious. Unless Castiel showed up or some miracle caused a spring to magically appear. With Dean’s luck, a magical spring would turn out to be a cursed spring and he’d wind up living the last of his days as a girl or a dog or a monkey. He would say no to the cursed spring the way kids said no to drugs in the eighties.
He rationed the last of his water as long as he could but it wouldn’t last very long. It would be ironic or, maybe, really stupid if he’d stopped walking and given up a few miles from some sort of town. Dean was pretty sure he hadn’t
The heat had made him a little delirious, he decided, when he found himself babbling to absolutly nothing at all and maybe praying a little.
“You know, you really gave us a raw deal, you asshole,” Dean told the Almighty in a voice so hoarse it was barely there anymore. Dean held up a finger, pointing savagely. “My life is like a bad country song except, instead of a wife, it’s demons who took the dog and the house and my fucking car and ran over my brother and possessed my friends and angels who swooped down and fucked it up some more.”
Dean licked his lips again and tried to swallow, his throat felt like it was coated in dust.
He babbled and babbled until his voice gave out completely, then he curled up and fell asleep cold, hungry for more than just food.
--
Sometimes Dean thought the isolation was almost worse than Hell. He’d been tortured, yes, but he’d never been left alone. He remembered Ruby telling him how long it had taken to strip away her humanity and wondered how long this walk through an empty nowhere would take to strip away what was left of his.
--
It was dark when Dean woke again, his mouth tasted like the inside of a sewer drain and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His lips had sealed themselves shut with dryness and opening them reopened the cut in his lip and made it bleed.
“Fuck,” he said although his voice was barely a whisper and sucked his lower lip into his mouth. He turned to get a drink from the bottle but he’d left it open and knocked it over sometime after he’d fallen asleep. “Fuck,” he said with feeling even if he didn’t have the voice to give it that extra level of special hate it deserved. He lay back and waited because there wasn’t really anything else he could do.
--
He must have fallen asleep again because the next thing he knew he was being shaken awake but he didn’t really have the energy to do anything but lie there, so he let whoever it was do their thing and hoped they’d leave.
“Dean,” whoever it was said and the voice sounded familiar but the name didn’t come. “Dean Winchester, I know you still breathe. Dean!” The voice had a funny way of talking and was starting to sound kind of scared. “Dean, wake up!” The voice insisted, almost panicked now. “Father, give me strength and please forgive me for what I am about to do if this human does not-“
Dean turned toward the voice. “Cas?” he croaked. “That you?” And was surprised when he found himself pulled into the most awkward embrace he’d ever experienced and he’d experienced a lot of awkward embraces.
“Yes.” Castiel was saying into his hair. “I’m here, Dean.”
“Ouch,” Dean said, because he was bent over himself and his back was arched in a weird way, and he’d knocked his face against one of the buttons on Castiel’s stupid coat.
Castiel pulled away, and Dean nearly went with him because he was dizzy from being upright so suddenly. Castiel caught him, though, and pulled Dean into a more comfortable position against him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause you discomfort.”
“’S not a big deal.” Dean mumbled into Castiel’s coat. “’M tired.”
“I know, Dean,” Castiel said and he sounded so incredibly sad that Dean found himself tearing up like a girl even though he was pretty sure he didn’t have all that much in the way of water left to make anything of it.
Apparently he did, although the tears were painful and he tried to hold them in but Castiel laid a hand on his head, stroking his hair absently and all of the things Dean hadn’t been thinking about - Sammy, Bobby, the war and Dean’s own epic failure and Dean’s fucking car-he broke down, clutching at Castiel.
Castiel caught Dean’s face up in his hands, smoothing his thumbs over Dean’s face. The angel’s eyes were so tired even as they blurred into distorted blue pools in Dean’s vision.
“I would have spared you this, Dean,” Castiel said softly. “If it were within my power, I would spare you this.”
Dean didn’t know when he’d done it, but his hands clutched at Castiel’s, holding them against his face. “I know, Cas.”
Castiel choked in the breath that, coming from anyone else, Dean would have called a sob and shook his head in frustration. “I come to you hoping you will be ready and every time the answer is the same whether I voice it or not. Why do you bother asking me what our losses are when you cannot even bring yourself to fight?”
Dean drew back, angry. “What the fuck, Cas? I have been out there. I would be there right now if I were not stuck out here with no wheels. Don’t you fucking accuse me of running away.” The anger had made him dizzy but he was right in Castiel’s face, clutching the lapels of the angel’s coat as if holding them tightly enough would drive his point home. “If you’re so fucking eager to have me back out there, why the hell haven’t you worked your angel mojo and popped me back on the front lines then, huh?” Dean growled, panting a little at the effort.
Castiel stared at Dean for a long time. “The man I found here, Dean, is not a man who deserves to fight,” Castiel growled. “The man I found was wallowing in self pity and waiting to die. He is not a man I want at my side in battle no matter how much I. . . . .”
Dean was about to get in Castiel’s face again when Castiel’s eyes widened. He pushed Dean away with a violence that seemed to surprise him. It sure as hell surprised Dean.
“What the fuck, Cas?” Dean asked but Castiel had his back to Dean, his hands were clenched into fists at his sides and he was shaking. Dean struggled to sit up but stopped when he heard Castiel’s voice, so low he could barely make it out.
“I have brought you supplies,” Castiel told him. “I advise you to drink slowly. There is a town thirty miles north of here, I suggest you find it.”
Castiel turned back to him then and he looked so defeated that all the fight left Dean in a rush that left him exhausted.
“Dean,” Castiel said quietly. “This place will not let you leave until you are ready. There is no power I possess that will allow me to bring you from it. I would . . . but I cannot.
Castiel left and Dean stared at the pit in the sand his shoes had created until the wind covered it over.
--
The town he found was the same town he’d found weeks ago only it was cleaner somehow, like someone had come through and cleaned up all the debris, restocked the shelves and vanished. The situation was eerie and Dean felt like he’d been dropped into the middle of a video game, the kind that cleaned up the bodies after the player’s character left the room.
“Huh,” Dean said. It explained a lot, really. Like how he hadn’t seen anyone at all since the car ran out of gas, like the fact he’d suddenly developed the memory of a goldfish and no thoughts would stay in his head. Dean growled. “Castiel, you bastard, you could have fucking told me.” But that didn’t seem right either.
Dean decided to stay in the eerie town. If this was some kind of weird video game scenario, maybe he should be picking up clues and retracing his steps. Hell, maybe he should find a freaking map of the game layout.
He started with the smaller buildings, intent on working his way up to the larger ones.
In a small house at the edge of town, he found the trappings of an idyllic family life he’d never had. The kind with toys neatly packed away on their shelves or in boxes and all of the dishes stowed in exactly the right place, like someone had drawn a map of the perfect life and put it in this one house. As he searched, Dean tried to put things back exactly as he’d found them out of respect for the idea of the place, so he didn’t notice at first when the things he’d shifted started shifting themselves back.
At first he thought he was seeing things or had forgotten he’d put something back, but when he turned his back on a bowl he’d taken down from a rack of shelves and then turned around to find it sitting right where it had been before he moved it, well-Dean could take a hint.
After that he stopped trying to put things back neatly.
In the next house and the next, everything he pulled down from counters or out of drawers put itself back as if it had never been touched. In the interests of science, Dean broke a couple of plates and a tiny figurine before he left a kitchen and returned later to find them all in perfect condition exactly where whatever freaky mojo that kept him here had put them.
He searched the town until there was barely any light to see by and came up with nothing more useful than food and water. Frustrated, he threw a shelf load of cans at the wall and watched as they bounced and rolled on the floor to lie pathetic and dented, wondering at his cruelty. Dean ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He thought about picking the cans up and putting them back on the shelf, he was bending over to do it when he changed his mind.
They would be back on the shelf as soon as he left the room anyway.
--
Dean itched to leave by the next afternoon. Wandering blankly around the desert at least offered the illusion that he was doing something even if it also meant that he was in danger of starving or dehydration or being set upon by a pack of apparently imaginary wolves. This empty town had food, shelter, and water but Dean was bored and without the distraction walking provided, his mind wandered in strange directions.
To distract himself, he cleaned his guns and walked the perimeter of the town to see if he’d missed something the night before. He rummaged through the shining stores, empty of people and found a ball to kick around, something else to throw and to keep him busy.
He did a dozen other things but lost interest in all of them and still had nothing but time, so he decided to call it a day early and go to sleep.
--
By the end of the week, Dean had taken to climbing to the top of the tallest building at sunrise in the mornings to watch the horizon. It was pointless to leave messes; everything he left out at night was back where it belonged in the morning unless he kept it close. He discovered this when he had taken a baseball from a footlocker in the storeroom of some invisible person’s house and left it in his coat pocket overnight. In the morning, it was still there waiting to be tossed against a wall. Because it had stayed, he kept it and used it for just that purpose.
In the mornings, though, he took his breakfasts out to the roof of the town’s only hotel and watched the sun come up.
It came up exactly the same way every morning at exactly the same time. It was something that Dean never would have noticed if he hadn’t been bored enough to time it.
Every morning, the sun turned the sky into a field of muted reds and oranges as it worked its way up into the sky. Every morning the clouds were in exactly the same place and the desert was exactly the same temperature. For the first few days, this had fascinated him almost as much as it horrified him but, as the days wore on, he found even this boring.
“Dude,” he said to the sun and the sky, chewing on a protein bar he’d scavenged from the grocery store. “This no change sunrise thing is lame. You’re a one trick pony.”
The sky seemed to freeze then and Dean blinked, nearly dropping the protein bar in shock, but the sun started coming up exactly the same way as if it hadn’t paused at the insult.
“Whoa,” Dean said because that wasn’t creepy at all.
He let his mind wander and he must not have been paying enough attention because the next thing he knew he was somewhere else. It was dark and a lot colder and he felt like his body was muffled in something scratchy. There were also voices.
“How is he?” One of the voices asked and it sounded a lot like Bobby but Bobby wasn’t with him in the desert.
“No change,” the second voice sounded sad, sounded like Sam. “It’s like he just shut down after. . . . .”
Dean didn’t hear the rest of the sentence because he was back on the hotel roof and the sun was higher in the sky than he remembered. He found he was holding an empty wrapper. Dean blinked and got up to bore himself to tears for the rest of the day.
--
Dean waited for Castiel to show up but he didn’t.
“Freaking PMSing angels,” Dean muttered, kicking an empty can around the un-peopled grocery store. He did this a lot, almost as much as he threw the baseball at walls and cleaned his guns. There really wasn’t much else to do.
