Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13 (T)
Disclaimer: There'd be plenty of things that would be different if I owned Supernatural.
Spoilers: Watch season 8.
Summary: The first dawn since he's come topside almost goes unnoticed.
Notes: Prompt dawn. Unbetaed.
The first dawn since he's come topside almost goes unnoticed as a weak, austere light slips into the sky. Dean leans up against a tree trunk, cradling his forearm, attempting futily to catch a catnap. He's shaking with exhaustion, adrenaline, and the weird, pulsing energy he can feel just squirming around under his skin if he thinks about it too much and too long. He wants nothing more than to get out of this fucking forest; it doesn't matter that it's Maine and not some fucked up plane of nightmarish existence, this many trees will forever remind him of that place and he can't get further away. He can't truly believe he's out until he feels concrete under his feet. Stumbling, however, through the underbrush, he'd known he didn't have the strength to make it out without resting for the night. It didn't matter anyway; there was nothing in these woods that could compare to the horrors he'd slept amongst for the last however the hell long.
In the sort of hazy, shivery way of the chronically sleep-deprived he realizes the light is growing stronger and watches it paint pale strokes across the textured humus of the forest floor. Lighter yet heavier. It wraps sensuously around the leaves, twigs, pinecones, and other detritus cushioning his seat. Little divots and hollows and squiggles of increasingly yellow light suffused with a sort of warmth he'd dreamed about, had nightmares about.
He feels his muscles abort a swallow when he comes to the realization that the sun, the goddamned sun, is actually on the rise. The back of his tongue remains a stubborn knot in his throat but he manages to clumsily fling an arm out into the bright contours of daybreak. His tongue loosens up with a little choking snort when it hits him that he's going to feel actual sunlight on his skin and in the time it takes him to register the thought, the back of his hand has electrified. The light there hadn't been anything like this. Day never seemed to blossom beyond watery twilight there and there had been no life, no heat in that chilly illumination. But here… he couldn't even contain his delirious laughter if he tried. Any thoughts of his plans - to find his way to Louisiana, to track down his brother, to slide against his baby's supple leather, to pointedly avoid thinking about the man whose faltering hand was the last warmth his skin had felt – fall to the wayside as he watches the goosebumps rise on his flesh under the caress of a warm star hanging on the edge of morning on solid earth, and he laughs like a maniac.