Watching the Storm
It was a miserable day, Dean remembered that distinctly. Dreary and overcast, it drizzled in periodic spurts. The bleak shoreline was deserted, the grey sky reflected on the sea.
He wasn't really sure why he was there, and it didn't really matter anyway. Dean wandered, without meaning and without purpose, sometimes it felt like the only thing he knew how to do.
Dean never saw where the boy came from; He was distracted, occupied trying to break off a piece of the rigid driftwood log he sat on. It was the distant rumbling of thunder caught his attention, by the time he chanced a gaze at the sky, the man was already there. The dark silhouette gazing out across the restless ocean, a tan trench coat fluttering in the wind. He seemed almost mystical, an unknown figure against the stormy sea.
The sky had darkened, it seemed on the brink of releasing the was only then, that all of a sudden he took off his shoes, rolled up his tattered pants and waded into the water, ankle deep.
It wasn't the boy's looks that had first struck Dean, though he truly was beautiful in an ethereal way; pale skin and dark hair, sharp facial lines and soft lips. It was the way Dean knew him, he could have sworn that he'd had never seen him before in this life, yet something within him recognised him, intimately.
The bou was enchanting, Dean couldn't draw his gaze from him, perhaps it was the way he carried himself as he waded in the shallows; a gentle, almost otherworldly, grace. It was as if he came from another place, another era, something about him seem to fit so perfectly into the landscape, but at the same time, he couldn't be more foreign. He didn't notice Dean, sitting on that log, too caught up within his own mind.
For hours or perhaps minutes, Dean continued to watch him entranced, as he jumped lithely onto the rocks. Dean wanted to go to the boy, the man, to ask him what had happened to make him so sad, to ask him where he was from, perhaps they had met before, and he just didn't remember it.
The way the man seemed so caught up in the world inside his head, the way he moved with such assured grace. It made Dean wistful, as he watched the man explore the rock pools. Maybe in another world could have been an angel. The thought had struck Dean out of the blue, and the more he swished it around his mind, the more it seemed to fit. The man was like an angel, a strange, beautiful angel.
Soon the man wandered out of sight around the curving shore, leaving Dean to contemplate. He shouldn't be there, not after what happened last year. A sudden wave of sadness washed through Dean and a single salty tear rolled down his cheek, he remembered waking up alone, the strange dreams, and the sterile grey hospital room.
In an instant, the man came back around the rocks then and Dean hastily wiped the tear from his face, suddenly fearful that he would be spotted, but he wasn't. A sudden look of such sadness and self-loathing crossed the man's face, as he picked up one of the rocks and threw it all the way out to sea, unleashing a terrible desolate cry. He collapsed into the sand, tremors racking his body as he let out all the emotion that had been building within him.
Dean was left to wonder what he had been through, and if the experience was anything like Dean's own? The man did appear so similar, yet infinitely more important. But the desolation and despair that was written clearly on his face. It reminded Dean of looking in a mirror, internally at least. Dean knew this was the man's place, a place for him to come, where he could just be and let his emotions run rampant, just like it was Dean's.
Dean watched with a reserved kind of sadness as the man finally got up, brushed the sand off himself and trudged back to the trees, pausing at the tree line, he looked up and they locked gaze. It was his eyes that struck Dean, first the colour, a startlingly clear baby blue, but it was also so the look in them. They twinkled under the grey sky, full of deep sorrow, regret and a touch of wistfulness.
The man in the trench coat gave Dean a sad smile, and then he knew, they were the same.
A/N: Short and sweet.
~Dyena