Proof of Existence, A Supernatural Fanfiction
Title: Proof of Existence
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2882
Characters: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Bobby, mentions Ruby
Genre: Gen
Warnings: eating disorders, language, descriptions of Hell, gore
Spoilers: Through Lazarus Rising, and some pretty general season 4 stuff. Basically if you know about Cas and Ruby, you're probably good to go.
Summary: Sequel to Rules for Hunting and All the Empty Spaces: It’s so human, so pathetically human that he can’t stop himself from doing it. Post-Hell Dean has all the old issues and more.
Wake up. Dig out of a grave. Water. Check scars. Eat. Throw up. Call Sam. Call Bobby.
Dean makes the list just after the wake up stage, before even fumbling for the lighter he knows will be in his pocket. This isn’t his first wake up call.
He’s dug out of his own grave a lot. Always in the same place in the middle of nowhere with a crooked little cross at the head, and it always gives him that little twitch of nostalgia. A cross is a place to be crucified, and he’s been through that enough it got boring, but sometimes he misses it because those were the early days, back when he didn’t know how bad things could really get.
Water is the first reality check. If it is cool and sweet and tastes just a little bit off since it doesn’t taste like sulfur, he gets a little pang of hope mixed with the sinking in his stomach. It could be real this time he refuses to think, because he knows water really means a more intricate agony.
The second reality check is for scars. If he doesn’t have any, he’s either really actually alive this time by some esoteric miracle, or he’s well and truly fucked. He pulls his shirt up and his stomach is smooth and flat and he can see it move with his breath, and fuck, but Alastair put a lot of work into this. Alastair is really more into disassembling than creating, and he’s done a remarkably patient job.
The hitch in his plan is the handprint on his shoulder, and he’s not sure what to make of it. It’s real this time he won’t let himself think, but this is certainly different. This is probably the point in the story where he branches from the usual to go down a new path, with a new trove of tortures waiting at the end.
He does the third reality check anyway. He eats the candy bar and it doesn’t taste like sulfur or charred flesh or congealed blood, so he finishes it and has another, while he packs up a bag full of snacks because even though this is absolutely not real this time, his stupid body is on autopilot like it’s actually alive and wants to keep being that way.
The earsplitting screeching is a new touch, but the glass raining down on top of him is remarkably cool and barely pricks his skin and c’mon you bastard, I’m waiting because he’s been through this routine so many times and it’s never anything but set up for a fall.
The fourth check. He eats two more candy bars, then shoves his fingers down his throat while he leans against the side of the ramshackle building. His stomach clenches, heaves, and nothing happens, and then all of a sudden it does, candy and water coming out in reverse and splattering on his boots and he fucking wants to do it all over again because this shit is real.
Now he can call Sam, and he dials, the phony chirp of each tone echoing in his ear, and he almost isn’t afraid that Alastair’s voice will answer. Almost.
It’s the phone lady, that automated female voice that answers all the calls that won’t go through, and he wants to cry because even though the phone lady isn’t human, she’s not a demon, and for that, he could marry her.
He calls Bobby and Bobby doesn’t believe he’s alive, but that’s okay, because he didn’t either, not at first, and he drives hundreds of miles, stops every fifty to throw up just to believe it all over again. He stands in Bobby’s house. He slices himself with silver and it doesn’t burn. He’s doused in sweet, sulfur-free water and there’s no hiss or steam or anything and if a couple of quick tears mix in with that holy water, no one has to know.
Dean showers, tracks Sam’s phone, eats dinner with Bobby, and then he throws up again just to remind himself that this time he’s really human.
-SPN-
Sam is so different, so much bigger and stronger and harder around the edges, and he fairly crushes Dean when they hug, but Dean holds on just as tight, hooking his chin over Sam’s shoulder and feeling his little brother breathe.
In the next moment, Sam is pulling the amulet over his head, placing it so gently in Dean’s palm that it doesn’t feel real. It settles on his chest, a delicate weight against his sternum and he loves it for not being a crushing blow.
