It's just the latest rapid in the river of shit that is their life: not only is Dean halfway across the country when Sam goes radio silent, he's in the middle of a hunt he can't half-ass without getting himself killed.
Kind of an understatement to say it's a really crappy few days before he finally gets to leave.
He has a hard time being on guard by the time he reaches the bunker, the case and the twenty-hour long haul hanging off every joint like sandbags, but he's got no choice. He hasn't heard from Sam in going on three days now, there wasn't anybody he could've called to check up on him because of that nasty habit all their friends have of getting murdered, and what with Sam throwing the doors wide for God's evil twin, they've got even more reason than usual to expect the worse. Dean's carrying his duffel, but he's also got his gun out, and an angel blade. Fat lot of good either will do him if it's Amara, but he feels better anyway.
The first thing Dean notices, when he eases open the door, is that the lights are off. Not a great sign. The second is that the bunker smells like Sam. No blood, no sulfur or ozone, no non-reek of Amara's smoke, which somehow and in the freakiest way possible smells like the total absence of anything else. Just...Sam. Warm and maybe a little more au naturel than he usually lets himself get, but he did seem like he was coming down with something when Dean left.
That sets him on edge in a totally different way as he starts remembering the Trials wetly churning their way right through the middle of Sam. Thinking about him crumpled feverish on the floor, too weak to even remember where the nearest faucet is, much less make it to one.
Dean flicks on the light, puts away the weapons. They stay in easy reach. "Sammy?" he calls out as he heads down the hallway, trying to hit that sweet spot between "cautious crawl" and "panicked dash." It tips real heavy towards one when he sees hair on the floor, peeking out from behind the nearest corner.
Sam. Collapsed. Unconscious or worse. Dean's heart has to bruise his other organs with how hard it thuds.
"Sa - ?!"
He swings around the corner, and the rest of Sam's name is suddenly nailed to his tongue.
It's almost too much for him to process. Especially after the hunt and the drive. He's seen some seriously weird shit in his time, but this is...god, it's like turning on a Cronenberg flick after a lifetime of Hammer horror.
"Son of a bitch," Dean whispers.
Dark chocolate hair curls across the floor in silky waves that stop right in front of Dean's boots. It's piled up in drifts around the walls, and it's gotta be inside them, too, because it's poured down into the light fixtures on the ceiling. It's wrapped around the bulbs, dimming everything, throwing long bars of shadow and making the whole scene even more surreal.
Distantly, Dean realizes he can smell burning hair. Apparently his hand knows more about how to deal with that than he does himself, because it fumbles for the nearest light switch and plunges everything back into darkness.
Dean can still see the shine on the hair, fluorescent light burning off it in strips, throbbing in negative in the blackness.
His brain feels gummy, slow. It's too long before he kicks past what he just saw, what he's not totally sure he even did see, and lands on the biggest, most pressing issue.
"Sam!" Dean bellows into the bunker.
Nothing. But then, faintly, too faint to tell exactly where it's coming from, "Dean!"
It's definitely Sam. He sounds scared. Now Dean's got adrenaline and big-brother instincts to carry him.
He shucks his backpack. His gun and blade are in his belt, so no worries there. Ripping open a zipper, he grabs a flashlight, turns it on, and - yep, hair's still here, awesome. Inanely, he's thinking about how pissed Sam's going to be at him if he finds out he stomped all over his hair with the dirty old shit-kickers he's got on right now, but that doesn't stop him as he charges. Then immediately skids, because hair's slippery.
He steadies himself automatically, grabbing a lock dangling down from one of the lights, then immediately lets go in disgust. He's not sure why, though. It's Sam's hair. All of this, he thinks as he aims the flashlight down the hall into nothing, is Sam. It smells like him. It looks like him. And he's in here somewhere.
"Sam!" Dean yells again, and runs towards the tiny voice that answers.
He's already getting used to hair under his boots.
1.12.16 - Morning
I guess I really did something to myself: sleeping didn't solve the headache, which is weird for me. Especially considering I put in about eleven hours. I slept right through my alarm, even.
I'm not sure what's going on with me, considering I didn't even get walloped in the head on this last case. I'm just waiting for all the times I have to catch up with me. I've read CTE's a bitch. [Note in margin: Look for neurologist? One who takes payment by credit card.]
