Work Text:
The Reality of the Thing Seen
Enchantment like lies can alter the sight of the beholder
but not the reality of the thing seen.
- Susan Howe, The Western Borders
*
Dean passes out fully clothed on the bed at three am with no alcohol in his blood; his belt digs a bruise into his belly and the pain follows him with gentle annoyance. He free-falls into sleep, and the air whooshes past his ears with a whizzing sound, though the landing is soft. He twists and the ground is covered in pine needles that crunch under his elbows.
"Hey Cas," he says. But Castiel's looking faraway and his leg is not warm against Dean's.
"I brought cheeseburgers," Castiel says and holds a grease-stained paper bag, floppy and translucent at the bottom. Castiel's mouth opens wide around the bun, which is really a large piece of glass that cuts a larger grin onto Castiel's solemn face. The edges are stained red with Jimmy's blood and blinding white with the leaking bits of Castiel's grace. Dean looks, mesmerized, as they drop to the ground. A rounded abyss of black nothing opens where they land; pine needles scatter and reveal the bald red earth beneath.
The trees are tall and cast long shadows on the ground. In the crook the sun forms when it meets the shade, Sam's sitting quietly, knees inside the circle of his arms.
"Sam," Dean says. "What's going on?" Sam shrugs and flips his hair out of his forehead and his eyes are red-rimmed and his face is shiny with sweat and there's pain around his lips that he's biting off with white teeth.
"I think we're still hungry," Sam says.
Dean nods and bares his forearm and offers it to Sam and Sam's delight is childish, wide-eyed wonder. Dean shivers.
"Would you do this for me?" Sam asks.
"Of course, Sammy," Dean says and pats Sam's bent neck where the hair is soft and silky. "It doesn't even hurt."
Castiel's sigh bubbles red with frothing blood. Dean, hand still on Sam's neck, looks at him and says, "Here, you can have my leg. Just leave me one so I can hop back home."
Castiel's nod is a formal bob of the head. "Of course," he says. He takes a bite with the bare bone of his jaw peeking out, chews and swallows before he says, "Thank you, Dean. I appreciate this very much."
A few minutes later over the noises of chewing teeth and sucking lips, Dean asks the trees, "What if it's not enough?" Thinks, what if I'm not enough?
The answer gets lost in the sun's rays slanting through partially closed blinds and the soft snores coming from Sam's bed and the honk of a car, like a sharp siren's call.
Dean stands, sheds his clothes on his way to the bathroom and rubs his belly where the belt left a red crescent furrow deep in his skin. The water's warm and the soap smells of chemicals under the faint odor of lilac when he rubs the weak foam into his skin.
Later, in the foggy mirror, Castiel's reflection is whole and pale though smudged at the edges. A serious frown between his eyebrows and over his wide-eyed look.
Dean doesn't startle.
"I dreamed," Castiel says. No preamble. "It was… peculiar."
Dean stares at Castiel's reflection. "I didn't think you slept."
"I don't."
Castiel looks upward at the ceiling, maybe through it for all Dean knows. "In the dream I had found my Father."
There's a real smile on Castiel's face when Dean turns around, something blinding and joyful that stills Dean's hands around the terry cloth. Castiel flickers away, and only later Dean realizes Castiel shouldn't know where Sam and he are staying.
*
They leave Bobby's after a week; they leave Bobby on the porch, eyes hidden by the cap and by the shadow of the overhang: only his useless legs are sunlit. "Don't do anything stupid," he says. "Call if you need something," he says.
Sam waves a trembling hand in his direction while he wobbles his way to the car and falls asleep to the lull of the engine and the warmth of the sun through the windshield. Dean looks at the road and at the shadows the tree branches play across the hollows under Sam's eyes and his cheekbones, and then he heads north.
At night, they stop in a no-tell motel half swallowed by tall rows of corn. Sam stands outside for hours after dinner looking at the fields; when he comes inside his face is white like the walls and his lips are bitten red. He finally asks, "What if it happens again?"
Dean's got no answer, so he just pats his bed and Sam sits down and lies on top of the covers and turns on his side to sleep the exhaustion off, unmoving like a dead body.
Dean doesn't move either, legs stretched alongside Sam's back with his own uncomfortable against the wooden knobs of the bedpost, and if the corn whispers any secret under the slow rolling of the wind, he can't understand it.
*
"What if it happens again?" Sam asks Castiel. Sam's breath on Dean's neck is copper- scented.
Dean holds his breath waiting for a damning answer, but Castiel just shrugs.
