When You're a Stranger 4/4
When You're a Stranger (Part 4)
A/N: Okay, so this is kind of unresolved. I'll be posting an epilogue in the next couple of days. Please be gentle :P
"It's..." Damien swallows. Barnes steps carefully across the rug and takes his hand, and he laces their fingers together gratefully. It feels like the whole room is holding its breath; even the man on the couch has stilled for a moment. "Uh, it's kind of a long story."
Dean's still looking back and forth between them like he's not entirely sure they're really there, brow furrowed incredulously. "Yeah, I'll bet. We make it out of here alive, I'm gonna want to hear it."
And that, of course, has the effect of reminding everybody of what's outside. Demons. Sweet Jesus, Barnes was right. They're all going to die.
"Ow," Barnes says quietly, fingers twitching where Damien is crushing them.
Guiltily, he loosens his hold. "Sorry."
Dean glances at their joined hands, and for an instant something that's almost a smile finds its way onto his face. Then the man on the couch starts mumbling again and its like everybody else in the room just disappears.
"Hey, Cas." His voice is almost painfully gentle. "Hey, it's okay. We got you a translator, man, not that I'm gonna mind if you decide to, you know, speak English--"
"Okay," Bobby says abruptly. "Game plan. Sam, your arm--"
"I told you, it's fine."
"Don't give me that I'm fine bullshit, boy. You. Damien."
He starts a little. "What?"
"You come give me a hand re-setting his elbow. Barnes, you stay here, tell Dean what Castiel needs to keep us in one piece." When nobody moves, he sweeps a withering glare around the room. "Unless you'd all rather just sit here with our thumbs up our asses until those bastards break through?"
"Dean--" Sam starts.
Without looking away from his charge, Dean flicks a hand in his direction, a vague gesture that must mean something to Sam, because he makes a dissatisfied sound in the back of his throat and heads into the kitchen. Damien glances at Barnes, swallows hard, and lets go of his hand. His empty palm feels damp and too cold, but he squares his shoulders and follows Sam. He can hear the squeak of Bobby's wheels behind him, Barnes' nervous murmur and the low rasp of Dean's voice replying. The cluttered kitchen looks obscenely bright and still smells pleasantly of coffee.
Sam sinks onto a kitchen chair that sits in a square of yellow sunlight. His hair is sticking to his forehead and his breath sounds harsh.
"You don't look so good," Damien tells him, cautiously.
Sam blows out a quick breath that almost sounds like a laugh. "Thanks a lot."
"No, I mean, it's just--" He looks down at his hands, plump and soft and useless-looking compared to Sam's giant brown paws. "I've never set somebody's elbow before. I don't know what to do."
"You don't do anything," Bobby says, rolling into view. "You brace his arm and I set it. Grab his shoulder."
"Oh," Damien says. "Okay." Tentatively, he reaches out and grips the solid curve of Sam's shoulder. God, the guy's like Goliath, or something. Freaking huge.
"Tighter," Bobby orders, and Damien adjusts his grip. "Good. Sam, you ready?"
"Just get it over with," Sam says tightly, and Bobby grabs ahold of his arm, pulls and twists in a way that makes him bite out a vicious curse. Damien winces and looks away. He can feel muscles jumping under his palm, and then Sam swears again and sighs. "Jesus, Bobby, you're a sadist, you know that?"
"You're welcome," Bobby says sourly. "If you want--"
Before he can finish, a booming crack splits the air, a sound that reminds Damien obscurely of the time when he was twelve and his dad took him to see a demonstration of the B-2 Stealth Bomber. It made a noise just like that when it broke the sound barrier, and he doesn't know what that sound means now, but it can't be anything good.
"Shit," Sam says quietly. "Bobby--"
Bobby's face looks gray beneath his beard. "Yeah, they broke through. The house wards should hold, but--"
"Panic room?"
"No good. Last thing I had in there cracked the devil's trap and--"
There's a loud thud from the living room, and then the light just goes--wrong. Dark. Not like something is blocking it but like some kind of giant hand turned down a dimmer switch on the sun.
