Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A country paved in asphalt will wear down your tires. Dean’s always tried to make ‘em last long as he could. Until they were almost smooth, down to the webbing. Until there wasn’t much holding Baby down to the ground. Maybe one day she’d just lift off. Maybe one day tires’d just burst and peel off and she’d bury herself in the gravel at the side of the road with a hiss, a spray of pebbles.

Thing is, it’s expensive to replace tires. It’s expensive and you gotta make sure they have the right ones. And sometimes that means you gotta wait around in town. And lots/often/most of the time waiting around’s not safe.

Sometimes Dean feels the road on his skin. Feels the roughness, grating him down. Doesn’t leave his skin smooth like tires though. Nah, he gets cut up and raw and bloody. He feels that – foot on the pedal, diving across the country. worn down to the bone. Like the tip of a finger lost to grating potatoes. Oop, it’s in the bowl now. But what’s he gonna do? Never could afford not to eat it. Sam drank demon blood, sure, but before that he ate more meals than Dean maybe wants to admit with little bits of his flesh in it. This is my body broken for you or whatever. Feeding the five thousand. The last supper. Water into wine. Dude was obsessed with food. It’s not cannibalism though. Dean’d know. For sure he’d know. It’s just – shit – it’s just having no fucking money. 

But for a second there it looked like – like maybe not. Like maybe a garage with a smooth floor and an address – or near as like. Staying somewhere and safe in it. For a second it didn’t look like a new tank of gas every week. Sometimes every day – Every few hours. Looked like maybe he could make it last. Tires still got some teeth on ‘em. Put a coin between the treads and it shows they’ll last a bit longer. Dean always has a coin, always picks them up. So yeah, looked for a minute like that.

It was never gonna be though. Cause there came that black goo grabbing Cas like a tar patch on a hot day melting in the sun. 

And.

Well, don’t take much to pop a tire. Don’t take much to make a hole you can’t patch. 

Dean’s been knelt down next to the highway so many damn times. Tire repair kit on the road by his knee. Elbow deep in the tire well. Trying to press the patch in right. He’s fixed lotta tires that way. Gotten a few more miles outta them. Til they were too worn down to patch. Gotten a few more miles outta himself. 

But shit – like that time Dad once drove over an old electric fence ground rod. Couldn’t see it in the grass. Felt something bump and said fuck it and kept his foot on the gas. Thought it was a rock or something. Just tried to keep going. Stead it was a little metal stake – little steel tree hidden next to an abandoned field. Tore a gash outta that tire that Dean couldn’t – Dad tapping his foot against the ground like hurry up. Sam keeping saying do you want me to try. Dean running his hands around the flap of rubber with little white fibers hanging out, thinking no way I can fix this. Tire went boom when it hit the rod. Like popping a balloon. Like a gunshot. Like popping a lung. 

So yeah, Dean’s whatever you wanna call him. Flat tire. Median strip litter. Junkyard scrap. Done for. Whatever you wanna call it, it’s time to call it. Undo the lug nuts. Lift him up and off the rim. Let him go. 

Dean remembers when Dad got that first flat. Showed Dean how to loosen the nuts. Let his little hands pretend they were strong enough. Made sure he knew that soon they’d have to be. The sound of cars rushing behind Dean’s ears made him jumpy and Dad kept putting his hands on Dean’s face, turning him back around. Dean remembers Dad getting the spare on. Showing Dean how to tighten the bolts. Make a little star over and over. Remembers Dad filling the extra space in the trunk with more guns, more bullets. Never replaced the spare. Money was tight. They needed it for salt, for gasoline, for silver and lead. Dad ran that spare nearly down to the rim. Dean replaced it the next time. Throwing his whole body weight against the wrench for each nut. Breathing heavy, panting, feeling the pinch between his shoulders. And Dad just watching. Dad sorting through the trunk, counting bullets.

Never got another spare as long as Dad drove her. It was like that. Skin of your teeth. Skin off your knuckles.

Dean thinks maybe he should tell Sam. Hey, you can move some shit up to the passenger seat now or something. I won’t be driving so – more room. Or maybe you’ll take Eileen. Or maybe you’ll just take her car. Or – well anyway, you should get a spare. You have the space now. Could come in handy. Dean probably should have got it sometime himself. Anyway, too late now. 

Wait – no. He’s gotta tell Sam. Don’t drive her. After the truck smashed us I never got a new frame. You’re not supposed to fix a frame like that. God and that wasn’t the only time. Totaled is totaled for a reason. I’m a good driver though, see, made it this far. Even when it got smashed again. But fuck maybe Sam wants kids. Can’t drive a car with a re-welded frame with kids. It’s gonna snap. Crack at the weakest point.

If it hits hard enough metal will just break. Frame of a car crumpling against a telephone poll. Broken ribs cracking up against a wood beam. Something’s punched right through. Snap. Feels like the heart. Weakest point for damn sure. Must not be through his heart though – this part’d be quicker.

You’re sposed to be able to tell what leak you got by what kinda patch it leaves under the car: water from the radiator or gas from the tank or the shimmering rainbow of oil. Oil viscous and black grabbing Cas like — no. Baby’s never really sat in a place long enough to leave a patch though. Sometimes Dean’s peeling out of there and ain’t even got the chance to look behind him. He’s always fixed what’s wrong best he could though. Patch a leak, tighten a bolt. Top of the fluid. Best he – 

Dean’s leaking out now. Little patch-a red brown copper on the floor under him. It’s easy – diagnose where the rupture is. Figure out what’s dripping down his back. It’s easy. Diagnosed the problem with his tubes decades ago. That’s the thing about an oil leak. Just gets worse and before you know it, it you’re gushing hot red blood and feeling shaky and your eyes are having trouble and — wait that’s not – 

Dean tripped on the stairs carrying Sammy out of the house. Skinned his knee on the carpet in front of the door. Didn’t drop Sammy though. Couldn’t put his arms out to catch himself. Bled through his pajamas quietly all night cause Dad was angry and everything was awful and Dean had to keep Sammy happy. He’s kinda kept bleeding since. One way or another. Oil leak’ll start small and just get worse. 

Dean’s mouth tastes salty. He remembers being little. Taking a pinch out of the salt line at the door to season the plain canned beans Sam didn’t wanna eat. Leaving the line just a little bit thinner. Salt in the amounts they used got pricey. Dad said not to use it. But Dean needed Sam to eat. 

Oh, Dean’s mouth tastes like blood is what it is. Most familiar taste in the world. Musta swallowed a mouthful on the way outta the womb. Choking on it, couldn’t scream. Never got a chance to ask. 

The light changes. Tow truck coming to drag Baby away to the scrap yard. Flashing lights. Like when you’re sleeping in the car and the sun’s flicking just under the tree line. Light dark light dark. Like the firetrucks night Mom died. Sirens and all. Like the police cars cornering a little convertible at the site of the Grand Canyon. 

Dean always thought, you know, fucking sad way to end a movie. Always thought, you know, but it’s not like they were gonna let them live after they kissed. Ain’t that the way it goes? Knew they loved each other the whole damn ride but it’s only when it’s over that – 

Dean – shit – Dean thinks about Cas. What did Chuck say? Crack in his chassis. Came off the line like that. Dean thinks, hey me too. Thinks about Cas dying and thinks, hey me too. Look at us. Thelma and Louise. Hey, Cas, don’t do this. Let’s just… keep driving… little longer… hey let’s…

I love you, Cas said. Hey me too, Dean thinks. Me too. Love you. Shoulda said – course I shoulda. Can’t say nice shit to me. Can’t say shit to me. 

Dean sees him.

There he is. Sat beside the bed like after Alastair almost laid Dean out fucking decade ago. There he is all soft eyes. And waiting for Dean to talk. Always so fucking patient is what he is. And Dean doesn’t deserve – but fuck it. Cracked frame and popped tired and busted engine and leaking crankcase and all Dean’s still gonna. He’s gotta this time. 

“Hey, Cas, love you too.”

“Whoah, they’ve got you on some strong shit,” Sam says. “You’re talking nonsense.”

Dean opens his closed eyes. Cas isn’t there. 

Hospital room and Sam in a chair and dark out the windows but light in the hall. Dean’s body feels… doesn’t. 

Sam looking tired as hell. 

Cas isn’t anywhere.

Dean tries to – breathe/talk/ask. But tube down his throat and he’s choking and coughing and gasping and he’s getting stabbed right through again he can feel it. Tears in his eyes from choking and pain and panic. 

“Hey, man,” Sam says. “It’s okay. Hey.”

Sam gets a big hand on Dean’s shoulder, pushes him back down against the bed. Dean clamps his eyes shut and tries not to feel the tube in his throat, pressing against the back of his tongue. Tries breathe calm around it. Chest/back feel like he’s still being stabbed. Tears leak hot out of the corners of his squeezed shut eyes. Tries not to panic. 

Wants to sit up. Feels like breathing would be fuller somehow. But Sam’s heavy hand holds him in place. Okay, Dean breathes, okay. 

“Dean, man,” Sam sighs, once Dean’s stopped resisting. “I thought – god, I thought…”

Sam sinks back down into a chair. “One of those kids called 911. You believe that? Stole a cell off one of the dead vampires. Brave kids. They’ll do alright. They’ll be okay.” Sam sighs. “You had me worried, man. I was so…”

He gets up. Tall, tall over the bed. “It’s good you’re awake. It’s good. I’m gonna go get a nurse.”

Room’s darker for a moment with Sam’s frame in the doorway. Then he’s gone.

Dean’s alone. 

He turns his head, slow. Feels hard, feels mucky. Body feels confused. Turns his head to look over his left shoulder at the empty chair. Fuck .

Cas was there. Dean felt like he was there. Could see him. Could – 

Where’d Sam go? Dean wants him to come back. Wants to ask where Cas went. Maybe he just blipped out for a sec. Like old times. Used to do that all the time. Come and go. Leave Dean blinking, leave Dean – 

No wings though. Cas couldn’t – where’s Sam. Dean needs to ask. 

Nurse comes through the door. Sam doesn’t come back.

Nurse clicks and clacks in the room, typing and looking at the monitors and asking Dean questions he can’t quite hear. Don’t make sense. He can’t answer but it doesn’t matter. That’s not what matters. 

Dean remembers – stuff – a hunt, a barn – doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter compared to Cas was just in that chair he knows it. Where is he? Where is he? Dean needs him. Needs to tell him. Should have been telling him this whole damn time. 

Sam’s voice comes in from the hall. “...yeah. He just woke up… I will. I will, soon.”

Sam’s back in the room now. Nurse talks to him. Takes forever. Dean needs her to go. Just needs to ask Sam. 

Finally, finally, finally she’s done. 

Sam sits back down on the other side of the bed.

“Where’s Cas?” Dean says, hoarse and thick and raw around the tube. Hurts. 

“Cas is gone,” Sam says. He sounds tired.

“No,” Dean says. “He just just –” Dean can’t point. Can’t move to show Sam where. But, “He was just – just there,” he says. “In the chair. He was –”

“Dean,” Sam says, voice is measured, restrained, “You’re on a lot of medications. You need to understand –”

“Screw all that, Sammy,” Dean groans. Wants to push up off the bed. “He was right –”

“Dean,” Sam cuts him off, “Cas is dead.”

In the haze it feels like a car crash. Patch of ice on the road and car’s nose diving into the guardrail. Feels like glass all around him and fire in the engine and smoke and he’s turning to the passenger seat like Cas? Cas? And Cas is gone. 

And it doesn’t make any fucking sense why Dean isn’t. Piece of windshield glass pinning through him into the seat but he’s still –

Chapter Text

Next time Dean wakes, his head feels clearer. Can remember Cas is dead. And why.

Room’s dark and it’s dark beyond the windows but the door’s cracked to the hall and light spills in. Faint hospital sounds, even in the night. Talking, beeping, walking, rolling wheels. Sounds of life and the edges of it.

There’s an IV line sticking into Dean’s right hand and a heart rate monitor clipped on his finger. Tube’s out of his mouth. Lying on the blue hospital blanket next to his hand, there’s a remote with a call-button for a nurse. Doesn’t press it.

Dean watches the movement through the open door. The way the light flickers as people pass by. 

When Dean was real young once, the school he and Sammy were going to for a bit had a concert. Dean remembers it foggy the way you do when you’re little. Dark in the big room and hard to see anything but the stage. Dark enough that he shoulda been nervous. But couldn’t be. Soon as the music started, he couldn’t be. Stopped fidgeting, stopped trying to scan the room. Stopped looking over his shoulder. Cause someone was playing the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. Later learned that’s a cello. But. Before there were words for it, it was just the sound. Low and heavy like he could wear it as a coat in winter to keep warm. He remembers watching the slow drag of the bow on the strings and thinking there must be something else. No way just some strings and hollow wood and a bow could do this. Made him feel sad but like there were things that would come after the feeling sad. Like if he listened long enough, it would take him past it. His chest hummed and vibrated with it and in the dark theater he knew he should have been scared and wasn’t. 

It was like that when he met Cas. Cas like things beyond words. Cas like Dean knew he should have been scared. Cas like a humming in his chest. Cas like music.

Goddammit.

Above him the ceiling’s big tile panels framed in metal strips. Dean kinda wants to count them. As if that would – 

Last time he woke up like this, like Cas’ goneness was the only thing he knew, he had a foot in his side for an alarm. 

Went like this. Watched the fucking tape. And then again. It was like – numb from a whole bottle and exhausted and back cramped from the wooden chair – but if he didn’t stop watching the tape, he was still there in the dungeon. And he could – could stop Cas in every way. Draw a banishment sigil – send him to safety. Stop him from talking – stop the Empty coming. Grab on – Empty takes him too. Give himself up to Billie – she spares Cas. Watched the tape and watched the tape and saved Cas every time. Sees himself start to turn. Hits the button, rewinds. Saves him again. “Don’t do this, Cas” – and Cas doesn’t. Doesn’t sacrifice himself. Doesn’t die. Doesn’t go. 

Dean could go all the way back – make Cas leave him in Hell. Go all the way back – stop Cas from rebelling. First time Cas died was Dean’s fault too. Course it was. Dean rewinds. Doesn’t let Cas stay in Chuck’s kitchen to be killed by Raphael. Goes all the way back – stops Cas from loving him. 

Cas breaks open those barn doors and walks through in a hail of sparks. Says, “I’m an angel of the Lord.”

“Don’t do this, Cas,” Dean says.

He rewinds. “Don’t do this.” And rewinds.

Dean doesn’t remember falling asleep watching the tape. Doesn’t remember falling off the chair, hitting the floor. Doesn’t know which happened first.

But remembers waking up, Sam’s toe in his ribs, empty bottle on his cheek, and Cas’ goneness everywhere. Filling up all the space. Computer playing back hours of footage of Dean lying on the floor. Dean’s body like negative space. Cas’ goneness filling every pixel around him. Spilling out. Drowning him.

Sam going, “You okay?”

No. 

But tried to be okay enough for as long as he could. Whatever that meant. Slammed the laptop shut. World ending and everything. Put one foot in front of the other and didn’t think about it. Worked long enough. Sam – Sam and Jack figured it out. Jack took Chuck’s power. Sam started his new life.

Dean waited. Burned out lightbulb in a socket high enough to be inconvenient to change. Not hardly worth grabbing the step stool to reach. Empty plastic bag stuck in a tree. Wind whipped. 

Did what he might do. Fed the dog, washed dishes, cleaned his guns, hunted. Heard himself talk to Sam. Dean’d say that, right? Dean thought so – looking down through the branches. Headed into that barn. Saved the kids. Dean would do that. Dean wanted to do that. 

Flickered and sparked a few more times maybe but – Dean knows he entered that barn dim. Was kinda expecting on leaving shattered. Was kinda thinking he wasn’t gonna leave at all.

Dean doesn’t remember most of what he said to Sam in there. Remembers he wanted Sam to be okay. Remembers the pain. Remembers feeling like he felt like he was back in his body for the first time in a long time. Didn’t really realize til right then how far out of it he’d been. Remembers thinking that wouldn’t last long. 

Remembers thinking he wouldn’t have to wake up again without Cas. 

Dean traces the edges of the ceiling tiles with his eyes.

Wonders when exactly he decided he couldn’t do that again. He knows, somewhere in the mess of bleeding out and worrying about Sam and the kids and all of it that he felt relief. 

So when was it that he realized he couldn’t – When he felt the metal in his back? When the vamps were pinning him down? When they saved the kids but not from losing their dad, not from being scared, not from lives shaped by – 

When he woke up hollow in the morning, again, and got dressed and ate breakfast and researched the hunt and talked with Sam and drove his car and Cas was still – 

Probably soon’as the Empty finished grabbing Cas, Dean was ready to die. Probably before.

The ceiling tiles are impassive about Dean’s assessment. 

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” a nurse says from the door. “He’s awake,” she calls over her shoulder and out into the hall.

Sam walks into the room behind her. He flicks the light switch next to the door and Dean blinks as his eyes adjust.

“My name’s Lacy,” the nurse says as she starts checking him over. “How are you feeling, hon?” 

Dean looks at Sam like, I can’t do this, can you just…. 

Sam doesn’t say anything.

“That’s okay,” Lacy says, “The breathing tube often leaves your throat feeling raw. In just a minute, I’ll get you some warm water. How about that?”

Dean nods.

“Do you know where you are?” Lacy asks as she types quickly into her rolling computer stand.

Dean shakes his head.

“You’re at Aultman Hospital,” she says. Then takes in Dean’s face and adds, “Largest hospital in Canton.”

Dean nods.

When Lacy finishes his vitals, she says, “Are you doing okay in bed? Comfortable?”

Dean has no idea. 

“Unfortunately, you’ve got to stay propped up on the pillows like that,” Lacy says. “We don’t want too much pressure on your broken ribs or your incision.” 

Dean nods. He feels the pillows now, propping his back up in the bed, most of his weight resting on his right side.

“But how about your feet?” Lacy asks. “Are you too cold?” She touches his toes through the blanket and sheet and Dean realizes he’s wearing socks. It feels sudden. Feeling all the way down his stiff legs to his feet.

I’m fine, he tries to say. Can’t. He shakes his head.

“Alrighty,” Lacy says, “Well just don’t forget to hit that button if you do get cold.”

She fills up a small clear plastic cup with warm water from the tap across the room and places it on the plastic tray table she wheels so the top sits over Dean’s lap. “Okay, so just take a sip of this and gargle a few times. I’m afraid we can’t have you swallowing it yet because your stomach’s still going to be sensitive from your medications.”

Dean picks up the cup. His fingers feel stiff and cold against the warm, thin plastic. It crinkles as he sips. The water stings his throat a little but mostly feels good. Mouth was dry. But he starts to spit back out into the cup and then coughs and water spills down his chin and pain spiderwebs out from his back. There are tears in his eyes when Lacy hands him a paper towel. Through Dean’s watery eyes, Sam is a blurry figure in the background, in his chair.

“That’s okay,” she says, a hand touching lightly on his right shoulder. “That’s okay.”

Lacy points to a white board just inside the door, “See that’s my name and I’m on duty for another six hours so if you need something, just press that button. And after that, it’ll be night shift but they’ll introduce themselves. And your doctor is going to be Dr. Montgomery. See her name there. She’s gonna be in to see you in just a few minutes. And I’ll leave your brother to look after you til then.”

Sam doesn’t say anything while they wait for Dr. Montgomery. He slouches in the chair by the door. Looks exhausted. Dean wants to – get him some food or something. Probably been eating this hospital shit. Hey you can go, he wants to say, go get yourself something good. 

Can’t say anything though. Tongue’s not connected. 

Dr. Montgomery’s nice and straight to the point. Dean’s got a newly sewn-up punctured lung and three broken ribs and they had to restart his heart once in the ambulance and he’s not allowed to eat solid food for another few days but he can start to try drinking some juice at dinner time today. She goes over his medications – also on the white board by the door – and Dean kinda wishes Sam was writing some of this down or something. The words float around him and by the time she’s finished a sentence, he’s forgetting where it starts. But all Sam does as the Doc’s talking is take a sharp breath in a few times. 

Dean hears the words “long recovery” and “frozen shoulder risk” and “physical therapy,” and “inches from your spine.” And “lucky.”

“Any questions?” Dr. Montgomery asks.

Dean shakes his head.

She looks over at Sam for a moment but he waves a hand.

“Okay, great,” Dr. Montgomery says. And, “If you need anything,” she gestures to the button next to Dean’s hand.

Dean nods. 

Dr. Montgomery walks out. Her shoes click on the waxed linoleum.

Across the room, Sam asks, “How’re you doing?”

Dean half gestures at the room like, how do you think, half shrugs and then winces and gasps as his left shoulder pulls on cut muscle.

Sam makes a sympathetic face. But then he sighs, sits up a little straighter in his chair. Says, “Listen, Dean, we need to talk.”

Dean clenches his jaw. Nods.

“I feel like,” Sam starts and then pauses. It almost sounds like he’s rehearsed this. “I’m really worried, man,” Sam says. “It’s like you…” He sighs and leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands reaching out toward Dean. “Look, I know, believe me I know, the stuff with Chuck was awful, finding out we were living like that… that he’d been controlling… I get it, I really do. It messed me up too, you know. And I know that even though Jack is fixing stuff, has fixed stuff, it still feels… you know, I know that feeling’s not just going to go away.”

Dean listens to Sam’s voice mostly. He doesn’t quite understand why he’s saying all this. Dean knows Sam feels like this. It makes sense. But Sam likes to talk things out, always has. So Dean listens. Always has.

“But Dean,” Sam says, “You almost died. I mean you did die. You let go, man. And I was ready… It’s like you keep… and I can’t keep doing this. I mean, I know things take time and I know everything with losing Cas and all that was really hard. Believe me, I know. But I can’t keep doing this. You need help .” He’s doing that thing he does where he lets the words linger. Makes each one heavy. Holds Dean down with them. Like if he can get Dean to just hear him right, Dean’ll realize – Dean’ll change – Dean’ll do what Sam thinks – Dean’ll do better .

But it’s the way Sam says, “everything with losing Cas.” Creeps it into the speech like it isn’t – like that’s just some part of it when – 

Sammy, Dean tries to say. Like, please. Come on, Sammy. I’m trying, please. Don’t make me have to say it. Please. I can’t say it. 

But it’s like – Sam sat at that pie festival and said, you know, “I’m thinking about Cas.”

Like Dean – Like Dean wasn’t fighting for breath every second. Thought of Cas like an anchor trying to pull him all the way under, hands flailing at the surface for air, for anything to grab. Like Dean wasn’t a hollow shell. Make a hole and Cas’ absence comes pouring in like the whole ocean. Dean sinks. 

“I’m thinking about Cas,” Sam said. Like – 

Dean said, please, I can’t talk about this, please. Or near enough.

“Dean, are you listening to me?” Sam asks and Dean forces his eyes off the ceiling. I’m listening. I’m listening.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Sam says, again. “It’s a roller coaster, Dean. You need…” he pauses. “I got you some help. There’s a mental hospital nearby, okay. And I know how you feel about all that,” he talks fast, “I know what you’re going to say. But, I can’t okay. I can’t keep almost… So I talked to them. I explained about the accident and that you were… that you were trying to kill yourself.”

Sam doesn’t look at Dean when he says this and Dean’s throat only clicks when he tries to say something. Tongue’s trying to slide back down his throat. Useless.

Sam rubs his hands together slowly. “A doctor from there is going to come over this afternoon to talk to you, okay? And they think you should stay over there once… once you’re ready to get released from here. And Dean, I want you to too, okay. Just try, okay. Cause I can’t keep doing this ,” Sam gestures around the room.

