Work Text:
The darkness shouldn’t be frightening.
Dean’s spent more nights than he can count hunting things that go bump in the night. Watching shadows shift and creep, witchy-fingers tracing tombstones and the walls of abandoned buildings.
This is different.
No matter how many times he tries to convince himself otherwise, this is different.
He curses, scuffed boots slipping in the rotten undergrowth as he jerks back, narrowly avoiding the loss of an eye from a wayward branch. The forest blurs around him, trees shifting like superimposed negatives exposed to the light.
His skin stings, feels too tight and hot.
“This is stupid. We can’t just keep stumbling around higgledy-piggledy all night,” he says, waving one hand around in a corkscrew motion. “Let’s find somewhere to hole up for a bit. Come up with a game plan.”
Castiel tilts his head.
It’s a gesture that should be comforting, but only makes Dean want to hit someone. A feathered someone, even if the wings are long gone. He tries to ignore the whispers in the back of his mind, voices tolling like diseased bells: “So how’s that forgiveness thing working out for you, then? Not so easy, is it.”
He shakes the thought away and tries to focus.
“…always night here, and there aren’t any pigs in purgatory. About higgledies I’m less certain,” Casteil says, face blank.
“Great. That’s just…great. Guess bacon’s off the menu, then.”
The thought of bacon makes his stomach cramp suddenly, sickness crawling. He braces one hand against damp bark and wretches, thin strings of bile dripping onto decayed leaves. A hand traces tentative circles over his back, an offer of comfort that doesn’t help.
He wants Sam and he wants to go home.
:::: :::: :::: ::::
Building a shelter isn’t as easy as Girl Scouts would have you believe.
He’d dated one for a few weeks when he was sixteen. John had dumped them at a rundown motel on the outskirts of a town in North Carolina before disappearing, terse instructions to look after Sam thrown over one shoulder.
Her name was Melissa.
He’d spent a memorable night running hands over merit badges stitched through the front of her blouse, before fumbling open the buttons and slipping damp, sweaty fingers inside. Her parents were out. Cicadas hummed loudly outside the window while the laugh track of a forgotten television show faded into the background.
It was the furthest he’d ever gone with a girl.
She’s probably married and divorced by now, lines engraved on her face by the stress of looking after three kids and battling an addiction to lottery tickets. Maybe this is the week she’ll win the jackpot.
Still, he bets the girl she once was could have built a kick-ass shelter.
Certainly better than a nest of sticks, which, after an hour, is the best a sometimes-Angel of the Lord and Hunter Extraordinaire seem to have managed. He gazes at the haphazard structure with something close to despair. Damp sticks covered with moss and mud are layered over two low-hanging branches, ooze dripping from their ends.
Dean squeezes his eyes shut and bites down on a groan. The trees are still moving around him. Half-glimpsed flickers tease at the edge of his vision, bark and shadows folding over each other in endless patterns. A thousand origami-forests fighting for existence.
Too far and never, too close and now.
Nausea is his constant companion, stomach muscles fluttering as if haunted by a sickness that never quite arrives. He clears his throat and spits sticky strands of saliva onto the ground. Fine tremors make his hands shake.
He grabs hold of Castiel’s arm, fingers clenching around torn fabric, and pretends that he wouldn’t be on his knees in the dirt without it.
:::: :::: :::: ::::
As it turns out, their house of sticks is more impressive when viewed from the outside.
There’s barely enough room for one person inside, let alone two.
They end up pressed tightly together in a tangle of limbs, elbows jammed against ribs and knees bent at awkward angles. The ground’s cold and wet. Dean suspects that more of Castiel is actually outside the shelter than in, but finds himself too miserable to care.
His head aches, is filled with shrill voices singing nursery rhymes of betrayal and death, always slightly out of key. He wants to ask if Cas can hear them too, but is scared of the answer.
“I’ll take first watch while you get some rest,” he grunts.
“I don’t need rest.”
“Make up haikus or something, then. Silently, in your head. I don’t care, just stop poking me!” Dean snaps, shoving at Castiel’s shoulder before a violent spasm sends him lurching to the side, coughing up nothing but air.
Tears force themselves from his eyes. The world shrinks to the simple act of trying to breathe, black static dancing.
When it finally stops he finds himself sitting on Castiel’s lap, arms wrapped tightly around his chest. He struggles weakly, before sighing in defeat and slumping back.
“Fuck. Next time God’s recruiting a design committee, tell him to rethink the knitting-needle-for-elbows thing, okay?”
“My arm joints are made as intended and do not resemble implements of wool weaving. Stop wiggling, or our sticks will fall down.”
“Wiggling? Dude, not cool,” Dean says, coughing wetly. “And if you tell anyone about this I’m banishing you to, like, the top of Mount Everest or something.”
He risks shuffling forward anyway, and casts a nervous glance at the roof of the shelter. It doesn’t look any worse than before. Which, of course, isn’t saying much.
“I’ll take first watch while you try and recharge the mojo. I’m fine.”
“Yes, that is clearly something other than a lie.” A warm puff of breath falls against the back of his neck, makes him shiver. “My father never intended for this purgatory, this reality, to contain human souls. It is…more. More than your soul was intended to withstand. Heaven is not one, but a million mirrors stitched together, each reflecting a different soul. You know this. Purgatory is no different: as above, so below. Tomorrow we’ll start searching for a doorway.”
He knows Cas said something important but is too tired to hold the meaning in place; can only watch as it darts away between the shifting trees, mocking laughter left in its wake.
“Just let me take first watch, okay?”
The words he doesn’t say are strung taught in the silence between them, a history that can’t be unwritten.
”Trust fell down and broke its crown, and purgatory came soon after,” sing-song the voices. “No Sammy, now. Bobby’s gone. You’re alone, alone, all-all-alone. Alone, alone, alone.”
Fuck this.
He’s tired and he hurts and he wants to go home. This is different. Maybe this time will be different.
Just, fuck it.
“You’ll wake me up if something happens?” Dean asks, voice quiet. “Promise?” He allows his to eyes slip shut, cheek pressed against a bony shoulder, and tries to find position a where it doesn’t hurt to breathe.
Arms tighten around him, until they’re almost painful.
You’ll keep me safe?
“Yes.”