"God-damn motherfucking son of a bitch!" Dean's voice, rising to a sudden shout, and Sam is out of his chair and striding across the room, bad arm apparently forgotten. Damien follows him as far as the doorway and stops there, putting out a hand to hold onto the doorframe like it's going to keep him safe. This is nothing--nothing--like he imagined. He can't do anything. Here's these three tough demon-hunters straight out of a storybook--literally--and then there's him. And Barnes. They're so screwed.
The strange man--Castiel--is laying in a heap on the floor, hands gripping the sides of his head. There's fresh blood oozing between his fingers. Barnes is sitting cross-legged by his feet, looking dazed.
"Dean?" Sam says quietly. "What--"
Dean doesn't look up from where he's kneeling next to the man, and when he speaks his voice is tight. "Bobby, please tell me you have sage grass and an iron bowl."
"I look like a goddamn amateur to you? In the pantry."
Sam spins on his heel and heads back into the kitchen. Damien can hear him rummaging around, pots and pans clashing together with a sound that's too loud and bright for this oppressive silence.
There's another cracking sound, and the house shudders. Upstairs, something heavy crashes to the floor.
"Sam?" Dean calls. "Now would be a good time to hurry your ass up."
"Oh, you think so?" Sam says breathlessly, striding back into the room with a handful of pungent herbs in one hand and a heavy black bowl in the other. He sets both down in front of Dean. "I thought you were the one always telling me to stop and smell the roses. Do you have any idea what you're doing?"
"Not a clue," Dean says with grim good humor. He jerks a thumb at Barnes. "He does, though. Supposedly."
What?
"Blood of darkness and light," Barnes intones in a voice that doesn't sound anything like his own. He looks up, and his eyes slide over Damien without recognition. It's just like at the hospital, just like the past week, and it makes Damien want to scream but he can't make his mouth move.
Dean barely glances over as he pulls a wicked-looking blade out of his boot. "I'm guessing that means--"
"--me and Castiel," Sam says bleakly. "Right. Of course." He takes the knife from Dean and cuts a quick slice across the palm of his good hand, squeezing it so that blood dribbles down to pool in the bottom of the bowl. Dean repeats the process with an unresisting Castiel, runs a gentle thumb across the man's knuckles before he lets go.
"Lighter."
Sam starts digging through his pockets, but it's Bobby who comes up with one first. He throws it at Dean, who plucks it deftly out of the air without looking up. He flicks it on and holds the small flame against the bundle of herbs until it begins to smoke, then drops it into the bowl.
For a long, breathless moment, nothing happens. The pungent smoke winds up slowly, heavy in the dim air, and some small, hysterical part of Damien wants to burst out laughing at the picture they must make: six grown men huddled around a bowl of smoking herbs. Well. Four grown men. Castiel is still sprawled across the carpet like a broken doll, and Barnes' eyes are as wide and blank as two new coins. Damien squeezes his own eyes shut, trying hard to shake off the sickened chill, and when he opens them again the bowl is glowing.
Fire is his first thought, but this isn't like any firelight he's ever seen. It's white, cold and pure, radiating out from the metal bowl like a small sun. Growing, too, expanding to illuminate Dean's gaunt cheekbones, Sam's sweat-dark hair, the ragged brim of Bobby's baseball cap, the dusting of stubble beginning to shade Barnes' upper lip. Barnes' mouth is moving. That's the last thing he sees before the light takes him, and maybe he can hear the painful echo of an impossible voice, or maybe it's just a hallucination swooping down on him.
The light swallows everything, swallows Damien and casts him down into darkness.
***
"...mien? Damien? Damien, wake up, please wake up--"
Light. That's the first thing he notices, even through his eyelids. Sunlight, or something a lot like it.
"Are you sure he's okay? Are you--"
"Yes." The voice is unfamiliar, gravelly and deep. "He is not injured."
"Cas?" A thud, a shuffle, then, "Cas, I swear to God, if you ever pull something like that again I'm gonna--"
"Dean, are you--"
"Sammy? Is Bobby okay?"
"--don't you ask me yourself, boy, did you lose your manners along with the rest of your brain cells?"