Dean’s pinching the hospital blanket between his fingers. His hands feel numb. 

“I put the Impala in a storage lot in town,” Sam says. 

Now Dean glares at him.

“Stop it,” Sam says, “I checked reviews. Made sure it was a good one. It’s paid for for a while. So you can… you can stay here as long as you need to. As long as it takes, okay.”

Dean’s eyes are stinging and his chest hurts cause he knows part of him wants to cry and his one good lung can’t hack that on its own and his whole body’s tight and panicked at the prospect. 

Sam stands. “But I…” he says, “I can’t stay. I’m sorry, Dean. I need to… I just… I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep making peace with… and then… I thought you were going to die ,” he says again. “I thought…” he sighs. “Eileen’s coming to pick me up in a bit. I… I’m going to let you rest now,” Sam says. “I hope…” 

Dean wonders if he should say something. Should try to stop him. But Sam’s right. Not fair to him that Dean’s –

Whatever Dean is. Was.

Sam flicks the light off as he walks out of the room.

Even with the light off, the ceiling panels are lighter now, clearer. Dawn light coming in from the window. Room’s grey-blue.

And Dean can hear Sam’s voice in the barn saying, “It’s okay you can go.”

He wonders when Sam realized he was ready for Dean to die. When he said, “you can go?” When Dean was trying and trying and trying to make sure Sam’d be okay? When Sam said he’d call an ambulance and Dean said please stay with me and so he didn’t call? When he tried to pull Dean off the spike? When he saw Dean pinned down by the vamps and had to save him, again? When he pied Dean, tried to cheer him up, and Dean just couldn’t – 

When Dean woke up hollow in the morning, again, and got dressed and ate breakfast and researched the hunt and talked with Sam and drove his car and Cas was still – 

“I can’t keep doing this,” Sam said. 

Dean closes his eyes. Wet lashes stick together.

Chapter Text

There’s warm light coming through the vertical blinds the next time Dean wakes. They’re angled so he can’t see through them to whatever’s outside the hospital.

There were a few minutes – can’t remember how long – after Dean woke up with a busted heart – back after he’d first come to get Sammy – when he was alone. Wasn’t sure where Sam was. Bright sunlit hospital room. Fucking daytime TV the only company. And Dean thought/worried – Sam’d just gone. Left his sorry ass and – 

Did what Dad woulda done. Had done more’n once. Dean went and got himself fucked up and useless on a hunt. And well, useless is useless. Ain’t no use sticking around. 

Eyes damp and stinging. Clutching the TV remote like he woulda cracked it if he had the strength. It was worse than when the doc said he had weeks left.

Then Sam walked into the room and Dean was so relieved not to be alone that for a second he felt like everything was gonna be okay – before he remembered.

After Dean got better, Sam told him that he’d called Dad. Said, you know, “He didn’t answer. Probably didn’t recognize my new number.”

Dean called Dad too. Not like he’d tell Sam. But yeah, Dean called. Wanted to say – goodbye and shit. Like. Wanted to hear – 

“Yeah,” Dean said to Sam, “that musta been it.”

Dean can’t see out the hospital window but he imagines he can. He imagines standing at the window. He’s three stories up. He tucks a finger through the blinds, opens them a tiny bit more. Looks down. Even though he knows it was hours ago, imagines he sees Sam’s long form stride out of the hospital. Eileen’s red Valiant is pulled up to the curb. Sam bends down. Smiles. Signs Hello . Slides in. Doesn’t look back.

Dean knows even if he were on the first floor he wouldn’t be able to see this but in his mind he sees Eileen grab Sam’s hand reassuringly. They drive off. Sam looks at Eileen, tired, worn, relieved. She squeezes his hand. Again. Tighter.

There is a part of Dean – a really big part of him – that’s happy for Sam. Always has been happy for him when he’s doing good, doing something for himself. The thing is it would be easier if Dean just wasn’t – if Sam could just go off and wasn’t leaving Dean sitting in a hospital bed feeling like he’s getting run through again.

That’s always been the problem hasn’t it. Problem is Dean wants what Sam has. Not for Sam not to have it. Just. Can’t help thinking about what if there was — someone who grabbed his hand as he drove. What if someone thumbed over his knuckles. 

What if he had gotten to go to college. Gotten away from — 

That time Dad gave Sam a computer for his birthday. Sam all lit up and only rolling his eyes a little when Dad said you’re going to use it for research now, son. And Dean. Couldn’t even list on both hands the birthdays he’d gone without anything. Unless you considered Dad offering him a beer sometimes — if he was in town. And right now – then – that seems to not count for very much at all. Dad drinking a beer and another and then some whiskey and Dean sipping slowly until Dad forgot why they were drinking in the first place and started to get brutal and rancid like he did sometimes. Then Dean’d drink fast. But only lasting thing you get from that is a headache next day waking up to the sound of Sam’s keyboard clicking. Or – few times – a bruise.

Sam and Eileen are on the highway by now. 15 hour drive back to the bunker. Dean wonders how many times they’ll stop. Pull in to some motel. Highway rest stop. Grab a bite. Sam probably won’t give Eileen shit when she picks a burger place. Dean wonders when they’ll trade places. He knows Eileen likes to drive. Sam likes to listen to stuff and nap and read. How he manages not to get carsick, Dean’ll never know. Sam’ll hand Eileen chips so she can keep her eyes on the road. And he’ll touch her arm gently if he has to say something to her. And sometimes he’ll just quietly watch her. Soft smile. Cause they’ve got time.

Dean’s shaking. And he wants to believe it’s from the cold hospital air or the meds or the hunger or the recent impaling. But it’s not.

Sometimes the hardest part of Dad leaving them for weeks wasn’t the worry and the empty stomachs. It was overhearing a classmate say what his family was having for dinner and inviting a friend.

Driving around some town at night after Dean’s spent the evening caked in mud and blood and pulled something in his shoulder and smelling things he’d rather forget and now are on his shoes and under his nails and Dad on his case about not having done something better/faster/smarter and Dean’s head pressed against the cold glass of the car window just looking out into the night and catching glimpses of families through lit windows. And crying, quiet. 

The hardest part was always looking in. 

Shit. Dean wants it. And he wants Sam to have it. But he wants it too. At least Sam not being here means he’s not just gonna pull the log off the forest floor and reveal all the gross, mortifying, crawling, dark-accustomed insects of Dean’s want. Wriggling in the daylight. 

Cassie asked him one time if he was jealous of Sam – off at school at the time. No – is the thing. No. He would die to give Sam this. Give him everything. He would. 

He just doesn’t want to be left over – 

That was the great part about the demon deal. Give something to Sam and Dean can just go. Stop being. Won’t have to be sitting around not having it. He’d just be gone. 

But no that’s — that’s when he met – 

“Mr. Bonham?” a voice says from the door of the room, behind where Dean’s face is turned away. Says it like it’s not the first time.

Dean turns his head. Blinks. Doc in the doorway’s a little older than him maybe, greying hair and a brown blazer. Khakis. Little scruff – salt and pepper. One hand in his pocket, the other raised like he’d just tried knocking on the door.

Meets Dean’s eyes. Says, “May I come in?”

Dean nods.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Bonham. I’m Dr. Henshaw,” guy says. 

Mr. Bonham. Takes Dean a minute to put it together. That’s me. Who I’m meant to be right now. Course Sam woulda had to say something.

“Can I sit?” the doctor asks, sitting.

Dean nods.

“Mr. Bonham, I’m a physician from the inpatient department at the Sunrise Vista Behavioral Hospital. We’re lucky to have such a good partnership with Aultman that means I can come over here and talk to you while you’re undergoing your recovery – until you’re ready to come join us at Sunrise, that is.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I really hope you will seriously consider that. I spoke with your brother and he has some pretty serious concerns about your safety. Mr. Bonham, I want you to know that you can trust us. We all just want what’s best for you.”

Dean wishes he could see out of the window. He wants to ask Henshaw to go open the blinds but Henshaw just keeps talking and Dean knows nothing’d come out of his mouth if he opened it anyway.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions,” Henshaw says and Dean nods cause what else can he do. 

“Alright, that’s good!” Henshaw says, “That’s good. Like I said, I talked to your brother and he gave me a sense of what’s been going on and what happened the night of your… accident…. But I want to hear from you. What he told me is you’ve both gone through a pretty serious change in living circumstances recently – though he stressed that it was a positive change – but you’ve been having trouble adjusting? Does that sound correct to you, Mr. Bonham?”

Dean shrugs – kind of shrugs – does the best he can manage with access to less than half the muscles in his torso. Whatever he does still makes him wince though. 

“Alright,” Henshsaw says, making a little note on the paper inside the manila folder on his lap. “Your brother also mentioned a friend – that you’d both recently lost a close friend and it’s been hitting you…”

The air’s gone from Dean’s lungs. From the room. His ears feel like the pressure’s changed. Like everything sounds muffled. Distanced. 

Henshaw’s still saying, “That you’re having some trouble passing through the grief.. and…”

Parts of Dean’s brain are screaming at each other. Screaming Sam’s just trying to protect you that’s why he didn’t say. Screaming Sam doesn’t know. Screaming he has to know he has to he has to.  

Feels like it used to with Dad sometimes. Dean repeating over and over in his head that Dad meant well – or that’s not what Dad meant – or – or anything to drown out the leaden feeling in his gut that knew exactly what it was that Dad meant.

Cause of course there’s a part of Dean, quiet and certain of itself, that sits and knows that Sam likes to seem up with the times. Sam likes to look open and accepting and – and he would have said, if he – 

He wants Dean to get help. He would have said everything he thought would be relevant. Last time Cas died, Sam took Dean to a strip club. Still found him passed out on the floor next morning. Toes in his gut, “hey come on, get up. You okay?” Little chuckle.

Sam either isn’t looking or doesn’t want to.

“Mr. Bonham?” Dr. Henshaw says, “Mr. Bonham?... John?”

John .

Fuck. Fuck. Is Sam trying to say something? Is Sam saying Dean is being Dad? Is – what’s – Was he – Fuck. 

John Bonham. 

Dean could call Sam. Ask him if he did it on purpose. Which part would Sam even think he was asking about? Hell, he probably thought he was doing something nice. Zeppelin Rules. And all that. It wouldn’t be the first time even Dean’s used that name. Fuck. Sam probably thinks – Sam probably… 

“John?” Henshaw says again. “Do you –”

“Get out,” Dean growls, cutting him off. The words scrape out of Dean’s dry, disused throat. “Get the hell out.”

Dean can’t call Sam. Can’t explain about Cas and can’t explain about Dad and can’t hardly fucking talk anyway.

As he leaves, Dr. Henshaw’s voice is distant and concerned, speaking to someone in the hallway. But when Lacy walks in, she’s smiling warmly and doesn’t mention it. 

She does his vitals and switches out his IV fluids and asks Dean if anything’s changed and he shakes his head.

“I brought you a little treat,” she says. “Apple juice! We’re going to see how that goes down and then by tomorrow you might try some solid foods! You’re going to take some sips for me and then we’re going to see about getting you out of that bed for a bit.”

The juice is lukewarm and sickly sweet and Dean’s sure he hasn’t had apple juice in a long time and there are memories/feelings bubbling up at the taste and he closes his eyes and finishes the cup with clenched teeth, fighting for his throat to open enough that he can swallow.

Lacy’s brow is furrowed when Dean opens his eyes and hands her back the cup. But she says, “Ready to get up and at’em?” 

No.

Dean nods.

“Great!” Lacy says, “So first we gotta put this on.” She holds up a simple, fabric sling. “We don’t want your muscles fighting with the weight of your arm on top of healing,” she explains. 

Dean mostly feels numb as she sets his arm in the sling, tightens the straps around his shoulder and waist. And once he gets up, even though he can feel she’s strong enough to hold him, Dean puts most of his weight on the rolling IV stand as Lacy leads him slowly around the room. His body feels distant. Translucent. He feels like a ghost.

He stops at the window and fights for a moment with the chord of metal beads that pull the blinds open. And then, Dean’s looking out at the top story of a parking garage. All the trees on the streets surrounding the hospital are bare. The sky is pale blue with the thin fading light of an early winter sunset. There are five cars parked on top of the garage. The structure has maybe three stories. Dean can’t quite tell. A few cars roll down the streets. One turns into the entrance. Dean can see the rear of the car pause for a moment as the driver must stop to get a parking stub before pulling the rest of the way in. 

Two people walk out to one of the cars on the garage roof. One’s carrying a handful of papers and one of those plastic bags with the snapping handles that hospitals give you for your clothes and stuff when you leave. The other’s got a blue hat and has their arm wrapped securely around the ex-patient’s elbow. Blue hat makes sure patient’s settled safely in the car before patting their shoulder carefully and walking around to the driver’s side.

Dean doesn’t know what he was expecting. He drops the curtain chain, the metal beads sliding out through his fingers. It falls back against the wall with a dull clink. The blinds themselves shuffle like a breeze through plastic leaves.

“You ready to get back into bed, hon?” Lacy asks and Dean loses track of the moments between the question and when she’s settling him back onto the thin mattress, adjusting the pillows behind him.

Dean’s breathing heavily and his left side feels tight. But Lacy looks at him and says, “That’s okay. You’re going to be a little more out of breath than you’re used to. You just had a hole in your lung.”

Dean nods.

“But you did a good job,” Lacy says, “Tomorrow we’ll traverse the hallway!” 

As she’s leaving the room, she says, “Remember, just press that button if you need anything.”

And Dean’s brain screams, in desperation without reason, can you bring him back. I just need him . He doesn’t say it. It is impossible. And stupid. And Dean wants it. 

There is a hollow in him. A punched out part that stabs through his back next to his spine and through his lung and toward his heart. It’s not shaped like the hole in his lung or the incisions where the doctors had to widen the wound to flush it or where they had to hold his body open to reach and patch his lung. It’s not the shape of his broken ribs or the bruising he can feel across his back. It’s not the shape of the stitches or the rebar. 

It’s shaped like Cas.

Chapter Text

“So we’re taking you off the morphine drip. You’ll be on a regime of Percocet until we can cycle you through to a schedule of Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen that you’ll be able to maintain once you’re discharged. You should expect an increase in pain and sensation but please let us know if it gets to be too much or too drastic. It looks like you’ve been doing well with holding down liquids so we’re going to think about some more solid foods today. With the change in medication, you should feel less nauseated but don’t force anything and let the nurses know if you’re struggling with eating. My notes here have it that you’re getting up and out of bed okay so we’re going to be looking at our physical therapist coming by in the next few days to get you started on the program you’ll want to follow at home. Of course, we’re expecting you to also work with a physical therapist over the next few months and we can definitely recommend some practices in the area. Alright, do you have any questions?” 

Dr. Montgomery looks up from tapping her pen down Dean’s chart.

Dean can’t follow it all. He hears different phrases over and over long after Dr. Montgomery has stopped speaking but he can’t remember all of what she said and some things float around disconnected from each other. By the time he’s cleared his throat and worked out he wants to ask if this is all gonna be written down somewhere, he looks up and his chart is swaying gently off the edge of his bed again and her heels are turning the corner past the door and out into the hall.

A nurse who introduces himself as Greg comes to check Dean’s vitals and help him take a walk down the hallway. The lights are bright above him and his senses blur. The sound of his socks scuffling on the floor is loud in his ears. Greg gives Dean a few affirmations as they go but Dean can’t think of what to say back.

It hurts to walk, to hold his torso up straight, to feel the way his muscles tense and strain as his balance slips. Dean feels breathless and he clenches his jaw against the pain and tries to keep up with Greg’s slow pace.

Other patients and nurses and doctors pass them in the halls. Dean watches their speed, watches the blur of their shoes or their slow plodding or their wheels. He watches nurses twist their bodies carefully out of the way where he and Greg are taking up much of the hallway. He watches them roll patients in wheelchairs up close to the wall to give him space. He feels the weight of people behind him, unsure if it’s rude to pass or not. 

He feels like an empty styrofoam cup caught up on a branch in a stream. A old piece of trash, stained with algae and mud and age, only raised by floodwaters. Now he’s slowly accumulating more sticks and muck, changing the current of the whole river all because he can’t figure out how to detach, how to let go, just head down the stream with everything else. Shoulda stayed buried.

Sam used to like to stab empty coffee cups when he was like 13, Dean thinks. Used to take his knife slide it in and out over and over. Dean can still hear the sound – the plastic crumpling just a little, the squeal of the knife being pulled out. Until the cup was disintegrating in Sam’s hands. 

