on the bright side, there isn't a bright side - 3
“Sam…”
“Yeah?”
“I do not understand the significance of the enchanted dustbins.”
“What?” Dean’s pretty sure by now that his brother must have a permanent kink in his back from the number of times he’s twisted around so that he can look at Cas while he answers one of his questions since eye contact is essential in creating a healthy and comfortable relationship or some shit like that. Even though this question is kind of… well, what the fuck?
Despite the fact that they’ve been on a straight, flat road for the past hour (these goddamn prairie states are so boring) and there hasn’t been another car in sight for ages, Dean glances in the rearview mirror. Mostly it’s just so he can see Cas, who is sitting in the back seat as per usual reading-oh, Christ. He should have guessed. It’s all Cas has been doing for the past few days, anyways, ever since Sam gave him the first book; and it just doesn’t seem fair to Dean, that in any decision they make it’ll be him against two Harry Potter fans.
“Oh, you mean way back at the start, with Mad-Eye Moody?” Cas slips a finger between the pages to hold his spot and nods; Dean is, frankly, surprised he doesn’t break a bone in doing so, since The Goblet of Fire looks to be approximately the size and weight of a large-ish brick. “Okay, yeah. It’s okay, I only got that bit on my third time. So basically Barty Crouch Jr. tries to break into his house to kidnap Moody, only Moody’s super paranoid from being an Auror so long so he ends up making a whole bunch of noise, which wakes up all the Muggles and alerts the Ministry and stuff. So Crouch has to change into Moody super fast and hide the real Moody, and then when the Ministry comes he makes some dustbins move around and says he heard an intruder. Which the Ministry has heard from him, like, five hundred times before so no one really pays much attention any more, and Crouch is safe.”
Cas nods with the air of someone being given a detailed explanation for Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and goes back to reading. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to him,” Dean tells Sam resentfully. “If you convince him to go to ComicCon or something with you I swear will legitimately clobber you to death with that book.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault he likes it. I just gave him the book,” says Sam smugly.
“Whatever. You’re his enabler.”
“Seriously, Dean? It’s Harry Potter, not cocaine.”
Not, unfortunately, that Cas’s disgusting geekiness has done anything to get rid of the BFB problem; so just to add insult to injury, Dean has to admit to himself for what is probably the first time in his life that he is lusting after a fanboy. Gross. Except not actually, since to his horror he occasionally finds himself wondering if Cas would be into role-playing at all, because he could definitely get behind (like, literally behind) the idea of Cas in one of those slutty school-girl uniforms, or-
So his life has come to this. It’s just sad, really.
Also, for some reason now he can’t stop picturing Cas dressed up as an owl. Which is weird and also not a good thing to mention around Cas, since last time he brought up the subject of wings Cas looked like he was about to burst into tears. But mostly it’s just weird.
Aside from any bird-related fantasies though (seriously, what the fuck), Dean can proudly say he’s got the BFB situation pretty much under control. Well-he can proudly say it inside his head, at least, since it’s one of those take-it-to-your-grave secrets (and thanks to the Apocalypse, he may not have to wait very long for that). And by “pretty much under control” all he can really say is that he hasn’t tried to undress Castiel in his sleep during those not-at-all-awkward nights when they have to share a bed. But still. It could be worse. The one good thing about the Apocalypse, besides the aforementioned fact that he might not have to keep his secret crush a secret much longer, is that he, Sam, and Cas are so busy rushing around trying to hold the world together that there isn’t a whole lot of time to think about much else.
Take, for instance, the kraken. Despite the fact that all lore found on the creature states clearly that it ought to lurk in the depths of the seas off the coast of Norway, the big ugly tentacle-y thing has apparently decided to join the Apocalyptic monster party by taking up residence in a lake in upstate New York. Clearly it’s either a baby or some sort of teacup variety, because it’s only about the size of a house; even so, that’s really frigging huge when you take into account that pretty much every inch of it is lethal in some way or another. As Dean gets slammed into a cliff-face for the sixth (or maybe seventh or maybe eighth and it’s reached the point where he can’t remember what number comes next) time, head ringing and vision going funny and every part of his body screaming in agony, he concludes that those Norwegians must be able to crush fucking boulders with their teeth if bigger versions of this vicious bastard are what they deal with on a regular basis.