Maybe it just took more out of me than I thought. I did sleep in the car a lot, so it could be referred pain from my back or my neck. Or I've got something, I wasn't feeling super great today. A couple advil is doing the trick so far, though. I've been able to check in on all the scans and see what the net picked up while we were out.
There's something over in the Southwest that really looks like Amara. It's way outside the area where all the other sightings have been, but we haven't had a solid lead on her in months, and it fits her MO to a T. Even if it's not her, it sounds like something's eating people's energy and possibly their souls too, and there's nobody I'd trust to take care of it besides us.
Well, Dean. I can't go like this.
Speaking of Dean, he's obviously gone all mother hen on me. I think he thought the whole headache thing was just the excuse I used last night. He tried to tell me we could just wait a day or two and go when I feel better, but I don't think we can afford to wait. Not if it's Amara.
I told him I'll rent a car and come out to meet him soon as whatever's going on with me blows over, but until then, I'll research and be his guy in the chair. I think he liked that, even if he'd like it better if we were heading out together.
He insisted on blowing me before he left. He wouldn't let me lift a finger. I'll admit, the orgasm did help with the headache...for a while, at least. I'd never say it to his face, but Dean can be a real romantic when the mood strikes him. "No chick flick moments" my ass.
I need to think of something I can do to make this up to him. If I can't come up with anything else, maybe I'll just let him give me a haircut when we get back. God knows he loves any opportunities to come at me with a pair of scissors, get a couple inches off all this. And I noticed earlier I really am starting to need a trim.
"Sam!
"Sammy!
"Sam!"
He's answering, but not every time, and that's got Dean feeling like his guts are trying to crawl up out of his throat in an anxious scramble. Either he's not telling Dean where he is when he asks, or he doesn't know, because Dean hasn't heard an intelligible response to that yet. And it sounds, horrifyingly, like he's getting further away. Which ought to be impossible, considering the way the hair's thickening around Dean with every step.
He keeps slipping on it as the piles just get deeper. It's spilling out of the air vents, he sees every time he passes one, forcing the grates off some, clogging the fans. He wonders if it's time to start worrying about their air supply. Sam's hair whispers around his ankles, brushes like crawling spiders over his face and head and neck much as he tries to avoid it.
He comes to the kitchen, searches it even though he can tell pretty fast Sam's not in here. There's hair wrapped tightly around the hanging pots and pans, curled in the sinks, twisted up the legs of the table and chairs, piling out of the cabinets.
It's fucking surreal and god, is it ever gonna be a pain in the ass to clean up.
Dean barks out a laugh, then swallows a gag. Fuck, it just had to be in the kitchen. He's never been able to stand hair in his food. Every time he finds one too long to be his, he bitches at Sam, even if the length and color don't match. He starts feeling like maybe he shouldn't have done that, but he pushes it away.
Sam's fine. Or, well, maybe "fine" is too strong a word here, but Dean will find him in the middle of all this and they'll fix it, and then he will be fine.
Dean pulls his mind back into focus hard as he leaves the kitchen. Clearly, they're dealing with a curse, a real doozy. It is just going to be a bitch to find a hex bag in all this.
"Sam!" Dean yells, and Sam calls back, "Dean!"
Now he sounds closer. Or maybe he doesn't, Dean can't even tell.
"Think this shit's messing with sound!" Dean shouts to Sam. "I can't tell where you are!"
Sam yells something to him, but all Dean can make out of it is his own name.
"Can't get to you if I don't know where you are, Sammy," Dean points out, frustrated. And yeah, he knows he's not being fair. Knows Sam's trying, and he's probably every bit as terrified as Dean is. Worse, probably, and what kind of shape is he even in?
Dean knows all that, but he still can't help the irritation. Not with all this hair in his face.
Sam's not replying, so Dean starts moving again. Running. He's panting, starting to sweat, because it's hot in here, and he ditches his field jacket. Moving helps him think, always has, and he figures he can knock this out by the process of elimination. Probably, Sam's in the library, or his bedroom. He should hit those first. Or a storeroom, maybe he was screwing around with something he shouldn't have and did this to himself (which is totally something he'd do), but he can't be too deep in the bunker because Dean can hear him. That automatically takes everything but the first and maybe the second level off the table. Nice.
Sam probably can't move, either. Not with all this hair. He's going to either be weighted down by it, or tangled up in it.
Or he could be buried under it. Slowly being crushed. Which could be why Dean can't hear him very well, why he can't tell him where he is, why he sounds like he's getting more and more -
Something moves.