Greg walks him back to his room and takes his vitals again but he doesn’t say anything else before he leaves.

~~~

The cops come in the afternoon. 

Dean still has half a red jello cup left to eat but he sets the plastic spoon down on the table resting over his bed when the two officers walk through the door. It’s not the woman he and Sam spoke with a few days ago but Dean thinks he recognizes the two men from the crime scene at the house where the kids were taken.

“We just need to ask you a few questions,” one of them says, stupid blue hat in his hands, while the other makes little notes on a little pad. “I’m Officer Daniels and this is Officer Erickson.”

“We spoke to your…” Daniels looks toward Erickson who looks up from his notes.

“Brother,” Erickson supplies.

“Yes, we spoke to your brother. And we’d just like to hear your story.”

Dean doesn’t want to speak. Doesn’t want to go over it all again. Remembering the house and the pictures of the smiling family on the wall and knowing dad’s dead and mom’s traumatized and the kids’ll be fucked up for life probably. And he can never stop any of it. Just shows up after it’s already too late and it doesn’t fucking – it doesn’t fucking help if he saves them cause he knows what this shit does to you – knows it just wrecks you. The loss spreads in you like rust. And you crumble. And he doesn’t want to fucking think about those two kids scared and brave and just having to live with all that. And he couldn’t save them. It was already too late. Spent his whole life already too late. 

Spent his whole life like that night when he woke up only after he heard mom scream. 

“Mr. Bonham?” Daniels says. 

Dean looks toward him, enough that the cop’ll feel his attention. But Dean doesn’t really see him. He looks past the holster strapped on Daniels’ hip and out to the hospital hallway with its teal and tan floor tiles and blue railing along the edge. The painting Dean can kind of glimpse past Erickson’s shoulder is of a distant lighthouse maybe, a shoreline, some dunes. 

A nurse rolls his cart down the hallway and Dean hears the squeak of the plastic rollers on the waxed floor. 

Above the two cops is the pockmarked, paneled ceiling. The panels themselves are just enough bigger than the floor tiles that it doesn’t feel like it fits quite right. The door to the room has a long rectangular window in it running from near the top to just above the handle. But the door swung wide, nearly pressed back against the wall. The view through the windows’ diagonal pattern of wired-glass is just the shadowed, pale blue wall of Dean’s room.

“Alright,” Daniels says, sounding annoyed, “I’m going to need you to listen to me and just answer, okay pal.”

Dean shifts his focus so instead of seeing through and around Daniels, he’s looking directly at him: Daniels’ head shaved nearly bald, the little red raised skin over his chin where it’s irritated from the razor this morning, the collar of his uniform that’s buttoned too tight under his chin, the way he doesn’t know what to do with his hands so one of them rests on the grip of his gun, the handcuffs hanging off his other hip. He looks angry and bored. His teeth are so, so white when he talks. 

“Now that I have your attention,” Daniels says in a clipped tone, “We appreciate what you did finding those kids and, of course, that you were injured in the incident. But I want to understand just what you were doing trespassing on private property on the night of November 19th?”

Erickson is writing things in his notepad and Dean doesn’t know what it could be cause he hasn’t said anything. He wishes Sam were here or had told him what he’d already told the cops – besides that Dean was trying to – besides – But he feels fuzzy on what he’d normally say in a situation like this – what Sam would have probably said. They have a system worked out for what to say right? Dean just can’t quite remember…

And there’s something else building in him – something that feels like finding out Chuck was actually God but had just been fucking around for centuries not really caring, something like finding out the angels were trying to start the apocalypse too, something like years ago being offered up to the orchard god and the guy tigenting the knots was a cop, something like Chuck leaving with Amara and telling Dean the world had him so it’d be okay and then watching people die around him over and over and – 

Feels like finding out Dad had stopped working the case and Dean’ll doesn’t know wh– 

“It’s not a difficult question, Mr. Bonham,” Daniels cuts through Dean’s processing. “What were you doing on November –”

“What were you doing?” Dean says suddenly. The words come out loud and angry.

Both cops take a step back and Daniels’ hand tightens on the holster. 

But Dean’s just as shocked as they are. Doesn’t mean the words stop though. Anger’s always made the words easier. “What the fuck were you doing, huh? People have been disappearing, like this since the fucking eighties and what? You’re too busy to look into it?” Dean’s back comes off the pillows on the bed behind him. “You don’t care? People been going missing for decades – Kids have been going missing and what –” his right arm wants to reach out, point at them, maybe even throw a punch, but it can’t so he just holds it tight in its sling with his left. “And what you just – you just – you just…” but the words leave him as quickly as they came. His voice cracking over the last few and his chest tight and painful. 

His back feels hot and there’s an awful pinching and then a spreading ache coming from his wound. And then his dry throat wants to cough and he has to hold it down until his eyes water. He can barely see the two cops anymore. Pain and tears have made them into two blue smudges in his vision. 

Daniels and Erickson seemed stunned for a moment and then Daniels takes a step forward, “ What did you just say to –”

But Erickson’s hand comes out and holds Daniels back. As soon as Daniels is still, Erickson pulls out his notepad. “What are you saying about other disappearances?”

But Dean’s done. Nothing more he could say comes close. Nothing touches what he’s feeling. He wants to take the jello cup and throw it at them, watch the opaque red splash and drip across their uniforms.

“Yeah,” says Daniels, picking up steam from Erickson’s question, “Yeah, what do you know about other disappearances?”

Dean glares at him and pictures the bright, red jello staining Daniels’ crisp, tight collar, seeping into it. 

“Hey,” says an angry voice from the door. Greg pokes his head through and takes one look from Dean to the cops before saying, “Okay time to go.”

“We’re not done question–” Erickson starts.

Greg cuts him off, “Are you holding him or is he free to go?”

“We still have questions,” Daniels says. His hand is on his holster, again.

“Is he under arrest or is he free to go?” Greg says, firmly. “I can’t have you upsetting a patient with a traumatic injury like this. You’re putting him at serious risk.”

“We –” Erickson starts. Erickson’s fingers trace the handcuffs hanging on his belt, like he’s thinking. 

“Is he free to go?” Greg asks, again.

“Mr. Bonham, we will have more to discuss with you,” Daniels says, taking a step back away from Greg. “Don’t leave town.”

When the two cops finally step out of the room, Greg shuts the door behind them. 

“Are you okay?” he says, looking Dean up and down. 

No.

Dean tries to shrug but his whole body is so tense that it just strains his back and he gasps and then clenches his teeth. 

“Come on,” Greg says, “You really need to lie back down, okay.” He helps Dean shift back in bed but Dean can’t figure out how to lie the way he was before. His body feels like a twisted rope, just waiting to unravel.

“You really shouldn’t talk to them,” Greg says. “You’ll just bring yourself more trouble.”

Dean nods. He knows. He knows. But – nearly 40 years of missing kids and – and nothing . He wants to cry. He wants to scream. He still wants to throw the jello. 

“Just press that button if you need anything,” Greg says as he leaves and then Dean wants to throw the fucking nurses’ button through the wall.

But something about Greg’s words and the worry in his eyes as he walks from the room, leaving the door open, sinks in Dean’s gut. He knows he shouldn’t have said shit to the cops. Knows they’re never gonna leave that one alone – 

And maybe it doesn’t quite make sense but lying here with a hole punched through his back makes him feel – vulnerable. Trapped. Filled with dread. 

When Sam went missing and Dean had looked everywhere and called everyone and looked and called again. And again. And Dad’s coming home like a ticking time bomb. God it was almost worse before he actually got there. The waiting. 

God. Dean’s been arrested more times than he can even – slammed onto tables and the hoods of cars and walls and shoved to his knees, his stomach, hands on his head, hands behind him, yanked back into cuffs, straining his shoulders. The punch of air from his lungs as he’s pushed down, the uneven yank of his arms pulled back, the smell of whatever his face is pressed up into, the texture of it, and the dread, the dread holding him down as much as the hands. A rabbit caught in a snare, legs kicking helplessly. 

Maybe it’s cause they took him off the morphine, maybe it’s cause he can feel the phantom of cuffed wrists pulling his shoulders, but his back aches and aches. He feels cold. 

His body tells him how it would go, how it would feel. The strain and tearing in his muscles from trying to force himself up and free while the cops are trying to hold him down, cuff him. The way they’d slam him back against the bed and his back would open and his body would shudder and shudder. The yank of the cuffs on his wrist when it inevitably happened. The sound of the metal rattling around the hospital bed’s handle whenever he moved. The way the metal would slowly warm, the longer he was trapped, until he was almost used to it. Until he almost couldn’t feel it anymore.

Yeah. Dean is definitely going to leave town.

He remembers doc saying something this morning about over the counter pain meds and he can definitely get more if what he has in Baby isn’t enough. And how’s sitting in the car driving all day that different from sitting in this stupid bed. He can walk. He can – 

Dean pulls the IV needle from his arm. It falls back toward the stand and drips quietly onto the floor. His arm starts to bleed. 

Getting out of bed is harder when there’s no nurse’s arm to grab or lean on and he should have chosen to shift his legs over right side of the bed so he had a working arm to grab the bed rail with but he didn’t. So he pulls himself forward by the edge of the mattress until his feet can feel how close the floor is. 

He finds his clothes in a cabinet over the sink in the corner of the room, inside one of those little plastic bags of belongings he saw a patient walking out with … yesterday? The day before? He doesn’t – 

Dean knows he doesn’t have long. Shuts the door quiet as he can. Dumps everything from the bag out onto the bed. Wallet. Phone – battery dead. Pants. Underwear. Baby’s keys and a business card from a storage facility in town with a unit number written on it. Sam must’ve left – Boots. T-shirt, denim shirt, jacket stuck together and bloody. Hole punched through three layers. T-shirts cut down the front from where they had to pull it off him. 

Dean stops a moment. Finger on the tears, stained dark brown and crisp with his dried blood. He pulls the fabric apart. The fibers hiss at the separation. The denim looks least ruined, least conspicuous, but Dean can’t get it on with the sling. 

He pulls at the velcro and the buckles that lengthen the straps. But he isn’t expecting how suddenly it lets go and his arm falls. Pulls muscle and tissue in his back. Hurts like shit. Wets his eyes. Fuck . 

But he gets free. Johnny off and naked for a moment before he struggles awkwardly into underwear and pants and boots, lacing tucked into the top. Doesn’t have two hands to tie them. Dean lets his left arm hang loose to slip into the denim shirt. Feels weird with nothing underneath. Feels weird to button it. 

Then he can’t get the sling back on. 

He throws the rest of his shit into the little plastic bag. Cracks the door and waits until the hallway is quiet enough.

And leaves. 

Dean steps out of some utility door at the back end of the hospital to a cutting winter wind.

Chapter Text

Sun’s low in the sky outside the hospital. Not evening yet. But that time of year when the sun’s sinking lower sooner every day. The change always feels faster up north. Night gulping daylight in minutes. 

Behind Dean the hospital’s shading out most of the sunset itself. The little suburban street in front of him is shadowed and quiet. Lawns and fences and sidewalk all grey and tan and dull. He wends his way through the neighborhood. He’s cold. 

The plan is: charge phone, get Baby, get food, get gone. 

Any one of the houses he passes could have a phone charger. But it’d be more trouble than Dean feels he could handle to get busted on an alarm or some shit. And while Dean’s spent his whole life knocking on stranger’s doorways for help, it was always him offering it. Doesn’t like the idea of standing cold on a porch in a bloody shirt with a bag labeled Aultman Hospital in big blue and tan letters and just waiting. Plus half the driveways are empty anyway. Before five on a weekday.

Dean figures he’s gotta hit a gas station or convenience store or something before too long. So he walks. 

The wind cuts through the hole in the back of Dean’s shirt and even despite all the bandages, it feels colder there than on his bare skin. He clenches his jaw and tries to cross his arms across his chest and his wound wails at the stretch and Dean curses to himself. 

He wants to hold his left arm up against the strain of it hanging down and swinging while he walks but when he tries to hold the thin plastic handle of the hospital bag that holds the rest of his clothes, his fingers won’t close around it without twinging. So he loops his right fingers through and grabs his left sleeve so he can cradle his arm better. 

Adds “figure out how to put the sling back on” to the plan.

When he hits it, Ninth Street is larger than the grid of smaller residential lanes Dean’s been weaving through so he turns onto it. Left, away from the hospital. 

Cars zoom past and Dean resists the urge to sweep his head around to check each time that it’s not the cops. Even if it were, he tells his tensing neck – even if it were, it would make him look more suspicious. 

Street’s bigger than the others had been but it’s still just houses and Dean’s starting to wonder if maybe he should have headed the other way when he sees a gas station. 

And he should feel relief but shit the cold air’s getting into his lungs now and he feels breathless and clammy and he knows this is way farther than he’s been walking in the hospital. And he’s starting to feel dizzy and tired and breathless. And he doesn’t want to have to catch himself on the weathered, splintery wood or hollow, white plastic or paint-peeling, wrought iron fences around the lawns he’s passing but he has no choice. The wind keeps sneaking down his collar and through the gaps between the buttons. His heart is racing and Dean can feel it throbbing in the wound, like it’s louder there. Like it’s echoing in the empty space.

When he finally gets to the gas station, the blast of warm air from the heater just inside the door hits Dean in the face and, combined with the sound of the bell, he nearly passes out right there. 

Hand on the lip of a metal shelf of potato chips to catch himself. His skin feels sticky and slick.

He makes his way to the counter at the back, trying to make his balance against the shelves look like browsing. It probably doesn’t work but – 

There’s something simple about feeling like this, like his needs are so simple – getting somewhere and food and to patch where he got busted up. Felt like this a lot as a kid and at least there’s no one to look after other than himself this time – no one else waiting on him.

He’s not some scared teenager with a black eye and broken nose hitching on the side of the road cause Dad got pissed that Dean fucked up and told him to “Take some time on the road to wise up” and meet him and Sam two states over in a week. He used to get really panicked then, he remembers. Sometimes he’d just sit frozen and left, without a fucking clue what to do.

But Dean got better at figuring out what to do as a kid and now it’s even clearer. He’s got a plan. Charge phone, get Baby, get food, figure out the fucking sling, get gone. Simple.

He leans up against the check-out. His fingers are gripping the linoleum counter so tight, he can feel the little metal edging’s shape being pressed into his palm. 

The attendant turns around from where he was straightening the Lotto ticket display and says, “Hey, what can I do for you?”

Dean carefully fishes his phone out of his pocket, making sure to keep his hip leaning against the counter for stability and holding on as tight as he can with his weakened left hand. He waves the black phone screen at the guy to show he’s asking for a charge.

“Ahh, sorry,” the guy says, “I don’t think we sell that kind of cable.”

Dean nods. 

“Anything else I can…” The guy trails off. 

Get Baby. That’s gotta come before the phone then cause how’s he supposed to get anywhere else without – he pulls out the card Sam left him with the storage company’s name on it and shows it to the attendant. 

“Blue Water? Yeah… that’s about, oh I don’t know, fifteen or twenty from here?” He looks back at Dean like he’s expecting Dean’s gonna – talk. 

Dean can’t. He clears his throat but he can’t. He nods like, thanks. And like… 

“Do you…” 

The guy seems uncertain and uneasy and Dean tries to smile reassuringly but there’s no way it reaches his eyes so that’s probably made things worse. 

“Right, your phone’s dead,” guy says. “Do you want me to call you a cab or something?” 

Dean nods and smiles gratefully and grabs the counter with his right hand too cause it’s so hot in here and he feels dizzy enough that it’s hard to read the guy’s expression clearly.

The guy keeps his eyes on Dean the whole time he’s calling a cab and Dean’s not too stupid not to be worried he might’a called the cops instead – but why would he? But he still might anyway. But – 

Dean can’t quite focus on the guy’s face while he’s making the call but the guy hangs up and says, “Cab’s gonna be like ten minutes. It’ll be Yellow Cab. You can wait in here if you wanna.”

Dean nods again, thanks. Thank you. He taps the counter with his knuckles. Like hey this is normal. Like pretend I can make a sound, okay?

Guy nods at him.

Dean tries to step away from the counter so he’s not crowding it for other people and nearly trips. It’s not the dizziness this time. He looks down at where his shoes are tied too loose cause back at the hospital he couldn’t pull the laces right with his useless left arm. But now he can feel that the backs of both of his ankles are blistering from where the boots have been chaffing around them. 

Dean wonders how he didn’t notice while he was walking. Because now every time he moves, he can feel them yelp. 

He thinks about the bandaids in Baby’s first aid kit. And thinks about bending down to get them on. His body shudders.

It must not actually take ten minutes for the cab to pull up out front. Dean waves at the attendant and heads toward the door. Over the sound of the bell ringing again he hears the guy call, “Hey, man! You okay? Your shirt – is that blood?” 

Dean lets the door slam closed behind him and hops into the back of the cab.

At least this is easy. He leans forward to show the Blue Water Storage card to the driver.

“Righty-oh,” the driver says and pulls out of the gas station. 

Then, it’s not easy anymore cause Dean can’t lean back against the seat without his breath being knocked from his body and the tension of holding himself off the seat throbs and aches and makes Dean nauseous. 

He grips the back of the front passenger seat and grits his teeth while nearly colorless winter suburbs stream by. 

He pays the cabbie and pulls himself out of the car. 

Dean keeps his teeth clenched over the nausea through the walk to the storage center’s office and tries to walk so his boots don’t make the blisters worse. It doesn’t work.

The office is small and cluttered with papers and the woman behind the desk looks up tiredly as Dean walks in. 

“Yeah?” She says.

He shows her the business card with the unit number on it.

She says, “Yeah?” again.

Dean swallows. He clears his throat. He wills himself to speak. He taps the edge of the card on the counter. He balls his other hand into a fist. He takes a shaky breath in. 

The woman blinks at him.

Dean opens his mouth. Nothing.

He grabs a pen and piece of paper from the counter and writes, Here for my car. He looks down at the paper for a second and closes his eyes. He clenches his jaw. But shame has never made the words easier.

He slides the paper over. He pulls his car keys out and jingles them. 

She takes the business card from him and squints at the unit number written on it. “You sure? Guy was just here the other day and paid for two months.”

Dean’s vision blacks out for a moment but he manages to nod. 

“Okay,” she says a little skeptically but she reaches behind the desk to the rack of keys and hands Dean one of them.

He nods like thanks and she goes back to looking at her computer.

Dean walks out of the office and turns a corner into the alleyways of blue storage unit doors. As soon as he’s sure he’s out of sight of the office and the street, he leans his forehead against the cold, stucco texture of the concrete. And tries to breathe.

The meds have worn off all the way now – or close. Dean feels as crisp and clear in his mind as the air outside. And as bitten and raw inside as the wind on his skin. The stucco is rough on his forehead. When he lifts his head, there’ll be the tiny grainy imprints all over it. If he rubs his head at all, it’ll be grated and bloody. His heels are burning. 

And it hurts so much to move, he might be sick. Meds go on the plan – meds go on first – meds in the back of Baby maybe? Shit if he can even make it that far.

Dean pushes up off the wall. He has to use enough of his neck muscles that his face gets scraped. Fucking perfect. Someone’s gonna take one look at him and call the cops. Maybe he has other clothes in the car?

He just has to get there.

Hand runs along the rough wall. Eyes track numbers and blue doors and locks and corners. Lungs stutter. Heels scream. Eyes well with – no. No.

Unit 1123. Unit 1122. Unit 1121. 

That’s it. Dean breathes. Fumbles the key. The lock is cold and Dean feels like his fingers want to stick to it. But he’s also so close to safety. That feeling from when he was a kid comes back – screw the bunker, screw Kansas, screw – front seat of that car is all he needs. All he’s ever fucking needed, right?

Opening the garage door is hell. But he manages it.

And there she is. 

He spares one moment of annoyance that Sam didn’t bother to cover her or anything. But this way – this way – he can run his hand along the whole metal shape of her. She can help hold him up. Help support him as he walks to the trunk – get meds, get clothes. Baby feels smooth. And strong.

You and me, Baby, he thinks, you and me . Simple.

He pops the trunk. It’s almost empty. 

Dean’s chest tightens. His stomach drops. His throat goes dry. His eyes are hazy. His hands shake. 

No salt. No holy water. No guns, bullets, knives. No charms, books. No matches.

But more importantly – 

Thoughtless of how his quick movements jostle and rip at his back, Dean’s hands run to the back corner of the trunk, frantic. In the near-darkness of the storage unit, it’s impossible to see. But he can’t breathe. He can’t even think til he – 

His fingers find the cool canvas material, balled up, shoved all the way in the back.

Dean takes a shaky breath and pulls his quivering fingers away. He doesn’t want to hurt – doesn’t want to risk moving, touching for too long, smudging.

He lets the false floor of the retrofitted tire-well fall closed. He stares down the first aid kit.

The urge to skip the meds rises sickeningly.

But his back aches. Feels stiff. Feels cold. Feels open .

He opens a bottle and chugs a few pills.

It didn’t escape his notice that his duffle of clothes isn’t here. He throws the hospital bag down in frustration. Slams the trunk.

Dean lowers himself carefully into the driver’s seat. He can’t lean back fully, can’t relax but this feels – He leans forward and rests his forehead on the wheel. Then adjusts it when he can feel the cuts leaving a little trail of blood. Sorry, Baby .

He turns the key. 

And there she is – best sound in the world that steady purr. 

Dean plugs in his phone and shuts his eyes against the pain and everything else and breathes into Baby’s hum.

When his phone chimes that it’s restarted itself, he tries to take a deep breath and plugs in GPS to the nearest grocery store and drives out of storage place. He kinda feels like a dick for not returning the key but he just wants to be gone.

It takes him a few minutes in the parking lot of Fischer Foods to convince his aching body and raw feet that he actually does have to get out of the car. 

And once inside, the bright lights and bustling noise are overwhelming. But he just has to get through this – come on. He’s so close. He’s got Baby. And meds and a nearly charged phone. Getting food and getting gone is all that’s left. Simple. 

He grabs a basket cause he doesn’t need much, right? And then – bread, yeah, that’ll be good – peanut butter, okay – jam, shit that’s back up with the bread – jerky, for road snacks – but where’s he – don’t think about that – beer – and whiskey – shit chips would be good, gotta go back – toothbrush – toothpaste. He throws two three-packs of boxer briefs into the basket, which is pulling down roughly on his arm by now, and then a set of plain black v-necks.

That should be good, right? Dean feels like he’s done three circuits of the store. He feels shaky and tense and whatever the meds were in the first aid kit weren’t close to what the hospital had cause he still feels like shit. 

He loops back around to the painkiller aisle just to see if there’s something – anything – 

The basket is so heavy and he’s having trouble reading the labels and then he can feel eyes on him from down the aisle.

He glances up.

One of the kids reaches up to tug at the sleeve of the woman next to him — his mom probably. Dean watches them from the corner of his eye cause shit is this it. Kid’s gonna ask his mom what’s wrong with Dean’s face and shirt and then the cops’ll – 

But there’s something familiar about them, he thinks, watching at a slant.

Kid says something Dean doesn’t hear but he points at Dean and mom looks down at him and then up at Dean and her face fills up with emotion.

It’s the fullness of it that Dean recognizes. 

There was a picture of her on the wall next to the stairs in her home that showed her – newborn in her arms – couldn’t be long after giving birth and she looked so tired and worn and grateful as she looked more down at the baby than the camera. And that’s very nearly the expression she’s wearing now, looking more at her son than Dean. Worn, grateful.

And now he knows where he’s seen the kids before too – even thought he only saw them for a moment – 

Cause a few days ago, he ran into a barn to save them from some vamps. 

He meets the mom’s eyes. 

The kids are both tucking their bodies half behind hers but not in fear, just in closeness, reassurance. 

And Dean wants to say something to her – to them – wants to – wants to say sorry and wants them to be okay and wants to – 

He nearly drops his basket. 

He takes a step forward and tries and tries to get his tongue to do something . But it’s too much. It’s all too much. 

The kids are wide-eyed and silent next to mom and she’s still looking at Dean like – 

And Dean wants to be able to say something to her. 

Shit . 

And then she lifts her hands off the handle of her cart and she raises her right hand flat to her lips and lifts it off, palm up, as she smiles softly at him.

It means, thank you . 

Vamps cut out her tongue, he remembers. She can’t speak. She says, Thank you .

She’s looking at him expectantly and Dean watches the smile falter just a bit like she’s worried he didn’t understand her or she said it wrong or – Her hands wait poised over the cart handle like she wants to say more but she’s not sure she can and – 

Dean bends to put his basket on the ground and tries not to shake or groan with the effort and he looks at her and he closes his right hand into a loose fist, keeping his thumb out and runs it in a careful circle over his chest. It means, I’m sorry . He tells her with his eyes too, with his whole face, I’m sorry . 

She smiles in the relief of understanding for a moment but she pinches her two first fingers and thumb together and shakes her head, No, no, no. And then she says, again, Thank you .

I’m sorry , Dean says again. It doesn’t even touch it. 

She swallows. Clears her expression. Your face ? She asks.

  Dean’s quick to sign, Fine. I’m fine. He remembers out of the vagueness of the first moments in the hospital Sam saying something about how these kids had called the ambulance when Sam — that they had killed. Thank you, he says, looking down at the kids, back then you saved me. Thank you. It hurts – making signs that use both his hands but Dean makes sure to smile – to say as much with his face as his hands. Though he doesn’t know how much they understand yet. 

Mom looks like she wants to say more but Dean thinks she must only have started learning to talk this way. Her hands flutter for a moment and she scrunches her nose up like she’s thinking, trying. 

She reaches out briefly with a hand like maybe she wants to touch Dean’s arm or shake his hand or – She says, thank you , again. 

Because Dean is watching her hands, he watches them stop speaking and her fingers circle her wedding ring. A soft, sad, nervous movement. 

The breath catches in Dean’s throat.

She lifts her fingers off the ring. He , she says. She stops. He , she starts again. Her brow knits a little in frustration as she searches for how to say what she wants to.

And then her face crumples into tears. 

She squeezes one hand around the other. And Dean can see where she’s pressing hardest around her ring. 

One of her sons wraps his arms around her waist and Dean watches her take two steadying breaths before letting go of the ring and wrapping her arms around her kids shoulders. 

She meets Dean’s eyes one more time and shuffles her kids and cart toward checkout. 

Dean runs his fist over his chest again, even though they probably can’t see him anymore. I’m sorry.

He picks up his basket. 

Checks out. 

Heads out into the parking lot awash in fluorescent light. 

He doesn’t have a plan anymore. “Get gone” is hardly detailed.

He drives until he finds a turn off without streetlights and parks. 

Dean thought he was gonna eat something maybe or try to change his shirt or maybe try to make it to a motel or just – something simple or  – 

Dean presses his head against the steering wheel. 

His left arm rests on top of his leg, his hand hands limply down. With his right hand, Dean reaches around and pinches the skin around his left third finger. He squeezes until he can feel the bone, his skin shifting aside under the press of his finger tips. He squeezes and squeezes and squeezes until his hands are all tangled together and his fingers ache.

Baby clicks quietly as her engine cools. 

Back behind Dean’s hunched, shuddering shoulders, in the cavernous trunk, two bloody coats lie crumpled and separate.

Chapter Text

The deer’s neck is bent back on itself. Broken. Its body looks otherwise unscathed. But the unnatural angle and its throat twisted out – exposed, and vulnerable as it would never be in life is enough – it’s dead.

Dean pulls off onto the gravel at the side of the road and the consistent rumble of Baby’s engine is cut off abruptly as he twists the key. After nearly 7 hours of its reassuring sound, the car seems deathly quiet. Cold air starts to seep in almost immediately. 

Dean reaches for the door handle first with his left hand, which twinges all the way up his arm and into his back, and then his right. The angle pinches a little but he gets a grip on the handle and pushes. The door squeaks loudly into the momentarily empty road. 

Dean pushes himself from the car. The gravel at the side of the road is solid and unforgiving under his feet. A sheen of ice has formed on the puddles from this morning’s rain. 

One of the deer’s feet disappears into the dark water, a little unfrozen circle around its ankle where the body is still warm. 

Dean thinks he’s seen enough bodies on roadsides to fill a whole book. Not that there’s a market for A Field Guide to the Roadkill of America’s Highways . But it’s there – all in his head. They’d be categorized not by animal but by the violence of the death – and the time since it happened. 

There’s roadkill that time has reduced to nothing more than a smear of skin on pavement. Whatever it once was has long since been run into the ground. Nothing but sun-scorched leather, fur, feathers. 

There’s tragedy. Animals that look merely like they’ve fallen down mid-leap. Legs splayed out – no visible marks. Death announces itself in their lack of movement or fear. Possums in broad daylight. Fat raccoons basking in the sun. Coyotes whose tails just catch a breeze – almost as if – but no, still dead.

The rabbits are the hardest of these to witness. Long legs stretched in a leap that couldn’t save them. Soft bellies, normally so protected and hidden in grass and shadows, now layed out. Death forces them to turn over their secrets. Death displays their bright, white fur.

There’s gore. Guts spilling from ruptured chests and abdomens. Death pops them open. Crows and vultures pecking. And then flapping away. Sometimes waiting just a moment too long. Sometimes nearly succumbing themselves – before they catch flight. Their meals are organs unspooled from their containers – pink and slimy and brown. These are the ones that reek. The ones that have you rolling up the windows. Cooking on the skillet of roadways with no earth to decompose into.

The skunks also smell. For miles before you see the crumpled, striped shape. And nearly a relief when you do. An explanation. And the knowledge the smell will pass, in time.

Spring is the worst season. Fledglings and frolicking squirrel kits and all manner of young creatures that will never learn to avoid the road. Frogs so new their skin is practically translucent that only have to make two journeys across a road in their whole lives - but sometimes never even get halfway. Tiny fractured puzzle pieces of hatchling turtle shells. A season of boundless new life everywhere gives death more dinner. 

There’s the awful, almost inexplicable, sight of birds. The reality that somehow even something that flies can be hit. Grounded, wings bent and askew, feathers scattered ever more by the wind of each passing car. Death is gravity itself. 

There’s the swerve of cars in front of you, tires sliding over the yellow lines like the bend in a river. And then, moments later, the explanation – a body. Soon it will be edged to the side of the road by repetitions of traffic. Put, unceremoniously, away.

There’s the sickening feeling of ruining flesh under your own tires. Dean has killed more than one animal this way. Been driving since he was nearly nine. Been rushed and scared and tearing across the country and back so many fucking times. Mostly at night. Sometimes feeling like the devil was right behind him. Sometimes was. So yeah, there’ve been soft bodies he couldn’t break for. Didn’t see. Couldn’t spare the swerve with cruiser lights flashing red and blue seconds behind him. It goes like this: fuck and then the bump. He wishes he hadn’t. He wishes he could remember how many – some kind of penance, to be able to count them. He wishes he didn’t know what death looked like in his rear view mirror, in the wake of his own car.

There’s the exact width of a tire measured in a length of flattened snake.

There’s relief. A mound on the shoulder of the road – the work identification begins instantly – turns out to be a trash bag or a strip of tire tread, a piece of bumper. And for just a moment death doesn’t exist. 

There’s the almost. A sudden dash of brown fur in the wrong direction and then foot stomping on breaks and frantic looks in the rearview to check. And then – and then a slideshow of imagining how it could have gone, for miles. 

There’s the gut-wrenching sight of the moment it happens. Legs and fur and a small, quick face dart between tires – and don’t make it. They roll under the car in front of you. The body cracks, breaks, comes apart. And it’s over. 

When Dean was very, very young and still believed – still trusted something in his Dad before he watched the performance fade, he saw a squirrel hit by a car ahead of them in traffic. He saw – or thought he saw – it limp up again. Try to make it to the curb. He begged and begged to stop and help. Helping people – that’s what they did, right? And over and over Dad said, “No.” Said it was dead. Until they were too far away to help anyway. 

Dean knows it was probably dead – or beyond saving. Knows that the little movements he saw – or thought he saw – were probably the last convulsions of dying nerves. Has seen a thousand thousand more things quiver and die in the time since. Still, sometimes he sees its final twitch on the inside of his closed eyelids. Sees its splayed limbs, one leg twisted to the side, neck turned almost like in sleep. 

There’s bodies right after and long since and whole and piecemeal and pets and wild and sad and sadder. He’s seen them all. 

 There’s scattered bits over and over on the side of every road from coast to coast and back again. Limbs and tissue torn and strewn in red chunks on asphalt. Death has no concern for optics, for reverence. Death makes meat. And flies, profane and unconcerned and hungry, land on sightless, open eyeballs. 

And every time, Dean’s spine shudders just a little at the precise, indisputable possibility. Death sits on the guardrail at the edge of the road, and dangles its feet. And waves, while cars rush past. 

The deer is in the precious few hours after death where it hasn’t quite begun to rot. It’s amazing what time will do to a corpse – even after years, the scent can still cling to your nostrils. Dean’s certainly scrambled through enough attics and basements and mausoleums to know a mouse will smell like dead rodent for months and months after its body is nothing but dry skin and fur holding a tiny puzzle of bones.

But here – in these moments after death, the deer smells like leaves and soil, like the sweet scent of manure. The orange glow of the setting sun colors its flank a warm brown. One of its ears has scraped against the road, just a little. Red blood flecked and dried on its soft fur, coagulated uselessly. Wouldn’t have made a difference if it kept bleeding.

He’s going to bury it. He’s not gonna leave it like this, tossed like trash at the side of the road. He’s not gonna just drive on by and let this life go unmourned. He’s not – 

He opens the empty trunk before he remembers. He has to buy a fucking shovel.

Shouldn’t be too hard. All day, he’s been driving through nothing but brittle, late-fall remnants of corn fields punctuated by miles of warehouses then miles of strip malls. West through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. So he’s sure to have passed a couple-hundred sprawling hardware stores. Hell, even a gas station would probably do. Sometime in the past few hours, the morning rain cleared and Dean’s route toward the setting sun poured squinting light through his windshield.

Dean sinks back into the car. He doesn’t remember falling asleep last night and doesn’t really remember the decision to start driving back to the bunker. He’s been in a daze, watching the miles roll past while registering very little. Maybe he grabbed something to eat somewhere, sometime.  

But now, he’s hungry. His body aches. He’s probably due for some medicating so he reaches over and grabs a few pills to swallow down. But it’s not just his wound that hurts. His leg’s sore from hovering on the gas. His other knee feels stiff from inaction. His core muscles feel wrung out, presumably from holding his body upright and away from the seat so he didn’t put weight on his back. He doesn’t remember the choice to sit that way. But now all his muscles want to do is collapse back into the seat. He tries to ease into it. To relax his tense abs slowly but the second his spine starts to lean on the cushion, it feels like he’s being punched through again. 

Dean lets out the gasp necessary to get air back in his lungs and clings to the steering wheel to keep his tired muscles upright and pulls the car in a large loop across the road and heads back toward the last shopping center he passed.