“Hurry the fuck up, you guys!” he wheezes to Sam and Cas, who are both locked in heated battle with the rest of the thing’s arms from the shore. Sam’s had the idea to burn any mangled stumps where they’ve managed to hack tentacles off to prevent them from growing back, the way Heracles did with the Hydra; which is actually a pretty good idea except for the fact that it takes a chainsaw going at full power a solid five minutes to cut through one of those rubbery appendages, and that’s only provided the kraken is thoughtful enough to hold relatively still. They managed to get three off before it grabbed Dean, and Cas and Sam are each working away at a fourth and fifth, but it hasn’t really slowed the beast down much. All that’s happened, really, is that the lake is now full of black blood and scorched flesh and somewhere at the bottom a few huge limbs. So much for preserving the natural beauty of state parks.
“We’re trying! Just hang on, okay?” Sam shouts back. His head jerks away, eyes and mouth squeezed tightly shut, as the blade of the saw sinks a couple of inches further to unleash a particularly nasty spray of dark goo. A few inches more and the arm is off entirely, dropping into the lake with a mighty splash; Sam promptly blow-torches the stump until the grey-pink skin chars black, and the creatures remaining arms (including the one currently attempting to squeeze Dean’s internal organs into jelly) thrash wildly as it lets out a roar of pain. And maybe Dean is just so out of it he’s seeing doubles, but it looks like the thing’s still got just as many limbs as it did when they started. Wonderful. He’s going to die again.
“This isn’t working!” Sam yells to Cas. Dean would roll his eyes-no shit, Sherlock-only they feel like they’re about to pop out of his head.
Cas is bleeding and bruised and holding his weight in a way that says he’s probably sprained his left ankle pretty badly. He must be scared out of his mind since he can actually hurt now, he can actually die or at least infuriated by how weak he is without his angelic powers; but Dean has to hand it to him, because he looks just as calm as he did in the barn that first time they met. “So what now?” he calls back, still grimly hacking away at the nearest arm.
Sam ducks a wild swipe, and after that Dean doesn’t see much. His head cracks against the stone behind him once again, splotches of darkness pop in front of his eyes to obscure almost his entire field of vision, everything sounds like it’s coming from a very long ways away, and even though he knows that ought to have hurt like hell his nerve endings have apparently had enough and are just going to pack it in right now. He knows he needs to stay conscious, which he’s somehow, miraculously, managing to pull off; until he tries to breath in and instead of air his mouth fills with water.
Maybe Sam and Cas have succeeded in killing the kraken, or maybe the son-of-a-bitch has simply lost interest in Dean and decided to let go. Either way he’s in the lake, choking ineffectively on the grimy liquid as it starts to fill his lungs. Somewhere in the very back corners of his mind he registers that he’s free from the tentacle’s grip, and also that he’s drowning so he should probably start swimming; but aside from the fact that none of his limbs want to respond to his commands his head is so fucked over he can’t even tell which way is up anymore so for all he knows he’ll just be swimming further away from the surface.
He’s heard that drowning is supposed to be one of the worst ways to die. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s just that dying kind of sucks in general. But to someone who’s had his body torn to shreds by hellhounds, who’s suffered forty years of torture in Hell, who’s been dragged back out of the Pit only to be forced to try and clean up a world determined to drive itself to destruction, drowning is actually kind of… nice. Peaceful. There isn’t even any panic; his brain has been bashed around too much for that. He’s sorry to leave Sam, sorry to leave Cas, but he’s so, so tired, and the last few clear spots in his vision are hazing over so why bother fighting anymore-
Except suddenly someone is pounding at his chest, and someone else is shouting at him or it might be the same person or it might be two people at once, he can’t really tell. “Dean? Dean? Can you hear me? Come on, Dean, you can’t do this to me, not again, just fucking say something you fucking asshole-”
He wants to yell at them to shut up because I’m tired, I want to rest; but when he opens his mouth all that happens is that he jerks over onto his side to vomit up mouthful after mouthful of gross-tasting lake water. After which movement of any sort takes far too much effort so he just lies face down in the grass, kind of nice grass actually, really nice grass actually, in fact this grass is so nice he would take it out for dinner and let it share his pie and then take it home and make sweet passionate love to this grass and then-
-and then he passes out. Which is probably a good thing.
At some point he kind of wakes up, just enough to tell that he’s in a car and his head is in someone’s lap. Whoever the lap belongs to is stroking his forehead, brushing his short, damp hair away from his face. The way his mom used to do when he was little, when he was sick or had a nightmare or whatever. He knows he’s supposed to be too old for that sort of thing now but it’s soothing, comforting, and he doesn’t want her to stop. He’d tell her that, and a whole lot more besides, if only he could remember how to work his vocal chords again. She doesn’t stop, though. Mary was always good at guessing what he was thinking. He passes out again to the feel of her hand on his forehead.
