Work Text:
A collection of coda pieces for 9.01, 9.03, 9.06, 9.09, 9.10, 9.18. See end of the fic for disclaimer. Beta provided by Celesma, all remaining mistakes are my own
1. Now I see you, trouble, it's coming up ahead (black dogs running through the fields, they're dripping red)
Dean drives.
It calms the twitch in his legs, but now his hands won't stop shaking. His head still hurts, aches, where the angels had hit him again and again. But it's not just that.
He looks to the side, a quick, nervous glance. Sam is still unconscious, sprawled awkwardly in the passenger seat. He's shivering occasionally, but otherwise, his sleep appears peaceful. His slack face and unmoving hands make Dean's guts twist whenever he looks, but he keeps looking. Every few miles, every time he loses track of his brother's breathing, he looks.
Dean drives and he feels trapped. That's his baby, and that's his brother beside him – but the sky outside is dark and he feels cold all over. At one point, he puts the radio on low – and there's some guy singing about birds falling out of the sky, and he shuts it down again with a disgusted noise. He digs his phone out of his pocket, single-handedly, almost lets it drop on the floor between his feet. His thumb is already hovering over the speed dial button, when his brain comes back online and – Cas calling him from some stupid fucked up pay phone and he took my grace.
He curses under his breath, puts the phone away again.
It feels heavier in his coat pocket than it had before. All his clothes feel heavier. It's familiar – they're soaked through with blood in places – but it's different, too.
Like that night in the crypt – Cas had healed Dean's face but his jacket had remained bloodstained, the smell of it haunting him all the way back to the bunker.
Cas's coat and his shirt, torn up and bloodied after he'd been jumped by Crowley and those other fuckers – in the morning, it had been all pristine again, untouched.
“We need new clothes, Sammy, you know?” Dean tells his sleeping brother, his voice at once rough and quiet. It echoes eerily in his ears, but he keeps on, anyway, “Cas is gonna need clothes now, too. We should get him some plaid. What do ya think?” He tries to make himself smile. It doesn't work.
Sam doesn't react to his voice at all, only slumps down farther against the window, mouth slightly open. He's still shivering occasionally. Dean's hands spasm on the steering wheel again. He forces some deep breaths into his lungs. His shoulders feel like someone dropped rocks onto them.
He drives through the night until he has to stop for gas. He can't help casting nervous glances in Sam's direction every few seconds but finally manages to tear his gaze away, to straighten his back and make for the restroom. There, he splashes some cold water on his face, quickly, but he can't help catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. There's blood on his face still, black shadows under his eyes.
The people at the gas station look at him kind of funny (read: suspiciously) but he doesn't have the energy to pretend to be normal. There's news about the “meteor shower” on the TV but he can't make himself look up for that either.
He gets two bottles of water and a wool blanket – the one that's in the trunk has someone's blood stains on it – and leaves.
Just outside the station, there's another pay phone, probably for emergencies. The glass is stained, the blue plastic bits scratched. As he draws closer he can see a light above the phone. It's tiny and obviously not well looked after – it goes off and on irregularly, making a buzzing noise.
Dean kind of stands there, almost in a daze, staring at the phone for a moment. Then a car drives by, someone honks, and the moment is broken. He goes back to the Impala, lays the blanket over Sam's quiet form, carefully tucking it in to prevent the draft getting in. He hadn't even noticed how fucking cold it was.
When he drives, he's still gripping the steering wheel too hard, but his hands have almost stopped shaking. Almost.
His phone is a stone in his pocket, heavy and silent.
2. No map, no message (it's the deep blue screen i know)
They pack everything quickly, routinely – phones, weapons, maps, fake badges. But Dean is distracted, impatient. He feels jittery and tense, Ezekiel's words ringing in his head, Castiel, the angels are hunting him.
He's weighing his .45 in his hands, staring at it without really seeing it, when Sam shoots another nervous glance in his direction, clears his throat kind of nervously, shifting his weight.
“Dean? You okay?”