It's right on the edge of the flashlight's outer halo, so Dean can't make out much of it, but it's person-shaped. Almost. It's too tall, it's too thin, it's wrong, fingers and maybe head trailing off into the distance like the tentacles on a deep-sea squid, and it trips every alarm Dean has.
He goes instantly for his gun, but he's trying to backpedal at the same time, and his ankle snags in a loop of hair and thank god for trigger discipline or he probably would have shot himself in the face. He goes down hard. His head bounces off the floor, and the hair doesn't provide much cushion at all as a black-red starburst rips through his vision. His flashlight beam scythes wildly through the air, popped neatly out of his hand by the impact.
He's immediately sitting up, gun in both hands as he scoots back until he's pressed to a wall, hair dragged up under his ass. He can't see shit besides the chestnut glow of his flashlight where it's lens-down in the mess of Sammy-mane, but he's trained on where he last saw the thing, waiting, watching. Trying not to shake.
Dean doesn't know how long it takes him to calm down and realize there's nothing to shoot right now, but it doesn't happen until his shoulders are seriously aching with the effort of holding the pose. He doesn't put the gun away, but he does put it down and crawl over to grab his flashlight. As he stands, there's a tug on his pants that nearly brings his heart up out of his mouth, but it's just hair wound around the rivets of his jeans.
He does a slow sweep, gun and flashlight. With the adrenaline in his system souring and his heart rate slowing down, he catches sight of a curtain of hair dangling from a damaged vent, floor to ceiling. If he swings the flashlight wildly over it, squints, it kind of looks like a person.
That must be what he saw. Gotta be.
Dean swallows, throat sticking. Then he calls, "Sam?"
There's a couple acid seconds that come close to eating him alive, then, "Dean?"
Instead of taking off again right away, Dean closes his eyes. Wendigos can mimic human voices. Crocattas. Plenty of others. Probably some he doesn't even know about.
But what choice does he have?
He take a step, nearly eats it because the fucking hair's still around his ankle, so he's gotta waste time getting that untangled. All through it, he's swearing to himself.
"Second I find you, Cousin It," he mutters to himself, "you're getting shaved bald, and you're staying that way."
1.12.16 - Morning
I'm starting to think I might actually be sick, with how bad I feel. My head's still killing me, I think it's actually worse than yesterday, and now advil's not touching it. Neither's aspirin or tylenol. I don't want to touch the harder stuff, not with Dean relying on me. I need to stay sharp.
Guess I'm not driving out today.
I've never had a headache like this before. It's like this burning, between my scalp and my skull. It pulses, and it feels swollen. Like an infection, almost. It runs down my neck, it's in my back...it feels like somebody's trying to pull all my nerves out of me through my head. I'd say it's the flu, but I don't have a fever, and I definitely don't have any stomach trouble. I'm craving the weirdest stuff: sweet potatoes, eggs. I ate an entire bag of spinach yesterday, and the last time I was sick (actually sick, not Trials stuff) Dean practically had to force-feed me. That was a while back, but still.
I got sick all the time when I was little. I think it's because we moved around so much I never really built up an immunity to one place's germs before I was getting exposed all over again, but eventually, I guess I caught basically everything there was to catch because it stopped. I feel kind of bad for Dean now, I think he hated me being sick but he liked taking care of me. Hell, I miss it too. Him making chicken soup for me and reading to me and rubbing my back...I wish he could have stayed home this time. But I'm glad he went.
Every tiny thing's bothering me so much more than it should be. I really need a haircut, and that's driving me crazy. At least I can put it in a ponytail, which Dean would just love. I tried yesterday and thought it wasn't long enough, but I must have been screwing up somewhere.
I really need to shave, too. But I feel like I can either take care of that or focus on research, and honestly, I'm not even sure I could handle shaving. I don't want to cut myself. I'll just have to do away with it before I see Dean again, I know he hates how beards feel. One of these days he's gonna have to admit he's got sensitive skin.
Afternoon
Dean called. He's worried I'm still not heading out, but I tried to play it off. I'm not sure if he bought it or not. He tried for some phone sex, since it's been a while since we were far enough apart for long enough that that could work, but I wasn't in the mood. I appreciate the thought, though.
Sounds like it's not Amara. Shadow people. This isn't the first time this has happened. It's anybody's guess whether they follow her around, or she somehow spawns them in some kind of reverse-creation process, or I guess they could have nothing to do with her at all and they just suck souls like she does.
