Map of the World: August 23
Rituals...
—Day 20—
Dean wakes up in hell. Kind of.
“God,” he thinks he whispers, but his entire body shakes from something that sounds like a fucking gong. “What. The. Fuck.”
Dean tries to take some kind of stock of the situation, but his body is a mass of conflicting impulses, most of them ranging from unpleasant to horrific, and his eyes feel swollen and scratchy-dry, skin tight and sore. “Christ,” he says out loud, not even caring about the gong in the existential horror of his life. “What—”
“Please be quiet.” Cas, he’d know that voice anywhere, but rougher than he’s ever heard it even bleeding out after a fight, gravel and smoke and too much whiskey, Jesus. It occurs to him how close that voice is just as whatever he’s lying on seems to start moving. Couches, he thinks vaguely, shouldn’t do that, and decides he’s just not gonna come to any obvious conclusions right at the moment. “You’re making it difficult to pretend this isn’t happening.”
Dean licks his lips with a tongue that feels like sandpaper and fails at ignoring the fact that’s denim under his cheek and so fucking not a couch.
“Cas?” Very distantly, he remembers the last, far less traumatic time he and Cas got drunk, which if nothing else proved between the two of them, they could create a whole fucking new standard in competitive drinking. “You okay?”
There’s a silence that resembles, on the surface, endless humiliation. “I hadn’t tested the potency of this particular distillation as thoroughly as I had assumed.” Then, “Apparently, four bottles is excessive.”
“Four?” Dean opens his eyes, and it’s all brilliant, horrible light and oh God, he hates everything. Shutting his eyes, he buries his face in the warmth of the definitely not a warm, wash-softened flannel couch that happens to have disturbingly prominent ribs. Despite the pounding headache, there’s something wrong with that math.
“I didn’t share the last one since you had already passed out.”
Jesus Christ. Reaching up to rub his eyes, he flinches at the abrasion of his own fingers against the supersensitive skin and realizes what that means. “Did I…” Cry, he doesn’t ask; he did, in front of Cas, moving on now. “You have anything to help?” Arsenic is a pretty attractive option; he just doesn’t think he has the hand-eye coordination yet to risk suicide with a weapon. Wherever those are now.
“With the hangover?”
Or that. “Sure.”
“It’s been a very long time since I had one, but I think…” Cas’s voice trickles off and much more upsetting, there’s no movement to get up.
“So? Get it.”
Another silence, not encouraging. “Can you move?”
Even thinking about it makes him nauseous, so there goes that plan. “No.”
“I don’t think I can walk anyway,” Cas answers, like he’s trying to be comforting or something, and Dean feels something not unlike a hand petting his head, and he will, actually, risk a shitty headshot before admitting how incredibly good that feels. “Nor am I sure where the floor is in relation to where I am.”
Cas just sounds so defeated, like physics plus Cthulhu’s own hangover are fucking him over so hard and he just can’t understand why.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Dean slurs, keeping as still as he can to avoid reality and not because Cas fingers are now threading rhythmically through his hair. “Me either.”
Hazy, unformed memories keep trying to resolve before the headache pounds their asses to dust, and it’s the weirdest fucking thing to realize he really doesn’t remember exactly what happened last night, and also, that it might be possible to die from sheer self-defense in the grips of a hangover that he’s pretty sure Alistair would have thought was kind of overkill when it comes to torture.
As Cas’s fingers shift down to his neck, rubbing into the muscles like some kind of touch-morphine of pure goodness, Dean’s head clears enough to consider in its entirety where he is and what he doesn’t remember that he might have done getting here, and (possibly) how much he should be prepared to deal with knowing for sure.
He’s had some honest to God shittily considered hookups, and every goddamn one of them started with way too much fucking alcohol and some general personal misery, so at least it’d be consistent. That they didn’t involve guys isn’t particularly relevant, because they also didn’t involve alcohol that probably kills Elder Gods after it summons them.