Fingers are on his face, soft, slender fingers. Familiar. Barnes. Damien opens his eyes.
Barnes is looming over him, eyes dark and huge. He looks like he's gone ten rounds with a hurricane, and when he speaks his voice is cracking up the registers. "Damien?"
Damien tries out a smile on lips that feel like they're made out of Play-Dough. "Hi."
Anything else he might have said is muffled, because he's suddenly being kissed soundly. And that's really more than okay.
"Jesus Christ, I thought we were all dead," Barnes says when he pulls away. "Jesus Christ."
"Welcome to our life," says Dean from somewhere to Damien's left. He sounds like he was aiming for amused but ran out of energy halfway there. Damien gets his elbows under him and levers himself up into a sitting position. The living room is a disaster zone of shredded papers, cracked furniture, and broken glass. There's a black crater where the bowl was sitting, and the setting sun is casting bloody fingers across the floor.
Wait a second. He shakes his head, a little gingerly; it feels weirdly fragile, like it might come loose from its moorings and roll away if he isn't careful. "What happened?"
"We lost some time," says Barnes anxiously. "Most of the day, I think. I don't know. I mean, he was just talking--Castiel--and then--"
"--he mind-whammied you," says Dean. "Freaking angels, man. No manners."
"I apologize," says the gravelly voice. "It was necessary."
Damien blinks, looks around. Dean is leaning against the couch, head back against the seat cushions. Sam is on the floor next to him with an arm flung over his eyes. Bobby's in his wheelchair, head drooping like a tired horse's, and standing beside him is--huh.
It's the man he helped Dean carry in, but his skin is smooth and undamaged, his clothes neat and clean, not a trace of blood of grime. His dark hair is artfully tousled and he's surveying the demolished living room with an expression of detached interest.
"I'm taking the cleaning bill out of your hide," Bobby grumbles without lifting his head.
"I apologize," says the man again. "I did not expect them to catch on so quickly, or I would have given myself more time to escape."
"You are a shitty guardian angel," Dean says distinctly. "Can't even keep your own stupid skin in one piece. I want a refund."
An brief smile flickers across the man's ascetic face. "I did say that I had no plans of perching on your shoulder."
"Yeah, bang-up job with that," says Dean, but he's smiling too, eyes closed, exhaustion written into the lines of his blood-smeared face.
Barnes' hand spreads out warm and familiar against Damien's shoulder blade, an anchor of normal. "Are you okay?" he asks quietly.
Damien considers this very seriously. "No," he says at last, and Barnes lets out a surprised little meep of laughter.
"Yeah," he says. "Me neither."
"You need a beer," says Dean without opening his eyes. "I need a beer too. Cas?"
"I am not getting you a beer," Castiel says gravely, picking his way across the detritus on the floor to Dean. When he stops by the couch, Dean hooks an arm around his calf and leans his cheek against his knee.
"See what I mean? Shitty excuse for a guardian angel." His voice is muffled by the fabric of Castiel's trousers. "I want beer. Sammy, get me a beer."
"Screw you," Sam mumbles without moving his arm.
Castiel is looking at Damien, and Damien's never been so glad of the long bony line of Barnes' body against his side. The guy should look ridiculous, standing there in a tan trenchcoat amid the rubble with his head cocked bird-like and Dean hanging on to his leg like a tired child, but he doesn't. His eyes are vividly blue, and his expression is somehow both serene and intense. Like he's learning Damien just by looking at him; like he can see right through to to back of his skull. It makes Damien squirm in his seat.
"Stop staring," Dean murmurs. "Dude, we've talked about this. It freaks people out when you do that."
Castiel inclides his head, and Damien breathes out an involuntary sigh of relief. "I don't believe we've been introduced."
"What?" Dean finally looks up, bleary-eyed. "You turn the poor bastard into a pod person because you forgot how to speak English and now you want me to make introductions?"
"It would be polite."
"Yeah, 'cause I'm real big on that." Dean rolls his eyes. "Cas, this is Barnes and Damien. They saved my ass once, so be nice. Barnes, Damien, this is Castiel, angel on the lam. Now that we all know each other, can somebody please get me a beer?"