~~~

Inside, Lowe’s is bright, bright light. And wide aisles and shelves piled high under shelves piled high and Dean is very dizzy. There’s barely anyone else inside and it feels for a moment like the end of the world. Like when Chuck disappeared everyone. A place that seems like it ought to be filled with people, emptied and silent. A store stocked to the brim for ghosts.

Dean walks up and down and up and down and the sound of his boots is loud and his knee hurts and his back aches and jostles a little with every step. And he walks out into the garden section cause he thinks the shovels ought to be there. But everything’s put away for the season. The cold air makes Dean shiver.

He wanders back inside, eyes darting to aisle labels but barely taking them in. The store smells like new plastic and chalky dust and cheap pine boards. The lights overhead are so bright that when he looks up to read signs, it’s hard to see for a moment after. 

Everything is so quiet.

He’s wandered into the appliances. They shine chrome and porcelain white and rippling black in the incandescent lights. Refrigerators and washing machines and microwaves. Mocked up kitchen walls topped by three feet of molding which ends abruptly with 30 feet of air above it before it could reach the pipe-covered ceiling of the store. 

Some of the kitchens have entire faked windows set into the walls above their sinks. Beveled grills on the panes and decorative curtains pulled back in neat loops. Under the top lip of the window frame, warmer LED lights hide and mimic sunlight spilling through the glass.  

Dean’s eyes glaze into the blurry painting of a grassy field. His cold body wants to feel the warmth of the sunlight. His stiff hands want to wash dishes in warm water. His heart wants to have cooked a meal for his – 

He runs a hand over his face, cutting himself off from the vision. He leaves appliances.

He finds the shovels. 

It’s fully night when he gets back in the car. Grits his teeth and grips the wheel all the way back to the body. 

He leaves the shovel leaning against the side of the car and bends down to the deer. He tries at first to wrap his left hand around one of its delicate, bony ankles but his grip is weak and loose. So he holds the leg as firmly as he can in his right hand and pulls. 

His hand slips off over the foot and he stumbles back into the guardrail. The deer lays heavily on the earth.

But Dean’s moved bodies before. For a moment he considers trying to carry it but no. He doesn’t have the strength to shoulder it. Once it starts moving, it’ll get easier to drag. Once he’s been moving for a bit, he’ll warm up. 

He bends down again, takes a deep breath, braces his thighs, and pulls. The deer budges, just a little. 

Its hooves click together quietly. Its neck sways limply.

Dean huffs out a breath. 

He braces his body. And pulls again. The deer’s round side scrapes against the road. He can hear the pebbles underneath it grate. Dean pictures the little injuries, dotting blood through its fur. Wishes he were strong enough to lift it. Not that it would – He sighs.

Even though he’s trying to use only the muscles on his right side, Dean can feel his left start to pull apart. Can feel stitches and bandages and whatever else they’ve taped and sewn to him start to pull apart. 

But there are trees just beyond the guardrail at the side of the road. There, the ground is covered in damp leaves and it will be easier. If he can just get there. It will be easier. The shoulder of the road begins to slope down soon and it will get easier.

Dean breathes and yanks the deer’s feet and breathes and pulls and the deer trails along, inert, after him. Its large, open eyes reflect the headlights of a passing car. It feels obscene, this dragging. Spindly legs meant for quick dashes, leaping, quiet steps through sun-speckled woods. But now they are twigs, insubstantial handles to drag the muscled corpse. A grotesque reversal.  

They make it to the guardrail. And the deer’s body is too thick to pull under it.

Dean curses and breathes in quick, ragged pants. 

And then bends and drags the deer a little farther down the road to where the shoulder drops off more and the gap between gravel turning to grass and the metal guard widens.

Dean slinks over the guard and catches himself on the rough lip of it as the gravel shifts under his feet. But he gets the deer through.

And pulling it through the woods is a bit easier – until he meets a fallen tree. But at least – this is far enough. It’s off the road. This will – this will have to be okay. 

Dean scrambles back up to Baby and grabs the shovel.

He moves back down to the deer, an opaque dark mound on the ground between the trees.

He does not think about how his body hurts or what he might have torn or how long it’s gonna fucking take to dig this hole with half his muscles useless or if he’ll be able to even push the deer in. He just aims the shovel and sets his foot firmly on the footstep and slams it toward the ground. 

It dives a half inch into the ground and no further. Dean’s momentum carries him forward into the shovel’s handle. It hits him in the chest and knocks him all the way down against the slick leaves and sticks of the forest floor. 

The ground is entirely, utterly frozen.

Dean’s dug through all manner of soils – so sandy that they start to fill in the hole as soon as you begin to dig, so wet and heavy that you can barely lift up a shovel-full but the sides of your dig stay perfectly intact, so soft and airy and rich that Dean imagines growing a garden right there, so full of stones that his shovel tip’s all bent and chipped at the end of one grave. Brown soil, grey soil, tan soil, he’s had it all under his nails. 

But this – Dean kicks his foot in frustration against the stubborn, solid ground – would take hours to chip away at. And hours after that. And he can’t – he just knows he – 

Dean gasps for breath.

His low back feels strained from pulling. His arms are sore. His thighs are tingling. He knows his back is bleeding. The back of his head hurts from where it met the ground.

Everything suddenly feels crisp and sharp and clear and he realizes he’s down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere trying to bury a deer and he knows exactly fucking why and cannot – 

Dean rolls onto his face and stumbles to standing. His fingers press against the topography of frozen soil – little gaps of air between where the soil has frozen together in clumps.

Standing, he looks down at the deer. It won’t be too long before it no longer seems like it’s sleeping. But at least here, it’s back where it belongs. Between the trees, it can decompose in peace, away from the road, from the unnatural, chaotic moments of its death. 

Dean bends, wincing, and gently lifts the deer’s face. He turns its neck carefully, gingerly, so it’s curving as it should, all the carnage removed from the angle.

Alone in the dark, it’s not so hard to choke out, “I’m sorry” cause maybe there doesn’t really need to be sound. He wishes he could do more. He can’t.

Using the useless shovel as leverage, he scrambles and crawls back up to Baby, sitting quiet and patient on the edge of the road. 

His fumbling fingers lose the car keys into the shadows under the door and when he kneels to grab them, a passing box truck sends a wave of chunky, half-frozen puddle water splashing up and across his back. It soaks down his spine like ice. Dean loses air for a moment and gasps and gasps in the chill. 

Fuck fuck fuck . His wound, bleeding and torn and strained, is now soaked in fucking roadside water, all gas and oil and grit. Dean rests his head against Baby’s door and shivers.

He uses his bloody coat – the one with the ragged hole torn through it – to try and keep the mess of Baby’s seat. Then he stops at the first motel he sees. It’s barely even set back from the road.

Not too hard to indicate one room one bed one night without words and then he’s parking and closing the door behind himself.

Dean wants to crash into the bed but his wet jeans are starting to chafe and he knows he needs to wash out his wound. God everything just feels so fucking – 

He kicks off his boots, hand braced against the thin plywood door frame of the bathroom. He rips off his pants and shorts and unbuttons his soaking shirt and adds it to the pile. He clicks on the buzzing, yellow incandescent light above the vanity and slowly turns.

It’s the first time he’s actually looked at his back. There’s not too much to see, purple and yellow bruising spilling out from under stacks of gauze bandages stained dark grey by the water. There’s a dark brown patch at the center from where he started to bleed again. The tape at the edge is starting to peel off, from the strain of dragging the deer and his fall and dragging himself back up the slope. 

Dean reaches as best he can and picks at the peeling tape. He knows the doctor said not to remove the bandages yet or something but he also knows it can’t just be left to soak in grime. 

He grits his teeth at the pain of the adhesive trying to stay on his skin and the way his torso twists as he tries to get a good grip on the bandage. He tries the other hand. The pain comes in sharp and nauseating and he grips the edge of the sink and hangs his head. 

Fuck .

Maybe it’ll come off easier in the shower. He turns the water on. The flow is weak and sputtering and he steps under it. Too late, he realizes there’s no soap in the shitty off-white bathroom but at least the water will help wash out the grit. 

He turns his back to the flow and lets it pour down on the bandage, slowly working the edges with his fingers. Finally, the sodden mess of gauze falls off and onto the shower floor with a wet smack that the meager drips from the shower aren’t loud enough to muffle. 

When the water begins to actually hit his wound, it feels burning hot and Dean steps back and turns quickly away. He twists the tap until it’s nearly chilling the rest of him but he can let it run against his tender back without gasping – much. 

He rinses until he’s shivering from pain and cold and the water running between his feet has gone from brown to pink. It never runs clear. And after he shuts the water off, a little pool of red starts to collect between his toes. 

When he gets out of the shower, steadying himself on the towel rack, then the counter, then the door, then the wall, he finds he doesn’t have an ounce of strength left to try and re-dress the wound. He grabs gauze from the first aid kit and strains to reach back and hold it against the wound. He feels blood seeping onto his wrist. 

Dean collapses onto the bed. Flat on his stomach with one ankle hanging loosely off the mattress. One arm curled painfully behind him, holding the bandage. The other splayed out, trying to mitigate the tension, the pain. His neck is turned away from the injury, twisted to the side. He is damp and limp and nearly lifeless. Naked, layed out. And around him in the room, the sound of the nearby highway rumbles, so loud and close. Like he’s just waiting for the bite of tires.

Chapter Text

“Mom, you’ve gotta try these!” Dean calls forward as he walks down the bunker’s hallway, hand deep in a bag of tortilla chips. 

“Mm, well hand them over then,” she calls back from where she’s walking next to Sam, hunting duffles on their shoulders. 

“Oh don’t get her hooked on your junk,” Sam whines.

“Too late, gimme!” Mom says, hands reaching back for the chips.

Dean hands them forward, shrugging to readjust his own duffle over his shoulders. 

They’re in the car. It’s immediate but Dean doesn’t question it. Mom is driving. Sam sitting shotgun. They’re driving away from the bunker which looks like Bobby’s house on the outside. Dean thinks he might need to move Bobby’s truck before they park Baby back in the yard.

He hears the sound of the chip bag crumple.

“Those were great,” Mom says.

“Not you too,” Sam groans.

Dean sees Mom’s smile even though he knows she’s facing the road. Dean is sad for a moment. He wanted more of the chips. 

Cas is next to him in the back seat. Should Cas be here – No, yes, of course. Cas is next to him.

Cas must see the disappointment in Dean’s face because he smiles softly and opens his hands which have been clasped together as though protecting a small insect. Inside, there is one perfect tortilla chip nestled between the lines of his palm.

After the hunt – Dean’s sure it happened; he just can’t quite recall what it was – they move from the darkness of the world outside into the bright light of a convenience store. Garth and Bess wave cheerily from the cashier counter.

Mom and Sam are discussing something about the monster. All the words sound like sentences but then Dean thinks about them and doesn’t know how he could make them make sense upon repeating.

He and Cas wander down the snack aisle. He says something and Cas smiles and Cas says something and Dean smiles. Cas hands him a bag of the chips from earlier. Dean reaches for them, hands almost touching.

Dean is tired when they head back down the bunker stairs. His shoulder knocks into Cas’ where he walks on the step next to Dean.

Mom drops her bag on the floor and heads for the kitchen for a snack. 

Sam shoulders his and heads toward his room.

Cas smiles. “Home sweet home, is the phrase, I believe,” he says.

Dean – 

Wakes.

He can feel the light through his eyelids. He’s not quite ready to open his eyes yet. He can hear faint road sounds from outside. 

He tries to remember – what the case was they were working? If they came back to the bunker after, why is he not in his bed? Why is it so light? Did he go straight to bed or did he and Cas talk? Is the bunker under Bobby’s old house? What were the chips that – 

His head feels fuzzy. He knows he dreamed something . He just can’t quite remember which part of it was – 

He starts to roll over. And it feels almost like he’s being pierced through again. Eyes slamming open to the water-stained ceiling panes. Pain tearing through his back, pinning him down to the bed, breathless. But that’s not even the worst – 

The realization is almost like losing Cas again. 

There are no tired smiles after hunts. There are no jokes in gas stations. There is no home they share. It all felt so real , so normal, so mundane. It used to happen like that. Cas was just there . He should be there . But instead the world is empty of him. 

Dean feels sick. His back throbs in waves. And his brain feels like it’s splitting in half, the part clinging desperately to the dream as though believing and wanting it can make it real. As though simply by remembering Cas there next to him, he can force it to be true. And half of him – 

The splitting headache is probably from dehydration, from likely missing a dose of his meds, from hours staring at the road with his whole body tensed almost to snapping, from hitting the forest floor. 

The split runs down his neck, down and through his back and splinters open, cracking and aching and raw. 

When Dean moves, timid and tentative like he can hide from the awful jabs of pain, he finds the gauze he’d been holding to his back is stuck on with dried blood. His arm aches from twisting to hold the bandage on. His toes are cold and nearly numb. The blisters on his heels which had scabbed over during the drive have been rubbed raw again by the movement of dragging the deer through the woods.

And Cas is dead. 

~~~

The only thing that gets Dean off the mattress and moving is the thought of his bed in the bunker, darkness and a closed door. The idea that he won’t have to spend hours stiff and sore driving down roads that feel like they lead nowhere, winding through barren land. Lacking the one thing he – 

He slaps tape on the corners of gauze he can reach, figuring the blood has stuck enough to the rest. He throws on a pair of the new underwear and t-shirts he bought back in Canton and then his mud-stained jeans and bloody coat.

And drives. Out of Illinois and straight through Missouri. The sun beats through the windshield and Baby heats up inside. Dean has to pull over to crack the window with his right arm; his left won’t cooperate with the movements. But the air that whistles through the gap is bitter and dry.

Rides like that for a while, lips chapping in the breeze, before he can pull over again at the next rest stop to roll the window up. 

He eats. Drives into Kansas.

Sun’s setting over long stretches of mowed corn fields by the time he’s pulling off the exit to Lebanon. Strictly speaking, he could go one more exit since the bunker’s definitely on the outskirts but he’s always liked driving through the town itself. 

Dean’s spent his whole life driving through cities and suburbs, past houses and apartment buildings and farms and gas stations. Looking at rich manicured lawns and overgrown yards full of half-gutted, rusty cars and triple-deckers on city blocks without a tree in sight that almost seem to melt in the sun and houses so overgrown with vines that you couldn’t see in the windows. Driving by them all and leaving just as quick. 

But Lebanon is Dean’s . These are his neighbors. That’s Marta’s house with the grass that could use cutting. That’s Jackson’s yard filled with cars he’s always trying to make time to work on. That’s the gas station with the best prices and cracked asphalt. It hasn’t always felt so familiar but past couple-a years living in the bunker and Dean’s started to get this feeling when he pulls off the highway. This going home feeling. This hot shower and comfy mattress and people he knows and his own big kitchen table feeling. This is his town lit up in the glow of the sunset.

That’s the pizza place that makes the (second) best slice in town but Dean still goes there more than anywhere else since that’s where Max’ mom works and Dean knows single parenting isn’t cheap.

That’s Kansas’ own wild sunflower stalks lining the road. Well, probably. Cas showed Dean all the different roadside flowers once: coneflower and verbena, coreopsis, milkweed, larkspur, goldenrod – and sunflowers. It was easier to tell them apart with their flowers and different leaves. Now, they’re almost all grey-brown ghostly sticks with a few dry leaves clinging on. Dean tries to remember what Cas said about the ways to tell them apart – even out of season – 

He remembers saying – saying something about the leaves and Cas looking so proud and – 

Dean punches his leg fiercely with his right arm. Stop it .

So maybe coming home today doesn’t feel like heading toward any real rest or contentment. Just – a pause – a closed door and dim lights and sleep and trying to forget. Just to not have to be for a while – just – 

Baby’s tires crunch on the gravel outside the bunker. And then slide smoothly onto the shiny concrete floor of the garage. Dean leaves most of his shit in the car – maybe Sam can help him carry it tomorrow.

He tiredly turns the lock and starts to stumble in through the door.

The smell of home hits him in a wave – way it always does. Old books and wooden furniture and waxed floors, faint smell of food from the kitchen. He also picks up the more recent smell of dog. He’s getting used to that too. And coming through the garage always brings the slight tang of gasoline and engine oil. But that smells good too. 

Dean’s eyes are closed a moment to breathe it in.

When he opens them, he’s greeted by three gun barrels, raised quickly and expertly to his face.

~~~

Dean is all memory. God, this has happened a thousand times. Staring down that silver ring. Black hole center. Vision focusing down on the sight and knowing all the way through to his bones that he’s seeing it from the wrong direction. The reverberation of a hammer cocking in a large room. All of the moments and memories stack on top of each other until he’s back at eight years old as John teaches him how to grab a gun from someone else.

Dean reaches for his own gun and the memory, the reflexes, the smooth reaction glitches as his hand comes up empty. 

“Easy now,” One of the voices that holds a gun says. “Stay right where you are. Let’s see those hands.”

This has happened a thousand times – well not this exactly. Not Dean without a weapon, not in his own home, not with a hole through him already. That’s happened too, of course. Just less. But feeling/thinking/knowing he’s pinned down.

Dean strains against breathlessness, against helplessness. He tries to raise his arms. The left one wails in pain and he falls backward against the wall. Slides down. Hand on his chest. Shoes scuffling the floor.

The black eyes of the guns follow him down. 

Someone yells something Dean doesn’t catch. First voice says, “Hey! I said stay still.”

From farther back someone else says quiet, then repeats louder, “Wait isn’t that – I think that’s that guy Sam’s brother? Isn’t that Dean? Winchester?” They look toward Dean. Their face is blurry in his pained vision. “Hey are you Dean?”

He nods. Feet pushing against the floor trying to right himself.

“Dean?” someone else yells.

“Wait Dean like Dean? Dean Winchester ?”

“Holy shit!” 

“Dean? You’re Dean?” 

It’s all around him. Room full of voices. Room full of faces.

He nods and nods and then there’re arms trying to pull him up. But it’s by his left and he has to push them away and catch his breath and people are asking if he’s alright and it’s all too much. 

“Where’s Sam?” he manages to croak and then repeat louder when no one hears him.

“Sam?” someone says. “He – I thought you would – he told us we could – I mean he and Ei… Eileen–?”

“Yeah, Eileen!”

“Thanks – yeah – he and Eileen went off to – I don’t know I guess – but I mean he said we could use this place – well hunters I mean – said he wouldn’t need it or wasn’t gonna be hunting or – anyway – I thought you would know…” guy trails off.

Dean nods slowly. Yeah that makes sense. Sam did always want that kind of hunter network thing. Sam deserves to stop hunting. Dean always wanted that for him. 

Guy offers him a hand up again – left first but Dean shakes his head and shrugs at where his own left hand is clutched around his chest – then right.

“So you are you staying here?” Guy asks. “I mean I guess – I mean this is your – was your bunker so like we don’t wanna step on your – I mean your room is – we haven’t touched that – there’s plenty of space so people have other rooms and like there’s food in the kitchen if you want some. Oh I’m Pete by the way. But we have like a system of like labeling that Angie can explain more cause she really likes that – ANGIE,” he yells over his shoulder. 