I hope she doesn't make them. I don't think I want to see anything she does make. Or what she could turn somebody into if she was actually trying, not just...feeding.
Dean thinks one's tailing him. At least one. He can't leave the town. It's killing me not to be there with him.
It's killing me. It's killing me.
Afternoon (again)
God, I feel like shit.
?
I
Fuck, this
I'm
Uh oh
Dean's starting to obsess over how dry his mouth and throat are getting when he realizes that he's got no idea where he is.
He stops, calf-deep in Sam's hair, soft columns of the stuff pouring from walls and ceiling all around him. He doesn't know how long he's been moving (a ghost killed his watch a few hunts ago and his phone was in his bag), but it feels like a while, and relatively speaking, Sam's room and the library are not all that far from the kitchen. Minutes away, actually. Even if the hair's slowing him down to a molasses creep, he should have come to...to a branching hallway. Or something. Not just this single straight, hair-filled shot.
Dean should not be lost in the bunker after living here as long as he has, even with everything warped by its brand-new fur coat. He's always had a good sense of direction, but the unconscious map he's got of their home in his head, the one he's been following this whole time, has started to decay off into long, drifting splinters. Strands.
It's not a fun feeling.
He started running his hands over the walls behind the hair a while ago, looking for doors, but he hasn't found any. And sometimes it feels like he has to dig a lot further through the hair to find a wall than he should.
The need to find Sam's like a growing cancer, eating him alive with needle teeth. It's made up of so many smaller needs - to know where he is, to know he can touch him if he wants, to have him close enough to to hear the noises that his body makes because without all that, Dean might as well be fucking cocooned.
He's drowned before. In water so deep the crushing weight of it wouldn't have let his chest move enough to breathe even if he'd had an air supply, the oceans of Hell vast and infinite. That's what this is making him think of, and it might be a little bit of an understatement, but he's not a big fan of things that remind him of Hell.
Not moving's a physical pain, so even though Dean has no idea where he's going, he keeps on slogging through the hair. He slips, gets back up, shoves through it. It's getting thicker all around him, closing in. Overall it's soft, Sam's hair, but with so much of it, the ends prick at Dean's hands, rake at his eyes. He spits when it gets in his mouth, losing water he probably can't afford to.
"Son of a bitch!"
He thrashes, claws, swears loudly even though there's nobody around to hear him because he's somehow gotten hair twisted around his limbs and wrapped around his waist and it's, Christ, it's around his neck and it feels like somebody's garroting him. He breaks the strands and does it hard, getting free. Little fragments float in the beam of his flashlight, itch and burn in his eyes, creep into his mouth.
He spits and swipes and curses. Then something grabs him.
Dean whirls, gun out again, teeth bared, almost glad for something to shoot and take all this out on. He's barely realizing it was just a loop of hair dropping onto his shoulder from the ceiling when he sees the face among all the locks. Small eyes and gaping mouth, something very, very wrong with it.
He takes the shot this time, but he shouldn't have. He's off-balance and falls hard into the wall behind him, but it shakes with his weight, less than solid, and it's a door, thank you, god. But he can't calm down until he aims his flashlight at the "face" and sees it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Whorls in the hair.
Except...is it?
He pans the flashlight along, and he can see his pulse throbbing in his vision, and his mouth tastes like batteries with adrenaline burning a sick path through his stomach. He sees more warped faces, too long, too thin, eyes mismatched, hands with too many trailing fingers, limbs, skinny, twisted torsos that branch in ways they shouldn't…
Dean closes his eyes, sucks in a deep breath. It feels like it coats his throat and lungs instantly with hair, but he holds the breath, doesn't let himself cough. He counts to ten, then lets out the breath and opens his eyes, and it's all gone.
At least it all muffled the gunshot. He's not deaf.
He's still acid-jittery with way too much adrenaline, so it takes him a few tries to fumble the door open and fall into the room. He doesn't recognize it at first, with the hair coiled on the desk and the bed and the floor, but then he starts seeing books and files still visible through the hanks. He could have sworn it's on the wrong side of the hall for Sam's room, but is it any wonder he got turned around out there?
He has to use his angel blade to slash himself free of his hairy straitjacket before he can start looking, and the delay would probably be less agonizing if he just used it to shave off pieces of skin instead. He yells, but his voice isn't very loud anymore with how dry and strained his throat is, so he's not sure how much good it does.
