Dean hadn't had cereal for four months, so he could be forgiven for taken a little extra time to properly indulge.
He took the bowl to the table, shut Sam's laptop so he didn't fling milk all over it, because he did have some sense, no matter what other people thought, seriously he wasn't a complete moron.
Not that Sam didn't deserve it, because an iPod? Seriously?
He wasn't sure where Bobby was, he hadn't seen him all morning.
"Not out of hell five minutes before everyone has something better to do." He threw his coat over the back of the chair and dropped his spoon into the bowl.
It was good cereal, it was really good cereal, no actually it was probably fairly crappy cereal but he had a new appreciation of cereal which was less harsh than it used to be.
He stared at the spoon while he chewed.
His face was a twisted faraway thing trailing milk...
Solid links that stretch on forever, a stretch of clanking metal like a vast spider's web, every link brown with ages of rust and rivers of blood.
And in-between the chains there was nothing.
Even if you tore free, even if you unhooked the chains.
You'd fall, and if you fell, you'd fall through them forever, tossed between them like a rag doll, screaming all the way.
Dean swivelled the spoon, found a distorted version of his own face in the metal and nothing else, he frowned at it.
"Yeah, be lucky you have a face again." He shoved it back in his cereal, then his mouth.
Sam hadn't left him a message, at least he hadn't left him a message among the mess that was on the table. But if he wanted to be all secretive and weird for a few days then screw it. Maybe he deserved a little secretive and weird.
If it was the other way round, he might have had his reservations too.
It wasn't just about demon or not, sometimes it was about what you brought back with you.
Or what you brought back in you.
Though Dean didn't really want to think about that, thinking about that was gross.
He pulled a face
He wasn't a pod person.
Being a pod person would suck.
It was like you weren't whole, like you were spread across its horrors in screaming pieces, the whole picture too much for anyone's mind, for anyone's skin, to hold.
Dean paused, the spoon halfway to his mouth, before scowling and shoving it in anyway.
He didn't know how long were you supposed to scream for before you knew for certain that no one was coming. But terrified that that was the point, that you never stopped, that you couldn't stop. And how could you scream with no breath, with no throat, with no fucking lungs, but you screamed anyway, you screamed until you couldn't hear anything else.
Dean grunted, stretched his boots out and threw one over the other.
There was something at the edge of his brain, crawling just out of reach. And he wasn't sure whether it was the sort of thing he needed to poke at or not, but he wouldn't be him if he didn't try, like pressing on a wound to see if there was anything inside.
Sometimes you had to gouge yourself out to stay whole.
He sounded like dad.
Sam was going to pull out the pissy face if he heard him talking like that.
Dean sniffed and stared at the TV, which was showing a cookery program which someone had left on mute.
The bright pink of raw meat sizzled in a frying pan.
Dean's hand skidded across the table shoving papers and Sam's books aside until he could find the remote and change the channel
Then he dumped the spoon in his bowl with a noise of disgust and pulled his hand down his face.
Something with hands that burned, burned all the way through.
Something made of fire and glory that had seemed to have no purpose in that second than to drag him screaming back to life-
Dean pushed his bowl away, mouth suddenly numb.
His shoulders ached like they hadn't for hours. An angry throb of hand prints that went deeper than the skin, so much fucking deeper.
And he didn't want to understand that.
Dean pressed his hands against the table, angry in a way that made no sense, because out of everything it was that, out of all the fucked up flashes, only half-seen when he closed his eyes, out of all the bits and pieces that should have him messed up and terrified.
It was that that shook him all the way through
The way hell couldn't change anything.
The way coming back from hell couldn't change everything
...
The thing that had changed everything.
A barn full of wings-
He hadn't believed it even then, even after they failed to put a dent in his body, even after the sound and the wings.
"Because we have work for you."
Even then...
Until he'd held out his hand.
A hand that was skin, as much flesh and blood as his own, but the thing underneath, the thing inside he'd known that.
The thing wearing a person was the same thing that had filled hell with light. Something that had never been human, something old and terrible, terrible enough to burn your eyes out, terrible enough to burn you into ash.
Dean remembered, not the face, or the voice, he remembered the pain, he remembered burning.
Dean remembered wanting to burn.
He'd wanted to pull away then, wanted to drag his hand away because you didn't put your fingers where the monsters could get them, the first rule he ever learned. You didn't reach out, you didn't give them anything.
But fingertips had caught his own, had dared him.
"Touch me." Quiet fall of words, halfway between suggestion and dare. And Dean had heard the same trick from a hundred demons, 'touch me, I'm real, I'm not a monster, I love you.' There was always a flare of desire, of challenge, of threat.
And standing here there were none of those things.
But he saw all of them.
Maybe that was his own kind of fucked up, Dean's own contagion, the flavour of demons painted on his skin.
But Dean had never had the sense not to be pulled, not to push against what was impossible, to dare right back.
'Prove it to me, prove you're not a monster, prove you can't bleed and scream and die like everything else.'
Because everything died.
So Dean touched him, pushed aside the edges of his shirt and tie and the thing let him, spread his arms a little so he could find the spot the knife went in and there was nothing, nothing but skin and a heartbeat under Dean's fingers, under the push of his fingers.
The heartbeat was nothing close to his own, rhythm gone to roaring in his chest, though Dean's face was as flat as he could make it. Pretending he wasn't scared of the lie, of this thing luring him close enough to pull him into pieces, or of the truth, the impossible truth.
Because he didn't believe, he couldn't believe. A god that could make a world like this was a god that didn't care at all. One that had abandoned them all and left hell to run wild.
He shook his head, one helpless movement, frowning under it
The thing laid fingers over his own and the world twisted.
And for a long second it was like Dean had his fingers under the skin.
He knew what demons felt like, he knew how they worked, he'd been killing them his whole life, all different flavours of blood and hate and violence.
And Castiel was-
He was like nothing, nothing Dean had ever touched-
He did pull his hand away then, breath lodged in his throat.
"Have you seen enough?"
The motel room was completely silent.
There was nothing on the TV but static, a quiet thrum of white and black.
Dean glared at it, then picked up the remote and changed channels, changed channels again.
Nothing but static everywhere.
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