Dean waves him down. No, he is not staying here. No he does not need to know the labeling system in his – in the kitchen.

Dean gestures toward the hallway that leads to his room. 

“Oh yeah, sure,” Pete says, giving him some more space to walk.

As he walks down the hallway, Dean hears the chatter from the room behind him. God. He’s so tired.

He shuts his room door. On the bed is a duffle full of shit from Baby’s trunk: guns and salt and ammo. Sam must have tossed it here when he got back. Otherwise his room is as he left it. Cluttered around his badly made bed. But Dean doesn’t have it in him to tidy it. He just wants to sink down into the bed. Sink in and not have to be anything anymore. But the bunker’s full to the brim. Dean can’t disappear into this.

He slides his phone out of his pocket and calls Sam. 

“Hello hi ,” Sam’s voice says cheerily on the answering message, “ You’ve reached Sam, Eileen, and Miracle! We’ll answer as soon as we can but don’t hold your breath – it’s our honeymoon.” Dean hears Eileen laugh softly from the other end before he throws the phone full force against the cement wall and hears the pieces scatter across the room.

His chest hurts from how fast he’s breathing, how his torso is shaking. 

He grabs the duffel, throws a few more pairs of pants and shirts in and books it out of the room. 

In the map room, the conversation among the hunters has shifted back to a case. Dean catches snippets. “Eastern Pennsylvania.” 

“People going missing… a cycle.” 

“Is Jaime free?” 

“No, she’s working a case in Alabama.” 

“Hector?” 

“No. Nevada.” 

“James?” 

“No.”

“I’ll go,” Dean says.

They don’t hear him at first.

Dean breathes deep and forces the words out. “What’s the deal?” he says again, louder. “I’ll go.”

“You, sure?” The guy who met Dean at the door – Pete – asks, “I mean you look a little banged up?”

“Yeah I’m sure,” Dean says. Something about this makes it easier to speak, he thinks. Talking about hunting. It’s so rote. He barely has to think about what he’s saying. He’s said it all before. Thousand times. “Sounds like a milk run and I could use something to do.” It’s not even talking. It’s playing back a tape.

“Okay?” the guy says, still wary. 

“Just point me at em,” Dean recites. 

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Pete says. Then, “Wait there was a file we found the other day that seemed like it might have something on the monster. We should give you that before you head off. Come on.”

Dean drops his duffle and follows Pete back down the hall. 

Pete talks about the case more as he walks. Small town. Above average disappearances. A hunter went there a few years ago and made some notes but didn’t find anything else. And now all of the people they talked to are disappearing. Dean nods along and nods along and – 

And then they’re standing outside the dungeon. 

Dean freezes. 

Pete keeps chatting for a bit before realizing Dean hasn’t followed him into the room. 

“Hey,” Pete calls, “It’s just in here. There’s all these files – well you would know right – but I mean, it’s just –”

But Dean can’t follow. Can’t even – chest feels tight like – 

He didn’t realize – he wasn’t paying attention. He was just – autopilot and now he’s in front of the door. The goddamn door. There’s a light on in the dungeon behind it but the deep grey of the door’s paint seems not to notice. It’s hanging slightly ajar and blown air from the filter system sways it just enough that Dean watches the lights dance slightly on the little brass “7B.” But the door itself is all shadows.

Hidden, blocked from the light entirely, tucked between the wall and the back of the door, are the remains of a sigil painted in Cas’ blood. Dean knows it’s there because he had to goddamn walk by it to get out of this room the last time, after – after – 

He can almost still hear the banging – God. Fuck. 

“Hey man, you okay?” Pete’s voice comes abrupt and concerned from next to Dean. Pete’s hand is on his back. 

Dean is hunched over, left hand pressed against his spasming chest. He feels like – it feels like – 

He didn’t even realize that was happening. 

“You okay?” Pete asks, again.

And Dean is backing up, straightening up, nodding. Body turned away from the door. Body aching to run down the hallway, away.

“Okay…” Pete’s voice is confused. “Well, here’s the file anyway.”

Dean opens his mouth to reply but the words are gone again just as quick as they came. Dean grabs the file from Pete’s hands and walks ahead of Pete all the way back down the hallway. 

He picks his duffle back up and struggles to shoulder it as his back and chest ache. 

Hands on the doorknob when he hears Pete calling, “Wait – here’s my number in case – well just call, you know, if you need a hand or like when you’re finished, okay?”

Dean shoves the paper into his pocket.

His chest spasms one more time before he reaches the door and his hand comes up to grip his heart and –

There’s worried murmuring from the room behind him but Dean runs.

Baby’s engine’s still clicking and cooling when Dean gets back to her. He pops the trunk and drops the duffle in. Slams the door. Peels out of the garage. Sun’s fully set when they drive back outside.

He gets back on the highway at the nearest exit. Lebanon’s lights shine in the distance. Until they don’t.

Chapter Text

Dean drives until he can’t. He knows he’s already pushed himself farther than he should have today. Sitting rigid and uncomfortable, trying to keep the weight off his back. Unable to lean back and rest all through the long miles. His body yells and he pushes through it, watching the subtle glow of the snaking double yellow lines in the dark. Then he tries to take a turn and finds his arms too stiff and sore to twist the wheel tightly through the curve. Baby rolls wide out into the left lane. 

It’s late; there’s no one else on the road. Still Dean’s heart races like he’s hit someone. Shit . He can’t risk hurting someone. He can’t risk doing that to Baby. 

He pulls off at the next rest stop he sees, grimacing and forcing his arms into the turn. It’s nearly twenty hours til where he’s headed in Pennsylvania, to the hunt. And he’s sure he’s barely put a dent in. People are dying. He should – he should.

It’s surprisingly easy to slump down on the bench seat. Dean can’t be on his back or lay against the seat back. Instead, he curls his face into the angle where they meet. Buries himself in the darkness. 

His back feels exposed, vulnerable to the slight airflow wafting around the car. He shivers. Feels like something could just reach out, put its claws in the tender skin at the base of his neck. Dean doesn’t have the energy to roll over and grab a sip from the flask in the glove box. He clenches his teeth against the shivers. He pulls the pocket knife from his back pocket and holds it firm in his palm.

His body is wrecked. He sleeps.

Dean wakes cause his toes feel like ice. His whole body is shaking from the cold – but his feet are stiff and distant. He tries to wiggle his toes. They flop pitifully in his boots. The only thing that feels warm is the metal of the knife in his palm.

Groaning, Dean pushes himself up. According to his watch, he got a good three hours in. It’ll do. He stumbles, through the thin morning light, to the inside of the rest area. Grabs a coffee and a cheap breakfast sandwich. And stumbles back out again.

His toes still feel slow and sodden with cold. 

Back in the car, he turns it on and tries to blast some heat on his tingling toes, feeling them twinge and spasm. He sips the coffee through gritted teeth and looks over the files Pete gave him.

As he pulls back onto 36 East, he thinks about the list of missing. Not much in common except they were all athletes of some kind – the youngest was still in high school. Dean’s fist clenches on the wheel. When he switches to Interstate 72, he thinks about how they were all reported missing after not coming home when they were expected. He grabs a shitty microwave lunch and double-checks that none of their files have anyone in common as the last person to see them before they disappeared. He crosses into Indiana and thinks about the notes from Pete’s file on disappearances in the same town just under twenty years before. 

His brain actually forms the question, “Hey Sam, were all the vics Friday-Night-Light-ers back then too?” But his mouth doesn’t say it. And his neck jerks over to the passenger’s seat as if it’s startled to find it empty. It shouldn’t feel like a surprise. It shouldn’t hurt like – 

His left arm aches. It starts in his back and travels all the way down to his finger tips. It’s like parts of his arm switch on and off numbness and every time a new part wakes up, it hurts. He gave up holding the steering wheel early on in the drive and now his arm hangs limp in his lap. He still wishes he had a sling or something to hold its weight. His fingers are starting to get cold.

He wishes he had someone to share the driving with. Get there faster. Maybe save someone faster. He wishes he wasn’t alone.

But, hey, that’s life, right. He’s been here before. Hell, when has he not – Dean can count on his fingers – fuck that – on less than one hand how many times he’s been happy. Like everyone around him safe and fed and there happy. So it shouldn’t be a problem to just roll with this, right. 

He’s spent years forcing himself to sleep by trying to promise himself that maybe it’ll be better in the morning – maybe somehow Mom’ll still be alive or Dad’ll be back or there’ll be enough food for Sam or they don’t really have to pack up and leave town again so soon or maybe the vics wife really just is out of cell range and not dead and half covered by leaves in the woods or their plan to stop this apocalypse is gonna work or Cas is gonna walk right back through the door or Mom’ll still be alive or Cas is gonna – And years waking up and choking it down. Pedal to the metal. That’s it.

He always knew he was gonna die alone on some hunt sometime. Thought it was gonna be last week. But just cause it wasn’t doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be tomorrow. And as for the alone part – sure, yeah, whatever there’s a hole in his back and in his gut and in his heart but what the fuck else is new right. 

I-72 runs nearly horizontal across the midwest. Not north, not south, just east-west. He comes up on little herds of cars grouped by their shared speeds, then outpaces them and drives on. Dean watches cars merge onto the highway, keep pace with him for a few miles, and exit. Watches the license plates switch from Kansas to Missouri to Illinois to Indiana – always with a good share of the classic Florida rental plates thrown in. 

It’s only the trucks that just keep rolling on and on. Distance swimmers, barely halfway through a lap. Dean wonders how many of them he’s passed before, last year, the year before, anytime since ‘83, ‘84. Hopes some of those early guys have gotten to retire by now - backs intact. Hopes some of the ones he met in the 90’s are rotting. Or, well, guesses he doesn’t really. Just hopes they don’t pass this way. 

Dean rolls down the left lane past landscapes he doesn’t really take in cause he’s seen them all a thousand times. The fields and barns and cities and stripmalls and miles of on ramps and exits. And just like the thousands of times before, there’s no evidence he even passed this way except the brittle rustle of dry grass.

He was never gonna get anything different. 

Late, he shells out for a crap motel for the night and scans the file again. The first time folks went missing, a few bodies had been recovered from an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. They were all athletes too.

He sleeps. Five hours. 

In the morning, Dean brushes his teeth and thinks – no marks on the bodies. Autopsies didn’t reveal anything concrete for a cause of death. At the Ohio state line, Dean thinks about the house where the bodies were found – devoid of clues but reports mentioned some of the wood looked scorched, burned like from a fire there never was. As he passes the western Pennsylvania mountains, Dean gets shaky, realizes he hasn’t had anything to eat and grabs something. 

Here, the highway doesn’t just run through the mountains, it cuts. It punches. It cleaves hills in half, leaving ugly patches of naked, scarred rock. An even pattern of man-made fissures dig into each rock face. Dean asked Dad about it, a long time ago. Dad said to build the highways, they needed to clear away the hills and rocks that were in their way. When Dean asked why they couldn’t just go over or around them, Dad said, “They had to build it straight. They had to get where they were supposed to go.” When Dean asked how they did it – why the stone looked like giant sheets of sideways lined notebook paper, Dad said, “They drilled holes down through the rock, packed the holes with dynamite and blasted them open. No more questions, Dean, I have to focus.”

Once, when he wasn’t a kid really and wasn’t really anything else, while working a case, Dean was looking for clues along the edge of the road. It was one of the interstate project ones, with the systematically broken rock to prove it. Up close, the gaps between the drilled holes were bigger than Dean had imagined. His whole body could fit between one crack and another. The hole itself was eerily smooth next to the fractured, uneven stone surface. Driving past, it always looked like Dean could have just tucked one finger down into the drilled-out semi-circle. Up close, nearly his whole hand fit. 

Even in the gathering dusk, the rock face still held some warmth from the day. But the indented channel was slightly cooler than the broken face above it, having soaked up just that much less sun. Dean’s fingers brushed up and down inside the cool curve. And he wondered, for a moment, what it feels like to be hollowed out, then shattered apart at the crack.

In the eastern Pennsylvania lowlands, Dean thinks about the list of missing – youngest was still in high school. Her name was Lucy. He punches the wheel. 

He pulls off the highway. It’s always a funny feeling after a long time on the highway. Stoplights feel so sudden. Thirty-miles-an-hour feels so slow. The world outside the car looks viscous. It slides past the windows like thick syrup where before it had been streaming by. Everything feels quieter. The engine. The other cars. The wind that whips across the wide channel of highway road is stilled by trees and houses.

On the outskirts of the town, Dean pulls over and pops the trunk. He knows his Fed suit is buried in here somewhere. It must have been in the bag of shit Sam grabbed out of the trunk and left on his bed back in the bunker.

But the bag is a discordant mess. Shotguns half nested into socks, ammo spilling out of its boxes and intermingling through layers of clothes both clean and dirty. Dean reaches for what looks like a pair of dress pants and has to yank his hand away from a knife slipping out of its sheath. 

He angrily shoves it back together and pulls the pants out. The road is quiet enough that he’s not too worried about changing in the shadow of the car and the setting sun. But he can’t pull his pants off over his boots so he one shoe off and then his balance falters and his leg is stiff from days in the car and his socked foot lands on the damp pavement. It immediately soaks through. It takes his stiff, sore body longer than he’d like to cooperate with so much movement. He finally gets the pants on and shoves his foot back in his boots only to remember he needs the damn dress shoes with this suit. Well, at least he can change his sock.

The top layers don’t prove to be too tricky, except where his bandage has bled through a bit and stuck to his t-shirt. Dean tries to pull it off twice and his vision whites out once before he gives up and throws the crisp – if a little wrinkled – white button up over top. Under the suit jacket, it hopefully shouldn’t be too easy to tell the t-shirt underneath is black.

The only other issue is pulling the jacket itself on. The tight fitted cut presses against his back, squeezing the bandage down. Dean gulps a few times through the pain and leans against Baby with a closed fist and closed eyes, before deciding it’s too much. But even the motion of shrugging the jacket off, strains his back painfully. 

He throws the jacket down on the seat next to him and drives into town. He’s not – he’s not ready to talk to the vic’s families. But he scouts around a few of the last places they were seen – a bar, the post office, the fucking high school – before it gets too dark to do anything meaningful.

After a struggle with the damn jacket, a few fake badge flashes, and a short wait, he’s sitting across from the chief of police. Chief Baker looks totally torn up about Lucy – Dean can’t blame him. From the sound of it, she was a close family friend. Her Dad was the guy’s buddy from way back. Like a niece he says. Dean mostly nods along. Baker seems close to tears. She was 17.

“Do you know of any – uh – places at the edge of town – like, uh.” Dean clears his throat, trying to get the words out. 

“What?” guy says. “Oh right – well there’s the old meeting hall, I guess. I mean no one’s used it in over ten years but if that’s what you’re looking for that’s where I’d start. Take a right out of here and keep heading straight on Pleasant, you can’t miss it.”

Dean nods, taps his notepad on the desk and heads out.

As he shimmies out of the painful suit jacket again, he thinks about Baker’s red, haunted eyes. As he slides back behind Baby’s wheel, he thinks about the abandoned house from years ago. Heading down Pleasant street, he thinks about being given one location and not a list.

By the time he’s reached the end of the road and pulled over next to a narrow covered-bridge, beyond which he can only just see the outline of a building against the trees, the memory of the look in Chief Baker’s eyes is going sour. He’s thinking about traps.

He cuts the engine. This far out of town, the night is very quiet and very dark. Dean takes a moment to switch back into his boots. It still hurts even just to bend over and tie his shoes. He tucks a knife in his pocket. He’s still not sure what kind of creature he’s looking for but silver seems like the least common denominator so he shoves a mag into his gun and tucks it back into his pants. 

The night smells cold. So cold the fallen autumn leaves have paused their decay. Decomposition nearly holding its breath til spring.

Dean’s feet crunch through roadside gravel and leaves until they land on the aging wood of the covered-bridge. It sags, just a little, with each step. Dean reaches out and places a hand against the side. The wood feels old, dry, and porous under his fingers. He takes another step and the board under his foot creaks. 

Perfect . Probably should have tried to get a phone or something so he coulda texted Pete what he was doing. Now, when the bridge collapses under him and his body lands on the rocky, frozen stream below, no one’s gonna know the first place to look. 

Too late now though.

When the next board creaks, Dean’s hand shoots out to steady himself against the bridge’s wall and his skin, made brittle by the cold, ruptures for a splinter with ease. His hands are too cold to be able to really feel it. But he can sense it there, pushing into his palm. 

He makes it across the bridge. 

On the other side, the leaves are deeper. Though the ring of trees that surround the building are set back a little, they’re old and their branches have long since started to reach out over the roof, into the open space. Into what would be, in the daytime, the light. 

There’s no clear path to the building but from this distance, Dean can now see it’s an old, one-room, one-story deal. Chief Baker called it a meeting hall and it does have that look – long and low with double doors (now boarded up) at the front, under a short, wide gable. The paint on the outside is cracking and falling off. In the dark Dean can’t tell what color it was ever supposed to be. 

And all the windows are boarded up. Which – well, that’s never a good sign.

He pulls the gun from his pants, cocks it, and keeps moving through the brush. Brush being the operative word here. The leaves are deep but there’s also some kind of vine winding through them. It tangles around Dean’s feet. It claws at his legs. He shuffles forward awkwardly and it holds him back. 

Dean’s used to trying not to trip. Used to holding himself like at any moment somethings gonna come grabbing at his feet. Used to taking careful steps and keeping his stance wide and solid. Used to tapping a toe down before shifting his whole weight. Used to the strain in his hips as he tries to keep walking through the resistant, heavy pull of the vines. 

He trudges along, eyes fixed on the hall. He doesn’t see any lights inside. He doesn’t hear any movement. He probably should have waited til morning or something but – that kid’s 17. Dean quietly shuffles up to the boarded front doors, runs a hand along the edges of the boards to see if anything feels recently shifted, precariously or hastily placed. But they’re screwed on good and the screws themselves are rusting. 

He shuffles around the sides of the building. Close to the walls, the vines are less ferocious. But he still feels them grab his pants. Almost stumbles once. He tries to squint under the edges of the boards across the windows but he can’t see shit. 

Around the back, he finds the unboarded door. 

It hits his gut funny. Like he kinda always knew it was gonna be like this. He tests the cool metal of the door knob with one, gentle finger – unlocked. He shifts his grip on the gun. He feels where the metal has warmed in his hands even though they feel icy cold. He feels where the splinter is resting under his skin. It’ll hurt once his hands warm up. He takes a breath. 

And when his neck is pinched from behind, his head is slammed against the door, and his feet are knocked out from under him, well, he’s used to that too.

Chapter Text

Dean wakes up on the floor. His vision’s foggy and his head hurts from getting knocked out but that all’s got nothing on the agony in his back. The pain is so sharp and internal and nauseating that he has to spend a good minute trying not to spill his guts across the floor. It doesn’t help that his arms are pinned behind him and tied with rough rope so they’re holding all his back muscles tight and pressed against his wound. Crushing the flesh in and around it. He’s sure the wound has opened back up again, can even feel the warm, wet, drip of it rolling horizontal across his back toward the floor. He can feel dried blood on his forehead. Dean wants to open his eyes, take stock of his surroundings, do something . But all he can do is just lie there and try to breathe. 

The worst part is when Pete finally realizes that Dean’s not gonna be able to handle this one, there’ll be no one to warn the next hunters about Chief Baker, about the meeting hall, about the trap, about whatever it is that’s shuffling around in the darkness. And if any of them get hurt, that’ll be on Dean - or what’s left of him. 

Goddamnit . 

The thing moving around in the dark doesn’t seem to notice Dean’s awake yet. Or, at least, its sounds haven’t gotten closer. And Dean still doesn’t even know what the fuck it is. Tries to figure out if it not having killed him yet is evidence of anything. 

Dean finally manages a pained squint and opens his eyes enough to let his dizzy pupils fix on something. 

It’s a corpse. More specifically, it’s Lucy’s corpse. 

Fuck . 

She’s been dead a few days looks like. Dean immediately feels again like he’s gonna throw up. Even with his eyes snapped back shut, the smell has now wormed its way through his disoriented senses and he can’t escape. The whole room reeks of death. He assumes if Lucy’s here, the rest of the missing can’t be far. He remembers the file about the string of victims in the past. Bodies all collected in one spot. Like a nest. 

He clenches his jaw and twists his head so when he opens his eyes again, it won’t be right into the pallid, sagging face of a dead teenager. 

Instead, he sees the other missing. Scattered around the room, in various stages of becoming part of the floor or part of the smell. 

Next he takes in the room. Lit only by one recessed fluorescent in the far corner, light barely spills out to the edges. The floor is dusty and littered with leaves that have managed to make it in even past all boards. The windows themselves reveal only the reverse side of the wood and hold only the cracked glass remnants of panes along their edges. A few have a pool of shards below them. One corner of the room houses rolling carts of rusting folding chairs. A few are still scattered around the room as though, maybe, people might one day come back here. But they won’t. 

And in a pattern across the floor that Dean can’t discern, in patches on the walls, on the frame of the door he must have been dragged through, is the same burned wood phenomena that was found at the first house years ago. It means something. If only he could remember – 

Finally, he sees a pair of dress shoes and grey slacks walking toward him. 

“Fuck,” the guy says. “He’s awake.”

Fuck is right. Dean had been trying to grope for a piece of broken glass on the floor behind him. He freezes. 

“So what are you?” Dean says. Stalling comes so easy sometimes it’s like he doesn’t even have to choose the words. “Some kinda witch or just some kinda freak who gets off on killing –”

“What? No –” Pause. “No, that’s what I’m saying.”

It takes Dean a moment to realize the guy isn’t talking to him but into a phone. He’s pacing back and forth in front of Dean as he talks and only spared a brief glance down at Dean’s words. 

“I tried to; there was nothing in him –” Pause. Dean watches the guy’s feet pace back and forth. 

Dean shifts slightly so his good right arm can move a little more freely. It puts extra weight and pressure on his aching left side. He sucks it up. 

 “No, I don’t know why… yeah I’ll take care of it. Like I always do.” Pause, “Oh yeah thanks for the tip .” The guy pauses his pacing when he snaps at whoever’s on the other line. 

He’s stopped with his feet angled away from Dean. Dean’s fingers shuffle against the dusty floor. 

The guy sighs again and Dean freezes as the shoes spin his direction again.

Abruptly, the guy crouches in front of him, staring down at Dean from under his floppy blond hair, with a mix of confusion and anger. “So what the hell’s wrong with you?” he asks.

“Wrong with me?” Dean spits out, “I’m not the one hanging around in a room full of stiffs. I’m not the one killing them in the first –”

He’s cut off sharp by the guy taking a firm and painful grip on his chin and pinching. It forces Dean’s jaw open and his tongue goes quiet and garbled with barely anything to reverberate against. He tries to wrench his neck out of the guy’s grasp but the dude’s fingers are so strong. So strong and long somehow. 

And his face – Dean watches as it greys. Even in the dim light, he can see the color start to drain out of it. And it gets longer too. Like the fingers – bony, stretched, shadowed. Guy’s eyes become hooded husks. And now his jaw is opening too – into a wide, black maw. 

The mouth starts to glow - a cool white-blue. 

It clicks together like finding the last piece of a puzzle. A shtriga, perfect . The explains the confusing burned patches, and the targeting of athletes. Shtriga’s feed on life force. One Dean’s met before went after kids – with their whole lives ahead of them, full and delicious.

“Aren’t I supposed to be sleeping?” Dean tries to say but it comes out a hoarse, slurred mess. His fingers search blind and desperate for a shard of glass.