He digs through the drifts, but the room's small, and it's not long before Dean's forced to admit Sam's not in it. He's not answering him anymore, either, but if he's somewhere else, there's no way he'd be able to hear him in here.
There's less hair in here. It crawled in through the vents, slithered in under the door, so it's not hanging and the air's clear. Nice as it is, Dean knows he better get moving again, but first...he needs water.
He turns on the faucet. It doesn't even rumble before hair tumbles instantly out, popping off the aerator Dean screwed in their first week here because he knows that's how Sam likes his water.
Dean feels the hair, even though he can already see that it's drier than Texas in July.
He glances in the mirror, flashlight aimed down. He looks about like he would have expected himself to look here: like hell. Pale, eyes red from the constant cycle of pricking and rubbing, skin all irritated and rashy with tiny pin-dots he can make out if he looks close enough. Chapped lips.
There's nothing else for him in here.
He's about to leave when he happens to notice the sink. When the hair first came out of the faucet, it didn't reach the drain. Now, though, it's folded against it at the end.
He reaches out, tugs on it. It doesn't budge, but as he's stood there for a couple minutes holding onto it, his hand steadily inches lower. More hair flowing out of the faucet in a steady, familiar pulsing.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your...
Dean lets go of it, and looks around the room. Out into the hall through the open door, too. He watches different ends and waves as they curl further, get longer, fast enough for him to see it.
It's still growing.
"Fuck."
1.14.16 - Afternoon?
Okay. So.
There's definitely a problem.
When I finally managed to wake up for real, my hair was past my shoulders, and I know for a fact it hasn't been this long in...geez, maybe ever? I know it's dumb keeping it even as long as I do, but this is too long. This is strangle-me-with-it length. I've got a full beard, too, and I know I've been out of it recently, but I would definitely remember if I'd gone to bed like this last night. Hair does not grow this fast.
There's a bigger problem, too. I marked a spot on my arm, right under the ends of my hair, and when I checked an hour later, it was past it. I know it's definitely not the cleanest experiment I could have run, but it got the job done. I think.
My head is fucking killing me. I can barely touch my scalp, or my face. The follicles feel infected, and I can't even mess with them enough to see what's going on under all that hair without making myself pass out or throw up. It feels like something in my spine's clawing and biting to get out, I keep catching myself arching my back because I feel like it would all stop if it just...burst free.
I'm bleeding. There's crusty stuff in my hair, my beard, and maybe it's got something else in it, too, but when I took my fingers away, they looked rusty. It's all over my pillow, my bed. All I can smell is copper.
Oh my god, look at how bad my handwriting's getting. I'm gonna have to go back over this just so I can read it.
My scalp feels wet.
Evening
I cut my hair. Close as I could get it without feeling like somebody was jabbing a hot ice pick into my bare brain. It...it felt awful, and not just because of how bad my skin's hurting. It reminded me of dad. How when it got too long he'd just push me down in a chair and just. Chop. Yell at me to stop crying and Dean to shut up.
I shaved too. Kind of. Passed out when I nicked myself and woke up however long later on the floor. whatever.
I just wanted to buy myself some time while I try to figure this out but I think it's already back to how it was before I cut it all off.
There aren't any diseases that make your hair grow this fast, I checked. I looked for hex bags I could've looked harder, but our last witch hunt was so long ago, and she didn't even use hex bags. We didn't have to kill her, she was just an amateur, but even if she'd want to do this to me, I can't imagine how she'd do it.
Our last hunt was a werewolf. I didn't get scratched or bit. I did a skin check just to be sure, but nothing. Even if i was wolfing out, it wouldn't cause...I don't think it would cause this.
Nobody could have snuck into the bunker. Our only major enemy right nows Amara and this has nothing to do with anything else she's done.
I tried to summon Crowley because maybe he'd have some kind of idea what's going on, even if he's not behind this? Bastard must have some kind of charm on him now that keeps him from getting yanked into a devil's trap, because he didn't show up. Gotta hand it to him, that's smart. But it makes me want to just kill him the next time we see him.
I can hardly get anything done. I have to keep stopping to eat I'm so hungry. It's like I can't stay full, or even get full and it hurts. Were almost out of eggs and spinach.