Part 3 Epilogue
A/N: Okay, so this is kind of unresolved. I'll be posting an epilogue in the next couple of days. Please be gentle :P
"It's..." Damien swallows. Barnes steps carefully across the rug and takes his hand, and he laces their fingers together gratefully. It feels like the whole room is holding its breath; even the man on the couch has stilled for a moment. "Uh, it's kind of a long story."
Dean's still looking back and forth between them like he's not entirely sure they're really there, brow furrowed incredulously. "Yeah, I'll bet. We make it out of here alive, I'm gonna want to hear it."
And that, of course, has the effect of reminding everybody of what's outside. Demons. Sweet Jesus, Barnes was right. They're all going to die.
"Ow," Barnes says quietly, fingers twitching where Damien is crushing them.
Guiltily, he loosens his hold. "Sorry."
Dean glances at their joined hands, and for an instant something that's almost a smile finds its way onto his face. Then the man on the couch starts mumbling again and its like everybody else in the room just disappears.
"Hey, Cas." His voice is almost painfully gentle. "Hey, it's okay. We got you a translator, man, not that I'm gonna mind if you decide to, you know, speak English--"
"Okay," Bobby says abruptly. "Game plan. Sam, your arm--"
"I told you, it's fine."
"Don't give me that I'm fine bullshit, boy. You. Damien."
He starts a little. "What?"
"You come give me a hand re-setting his elbow. Barnes, you stay here, tell Dean what Castiel needs to keep us in one piece." When nobody moves, he sweeps a withering glare around the room. "Unless you'd all rather just sit here with our thumbs up our asses until those bastards break through?"
"Dean--" Sam starts.
Without looking away from his charge, Dean flicks a hand in his direction, a vague gesture that must mean something to Sam, because he makes a dissatisfied sound in the back of his throat and heads into the kitchen. Damien glances at Barnes, swallows hard, and lets go of his hand. His empty palm feels damp and too cold, but he squares his shoulders and follows Sam. He can hear the squeak of Bobby's wheels behind him, Barnes' nervous murmur and the low rasp of Dean's voice replying. The cluttered kitchen looks obscenely bright and still smells pleasantly of coffee.
Sam sinks onto a kitchen chair that sits in a square of yellow sunlight. His hair is sticking to his forehead and his breath sounds harsh.
"You don't look so good," Damien tells him, cautiously.
Sam blows out a quick breath that almost sounds like a laugh. "Thanks a lot."
"No, I mean, it's just--" He looks down at his hands, plump and soft and useless-looking compared to Sam's giant brown paws. "I've never set somebody's elbow before. I don't know what to do."
"You don't do anything," Bobby says, rolling into view. "You brace his arm and I set it. Grab his shoulder."
"Oh," Damien says. "Okay." Tentatively, he reaches out and grips the solid curve of Sam's shoulder. God, the guy's like Goliath, or something. Freaking huge.
"Tighter," Bobby orders, and Damien adjusts his grip. "Good. Sam, you ready?"
"Just get it over with," Sam says tightly, and Bobby grabs ahold of his arm, pulls and twists in a way that makes him bite out a vicious curse. Damien winces and looks away. He can feel muscles jumping under his palm, and then Sam swears again and sighs. "Jesus, Bobby, you're a sadist, you know that?"
"You're welcome," Bobby says sourly. "If you want--"
Before he can finish, a booming crack splits the air, a sound that reminds Damien obscurely of the time when he was twelve and his dad took him to see a demonstration of the B-2 Stealth Bomber. It made a noise just like that when it broke the sound barrier, and he doesn't know what that sound means now, but it can't be anything good.
"Shit," Sam says quietly. "Bobby--"
Bobby's face looks gray beneath his beard. "Yeah, they broke through. The house wards should hold, but--"
"Panic room?"
"No good. Last thing I had in there cracked the devil's trap and--"
There's a loud thud from the living room, and then the light just goes--wrong. Dark. Not like something is blocking it but like some kind of giant hand turned down a dimmer switch on the sun.