The next time he wakes up he’s in bed back at their motel. There is no sign of Mary because, he’s now lucid enough to remember, she is dead. Sam, however, he can see passed out fully dressed on the bed beside his; and Cas, gorgeous Cas, is sitting in a chair on the other side of him, wearing the Superman t-shirt Sam got Dean for his birthday one year as a joke. Even though Cas is leaner than Dean the old shirt is stretched tight across his chest, which means Dean probably wouldn’t fit into it at all, anymore. He guesses the only reason Cas is wearing it is that they’ve been too busy looking after him to get around to doing laundry-either that or Sam’s got him hooked on comic books now, too. Dean really hopes it’s the first option.
“Hello, Dean,” says Cas. “How is your recovery process fairing?”
Dean coughs to try and clear his throat. It hurts. A lot. “Fantastic,” he croaks. “You?”
“I’m well, thank you. My ankle took only two days to heal, which Sam said was very lucky. He bruised three ribs and we both received a number of cuts and abrasions, but by now we’re healed, for the most part.” Though it’s almost unbelievable to have escaped something as huge as the kraken with so few injuries, Cas is frowning in a less-than-pleased way, and before Dean can ask what’s wrong he adds, “These human bodies are extremely fragile. I didn’t realize they would damage so easily, or take so long to repair themselves.”
“Sorry to break it to you, but that’s life.” Dean’s attempt to chuckle at Cas’s disgruntlement turns into a grunt of pain as his chest protests the action. Great. What’s the use of being alive if he can’t even laugh?
“It would appear so,” Cas agrees grudgingly. “At any rate, the kraken was destroyed. Sam threw an explosive device into its mouth and the whole thing exploded.”
“Wow. I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified. Or grossed out. That sounds nasty.”
“It did make an extremely large mess, if that’s what you’re referring to.”
They’re both quiet for a moment. Dean debates using his unstable mental state as an excuse to ask Cas to get into bed with him, but ultimately decides against it; he’s too sore to try anything fun, so the best he can hope for would be some girly cuddling shit from which his dignity might never recover.
“Hey, Cas?”
“Yes?”
“Remember that time I almost drowned?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty funny, huh?”
“Not really,” says Cas, and for the first time Dean realizes that Sam may not have been the only one scared of losing him. Before he has time to consider this, however, the monumental effort required to hold such a lengthy conversation catches up with him, and he’s asleep again.
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“Yeah?”
“I do not understand the significance of the enchanted dustbins.”
“What?” Dean’s pretty sure by now that his brother must have a permanent kink in his back from the number of times he’s twisted around so that he can look at Cas while he answers one of his questions since eye contact is essential in creating a healthy and comfortable relationship or some shit like that. Even though this question is kind of… well, what the fuck?
Despite the fact that they’ve been on a straight, flat road for the past hour (these goddamn prairie states are so boring) and there hasn’t been another car in sight for ages, Dean glances in the rearview mirror. Mostly it’s just so he can see Cas, who is sitting in the back seat as per usual reading-oh, Christ. He should have guessed. It’s all Cas has been doing for the past few days, anyways, ever since Sam gave him the first book; and it just doesn’t seem fair to Dean, that in any decision they make it’ll be him against two Harry Potter fans.
“Oh, you mean way back at the start, with Mad-Eye Moody?” Cas slips a finger between the pages to hold his spot and nods; Dean is, frankly, surprised he doesn’t break a bone in doing so, since The Goblet of Fire looks to be approximately the size and weight of a large-ish brick. “Okay, yeah. It’s okay, I only got that bit on my third time. So basically Barty Crouch Jr. tries to break into his house to kidnap Moody, only Moody’s super paranoid from being an Auror so long so he ends up making a whole bunch of noise, which wakes up all the Muggles and alerts the Ministry and stuff. So Crouch has to change into Moody super fast and hide the real Moody, and then when the Ministry comes he makes some dustbins move around and says he heard an intruder. Which the Ministry has heard from him, like, five hundred times before so no one really pays much attention any more, and Crouch is safe.”
Cas nods with the air of someone being given a detailed explanation for Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and goes back to reading. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to him,” Dean tells Sam resentfully. “If you convince him to go to ComicCon or something with you I swear will legitimately clobber you to death with that book.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault he likes it. I just gave him the book,” says Sam smugly.
“Whatever. You’re his enabler.”
“Seriously, Dean? It’s Harry Potter, not cocaine.”