I haven't called Dean. I know I ought to check in but I haven't been able to research anything but this, so I don't have anything for him. I don't want to make him worry. I handled the whole Darkness sickness thing, right? I'll be fine. I can deal with this on my own he's got more than enogh on his plate right now and his whole life's just been trying to pick up after me. I can take care of myself, I don't have to put this on him.
I havent really been up that long, but I think I'm going to go lay down again. I'm tired, and my whole body, all my skin feels like I crawled out of a pot of boiling water. And I'm hearing voices almost. something like voices. I can't make out what they're saying but I bet it isnt good.
It almost sounds like its my fucking hair tal
Dean should have brought a machete with him. An angel blade might work like a charm for ganking demons, but bushwhacking acres of human hair? Apparently not in its job description.
He imagines the hair screaming as he cuts it.
It's so thick around him. It's getting harder and harder to move, wearing him out, and of course that's just making him more and more frustrated, so he's making worse and worse decisions. It tangles him again and again. It pokes him, scratches him. He could swear he can see it waving, like seaweed, on the edges of his vision and his flashlight, but when he shines the light directly at it, it's not moving at all. Just growing.
The same goes for the grasping hands he keeps seeing. The darting, malformed bodies. The faces.
He hears Sam, calling out for him over and over, so he keeps moving in what he can only hope is the right direction. He's got no idea where he is, even less than he did before. Awful as it feels to admit it to himself, he's not even sure he's in the bunker anymore. The last time he dug through the hair to touch a wall must have been hours ago, and it took forever, and the wall felt wrong when he reached it. Warm and soft in a way it shouldn't have been.
He almost wanted to stab it to see if it bled. Instead, he just pulled away, because if it did, he didn't want to see what came out of it.
He can't even answer Sam. His tongue's thick and numb in his mouth, and he's afraid to peel his lips apart because he knows they'll crack. He wasted so much moisture spitting out hair, and now that he's stopped, it feels like it's wedged between his teeth. Spiraled on his tongue. Wrapped around his uvula.
He was itching, from all the hair down his clothes and on his face, but now it's turned to a nasty, infected soreness from all the irritation and him tearing at his skin with his nails. He keeps ripping it off, but there's only so much he can do as it tickles down the crack of his ass and winds itself around his toes.
He knows it's not really grabbing at him like some kind of parasitic plant, but it sure fucking feels like it.
Dean thinks about giving Sam a haircut. The ritual of it. Washing his hair, giving him a scalp massage, trimming off the ends and doing his best to make it look good and keep it at Sam's preferred length even as he's joking about taking it all off. The way all that touching leads to sex afterwards, almost always. How relaxed Sam looks, how good it makes Dean feel.
A while ago, he tried to turn back. It felt like ripping off the stitches keeping a severed limb on him, but he figured he could regroup, come back more prepared, find Sam. He couldn't find his way out, and maybe that's a good thing.
The hair getting thicker has to be a good sign. It has to mean he's getting closer. With the muffling, he can't tell by sound, and everything smells like Sam. And like blood which, in a way, is also Sam's smell.
The swinging beam of Dean's flashlight picks something out up ahead. He waits for it to dissolve like everything else has, but it doesn't. He thinks it's a box or something at first, square, tangled in a cord of hair and hanging from the ceiling. He sees it's a book a second later, cuts it free as soon as he reaches it. Leather, an Aquarian star stamped into it.
It's a Man of Letters journal. They found a whole bunch stashed in the basement when they moved in, because apparently they weren't made special, just had the names worked into them. This one's been written in, and Dean can tell as soon as he opens it that it's Sam's.
He knew he kept journals, in a cloudy kind of way. Even thought about swiping one to make fun of him back when they were younger, but Sam probably knew he'd do that, so Dean's never actually seen any.
He hesitates before he cracks it open. Sam would blow a gasket if he knew he read it, and Dean wouldn't blame him. But with what's going on, and with there maybe being information in here that can tell Dean what's going on and how to fix it and where Sam is and how to find him, he opens it anyway, and stands there in the hair, reading with his flashlight.
It's halfway empty and he goes right to the last few pages. He ought to dig all around him, because Sam might be nearby. Probably is, because how would he knot his journal up in the hair and then walk off and leave it? But Dean can't do anything but stand frozen and read for the longest time.
When he finally drops the journal, it's in a frenzy. He claws into the hair, and he doesn't find Sam, and that feels like somebody kicking his stomach through his spine. He opens his mouth, and his lips bleed, but he doesn't care as he screams for him over and over and over again, what little water he's got left flying out of him in tears and spit and snot. He wonders if he's still been hearing Sam's voice. If he ever heard it.
