Work Text:
Dean knows, as an absolute fact, that he and Sam have explored the entire bunker. They’ve found every secret hidden passage and inspected every possible room. They both have a tendency to move when bored or thinking, so upon first finding the bunker, this was relatively accidental. By now, Dean knows the extent of the maze like the back of his hand.
He knows about the main rooms, pretty much the only ones they use, which include the main room, the library, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the storeroom with the demon trap and like three different bathrooms because why restrict yourself?
He knows about the observatory and the second, smaller and much more pointless library, the little storerooms scattered around and the beloved soundproof room he found in the far corner that he has yet to tell Sammy about, his ‘safe-room’, you might say.
What he has yet to find is the swimming pool.
How does he know there is a swimming pool to find? Well, he has yet to come across one in this massive place, but he knows every storeroom and broom closet, knows every cleaning product and bottle of bleach, both retained and Sammy-bought, so he knows, as an absolute fact, that there shouldn’t be a distinct scent of chlorine coming from the vent in his safe-room, that supposedly isn’t as safe as originally perceived.
Dean rose from his chair in the corner of the small room and turned down the radio to background noise. The scent was faint, but Dean had spent enough time in this room to know the difference in the cosy rustic kind of scent it had.
At first, Dean really did think he had missed out on the fucking swimming pool room, and began to re-search the wall that the vent was on, running his hand along the surface and corner for any changes in the bricking, smoothing the dark bookshelf that had always sort of been there for buttons or levers or, hell, secret books to pull. Nothing.
The scent was getting stronger, and Dean could already feel the headache building behind his eyes, making them itchy. He rubbed at them absently and stared at the vent with narrowed eyes.
Is it just me or is that vent smoking?
The gas that started to spill from the grating in the vent looked white at first, but the more Dean stared, the more it started to look a sort of pale green, and this headache was definitely getting worse now.
Dean huffed, feeling a hint of frustration that his safe-room, his supposed ‘happy place’ was fucking contaminated, and reached for the door to go grab Sammy and see if they can find and fix the issue.
The door was locked.
Dean frowned and jiggled the handle again, but the door stayed stubbornly shut. Already, he could feel the growth of panic again as he pulled the handle, hard, biting his lip to stop the build of anxiety.
“Ookay, Dean, okay.” The growing parasite of pain in his head was not helping, especially since it had drifted to his chest, constricting his lungs in the time the gas had taken to spill further into the room.
Dean coughed, hard, around the tightness and raised his shirt over his nose. The gas was definitely green, and the scent of chlorine was painful, dizzyingly strong.
Chlorine gas? What is this, World War One?
The tendrils were spilling concerningly fast, and the door wasn’t fucking budging, and for a second Dean drew a unnerving blank on the course of action, of how he was going to get out. Another grasp on his lungs threw him to cough again, harder, much more painful, and Dean lowered his shirt to see…
“Shit-” He groaned at the specks of blood. Fucking wonderful.
By now the room was full, foggy, almost dreamlike, which did not help throw the waves of dizziness, and Dean swallowed around the growing feel of nausea building in his throat, spitting out the build of saliva. He would not throw up.
Think, Dean, goddamnit.
The door wouldn’t open any time soon, as he didn’t have his lock-pick and he couldn’t kick the door that swung towards him. He hit his fist against the door in frustration, caring very little for how childish the action was, and spitting out excess saliva and blood in his mouth, coughing into his shirt.
Grabbing his jacket that was slung over one of the chairs, he pushed it on top of the bookshelf with weakened, shaky arms, so that it pressed against the vent. He ignored how useless it was by now, since he could hardly see the other end of the room, and focused on trying not to throw up as he coughed, again, the bitter taste of blood filling his mouth with each hack, and each jerk of his head throwing another wave of dizziness over him until... how did I end up on the floor?
Blinking to clear the doubling in his vision, Dean pushed up off the floor to shuffle over to where man’s greatest creation, his saving grace, his fucking phone was on the floor, probably having fallen off his jacket when he grabbed it.