He wonders idly if it would be worth it to check and see if he’s wearing pants. It might confirm or deny, but then there’s the whole hideous light thing, and in all honesty, he’s not sure he actually cares that much. This would be so much easier if Cas would have his goddamn drug-fueled orgies in a bed like a normal person. Not like he couldn’t get a bigger bed.
“Cas?”
There’s a long enough delay that Dean’s already considering how big a bed would be necessary—would falling off be a problem? Jesus, imagine laundry day with those sheets—when Cas finally says, “What?” in a really insultingly annoyed voice, like Dean is just bothering him from sheer spite.
“We didn’t have sex, right?”
In the history of Dean’s shittily considered hookups—and it doesn’t say anything good that while he can remember all of them, they’re officially outnumbering the well-considered ones—there are certain rules that you just don’t break. Asking if it actually happened is right at the top, along with “What’s your name again?” and may in fact beat crawling out the window while they’re in the bathroom, which as far as his post-coital shitty behavior goes, shouldn’t be something he’s aspiring to surpass. He hopes guiltily that they didn’t; he can deal with a guy, fine, he can even deal with it being Cas (at least he knows his name), but he’ll never be able to look at himself in the mirror again if he forgot.
Cas’s fingers stop abruptly, and Dean is on the edge of promising a repeat performance in perfect sobriety to get that back—he’s still very drunk, he reminds himself firmly—when Cas sighs, and if Dean were sober enough to trust himself, he might think it was regretful. “No.”
Taking a deep breath—and rewarded for it with life-ending nausea—he waits for the urge to vomit out a lifetime of meals to pass, and then Cas’s fingers slide up to his hairline, scratching just right against the scalp, and his entire body just goes boneless in sheer relief. Turning his face into the blissful warmth of soft flannel, he carefully nods. “Okay.”
“Guys, is everything—”
“Chuck.”
Dean, jerked out of comfortable misery when Cas’s hand stops moving, thinks he’s never heard a single word able to encompass death and dismemberment and dry leaves in unmentionable places, a lot of them, and that’s just how it starts. At this moment, he agrees with all of it and so much more; if he could stand up right now, Chuck wouldn’t be breathing—well, panting, from the sound of it—any longer than it took him to—
Chuck, it occurs to him, is standing up and that probably means he can walk. To the kitchen. “Cas?”
“I’ll come back later,” Chuck is saying, like he just realized if he gets out now, he may live a few more hours. It’s cute that he thinks that.
“Cas,” Dean says, making a herculean effort and getting his fingers to close around a handful of flannel. “He can walk.”
“Not at this moment, if he values his life,” Cas says pleasantly, and to Dean’s relief, he curves a hand over the back of his neck, fingertips sketching soothing circles against his skin. Chuck makes a helpless, horrified sound, which is as it should be, he thinks contentedly, perfectly happy to let Cas be fucking terrifying at anyone he wants for a greater good. “Chuck, considering how much time the archangels spent repairing your liver on a daily basis, I assume you know a remedy for a hangover. Make one.”
“Two,” Dean adds, just in case the terror wafting from Chuck means he takes that way too literally. Carefully, he opens his eyes to squint in Chuck’s direction, the better to let in less hideous light, and finds Chuck’s general shape cowering near the doorway. Positive reinforcement might be needed. “Do it and I’ll make sure he kills you fast,” he says comfortingly, then goes limp and figures Cas can handle this shit from here on out. He’s done his part.
He opens his eyes again when he’s viciously jerked upright and his nose held closed; before he can wonder about the sheer stupidity of suffocation—what, not even a pillow?—something is pouring down his throat and oh my God, he just did not know. Batting feebly at whatever unnatural dick (Cas, totally Cas) is holding him down for this, he ends up swallowing anyway and the universe is just horrible, horrible nauseous agony.
…for ten seconds. Blinking, Dean stares up at Cas with blurry eyes—yes, he’s crying, and fuck everything, anyone would—and realizes the headache has receded to a sullen burn and he can, maybe, someday, want to think about living again. “What—”
“You’ll need the bathroom,” Cas says, pulling him to his feet and pushing him toward the bedroom door. “Go.”