Sam is careful like that now, like he knows he’s so much bigger than Dean, but it’s more than that. Like Dean is this fragile little thing that Sam could break if he jostles him or says the wrong thing. Those goddamn puppy dog eyes are three-quarters of Sam’s personal style nowadays, at least when he’s looking at his brother.
Dean hates it, hates how strong and determined and fucking powerful Sam is, because he’s going the wrong way and Dean wants to tell him it’s okay to be soft and weak and human and uncertain. That there are mountains of skull and bone, cemented with brain, and the only way not to shatter on the all the evil in the world is to be soft enough to withstand, to be human enough to fall and tumble down to the depths and then get back up.
He doesn’t want Sam to know Hell, though, so he keeps his mouth shut.
Except at night when Sam is asleep or gone or anywhere else, and then he throws up as much as he can because his renewed body is hard and strong and undamaged. He misses the twinge in his back and the shoulder that popped out and the scar at the hollow of his throat where he almost died but didn’t. He misses the things he thought were weak, because now he feels so strong and helpless.
-SPN-
He couldn’t throw up in Hell, no matter how hard he tried. Alastair forced his own raw fat down his throat, poured bile and spinal fluid and liquefied eyes directly into his stomach and it stayed as long as it wanted to. If Alastair wanted it back, he pulled Dean’s stomach out through his mouth, and took it.
It’s so human, so pathetically human that he can’t stop himself from doing it. That he can feel empty and fill that space. That he can feel full and empty it. That none of his body is trapped on wires and hooks, twisting and leaping into the fire at anyone’s will but his own.
He throws up every morning, goes from nightmare to heaving in less than five seconds, and when he’s done he’s calm and comfortable in his skin again, and it’s all okay.
“Dean,” his brother said the first few times it happened, the world trailing into nothing, puppy dog eyes taking up Sam’s whole face. Sam patted him on the back and gave him water and comfort and asked if he wanted to stay at the motel, sleep, should I drive, can I get you anything, please just let me help.
Dean didn’t know how to say that this was all the help he needed, so he didn’t say anything, just shrugged it off and then Sam stopped asking and Dean wished he could shrug it back on, like the warm comfort of a hoodie, but nothing of Sam’s really fits the same way anymore.
-SPN-
Sam has pulled him out of this particular fire several times already.
They have a routine. Dean makes himself another list.
Throw up until it stops feeling better. Then throw up until there’s blood. When there’s blood, tell Sam.
Sam makes the list from there. It usually involves set eating times, activities after meals. It involves Sam choosing food for Dean, Sam giving him gum after every meal to help him forget he ate. It involves Dean bitching that he’s not a child and then doing as he’s told, Dean doing things back for Sam like always getting coffee and his favorite candy and sometimes letting him play girly emo crap on the motel radios when he’s sure Baby can’t hear the blasphemy.
This time the order is all wrong. He throws up to feel better, but it never stops feeling better. And then there’s blood, but it’s just a little. Then there’s blood and it’s more than a little, but it still feels better, so fuck it, it’s not time to tell Sam.
There used to be an intermediate step between seeing blood and telling Sam. Sam steps in. Sam tells Dean he knows what’s going on, tells Dean he’s going to help, tells Dean it’s going to be okay without actually using those words. And then Dean tells Sam that there may have been blood but don’t make a big thing about it, bitch.
Dean’s waiting for Sam to step in. Sam steps out. Out of the motel room, out of the Impala, out of Dean’s life, slowly but surely.
Dean doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t like this dance they do, and he may be stuck with it, but Sam certainly isn’t.
-SPN-
They’re at Bobby’s for a few days because Baby needs some love and attention, Dean needs to keep Sam away from Ruby, Sam needs to borrow a book, and Bobby needs someone to sleep on his couch and drink his beer.
Bobby finds Dean sitting on his ass in the dirt, leaning against Baby’s front tire, shaking like he might fly apart. He doesn’t even have the decency to fake surprise.
