Chapter Text
A dark room, the soft glow of a lamplight not reaching the man sequestered within. Scattered shouts from outside. The distant hum of a fluorescent motel sign and vending machines roaring with life.
Dean is alone.
The nursed bottle of whiskey nestled beneath his arm in a pale imitation of companionship is the only company he has. Dean watches, vacantly, as the digital clock beside the bed ticks closer and closer to midnight, crimson numbers bleeding together before eyes infiltrated with a haze that has nothing to do with alcohol.
He’s alone, and it's Christmas Eve, and he’s getting drunk off of shitty whisky in a shitty motel room.
Merry-fucking-Christmas.
He’d chosen this isolation for himself, had told his brother to see Ellen and Jo and let him be, had told Cas he didn’t want the angel’s company, company that’s awkward and formal and incredible all at once.
He’d chosen this, but still, he misses Sam, misses Cas; wants to be here and anywhere else and alone and surrounded by people all at once.
As it turns out, premeditated isolation doesn’t make cloying loneliness any easier to bear.
The air is musty, a festering of oxygen accumulated over days spent inside that seem like eternity. Below the tree sits a present, wrapped by himself, for himself. The singular parcel is the only evidence of the festive season that hasn’t felt festive in so long he doesn’t know if it ever really has.
He wonders if Cas would’ve liked a present if they’d spent the day together, wonders if the Angel would’ve smiled that smile like the ethereal luminescence of a thousand suns. If he would’ve shared a drink with Dean as the clock ticks past midnight with a grimace and a comment about the taste of molecules. Wonders if he might’ve shared a kiss beneath imaginary mistletoe as the world falls away around them.
He closes his eyes against the image that forms burning tears behind his eyes.
It doesn’t matter. Cas is gone.
He wonders if the Angel misses him, too.
Alcohol makes everything soft at the edges, smooths sharp corners and brings to light the thoughts sequestered in the back of his head, shines a blinding spotlight over feelings he can’t feel and inadequacies he wishes he could ignore.
Dean stares down into the dark liquid as it slopes unevenly side to side, poisonous amber, languid in its movements.
He knows it isn’t helping.
He drinks anyway.
He drinks, and stares at nothing with empty eyes, and pointedly doesn’t think about Cas, alone somewhere, bound to the Earth that will never be a home to him as long as he has nowhere to go. Thinks of Sam, of the new family he’s carving out for himself with the Harvelles. Thinks of his father, submerged six feet under.
He thinks of everything, and nothing at all, until finally, sleep claims him.
Dean doesn’t know how long he’s submerged beneath the veil of fitful slumber, twisting and turning and writhing under the ghost of Alastair’s hands.
He wakes to a flutter of wings.
Green eyes strain in darkness to identify the sudden presence, searching through blackness that, for a moment, makes him think he’s back there. Pinned to the rack, burning Hellfire.
Blinking sleep from his eyes, he finally registers the sound. The sound that only ever announces the presence of an Angel.
His Angel.
He reaches for the lamp beside the bed, but before he can, golden light explodes in the space.
Sandy blond hair. A broad smirk. A voice imbued with artificial deepness.
“Hello, Dean.”
“Fucking- Balthazar?”
The smirk widens, and he is awake.