Castiel's upside down, legs up and straight against a tree trunk, shoulders and head bent against the ground. Maggots are crawling inside his nostrils, white and fat, but he doesn't look bothered. Dean leans back against Sam's chest, bends his head sideways so Sam can reach the big artery under his jaw. Sam worries at it with sharp teeth and soft lips and warm tongue.
Dean stares at his leg. The exposed muscle of his thigh is striped, bloodless; the bone shines white under the moonlight. "I think I need a drink," Dean says. "That's good, right?"
He smiles at Castiel's enthusiastic nod; Sam's head bobs against his shoulder before he manhandles Dean around so they're face to face.
"Hey, maybe it's working," Sam says, but his voice is all wrong and too young.
Dean looks at the ground: snow-white and iridescent where it catches the light. Too soft to be real and too warm to be true snow.
*
Bobby gives Sam hot, orange-colored broth in a coffee cup and a cup of coffee to Dean. Sam's wearing a plaid ugly-ass shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Dean thinks of the air hitting naked skin, shivers and huddles under the blanket and inside the dusty smell of ink and yellow paper of Bobby's couch.
Sam's hands quiver around his cup and Bobby holds it for him with a gentle calloused hand.
Dean, envious of Bobby's hand, says, "You missed your calling, Bobby."
Sam's smile is fragile and secret and all for Dean; Bobby rolls his eyes and his shoulders. "You're still fucking idiots," he says.
Dean knots his fingers together and around the warmth of his own cup and looks at the surface of normalcy ripple under the strain of their feeble, desperate efforts before it settles over again to still, stale water.
*
In a trucker's bar, Dean drinks. The beer tastes sour and weak and leaves a bitter aftertaste on the roof of his mouth.
"Excuse me," a woman says. Dean flattens the grimace on his mouth and turns toward the oval shape of her face. Her curls are glossy, dirty blonde, her nails perfectly manicured. Interest pools in his groin. Half-hard cock.
"Sure," he says when she points a long, thin cigarette in his direction. He takes his Zippo out and clicks it open and lowers the flame and she drags smoke from perfect pink lips that stretch into a smile. Dean smiles, too.
They stumble inside her bedroom later, Dean with his back to the bed and her lips on his neck, tongue in the dip of his collarbone. He digs fingers into the silk of her hair and her blue blouse and into her black panties and the soft flesh of her pussy, and later sleep is sticky with cooling come on his stomach.
"I'm not sure this was supposed to happen," says Sam.
Dean turns, takes Sam jaw between thumb and forefinger and stares at Sam's eyes. They're crystalline, an orange glow to them that's just the glare of the sun bouncing off the yellow sand. Dean pats Sam's face.
"You always worry too much, Sammy," he says.
Sam's nod relays he's not convinced; he licks a speckle of blood from his upper lip.
"Cas, tell him," Dean says.
"You smell different," Castiel says, then he stretches and sniffs at Dean's groin. His fingertips are red and cold on the soft skin of Dean's navel and too close to his limp cock.
"Dude, that tickles," Dean says and twists his hips to get away and laughs when Sam pokes his sides and laughs more when Castiel wriggles his fingers in the dip under his hipbone. "C'mon, stop it," he says breathless and gasping huge mouthful of dry air. "I'm getting sand in my ass."
Sam with his serious voice says, "I'll relax," he underlines each word with a sharp poke below Dean's ribs, "if you let me take care of this."
Dean's too winded to talk, wheezing with laughter that makes the muscles of his belly ache.
*
Sam stops screaming on the afternoon of the second day. Dean unlocks the door with a loud metallic noise that raises goose-bumps on his arms. Inside it's cold, but Sam's sweating sprawled on the cot and his hair is wet and his shirt's sticky and clinging to his shoulder. Dean wets a washcloth with cold water and wipes the sweat off his brow and changes his shirt. When Sam keeps sleeping, he sits with his back against the cot and listens to Sam's heavy breaths as he shivers on the cold cement floor.
Castiel stays by the door, face hidden in the shadows.
"How are you feeling?" Castiel asks again and Dean's not sure he's only dreamed Castiel's question, but he nods anyway. He's good, maybe a bit cold.
When Sam wakes up, Dean will tell him everything. And he'll say sorry even though he's not.
*
"I had this dream," Sam says. His eyes shift sideways to the window and to the bare parking lot, above the steam of his coffee cup.
Dean follows his gaze and finds nothing to latch his attention to. The shadows have eased from Sam's eyes and his hair is fluffy, neatly parted on his forehead.
"Yeah?" Dean asks.
"It was weird."
Dean smiles and slouches back on the hard seat. "Dude, that's not exactly a newsflash."
The roll of Sam's eyes is purposeful and exaggerated and underlined by a smile of his own. Fondness that warms Dean's limbs into a lethargic laziness.