But he does sit down on the dusty earth next to Dean and hand him a plate holding a sandwich, potato salad and even some carrots. The kind of lunch he used to eat at Bobby’s as a kid, out here on this very earth, face and clothes streaked with dirt and grease, but hands cleaned to Bobby’s exacting specifications.
“Haven’t seen you eat in three days,” Bobby says. He’s looking out across the yard, eyeing the occasional car, but never looking at Dean.
“Been a while, I guess,” Dean says, like he doesn’t know exactly the last time he ate and puked.
“Looking kind of skinny,” Bobby says, still not quite looking at Dean.
Dean doesn’t know what to say. There’s no pretending with Bobby, and what is there to say when you both already know? He picks up a carrot stick and twists it in his fingers.
Rumsfeld peers around the fender of the Impala, eyes Dean’s plate, then plants himself right in front of Dean, nose an inch from the plate.
“You should eat that, ‘fore Rumsfeld here eats it and you,” Bobby says idly. Dean snorts and the dog licks half of his own face in a show of obvious desire.
It takes almost an hour, but Dean finishes his plate, Bobby sitting shoulder to shoulder with him the whole time. Dean tosses the last bite of sandwich to Rumsfeld and wipes his hands on his jeans. The dog makes a sort of vacuuming noise like he’s inhaling the food and Dean is a little jealous of just how easy eating could be.
“Don’t tell Sam.”
“He doesn’t know?” Bobby looks at Dean and raises his eyebrows. Dean shakes his head.
“We’ve got a lot of other shit going on that’s more important than me being a fuck-up.”
It’s Bobby’s turn to shake his head. “Kid, you been through enough, I’d be more worried if you weren’t a little fucked up.”
-SPN-
It’s more than a little blood.
Kneeling in the grimy bathroom of their latest motel room, middle of the day but Sam is never fucking here anyway, and it’s more than a little blood.
It’s actually kind of more than more than a little blood. It might be, Dean thinks, more like a lot of blood.
A lot of blood and an intense pain somewhere between his heart and his stomach, like a cross between the times Alastair tied his esophagus in a bow and the times he ripped it out entirely.
He’s still puking blood, everything red, but starting to fade to black at the edges, the blood not so colourful, his heart in his ears but not nearly as loud as it should be.
There’s warm, wet blood trailing down his chin and soaking into his shirt as he falls back onto the tile, his head knocking against the floor with a thud that lets a little white override the red for a moment.
He chokes a little, gargles thick red, coughs, gags some more. Wheezes out a breath that sounds a little like “Cas,” and inhales a sharp breath that sounds like “help.”
And the angel is there, his face upside down over Dean’s where he crouches at the bathroom door, one hand coming toward him to touch his forehead and it burns a little, like the handprint on his shoulder, the alternate path, and Dean blinks his eyes open to see no red at all.
He struggles to sit, his back twinging just a little, and lurches his way up to standing. His stomach feels funny, like there’s still blood in it. Maybe blood, maybe something else, and either way he wants it out and fuck, he’s so far over his head.
“Dean,” Cas says, this solemn, omniscient voice and Dean closes his eyes and pictures the steps in his head wake up, dig, water, check, eat, throw up like just by thinking hard enough he can take all of this back, start over. When he opens his eyes, Cas is still standing there, impenetrable blue stare in place.
Dean pushes past him and sits on the corner of the bed, head in his hands, and Cas sits in a chair opposite him, just watching.
“It’s just something I do, Cas,” he finally says.
“I know,” the angel says. “But I do not understand.”
“What’s to understand?” Dean says roughly. “I’m a pathetic fuck-up and I throw up to feel better. It’s stupid.”
Cas frowns, tilts his head forward a little, looking more stern. “I repaired your body,” he says. “I did not repair it for you to keep hurting yourself.”
Dean’s trembling, his whole body shivering there on the edge of an unfamiliar bed in a motel whose name he forgot and he suddenly very powerfully just wants to go home, just go where things actually make sense, and he shakes even harder when he realizes the only place he can think of is Hell.
Cas appears in an instant at his side, one hand resting lightly on his back, warm and familiar though he can count on one hand the number of times the angel has touched him.