He didn’t know why, but Castiel’s absence filled him with a hollow sort of dread.
--
At the end of the second week, Dean had started watching the sunsets to see if they were the same kind of weird as the sunrises. They were. The sky darkened the same way every night with the clouds in exactly the same places on the horizon at exactly the same time. He’d taken to sitting a little further back from the edge of the roof after that weird no-place-like-home moment even though there hadn’t been any more like it since.
Sometimes, when the sun rose or set in the same way at the same time, Dean wished he’d wake up in that cold place just so he could ask what the fuck was going on.
--
He got his wish late in the third week. He had been sitting-he felt it was ironic-in what was left of the grocery’s meat freezer bouncing the purloined baseball against the wall. He let himself get lost in the thump and return, the way the ball slid from his fingers as he threw it and suddenly found himself back in the cold room with the scratchy muffled feeling. It was warmer this time, though and it took Dean a minute to figure out why.
Sam was stretched out on the bed-it was a bed, Dean realized-propped up against the wall. Sam was talking to him in a quiet voice.
“I’m sorry,” Sam was saying. “I know you didn’t want to leave him behind.”
Dean had no idea what Sam was talking about. Leave who behind? He wanted to ask but the same scratchy muffled feeling made it impossible for him to move. He tried to will his fingers to twitch but nothing happened, there was a strange disconnect between what he saw and what he could touch or say, apparently.
On some plane of reality, Dean was stretching and raising his hand with so much force that all of the muscles were stretched and tensed at once, trembling with the effort. In the cold room with Sam, the flesh Dean occupied didn’t respond.
“You have to wake up, though.” The bed shifted when Sam moved and drew his fingers through his hair. Dean couldn’t see anything except Sam’s legs, but he felt it. Heard it.
“Look,” Sam said. “I know you were friends and I respected the guy, even if I didn’t always like him.”
Dean felt colder than he had since finding himself here.
“He got us out of there,” Sam said quietly. “I have to respect that.”
Dean struggled hard to ask Sam what he was talking about but he had a feeling he already knew, even if it hung just out of reach somewhere in his mind, and jolted awake back in the meat freezer, the baseball he’d been throwing lay in the middle of the floor, reproachful.
Dean packed up his things and headed back out into the desert that night. He didn’t take the ball with him.
--
When Dean slept the next night, he dreamed in a way he hadn’t since he’d found himself trapped here.
He dreamt he was in a museum, staring down a long hall. Down the hall, Dean heard the noise of a battle, Sam was up there somewhere. Dean remembered watching him cut his way through a crowd of demons and Dean wanted to be up there too, watching Sam’s back but he wasn’t. He was standing in the middle of the hall with Castiel.
“Dean,” Castiel said urgently, drawing Dean’s attention away from the carnage at the other end of the hall. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “I can’t hold them off for much longer. There are too many.” Castiel was trembling with the effort and Dean wished he could remember why they were there.
“Okay,” Dean said, “What do you need me to do?”
“Leave. Call Sam back and retreat, I will hold them off for as long as I am able.”
Dean’s eyes widened. “No fucking way, Cas.” Dean growled.
Castiel made a frustrated noise and flinched when something Dean couldn’t see slammed into him hard enough to send him stumbling back a few steps before he firmed up again with a grimace. Dean moved toward Castiel involuntarily then shook himself because it wasn’t like he could do anything to help him out with his angel-fu. He clenched his hands into fists, frustrated.
“You must leave, Dean,” Castiel was saying. “You have what we came for.
Dean looked down. In his hands, he now held what looked like a jewelry box. It was old and the varnish chipped and peeled up at the corners giving it a kind of gray, used look. It was one of the ugliest things he had ever seen. Dean didn’t remember picking it up.
In the magic of dreams, Castiel was looking at him now, hands at his sides like none of the noise and clamor was happening. Behind Castiel, Castiel also stood, still reaching out and pushing away something invisible.
“Dean,” said the Castiel in front of him but he was looking at what was in Dean’s hands. “That is why you are here.”
Dean woke up panting and expected to find himself still holding the box. There was nothing in his hands but he felt the weight of it cradled in his palms anyway.
--
Sam had pulled him out. Dean remembered this too, but he tried not to think about it while he walked. Sam had pulled him out screaming and cursing. He remembered being furious but now he felt hollow and guilty, each step he took made him feel closer to the ground.
--
Dean walked for days but didn’t count them anymore, took no pleasure in the identical sunrises and sunsets or the way each grain of sand was the same size.
He had arrived here alone but he felt it more now than he had in the months of this perceived existence wandering a desert of his own making. He knew he would have to wake up eventually, like Sam said but he didn’t want to have to talk to Sam right now.
Not while Dean still blamed him.
He wasn’t really paying attention to where he was going and barely noticed when the ground began to curve upward making every step more difficult. He was grateful for the burn in his thighs because it distracted him from thinking. He looked up eventually, when the fading light made it more difficult to find places to put his feet and kept looking. Stretching above him for miles was a mountain he didn’t remember seeing anywhere and Dean suspected he must have created this too.
He stopped there, throwing his bags on the ground and following them. Overhead, the sky stretched wide and bright with stars that were as cold and distant as he felt.
--
When he dreamed that night he saw Castiel, arms extended with his back to Dean, he was panting and trembling with exertion and looked so damn stupid with that fucking trench coat fluttering at his calves and pulled tight at the shoulders.
In his dream, Dean was slung over Sam’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry and he struggled as Sam pulled him farther down a darkening passageway.
In his dream, Castiel straightened up at the last minute to look over his shoulder. He had the smallest of smiles on his face and an expression that wasn’t entirely concentration but something that Dean couldn’t read.
“Dean,” Castiel said so quietly that Dean had to concentrate hard to hear. “It has been an honor to fight beside you.” Castiel’s expression firmed up then and he turned his back.
In his dream, Dean fought harder against the arms that held him and shouted curses at his brother and Castiel.
--
When Dean woke this time, Castiel was standing over him frowning. Dean shut his eyes, throwing an arm over them to block out the vision.
“You’re dead,” Dean told Castiel flatly.
Castiel huffed out a laugh and Dean removed the arm to look up at him. If anything, Castiel looked amused. “Despite evidence to the contrary,” Castiel said, indicating himself. “This is what you choose to believe?”
Dean frowned. “Sam seemed pretty damn sure about it.”
Castiel looked at him sharply. “You have seen your brother?”
Dean didn’t answer immediately, his mind still catching up on seeing Castiel here instead of disappearing down a hallway. “Yeah,” Dean said. “I saw Sam.”
Before Dean could even blink Castiel was grabbing his arm and pulling him upward so fast Dean had to extend his other arm to keep himself from falling face first into the dirt.
“A little warning,” Dean snapped. Castiel had the grace to look embarrassed and let Dean collect himself. Dean decided to take his time about it because he’d just woken up and hadn’t even had breakfast. He bent over to get an energy bar and sat down on the ground, looking up at Castiel. Castiel raised his eyebrows almost impatiently.
Dean raised his right back. “Mind telling me what’s going on? Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got nothing but time.”
“I was hoping to remedy that.”
“I’m all ears.”
Castiel lowered himself into the dirt next to Dean, arranging his coat underneath him and sighed. “Do you recall the device we captured at the museum?”
Dean nodded, taking a bite out of his protein bar. It tasted like dust but Dean thought that was fitting since he was practically covered in the stuff.
“It is what is known as a dream box. The box and others like it were used as a means of storage by oneiromancers who wished to keep the dreams they felt held significant meaning in order to divine certain truths but it can also be used to force a dream state, drawing the dreamer and anyone else related into a fabricated dreamscape.”
“Okay,” Dean said. “That explains why I’m here but why you and why not Sam, since he’s close enough?”
Castiel studied Dean for a moment before answering. “What do you remember before you found yourself here?”
Dean sighed. “I was pissed at Sam but he wouldn’t leave it alone. Kept wanting to talk.”
Dean grimaced, running a hand over his face. Dean hadn’t wanted to talk, he’d wanted Sam to leave him alone.
“The box responds to the subconscious desires of the user, in this case you. You wanted to be alone,” Castiel swept his hand out to indicate the bare landscape. “It gave you what you wanted.”
“If I wanted to be alone, why are you here?”
“I’m not entirely certain. I can only assume it was because you wanted me here.”
Dean shrugged a shoulder. It was probably true and he wasn’t really in a position to deny it with evidence to the contrary.
“It has been,” Castiel said a little uncomfortably. “Somewhat . . . distracting to find myself here when I should be elsewhere.”
“How do I know it’s you here and not the box responding to my ‘subconscious desire’ to see you alive?”
Castiel blinked. “You don’t, Dean.”
“That’s not helpful, Cas.”
Castiel leaned forward, watching Dean’s face so intently he seemed to be trying to read it with his eyes. “Dean,” he said. “Do you trust me?”
“I don’t trust you not to get yourself killed, but otherwise, yeah. I guess so.”
Castiel sighed. “Your avoidance of this matter seems particularly melodramatic. I had not thought you would go so far as to create a world for yourself just to escape your brother.”
“Dead guy or not,” Dean said, glaring. “I will kick you.”
Castiel huffed out a laugh and Dean found himself grinning a little. Then Castiel stood up and put out his hand for Dean to take. “Come,” he said.
“Where are we going?” Dean asked, confused, but he took Castiel’s hand anyway.
“Up.” Castiel said while pulling Dean to his feet.
--
Dean followed Castiel up the mountain, watching the angel’s trench coat flap about his calves and wondered what he was doing. Months of wandering in no particular direction and he still had no idea where he was going.
“Tell me something,” Dean said, stepping around a cluster of rocks that Castiel hadn’t even bothered to avoid.
“Yes, Dean?” Castiel asked but didn’t stop walking or look in Dean’s direction.
“I’ve been here for months, right? How come I’m not dead?”
“Time is relative.” Castiel said and Dean rolled his eyes because that so did not answer his question.
They navigated around a jagged rock feature and Dean had to hoist himself up over parts of it just to stay on the same route. Castiel seemed to have less difficulty, moving between the fixtures with ease or willing himself higher and pausing to wait for Dean to catch up before continuing. Dean was so focused on where he was putting his hands and feet that he almost didn’t hear when Castiel spoke again.
“While you may have been here for months in the context of the dream, I believe only a few days have passed out of it.”
“Huh,” Dean said, dragging himself up another rock and lapsed into silence to concentrate.
They walked and climbed and walked and climbed further.