The screen blurred as his numbing fingers fumbled with it, scrolling through his contacts and calling Sam. Sam can help.
No service.
“Crap.” Dean coughed, leaning back against the bookshelf with a painful thud that seemed to shake through him, knocking against his lungs and skimming past his heart, racing up his throat to stab behind his eyes with aggressive intensity that caused a pained, whimpering groan to grit itself out.
Fucking chlorine gas. What a way to go.
“Sammy!” Dean didn’t even think about it, in too much fucking pain to think about keeping up his composed facade as he yelled, around wet coughed that scraped his lungs, for his younger brother, for his angel, hell, for his dead mother to save him, save me, please, it hurts.
At some point, he had thrown up, but he couldn’t remember around the coughing and the crying and the waves of black that washed over him, dragging him under before snapping him back with painful intensity, teasing him, playing with him, please, god, let it be over.
In the corners of his dimming vision, through the irritating twitch in his eyes, the door was rattling, shifting, moving. Or was he going insane? Was his vision fucking with him? He couldn’t tell. And he couldn't trust the banging he heard wasn’t just the pound of his aching heart in his ears, punching his chest and lungs and causing more spotted coughs to erupt from him.
Each time he coughed, his burning abdomen seemed to produce more bile, until he shirt was soaked with either that or sweat, either way it was fucking gross.
At least he couldn’t see it any more.
And it hurt, everywhere. The pain behind his swollen eyes had spread, spiking in his lungs and abdomen, spreading in an angry rash across his arms and legs, which rubbed sorely against his jeans. Every whimper he let out around the coughs was deaf to rushing ears and he couldn’t fucking breathe any more.
Somewhere off in the land of fuckery, someone was begging, pleading for their mother, sounding fucking awful, but Dean coudn’t help them. He was already floating away, sinking into the darkness that was drowning him, clasping his throat shut, stopping him from taking a damned breath until that too floated away in the woosh of a messy trench coat.
…..
……
……..
……….wait, a messy trench coat?
Dean gasped as he crawled back up from the depths of the ocean, pacific in temperature, already coughing and spluttering the water from his lungs, expelling any excess shit from inside him before flopping back onto a bed...which was now here for some reason?
Fighting to wrench his eyes open, Dean flailed his arm. “Sam? Sammy?” His voice was rough, croaky, and every panicked breath he took rattled his lungs and why can’t I open my fucking eyes?
“Sam!” Someone’s hand grabbed his, and he pulled back with a yelp that threw him into a painful coughing fit.
“Dean, Dean, calm down.” Sam’s voice came from the direction of the hand grabbing him, and he slowed his thrashing.
“Sammy?”
“Yeah, Dean, it’s me. You gotta calm down, alright? Your heart and lungs took quite the beating.”
Dean frowned, stopping completely, and swallowed thickly, fuck that hurt. “Sammy, I can’t open my eyes.”
Even to himself, he sounded pathetic, and he winced at the childish whimper in his voice.
Sam sighed. “I know, Dean, we had to wrap them up. Cas said you wouldn’t go blind but you can't open them for another week or so, in case it causes more damage.”
“Cas was here?”
Hesitation. “Yeah, Dean, Cas was here. Don’t you remember?”
Dean frowned again. Was he supposed to? “No?”
“You had, like, a whole conversation with him.”
Dean’s heart skipped a beat, a cavern of anxiety opening in his gut. “I don’t...I don’t remember.”
Suddenly very aware that he was still gripping Sam’s hand, he let go, rubbing his hand down his jeans and letting out a pained hiss at how sore they still were. Inhaling through rusted lungs, he pushed himself to sit up.
“Woah, woah, Dean, take it easy.”
Dean grumbled at the hands holding his shoulders, helping him sit up and lean back against the pillows. His chest ached like he had just run through Hell itself, and he coughed grossly into his elbow.
Guess his safe-room wasn’t so safe anymore.