The shtriga’s fingers pinch tighter against his chin. His face presses closer. He doesn’t respond to Dean’s question. His face is being shrouded as a black cloak starts to materialize around him.

Dean’s fingers close on a piece of glass. Finally.

It’s too much to look into the shtriga’s hungry mouth and try and feel how to get the glass positioned right to cut the ropes so Dean closes his eyes.

He lets the shtriga pinch and pull at his chin. Lets its cool breath float across his cheek. And focuses on getting the glass firmly between the knuckles of his right hand. Then he twists his wrist and does his best to rub the sharp edge of the glass along the rope. 

He supposes from the way the shtriga is yanking his chin around that it’s not getting whatever it wants from him. 

The glass works its way through the rope.

The shtriga’s lips are nearly against Dean’s.

“What is wrong with you,” the shtriga growls.

The rope snaps.

Dean throws his right arm, clumsy and limp and mostly dead weight, against the shtriga’s head. It’s not a good punch but it’s enough to throw the creature off him. 

Enough for Dean to scramble backwards across the floor and start to try and stand. He’s shaky on his legs but the shtriga is still dazed from the blow, his face almost flickering back and forth from almost human to the pale, hungry grey. The cloak fades off of him.

Dean crashes toward the door. His head feels heavy. His brain feels loose in his skull. His vision is blurry. Behind him the shtriga is groaning and Dean can hear it begin to scrape to its feet. 

Dean has the presence of mind to palm the door’s lock as he nearly falls through it. Not that it’ll stall the creature for long but every second counts. Dean’s given up on the gun he brought in. No telling where the shtriga’s stashed it. But the silver bullets inside would do no good, anyway. What he needs is the consecrated iron rounds rattling around somewhere in his duffel. 

But to get to them he needs to get back to Baby and to do that he needs to – 

Dean stumbles and pushes his way back through the tangled weeds around the meeting house. His breath is ragged and sharp and his back hurts like – he doesn’t think about it.

The door crashes open behind him. Dean keeps running through the brush.

His feet finally scuff onto the slats of the covered-bridge.

A bullet flies past his leg.

It's so close Dean can feel it whip the fabric of his pants. Can see where it embeds itself in the wooden floor in front of him. 

He plasters himself flat against the wall of the bridge for a moment and spares a glance back. 

Another bullet flies past his stomach. 

Bad news – shtriga’s got his gun. Good news – guy doesn’t seem great at aiming. But still – 

Another shot. This one flies wide of Dean’s head – leaving a hole in the bridge wall.

Dean gets back to running. 

There’s nowhere to hide. Nothing to fight back with. Shots sound behind him but it almost doesn’t matter. There is only making it to Baby’s trunk in time or not making it. He runs.

His frantic paces echo off the wooden planks. He hears shots fired and it feels like his heart stops each time. He’s just waiting for – 

Dean skids to a stop in the gravel, hands on Baby’s cold hood. A bullet lands in the gravel next to his feet, sending a painful spray up his leg.

But he made it. Dean dashes around the car. He spends a second digging for the keys in his pocket. And then he’s crouching and opening Baby’s trunk. 

His fingers fumble blindly in the duffel. The iron rounds he’s looking for are slugs. The shotgun they’ll fit keeps bumping against his arm as he digs. 

A bullet glances off the open lid of the trunk and Dean curses and throws a hand up to keep it from smashing down on his head. 

The shtriga’s quick footsteps stop sounding off the boards of the bridge. Dean hears the crunch of them in the gravel. 

His fingers close on the box of slugs. 

He grabs the shotgun and turns from the trunk. Kneeling, he ejects the existing round from the chamber, not caring what kind it was as it skitters away into the darkness.

The shritga is rounding on him now. A shot hits the gravel next to Dean and he presses his body closer against Baby’s bumper. 

He loads the iron slug. 

There’s a piece to this that is gonna really suck. And that’s that the shtriga has to be trying to feed for the bullet to do a damn bit of good. 

And if the guy just shoots Dean – well that’ll be that.

Dean can hear how close the shtriga’s feet are but he’s also been counting and if he’s not wrong – Dean takes a shuddering breath – if he’s not wrong, the guy’s out of ammo.

So.

Dean clenches his jaw and tucks the shotgun down into the dark shadow under Baby’s belly. 

Seems kinda silly but – he pushes his head back against her cool body. See you on the other side . 

The shtriga skirts the car. For a second, Dean thinks – his chest clutches with fear. But – but no –  his colt hangs limp in the shtriga’s hands, slide locked back, mag perfectly, miraculously empty. 

Dean lets the relief sink in. Let’s the tension draining from his limbs aid ruse. He leans back, trying to look slack, empty, exhausted – which honestly isn’t that hard. He closes his eyes to slits. He lets out his held breath and lets his lungs gasp and shudder. 

Above him, through a curtain of lashes, Dean sees the shtriga smirk. 

Dean blinks slow, like he’s about to pass out. 

The shtriga bends to reach for Dean’s face. 

Dean lets his right arm, splayed across the ground next to him, twitch toward the gun under the car. 

The shtriga’s awful, long fingers pinch into his cheek again.

Dean’s arm moves just that much closer to the gun. 

“What,” the shtriga growls, his face pressed close, “the fuck… is… wrong… with you ?!” here he lifts Dean’s face and slams his head back against Baby. 

Dean internally reels from the shock. But as his vision clears, he sees the shtriga’s mouth open again inside his now-grey face. The glow starts. The loose black sleeves of the shtriga’s robe, rematerialized, brush Dean’s neck.

Dean grabs the shotgun and fires the slug straight into the shtriga’s gut. 

It stumbles back for a moment. Dean’s colt hits the gravel with a heavy thud. Then it’s dust. 

Dean leans back against Baby’s comforting shape and breathes. 

The night is eerily silent again around him. His racing heart and fearful ears haven’t stopped waiting for something else to come after him. He feels like he’s still straining to hear a threat in all the silence. Even his own breathing feels too loud – like it could conceal the sound of an enemy’s approach. 

Dean turns to quickly load another round in the shotgun. And sits, gun held ready, until his nervous system starts to calm.

Now that it’s over, everything hurts. His back, his head, his wrists, his ass on the cold ground. And he didn’t – he didn’t even save anyone . He’s gotta go back into the fucking room and try and – try and piece together something that’ll prove Baker was involved – or – what his deal was. But at the end of it all – it’ll just be a room full of corpses. 

Dean was too late.

He groans and gets up. He leans to pull his colt out of the brushes at the side of the road. It hurts to bend down. He stands back up and drops the emptied mag out. 

Turning to Baby, Dean palms over the bullet gouge on her trunk. Sorry, sweetheart . 

He rifles through the duffel again and finds a new magazine, loaded with regular ammo. Doesn’t think anyone else is gonna come for him but that cop. He tucks his gun back into the waistband of his pants. He grabs a flashlight.

The walk across the bridge feels shorter this time. The weeds only pull a little at his tired legs. He opens the once-again unlocked door. 

Dean almost doesn’t want to turn the light on. Doesn’t want to see – but – these people deserve the truth being told – or as near to it as he can get. 

They’re all here. Eight missing. Eight found. Eight dead. Lucy’s clearly the most recent. But – Dean’s flashlight beam slides back and forth across the room – there’s Ken, Jamie, Randall, Frank, Keith, Sarah, Chris. 

It’s so goddamn pointless, Dean could scream. 

There’s nothing else in the room but the bodies and the scattered chairs he noticed before. But he’s gotta find something – something that’ll at least put that creep Baker away. He flashes the light up and down the walls, across the floor. He takes a closer look at the bodies. 

Lucy’s phone is lying next to her hand, palm up and empty. 

Dean picks it up. He wonders – yep – FaceID still works for a few days after – file that one in morbid tips he wants to stop thinking about. The phone unlocks to a message screen. 

From “Ben Baker” at 8:14 pm five days ago, “Come down to that old meetinghouse, I’ve got something to show you.”

Lucy, “For real?”

Baker, “It’s for your Dad’s birthday – surprise party ideas.”

Lucy, “kk.”

Twenty minutes after, she wrote, “Here?”

Three minutes after that, she wrote, “where r u?”

The message she typed but never got to send says, “What the fuck this place is kinda –”

It takes a great deal of effort for Dean not to smash the phone in rage. 

Instead, he screenshots the texts and looks at her other conversations. There’s a group pinned at the top called “Losers.” When he opens the contacts, he finds them labeled “Momo,” “Dumdum,” and “The brat.” That’s good enough for Dean. 

He texts the screenshot to the family group chat. And then adds, “I’m sorry.” And then realizes that won’t mean anything to them and deletes it. But for good measure he takes a picture of Lucy’s phone screen with his own phone. 

Then he calls the police station.

Takes him a few minutes to confirm Baker’s gone for the day. But as soon as that’s sorted he reports the bodies and hangs up.

He trudges back to Baby. He scoops the shtriga’s empty robe from off the ground. 

Lucy’s parents address is tucked into one of the files from Pete and Dean climbs tiredly back into Baby and digs through to find it. It’s not far. It’s not fucking fair.

Their house is a small, split-level with a built-in garage and sloping lawn. Dean parks across the street. All the lights are on inside. 

He walks slowly up the brick steps to their door, his right hand nearly having to pull his body up by the wrought iron railing. Everything hurts. 

He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want – 

He wants to have saved her. Wants to be calling her parents from next to a hospital bed, talking quiet so he doesn’t wake her up. Listening to the quiet, rhythmic sounds of steady care, the beeping of the monitors, the slow drip of a line of fluid. God – anything but this.

A woman answers the door. She’s disheveled and frantic looking. It’s not like he needs the confirmation but yeah, she got the text. Fuck .

Dean would lie if it could make any of this better. Instead, he tells Lucy’s tense, collapsing mother and her angry, disbelieving father, the truth. He watches her younger sister listen in from the bottom of the split staircase. He answers questions and repeats the answers again when he needs to. 

His throat hurts from talking more than he has in days and days. He wants to break something apart. Instead it’s just his voice that cracks.

He leaves when the cops show up to confirm they found Lucy’s body.

Dean slips back out into the night. 

It’s not too far to his next stop either. He managed to badger the address off one of the cops on the phone.

The house doesn’t look like – but, well, they never do. It’s a small, boxy two-story. A few bushes out front. A lawn. A flag hanging off the porch. A mailbox sitting at the curb. 

Dean sits in the car. It’s late. There’s no lights on here. Presumably the cops are still working out what to do about Baker’s apparent involvement – if they even ever will admit to it. Presumably Lucy’s family is still awake, grieving, exhausted, disoriented, confused, lost. Presumably Baker is sleeping, if not peacefully, at least thinking he got away with it – again. 

Dean thinks about burning the house down. Thinks Baker probably has kids.

He gets out of the car, pulling the shtriga’s empty cloak behind him.

Dean stares up at the dark house. He doesn’t – doesn’t know what he’s doing. He slams Baby’s door and leans back against it.

It all feels so hollow. 

Inside the house, a light flicks on – second floor.

Dean watches for a few moments until one turns on downstairs. He waits.

The front door opens. Baker’s silhouette is illuminated in the frame. He blinks out into the night for a moment before his eyes settle on Dean. 

Dean pictures shooting him. And wishes so desperately that it would change something – really change it. 

Instead, he raises the shtriga’s cloak so Baker can clearly see it dangle in his hands. 

“Hey,” Baker yells louder than he needs to to be heard over the short distance across the lawn. “Hey!”

Dean tosses the cloak forward. 

It falls anticlimactically onto the pavers leading up to the porch. It doesn’t make a sound. 

“Hey,” Baker says, “Is that –” he stops himself. He’s taken a few steps out of the door to stare down at the cloak. He’s shivering a little in his cotton pajamas. Dean imagines pinning him to the ground with a boot and demanding why he did it all – forcing explanations out of him until he understands why he would – 

It won’t change anything.

“I didn’t –” Baker says and then stops. 

“But you did,” Dean says. He’s not sure if Baker even heard him. 

In Dean’s peripheral vision, flashing blue and red lights turn onto the street. He watches Baker’s eyes flash from him to the cloak to the lights and back.

It’s time to go.

Baby’s door creaks open and Dean climbs back in. He drives off down the street. His back hurts. He wants to throw up.

Chapter Text

Dean figures however long he spent unconscious in the shtriga’s nest is gonna have to count for a good night’s rest cause he’s gotta get out of this town. He hopes – he hopes he made it a little better at least. But that part – the part where the other humans have to step up and hold each other accountable and shit – he’s never been sure he could trust that. Feels like just when you think it’s gonna be okay, you get screwed. 

Speaking of accountability and shit, he really should update Pete on the situation. Which means he really should get a phone. All the ones in Baby’s glovebox have been cleared out. And of course his is – 

Dean shivers down the memory of Sam’s voicemail. The feeling in his shaking fingers. The force of his throw. The twinge in his shoulder. The sound of the phone hitting the floor. Breaking apart. Lot of good it did. Dean’s still angry. And now he has no phone.

He drives. 

East, without really thinking about why. Maybe he’s not ready to go back to the bunker. Maybe that’s just the way he’s been going so he keeps on. Around dawn, he’s too tired to keep driving so he pulls into some strip mall and slinks down in the seat to rest while he waits for the big box store to open. 

He used to be able to do this. Get thrown around all night then shrug it off. Pound a few aspirin for the headache and do it all again. Hell, he used to wake up wincing, lift his shirt in the mirror and find his whole torso black and blue. He used to – 

The sun rises. Dean grabs the steering wheel and pulls his aching body back to sitting. In the thin light spilling down into the car, Dean’s hands look dirty. Makes sense. He was scrambling through the bracken and then fighting the shtriga and then – he never washed them.

What did Lucy’s family think of him sitting in their bright living room on their white couch, covered in dirt and dust. Maybe they were so caught up in grief that they didn’t notice. Maybe they’ll only notice after the funeral – when they come home, tired and at a loss for what’s next and there on the couch will be a dusty, brown patch, the remnants of Dean’s presence in their lives.

One of Dean’s hands also hurts. There’s an aching coming from his palm. Probably from falling down or gun recoil or something else he doesn’t even remember. He checks his watch. Place should be open by now. Getting out of the car, he hunches his shoulders against the biting wind. And walks through the nearly deserted parking lot to the automatic doors of the huge box of a building. They open with a hiss.

Inside it’s all bright light and aisles upon aisles of shiny, new, unopened – Dean doesn’t even take it in. Fortunately, he doesn’t see anyone as he scurries to the back corner and down the markedly less polished hall to the bathroom. He catches a glimpse of what might be a windowless breakroom as he darts past.

In the bathroom mirror, he looks like shit. His dress shirt is covered in mud and blood. There’s the ghost of ashy, grey fingerprints all along his jaw. His pants have dirt ground into the knees and dust everywhere else. Jesus, maybe it all just looks so much worse in the unforgiving, white light of the bathroom or Lucy’s family must have been out of their minds to talk to him looking like this.

Dean washes his hands. He fights with the automated sensor to keep the water flowing long enough and fights with the thin, pink soap to actually take off any dirt. His palm throbs as he scrubs at it and as he rubs water on his face to remove the worst of the stains. 

Nothing to do in here about the blood or the mud on his clothes so he heads back out to the car. The duffle he grabbed has a few extra clothes in it and he finds a thick flannel to cover his bloody shirt. The muddy pants will have to wait. It still hurts to pull the shirt on as the places where his back has bled and dried to the bandage, his t-shirt, and the dress shirt pull and stick. Dean wonders if he could get somewhere where they’d sew the damn thing closed for him. Just keeps bleeding everywhere, with every little thing he does.  

He heads back into the store. Used to be you could buy a phone from a spinning kiosk right next to check-out at some of these places. But things change. Dean heads toward the electronics department. There’s aisles of headphones and chargers and adaptors and Dean’s not sure what all else, all trapped behind glass panels. He finds the phones and scans til he sees the cheapest one but there’s no one around to unlock it. Dean glances down a few nearby aisles but figures the place just opened and someone will be back here soon. So he waits.

On the back wall of the store, there’s the usual display of big screen TVs. Dean’s sure there are differences in size and color quality and everything between them. But all lined up like this, they’re just colors. Some are playing sports or reality TV or action movies. The audios all off and Dean’s eyes bounce from screen to screen trying to make sense of the speed, the transitions, the silent explosions. He’s sure he should recognize something that’s playing but he just feels lost. 

It’s not meant to be like this. You’re supposed to just have one screen and not so high up you get a crick in your neck. You’re supposed to have a few comfy chairs. A bowl of popcorn. A beer. And next to you, there’s – in the other chair is – there’s this laugh – there should be – low and deep and just a little bit confused at whatever plot inconsistency you were just trying to explain and – you’re supposed to – when – when you glance away from the TV, toward the laugh – there’s gonna – you’ll find that the eyes above the laugh aren’t looking at the TV screen at all. Instead they’re beautiful and blue they’re still laughing even though the room is quiet except for the TV which doesn’t even matter anymore – It’s – 

“Can I help you?” someone says next to Dean and he’s shocked so suddenly back into his body that he has to place a hand on the shelf next to him to keep from falling over. The twenty-something looks a little nervous at Dean’s reaction and he straightens up, trying to look – trying to seem – 

He buys the phone with clenched teeth and ignores the way the cashier looks at him. 

Back at the car he digs around in his pants from yesterday for Pete’s number. Shoots off a text – “It’s Dean. Hunt’s done, found the missing but didn’t save them. It was a shtriga. What’s next?”

Dean taps the phone against the wheel for a bit, waiting, but Pete doesn’t reply right away. Dean sags back into the front seat. Tosses the phone onto the bench next to him. His hand hurts where the phone was pressing against it. 

He finally gives it a good look. There’s a splinter lodged deep under layers of his palm. Dean remembers now vaguely, stumbling, grabbing the side of the bridge, feeling the shard dig in, knowing it would hurt more later. 

Around the wooden intrusion, his skin is pink and swollen. Infected. It always amazes him how fast it can get like that. Been less than a day. 

He pinches his hand. The pain is white hot and Dean’s jaw pops as his teeth clench. He pinches harder. Fingers digging into his skin, trying to raise the splinter, force it out. Instead, a dribble of white pus squeezes out. His palm throbs. The splinter stays put.

Dean flicks out his knife. And cuts. Not much, just enough to poke the tip of the knife in and dig the wood out. If he were here, Sam would give Dean shit for not using tweezers. And if Cas were here he could – he’d – 

The splinter doesn’t want to come out. The point of Dean’s knife just seems to push it deeper and Dean has to close his eyes for a moment at the redoubling of the penetrating wrongness of the pain. But he knows from experience that once it’s gone, it’ll feel better. So he cuts a bigger hole.

Finally, he’s able to get the damn thing out. It doesn’t look like much. Little brown fleck resting on the knee of his pants. 

His palm feels almost indescribably better. The sharp, superficial pain of a small cut replaces the deep throb of a foreign object. A little line of blood appears. He grabs his flask from the glovebox and dumps the stinging liquid across his palm. It splashes down onto his pants. Dean would kill for the bunker showers right now. Instead, he grabs a few napkins from his takeout bag and dabs them on his pants. Uses another to soak up the blood from his palm. 

His phone buzzes, “Haunting in Maine. You in?”

Dean shoots back, “Yeah. Send info.” And starts to drive. It’s not like he needs to know exactly where he’s going to keep driving east. He presses the napkin against the wheel to keep pressure on the cut.

Dean pulls over when he sees how long Pete’s text with the details is. Normally he’d have Sam read it aloud or – It was always nice to have someone else in the car, to read case details, bounce ideas off of, even just hand him a bite to eat. Dean gets lunch from a drive through and has to pull over to even open up the burger wrapper since his left arm is stiff and uncooperative. He needs a shower. Needs his muscles to relax. Needs to sleep. 

Pete’s text said the allegedly haunted house was empty and there haven’t been any reports of people being hurt, only scared. That’s good. Gives Dean a little bit of time. He pulls off the highway. Greeley, Pennsylvania sounds kinda familiar. But everywhere sounds kinda familiar.

The town’s small. Each road is lined with naked, skeletal trees. Dean crawls along them while the highway rush fades from his ears. The forest around him is eerie. White birch trunks stand out bright against their grey counterparts. Every once in a while, he sees a beach tree still clinging to all its leaves. Little tan ghosts of summer haunting the forest and whispering in the wind. 

He stops at a sign and watches traffic roll past him on the cross street. Something’s telling him a motel’s waiting just a little farther up the road. 

Strange – lotta cars for this small town. But it takes him only a moment longer to see the hazard lights, the little yellow flags hanging from rearview mirrors - “Funeral.” He only gets a little glimpse of a few faces as the cars pass, sad and tear-stained and stoic and distracted and closed-off. Some driving alone, some with passengers. They keep rolling along, sedans and SUVs and pickups. 

And Dean’s chest constricts. He can’t take it. Can’t bear the thought that these people have lost someone. That he can’t do anything. That he can never do anything about it. Can’t even save the person he loves – can’t even save one teenager. And the world just keeps going without them and more people just keep dying.

The cars keep on rolling past and soon they’ll all die too. Everyone and everything and the hole inside Dean will just keep getting bigger and bigger until he’s just a shell. He feels trapped. He feels like he can’t breathe. He feels like he’s being stabbed through again. He feels like he’s bleeding out again, his whole self spilling out his back until he’s empty. He – 

Behind him, someone wails on their horn.

Dean jumps and jostles his back painfully. Fuck . The funeral procession has past and he’s just been stopped in the road. He keeps driving on. In the rearview the person behind him flips him off. 

Dean takes deep breaths. He’s no good to anyone all spooled out. He’s no good panicking and crying and useless. And look, hey, there’s people alive and okay right now. Like the asshole in the car behind him. And he’s gonna – he’s gonna do what he can for as long as he can to make sure they have a world to live in. 

Dean takes another few gulps of breath and sighs. He knew it was always gonna be like this, right. Giving other folks what he can never have – even though – thought for a minute there he might – but nah, he knew. He knew.

The sun sets. Assholdes headlights follow Dean down the road a while before they turn off somewhere and then it’s just darkness in the rearview. Town’s too small for street lights so the mirror is just unending black.

The motel is called The Greeley Inn. It sounds kinda familiar. All motels sound kinda familiar. He pays for a room and dumps his duffle out on the bed. After he showers, he needs to sort his things out. So next time he’s not left fumbling for ammo while something’s breathing down his neck.

The kitschy faux-flowers in window boxes around the room seem kinda familiar. The rippled glass between the sink and the room seems kinda familiar. The blue and white checkered floor seems kinda familiar. The marbled green wall paper and light blue wood paneling seem kinda familiar. The gauzy-white curtains seem kinda familiar. 

Who the hell knows. Dean’s been to so many motels sometimes he wonders if he’s been to all of them. Still the deja vu is kinda nauseating. He’s probably just overtired. And bloody. 

It hurts to strip down. Bending to yank his boots off hurts and peeling the stuck layers of clothing off his back hurts and Dean’s stupid cut stings. It’s silly how much it hurts in comparison to everything he’s ever experienced. It’s just a dumb little cut but everytime he moves, he can feel it. 

The hot water on his skin hurts. If Sam were here Dean would make him just sew his fucking back closed. But he’s not. If Cas were –

Dean almost punches the shower tile. But he catches himself. Instead his fist lands anti-climatically and soft against the soap-scummed wall. The shower water pours against the back of his bent neck. And Dean wonders if there’s anywhere he could go and just have them close it up. He watches the pink water swirl down the drain of the kinda familiar sailboat-themed shower and pictures stitches or staples or anything that would just – just help keep in whatever’s left of him.