Dean’s steps slowed wearily but Castiel kept moving. The sun hung low in the sky and Dean had a fleeting notion that he could reach out a hand and touch the burning surface but Castiel reached out a hand and hoisted him over the edge of another stone and Dean forgot about the sun.
Energy leeched from Dean’s body the darker it got, he shivered as the air chilled, swiping at the sweat on his skin in little gusts and eddies. Dean was so exhausted he practically crawled over the rocks but Castiel didn’t stop even though he did check over his shoulder a little more often like he was afraid Dean’s silence meant he had fallen over the side of the mountain.
When it got too dark for Dean to see where he was supposed to put his hands, Castiel took one of Dean’s and led him along in the dark.
The higher they climbed the smoother the rock face became, loosening and shifting under Dean’s feet but anytime Dean felt he was in danger of slipping, Castiel moved to put his hands on Dean’s shoulders, caught at Dean’s elbow, dragged along Dean’s back. He shivered at the contact, unable to predict when it would come, warm in the cold night and strangely intimate.
“How far up do we have to go?” Dean asked the surrounding blackness, blacker than any night Dean had yet spent here and colder.
“We will know when we arrive,” Castiel murmured against Dean’s ear and he shivered once more.
All that existed was the texture of the ground against Dean’s legs and his hands, less grainy and rough - smoother and rounder somehow. Dean’s foot slipped against something and he jolted, hearing whatever he had dislodged bounce down the mountain until he could barely hear the noises it made, but Castiel’s hands caught him and pulled Dean up flush against his chest and Dean leaned into him, waiting for his heart to stop hammering in his ribcage.
Castiel’s hands made warm trails down Dean’s back, smoothing his shirt and stroking away the shock before he moved again to take one of Dean’s hands and lead him forward again.
When the sun rose, it was a cold heat in the sky that warmed nothing and revealed the mountain for what it had become overnight. Dean didn’t notice at first, stumbling with fatigue. His muscles protested every movement and he tripped over the debris in his path when he found he didn’t have the energy to lift his legs high enough to clear it. He fell, nearly pulling Castiel down on top of him and that’s when he noticed the difference.
“Jesus,” Dean breathed. “That’s . . . really fucking morbid.”
Castiel huffed out a laugh. Stretching below and above them for miles as far as Dean could see were bones piled like someone had thrown them there without any particular care as to where they landed. All of them were polished smooth and glowed faintly in the morning light.
“Come,” Castiel told him, tugging at his arm. “We must keep moving.”
“Yeah,” Dean said faintly, allowing himself to be dragged along, still studying the skeletal fragments that reached from the ground to catch at his ankles.
As the day wore on, Dean slumped with fatigue; he could barely lift his head and stumbled with exhaustion over the bones of phantoms. When he fell again, Castiel drew an arm around Dean’s waist, slung one of Dean’s arms over his shoulder and half dragged- half carried him up the mountain. Dean’s head lolled against Castiel’s shoulder, he could barely keep his eyes open.
“We will be there soon, Dean,” Castiel murmured, hand tightening around Dean’s middle. “And then you can rest.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, his voice a tired rumble, and turned his face into Castiel’s neck. “OK.”
The sun hung in the sky like it was a ball suspended from a string in a diorama. Dean supposed this was fitting because his mind was essentially trapped in a box and told Castiel as much. Castiel gave him a concerned look and urged him to drink some water.
Sometimes it seemed to Dean that the pile of bone fragments grew larger as they climbed, he began to worry that they would never find the top of it but he shook that off because he didn’t know that they needed to reach the top. This too faded from his mind because he was too busy concentrating on picking up his feet and moving forward and he knew he couldn’t even have done that if Castiel hadn’t been supporting him.
Dean’s legs trembled with fatigue, his mind ached for sleep and he slumped against Castiel gratefully, not listening to the crunch and shift of bones beneath their feet but the shuffle-slip of his body against Castiel’s that was more motion and warmth than sound. He allowed himself to be borne away by it until he thought of nothing at all.
Dean almost didn’t notice when they stopped walking.
“We’re here Dean,” Castiel said quietly, breath warm against his forehead and Dean couldn’t do more than offer a weak nod. Castiel pulled away and Dean made a small noise of protest, blinking at the bleached landscape.
They were as high as they could go. Sometime, without Dean noticing, they had reached the summit and all that stretched out for miles below them were bones reflecting the cold glow of the sun, bright like a snowfield in winter but dry and dead and far colder.
“Close your eyes, Dean,” Castiel murmured, settling Dean down on the ground. Dean shivered as he drew away.
“You’re sure you’re not dead?” Dean asked but closed his eyes anyway.
“Does it matter?” Castiel asked and his voice came as if from a very long way off. Dean drifted.
“Yes,” Dean thought, but he was already asleep.
When he woke up, Sam was standing over him. Dean watched Sam’s eyes widen in surprise, watched as he turned to shout for someone and Dean closed his eyes again.
--|||--
Dean stood on the roof of the dilapidated apartment complex they had appropriated when it became apparent that they were collecting people months ago and stared out at the darkening sky. Sam liked to call the compound “the most obsessively warded hotel in creation” but Dean just called it The Compound.
It felt strange to be here again.
Ever since he’d woken up, he’d started coming up every night just before sunset just to make sure the sun didn’t set the same way every night. It didn’t and Dean knew, but he didn’t mind coming out to check when he got the chance. There was also the added benefit of quiet provided by this nightly ritual where Dean found himself on the roof marveling over how bright and loud things were. It had taken him a couple of days to stop flinching at sudden voices and there were many sudden voices in the compound.
Dean was still having trouble with crowds.
According to Sam, Dean hadn’t been out for more than a week but in the dream it had been months and Dean wasn’t used to having more than one person around at a time, so he came up to the roof to hide for an hour or two. Sometimes Sam came with him and, while Dean was happy to have his brother back, Sam had an irritating tendency to want to talk which, if Dean was honest with himself, was what had landed him in dream world in the first place.
Dean had tried to explain why he went up there but Sam still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that Dean had been wandering around a desert for months. He tried, though. Dean had to give him that.
Bobby came up to the roof with him once and set up a folding chair and popped open a can of beer. Bobby hadn’t talked much and Dean had been grateful. They’d sat and watched the sun go down, drinking quietly. The sounds of a soccer game filtered up from down below, echoing sharply against the concrete walls and Dean had flinched a little, but Bobby still hadn’t said anything.
Tonight, Dean was alone, leaning against the weather beaten concrete barrier that kept people from walking off the roof. There wasn’t much of a sunset because it had been overcast all day, clouds hanging low and heavy in the sky. It might not have been much of a sunset, but it was different than all of the sunsets he’d seen in his long dream and Dean was grateful for that.
He’d been out of the dream for three weeks but sometimes the dream felt more real than reality did and sometimes reality was far more comforting except that, in reality, Dean still hadn’t seen Castiel. If Dean were really honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he came out to the roof to mourn Castiel’s absence as much as he did for the quiet.
There were sounds of a commotion in the courtyard below echoing up to Dean but he tried to ignore them. The noises were all sharp angles that gave way to humming murmurs and skittered along the concrete until they came to Dean with more sensation than intelligibility. He felt them in his elbows where they rested against the barrier but wasn’t interested enough to listen for the meaning behind the vibration.
When he tuned the noise out, sometimes he could almost feel the dry heat of the desert air again and pretend he was leaning against a stone fixture instead of a concrete wall. Sometimes he could pretend Castiel was standing next to him watching the sky although he never had in Dean’s dream.
The door opened and Dean started but it was just Sam looking sheepish and a little put out. “Sorry,” Sam said. “I keep forgetting about the noise thing.”
“’S okay,” Dean told him because it wasn’t Sam’s fault Dean wasn’t used to having people around.
“There’s, uh, someone downstairs you should probably talk to,” Sam said, shifting a little awkwardly.
Dean grimaced. “That what all the noise was about?”
“Yeah.”
“New arrival, huh?” Dean asked, pushing himself away from the ledge.
Sam paused. “I guess you could say that,” he said opening the door wider for Dean.
“What I don’t get is why you always insist they talk to me when they come in.”
Sam snorted. “That’s your punishment for being The Man.”
“Dude, I am so not The Man.”
“Except for the part where you kind of are.” Sam replied dryly leading Dean down the hall. “I’m serious, though, Dean. You’ll want to see who it is.”
“Right,” Dean huffed. “That’s what you said about that hunter you guys dragged in last week. Dude was a pain in my ass.” The guy had followed Dean around all week asking him what his orders were and Dean almost hadn’t wanted to deck the guy because he was so earnest and lost but he had to put his foot down when the guy had taken to following Dean to his room like he didn’t know where else to go.
Sam snorted. “Okay, I totally didn’t know he was going to go all goo-goo eyes on you.”
“I can’t help it if I’m devastatingly handsome, Sammy.” Dean smirked and Sam rolled his eyes.
There were a couple of people hanging out in the hallway and they stopped talking to watch as Sam and Dean passed, nodding politely. Their regard made Dean uncomfortable and Sam seemed to notice this, moving to Dean’s back as if he could keep them from looking. Dean kind of hated Sam for that but he was grateful, too.
“Where are we going anyway?” Dean asked when they turned the corner.
“Not much farther. Bobby’s office,” Sam replied. Dean grunted affirmation.
“Bobby thinks I oughta meet the guy too, huh?” Dean asked more for something to say than confirmation as Sam paused outside Bobby’s door. Sam didn’t answer and Dean waited for him to open the door but Sam just looked at him and rolled his eyes. Dean sighed. “Fine, I get it. I’m already here, right?”
The low hum of voices stopped when Dean opened the door. Dean took in the room warily but there was nothing out of the ordinary, stacks of books in various states of chaos, Bobby and Chuck frozen mid argument about a text and in the extra chair was-
“Cas?” Dean asked quietly, frozen in the doorway. Castiel looked up and smiled just a little.
“Hello, Dean,” he said and Dean didn’t remember moving but he was across the room and pulling Castiel out of the chair by the lapels of his trench coat.
“You son of a bitch, don’t you ever fucking do that again,” Dean said as Castiel’s eyes went wide with surprise and Dean’s hands dragged up into Castiel’s hair, over his face and across his shoulders like they couldn’t believe what they were touching was present and solid beneath them.
He didn’t know if he wanted to shake Castiel or hug him.
Dean’s hands wandered, too rough and desperate, mapping out a landscape he’d tried so hard not to think about in the weeks he’d been awake. Then Dean’s hands found their way back into Castiel’s hair and pulled him in and kissed him. Castiel’s breath left his mouth in a surprised huff and Dean swallowed it, warm, moist, and alive. Castiel’s hands came up almost hesitantly to rest on Dean’s shoulders before sliding up into his hair and pulling him closer.
