Chapter Text
It started with a restless feeling in his limbs that he couldn’t drink or fidget away. He’d already switched from his flask to drinking directly from the bottle, and had worked his way through almost half a fifth of whiskey. He paced through the bunker, back and forth like a caged animal, and he didn’t even know why.
Sam, Charlie, and Kevin were in the computer room working. Talking about things Dean didn’t understand, didn’t care about. Okay, so maybe it made him feel a little old, maybe even a little useless and stupid, but whatever.
The three of them, they really sounded like Men and Women of Letters in there. Dean, he was just a grunt. He’d been telling Sam that from Day-fucking-One.
Whatever.
Dean took another swig of whiskey and headed to his room to lay down. His head settled into the pillow, his body sank into the familiar curves of memory foam, and his eyes snapped shut.
Trees.
A peaceful garden.
Blood.
Go East.
Walking through a peaceful garden, Dean felt at home here. This was home.
Flowing blood. Awareness of his own pulse in his neck.
Go East.
A map. The roads became veins, pulsing with bright red blood. He recognized this city, he knew where this was, how to get there. This was home, this was the garden. His blood pulled him toward this.
Come home.
You are needed.
Dean jolted awake in a cold sweat, his heart pounding frantically. He pushed his palm against his chest and could feel his heart beating. Something about it mesmerized him for a moment and his eyes went glassy. His awareness narrowed down to a knife-point focus, and the sound of his heart roared up in his ears and drowned out the world around him. Memories washed over him then, of a time when he’d been able to hear and physically feel a person’s beating heart this strongly from across a room.
Dean staggered out of bed and tried to get the thoughts out of his head. He went to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed some cold water on his face. And then, ridiculously, checked his gums. No extra teeth. He gave a sigh of relief and laughed at his own paranoid stupidity, and then went back to his room to get another swig of whiskey.
The whiskey was warm and comforting going down his throat, like blood, whispered something inside, making Dean’s breath hitch and chest tighten. He put the bottle down.
“Alright, Dean, time to think,” Dean said to himself. “There’s two possibilities here. One, there’s something monstery trying to lure me out. Two, I’m losing my mind.”
Dean stopped, considered.
“Should I involve anybody else in this?”
He thought about Sam, Charlie, and Kevin out in the computer room.
“I mean, this is probably a vamp if it’s anything. And I know how to deal with vamps on my own. And they’ve got their own thing they’re dealing with right now. That computer thing. I can’t help with that. I’m sitting here useless. I can go do a hunt while they do their thing. I go do what I’m good at while they do what they’re good at. Sounds good to me.”
Dean gave himself an approving nod, then grabbed a jacket and strode out of his room. He didn’t bother announcing that he was heading out. He’d just call from the road.
* * *
Dean was distracted by thoughts of roads like arteries, pumping cars and trucks, people and cargo down the interstate. And then the trees became branching veins, and he could imagine their roots mirrored beneath the earth, water flowing in them like blood. He felt his pulse throb in his neck, and the map pointing the way home flashed in his memory again. He could see the rivers etched across the terrain, and they looked like veins.
Dean shook his head and turned up his music.
The trip took him far across the country. He drove intuitively, without giving much thought to what road he was on or what state he was currently in. He just flowed from one interstate to the next, occasionally pit-stopping. He was just thinking about stopping to get a hotel room when his phone rang.
Sam.
Dean held the phone in his lap in one hand while he continued to steer with the other. He glanced down at the name on the screen as it rang.
Sam.
Dean sighed heavily, then answered the call.
“Yeah.”
“Dean, where’re you at?”
“You nerds’re doing your thing, so I went out.”
“Oh. Okay, well, just wanted to let you know, seems like we’re making some progress on the computer.”
“Awesome.”
“Yeah. Okay, well, talk to you later, man,” Sam said, in that tone that Dean knew meant, “you could continue this conversation if you wanted to, Dean.”
“Yep, talk to ya later, Sammy,” Dean said, and hung up.
I don’t need a hotel, Dean decided, feeling a renewed surge of determination. He kept driving.