Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or its characters - these were created by Eric Kripke - I'm just borrowing them. I'm not making any commercial gain. No harm or infringement intended.
Dean hits rock bottom. He's lost and can't find his way home. Spoilers for season 7. Set after 7.04 'Defending your Life'.
For Tribble Master, whose prompt was "Dean can't find his way home".
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No Way Home
Nothing makes sense anymore; everything is too real, too bright, and too painful. He feels raw, like some deranged TV chef has taken a grater to his nerves, filleted his emotions, and left his mind half-baked. Every moment he's manning the dam, because he knows that once those gates are opened the flood is never gonna stop.
Dean is used to analyzing strengths and weaknesses in others and he's just about self-aware enough to know that he's not someone who's used to reaching out to others for help, he just wasn't raised that way. Hell, he's not even wired that way.
He's lost, so lost.
Lost in grief.
Lost in guilt.
Lost in drink.
He feels like he might be dead already, and if it wasn't for the lack of physical torture he might have wondered if he was back in Hell.
Despite their occasional fallings-out in the past, home has always been where his brother is, but he knows now that his brother doesn't need him anymore, Sam can cope better without him.
As if on cue, he hears Sam laugh from the other room.
He goes to pour himself yet another glass of cheap whiskey, only to find that the bottle he'd bought earlier is already empty.
He suddenly feels the need for fresh air as the walls of the cabin start pressing in on him, suffocating him. Plus, he remembers he'd hidden, no... stored, another bottle of liquor in the trunk of the car.
Staggering to his feet he starts looking for his keys, which he thinks he might have left in his jacket, and he walks in to the other room. Sam shifts into a sudden, straighter sitting-position at the kitchen table with a strange expression on his face as if he'd he been caught doing something wrong or embarrassing.
Sam puts his hand out and for a split second in his confusion Dean flinches as he thinks his brother is taking a swing at him. Shit, does he know I killed Amy?
Realizing his mistake, he tries to collect himself and grabs his jacket, feeling absurdly pleased with himself that he's managed to do something as simple as remembering where he left his keys.
He watches with a numb, bleary gaze as Sam pulls himself to his feet and this time when his brother's hand darts out it manages to latch on to him. His brother doesn't know his own strength sometimes, and his grip on Dean's shoulder is tighter than intended.
Dean jumps as Sam's hand comes to rest over the faded handprint scar on his shoulder which seems to give a slight twinge in response, an uncomfortable, internal-twisting feeling, as if reacting to his presence - as it did with Cas on the odd occasional the angel had touched him in the same place. Dean dismisses it as another sign that he just doesn't 'do' comfort.
Even though he's been trying his damnedest to avoid thinking about it, it's enough of a trigger to make the look of desperation on Cas' face, just before he was swept away by the Leviathan, flash through Dean's mind
I failed him so much. I didn't do anything for him, but get him kicked out of heaven and killed. I was so absorbed in Sammy's and my problems that I didn't even think 'bout what he was going through. If I'd been a better friend he never would have gone to Crowley in the first place.
All at once the flood of memories and emotions become too much for him to deal with, and he knows he needs to run from the room before he embarrasses himself anymore than he has already. Lord knows, I'm enough of a millstone around Sam's neck already.
"You think you should be driving?" his brother yells, as he puts his arm out to try and stop Dean from leaving, and Dean feels so tightly wound that he can't even make proper sense of Sam's other words.
"Just leave me be," he growls, shoving his brother hard to get past him. The reference to his alcohol consumption just winds him up further – I don't have a drink problem, he tells himself, as he stomps out to the car. I could stop anytime I want, he just needs something to ease the pain. To fill the void when he is numb and feels nothing, and to dull the constant ache in his soul when it seems like all he can do is feel.
In typical Dean-fashion, Sam's warning simply prompts him to drive off in the Impala rather than return to the cabin once he's retrieved the bottle of whiskey from the trunk.