“It’s human,” Dean says and thinks maybe Cas will leave it alone, will believe that all humans do this, that he won’t realize what Dean really means. But angels are actually pretty fucking perceptive when they want to be.
“You have been saved, Dean,” Cas says. “I raised you, repaired you, restored you. You have been chosen for great things, none of them demonic.”
Dean shrugs just a little, and Cas shifts his hand, fits it over the scar on Dean’s shoulder, the flesh heating just more than would be natural, like Cas is applying a tiny bit of grace to an old wound. The alternate path, the first difference in a long line of the same old anguish.
“My hand left a mark on you,” Cas murmurs, as the flesh continues to warm. “Because you are mortal, delicately-made, because you were not meant to withstand this type of power.” He pauses, the scar under his hand almost hot enough to burn again before he speaks. “Because you are human.”
Cas’ hand drops from his shoulder and Dean feels the warmth dissipate, not out into the room, but through his body.
“You are special, Dean Winchester,” Castiel says, standing up. “You don’t need this anymore.”
And he’s gone.
-SPN-
Sam somehow knows. He’s there, reminding Dean to eat, making him watch a whole movie after dinner, or drive until he’s sure it’s too late to be sick. He doesn’t say anything about it, but sometimes he shakes his head when he catches sight of Dean’s ribs.
There are no puppy dog eyes, no earnest offerings of peanut M&Ms and promises that it will be okay.
Dean holds up his end too. Coffee. Sam’s foods. Sam gets to pick the music. Dean toys with the idea of reinstalling that iPod jack, but even his newly repaired heart can’t take it.
There aren’t any mutterings of bitch or jerk and Sam still leaves every night, but now it’s after the movie. He still thinks Dean doesn’t know.
None of it quite fits anymore. His skin itches and he needs and he sometimes smells sulfur just driving down the highway, windows up and music pounding, and he’s afraid it could be him.
But Dean has something new, something to hem him in so he fits in his world again.
He makes a new list.
Wake up. Water. Check scars. Eat.
End.
Continue on to The Other Half of the Equation, set between seasons five and six.
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2882
Characters: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Bobby, mentions Ruby
Genre: Gen
Warnings: eating disorders, language, descriptions of Hell, gore
Spoilers: Through Lazarus Rising, and some pretty general season 4 stuff. Basically if you know about Cas and Ruby, you're probably good to go.
Summary: Sequel to Rules for Hunting and All the Empty Spaces: It’s so human, so pathetically human that he can’t stop himself from doing it. Post-Hell Dean has all the old issues and more.
Wake up. Dig out of a grave. Water. Check scars. Eat. Throw up. Call Sam. Call Bobby.
Dean makes the list just after the wake up stage, before even fumbling for the lighter he knows will be in his pocket. This isn’t his first wake up call.
He’s dug out of his own grave a lot. Always in the same place in the middle of nowhere with a crooked little cross at the head, and it always gives him that little twitch of nostalgia. A cross is a place to be crucified, and he’s been through that enough it got boring, but sometimes he misses it because those were the early days, back when he didn’t know how bad things could really get.
Water is the first reality check. If it is cool and sweet and tastes just a little bit off since it doesn’t taste like sulfur, he gets a little pang of hope mixed with the sinking in his stomach. It could be real this time he refuses to think, because he knows water really means a more intricate agony.
The second reality check is for scars. If he doesn’t have any, he’s either really actually alive this time by some esoteric miracle, or he’s well and truly fucked. He pulls his shirt up and his stomach is smooth and flat and he can see it move with his breath, and fuck, but Alastair put a lot of work into this. Alastair is really more into disassembling than creating, and he’s done a remarkably patient job.
The hitch in his plan is the handprint on his shoulder, and he’s not sure what to make of it. It’s real this time he won’t let himself think, but this is certainly different. This is probably the point in the story where he branches from the usual to go down a new path, with a new trove of tortures waiting at the end.
He does the third reality check anyway. He eats the candy bar and it doesn’t taste like sulfur or charred flesh or congealed blood, so he finishes it and has another, while he packs up a bag full of snacks because even though this is absolutely not real this time, his stupid body is on autopilot like it’s actually alive and wants to keep being that way.
