Hell.
There was really no way to describe hell to someone who hadn't been there. It was terrible. But what was really terrible was how the people who ran it seemed to enjoy their jobs. Hell was the only place you could go with that level of job satisfaction. Dean was sure the angels were way more disgruntled than the demons.
Dean was also very drunk.
It might take a liquor store to get the angel drunk, but not Dean. One good bender was enough to have him contemplating what was worst about going to hell on the hood of the Impala. He tipped the whiskey bottle back up again as he fell backward so that he was leaning against the windshield of his beloved car. It was a cool night, and mercifully dark. The moon was not near full and it was a little cloudy. The lights in the sky were beginning to look like someone was swirling them before his eyes with a paintbrush. Sam was with Bobby and they were on their way, but somehow this thought failed to keep Dean from swallowing another harsh mouthful of alcohol.
He shivered, even though the booze was keeping him relatively warm, which was right when the headlights from Bobby's truck hit him through the pleasant darkness. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, and the liquor became bright and amber and painfully obvious.
Eyebrows furrowed as Dean eyed the dwindling level of liquid in the bottle. Maybe Sammy would make a beer and other alcohol run. Probably not. He would probably tell Dean off because he'd only opened the seal on what he was holding a few hours ago. And Dean would feel bad for being drunk. Or at least he would want to feel bad. And then he would make up for not feeling bad about drinking so much by feeling bad about not feeling bad about it. And it would all get very booze-laced and confusing but the general idea would still be guilt. He licked his lips as his brother opened the creaking passenger's side door of the truck, and waved one hand that he knew Bobby would see, even though the lights were too bright for him to see the older man.
Dean laid back down against the glass and let the whiskey bottle clink against it as Sam walked toward him in the dark. Bobby's headlights rolled away, leaving the Winchesters together in the dark.
A swallow hung in his throat, as though it knew that he wanted to stall and not saying anything. He hadn't tested his level of impairment speech-wise, he didn't want Sam to catch on too quickly just how drunk he was. It escaped the mind of this struggling swallow that there was no way Sammy hadn't seen the near emptiness of the bottle just a moment ago. Dean looked at him in an attempt to keep a straight and determined face.
Sam HAD seen the nearly depleted whiskey bottle. So had Bobby for that matter. Their sort of adoptive father had raised his brows at Sammy, who had promptly opened the door and gotten out of the truck. He didn't really know what was going on with his brother, and felt he was in no position to discuss it with the older hunter. As a result of this awkward quiet moment he and Bobby had shared, Sam was already in the mood to point out that there was no way he was going to let Dean drive them anywhere.
This mood seemed to grow with every step he took toward his older brother. It had a life of it's own and it was cracking out of the shell so that by the time he reached the sleek black car Dean was stretched out on, the mood had become a beast of a thing inside of him and he was afraid to open his mouth for fear his fist would act instead.
But Dean was grinning that lop-sided do-no-wrong, shit eating grin of his.
The grin that usually reassured him that all was right with the world and his broken, angry brother was actually not feeling the bulk of the pain of his tough life; snapped the cage bars holding back the growing, growling, possibly-fire-breathing mood.