“Okay,” Sam said from somewhere behind Dean, “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“I wish I could say that I wasn’t,” Chuck said miserably somewhere to Dean’s left.
Dean ignored them. He fisted his hands in Castiel’s coat and hung on.
-end-
Author: uselessplayback
Rating: PG
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: Season 4
Warnings: angst
Word Count: 11,248
Summary: Dean felt like he’d been dropped into the middle of a video game, the kind that cleaned up the bodies after the player’s character left the room.
Notes: Thanks to bellajayd for beta. Serious, serious thanks, yo. And also to theparadoxism for her brutal honesty. You are fine, upstanding ladies with epic amounts of patience. Any issues post beta are mine.
The car ran out of gas in somewhere in Utah and the only reason Dean knew the location was because he remembered passing the turnoff for Salt Lake City sometime after he’d navigated his way around the Beast of the Earth and before he’d found a lake full of wormwood.
Nothing was recognizable anymore but he remembered this because the car was the last thing he thought he’d lose, or maybe it was the last thing he’d thought he’d hold onto, but it had failed him in the middle of nowhere. He’d thought about finding a gas station. Maybe somewhere there was a final stronghold of humanity holding onto a couple of gallons of fuel that he could get with some degree of normalcy, but he found that he couldn’t kid himself at that point.
When the car stilled and wouldn’t be coaxed to move any further he just sat there, it could have been minutes or hours but Dean couldn’t propel himself into action. He’d stared out the windshield at the bleak, dusty road empty of everything now except the weather beaten shells of things that once held life and power.
When Dean grew tired of this, he hadn’t even bothered to get out of the car; he’d just thrown himself over the seat into the back, curled up and fell into an uneasy sleep that carried the echo of Sam’s voice, distant, distorted and barely comprehensible. In his dreams, Sam’s voice echoed through the empty desert as if from somewhere far away.
It was as if the sky spoke and it spoke with Sam’s voice.
When Dean woke it was dark, the light of the moon glinting off the surface of an abandoned car somewhere in the distance. Dean climbed out of the Impala and packed as much as he could safely carry.
He ran a hand once over the night cool metal of his car one last time, feeling the drag on his fingers before letting his hand drop against his thigh. The slap of flesh on his jeans echoed loud in the empty silence.
“I’ll come back, baby,” Dean promised the Impala, but he knew it was a lie.
--
Dean looked behind him only once. He didn’t know why, maybe it was some strange desire to see the marks of his progress on the landscape. When he did look back, the sand he’d torn under his boots was smooth as if he had never touched it.
--
When Dean thought about the Impala, he didn’t actually remember driving to Utah only being there. He could no longer even remember why he had come in the first place, not the job he must have been here to do, not splitting up with Sam or even why he’d done it in the first place. These were things he knew he had to figure out but, even as he asked himself these questions, the answers slipped from his mind and, eventually, he could no longer remember he’d had questions.
Dean didn’t miss Sam.
He had missed Sam once, remembered the fierce ache of something ripped out and still bleeding. He only missed Sam now when he thought about it, like remembering something you had to buy at the store.
Sometimes, Dean didn’t remember Sam’s face and those days were good days.
--
Dean had started west, two bags crossed over his chest a bulky awkward weight jarring against his thighs.
Sun beat down on him from a clear, pale sky as dusty as the ground and the jeans that covered his aching legs. He was no longer aware of what he saw as he walked, just motion and the sound of his footsteps that were as jarring to his ears as the weight of the bags were to his shoulders. He was so intent on putting one foot in front of the other that he didn’t notice the sound of a second pair of feet keeping time with his until Castiel spoke.
“There is shelter a mile from here,” Castiel said, quietly and yet too loudly, dusty like the ground and the sky. “You should rest, Dean.”
Dean blinked but didn’t respond and Castiel said nothing more. Dean watched his boots push at the ground, watched Castiel’s impractical shoes as they gradually took on the color of the sand and didn’t notice he was being herded until the ground changed shape and texture and the sound of his footfalls echoed in different tones.
He paused and looked up, finding himself in a room lit by a small window with tattered curtains and a pane of glass was broken and scattered on the floor. There was a mattress in the corner covered with stains from a lifetime of abuse and the dust that had made its way through the broken window.
Castiel led him over to it and he went, stumbling and aching.
Dean made no protest when Castiel removed the bags from his shoulders one at a time and put them carefully on the floor.
He watched, numb, as Castiel considered the bags and bent to open one, making a satisfied noise when he found a bottle of water and a packet of something that Dean vaguely remembered being food. Castiel turned and considered Dean who stared back vacantly, exhausted. Castiel opened the bottle and dropped the packet back into the bag before handing the bottle to Dean.
“Drink,” Castiel said and Dean brought the bottle absently to his mouth.
The water was warm, thick and metallic as it ran down his chin when he missed his mouth, but he drank and let Castiel take the bottle back before it could fall to the floor from his nerveless fingers. Dean felt Castiel’s hands on his face, smoothing the water from his chin and moving to Dean’s shoulders, pushing him down onto the mattress. Dean went eyes dry and gritty watching the ceiling tilt as Castiel pushed him down. Castiel was murmuring something, low and insistent, but Dean didn’t hear him. Then Castiel’s hand came up, cool and dry, and gently covered Dean’s eyes.
Dean let his eyes close, listened but did not hear Castiel’s voice telling him to sleep and a hundred other small things that weren’t important. He let himself drift under Castiel’s hand and, somewhere, fell asleep.
--
When Dean woke, Castiel was examining the window as if he were trying to figure out how to put it back together from sand, running his fingers along the jagged edges curiously. Dean shivered, still cold from sleep and drew in on himself.
“You know,” he said, voice hoarse from sleep and disuse. “I liked the world a lot better before it ended.”
“I know,” Castiel told him sadly.
Castiel looked smaller than Dean had remembered him, diminished in some way and infinitely tired. “I can’t stay long,” Castiel said, he hadn’t looked at Dean once since Dean had woken.
“I didn’t expect you to,” Dean told him. He moved to stand and winced as his muscles protested. “How’s the war going?”
Castiel turned to Dean with an unreadable expression and looked at him for so long that Dean wondered if he’d asked the wrong question.
“We are winning,” Castiel said finally without inflection and Dean laughed, a sick sound with no humor.
“Yeah? It sure doesn’t seem like it,” Dean said.
“No,” Castiel said, one side of his mouth quirked in a half smile as devoid of humor as Dean’s laugh had been. “It doesn’t.”
And Castiel was gone. Dean shivered in his absence.
--
Dean walked for days and saw no one.
He’d thought once that he would miss them, all of them; their noise, color and motion, the smells and discarded trappings of things that spoke of humanity and civilization. Instead, he found a bizarre sort of peace: endless, quiet and lonely.
--
He found the remains of a town two weeks later. There were hundreds of signs that people had lived here once, had died here and left their panic strewn about in scraps that hung limply from signposts and streetlamps, flopped around on the ground or just sat, slowly decaying. There were no bodies and that was almost worse.
Dean found a store that looked like it might have held food at one point, caught a glimpse of himself in the window and grimaced. He spent the next few hours rummaging through the debris to collect supplies and another hour on vanity. His hair was too long and he was sporting a serious caveman beard that had to go.
When he left, his hair was shorter and the beard was gone. He’d acquired a straight razor and some girly compact because it was the only thing with a mirror he could find that wasn’t broken. He was clean with new (or newer) clothes and it was a little regrettable that, now that he was clean again, he was going to walk back out into the dust and undo all of the work.
--
After more days of nothing but the crunch of his boots against the ground, Dean heard a faint noise, tinny and distant. The sound tugged at Dean’s memories the closer he came to the source, notes came together from random pieces as his boots ate up the distance. He hadn’t heard any noise besides the ones he made himself in so long that he didn’t recognize the sound for what it was until he was almost on top of it and, when he finally did, he wished he had decided to walk in another direction.
On the hill he approached, an ice cream truck lay on its side smelling sharp and sweet of confections that had known better days. Its call to neighborhood children echoed eerily out over the vista.
Dean walked past it and tried hard not to listen but the tinny notes assailed him and, though he walked faster, he heard the music for a long time.
Miles away, he saw smoke billowing up from the ground in dark, heavy clouds too far away to cover the sun, they hung just out of reach like some kind of formless floating sculpture.
--
Dean no longer remembered the last time he’d talked to Bobby.
He tried to hold onto it, like he’d tried to hold on to Sam, but the memory slipped away when he tried to catch it. Dean knew he should remember, that he should be more worried, but he was too tired to reach into his mind and summon it, so he gave up.
It was weird though, sometimes, when he wasn’t really paying attention, he thought he heard Bobby’s voice echoing out over the landscape as if he was speaking from the end of a long tunnel but Dean could never make out the words and the strangeness of the echoes were quickly forgotten.
--
The next time Castiel came, he didn’t so much drop in as drop.
“Shit,” Dean said, backing away and throwing up a hand to shield his eyes from the rain of sand Castiel had raised with his fall.
Castiel coughed and struggled to sit up. Dean shook off the shock of stupor and went to help him.
“Pardon me, Dean,” Castiel said wincing, his voice was more gravelly than usual and he was covered in dust. “I’m afraid I hadn’t expected to land so hard.”
“Dude,” Dean said, getting an arm under Castiel’s shoulder, “I’m just glad you didn’t land on me.”
“I took special care to make certain that did not happen,” Castiel said seriously while allowing himself to be pulled from the ground and watching with interest as Dean tried his best to slap the dust from Castiel’s coat.
Castiel looked pretty bad.
He was pale and unsteady on his feet. Dean tried to walk him to a nearby rock to sit down and Castiel leaned into him heavily, a little dazed. Castiel’s coat was torn and bloodied at the shoulder and a few other places, he had a cut somewhere on his scalp that had bled onto his forehead and had that tacky look that meant it was coagulating. Castiel was actually tripping over himself and Dean had to half carry, half drag him to the rock.
“You okay, Cas?” Dean asked even though it was clear Castiel was not.
Castiel blinked hazily up at Dean and gave the question some consideration. “No,” he finally said and rubbed a hand over his face. “I think I need what you humans call a vacation.”
Dean grunted affirmation and dug into his bag for something to clean the blood off. He had to fight Castiel to get a look at the wounds but he eventually submitted to the attention. He swayed a little in his seat and looked a little like he wanted to nod off.