Not, unfortunately, that Cas’s disgusting geekiness has done anything to get rid of the BFB problem; so just to add insult to injury, Dean has to admit to himself for what is probably the first time in his life that he is lusting after a fanboy. Gross. Except not actually, since to his horror he occasionally finds himself wondering if Cas would be into role-playing at all, because he could definitely get behind (like, literally behind) the idea of Cas in one of those slutty school-girl uniforms, or-
So his life has come to this. It’s just sad, really.
Also, for some reason now he can’t stop picturing Cas dressed up as an owl. Which is weird and also not a good thing to mention around Cas, since last time he brought up the subject of wings Cas looked like he was about to burst into tears. But mostly it’s just weird.
Aside from any bird-related fantasies though (seriously, what the fuck), Dean can proudly say he’s got the BFB situation pretty much under control. Well-he can proudly say it inside his head, at least, since it’s one of those take-it-to-your-grave secrets (and thanks to the Apocalypse, he may not have to wait very long for that). And by “pretty much under control” all he can really say is that he hasn’t tried to undress Castiel in his sleep during those not-at-all-awkward nights when they have to share a bed. But still. It could be worse. The one good thing about the Apocalypse, besides the aforementioned fact that he might not have to keep his secret crush a secret much longer, is that he, Sam, and Cas are so busy rushing around trying to hold the world together that there isn’t a whole lot of time to think about much else.
Take, for instance, the kraken. Despite the fact that all lore found on the creature states clearly that it ought to lurk in the depths of the seas off the coast of Norway, the big ugly tentacle-y thing has apparently decided to join the Apocalyptic monster party by taking up residence in a lake in upstate New York. Clearly it’s either a baby or some sort of teacup variety, because it’s only about the size of a house; even so, that’s really frigging huge when you take into account that pretty much every inch of it is lethal in some way or another. As Dean gets slammed into a cliff-face for the sixth (or maybe seventh or maybe eighth and it’s reached the point where he can’t remember what number comes next) time, head ringing and vision going funny and every part of his body screaming in agony, he concludes that those Norwegians must be able to crush fucking boulders with their teeth if bigger versions of this vicious bastard are what they deal with on a regular basis.
“Hurry the fuck up, you guys!” he wheezes to Sam and Cas, who are both locked in heated battle with the rest of the thing’s arms from the shore. Sam’s had the idea to burn any mangled stumps where they’ve managed to hack tentacles off to prevent them from growing back, the way Heracles did with the Hydra; which is actually a pretty good idea except for the fact that it takes a chainsaw going at full power a solid five minutes to cut through one of those rubbery appendages, and that’s only provided the kraken is thoughtful enough to hold relatively still. They managed to get three off before it grabbed Dean, and Cas and Sam are each working away at a fourth and fifth, but it hasn’t really slowed the beast down much. All that’s happened, really, is that the lake is now full of black blood and scorched flesh and somewhere at the bottom a few huge limbs. So much for preserving the natural beauty of state parks.
“We’re trying! Just hang on, okay?” Sam shouts back. His head jerks away, eyes and mouth squeezed tightly shut, as the blade of the saw sinks a couple of inches further to unleash a particularly nasty spray of dark goo. A few inches more and the arm is off entirely, dropping into the lake with a mighty splash; Sam promptly blow-torches the stump until the grey-pink skin chars black, and the creatures remaining arms (including the one currently attempting to squeeze Dean’s internal organs into jelly) thrash wildly as it lets out a roar of pain. And maybe Dean is just so out of it he’s seeing doubles, but it looks like the thing’s still got just as many limbs as it did when they started. Wonderful. He’s going to die again.
“This isn’t working!” Sam yells to Cas. Dean would roll his eyes-no shit, Sherlock-only they feel like they’re about to pop out of his head.
Cas is bleeding and bruised and holding his weight in a way that says he’s probably sprained his left ankle pretty badly. He must be scared out of his mind since he can actually hurt now, he can actually die or at least infuriated by how weak he is without his angelic powers; but Dean has to hand it to him, because he looks just as calm as he did in the barn that first time they met. “So what now?” he calls back, still grimly hacking away at the nearest arm.
Sam ducks a wild swipe, and after that Dean doesn’t see much. His head cracks against the stone behind him once again, splotches of darkness pop in front of his eyes to obscure almost his entire field of vision, everything sounds like it’s coming from a very long ways away, and even though he knows that ought to have hurt like hell his nerve endings have apparently had enough and are just going to pack it in right now. He knows he needs to stay conscious, which he’s somehow, miraculously, managing to pull off; until he tries to breath in and instead of air his mouth fills with water.