For the longest time he drives without thought of where he is going, and after a while he doesn't even know where he is. He finds himself driving past a lake and it reminds him a little of the dream location he'd shared a couple of times with Cas. Not as nice to be sure, and maybe more than a little polluted.
As he pulls the car to a stop he spies a dead bird by the side of the water and he can't help wondering if it's a bad omen of some kind. A pigeon. It makes him think of Crowley – it was what he used to call the angels.
Dean steps from the Impala wanting only to take a couple of lungfuls of clean, fresh air, but the taint of factory fumes hangs heavy in the air. As he looks around he can see the odd half-submerged shopping trolley and the ubiquitous plastic bags flapping in the breeze. No pier as such, but there is a slight overhang with a good view of the lake and the night sky. So, just like the dream, only shittier, he thinks. Just like my life then.
He takes a long, deep draught at the bottle of whiskey.
Dean's not stupid. He knows he's drinking too much. Passing out each night, often waking up in his own vomit, with a constant pounding headache, roiling stomach, and nausea each morning until his first drink of the day. That drink which has been getting earlier and earlier.
He knew he'd crossed a line last week when he'd took that first swig before he'd even got out of bed.
He knows that Sam had been getting increasingly concerned, until he'd reach the point when he was angry with him all the time. And he knows it must have got really bad, because his brother won't even bother to talk to him directly about it now.
He drains the last of the whiskey and, as he throws the bottle into the lake, he overextends himself and trips and stumbles, falling into the lake. He catches his head, hard, on a protruding rock on the way down.
He feels himself falling deeper and deeper into the lake. He is so befuddled by drink that he can make no sense of which way is up or down. He starts to panic, and just at that point he hits rock bottom.
Everything goes pitch back for a second, then there's an explosion of pain and white light like a supernova in the back of his head.
What a shitty way to die, he thinks to himself, yet somehow he has never in his life felt so calm.
Just as his lungs feel like they are on the verge of exploding, a figure rises from the depths of the water, grabs him tight by the shoulder and raises him from the water.
It's Cas.
The angel stands by Dean's side rubbing the hunter's back in slow patient circles, until, after a long while, Dean manages to cough the last dregs of water from his lungs.
Cas goes to the car and retrieves the trench coat, giving a broad smile and looking pleased as punch that Dean's kept it, but he's also somehow magically dry and so instead of wearing it himself, he drapes it around Dean's shoulders to keep him warm. The angel keeps his arms wrapped around the hunter until Dean's violent shivers subside, before seeming to withdraw back into himself.
Dean though holds on tight, he was fool enough to let go once and he's not prepared to make that same mistake again. He looks at the angel with a shy expression, not quite able to make eye contact, there is so much that he wants to say, but he's just not equipped with the means to even start to explain himself.
The kiss when it comes is as tentative and tender, as it unexpected.
"I'm lost without you," Dean whispers, after a breathless moment, in solemn confession. He's already so broken the revelation costs him nothing.
Cas stands there looking grave, his eyes on the ground, and it's obvious that he's composing himself to impart some devastating news
Castiel finally looks up and Dean feels pinned to the spot by the angel's impossibly deep-blue eyes.
"Dean, I'm dead. I have been the whole time. I'm just a... figment... of your imagination," he says, his gravel-like tones resounding like church bells.
The ground tilts alarmingly for Dean, the world suddenly spinning and he wonders how he managed to keep standing. Except he isn't, he's lying face down in the mud on the bank of the lake, still coughing up the brackish water from his lungs.
Dean can't find his way home, because he no longer has one. He never really has.
And he realizes now that he never will.
~#~
Dean staggers back to the car to find the trench coat still waiting for him in silent accusation. God and His angels must still be watching out for him, because he somehow manages to drive back to the cabin without killing himself or anyone else.
He stumbles back into the cabin before falling to his knees, his brother rushing to his aid in an instant.
"Sammy, I loved him. I really, really loved him," wept Dean.
Sam wrapped his arms around his older brother, "I know, Dean. I know," he crooned.
"He loved you too."
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