Work Text:
The only indication Dean had that it was cold was the way his jacket ruffled in the midnight air. He watched, dazed, as the breeze pushed the water into tiny waves in the river thirty feet below him, warping the reflected image of the moon.
He couldn’t remember why he was there, or how he got there. As far as he was concerned, he had woken up here after a drunken fever dream. He had opened his eyes to find his legs swinging from the rusted bar on the old bridge, the one that creaked and groaned under where Baby was parked behind him. Around him, shrouded in the shadows the moonlight didn’t quite reach, was the forest about a mile from Bobby’s old place, the one that burned down.
He had memories, someone else’s memories, of coming here as a kid, to this bridge, That person would sit there with his uncle and his little brother, skipping stones while his uncle fished. His uncle would scold them, tell them that disturbing the water would scare the fish away and you carry on like that and you’ll have no dinner, you idjits!
So this other person would smirk, throw one last stone and scramble up the beams and supports, strong under his weight back then, out of his uncle’s reach. His brother would follow, less sure, slower but still too fast for their uncle to grab. The boys would sit at the highest point, the top beam that stretched between two supports. They would swing their legs and the other boy, the one Dean had memories of, would bring stones from his pocket. The younger brother would smile, laugh, grab his half and they would skip stones in the chill of the evening until the sun went down and it was nearly too dark to find their way down.
Dean glanced up. He could just about see that beam, another fifteen feet above, the edges reflecting the moonlight. Definitely couldn’t hold Dean’s weight.
Not that Dean had the energy to move up there anyway.
So he continued to stare, dazed, at the ripples in the water, warping the reflected image of the moon. If he drifted his gaze to the horizon, he could watch the stars appear, one by one, behind the thick wall of shadowed trees, catching the moonlight in their peak branches like snow. The silence that washed over the land was thick, impenetrable, deafening.
Dean was sick of silence.
Silence was all he got these days, ever since three months ago, since what everyone refused to refer to, and if it was, it was ‘the incident’.
Everyone is scared of the words ‘suicide attempt’.
Dean wasn’t. Dean wasn’t scared of anything anymore. Over thirty years of this job tends to have that effect on people, and yet everyone was surprised.
“Never saw it coming.”
“How could we have known?”
“He always seemed so happy, so carefree.”
Shit like that was funny to Dean, genuinely. As far as he was concerned, this had been a long time coming. Hadn’t Sammy been the one to name the infamous ‘Dean Winchester Suicide Tour’?
“How could you do this to me, Dean?”
That one had hurt. It was the first thing he had the pleasure of feeling in months, hell, fucking years, and it was pure, emotional pain . The way those hazel eyes, wide, tear-rimmed, had stared into his own with an expression that just screamed why? was enough to spark a break in the walls that had been building around his heart for those years of numbness.
However, not enough to break the dam. Not enough for that dam to never rebuild itself.
Not enough.
And the thing is, it had never mattered before. If anything it was an advantage - he was never held back by the anxiety of ‘what if?’, never got distracted by the need for joy, never wasted time with eating or sleeping until he was on the verge of dying.
Those verges of dying were the closest he ever got to feeling alive at all.
And Sammy was so painstakingly concerned. Of course he was. If Dean could feel anything towards his brother that went beyond instinctual love and trust then he’d probably be concerned too.
But he didn’t, so he wasn’t.
He watched, hazed by antidepressants washed down with alcohol, as his younger brother fell apart, collapsed beneath the weight of what Dean did and what Dean could do until he, too, fell numb.
Sammy wasn’t here anymore.
Time of death: 02:26am.
Another bullet in the dam, another stray tear.
Cause of death: multiple self-inflicted lacerations to either wrist, blood loss.
His thumb dragged over Sammy’s face in the peeling picture he gripped, damp with tear stains from tears he didn’t remember shedding.
We’re so sorry for your loss, son.
And that was it. Dean Winchester officially had no family left alive. He was officially the lone wolf he had been straining to become for as long as he could remember.
Careful what you wish for.
He supposed he should be broken. Be the sad old man in his ‘67, wandering the earth alone. Be the angsty warrior with a newfound will to kill every bastard that got in his way of bringing his family back.