Dean looks over quickly, pockets the gun, moves to throw the rest of his stuff in his duffel bag. The thing has a tear in its side. He grimaces – great, just great – but continues to shove his spare jacket in it, placing the angel blade on top for easier reach.
“Yeah, I'm just…” He trails off, makes a vague gesture with his hand at the duffel, the bunker door, the empty air.
He can feel Sam look at him for another few beats, but his brother doesn't say or do anything else.
Not until later, that is, when they're in the car, and trying to pick up the trail, and it's been hours, and Dean can't help driving too fast, gripping the steering wheel too hard, and his teeth even harder.
He can feel Sam staring at him with that damned sympathetic softness in his eyes, and he thinks he really needs to talk – not to him, but to Ezekiel – and he can't help the twisting of his guts because of how fucked up that is.
“Just – don't – ” he chokes out. Sam huffs, but stays quiet, staring out the window. Dean pushes the accelerator closer to the floor.
(Then he finds Cas, and loses Cas again, and gets him back, only to shove him out the door again in unceremonious fashion, at Ezekiel's insistence. This confuses Sam, but his brother stays surprisingly, mercifully quiet.)
Dean goes and holes up in his room and sits down on his bed, and then he just sits there, staring at nothing, scrubbing his hand over his face a dozen times, but it doesn't chase the numbness away, not at all. He stands up to put a record on, but has to turn it off again after just a few notes, a weight like lead in his stomach.
He sits back down. Pulls his phone out of his pocket, takes a deep breath.
I'm sorry buddy. I didn't have a choice.
He grimaces, deletes it. Starts over.
I'm sorry man. Let me know if you're ok.
He stares at the words for long minutes, his throat constricting painfully. He changes the last bit again.
Let me know if you need anything.
He hits send.
He doesn't get a reply.
3. You didn't see me, i was falling apart (i was a television version of a person with a broken heart)
Despite Cas's protests, Dean takes him back to his hotel room. “You're hurt, Cas, come on. You gotta sleep in a real bed.” Cas says nothing (though his expression speaks volumes), but Dean ignores that, ignores the guilt swirling like acid in his gut.
In the hotel Dean shoves a clean shirt at Cas, and Cas stares at it for a moment before handing it back to him. It hurts, the rejection, and Dean starts to protest: “Cas, you – ” But the words won't come, so he just stands there kind of awkwardly, holding the shirt in his hands, and stares at Cas in tense silence for several moments.
Cas stares back in defiance and doesn't offer any words either. When Dean doesn't budge, Cas finally breaks eye contact, which almost pushes Dean into another panicky scramble for words, it's so uncharacteristic.
Cas stares at the floor for a moment, then the wall, then finally at Dean again.
“I think I'd like to sleep now. I'm very tired.”
And Dean stands there, feeling floored, and can't say anything, so he just nods weakly, fingers clenching in the fabric of the shirt he's still holding out between them, like a seriously pathetic peace offering. He takes a step back, personal space, forces his gaze away and makes a vague gesture in the direction of the bathroom. “Yeah, you, uh… you can go first.”
Cas's stare becomes one of bewilderment, like he doesn't understand the English language anymore, or like Dean has just offered him the last slice of pie or something.
“Thank you,” he finally says stiffly – his face almost without expression – and Dean nearly says there you are, that's the old Cas, kinda missed you, but the words he doesn't say don't even register until the bathroom door has already clicked shut behind Cas's back.
“You're welcome,” he says instead, quietly, much too quiet for Cas to hear.
---
When Cas comes out of the bathroom a short time later he smells vaguely of toothpaste and seems to have washed his face but not to have taken a shower. Dean sits on the bed closest to the exit. He has the TV on low, but isn't really paying attention to it. He turns it off, throws the remote on his bed, towards Cas.
Their eyes meet for a moment, then Cas moves towards the other bed.
“The bathroom is free,” he says, unnecessarily, and Dean almost says, “Thanks, Captain Obvious,” but the words get stuck in his throat, again.
Instead, he watches Cas fiddle with the sheets on the other bed – he's still fully dressed except for his shoes, and the sight makes something ache and constrict in Dean's chest.