He gets out of the shower. His stuff is strewn across the kinda familiar blue bedspread. He digs through for a clean pair of underpants. On the way, he loads shells back into his shotgun and re-sheaths a knife. He throws his dirty clothes in a pile and rifles through for his laundry bag. He finds a pair of jeans wrapped around a box of salt that’s starting to spill. He tightens the lid back up. A bottle of holy water rests on a stack of crumpled papers. Dean picks them up and flattens them out. 

It’s his discharge papers from the hospital. A few pages of sterile medical jargon with diagrams and instructions. It opens, “You were treated for a severe wound to…” and ends with, “Please keep the wound covered but open to allow it to drain to reduce the chance of infection. Because the doctor wants the cut to stay open the whole time it heals, your scar may be larger than if the cut was closed.”

Dean stares down at the papers. It’s not that he didn’t know about… puncture wounds. It’s not that he didn’t realize that the surgery would have been for his lung and muscle and that the skin would have to be left – it’s just – just the thing feels like it’s never gonna close on its own. And in the meantime he’s barely keeping it together.

Dean crumples the paper up and throws it in the kinda familiar wicker trash can in the corner. He searches through a few socks and a few hex bags for the package of gauze and tape. 

The kinda familiar sink is outside of the bathroom in a little alcove. A countertop runs the whole width of the space and the sink sits in the middle, in between some shelves with towels and a tissue dispenser attached to the wall. Dean sets the gauze and tape down on the counter and bends to wash his hands. 

He’s half-turned in the mirror, trying to get a glimpse of the hole in his back when he realizes. It’s been over a decade but still the memory of Cas standing just over his shoulder in this mirror hits him and he jumps just as much as he did back then. 

Except this time, the room is empty around him. Cas isn’t here asking for Dean’s help tracking down Raphael. They’re not gonna drive together for the first time. They’re not gonna trash talk an archangel while a hurricane rages outside. Dean’s not gonna learn the solid feel of Cas’ shoulder under his palm. 

It’s stupid but Dean closes his eyes and clutches the edge of the sink as if, somehow, when he opens them again, time will reset. Cas will be standing close enough that Dean can almost taste him. They’ll get in the car and – 

Dean opens his eyes to his haggard, gaunt face in the mirror. No, it would still end the same way. Just Dean alone, a tacky little green windmill on the counter, a wound he’s not allowed to close, and the empty space behind his shoulder, through the room, past the curtains and the parking lot and out to the highway.

Dean throws the rest of his stuff back in the duffle and gets back in the car.

Chapter Text

2009

“We’re driving,” Dean announces and to his surprise, Cas agrees. 

The angel piles awkwardly into Baby’s passenger seat. Dean watches as he pinches the edges of his trenchcoat and pulls it over his knees. It makes Dean dizzy. He knows how strong Cas is – how alien he seemed at first. And yet, though Cas could whisk Dean off to Waterville, Maine with just the touch of a finger, here he is in the front seat of Dean’s car. Waiting for Dean to drive. 

Dean furrows his brow as he gently gives Baby a little choke before turning the key. Her engine turns over into glorious life. 

Cas tilts his head looking down at Dean’s foot on the pedal. Then back up at Dean’s face. It’s clearly a question. Dean thinks it’s crazy he can tell.

“It’s called choke,” he explains. “The – the, uh, engine burns a mix of gas and air to work. That’s what the carburetor does is – is mix them. But at the start, you don’t want the mix too lean – to airy. You need more gas to help it turn over so you – you choke the air off.”

Cas just nods and turns his eyes back on the road where Dean’s just pulled out of the parking lot. And Dean’s amazed that he read it right. Cas was curious… about his car. He smiles to himself and leans back in the seat.

They’ve been on the highway for about half an hour when the silence starts to get to Dean. It’s not that he’s not enjoying watching the way Cas sits so firmly upright without using the backrest. It’s not that he’s not fascinated by Cas’ eyes darting back and forth like he’s trying to catch a glimpse of everything they drive past. It’s not that he’s not mesmerized by the way Cas’ hair shifts in the breeze of the cracked window. 

But it’s a long way from Pennsylvania to Maine. And Dean’s starting to feel a little self conscious about refusing to get zapped there. Cause now Cas – cosmic being who could blink and teleport them anywhere – is just having to endure a so far mostly silent road trip at the pace of what must feel like watching a slug crawl.

“Hey, uh, wanna listen to some tunes?” Dean asks, “Hand me something from that box down at your feet. Uh, Led Zeppelin III, maybe?”

Cas nods and picks the box of cassettes up off the floor. Dean glances over to where he’s picking through the disorganized pile, occasionally scowling slightly at one of the covers. He picks out Zep III and shakes it in triumph. The tape makes a little plastic tapping sound against the box. 

Dean pops the box open and slides the tape into the player. It begins shouting out through the stereo halfway through “Celebration Day.” Dean hits the rewind button.

As the tape whirrs back, Cas says, “You have a lot of music here.” He rattles the box between his hands. 

“Yeah,” Dean nods. “Kinda a must-have when you drive cross country so much. Can’t rely on the radio if it’s always going static after half an hour.”

“Mhm,” Cas replies, then nods his head toward the buzzing of the rewinding tape, “Static like that?”

“Hey now,” Dean laughs, “Zep III is nearly forty-five minutes long! So it’s got that going for it. Even if it does take a minute to rewind sometimes. Plus I know exactly what I’m gonna get. I don’t have to be flipping through stations trying to find one that’s playing the good shit.”

“The good shit.”

“Yeah! Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Bob Seger, you know, the classics.”

“So that’s what you have in this box, the classics.”

“Regular Library of Alexandria in that box, man. They’re barely even making tapes anymore. When – when the car got wrecked, I thought I would have lost ‘em all and I was – but, well, I’ve still got ‘em.”

The tape clicks.

“You ready?” Dean smiles. And lets it play.

Cas listens in silence and Dean just lets the road slip under his tires as the familiar songs play. He taps his fingers on the wheel along with the beat. And after a while, he feels brave enough to sing along.

When they get to the B-side, Dean’s feeling the familiar comfort of the open road, a case, and music he can get lost in. 

After a little while, Cas says, “If you wanted to listen to the radio, I could easily stabilize the frequency of any station to this car.”

“What you don’t like this?”

“I do actually,” Cas says. “I can see why you have so many of their tapes.”

Dean laughs. He thumbs the volume up and shoots a glance at Cas. 

“I enjoy the bombast,” Cas replies, reading Dean’s silent question. 

Dean smiles, “Right on.” And turns it up.

Later, as the album fade out plays, Cas says, “And what about this?” He’s holding up Judy Collins’ Who Knows Where the Time Goes . “Is this one of the classics?”

“I don’t know that–” Dean starts out of habit. Then catches a glimpse of Cas’ earnest face. “We can listen to that one next if you want? I don’t – uh – know it as well as some of the others. It was one of – one of my mom’s tapes I think. And Dad used to – sometimes when me and Sammy were sleeping – or he thought we were – he’d listen. Think I caught him crying to it once actually. And he’d play us ‘Someday Soon’ from that one. Mom loved that song.”

“If you’d rather not listen, I would understand.”

“You know,” Dean sighs, looking out at the summer sun just beginning to set out the window, “Usually the rule is driver picks the music but what the hell.”

So they listen to Judy Collins. Then Dean figures he should do this right and sets them up with Zep I.

“Speaking of which,” Cas says after over an hour of near silence. “You should let me drive.”

“First of all,” Dean shoots back, “Speaking of what? And secondly, no!”

“Speaking of the driver choosing the music.”

“You want to pick the music?”

“No. I want to drive. You seem to be taking us on an indirect route. If we were aiming correctly, we would need to be several degrees to the northeast.”

Dean can’t help but laugh. “No, that’s just the way the highway is. We have to drive here cause we can go faster even if it’s not a straight line. In the long run it will be faster than taking smaller roads even if they might look more direct on a map or something.”

“All the more reason to let me drive. I could navigate the roads precisely.”

“You think you can just drive my Baby without practice?”

“Yes,” Cas says so certainly and directly that it takes Dean aback.

“Well you can’t,” he stammers. “She takes time to learn and patience and– “

“I am patient and I could handle the car perfectly,” Cas interrupts, nearly petulant.

“Well … still no.” Dean darts a look at Cas’ consternated expression in the dim light of the car and smiles to himself.

Dean stops to grab a bite to eat before they switch onto the rural two-lane that will bring them to Waterville. When he asks Cas if he wants anything Cas just says, “for what purpose?” and Dean isn’t sure how to answer. But Cas does a great job of getting the ketchup to french fry ratio perfect every time and eventually even experimentally takes a small bite out of one.

“Well?” Dean glances over with a raised eyebrow.

“Tastes like the shoreline,” Cas eventually answers. “Salt and dirt.”

“That,” Dean says, “is not a way I’ve heard french fries described before.” He reaches for another fry. Cas hands him the one that’s already in his hand – the one with the bitten off end – the one Cas just – 

Dean can’t just keep holding it in his hand having a crisis about Cas’ lips and teeth and tongue. He pops the french fry in his mouth. 

Cas looks unperturbed. 

Dean chews, swallows, takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, now try one with the ketchup.”

“Acidic,” is Cas’ only comment. 

Dean rolls his window down. That’s the nice thing about smaller highways. Less noise makes it easier to keep the windows down and still hear the tunes (Zep II by this point). 

He rests his elbow against the lip of the window. 

Cas looks over quizzically and rolls his own window down. He lets his arm rest on the sill matching Dean. And then, as Dean watches, Cas reaches his hand out the window and lets the wind flow under his fingers. He cups his palm and watches as his hand rises and falls with the current. 

“It’s almost like flying,” Cas says but quietly, like he’s saying it to himself. Then he turns back to Dean, “I understand, I think, why you like to drive so much.”

Dean swallows and doesn’t know what to say. But Cas doesn’t seem to mind.

When the tape ends this time, Dean doesn’t reach for anything to replace it.

As they pass exits for Portland, Cas asks, “So who are Thelma and Louise.”

Dean looks over at him, his mind working over all the things he could possibly say – and what they might really mean. Eventually he lands on, “They were on the run from the law.”

“Oh,” Cas says and sighs. “An apt metaphor then.”

“We could – we can, uh, watch it sometime,” Dean says. “If you want?”  And then can’t decide if he should have said more or less.

Chapter Text

Dean makes it to Maine the next evening. Took a break to nap at a rest stop, grab some truly bleak coffee, and head back out on the road. 

Maybe it’s cause he just can’t pick what music to listen to. Maybe it’s cause it’s been a while since he’s been driving around alone like this. But the car feels loud. The hiss of the tires on the road, the endless cycling of the engine, the rattle in the exhaust, the pumping of the carburetor. Even the whistle of the winter wind against the windshield feels like it’s blowing right into his ears. Eventually it all feels like too much. Dean reaches around and grabs a random tape to slam into the player but that just adds to the noise. 

Dean knows it’s not Baby’s fault. She’s been running almost non-stop for years. And that’s his fault. Dean wonders what would have happened if Dad really had gotten that WV all those years ago. Everything’s gotten all twisted. He loves Baby, always has. And he thought she was Dad’s car before she was his. But it turns out, that’s on Dean too. Convinced him to buy it instead of the van Dad had promised Mom he would buy. 

Maybe if Dean had kept his mouth shut, Mom woulda gotten away faster. Headed out on the highway at night with Dad and never looked back. Wouldn’t have mattered if Yellow Eyes possessed her Dad or anyone. She woulda been free. 

Maybe that Mary doesn’t have kids. Maybe she does. But maybe it’s not Sam, not Dean. 

Dean doesn’t remember what he said to Dad all those years ago to convince him to get Baby. Just knows he saw John in that car lot and saw Baby sitting dusty and patient and he didn’t even think. He probably waxed on about the engine, probably put on a little show of opening her up and – said something about how long she’d last. 

That she’d still be running great when she was 40.

Maybe Dean never should have fixed her up after the truck crashed into her. Maybe he should have never fixed her after demons flipped her over. Maybe he never should have after the damn Nachzehrer fight.

Maybe 40 years was asking too much. But Dean doesn’t know how you call it without a crash.

There’s still a few hours left ‘til he makes it up to Rockland where the haunting is. But he doesn’t think he has it in him to drive the rest of the way that night. 

He pulls off into some little town – cutsie in the way rural New England tourist towns have to be. Brick store fronts with hand painted signs and Christmas lights strung up around all the trees and between the street lamps. Big red bows on wreaths that must cost the town a fortune but make for a hell of a picture, especially in the snow. 

Dean eyes the neon beer brands lighting up the window of a bar and figures that’s as good a place as any to spend most of the night. 

The Impala won’t fit into the cramped, diagonal street parking so Dean circles around the building to the town lot out back. There’s a beautiful moment when he cuts the engine and everything feels quiet. The vibrating is gone from his legs. There’s only a few intermittent clicks as Baby’s engine cools down. Dean tilts his head so he can look out the window. The sky looks like snow. 

Then he leans too far back against the seat and his back shouts in pain and everything is loud again including the door as he slams it behind him when he gets out of the car. He fights with the parking meter before the thing spits out a little paper stub. With hunched shoulders, he runs back to Baby and tucks it on her dash. 

The bar, it turns out, is also a restaurant. He walks in, slamming the door at the cold that tries to follow behind him and the smiling hostess asks, “Table for one… Two?” She tilts her head, waiting for Dean’s response. Her brown hair piles on one of her shoulders. Her maroon nails tap restlessly against the menu covers. 

Dean clenches his jaw and manages a dissenting sort of sound and nods at the stools at the bar, of which several are available. 

“Of course,” the hostess says before turning away from him and back toward the door, placing the menus she’d picked up back down on her stand. 

There’s only a few people at the bar and Dean picks a seat a little apart from them and around the curve of the bar so his back isn’t toward the door. He slides onto the stool, winching a little when he braces too much of his weight with his left arm. He breathes through it and tries to settle his shoulders more comfortably as his elbows rest against the bar top’s edge. He orders the first beer listed on the paper stands displayed around the bar and doesn’t really taste it. 

Dean’s always liked bars. You can get lost in the noise and the faces. Usually if you wanna be quiet, the bartender can chat with folks who came for a good time. Or sometimes you wanna be the one having that good time. Yeah sure sometimes you walk into one and realize it’s full of townies who clock you from a mile away and decide it’s their personal business to make sure you don’t feel welcome. But most of the time if you keep your head down it goes alright. 

Dean can’t count the number of bar tops he’s leaned against - dark wood and light, formica, metal, scratched up, smooth, clean, sticky, wood grain you can get lost in or shellacked so shiny he can see his own face looking back at him.

A few guys come in, chatting about sports. There’s a hiss of cold wind coming in on their heels and a few faces turn at the noise and cold. But the door shuts and it’s quiet and warm again. One of them says, “Hi sweetheart” to the hostess as they walk past. They take a few of the seats nearer to Dean. Bartender nods at them like he knows them. 

Dean’s felt safe in bars for most of his life. When he was little, bars were one of the only places Dad seemed to be able to calm down in. Sure Dean didn’t really understand what was happening but he liked the low light and rumble of voices and the way Dad was able to sit still for a while, to rest. 

Then there were a few shitty years where Dean would walk into bars with a goal in mind, feeling like a raw nerve, like he was on stage naked, like he was a tomato in a grocery display. But – it’s been a long time since that. And since that he’s crossed the country more times than he can count and gone to three times as many bars. He’s had good drinks and bad ones and a ton he doesn’t even remember. 

Two more guys walk through the door, letting in a blast of cold air. One of them turns to make sure the door is firmly closed behind him. The guys next to Dean are still talking about football. 

There’s a lull in the conversation in the rest of the restaurant as people turn toward the cold breeze and then back to their dinners. 

The hostess asks, “Table for four?” and then jokes, “Letting the ladies park?”

“Uh,” says one guy and Dean’s eyes flick up over the top of his glass. 

The guys are both mid-thirties maybe, little bit of scruff. One has a scarf on that he was in the middle of untying. 

“No, uh,” the other one says. “We – just two.”

The hostess pauses for just a hair too long before says, “Oh,” and setting down two of the menus in her hand. “This way,” she says and gestures them into the restaurant. 

Dean glares back down at his beer. There’s nothing to it that means anything really. It was awkward, sure. But guys can get a bite to eat together and not be – well they can be too – it’s just you can’t always tell. But something makes him think maybe they… 

“Gross,” says one of the guys next to him.

And even though Dean knows that only he and the nearby guys heard, it still feels like it drowns out all the rest of the sound in the whole restaurant. 

“Can’t they find somewhere else to –” one of the other guys says and it feels as loud to Dean as a yell echoing through a canyon. 

Dean takes more careful stock of the group of guys now. It’s three of them. Closest one to him is the first one who spoke. He’s wearing a slouching Bruins beanie hat and has a five-o’clock-shadow of dirty blond hair across his chin. The two other guys are laughing a bit. One in a blue baseball cap and silly little mustache, the other got an unflatteringly gelled down crew cut. They don’t look much older than the two men who just walked in. They’ve got a casual air like this conversation is nothing to them. One of them plays with one of the few empty glasses in front of them on the bar. 

Behind them, the two other guys settle into their table. There’s no pulling the chair out, no taking off each other’s coat, no outward… They just sit down and open their menus. Dean watches their lips move as they discuss what to order. No, there’s nothing to make him think… But he feels… he just feels…

 “It’s like they want to rub it in our faces,” crew cut says. “Like they’re almost asking to be –”

“Shut up,” Dean says. His voice is low and raw, first time he’s used it in days. 

“The fuck you say?” Bruins hat says. 

The other two snap their eyes onto Dean. Blue hat looks tense, like he doesn’t know what’s gonna happen next. Crew cut’s just staring Dean down. Dean meets his eyes for a second, lets him know it’ll take more than that to rile him up. Then looks at the first one again. 

“I said, ‘shut up,’” he repeats.

“You got something to prove, man,” says crew cut. 

“Nah.” Dean takes a sip of his beer. “You just shouldn’t say shit like that.”

“What’s it to you?” Bruins hat growls. He’s not fully slurring his speech but Dean can tell he’s definitely not sober. “Huh? What – you’re not – I mean why do you have to defend some fucking homos.”

And his eyes scan up and down Dean’s body, where he’s leaning, faux-casual against the bar. Dean sees the moment of judgment and scorn flash across the guy’s face. And for a second he honestly doesn’t know if it’s worse if the man thinks he’s fucking gay or can’t fucking tell that he is. 

And then Dean watches as one of the two guys across the restaurant grabs the other one’s hand. It’s nothing big, just a casual touch, his cupped palm on the other man’s hand and his thumb running across his wrist. 

None of the guys in the group next to Dean have seen. They’re all too focused on him, their backs to the small, beautiful, damming gesture happening across the room. 

Dean forgets about the punched out part of his back. He forgets about the hunt and the drive and the cold. He forgets everything except keeping those two guys from ever finding out what these assholes are saying and his heart pounding loud and furious in his ears.

“Mind your damn business. If they wanna act like that in public, I get to speak my mind,” crew cut says.

“Oh really?” Dean growls, leaning in just a bit closer to the three men so he can be sure they’ll hear him and no one else will, “Cause if you wanna say that shit near me again, you’ll have to say it out back.” 

He stands, throws a twenty down on the bar next to his half-empty beer. He feels their eyes follow him all the way through the place and out the door. 

So he slams it a little harder than necessary, just to drive the point home, follow me.

Outside, it’s starting to snow. Thick flakes are falling on all the trees with their pretty lights and on the striped red awnings outside shops and on the green awnings adorned with numbers above apartment building entrances and on the sidewalks and trash cans and people’s cars. 

One time when Dean was first learning to drive, it was snowing and he lost control. Dad was asleep in the passenger seat and Sam in the back. Baby starting to spin. He hit the brakes hard and the left tires just slid on the slick road while the right kept spinning and Baby plowed straight into a snow back. Dean remembers the feeling of panic that he couldn’t stop what was happening. And he remembers the cushion of the snow. How the car just sort of slid into it and slowed. No sounds of tearing, crunching metal, just the soft swish of the tires coming to a stop. Dad wasn’t even that mad. When they all got out to dig the car free, it was so quiet. Snow still falling. The whole world muffled around them.

Maybe it’s quiet now but he can’t tell. Heart’s still pounding in his brain, his gut, his ears. Feet reverberate against the sidewalk. A truck drives past with a plow on the front and, though it’s not lowered yet, the hopper-spreader riding in the bed is running. The salt sprays out against the asphalt with an almost cacophonous hiss.

Dean grits his teeth. And just as he rounds the corner back toward the parking lot, he hears a door slam loudly from behind him. And the sound of three pairs of boots following fast. 

Dean considers walking toward Baby, maybe leaning up against her hood or something. But, nah, she doesn’t deserve to be involved in this. 

The sound of the boots is getting louder, closer. Dean can hear the way they’re walking fast, urgently. He can also hear the slight imbalance in the steps. 

They’re almost on him.

He turns around.

The fight doesn’t last long. Dean’s been in more fights than he’s been in bars. His back is still fucked up and that makes his left arm nearly useless but these guys clearly don’t know much other than swinging wild, ungrounded punches. Dean trips blue hat, let’s crew cut knock his fist into the parking meter behind him, and gives Bruins hat an uppercut he’s not gonna forget. 

And then they stand there breathing at each other for a moment. Guy cradling his jaw, guy experimentally opening and closing his fist, guy pushing himself back up off the damp concrete, and Dean. 

Dean scuffs his shoe against the pavement of the parking lot, wanna go again?

Crew cut is the first to lunge. His blow lands on Dean this time. But it only registers as a dull thump against Dean’s chest. Tilts Dean’s body left for a moment but then he gets his right hand on crew cut’s shoulder and drives his knee into his stomach. The guy drops. 

Dean’s right foot lands back on the ground and he can feel the unsteadiness in his stance but it’s okay cause Bruins hat now has to step over where crew cut is pushing himself shakily up off the ground and Dean can take a second to center himself. 

Then Bruins hat is coming at him. He gets a hold of Dean’s left arm and pulls down to try to hold Dean in place. The pain exists somewhere but it’s not close enough to worry Dean. He raises his right arm and slams it into Bruins hat’s neck. The guy goes down, yanking heavily on Dean’s left arm before losing grip.

He catches himself on one hand and a knee as Dean takes another step back. He’s waiting for blue hat to try for his next shot. But the guy looks at his friends on the ground and says, “Come on, Karl. Just leave it.”

Bruins hat stands up and Dean thinks maybe he’s gonna try again. 

And then there’s an awful second where Dean realizes his body feels wrong. Crew cut’s hit and the way Bruins hat yanked on his arm have got him unsteady. He’s unbalanced and his muscles aren’t responding like he wants them too. And the pain is real far away but Dean can feel it out there and he’s not sure when it’s gonna hit. Fuck.

He tries to get ready in case these assholes really aren’t done. 

But, “Eric,” blue hat is addressing crew cut now. 

Eric looks angry as shit and Karl’s face is set and pained. And Dean braces himself – 

Then Eric just spits on the ground and turns. It’s over.

They walk away, blue hat giving one concerned look over his shoulder like Dean was gonna follow them. He watches them round the corner, walking away from the bar. Their footsteps fading into the night.  

Dean starts to walk and a wave of dizziness crashes into him. He feels like he might throw up. He feels like he might pass out. His chest probably hurts. His arm probably hurts. His back probably hurts. He takes a few steps toward Baby.  