Dean almost disagrees—actually, he’s feeling pretty great—but before he can form the words, he feels something dangerously like a twinge. He looks at Cas, slumping onto the floor by the couch, looking less close to death but also really, really sure, and stumbles another step toward the door as the second twinge warns him that yeah, now, now is good.
“So, you guys don’t need me anymore,” Chuck is saying when Dean’s jerking the bathroom door mostly-shut. “So I’ll—”
“Sit down, Chuck,” Cas says, but Dean misses what comes next, since he’s kind of busy and toilets don’t conduct sound all that well.
When he comes back out (teeth brushed three times, a long shower, a change of clothes, and a lot of water) he almost feels normal. Hair still wet, he crosses the darkened bedroom and opens his mouth to tell Cas what he thinks of his post-hangover methods (yeah, it worked, but not the point) when he’s stopped short at the doorway, words drying up on his tongue and then forgotten.
Cas is pretty much where he left him, one knee tucked against his chest, feet bare and pale against the rug, looking tired and annoyed, nothing new there, watching Chuck on the nearby armchair with the thousand mile stare that the Host perfected. Even to himself, he can’t explain what’s different now, but something is, like a thousand tiny things slowly trying to come into focus.
He must make some kind of noise, though, because Cas’s eyes snap to him abruptly, and he’s only aware of Chuck jerking around from his perch on the edge of a threadbare chair when Cas looks away.
“Feeling better?” Cas says, tilting his head with impersonal curiosity, and for no reason at all, Dean feels a start of wariness.
“Yeah.” Leaning against the doorway, he tries and fails to ignore Chuck radiating self-loathing in his direction. From the way Cas looked when he came in here, he can guess what kind of conversation he’s so fucking glad he missed. “Chuck, thanks for the—whatever that was.”
“Anytime,” he says miserably, taking a visible breath before bursting out with, “I’m sorry for endangering your life for frivolous luxuries that my ancestors would have scorned.” His eyes dart hopefully to Cas before returning to Dean. “I won’t do it again.”
Yeah, he called that one. Turning his attention back to Cas, he contemplates the infinite ways Cas can radiate smug self-righteousness like breathing. For a guy who got himself shit-faced on possibly semi-mystical moonshine last night and has sex in a group setting, it’s pretty fucking impressive.
“What the hell did you do to Chuck?”
“I told him I was very disappointed,” he answers comfortably, the very picture of justice being served in post-hangover repose. “He understands the error of his ways and is prepared to make amends.”
“And I will never do it again,” Chuck adds right on schedule, knee-jerk pathetic. Even if he squints and turns his head sideways, no matter what Cas says, he just can’t see Chuck able to pick up and fire a gun. Chuck’s expression gets frantic, and Dean belatedly realizes he’s probably freaking him out. “I’m—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Dean interrupts, looking back at Cas. “I gave him an order, Cas, come on.”
“He should have known better than to obey it,” Cas answers pleasantly. “And I should have known better than to trust you not to break your word. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Dean sucks in a breath, feeling like he was punched in the gut. Dimly, he’s aware of Chuck opening his mouth before he sinks back into his chair, staring at the floor.
“You seem to be under the impression that we have developed a bond due to excessive alcohol consumption while you shared your feelings in monotonous detail and I pretended to care,” Cas says expressionlessly. “We didn’t.” Over the inexplicable buzzing in his ears, he hears Cas add, “This time, we’re not negotiating. You won’t leave this camp again.”
“How are you gonna stop me?” Before Cas can answer, Dean sees Chuck’s face go white and can hear his voice, bitter and honest, saying, Leave with you if he had to? Kill us to do it?
You being here at all is a loaded gun to everyone’s head.
“I won’t leave the camp again,” Dean says, and from the corner of his eye, he sees Chuck relax all at once, and thinks maybe now he believes it. Turning to the door, he tells Cas, “We’re done.”
Pausing briefly halfway up the porch steps of Dean’s cabin, it occurs to him that as of this moment, he’s probably actually now supposed to live here and nearly stumbles on the step before he jogs up the rest and makes himself go inside.
The rituals are intricate...
OOF