"God-damn motherfucking son of a bitch!" Dean's voice, rising to a sudden shout, and Sam is out of his chair and striding across the room, bad arm apparently forgotten. Damien follows him as far as the doorway and stops there, putting out a hand to hold onto the doorframe like it's going to keep him safe. This is nothing--nothing--like he imagined. He can't do anything. Here's these three tough demon-hunters straight out of a storybook--literally--and then there's him. And Barnes. They're so screwed.
The strange man--Castiel--is laying in a heap on the floor, hands gripping the sides of his head. There's fresh blood oozing between his fingers. Barnes is sitting cross-legged by his feet, looking dazed.
"Dean?" Sam says quietly. "What--"
Dean doesn't look up from where he's kneeling next to the man, and when he speaks his voice is tight. "Bobby, please tell me you have sage grass and an iron bowl."
"I look like a goddamn amateur to you? In the pantry."
Sam spins on his heel and heads back into the kitchen. Damien can hear him rummaging around, pots and pans clashing together with a sound that's too loud and bright for this oppressive silence.
There's another cracking sound, and the house shudders. Upstairs, something heavy crashes to the floor.
"Sam?" Dean calls. "Now would be a good time to hurry your ass up."
"Oh, you think so?" Sam says breathlessly, striding back into the room with a handful of pungent herbs in one hand and a heavy black bowl in the other. He sets both down in front of Dean. "I thought you were the one always telling me to stop and smell the roses. Do you have any idea what you're doing?"
"Not a clue," Dean says with grim good humor. He jerks a thumb at Barnes. "He does, though. Supposedly."
What?
"Blood of darkness and light," Barnes intones in a voice that doesn't sound anything like his own. He looks up, and his eyes slide over Damien without recognition. It's just like at the hospital, just like the past week, and it makes Damien want to scream but he can't make his mouth move.
Dean barely glances over as he pulls a wicked-looking blade out of his boot. "I'm guessing that means--"
"--me and Castiel," Sam says bleakly. "Right. Of course." He takes the knife from Dean and cuts a quick slice across the palm of his good hand, squeezing it so that blood dribbles down to pool in the bottom of the bowl. Dean repeats the process with an unresisting Castiel, runs a gentle thumb across the man's knuckles before he lets go.
"Lighter."
Sam starts digging through his pockets, but it's Bobby who comes up with one first. He throws it at Dean, who plucks it deftly out of the air without looking up. He flicks it on and holds the small flame against the bundle of herbs until it begins to smoke, then drops it into the bowl.
For a long, breathless moment, nothing happens. The pungent smoke winds up slowly, heavy in the dim air, and some small, hysterical part of Damien wants to burst out laughing at the picture they must make: six grown men huddled around a bowl of smoking herbs. Well. Four grown men. Castiel is still sprawled across the carpet like a broken doll, and Barnes' eyes are as wide and blank as two new coins. Damien squeezes his own eyes shut, trying hard to shake off the sickened chill, and when he opens them again the bowl is glowing.
Fire is his first thought, but this isn't like any firelight he's ever seen. It's white, cold and pure, radiating out from the metal bowl like a small sun. Growing, too, expanding to illuminate Dean's gaunt cheekbones, Sam's sweat-dark hair, the ragged brim of Bobby's baseball cap, the dusting of stubble beginning to shade Barnes' upper lip. Barnes' mouth is moving. That's the last thing he sees before the light takes him, and maybe he can hear the painful echo of an impossible voice, or maybe it's just a hallucination swooping down on him.
The light swallows everything, swallows Damien and casts him down into darkness.
***
"...mien? Damien? Damien, wake up, please wake up--"
Light. That's the first thing he notices, even through his eyelids. Sunlight, or something a lot like it.
"Are you sure he's okay? Are you--"
"Yes." The voice is unfamiliar, gravelly and deep. "He is not injured."
"Cas?" A thud, a shuffle, then, "Cas, I swear to God, if you ever pull something like that again I'm gonna--"
"Dean, are you--"
"Sammy? Is Bobby okay?"
"--don't you ask me yourself, boy, did you lose your manners along with the rest of your brain cells?"
Fingers are on his face, soft, slender fingers. Familiar. Barnes. Damien opens his eyes.