He opens and closes his mouth a few times, still nervous, the barely three feet between them an endless mine field, but he pushes the words out, almost stumbling over them.
“Did you mean it? What you said. That you want to – ” He has to swallow. “That you want to live.”
Cas pauses in his ministrations for a moment, then sits down on the bed, pushes his feet under the covers. Looks over to Dean, and his expression, for once, is less guarded.
“Yes. I did.” He pauses. “I do.”
And Dean can't help it, he stares at Cas in silence, can't control what's on his face, can't help the sigh that escapes him, the sagging of his shoulders.
“Good,” he says, finally, “that's – that's good, Cas.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.” And Cas almost, almost smiles at that, the corners of his mouth tugging up, but then he lays down, turns his back on Dean.
“Good night, Dean.”
Dean sits there and looks at him for another moment, and answers, belatedly, “Good night, Cas,” and pushes himself to his feet on autopilot.
In the bathroom, he stares at his toothbrush for an eternity, but when he touches it, it's dry, so Cas didn't use it. He smelled of toothpaste though. He must have used his fingers.
Dean feels another rush of guilt at that, and a rise of heat to his face.
He puts the toothbrush down again, takes a shower first.
When he comes out of the bathroom, Cas seems to have fallen asleep already. His hushed breaths are clearly audible in the quiet hotel room. He hadn't even turned off the lights.
Dean shakes his head in amusement and shuts them off.
Cas has opened the window a bit. The night air coming in is fresh but cold, creeping on the floor, crawling up Dean's legs, despite him being fully clothed again.
He stares down at his bed for a moment, then rips the covers off, takes them over to Cas's bed and carefully, quietly, arranges them in a neat pile over Castiel's own. And then, he just stands there for another moment, staring down at Cas's sleeping form like a creep, but he can't help it. He just can't help it.
“'Night, Cas,” he repeats silently. He goes over to his own bed again, huddles down in his jacket, and closes his eyes.
---
Cas shakes him awake early the next morning, saying “I have to go to work,” and he looks at Dean kind of strangely when Dean sits up, scrubbing a hand down over his eyes, asking, “You have to?”
Cas pauses. “I have to.”
Dean nods sleepily. “Yeah, right, okay.”
Cas stares at him still, doesn't move an inch.
Dean frowns, suddenly awake. “What?” he says defensively.
Cas stares for another moment, then: “Nothing.” He goes back to his own bed and starts putting his shoes on.
Dean watches him as he does it, shaking his head, then gets up and moves towards the bathroom. When he's at the door he pauses, turns around again and starts to say, “Hey, you can use – ” at the same time that Cas says, “I'm already done in the bathroom.” They stare at each other for a beat, then Cas says, “I used your soap and your razor. I hope that wasn't against your wishes. You were still asleep.”
Dean doesn't say anything for a moment, then comes up with, “Yeah, Cas, that's uh, that's cool, no worries,” and without waiting for an answer he goes into the bathroom, closes the door behind him. He leans heavily on the sink for a long moment, just breathing. When he finally looks up, he catches sight of his expression in the mirror and grimaces.
The glass is still fogged over in places. Cas did take a shower this time. The smell of his – Dean's – soap still hangs in the air.
Dean takes another deep breath, then shakes his head at himself. His toothbrush is wet, but there's no way to tell if that's because Cas used it or because it's still wet from when Dean used it a few hours back. He hurries through his morning routine, manages to avoid looking at himself in the mirror again.
When he comes out, Cas is already standing by the door. Dean shoots him a glance, turns around to pick up his duffel bag, turns around again – but Cas has already opened the door, has already stepped through it.
4. If you ask, i don't mind kneeling (but if my knees hurt, i like to stand)
They sit there for a long, tense, silent moment after Dean says it, we can't work together, and Dean feels nauseous, toxic and dizzy with the words repeating themselves in the back of his mind.