The earsplitting screeching is a new touch, but the glass raining down on top of him is remarkably cool and barely pricks his skin and c’mon you bastard, I’m waiting because he’s been through this routine so many times and it’s never anything but set up for a fall.
The fourth check. He eats two more candy bars, then shoves his fingers down his throat while he leans against the side of the ramshackle building. His stomach clenches, heaves, and nothing happens, and then all of a sudden it does, candy and water coming out in reverse and splattering on his boots and he fucking wants to do it all over again because this shit is real.
Now he can call Sam, and he dials, the phony chirp of each tone echoing in his ear, and he almost isn’t afraid that Alastair’s voice will answer. Almost.
It’s the phone lady, that automated female voice that answers all the calls that won’t go through, and he wants to cry because even though the phone lady isn’t human, she’s not a demon, and for that, he could marry her.
He calls Bobby and Bobby doesn’t believe he’s alive, but that’s okay, because he didn’t either, not at first, and he drives hundreds of miles, stops every fifty to throw up just to believe it all over again. He stands in Bobby’s house. He slices himself with silver and it doesn’t burn. He’s doused in sweet, sulfur-free water and there’s no hiss or steam or anything and if a couple of quick tears mix in with that holy water, no one has to know.
Dean showers, tracks Sam’s phone, eats dinner with Bobby, and then he throws up again just to remind himself that this time he’s really human.
-SPN-
Sam is so different, so much bigger and stronger and harder around the edges, and he fairly crushes Dean when they hug, but Dean holds on just as tight, hooking his chin over Sam’s shoulder and feeling his little brother breathe.
In the next moment, Sam is pulling the amulet over his head, placing it so gently in Dean’s palm that it doesn’t feel real. It settles on his chest, a delicate weight against his sternum and he loves it for not being a crushing blow.
Sam is careful like that now, like he knows he’s so much bigger than Dean, but it’s more than that. Like Dean is this fragile little thing that Sam could break if he jostles him or says the wrong thing. Those goddamn puppy dog eyes are three-quarters of Sam’s personal style nowadays, at least when he’s looking at his brother.
Dean hates it, hates how strong and determined and fucking powerful Sam is, because he’s going the wrong way and Dean wants to tell him it’s okay to be soft and weak and human and uncertain. That there are mountains of skull and bone, cemented with brain, and the only way not to shatter on the all the evil in the world is to be soft enough to withstand, to be human enough to fall and tumble down to the depths and then get back up.
He doesn’t want Sam to know Hell, though, so he keeps his mouth shut.
Except at night when Sam is asleep or gone or anywhere else, and then he throws up as much as he can because his renewed body is hard and strong and undamaged. He misses the twinge in his back and the shoulder that popped out and the scar at the hollow of his throat where he almost died but didn’t. He misses the things he thought were weak, because now he feels so strong and helpless.
-SPN-
He couldn’t throw up in Hell, no matter how hard he tried. Alastair forced his own raw fat down his throat, poured bile and spinal fluid and liquefied eyes directly into his stomach and it stayed as long as it wanted to. If Alastair wanted it back, he pulled Dean’s stomach out through his mouth, and took it.
It’s so human, so pathetically human that he can’t stop himself from doing it. That he can feel empty and fill that space. That he can feel full and empty it. That none of his body is trapped on wires and hooks, twisting and leaping into the fire at anyone’s will but his own.
He throws up every morning, goes from nightmare to heaving in less than five seconds, and when he’s done he’s calm and comfortable in his skin again, and it’s all okay.
“Dean,” his brother said the first few times it happened, the world trailing into nothing, puppy dog eyes taking up Sam’s whole face. Sam patted him on the back and gave him water and comfort and asked if he wanted to stay at the motel, sleep, should I drive, can I get you anything, please just let me help.
Dean didn’t know how to say that this was all the help he needed, so he didn’t say anything, just shrugged it off and then Sam stopped asking and Dean wished he could shrug it back on, like the warm comfort of a hoodie, but nothing of Sam’s really fits the same way anymore.