Barnes is looming over him, eyes dark and huge. He looks like he's gone ten rounds with a hurricane, and when he speaks his voice is cracking up the registers. "Damien?"
Damien tries out a smile on lips that feel like they're made out of Play-Dough. "Hi."
Anything else he might have said is muffled, because he's suddenly being kissed soundly. And that's really more than okay.
"Jesus Christ, I thought we were all dead," Barnes says when he pulls away. "Jesus Christ."
"Welcome to our life," says Dean from somewhere to Damien's left. He sounds like he was aiming for amused but ran out of energy halfway there. Damien gets his elbows under him and levers himself up into a sitting position. The living room is a disaster zone of shredded papers, cracked furniture, and broken glass. There's a black crater where the bowl was sitting, and the setting sun is casting bloody fingers across the floor.
Wait a second. He shakes his head, a little gingerly; it feels weirdly fragile, like it might come loose from its moorings and roll away if he isn't careful. "What happened?"
"We lost some time," says Barnes anxiously. "Most of the day, I think. I don't know. I mean, he was just talking--Castiel--and then--"
"--he mind-whammied you," says Dean. "Freaking angels, man. No manners."
"I apologize," says the gravelly voice. "It was necessary."
Damien blinks, looks around. Dean is leaning against the couch, head back against the seat cushions. Sam is on the floor next to him with an arm flung over his eyes. Bobby's in his wheelchair, head drooping like a tired horse's, and standing beside him is--huh.
It's the man he helped Dean carry in, but his skin is smooth and undamaged, his clothes neat and clean, not a trace of blood of grime. His dark hair is artfully tousled and he's surveying the demolished living room with an expression of detached interest.
"I'm taking the cleaning bill out of your hide," Bobby grumbles without lifting his head.
"I apologize," says the man again. "I did not expect them to catch on so quickly, or I would have given myself more time to escape."
"You are a shitty guardian angel," Dean says distinctly. "Can't even keep your own stupid skin in one piece. I want a refund."
An brief smile flickers across the man's ascetic face. "I did say that I had no plans of perching on your shoulder."
"Yeah, bang-up job with that," says Dean, but he's smiling too, eyes closed, exhaustion written into the lines of his blood-smeared face.
Barnes' hand spreads out warm and familiar against Damien's shoulder blade, an anchor of normal. "Are you okay?" he asks quietly.
Damien considers this very seriously. "No," he says at last, and Barnes lets out a surprised little meep of laughter.
"Yeah," he says. "Me neither."
"You need a beer," says Dean without opening his eyes. "I need a beer too. Cas?"
"I am not getting you a beer," Castiel says gravely, picking his way across the detritus on the floor to Dean. When he stops by the couch, Dean hooks an arm around his calf and leans his cheek against his knee.
"See what I mean? Shitty excuse for a guardian angel." His voice is muffled by the fabric of Castiel's trousers. "I want beer. Sammy, get me a beer."
"Screw you," Sam mumbles without moving his arm.
Castiel is looking at Damien, and Damien's never been so glad of the long bony line of Barnes' body against his side. The guy should look ridiculous, standing there in a tan trenchcoat amid the rubble with his head cocked bird-like and Dean hanging on to his leg like a tired child, but he doesn't. His eyes are vividly blue, and his expression is somehow both serene and intense. Like he's learning Damien just by looking at him; like he can see right through to to back of his skull. It makes Damien squirm in his seat.
"Stop staring," Dean murmurs. "Dude, we've talked about this. It freaks people out when you do that."
Castiel inclides his head, and Damien breathes out an involuntary sigh of relief. "I don't believe we've been introduced."
"What?" Dean finally looks up, bleary-eyed. "You turn the poor bastard into a pod person because you forgot how to speak English and now you want me to make introductions?"
"It would be polite."
"Yeah, 'cause I'm real big on that." Dean rolls his eyes. "Cas, this is Barnes and Damien. They saved my ass once, so be nice. Barnes, Damien, this is Castiel, angel on the lam. Now that we all know each other, can somebody please get me a beer?"
Part 3 Epilogue