Cas finally lets his gaze drop to the table, nods, says “I understand,” his tone (again) one of defeat, of disappointment. He gets up to leave, and Dean almost mirrors the movement but stops himself at the last minute. He starts to reach out with one hand, but stops that too. He says, “I'm sorry, it's, I mean – ” but Cas cuts him short.
“Dean,” he says, and that's his Angel of the Lord voice, and it still cuts deep as ever, but different now, too. “I understand,” he repeats, flatly, and turns away. That gets Dean on his feet, finally, and he stops Cas with a hand on his shoulder, makes him turn around once more.
“You keep us updated, okay? Don't want you falling off the grid again, all right?” He sounds pathetic even to his own ears, but he manages to hold Cas's eyes with his, waiting for his reply.
“If that helps you,” Cas finally answers, terse, and a new wave of guilt washes over Dean, turning his stomach again. He swallows, nods with a closed throat, lets his hand fall away from Cas's shoulder and looks away.
Contrary to his words, Cas remains standing there for another moment, his thousand-yard stare once more zeroed in on Dean. “There's something you're not telling me.”
Dean sighs and stares at the floor and doesn't say anything, and that's it then. They stand there for another few beats, and then Cas says, “I'll keep you 'updated' then,” and turns to leave. Even though doing so hurts, Dean watches his retreating back, then has to sit down to battle yet another wave of nausea threatening to crawl up his aching throat.
Later that night, back at the bunker, Sam makes some remarks about Cas's sudden disappearance – “Did he drive? I mean he was kind of hammered, right?” – but when Dean only answers half-heartedly, distracted and clearly short-tempered, his brother apparently gives up and goes to sleep. Dean, for his part, lies in the dark for hours, even as his eyes burn and a kind of fever grips him.
In the morning, his throat hasn't stopped hurting, and Sam looks at him strangely, and his phone still says 0 Messages.
5. I know, I could not last very long at all (without you here to break my fall)
“Look at you,” Dean says when he catches sight of Cas. Cas in a trenchcoat, looking just like he used to and yet different, and he can't help it, the brief smile, the brief flaring of warmth, of familiarity, on a day where everything else has turned to shit, all tables turned and no going back.
Later, though, his walls finally fall down, his defenses crumbling under his hands like so much dirt and dust. That's his brother over there, screaming in pain, and he –
“I can't,” he says brokenly, “Cas, I just can't anymore, I – ” And his throat constricts around the words, his stomach pins and needles; it's like he can't even feel his legs anymore, can't hear anything except the rushing in his ears, and – and then, Cas is there. He's just there.
“It's not him,” Cas says quietly, and he steps behind Dean, puts his arms around him, holds him up with more-than-human strength. “It's not Sam, Dean. Dean.”
But all Dean can do is sag against him, lean back in his strength for a moment, just one moment. He's sobbing quietly, shaking with it, but the tears won't come.
Hours later – hours that feel like days, like years, like the decades down in the pit – Dean sits alone in the Impala in the dark in another dirty parking lot of another no-name hotel. He arrived here minutes, maybe hours ago, but he stays where he is, can't get his body to move.
His phone is blinking at him in the dark.
He picks it up, clicks Delete All Messages without looking, then lies back down, stares at the dark above him and tries to breathe evenly.
6. So I won't let the flowers grow into the deep below (Oh, would you forget me now?)
Three days after that hostage disaster with Metatron and Gadreel (it's Gadreel now; Ezekiel, like so many other things, had been a lie), Dean wakes and all that registers for a few seconds is the ceiling above. He sits up, frowns at the wall. He isn't tired, and yet his eyes feel like they've been open for days, his bones and muscles aching. His stomach feels empty, but he isn't hungry. Hasn't been, for days maybe.
He drags a hand down his face, over his eyes, takes a deep breath. Nothing changes.
He stares at his right hand, fighting against the tremble, beating and beating down the urge to make a fist.
Later, they're on a wendigo hunt two states over. It's rainy, and cold, and messy, mud and dirt everywhere, there are trees, and thorny underbrush, and it's getting darker by the second, but Dean feels hot all over, alive with electricity. Someone, Sam, is shouting something in his ear, hands fisted in his jacket, trying to hold him back, and it doesn't make any sense. The monster is gonna escape into the woods if he doesn't make a move, now.