-SPN-
Sam has pulled him out of this particular fire several times already.
They have a routine. Dean makes himself another list.
Throw up until it stops feeling better. Then throw up until there’s blood. When there’s blood, tell Sam.
Sam makes the list from there. It usually involves set eating times, activities after meals. It involves Sam choosing food for Dean, Sam giving him gum after every meal to help him forget he ate. It involves Dean bitching that he’s not a child and then doing as he’s told, Dean doing things back for Sam like always getting coffee and his favorite candy and sometimes letting him play girly emo crap on the motel radios when he’s sure Baby can’t hear the blasphemy.
This time the order is all wrong. He throws up to feel better, but it never stops feeling better. And then there’s blood, but it’s just a little. Then there’s blood and it’s more than a little, but it still feels better, so fuck it, it’s not time to tell Sam.
There used to be an intermediate step between seeing blood and telling Sam. Sam steps in. Sam tells Dean he knows what’s going on, tells Dean he’s going to help, tells Dean it’s going to be okay without actually using those words. And then Dean tells Sam that there may have been blood but don’t make a big thing about it, bitch.
Dean’s waiting for Sam to step in. Sam steps out. Out of the motel room, out of the Impala, out of Dean’s life, slowly but surely.
Dean doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t like this dance they do, and he may be stuck with it, but Sam certainly isn’t.
-SPN-
They’re at Bobby’s for a few days because Baby needs some love and attention, Dean needs to keep Sam away from Ruby, Sam needs to borrow a book, and Bobby needs someone to sleep on his couch and drink his beer.
Bobby finds Dean sitting on his ass in the dirt, leaning against Baby’s front tire, shaking like he might fly apart. He doesn’t even have the decency to fake surprise.
But he does sit down on the dusty earth next to Dean and hand him a plate holding a sandwich, potato salad and even some carrots. The kind of lunch he used to eat at Bobby’s as a kid, out here on this very earth, face and clothes streaked with dirt and grease, but hands cleaned to Bobby’s exacting specifications.
“Haven’t seen you eat in three days,” Bobby says. He’s looking out across the yard, eyeing the occasional car, but never looking at Dean.
“Been a while, I guess,” Dean says, like he doesn’t know exactly the last time he ate and puked.
“Looking kind of skinny,” Bobby says, still not quite looking at Dean.
Dean doesn’t know what to say. There’s no pretending with Bobby, and what is there to say when you both already know? He picks up a carrot stick and twists it in his fingers.
Rumsfeld peers around the fender of the Impala, eyes Dean’s plate, then plants himself right in front of Dean, nose an inch from the plate.
“You should eat that, ‘fore Rumsfeld here eats it and you,” Bobby says idly. Dean snorts and the dog licks half of his own face in a show of obvious desire.
It takes almost an hour, but Dean finishes his plate, Bobby sitting shoulder to shoulder with him the whole time. Dean tosses the last bite of sandwich to Rumsfeld and wipes his hands on his jeans. The dog makes a sort of vacuuming noise like he’s inhaling the food and Dean is a little jealous of just how easy eating could be.
“Don’t tell Sam.”
“He doesn’t know?” Bobby looks at Dean and raises his eyebrows. Dean shakes his head.
“We’ve got a lot of other shit going on that’s more important than me being a fuck-up.”
It’s Bobby’s turn to shake his head. “Kid, you been through enough, I’d be more worried if you weren’t a little fucked up.”
-SPN-
It’s more than a little blood.
Kneeling in the grimy bathroom of their latest motel room, middle of the day but Sam is never fucking here anyway, and it’s more than a little blood.
It’s actually kind of more than more than a little blood. It might be, Dean thinks, more like a lot of blood.
A lot of blood and an intense pain somewhere between his heart and his stomach, like a cross between the times Alastair tied his esophagus in a bow and the times he ripped it out entirely.
He’s still puking blood, everything red, but starting to fade to black at the edges, the blood not so colourful, his heart in his ears but not nearly as loud as it should be.