“Do I even want to know what happened?” Dean asked.
“No.” Castiel said simply and ruined the effect by nearly falling off his perch on the rock. Dean caught him.
“Whoa, there, buddy,” Dean found himself saying to the top of Castiel’s head where it lay on Dean’s chest. Castiel’s hands made a feeble attempt to push himself up, clutching at Dean’s shirt. “Take it easy, okay?
Castiel stopped resisting and allowed Dean to maneuver him to the ground where he slumped gratefully against the rock, pressing his face into the cool stone and coughing when the motion shook loose some of the sand in his hair. Dean watched him for a minute. Castiel looked funny and kind of worked over with his shirt half undone and rumpled like that.
Dean decided he’d better set up a rudimentary bedroll and something to block the sun. He tried to keep an eye on Castiel in case the angel decided to try for another face plant in the sand but Castiel slumped motionless, hands limp at his sides, palms turned up to the sky. By the time Dean had organized anything like a shelter, Castiel was asleep, lips parted taking in deep, sleepy breaths, face mashed against the stone, hair standing at odd angles.
Dean sighed and went over to drag Castiel’s angel ass someplace he was less likely to wake up with a killer crick in his neck. When Dean managed to squeeze his arm behind Castiel’s back and prop him up, Castiel made a sleepy noise of protest and cracked an eye open.
“It’s okay, Cas,” Dean said quietly. “I’m just moving you someplace you can lie down, alright?”
Castiel nodded and his head drooped until he was resting his chin on his chest. Dean chuckled. “Help me out here, man. I promise you can go back to sleep in a second.”
Dean hefted Castiel up. The angel wasn’t much help, he dragged his feet tiredly all the way to Dean’s makeshift lean-to and practically fell onto the bedroll, coughing when this let loose another cloud of sand. Dean laughed and Castiel opened one eye to glower at him.
“Dude,” Dean said, shrugging. “It’s funny when you’re foiled by physics.”
Castiel closed his eye and pushed his face more firmly into the bedroll, disarranging his hair even more wildly in the process. Dean sighed and climbed in next to him. Castiel made a small questioning noise as if he didn’t have enough energy to form a complete sound much less a complete sentence.
“If you’re gonna take a nap, I’m gonna take a nap.” Dean said by way of explanation and pushed at Castiel’s shoulder. “Move over, you’re hogging the space.”
Castiel made a small noise of complaint but did as he was told and Dean squeezed in beside him, shifting around to find a comfortable spot. “If this is your idea of a vacation spot, Cas, I gotta tell you-“
“Dean,” Castiel said, irritated and muffled in the bedroll. “Shut up.”
Dean grinned up at the jackets he’d slung up to block the sun, then closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
--
It was dark when Dean woke and Castiel was still asleep, his face now mashed against Dean’s shoulder, one of his arms slung over Dean’s chest.
“Damn, Cas,” Dean murmured quietly, “when you fall asleep, you don’t fuck around.”
He considered getting up but the air had cooled considerably and Castiel was warm. There was, however, the matter of a stone trying to make nice with one of his kidneys that became more irritating the longer he was awake. Dean tried to shift so he wouldn’t wake Castiel and wound up with his face in Castiel’s still sandy hair trying valiantly not to sneeze. Castiel stirred, tightening the arm around Dean’s chest but didn’t wake. The urge to sneeze passed and Dean managed to pry the stone out from beneath his back before he lay slowly back down folding an arm under his head.
One of the jackets had been shifted by the wind and there was a crack in the lean-to’s makeshift ceiling. The sky was clear and the stars looked huge and hazy through the atmosphere.
Dean felt better than he had in days, relaxed and warm.
Having a sort-of person around, even a sleeping sort-of person did wonders for his morale. He’d been starting to think he’d been losing pieces of himself the further he walked. Until Castiel had dropped almost on top of him, he’d been wondering if he’d be able to talk or if he’d ever need to again. It had been so long since he’d had to.
Castiel shivered and tucked himself closer against Dean, sighing. Asleep he seemed more human than he ever did with his eyes open. No human looked at people the way Castiel did, as if everything was new and interesting and, at the same time, old and full of some indecipherable meaning. Castiel was also easier to deal with when he was asleep because, when Castiel was asleep, Dean didn’t feel the weight of Castiel’s expectations following him with Castiel’s eyes.
--
By the time Castiel woke, Dean was half way through cooking a not so wonderful can of something that disguised itself as spaghetti. He’d stocked up on food in the last town he’d passed but pickings were slim and Dean didn’t have a whole lot of preserved items proclaiming themselves to be food to choose from. When he could, Dean hunted, but he preferred to save the ammunition just in case something more dangerous than a wild dog crossed his path. Dean hadn’t seen anything except the aftermath of the things he needed that ammo for in weeks, but it always paid to be cautious.
Castiel looked better for the sleep, Dean decided, when Castiel made his way over to the fire. Even his clothes-the ones he was still wearing at least-looked better.
“Feel any better?” Dean asked even though it was obvious now that Castiel did.
“Yes,” Castiel said and cocked his head, studying Dean.
Dean stared back for a while then turned his attention back to the thing that pretended to be food. He rifled through a bag of jerky and picked out of a couple of pieces and handed one to Castiel.
He eyed it dubiously, frowning.“What is that?” Castiel asked.
“This,” Dean said, “is food. You might not eat but it would make me feel better if I didn’t have to suffer this shit alone.”
Castiel sighed. “Dean, I understand that it’s food but what kind of food is it?”
“This, Cas,” Dean said, waving the jerky for emphasis, “is an ancient piece of preserved beef that has been salted and dried and left to wait until some poor idiot like me needed something that had already been sitting around for months to chew on and still last for months. It’s practically a sacred relic. And this,” Dean pointed to the can warming over the fire, “is something that thinks it’s spaghetti but is really something that I don’t even want to think about.”
“I believe I see.” Castiel said, smiling wryly.
“No, you don’t because these two things are completely different,” Dean told him grinning. “One is the food of the devil,” Dean gestured to the not-spaghetti, “and the other is delicious.” Dean took a pointed bite out of the jerky and chewed, mouth open and grinning and waved the other piece of jerky at Castiel who sighed and took it.
Dean stirred the spaghetti and turned back to find Castiel studying the jerky intently. He brought it up to his nose and smelled it, making a face. Dean grimaced and rolled his eyes.
“Cas,” he said with studied patience. “You put it in your mouth. You do not smell it.”
Castiel studied Dean and tentatively touched his tongue to the meat. Dean made a face.
“It’s very salty,” Castiel pronounced.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Dean said rubbing a hand over his face.
Castiel looked surprised and a slow smile crept across his face. “Yes, Dean.” Castiel put the piece of jerky in his mouth and chewed. It didn’t fit completely and bobbed under Castiel’s nose.
Dean rolled his eyes. “You’re worse than Sam when he was five. He used to. . .” Dean trailed off. “I. . .I don’t know what made me say that. I haven’t even thought of Sam since-not for a long time.”
Castiel frowned and he looked kind of ridiculous doing that with jerky poking out of the corner of his mouth. It was even funnier when he tried to talk, having completely forgotten it was there, and was forced to take it out. “Your brother is alive, Dean,” Castiel said seriously and it made Dean want to laugh because the serious vibe was so at odds with what Dean had just witnessed. He settled on a half smile.
“Yeah, Cas. I know. I just. . . . .” Feel like someone died, Dean wanted to say, like I’m forgetting something.
“You’re still not ready,” Castiel said quietly, he sounded a little disappointed. “I had thought-but that is no matter.”
Dean frowned. “What is that supposed to mean, Cas?”
“Nothing.” Castiel said. “It means nothing.” And Castiel stood up. “Thank you for allowing me time to gather myself. I have intruded upon your hospitality too long, I fear.”
“Cas,” Dean said, so low it was almost a growl. “What does that mean?”
“I told you, Dean.” Castiel said, smiling, but his smile was sad now, all teasing gone. “It means nothing.”
And Castiel was gone, only an imprint in the sand gave proof that he had been there at all.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean swore and considered knocking the can off the fire but he didn’t.
The night was cold and the world was far, far too wide.
--
Dean fumed for the better part of the next day, angry for the first time in weeks. He held onto it, savoring the emotion even as it faded because he suspected it would be a long time before he would feel much of anything again.
--
He ran out of food a week later, too far between towns to stock up. He was running low on water too, so he started to ration it out like he should have done the food only he hadn’t expected to be caught out between stops.
He kept walking because stopping now would mean a slow and painful death and tried to remember the lay of the land, tried to remember where he should be going. Wherever it was, he needed to get there soon.
--
A freak sandstorm caught him off guard and, by the time he’d made it to something that kept the wind and the sand from doing their best to sandpaper his face off, he was covered in the stuff.
It was in everything and it itched.
It drove him crazy, sandwiched under a rock with barely any room to move and everything itched. He found himself cursing, first low under his breath and then louder and louder until he was screaming over the wind, at the wind, at Sam and Castiel, at Bobby and, eventually and especially at God.
“You invisible fucker, if there are sandworms too I will end you!” He screamed. He screamed until the voice grew hoarse and only then did Dean realize that he was crying.
“Fuck,” He said, his voice was rough and swallowing felt like he’d choked down glass. He was down to two bottles of water and he was exhausted.
Hours after the storm ended, he lay there, sandwiched under the rock and didn’t move. He closed his eyes, they stung and his face was gritty with sand and tears. He rubbed at it halfheartedly, gave up, slumped against the rock face and fell asleep.
Dean didn’t move the next day or the next.
He was too tired and hungry to do much of anything. Sometimes he played with the sand; picking it up and letting it fall through his fingers, drawing halfhearted symbols that used to mean something to him. One for protection, the world’s tiniest Devil’s Trap, and eyes.
He drew eyes.
Dark and opaque, wide and intense, he drew mournful eyes like Sam’s and wide eyes over and over until he didn’t even have the energy to do that. He was down to his last bottle of water and still dehydrated. His lips were cracked, a line in the center split open and bleeding. He licked at it to sooth the dryness and savored the sting of pain prodding it with his tongue caused.
He was going to die, that much was obvious. Unless Castiel showed up or some miracle caused a spring to magically appear. With Dean’s luck, a magical spring would turn out to be a cursed spring and he’d wind up living the last of his days as a girl or a dog or a monkey. He would say no to the cursed spring the way kids said no to drugs in the eighties.