Don’t get him wrong, he tried. He summoned every god forsaken crossroads demon he could squeeze out, talked to every necromancy specialist he could think of, hell, he prayed every fucking night for God’s mercy but was met with nothing but the silence of his brother’s grave.
It was that point, the point of knowing there was no hope, at all, that he fell into this fever dream. Three months was based on the paper he had picked up, desperate for the distraction of a case. Although, that could have been weeks ago. Dean didn’t know - his time management wasn’t exactly on point. Everything in the dream sort of mixed in together, in and out of the timeline.
Sammy died every day. That was the one consistency.
And he couldn’t even count that to determine the date. He stopped counting how many times he watched Sammy die sometime after fifty, because he couldn’t anymore. It didn't matter.
The bullets in the dam started to ricochet.
And that’s when he woke up, legs dangling thirty feet above sweet release from the numb, thirty feet above the promise to feel something.
Judging from the scars on his arms that he didn’t remember making, feeling something would be pretty great.
And then he was falling. The lake approached with blissful speed. Dean’s body turned midair, and the splash of stars drifted away in slow motion, blotted out by gigantic black wings that soared towards him, arms wrapped in a dirty trench coat reaching out, the familiar gravel of a voice screaming “No!”.
And then Dean was gone.
-----
Sitting by a hospital bed, next to the broken form of the Righteous Man, was becoming a new regular for Castiel. A regular he didn’t really appreciate.
His eyes were sunken above defined cheekbones. A paleness tinted his skin, washing out the usual light tan, sucking out the colour from his lips. His hair, usually a sandy brown, looked startlingly dark as it fell over his eyes in greasy bangs.
At least he looked peaceful.
Cas leant back against the uncomfortable plastic of his chair. He glanced at the medical report hanging from the foot of Dean’s bed.
The doctors said he overdosed on alcohol, and that was the reason he was unconscious. They said to expect him awake in another couple hours, and if not, then they would worry about something else being wrong.
Multiple tubes ran into Dean, sucking the poison from his veins whilst pushing in cures for his malnutrition and dehydration. The angel would never get used to how small, fragile, Dean always looked in the centre of a hospital bed, clinging to life by the thread of technology, the organic pump of his heart mirroring the robotic beep of the monitor.
Castiel couldn’t say he was surprised. Ever since the younger Winchester left, Dean had fallen harder than the first time. The angel had watched, helpless, as he drowned himself in alcohol and slept every three days and marked his skin with the same expression.
The expression of ‘I really wish I cared’
After the first month, the human seemed to stop hearing Cas, seemed to not feel the touch Cas tried to give, the comfort he was desperate to show and the love he wanted Dean to feel so bad it hurt. He practically lived in his car, drowned in the silence of his stolen radio.
Often, the angel followed Dean to that bridge, perching at the top bar, sitting for hours on high alert. He was ready when Dean finally fell.
Didn’t make it any easier to carry the man to the hospital, barely able to speak around the grip of panic, unfamiliar, that threatened to send the angel over the emotional edge.
Dean coughed, startling the angel into the present.
“Dean?” Cas questioned, daring to hope. His hand intertwined with Dean’s, the other carding his hair, coaxing Dean back into consciousness.
Come back to me. Please come back to me.
He had never been happier to see those bleary green eyes blinking up at him.
“Cas?”
“Oh, thank the lord.” Cas pulled Dean into a bone-crushing embrace, gripping the back of his head and burying his nose into his neck. He never thought he’d get that scent of motor oil and whiskey and coffee ever again, lost to the mould of the bottom of a lake.
Dean sniffled below him, and Cas gave one last squeeze, more for himself before leaning back. He pushed himself to sit on the bed beside Dean and watched, confusions taking over the relief, as warm tears trickled over the cliffs of his cheeks.
“Dean?” His grip on Dean’s hand tightened.
Dean’s eyes were downcast, warped with tears, and he seemed unable to force them to Castiel’s.
“Dean, what’s wrong?”
Dean swallowed, then his gaze flickered up, finally meeting Cas’, and the single word that escaped his trembling lips left a bullet in Cas’ heart.
“Why?”