"Okay, I'll bite. Tell me."
Sam gulps down his coffee, puts his empty cup over the ring of condensation it's left on the table.
"I was flying," he says, small blush on his neck and high on his cheekbones. "With wings, wide and black.
"You're going to hate this part," Sam continues with a grin that says he didn't hate it. "Anyways, you were flying too, but without wings. You were tucked against my ribs and you weren't afraid to fly."
Sam's wrong, Dean doesn't hate that part either, but he hits Sam's shin anyway, weakly so it doesn't hurt. The coffee is actually good, the right shade of black and bitter; he digs into his pancakes, all drenched and red with sticky maple syrup.
"Sometimes," he says as he chews, "a dream is just a dream."
"Yeah," Sam says. "But it was nice."
*
Two drops of blood fall into a bronze bowl. Dean has to wrestle Sam back on the cot after, all the unyielding muscles of him. He almost succeeds before he gets thrown into the wall by the unseen force of Sam's rage. It lasts only two seconds before its grip fades away under the onslaught of Castiel's raised hand. Dean falls to the ground and looks as Castiel walks slowly to Sam and puts two fingers on his forehead. It's like seeing an ant lead an elephant when Castiel breaks Sam's fall on the cot effortlessly.
Dean stands, ignores Bobby's dark look and Castiel's inquiring tilt of the head.
"Okay," Dean says "let's get this over with."
Bobby wheels around with a flick of his left hand, the other curled protectively around the bowl in his lap. He puts it on the worktable, mouth pursed and disapproving but resigned.
"Don't think he's going to thank you for this," Bobby says.
"I know."
Bobby's basement is too damp and too silent with the echoes of Sam's screams clinging to the bare pillars. Dean cuts his thumb with his switchblade, squeezes two drops of blood alongside Sam's.
"Cas?" he asks.
"Yes, Dean," he says. "I'm ready."
Dean's blood is the same color of Sam's, the same color of Castiel's vessel. Dean's not fooled, though. Sam's blood is thick and fat with so much fire and red-hot anger. Castiel's grace, when he rips it from his chest, is white with blinding and beautiful faith that sears the inside of Dean's eyelids and leaves his eyes sore and watering. Dean's blood, his meager offering, looks too pale by contrast, light like water.
Castiel holds two tiny bits of grace between his fingers and pushes the rest into the open folds of his chest. He lets them fall into their blood and the light lights every nook and corner of Bobby's basement as Dean screams and Castiel flops on the ground with a soft grunt of incredulity and Sam starts shouting again.
After, the basement smells of ozone and shimmers blue with static energy.
Bobby swears only when Castiel's well enough to bring him back above ground.
*
"You know we're not really here, don't you?"
Dean hums a distracted assent around the long blade of grass he's chewing on. The sky's washed white with the glare of the sun. The surface of the lake is unmoving, nestled between the swell of two low hills.
"I'm not really feasting on your blood, and Cas isn't really chewing your leg to the bone."
Dean gazes at Sam. It's hard to take him seriously when his teeth are stained red, but Sam's being sensible and he is right even when he's wrong. Castiel nods.
"As far as dreams go," he says "this one isn't that bad. Really, guys, I don't mind."
From behind his shades, when he opens his eyes, he sees only the road. Sam's humming something softly under his breath and driving at a leisurely pace. Dean recognizes the stretch of highway by a green road sign.
"Hey," Sam says. "You've been sleeping for hours. You all right?"
Dean stretches the muscles of his neck, sits up straight.
"Sure."
"Late night out, man. You're not that young anymore." Sam's smile is easy and loaded only with good-natured teasing. "I hope you're sharp enough to work," he says.
"Cas got a lead on something interesting." Sam's hands curl loosely around the wheel. "Maybe we're finally getting a break."
*
The night when Dean locks Sam into Bobby's basement, he goes outside and prays.
The weird thing about praying, though, never know who's going to answer. What.
Dean cannot say if the idea came from his too sober brain or from the fumes of the shattered bottle of whiskey soaking the ground; if it was something someone planted in his head. He doesn't remember getting inside and breaking it to Castiel and Bobby with the frantic belief that it was the only way. He remembers, though, the hollow sound of the empty space inside and that he'd longed to fill it with something else, anything but Sam's desperate pleas and Castiel's waning faith, their drooped shoulders and his own sense of failure.
*
Sam is angry and Castiel's faithful and both are so desperately alive with hunger, unlike Dean, who's just empty. But he's got flesh covering his bones and he's got blood running in his veins. It sounds like a good idea to give them both up.
--