He twists free from Sam's grasp – easy, so easy – and runs after the thing in the dark, slipping through mud and stones and thorns, panting, heartbeat doubling then trebling, and he's alive, so alive. All the pain, the grief, the desperation – it's gone, washed away.
He lives again.
He can hear the thing breathing, and running, running from him, he can feel the air shifting on his skin when it moves, when it changes direction, he can smell the woods and the iron in the blood, and he – he sees, he sees it now. It's easy, it's all so easy.
From then on it's an intersecting kaleidoscope of instincts, images – there's black and grey, mushed green, a sudden, unnatural white, and then red, a lot of red. It's everywhere. Everywhere. He is red. His hands are red. It's all around him.
Sounds come back – someone's laughter, ringing in his ears, and a beat like thunder, deafening, choking, that drowns out everything else.
A long, long time later, there's another sound behind him, and he whips around to face it, and then pain overtakes him, and he cries out in anger and despair even as the darkness drags him down.
---
Dean wakes slowly, painfully. The first thing he sees is a floor that looks vaguely familiar. He blinks, and – his head flies back on instinct and he hits the wall, pain flaring up white-hot and overwhelming. He's in chains. He's alone. His head feels like it's splitting open right down the middle.
He can't see.
He tries to say something, but his throat doesn't manage anything past a kind of choked gurgle.
He hears crying in the distance, screams, but he can't make out from where they're coming. He tries, again, to speak, but the words are gone. Panic rises up, and then, he goes under again.
When he wakes again, it's with a start. He sits up fast, wide-eyed. He is – he is in his room. He isn't chained. He stares at his wrists and can't make sense of what he's seeing.
He feels something watching him, looks to his left – Cas is sitting there, facing his bed. Dean closes his eyes, opens them again. Cas is still there.
Dean is completely confused.
“What the hell happened?”
His voice is scratchy, rough. For a moment, Cas doesn't answer. It's then that Dean notices how tired he looks, how his eyes are shadowed and rimmed with red. Cold fear comes tunneling up Dean's throat, fighting the detachment that has already begun to spread over him again.
“Cas, what did I do? Why was I in the dungeon?”
Cas had gotten up to move towards the bed, but now he pauses with a frown.
“Dean, you never were in the dungeon.”
Dean stares at him, opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Cas stares back, takes another few steps towards him, slowly, almost carefully.
“You were on a wendigo hunt with Sam. When it disappeared into the woods, you went after it. We searched for you for four days.”
Dean stares at the bedsheets, tries to understand what Cas just told him. He swallows, wets his dry and cracked lips.
“Did I kill it?”
Cas doesn't say anything.
“Cas, did I kill it?”
“Yes. You did.”
Dean nods, but doesn't look up at him again. “Good. Least I got that done.”
“Dean – ”
“No, Cas,” Dean cuts in fiercely. “That's my job, and you know it. That is who I am.”
Cas inhales sharply, sits down on the bed. “Dean, that is not all you are.”
“Shut up, Cas.” Cas's words hurt, somewhere down inside. Dean's hands shake from the effort of holding them still.
“Dean,” Cas says again, sounding choked, his hands twisted in the sheets, “Dean, we will get you through this. Whatever darkness you throw yourself into, I will find you again.”
The words punch a laugh out of Dean, bitter and twisted, and he shakes his head, turns around and away.
It doesn't even register with him that he's crying until the tears are already sliding down his cheeks, down his neck. He balls his fists against the feeling until his nails break his skin, and he holds his breath until he falls asleep, tumbles down, and it's dark again.
a companion piece to this one can be found here
Disclaimer: Titles inspired by the following music
1. Moon – Foals
2. Milk & Black Spiders – Foals
3. Pink Rabbits – The National
4. All That Jazz – Echo and the Bunnymen
5. After Glow – Foals
6. Bad Habit – Foals