Then his body is crashing. Left side locked into a skid the right can’t stop. Baby catches him. Not as soft as a snowbank but still smooth metal sliding under his falling hand. 

His head bumps against the pavement and his fingers curl between the spokes of Baby’s hubcaps. His thumb rubs at a little flake of paint. It chips off in his hand. 

Dean wonders how you know when it’s time to call it. Maybe you’re not supposed to keep trying to fix something. 

He looks up and can’t quite tell if he’s looking at stars or snow. Everything is so quiet. Like a cut engine.

Chapter Text

Dean wakes up and Cas is there. He’s in the fluorescent light faintly buzzing in the ceiling. And he’s in the hunched back of the person in a white coat bending over a computer across the room. He’s in the tan blanket draped across Dean’s torso and legs. And he’s in the dilute blue walls. He’s in the hum of noise from beyond the open door of the room. He’s each distant murmur of conversation, each rhythmic footstep, each steady beep of heart monitors and nurse-call buttons, and the rattle of gurney wheels on linoleum floors. 

And he’s in each moment and every breath Dean’s taken for years. He’s in Dean’s blood and his lungs and his gut and his heart and the hole in his back.

He’s on Dean’s tongue as he shakily gasps, “Cas?” 

And then Cas is sucked from the room like an airlock opening into space. A whoosh and he’s gone.

The world rumbles and murmurs on and Cas is nowhere. 

The person across the room says, “He’s awake.” And she isn’t Cas. Never was. 

Dean sinks back against the thin mattress of the cot. His back feels stuck to the sheets with sweat – or blood. He can feel a needle pressed under the skin on the back of his hand. A machine steadily drips fluids into his body. 

“Feeling okay?” the person asks. “Sorry that we have to do this but, unfortunately, you were found unconscious and without identification. Do you have insurance? Or anyone we can call?”

Dean feels spent. He’s slowly putting together that he must have been taken to a hospital sometime after he passed out last night. And the thing about that is, well, probably cops were involved somehow and probably he’s miles from his car and probably he’ll have to sneak out of here without giving them any information or money. And even before all of that, he’ll have to get through this interaction and he doesn’t feel like fucking talking. But at least his wrists aren’t cuffed to the bed.

It feels like – feels like there’s a tiny piece of him that remembers that moment of waking up, of Cas’ all encompassing presence in the room, of the shape of Cas’ name in Dean’s mouth and if he says anything else aloud, it truly will be gone. 

“Sir?”

Dean awkwardly signs something about his wallet being in his car. And the person doing the paperwork switches gears. She starts to speak much more slowly and loudly, her eyes glued to Dean’s mouth. She says, “I don’t understand you but I’m going to get an interpreter.” And she scuttles from the room. 

Dean guesses this is as good a moment as any and tries to slide his legs off the side of the bed. But the room starts to spin around him and his arms shake where they’re braced against the sides of the bed and he sinks back down. 

His back aches. He wants to find a way to lie down that doesn’t put so much weight on it. He awkwardly shuffles himself to his side, wincing as he accidentally hits the IV line in his hand. He’s still gotta get out of here but he needs a little more time… a little more rest… a little more of the fluids… 

Someone’s touching his shoulder and Dean starts back to wakefulness. His back twinges. His sudden movement jostles the IV. On instinct one of his hands is reaching for the knife in his pocket. Then there are hands frantically signing in front of his face. Too fast to understand. Dean lets go of the warm metal grasped in his palm and runs a hand over his face. 

The interpreter steps back, shoots a concerned look at the PA, and then starts signing again. 

Dean falls back against the bed and makes his hands say something along the lines of slow down .

The interpreter does. And it turns out all it is is them asking about the frigging insurance again. Or if he has anyone to call. He signs, again, that his insurance card is in his car. He signs that, no, there’s no one to call. 

At one point while he’s focused on watching the still slightly too fast hands of the interpreter, the PA taps Dean’s other shoulder and he nearly jumps off the bed. He wants to tell them that he can hear them but just isn’t gonna – can’t – talk about it. 

He wants to be left alone to close his eyes and catch a few hours sleep on this narrow bed. He wants them to stop asking him about the insurance and if there’s anyone who could go to the car and get his card or if he knows what kind of plan he has or will he tell them where his car is. 

No. It’s all no. 

Across the room, the PA says something to the interpreter and Dean’s focus is flicked in that direction and then the interpreter puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder to get his attention back and Dean slaps the hand away. 

He wants to say, I can hear you. He wants to say, please stop touching me. He wants to say, just let me go. He manages something like, don’t touch me.

The interpreter shoots a lost look across the room at the PA. Figures.

Dean’s been in a hospital a few times and he knows he’s always the most difficult person in there. No insurance, fake insurance that doesn’t match the name on his fake ID, angry and hurt, cracking jokes instead of answering questions, not wanting to talk at all, just wanting to get out of there, ripping IVs out of his arms and leaving the gown in a pile on the floor. He’s been probably responsible for a few sleepless nights of some poor nurse who now has to explain why a patient is just gone . He wishes he knew how to be different than this. 

Wishes he had someone to call who could answer the questions he doesn’t want to. Someone who would wait with him so he didn’t get so restless all alone. Someone who could remember what the doctors even said so it made sense to listen. Dad never stuck around when Dean was in the hospital. Made them too vulnerable, he always said.

Yeah, well, Dean used to sit up reading shit magazines in the emergency waiting room any time Dad was in there. One time when Sam was in college, Dean drove three states over to pick him up. Dean once broke into a pharmacy to swipe Dad the meds he needed for a nasty infection. When he was eleven…twelve maybe, Dean watched every detail of a doctor stitching up Dad’s leg so the next time Dean would be able to do it himself. 

But that was always the difference. It was always Dad’s hunt, Dad’s quest, Dad the one who needed to move forward. And heaven help you if you fell behind. 

One time Dean woke up in the hospital and Cas was there. Dean doesn’t think about that.

The PA says, “I don’t know just ask him again if there’s someone we can –”

Dean catches her eye and signs, emphatically, No .

“Okay well I –” The PA starts – then catches herself, “Wait, hang on. Something on his back. Can you ask him if it’s okay to take a look at – oh jesus that’s blood.” 

Dean feels her start to peel the hospital sheet off of where it’s gotten stuck to his back. He leans forward to make it easier and glances back and yeah, there’s a red splotch of blood on the fabric.

Bled right through all his clothes again. Shit. 

“Did this happen yesterday?” She asks. 

Dean signs, No, doesn’t look at the interpreter and just hears him repeat the, “No,” aloud like the world’s silliest game of telephone.

“I have to take a look,” the PA says. Dean catches a flicker of movement that means the interpreter is probably telling him the same thing. He nods.

“We’re going to need to cut you out of these shirts,” the PA says apologetically. 

But Dean’s having none of it. I need them , he signs. No. Then when her face crumples into annoyance and worry, Please. I will take them off.

“We really don’t – shouldn’t – the blood is stuck and I’m worried that–”

Dean interrupts her. Please. Please. He doesn’t say, it’s all I have. He doesn’t say I’m gonna leave here before you have a chance to ask me about the money again and I need to be wearing something other than a gown. He doesn’t say, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve washed blood out of my clothes. I got really good at it. He doesn’t say, been doing it since I was a kid.

Finally, the PA nods. She carefully removes the IV line from him, hands him a gown, with one final concerned look, and pulls the curtain closed along its channel. 

It’s painful work for Dean to peel out of his shirts. They’re stuck together and to him with dried blood and every angle he gets his shoulders into hurts. But eventually he makes it out and he awkwardly tucks his arms into the gown. Doesn’t do much good. His back is still cold and exposed. The air from the HVAC system blowing cool across his neck. 

They haven’t thought through how he’s going to communicate he’s changed. Dean heard them leave the room after they pulled the curtain but after he hears their footsteps approaching again, Dean waits a painful few minutes desperately fighting back the desire to sink back into the bed, into sleep. Then the PA awkwardly knocks her knuckles on the wall next to the curtain before peering her face around and saying, “Are you ready?”

Dean nods and she pulls back the curtain. 

She comes over to stand next to the bed to look at his back. It makes him a little nervous to have her standing back where he can’t see her. He just feels the slight touch of the tips of her gloved fingers gently probing around the bandage over the hole in his back. He shakes off the nerves, takes a breath, reminds himself that he wants – needs this shit taken care of so he’s not bleeding all over everywhere… forever.

“When did this happened?” the PA asks and Dean catches the interpreter’s hands moving from the corner of his eye.

He doesn’t know what to say, A week ago, maybe.

“And what caused it?”

Dean doesn’t know the word for rebar. Can’t even think about it too – feels like some part of him is still hanging there. Feels like parts of him have been breaking off for weeks – since – since – 

Part of him is still curled on the floor of the dungeon. 

Maybe he’ll just come apart. Leave bits of himself strewn across the country til there’s nothing – 

Metal stick , he signs. And hears how silly it sounds aloud from the interpreter. 

“Well you need a tetanus shot,” the PA says with worry in her voice. “It’s bad it’s been even this long.”

No, Dean says. No, I have it. I’m okay. 

“Okay, good, well maybe we can try to get your records from your primary care so we can just verify.”

Dean bows his head. He reaches his arms around himself and pinches the folds of his stomach through the thin fabric of the gown. He’s so sick of saying, I don’t have that. I can’t answer that. I don’t – I’ve never had a fucking doctor in my life. Closest I’ve got is a werewolf dentist and he doesn’t know shit about this unless Sam told him.

The PA seems to take his lack of response as a no and she says, “Okay, well I’m just gonna start getting this cleaned up.” 

Dean nods. He closes his eyes while she peels back the old bandage. He winces slightly as the last bits of stuck blood pull from his skin. He bows his head through the novocaine.

“So where are you from?” The PA asks, trying to be conversational while she gets started on his back.

Dean knows this one. He remembers carefully watching Eileen’s hand, thumb and first finger out, then closing, her finger wrapping her thumb in a protective little knot. Can’t barely say any other states without spelling out the whole name but this one he knows. Kansas, moved around but Kansas.

Then the PA’s gloved hand comes down to rest, apologetically on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I need you to hold still while I work. I shouldn’t have – I’m sorry.”

Dean starts to nod then cuts himself off when he feels how even that jostles his body. He holds still. He watches the gauze leave the tray table at his side in tight square chunks and come back mangled and soaked through with blood and iodine’s yellow stain.

“Doesn’t look too bad actually,” she says at last. “I mean it’s good we got it cleaned out because there definitely was an infection risk but I don’t see any concerning discharge or discoloration around the site. So we’ll just get it bandaged up and then –”

Dean interrupts her with a frantic movement of his hands – Will you sew it? Can you close it? Cause what’s the fucking point of any of this if they can’t finish – can’t just – how’s it supposed to heal if everyone keeps leaving it open, letting Dean spill out everywhere, letting everything get it’s hooks in him. He can clean it himself. Why’d he stay here if they’re not gonna – 

The PA looks to the interpreter, still standing awkwardly toward the edge of the room. “He’s asking for stitches.”

“Oh,” the PA replies, “No. We wouldn’t stitch in this situation. It doesn’t look infected but we can run your white blood count and prescribe an antibiotic if it seems necessary. But no, we don’t close puncture wounds. It’s better to let them evacuate themselves as they heal. If you’re worried about the scar, we could do a set stitch to keep the skin in place but I would rather not.”

Her words settle on him. He knows that. He should have known better than to ask. He just hoped – 

“So let’s just get this covered up,” the PA says and Dean sits quietly as she gets several larger pieces of gauze and a roll of tape. Her touch on his back is light as she places the bandage down and tacks down the edges. “All set.”

“So we’ll just leave you to get dressed and then we can talk about yesterday and figure out next steps and the insurance and co-payment or – yeah –” She pulls the curtain back around Dean’s bed.

He hears the two of them walk from the room. And Dean is alone with the bloody sheets, the pile of ruined gauze on the table, his own stained clothes. 

There’s a little sink and a few cabinets included within the bounds of the curtain. A small mirror sits over the sink and in its reflection Dean can just about make out the bandage on his back. 

It’s so smooth. The tidy white square and neatly taped corners betray nothing of the ragged hole underneath it. Dean reaches up and brushes a finger across the edge of the bandage. He can feel the tenderness in his skin. The way his body is warning that more pain awaits just a fingers’ breadth away. And yet, it’s hidden.

Dean struggles back into his shirts, checks that the coast is clear, and darts out of the hospital. 

Fortunately his phone battery isn’t quite dead and it takes him just a few minutes to get his bearings and start heading back toward the car. It’s a twenty minute walk through the cold, grey, dusky afternoon. The air is dry and cutting. And he can almost taste the salt-treated roads on his tongue. He tucks his hands into his armpits and bows his head against the cold. 

But the strain pulls at the skin of his back. Despite the shirts and layers of gauze, Dean feels empty and exposed, like the wind is whistling through the cavern inside of him. 

It seems like it takes forever to get back to Baby, winding his painful way up hilly, small-town streets. But there she is waiting for him with a ticket tucked under her wiper blades. 

Dean chucks the flimsy paper.

Inside the car, Dean feels – raw, unmoored, restless. He doesn’t feel ready to drive and his jaw is at risk of actually cracking from how long he’s been clenching his teeth. He wants to – he needs to – 

He jumps from out of the front seat and into the back. Knees on the seat, facing the back windshield, Dean hunches himself painfully under the roof of the car so he can reach the rear dash. It’s an awkward and painful position that presses his back against the ceiling and scrunches up his elbows. His knees press two deep wells into the cushion below him. But Dean can work with it. He pulls out his pocket knife.

When Dean and Sam carved their initials into the rear dash of the car, Dean couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Digging out all the lines that made up his name was tough. He ran the dull blade of his little pocket knife over and over them. Now, it takes just two deft strokes to form the first part of the “C.” But the line feels too straight so Dean works over it a few times until it’s more curved and smooth, the bottom half of the “C” curling around to mirror the top. He runs his fingers over the lines in the vinyl. The plastic is bumpy and uneven under his finger tips. 

Dean gets back to work. The “A” is easier, three quick cuts with just a little effort to widen and solidify them. Dean leans down to blow the little plastic scraps off his carving. His hand drifts down toward his own name, all the sharp edges of which have been worn down by time. Dust and dirt have filled into the cuts making them nearly blend into the tan vinyl.

The “S” is harder. When he started, Dean hadn’t really thought about how close all the letters would end up. The spacing is getting messier. The “C” is well above and to the left of Dean’s own name but the “A” starts to tilt down toward it which means the “S” would have to be nearly overlapping. Dean tries to work around it, giving the “S” a little more space from the other letters. But the curves and angles are tricky with the knife so the “S” slants back toward Dean’s initials. And the bottom line of the curve pierces into the “D” just a little. 

Dean’s breath catches. He didn’t have a plan for what to do when he finished carving and it catches him by surprise. The two names sit, barely intertwined. The new, fresh, vivid canyons that form “CAS” and the worn, sunbleached lines of “DW.”

Dean sets the knife down with a breath. His palm comes down flat over the names and he can feel the lines of them crossing the lines of his skin. Then he bows his forehead against the seat rest beneath him and starts to cry.

Chapter Text

2018

The first thing Cas does when he gets into the car is try to turn on the tape player. 

“Oh that’s been fucked up since Sam had her,” Dean says. “You know when I – when I was –” he means to say, “When I was possessed by Michael,” but the words don’t quite make it out. He waves his hand.

Cas nods. He knows.

Dean throws Baby into drive and away they go. It’s a short trip. Round about three hours from Lebanon to Omaha. Dean feels – feels hopeful in a way he almost forgot he could feel. Yeah sure the idea of facing Michael again is fucking awful. But he feels like maybe – maybe they’re gonna get him. Get the spear and get his ass. They’re gonna win. 

It almost makes him feel like. Like way back when things were good with Dad or Sam. When running to another case didn’t feel like the end of the world, everyone might die, brace yourself. When you could just roll down the window, hands in the wind, trunk full of salt rounds and holy water and that was all you needed. Maybe get thrown around the room a few times. But the worst you ever needed were a couple-a stitches. Land in a motel at 2am, grab a beer and a few hours sleep and head out again. There were times there, when it wasn’t awful. When it was almost – when it was almost good. 

Dean had nearly forgotten he could feel like that. Except it’s not quite the same. Cause it’s not Dad or Sam sitting next to him. It’s – 

Dean glances over to where Cas is sitting in the passenger seat. He’s leaning back, almost seeming relaxed, despite the stakes of where they’re heading. His trench coat pools loosely around his thighs on the seat, the tie snaking out across the bench, not quite reaching Dean’s leg.

Dean remembers how rigid Cas used to sit and stand and be . Barely used to lean back against the seat rest. And now, he sinks into it. Dean thinks he looks tired. Maybe the weight of the end of their journey is weighing more heavily on him than it is on Dean. Maybe it’s just the residual stress of losing Jack and fighting so hard to get him back. From what Cas has told him, shit in Heaven got pretty intense. 

But Jack’s back now, he’s home, and they just have to end Michael and then it will be – it will all be – 

Empty two lane rolling out in front and behind them. Dean turns to look at Cas. “Hey you wanna drive?” 

“What? Oh,” Cas says, turning to face Dean. “Oh no that’s okay. I know how much you like to drive.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, “But you know, I can’t always have all the fun.”

“That’s alright,” Cas says. “Thank you.”

Dean nods. He turns his eyes back to the road. “Well, the offer stands.” Taps the steering wheel. Glances at Cas again from the corner of his eye. 

Cas has changed so much since Dean first met him. It’s almost hard to remember him. Walking into that barn with the crackling light and sparks. Dean was so scared he thought he might piss himself. 

And now, over ten years later, Cas leans back easily in the seat of Dean’s car. Dean knows Cas isn’t really aging the same way he is. But Cas’ hair is a little softer and, in places, a little lighter, his face rounder, his frame thicker, fuller. His strength has changed from a sharp-edged thing to a sturdy persistence. 

Dean’s changed a lot too. Changed from the terrified kid fresh out of the grave. He remembers how weird it was right after he was resurrected. Feeling the acres of smooth skin. He never, ever remembered his body feeling that… new. Course it sucked finding out it wasn’t even for him; he wasn’t even alive for himself. It was so he could be the fucking prettiest dress at the prom for some archangel. 

But now, years later, he’s been re-collecting scars and aches and swollen knuckles. He’s got more lines on his face, his neck, his hands. His cheeks are a little less round, his eyes more tired. While Cas has gotten more full, Dean feels more worn, feels older. But also feels – feels like his body is more his . And that’s why – well – why it’s gonna feel so good to kill Michael. 

If Dean thinks about everything that’s happened in between when he first met Cas and now, he feels like his brain can’t hold it all. Years and fights and reconciliations and losses all stacking on top of each other, making Dean’s head spin. But in between – in between there have been so many moments like this. Driving, or sitting at some table in a diner in the middle of nowhere, or at the bunker’s kitchen table, or sometimes out on the roof, looking up at the stars.

Dean finds it easy to be with Cas. Like Cas doesn’t mind if he’s quiet. And doesn’t mind if he talks. He doesn’t rush to fill space and he doesn’t judge when Dean goes on and on about something stupid. He listens and replies when he feels like it – which isn’t always. And Dean trusts what he says cause Cas doesn’t have the same human hang-ups he does. And maybe at the start that was kinda hard cause Cas would say when he didn’t think Dean was strong enough or could really handle whatever. But now, now Dean just knows Cas’ll tell him the truth most of the time. And that makes things … easy. He doesn’t have a better word for it. 

And he – he knows what that means. 

He knows what it means that when he catches a detail of Cas’ face in the rearview mirror or the corner of his eye and feels his heart jump and his throat catch. 

He knows what it means that when they sit in companionable silence or soft conversation, he wants to scoot just a bit closer to Cas. And sometimes does. Sometimes brushes his hand across Cas’ arm for no other reason than just to – 

He knows what it means that even when he feels like he’s bearing his whole soul about something he can’t talk about with anyone but Cas, something inside him reminds him he’s not saying the whole truth himself. Even if it’s not about – about that, the fact that Dean – that Dean – Dean loves him is woven into everything he says.

He knows that it means it’s probably his turn to be fully honest with Cas and tell him. And tell him. And tell him. 

There’s also sometimes, like now, he almost feels like Cas is holding something back too. Ruminating on something he isn’t sure how to say. And Dean wonders, and wonders more frequently, and hopes that maybe the thing that makes Cas quiet for a moment when Dean says something a little too earnest is the same kind of secret. That maybe Cas finds it easy to be around Dean. That maybe Cas wants –

He looks over to Cas in the passenger seat. His body swaying gently with the motion of the car. Dean wonders and hopes.

Dean takes a deep breath. “How about some grub?”

“Are you hungry already?” Cas asks, looking over to meet Dean’s eyes. 

Dean swallows. “Always.” When he laughs, it comes out a little breathy. But he doesn’t break off the eye contact.

He pulls off the highway and into the parking lot of a fried-food joint. Dean orders two burgers and onion rings. It’s too cold to eat at the picnic tables outside so they slide into a booth with red bench seats and chrome accents. The diner is decorated for Christmas, with plastic evergreen garlands around the counter and bright red bows. 

While they wait, Dean fiddles with the ketchup and mustard bottles on the table. He teaches Cas to play sugar packet soccer and then gives up when Cas nails it every time. He eats his burger and explains in great detail where it ranks in the long list of all the burgers he’s ever tried. 

Cas sits with his hands patiently in his lap. Then he destroys Dean at sugar packet soccer. He eats his burger and tries to explain the difference in the molecular make up of the lettuce and tomato and hamburger and bun. 

They share the onion rings. Dean alternately dips them in the ketchup and mustard. Cas makes a quizzical face before opening one of the little strawberry jam packets on the table and dipping an onion ring into it. 

Dean makes a face. Cas chews thoughtfully. 

“That looks gross,” Dean groans. And then tries it when Cas hands him the next piece. And it is gross. Dean laughs. 

Cas smiles at him sideways, almost like he did it on purpose. 

“I used to steal those,” Dean says, nodding at the little stack of jams at the edge of the table. “When I was a kid. There’s lots of stuff like that that’s pretty easy to get away with and then it comes in handy later. Motel soaps and sugar cubes and instant coffee packets. And napkins.”

“Do you want some for the road?” Cas asks with so much weight and sincerity, gesturing to the large, empty pockets of his trench coat, that it feels like it reaches back through time and helps take the edge of the raw, shamed memory of being twelve years old in clothes that should have been retired four hunts ago and feeling a waitress’ pitying eyes hit him as a jelly pack falls out of his pocket when he gets up from the table.

“No I, uh,” Dean laughs. “I think I’m good.” And he means it. 

Cas bites the last onion ring in half and hands one of the ragged-edged pieces to Dean. Dean chews it and thinks about how it’s not even that much more than this that he could ever want. Like, yeah, he wants to kiss Cas. He wants to – he wants to feel all of Cas’ skin. And he wants – wants Cas inside him probably. 

But that’s – look at what he has right now – the bit off end of a shared onion ring with just a hint of Cas’ spit still lingering on it. Cas walking just behind him as they leave the diner, close enough that they’re pressed together in the doorway and Dean can feel Cas’ warmth, his gravity. 

And later, Cas in his car, listening to Dean mumbling along to snippets of Zepp III as it plays in his head and then Cas starting to sing along, his voice is low and steady and he knows all the words.

Dean starts to sing a bit louder, clearing his throat as the tune catches in it. He looks over, embarrassed, and Cas only smiles at him. And keeps singing.