But Sam answers, all around him.
"Dean!"
"Dean!"
"Dean!"
"Dean!"
Dozens of voices, distant and right here at the same time, Sam's voice but not, too breathy, too raspy, strands rubbing together. Pouring out of the waving, crawling hair. Desperate.
Dean screams until something pops, down deep in his throat, and nothing else comes out of him but a faint whistling.
The hair, though, keeps talking.
?
Im so tired
It hurts. My skins on fire, bones feel like they're all broken. Crumbling. I wish Dean were here. Hed know what to do. He'd fix it.
Starving. Nothing left to eat that it wants.
Shouldve called him. I miss Dean. i fucked up but nothing new there story of my life. I'd call him now, but I cant find my phone. Got my journal but i fell asleep writing in it earlier. Not sure having my phone would help actually, I can't find my ears. Think ive lost my mouth too but im afraid to check
It hurts it hurtsss
Dont know if dean's gonna find this. Im sorry Dean. Im sorry for everything, all of it, every time, there's been a lot huh? Not sure I've ever made it up to you all the way and then theres this oh my god. Hair. I dont know what it is but its so fucking stupid right?
im bleeding been bleeding this whole time how much left?
It hurts.
You always said you hated my hair. I know you didnt, not for real. I guess you do now. I do, too.
Fuck theres hair everywhere it itches and hurts and i think it's inside me Dean.
I tried to cut it. No good.
i can feel it, it's all part of me, im all of it
I love you so much. I love you like I've never loved anybody else, ever. Ive loved you my entire life and I hate i didn't tell you sooner. I wish you were here. I miss you. Please dont hate yourself because you weren't it's okay this was my fault. Not yours. Not mad. You were there every other time and I
i'm going to think about you. Touching me it hurts. Kissing. Running your hands through my
my
Dea
Dean's crawling. Has been for a while, doesn't remember when or why he started, but he can't stand up now, with the slippery weight of hair on his back and the tunnels of the stuff getting so narrow. He holds his flashlight in his teeth because he's buried up to his shoulders.
It waves around him. It really is moving now.
He cuts when he has to, sawing through it, and at one point he reaches for his gun but can't find it. Must have come loose somewhere, and no way in hell is he going back to look for it. Needle in a haystack. He doesn't think there's a floor underneath him anymore, it just feels like densely-packed hair as he slogs on, looking, searching, knowing Sam's here.
Things open back up for the first time in...a long time. A cavern of hair, his flashlight sweeping through it, locks running from floor to ceiling, whorls on the walls. Dean goes to stand, realizes when his legs start to shake that that would be a bad idea even if the strands looped around his limbs weren't holding him down.
He looks around at the hair.
It's brown, dark brown, but shot through in the light with glittering notes of gold and caramel and red and black, a warm rainbow. It's so glossy, shines and multiplies his flashlight, which is a good thing with the beam getting weaker by the second. Healthy. Soft and silky, except where the ends are jabbing him, but he hasn't felt any of that in a while.
Dean looks for the next route, the next tunnel, but even the one he came through has collapsed softly behind him. Nothing to do but wait for something to open up.
The hair's grown in its pulses around him this entire time, predictable as a tide. He can see it now. There's still something so familiar about the rhythm, and up until this exact second, he hasn't been able to put his finger on it, but now, it snaps into place.
Sam's heartbeat. Resting. Sleeping. Content.
The air smells like nothing but him.
Dean's flashlight flickers, and he switches it off. Better conserve battery. He'll need it, later. Maybe.
He's blind, but not for long. Light appears. Golden specks drifting in far-off, lazy rivers, like fireflies. No...not gold. Green. Silver. Pale blue. Shifting like Sam's eyes in sunlight.
Dean leans backwards, sits. The hair cradles him, an embrace. He's sure he hears Sam humming around him, making happy noises like when he's halfway between awake and asleep right after sex.
Hair loops itself into Dean's palm, and he squeezes, closing his eyes.
He should get back up. But he doesn't want to. It's comfortable here, warm. He needs to rest. Just sit for a while. Then he can keep going. Keep looking for Sam. He doesn't know what he'll be when he finds him, but he'll look. And if he doesn't get back up…
If he doesn't get back up, that might be okay. He's had worse deaths. So many worse.
At least this time, he's with Sam.