He rationed the last of his water as long as he could but it wouldn’t last very long. It would be ironic or, maybe, really stupid if he’d stopped walking and given up a few miles from some sort of town. Dean was pretty sure he hadn’t
The heat had made him a little delirious, he decided, when he found himself babbling to absolutly nothing at all and maybe praying a little.
“You know, you really gave us a raw deal, you asshole,” Dean told the Almighty in a voice so hoarse it was barely there anymore. Dean held up a finger, pointing savagely. “My life is like a bad country song except, instead of a wife, it’s demons who took the dog and the house and my fucking car and ran over my brother and possessed my friends and angels who swooped down and fucked it up some more.”
Dean licked his lips again and tried to swallow, his throat felt like it was coated in dust.
He babbled and babbled until his voice gave out completely, then he curled up and fell asleep cold, hungry for more than just food.
--
Sometimes Dean thought the isolation was almost worse than Hell. He’d been tortured, yes, but he’d never been left alone. He remembered Ruby telling him how long it had taken to strip away her humanity and wondered how long this walk through an empty nowhere would take to strip away what was left of his.
--
It was dark when Dean woke again, his mouth tasted like the inside of a sewer drain and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His lips had sealed themselves shut with dryness and opening them reopened the cut in his lip and made it bleed.
“Fuck,” he said although his voice was barely a whisper and sucked his lower lip into his mouth. He turned to get a drink from the bottle but he’d left it open and knocked it over sometime after he’d fallen asleep. “Fuck,” he said with feeling even if he didn’t have the voice to give it that extra level of special hate it deserved. He lay back and waited because there wasn’t really anything else he could do.
--
He must have fallen asleep again because the next thing he knew he was being shaken awake but he didn’t really have the energy to do anything but lie there, so he let whoever it was do their thing and hoped they’d leave.
“Dean,” whoever it was said and the voice sounded familiar but the name didn’t come. “Dean Winchester, I know you still breathe. Dean!” The voice had a funny way of talking and was starting to sound kind of scared. “Dean, wake up!” The voice insisted, almost panicked now. “Father, give me strength and please forgive me for what I am about to do if this human does not-“
Dean turned toward the voice. “Cas?” he croaked. “That you?” And was surprised when he found himself pulled into the most awkward embrace he’d ever experienced and he’d experienced a lot of awkward embraces.
“Yes.” Castiel was saying into his hair. “I’m here, Dean.”
“Ouch,” Dean said, because he was bent over himself and his back was arched in a weird way, and he’d knocked his face against one of the buttons on Castiel’s stupid coat.
Castiel pulled away, and Dean nearly went with him because he was dizzy from being upright so suddenly. Castiel caught him, though, and pulled Dean into a more comfortable position against him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause you discomfort.”
“’S not a big deal.” Dean mumbled into Castiel’s coat. “’M tired.”
“I know, Dean,” Castiel said and he sounded so incredibly sad that Dean found himself tearing up like a girl even though he was pretty sure he didn’t have all that much in the way of water left to make anything of it.
Apparently he did, although the tears were painful and he tried to hold them in but Castiel laid a hand on his head, stroking his hair absently and all of the things Dean hadn’t been thinking about - Sammy, Bobby, the war and Dean’s own epic failure and Dean’s fucking car-he broke down, clutching at Castiel.
Castiel caught Dean’s face up in his hands, smoothing his thumbs over Dean’s face. The angel’s eyes were so tired even as they blurred into distorted blue pools in Dean’s vision.
“I would have spared you this, Dean,” Castiel said softly. “If it were within my power, I would spare you this.”
Dean didn’t know when he’d done it, but his hands clutched at Castiel’s, holding them against his face. “I know, Cas.”
Castiel choked in the breath that, coming from anyone else, Dean would have called a sob and shook his head in frustration. “I come to you hoping you will be ready and every time the answer is the same whether I voice it or not. Why do you bother asking me what our losses are when you cannot even bring yourself to fight?”
Dean drew back, angry. “What the fuck, Cas? I have been out there. I would be there right now if I were not stuck out here with no wheels. Don’t you fucking accuse me of running away.” The anger had made him dizzy but he was right in Castiel’s face, clutching the lapels of the angel’s coat as if holding them tightly enough would drive his point home. “If you’re so fucking eager to have me back out there, why the hell haven’t you worked your angel mojo and popped me back on the front lines then, huh?” Dean growled, panting a little at the effort.
Castiel stared at Dean for a long time. “The man I found here, Dean, is not a man who deserves to fight,” Castiel growled. “The man I found was wallowing in self pity and waiting to die. He is not a man I want at my side in battle no matter how much I. . . . .”
Dean was about to get in Castiel’s face again when Castiel’s eyes widened. He pushed Dean away with a violence that seemed to surprise him. It sure as hell surprised Dean.
“What the fuck, Cas?” Dean asked but Castiel had his back to Dean, his hands were clenched into fists at his sides and he was shaking. Dean struggled to sit up but stopped when he heard Castiel’s voice, so low he could barely make it out.
“I have brought you supplies,” Castiel told him. “I advise you to drink slowly. There is a town thirty miles north of here, I suggest you find it.”
Castiel turned back to him then and he looked so defeated that all the fight left Dean in a rush that left him exhausted.
“Dean,” Castiel said quietly. “This place will not let you leave until you are ready. There is no power I possess that will allow me to bring you from it. I would . . . but I cannot.
Castiel left and Dean stared at the pit in the sand his shoes had created until the wind covered it over.
--
The town he found was the same town he’d found weeks ago only it was cleaner somehow, like someone had come through and cleaned up all the debris, restocked the shelves and vanished. The situation was eerie and Dean felt like he’d been dropped into the middle of a video game, the kind that cleaned up the bodies after the player’s character left the room.
“Huh,” Dean said. It explained a lot, really. Like how he hadn’t seen anyone at all since the car ran out of gas, like the fact he’d suddenly developed the memory of a goldfish and no thoughts would stay in his head. Dean growled. “Castiel, you bastard, you could have fucking told me.” But that didn’t seem right either.
Dean decided to stay in the eerie town. If this was some kind of weird video game scenario, maybe he should be picking up clues and retracing his steps. Hell, maybe he should find a freaking map of the game layout.
He started with the smaller buildings, intent on working his way up to the larger ones.
In a small house at the edge of town, he found the trappings of an idyllic family life he’d never had. The kind with toys neatly packed away on their shelves or in boxes and all of the dishes stowed in exactly the right place, like someone had drawn a map of the perfect life and put it in this one house. As he searched, Dean tried to put things back exactly as he’d found them out of respect for the idea of the place, so he didn’t notice at first when the things he’d shifted started shifting themselves back.
At first he thought he was seeing things or had forgotten he’d put something back, but when he turned his back on a bowl he’d taken down from a rack of shelves and then turned around to find it sitting right where it had been before he moved it, well-Dean could take a hint.
After that he stopped trying to put things back neatly.
In the next house and the next, everything he pulled down from counters or out of drawers put itself back as if it had never been touched. In the interests of science, Dean broke a couple of plates and a tiny figurine before he left a kitchen and returned later to find them all in perfect condition exactly where whatever freaky mojo that kept him here had put them.
He searched the town until there was barely any light to see by and came up with nothing more useful than food and water. Frustrated, he threw a shelf load of cans at the wall and watched as they bounced and rolled on the floor to lie pathetic and dented, wondering at his cruelty. Dean ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He thought about picking the cans up and putting them back on the shelf, he was bending over to do it when he changed his mind.
They would be back on the shelf as soon as he left the room anyway.
--
Dean itched to leave by the next afternoon. Wandering blankly around the desert at least offered the illusion that he was doing something even if it also meant that he was in danger of starving or dehydration or being set upon by a pack of apparently imaginary wolves. This empty town had food, shelter, and water but Dean was bored and without the distraction walking provided, his mind wandered in strange directions.
To distract himself, he cleaned his guns and walked the perimeter of the town to see if he’d missed something the night before. He rummaged through the shining stores, empty of people and found a ball to kick around, something else to throw and to keep him busy.
He did a dozen other things but lost interest in all of them and still had nothing but time, so he decided to call it a day early and go to sleep.
--
By the end of the week, Dean had taken to climbing to the top of the tallest building at sunrise in the mornings to watch the horizon. It was pointless to leave messes; everything he left out at night was back where it belonged in the morning unless he kept it close. He discovered this when he had taken a baseball from a footlocker in the storeroom of some invisible person’s house and left it in his coat pocket overnight. In the morning, it was still there waiting to be tossed against a wall. Because it had stayed, he kept it and used it for just that purpose.
In the mornings, though, he took his breakfasts out to the roof of the town’s only hotel and watched the sun come up.
It came up exactly the same way every morning at exactly the same time. It was something that Dean never would have noticed if he hadn’t been bored enough to time it.
Every morning, the sun turned the sky into a field of muted reds and oranges as it worked its way up into the sky. Every morning the clouds were in exactly the same place and the desert was exactly the same temperature. For the first few days, this had fascinated him almost as much as it horrified him but, as the days wore on, he found even this boring.
“Dude,” he said to the sun and the sky, chewing on a protein bar he’d scavenged from the grocery store. “This no change sunrise thing is lame. You’re a one trick pony.”
The sky seemed to freeze then and Dean blinked, nearly dropping the protein bar in shock, but the sun started coming up exactly the same way as if it hadn’t paused at the insult.
“Whoa,” Dean said because that wasn’t creepy at all.
He let his mind wander and he must not have been paying enough attention because the next thing he knew he was somewhere else. It was dark and a lot colder and he felt like his body was muffled in something scratchy. There were also voices.
“How is he?” One of the voices asked and it sounded a lot like Bobby but Bobby wasn’t with him in the desert.
“No change,” the second voice sounded sad, sounded like Sam. “It’s like he just shut down after. . . . .”
Dean didn’t hear the rest of the sentence because he was back on the hotel roof and the sun was higher in the sky than he remembered. He found he was holding an empty wrapper. Dean blinked and got up to bore himself to tears for the rest of the day.
--
Dean waited for Castiel to show up but he didn’t.
“Freaking PMSing angels,” Dean muttered, kicking an empty can around the un-peopled grocery store. He did this a lot, almost as much as he threw the baseball at walls and cleaned his guns. There really wasn’t much else to do.
He didn’t know why, but Castiel’s absence filled him with a hollow sort of dread.
--
At the end of the second week, Dean had started watching the sunsets to see if they were the same kind of weird as the sunrises. They were. The sky darkened the same way every night with the clouds in exactly the same places on the horizon at exactly the same time. He’d taken to sitting a little further back from the edge of the roof after that weird no-place-like-home moment even though there hadn’t been any more like it since.