There’s warm, wet blood trailing down his chin and soaking into his shirt as he falls back onto the tile, his head knocking against the floor with a thud that lets a little white override the red for a moment.
He chokes a little, gargles thick red, coughs, gags some more. Wheezes out a breath that sounds a little like “Cas,” and inhales a sharp breath that sounds like “help.”
And the angel is there, his face upside down over Dean’s where he crouches at the bathroom door, one hand coming toward him to touch his forehead and it burns a little, like the handprint on his shoulder, the alternate path, and Dean blinks his eyes open to see no red at all.
He struggles to sit, his back twinging just a little, and lurches his way up to standing. His stomach feels funny, like there’s still blood in it. Maybe blood, maybe something else, and either way he wants it out and fuck, he’s so far over his head.
“Dean,” Cas says, this solemn, omniscient voice and Dean closes his eyes and pictures the steps in his head wake up, dig, water, check, eat, throw up like just by thinking hard enough he can take all of this back, start over. When he opens his eyes, Cas is still standing there, impenetrable blue stare in place.
Dean pushes past him and sits on the corner of the bed, head in his hands, and Cas sits in a chair opposite him, just watching.
“It’s just something I do, Cas,” he finally says.
“I know,” the angel says. “But I do not understand.”
“What’s to understand?” Dean says roughly. “I’m a pathetic fuck-up and I throw up to feel better. It’s stupid.”
Cas frowns, tilts his head forward a little, looking more stern. “I repaired your body,” he says. “I did not repair it for you to keep hurting yourself.”
Dean’s trembling, his whole body shivering there on the edge of an unfamiliar bed in a motel whose name he forgot and he suddenly very powerfully just wants to go home, just go where things actually make sense, and he shakes even harder when he realizes the only place he can think of is Hell.
Cas appears in an instant at his side, one hand resting lightly on his back, warm and familiar though he can count on one hand the number of times the angel has touched him.
“It’s human,” Dean says and thinks maybe Cas will leave it alone, will believe that all humans do this, that he won’t realize what Dean really means. But angels are actually pretty fucking perceptive when they want to be.
“You have been saved, Dean,” Cas says. “I raised you, repaired you, restored you. You have been chosen for great things, none of them demonic.”
Dean shrugs just a little, and Cas shifts his hand, fits it over the scar on Dean’s shoulder, the flesh heating just more than would be natural, like Cas is applying a tiny bit of grace to an old wound. The alternate path, the first difference in a long line of the same old anguish.
“My hand left a mark on you,” Cas murmurs, as the flesh continues to warm. “Because you are mortal, delicately-made, because you were not meant to withstand this type of power.” He pauses, the scar under his hand almost hot enough to burn again before he speaks. “Because you are human.”
Cas’ hand drops from his shoulder and Dean feels the warmth dissipate, not out into the room, but through his body.
“You are special, Dean Winchester,” Castiel says, standing up. “You don’t need this anymore.”
And he’s gone.
-SPN-
Sam somehow knows. He’s there, reminding Dean to eat, making him watch a whole movie after dinner, or drive until he’s sure it’s too late to be sick. He doesn’t say anything about it, but sometimes he shakes his head when he catches sight of Dean’s ribs.
There are no puppy dog eyes, no earnest offerings of peanut M&Ms and promises that it will be okay.
Dean holds up his end too. Coffee. Sam’s foods. Sam gets to pick the music. Dean toys with the idea of reinstalling that iPod jack, but even his newly repaired heart can’t take it.
There aren’t any mutterings of bitch or jerk and Sam still leaves every night, but now it’s after the movie. He still thinks Dean doesn’t know.
None of it quite fits anymore. His skin itches and he needs and he sometimes smells sulfur just driving down the highway, windows up and music pounding, and he’s afraid it could be him.
But Dean has something new, something to hem him in so he fits in his world again.
He makes a new list.
Wake up. Water. Check scars. Eat.
End.
Continue on to The Other Half of the Equation, set between seasons five and six.