Maybe Sam and Cas have succeeded in killing the kraken, or maybe the son-of-a-bitch has simply lost interest in Dean and decided to let go. Either way he’s in the lake, choking ineffectively on the grimy liquid as it starts to fill his lungs. Somewhere in the very back corners of his mind he registers that he’s free from the tentacle’s grip, and also that he’s drowning so he should probably start swimming; but aside from the fact that none of his limbs want to respond to his commands his head is so fucked over he can’t even tell which way is up anymore so for all he knows he’ll just be swimming further away from the surface.
He’s heard that drowning is supposed to be one of the worst ways to die. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s just that dying kind of sucks in general. But to someone who’s had his body torn to shreds by hellhounds, who’s suffered forty years of torture in Hell, who’s been dragged back out of the Pit only to be forced to try and clean up a world determined to drive itself to destruction, drowning is actually kind of… nice. Peaceful. There isn’t even any panic; his brain has been bashed around too much for that. He’s sorry to leave Sam, sorry to leave Cas, but he’s so, so tired, and the last few clear spots in his vision are hazing over so why bother fighting anymore-
Except suddenly someone is pounding at his chest, and someone else is shouting at him or it might be the same person or it might be two people at once, he can’t really tell. “Dean? Dean? Can you hear me? Come on, Dean, you can’t do this to me, not again, just fucking say something you fucking asshole-”
He wants to yell at them to shut up because I’m tired, I want to rest; but when he opens his mouth all that happens is that he jerks over onto his side to vomit up mouthful after mouthful of gross-tasting lake water. After which movement of any sort takes far too much effort so he just lies face down in the grass, kind of nice grass actually, really nice grass actually, in fact this grass is so nice he would take it out for dinner and let it share his pie and then take it home and make sweet passionate love to this grass and then-
-and then he passes out. Which is probably a good thing.
At some point he kind of wakes up, just enough to tell that he’s in a car and his head is in someone’s lap. Whoever the lap belongs to is stroking his forehead, brushing his short, damp hair away from his face. The way his mom used to do when he was little, when he was sick or had a nightmare or whatever. He knows he’s supposed to be too old for that sort of thing now but it’s soothing, comforting, and he doesn’t want her to stop. He’d tell her that, and a whole lot more besides, if only he could remember how to work his vocal chords again. She doesn’t stop, though. Mary was always good at guessing what he was thinking. He passes out again to the feel of her hand on his forehead.
The next time he wakes up he’s in bed back at their motel. There is no sign of Mary because, he’s now lucid enough to remember, she is dead. Sam, however, he can see passed out fully dressed on the bed beside his; and Cas, gorgeous Cas, is sitting in a chair on the other side of him, wearing the Superman t-shirt Sam got Dean for his birthday one year as a joke. Even though Cas is leaner than Dean the old shirt is stretched tight across his chest, which means Dean probably wouldn’t fit into it at all, anymore. He guesses the only reason Cas is wearing it is that they’ve been too busy looking after him to get around to doing laundry-either that or Sam’s got him hooked on comic books now, too. Dean really hopes it’s the first option.
“Hello, Dean,” says Cas. “How is your recovery process fairing?”
Dean coughs to try and clear his throat. It hurts. A lot. “Fantastic,” he croaks. “You?”
“I’m well, thank you. My ankle took only two days to heal, which Sam said was very lucky. He bruised three ribs and we both received a number of cuts and abrasions, but by now we’re healed, for the most part.” Though it’s almost unbelievable to have escaped something as huge as the kraken with so few injuries, Cas is frowning in a less-than-pleased way, and before Dean can ask what’s wrong he adds, “These human bodies are extremely fragile. I didn’t realize they would damage so easily, or take so long to repair themselves.”
“Sorry to break it to you, but that’s life.” Dean’s attempt to chuckle at Cas’s disgruntlement turns into a grunt of pain as his chest protests the action. Great. What’s the use of being alive if he can’t even laugh?
“It would appear so,” Cas agrees grudgingly. “At any rate, the kraken was destroyed. Sam threw an explosive device into its mouth and the whole thing exploded.”
“Wow. I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified. Or grossed out. That sounds nasty.”
“It did make an extremely large mess, if that’s what you’re referring to.”
They’re both quiet for a moment. Dean debates using his unstable mental state as an excuse to ask Cas to get into bed with him, but ultimately decides against it; he’s too sore to try anything fun, so the best he can hope for would be some girly cuddling shit from which his dignity might never recover.
“Hey, Cas?”
“Yes?”
“Remember that time I almost drowned?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty funny, huh?”
“Not really,” says Cas, and for the first time Dean realizes that Sam may not have been the only one scared of losing him. Before he has time to consider this, however, the monumental effort required to hold such a lengthy conversation catches up with him, and he’s asleep again.
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