Sometimes, when the sun rose or set in the same way at the same time, Dean wished he’d wake up in that cold place just so he could ask what the fuck was going on.
--
He got his wish late in the third week. He had been sitting-he felt it was ironic-in what was left of the grocery’s meat freezer bouncing the purloined baseball against the wall. He let himself get lost in the thump and return, the way the ball slid from his fingers as he threw it and suddenly found himself back in the cold room with the scratchy muffled feeling. It was warmer this time, though and it took Dean a minute to figure out why.
Sam was stretched out on the bed-it was a bed, Dean realized-propped up against the wall. Sam was talking to him in a quiet voice.
“I’m sorry,” Sam was saying. “I know you didn’t want to leave him behind.”
Dean had no idea what Sam was talking about. Leave who behind? He wanted to ask but the same scratchy muffled feeling made it impossible for him to move. He tried to will his fingers to twitch but nothing happened, there was a strange disconnect between what he saw and what he could touch or say, apparently.
On some plane of reality, Dean was stretching and raising his hand with so much force that all of the muscles were stretched and tensed at once, trembling with the effort. In the cold room with Sam, the flesh Dean occupied didn’t respond.
“You have to wake up, though.” The bed shifted when Sam moved and drew his fingers through his hair. Dean couldn’t see anything except Sam’s legs, but he felt it. Heard it.
“Look,” Sam said. “I know you were friends and I respected the guy, even if I didn’t always like him.”
Dean felt colder than he had since finding himself here.
“He got us out of there,” Sam said quietly. “I have to respect that.”
Dean struggled hard to ask Sam what he was talking about but he had a feeling he already knew, even if it hung just out of reach somewhere in his mind, and jolted awake back in the meat freezer, the baseball he’d been throwing lay in the middle of the floor, reproachful.
Dean packed up his things and headed back out into the desert that night. He didn’t take the ball with him.
--
When Dean slept the next night, he dreamed in a way he hadn’t since he’d found himself trapped here.
He dreamt he was in a museum, staring down a long hall. Down the hall, Dean heard the noise of a battle, Sam was up there somewhere. Dean remembered watching him cut his way through a crowd of demons and Dean wanted to be up there too, watching Sam’s back but he wasn’t. He was standing in the middle of the hall with Castiel.
“Dean,” Castiel said urgently, drawing Dean’s attention away from the carnage at the other end of the hall. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “I can’t hold them off for much longer. There are too many.” Castiel was trembling with the effort and Dean wished he could remember why they were there.
“Okay,” Dean said, “What do you need me to do?”
“Leave. Call Sam back and retreat, I will hold them off for as long as I am able.”
Dean’s eyes widened. “No fucking way, Cas.” Dean growled.
Castiel made a frustrated noise and flinched when something Dean couldn’t see slammed into him hard enough to send him stumbling back a few steps before he firmed up again with a grimace. Dean moved toward Castiel involuntarily then shook himself because it wasn’t like he could do anything to help him out with his angel-fu. He clenched his hands into fists, frustrated.
“You must leave, Dean,” Castiel was saying. “You have what we came for.
Dean looked down. In his hands, he now held what looked like a jewelry box. It was old and the varnish chipped and peeled up at the corners giving it a kind of gray, used look. It was one of the ugliest things he had ever seen. Dean didn’t remember picking it up.
In the magic of dreams, Castiel was looking at him now, hands at his sides like none of the noise and clamor was happening. Behind Castiel, Castiel also stood, still reaching out and pushing away something invisible.
“Dean,” said the Castiel in front of him but he was looking at what was in Dean’s hands. “That is why you are here.”
Dean woke up panting and expected to find himself still holding the box. There was nothing in his hands but he felt the weight of it cradled in his palms anyway.
--
Sam had pulled him out. Dean remembered this too, but he tried not to think about it while he walked. Sam had pulled him out screaming and cursing. He remembered being furious but now he felt hollow and guilty, each step he took made him feel closer to the ground.
--
Dean walked for days but didn’t count them anymore, took no pleasure in the identical sunrises and sunsets or the way each grain of sand was the same size.
He had arrived here alone but he felt it more now than he had in the months of this perceived existence wandering a desert of his own making. He knew he would have to wake up eventually, like Sam said but he didn’t want to have to talk to Sam right now.
Not while Dean still blamed him.
He wasn’t really paying attention to where he was going and barely noticed when the ground began to curve upward making every step more difficult. He was grateful for the burn in his thighs because it distracted him from thinking. He looked up eventually, when the fading light made it more difficult to find places to put his feet and kept looking. Stretching above him for miles was a mountain he didn’t remember seeing anywhere and Dean suspected he must have created this too.
He stopped there, throwing his bags on the ground and following them. Overhead, the sky stretched wide and bright with stars that were as cold and distant as he felt.
--
When he dreamed that night he saw Castiel, arms extended with his back to Dean, he was panting and trembling with exertion and looked so damn stupid with that fucking trench coat fluttering at his calves and pulled tight at the shoulders.
In his dream, Dean was slung over Sam’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry and he struggled as Sam pulled him farther down a darkening passageway.
In his dream, Castiel straightened up at the last minute to look over his shoulder. He had the smallest of smiles on his face and an expression that wasn’t entirely concentration but something that Dean couldn’t read.
“Dean,” Castiel said so quietly that Dean had to concentrate hard to hear. “It has been an honor to fight beside you.” Castiel’s expression firmed up then and he turned his back.
In his dream, Dean fought harder against the arms that held him and shouted curses at his brother and Castiel.
--
When Dean woke this time, Castiel was standing over him frowning. Dean shut his eyes, throwing an arm over them to block out the vision.
“You’re dead,” Dean told Castiel flatly.
Castiel huffed out a laugh and Dean removed the arm to look up at him. If anything, Castiel looked amused. “Despite evidence to the contrary,” Castiel said, indicating himself. “This is what you choose to believe?”
Dean frowned. “Sam seemed pretty damn sure about it.”
Castiel looked at him sharply. “You have seen your brother?”
Dean didn’t answer immediately, his mind still catching up on seeing Castiel here instead of disappearing down a hallway. “Yeah,” Dean said. “I saw Sam.”
Before Dean could even blink Castiel was grabbing his arm and pulling him upward so fast Dean had to extend his other arm to keep himself from falling face first into the dirt.
“A little warning,” Dean snapped. Castiel had the grace to look embarrassed and let Dean collect himself. Dean decided to take his time about it because he’d just woken up and hadn’t even had breakfast. He bent over to get an energy bar and sat down on the ground, looking up at Castiel. Castiel raised his eyebrows almost impatiently.
Dean raised his right back. “Mind telling me what’s going on? Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got nothing but time.”
“I was hoping to remedy that.”
“I’m all ears.”
Castiel lowered himself into the dirt next to Dean, arranging his coat underneath him and sighed. “Do you recall the device we captured at the museum?”
Dean nodded, taking a bite out of his protein bar. It tasted like dust but Dean thought that was fitting since he was practically covered in the stuff.
“It is what is known as a dream box. The box and others like it were used as a means of storage by oneiromancers who wished to keep the dreams they felt held significant meaning in order to divine certain truths but it can also be used to force a dream state, drawing the dreamer and anyone else related into a fabricated dreamscape.”
“Okay,” Dean said. “That explains why I’m here but why you and why not Sam, since he’s close enough?”
Castiel studied Dean for a moment before answering. “What do you remember before you found yourself here?”
Dean sighed. “I was pissed at Sam but he wouldn’t leave it alone. Kept wanting to talk.”
Dean grimaced, running a hand over his face. Dean hadn’t wanted to talk, he’d wanted Sam to leave him alone.
“The box responds to the subconscious desires of the user, in this case you. You wanted to be alone,” Castiel swept his hand out to indicate the bare landscape. “It gave you what you wanted.”
“If I wanted to be alone, why are you here?”
“I’m not entirely certain. I can only assume it was because you wanted me here.”
Dean shrugged a shoulder. It was probably true and he wasn’t really in a position to deny it with evidence to the contrary.
“It has been,” Castiel said a little uncomfortably. “Somewhat . . . distracting to find myself here when I should be elsewhere.”
“How do I know it’s you here and not the box responding to my ‘subconscious desire’ to see you alive?”
Castiel blinked. “You don’t, Dean.”
“That’s not helpful, Cas.”
Castiel leaned forward, watching Dean’s face so intently he seemed to be trying to read it with his eyes. “Dean,” he said. “Do you trust me?”
“I don’t trust you not to get yourself killed, but otherwise, yeah. I guess so.”
Castiel sighed. “Your avoidance of this matter seems particularly melodramatic. I had not thought you would go so far as to create a world for yourself just to escape your brother.”
“Dead guy or not,” Dean said, glaring. “I will kick you.”
Castiel huffed out a laugh and Dean found himself grinning a little. Then Castiel stood up and put out his hand for Dean to take. “Come,” he said.
“Where are we going?” Dean asked, confused, but he took Castiel’s hand anyway.
“Up.” Castiel said while pulling Dean to his feet.
--
Dean followed Castiel up the mountain, watching the angel’s trench coat flap about his calves and wondered what he was doing. Months of wandering in no particular direction and he still had no idea where he was going.
“Tell me something,” Dean said, stepping around a cluster of rocks that Castiel hadn’t even bothered to avoid.
“Yes, Dean?” Castiel asked but didn’t stop walking or look in Dean’s direction.
“I’ve been here for months, right? How come I’m not dead?”
“Time is relative.” Castiel said and Dean rolled his eyes because that so did not answer his question.
They navigated around a jagged rock feature and Dean had to hoist himself up over parts of it just to stay on the same route. Castiel seemed to have less difficulty, moving between the fixtures with ease or willing himself higher and pausing to wait for Dean to catch up before continuing. Dean was so focused on where he was putting his hands and feet that he almost didn’t hear when Castiel spoke again.
“While you may have been here for months in the context of the dream, I believe only a few days have passed out of it.”
“Huh,” Dean said, dragging himself up another rock and lapsed into silence to concentrate.
They walked and climbed and walked and climbed further.
Dean’s steps slowed wearily but Castiel kept moving. The sun hung low in the sky and Dean had a fleeting notion that he could reach out a hand and touch the burning surface but Castiel reached out a hand and hoisted him over the edge of another stone and Dean forgot about the sun.
Energy leeched from Dean’s body the darker it got, he shivered as the air chilled, swiping at the sweat on his skin in little gusts and eddies. Dean was so exhausted he practically crawled over the rocks but Castiel didn’t stop even though he did check over his shoulder a little more often like he was afraid Dean’s silence meant he had fallen over the side of the mountain.
When it got too dark for Dean to see where he was supposed to put his hands, Castiel took one of Dean’s and led him along in the dark.
The higher they climbed the smoother the rock face became, loosening and shifting under Dean’s feet but anytime Dean felt he was in danger of slipping, Castiel moved to put his hands on Dean’s shoulders, caught at Dean’s elbow, dragged along Dean’s back. He shivered at the contact, unable to predict when it would come, warm in the cold night and strangely intimate.
“How far up do we have to go?” Dean asked the surrounding blackness, blacker than any night Dean had yet spent here and colder.
“We will know when we arrive,” Castiel murmured against Dean’s ear and he shivered once more.
All that existed was the texture of the ground against Dean’s legs and his hands, less grainy and rough - smoother and rounder somehow. Dean’s foot slipped against something and he jolted, hearing whatever he had dislodged bounce down the mountain until he could barely hear the noises it made, but Castiel’s hands caught him and pulled Dean up flush against his chest and Dean leaned into him, waiting for his heart to stop hammering in his ribcage.
Castiel’s hands made warm trails down Dean’s back, smoothing his shirt and stroking away the shock before he moved again to take one of Dean’s hands and lead him forward again.
When the sun rose, it was a cold heat in the sky that warmed nothing and revealed the mountain for what it had become overnight. Dean didn’t notice at first, stumbling with fatigue. His muscles protested every movement and he tripped over the debris in his path when he found he didn’t have the energy to lift his legs high enough to clear it. He fell, nearly pulling Castiel down on top of him and that’s when he noticed the difference.
“Jesus,” Dean breathed. “That’s . . . really fucking morbid.”
Castiel huffed out a laugh. Stretching below and above them for miles as far as Dean could see were bones piled like someone had thrown them there without any particular care as to where they landed. All of them were polished smooth and glowed faintly in the morning light.
“Come,” Castiel told him, tugging at his arm. “We must keep moving.”
“Yeah,” Dean said faintly, allowing himself to be dragged along, still studying the skeletal fragments that reached from the ground to catch at his ankles.
As the day wore on, Dean slumped with fatigue; he could barely lift his head and stumbled with exhaustion over the bones of phantoms. When he fell again, Castiel drew an arm around Dean’s waist, slung one of Dean’s arms over his shoulder and half dragged- half carried him up the mountain. Dean’s head lolled against Castiel’s shoulder, he could barely keep his eyes open.
“We will be there soon, Dean,” Castiel murmured, hand tightening around Dean’s middle. “And then you can rest.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, his voice a tired rumble, and turned his face into Castiel’s neck. “OK.”
The sun hung in the sky like it was a ball suspended from a string in a diorama. Dean supposed this was fitting because his mind was essentially trapped in a box and told Castiel as much. Castiel gave him a concerned look and urged him to drink some water.
Sometimes it seemed to Dean that the pile of bone fragments grew larger as they climbed, he began to worry that they would never find the top of it but he shook that off because he didn’t know that they needed to reach the top. This too faded from his mind because he was too busy concentrating on picking up his feet and moving forward and he knew he couldn’t even have done that if Castiel hadn’t been supporting him.
Dean’s legs trembled with fatigue, his mind ached for sleep and he slumped against Castiel gratefully, not listening to the crunch and shift of bones beneath their feet but the shuffle-slip of his body against Castiel’s that was more motion and warmth than sound. He allowed himself to be borne away by it until he thought of nothing at all.
Dean almost didn’t notice when they stopped walking.
“We’re here Dean,” Castiel said quietly, breath warm against his forehead and Dean couldn’t do more than offer a weak nod. Castiel pulled away and Dean made a small noise of protest, blinking at the bleached landscape.
They were as high as they could go. Sometime, without Dean noticing, they had reached the summit and all that stretched out for miles below them were bones reflecting the cold glow of the sun, bright like a snowfield in winter but dry and dead and far colder.
“Close your eyes, Dean,” Castiel murmured, settling Dean down on the ground. Dean shivered as he drew away.
“You’re sure you’re not dead?” Dean asked but closed his eyes anyway.
“Does it matter?” Castiel asked and his voice came as if from a very long way off. Dean drifted.
“Yes,” Dean thought, but he was already asleep.
When he woke up, Sam was standing over him. Dean watched Sam’s eyes widen in surprise, watched as he turned to shout for someone and Dean closed his eyes again.
--|||--
Dean stood on the roof of the dilapidated apartment complex they had appropriated when it became apparent that they were collecting people months ago and stared out at the darkening sky. Sam liked to call the compound “the most obsessively warded hotel in creation” but Dean just called it The Compound.
It felt strange to be here again.
Ever since he’d woken up, he’d started coming up every night just before sunset just to make sure the sun didn’t set the same way every night. It didn’t and Dean knew, but he didn’t mind coming out to check when he got the chance. There was also the added benefit of quiet provided by this nightly ritual where Dean found himself on the roof marveling over how bright and loud things were. It had taken him a couple of days to stop flinching at sudden voices and there were many sudden voices in the compound.
Dean was still having trouble with crowds.
According to Sam, Dean hadn’t been out for more than a week but in the dream it had been months and Dean wasn’t used to having more than one person around at a time, so he came up to the roof to hide for an hour or two. Sometimes Sam came with him and, while Dean was happy to have his brother back, Sam had an irritating tendency to want to talk which, if Dean was honest with himself, was what had landed him in dream world in the first place.
Dean had tried to explain why he went up there but Sam still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that Dean had been wandering around a desert for months. He tried, though. Dean had to give him that.
Bobby came up to the roof with him once and set up a folding chair and popped open a can of beer. Bobby hadn’t talked much and Dean had been grateful. They’d sat and watched the sun go down, drinking quietly. The sounds of a soccer game filtered up from down below, echoing sharply against the concrete walls and Dean had flinched a little, but Bobby still hadn’t said anything.
Tonight, Dean was alone, leaning against the weather beaten concrete barrier that kept people from walking off the roof. There wasn’t much of a sunset because it had been overcast all day, clouds hanging low and heavy in the sky. It might not have been much of a sunset, but it was different than all of the sunsets he’d seen in his long dream and Dean was grateful for that.
He’d been out of the dream for three weeks but sometimes the dream felt more real than reality did and sometimes reality was far more comforting except that, in reality, Dean still hadn’t seen Castiel. If Dean were really honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he came out to the roof to mourn Castiel’s absence as much as he did for the quiet.
There were sounds of a commotion in the courtyard below echoing up to Dean but he tried to ignore them. The noises were all sharp angles that gave way to humming murmurs and skittered along the concrete until they came to Dean with more sensation than intelligibility. He felt them in his elbows where they rested against the barrier but wasn’t interested enough to listen for the meaning behind the vibration.
When he tuned the noise out, sometimes he could almost feel the dry heat of the desert air again and pretend he was leaning against a stone fixture instead of a concrete wall. Sometimes he could pretend Castiel was standing next to him watching the sky although he never had in Dean’s dream.
The door opened and Dean started but it was just Sam looking sheepish and a little put out. “Sorry,” Sam said. “I keep forgetting about the noise thing.”
“’S okay,” Dean told him because it wasn’t Sam’s fault Dean wasn’t used to having people around.
“There’s, uh, someone downstairs you should probably talk to,” Sam said, shifting a little awkwardly.
Dean grimaced. “That what all the noise was about?”
“Yeah.”
“New arrival, huh?” Dean asked, pushing himself away from the ledge.
Sam paused. “I guess you could say that,” he said opening the door wider for Dean.
“What I don’t get is why you always insist they talk to me when they come in.”
Sam snorted. “That’s your punishment for being The Man.”
“Dude, I am so not The Man.”
“Except for the part where you kind of are.” Sam replied dryly leading Dean down the hall. “I’m serious, though, Dean. You’ll want to see who it is.”
“Right,” Dean huffed. “That’s what you said about that hunter you guys dragged in last week. Dude was a pain in my ass.” The guy had followed Dean around all week asking him what his orders were and Dean almost hadn’t wanted to deck the guy because he was so earnest and lost but he had to put his foot down when the guy had taken to following Dean to his room like he didn’t know where else to go.
Sam snorted. “Okay, I totally didn’t know he was going to go all goo-goo eyes on you.”
“I can’t help it if I’m devastatingly handsome, Sammy.” Dean smirked and Sam rolled his eyes.
There were a couple of people hanging out in the hallway and they stopped talking to watch as Sam and Dean passed, nodding politely. Their regard made Dean uncomfortable and Sam seemed to notice this, moving to Dean’s back as if he could keep them from looking. Dean kind of hated Sam for that but he was grateful, too.
“Where are we going anyway?” Dean asked when they turned the corner.
“Not much farther. Bobby’s office,” Sam replied. Dean grunted affirmation.
“Bobby thinks I oughta meet the guy too, huh?” Dean asked more for something to say than confirmation as Sam paused outside Bobby’s door. Sam didn’t answer and Dean waited for him to open the door but Sam just looked at him and rolled his eyes. Dean sighed. “Fine, I get it. I’m already here, right?”
The low hum of voices stopped when Dean opened the door. Dean took in the room warily but there was nothing out of the ordinary, stacks of books in various states of chaos, Bobby and Chuck frozen mid argument about a text and in the extra chair was-
“Cas?” Dean asked quietly, frozen in the doorway. Castiel looked up and smiled just a little.
“Hello, Dean,” he said and Dean didn’t remember moving but he was across the room and pulling Castiel out of the chair by the lapels of his trench coat.
“You son of a bitch, don’t you ever fucking do that again,” Dean said as Castiel’s eyes went wide with surprise and Dean’s hands dragged up into Castiel’s hair, over his face and across his shoulders like they couldn’t believe what they were touching was present and solid beneath them.
He didn’t know if he wanted to shake Castiel or hug him.
Dean’s hands wandered, too rough and desperate, mapping out a landscape he’d tried so hard not to think about in the weeks he’d been awake. Then Dean’s hands found their way back into Castiel’s hair and pulled him in and kissed him. Castiel’s breath left his mouth in a surprised huff and Dean swallowed it, warm, moist, and alive. Castiel’s hands came up almost hesitantly to rest on Dean’s shoulders before sliding up into his hair and pulling him closer.
“Okay,” Sam said from somewhere behind Dean, “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“I wish I could say that I wasn’t,” Chuck said miserably somewhere to Dean’s left.
Dean ignored them. He fisted his hands in Castiel’s coat and hung on.
-end-