Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
Dean wasn’t sure how or why it started. Him seeing things and having whacked out dreams. Hell, he isn’t even really sure when it started. It just did. He had to wonder if Lisa and Ben noticed when he shot away from the suddenly freeze-your-fingers-off cold fridge (not that it was really cold--Ben went and got a Coke a second later and shot him a weirded out/concerned look), or when he stumbled over a rug that felt like it had been attempting to grab his ankles, or when he woke up gasping because he dreamed about Hell. He thought he was over that but now half the time Lisa curled herself up against his side, him breathing hard flat on his back and tense, as memories flooded him. He could remember calling for Sam and begging, to God, maybe, and eventually begging Alastair. Then there were other dreams. Dreams that didn’t really make sense. Dreams where their mother had never died, but their father had; dreams where Sam never went off to college; dreams where Sam never agreed to help him look for Dad and stayed with Jess. Dreams about being eaten by Hell hounds; dreams where Sam died; dreams about watching Sam being tortured like he was in the pit.
He couldn’t figure out a way to stop it, either. He’d called for Cas once, the house empty, but heard no flutter of wings to tell him the tax-account-angel had dropped in. He’d even thought of calling Bobby, but decided against it.
In the end, he just wanted to gank the thing that was doing this. ‘Course, that’s where he hit a wall. He had no idea what was doing this or even if anything outside of himself was. He might have just snapped from stress or something. He didn’t know. He wasn’t some therapist or psychologist or some such shit. He was Dean Winchester, hunter--and he couldn’t very well hunt down whatever was broken in his head. If something was broken in his head.
He scowled to himself, fists clenching in his lap as he listened to water run, listened to Lisa humming and occasionally letting out a few scrambles words, partial lyrics in the shower. He sighed and laid back on the bed, just right on top of the cover. He was out of practice, he decided. If it hadn’t been nearly a year that he hadn’t been hunting, he’d know what was going on. If his dad’s journal wasn’t locked up in the trunk of the Impala, he’d know what to do. He was well aware he was lying to himself, but he did it often enough he barely noticed. It was just something obvious, not worth much thought.
Dean heard the water shut off and heard the pad of feet on the tile floor of the bathroom. Lisa walked out in a thin, stretched out cotton nightgown with a towel wrapped around her black hair and sitting on the top of her head like a turban. He smiled softly at her and she grinned back. She let her hair loose then and ran the towel through it. He merely kept an eye on her, appreciating how beautiful she was. Then she cocked an eyebrow at him, a particular expression coming to her face. That made him think too much of Sam, which more or less just creeped him the frick out.
“What’s up?” Lisa asked. “I thought you’d already be asleep. I did get back from work late.”
He shrugged. “Just wanted to see you again before I went to sleep,” he said. So I don’t wake up and realize you’re not there and automatically turn on the lamp on the bedside table to make sure you’re not pinned to the ceiling. Sure, Azazel was dead--he’d killed him. But the bastard had ruined so much of his life; who was to say he wouldn’t figure a way after death to keep up the trend? One of his little minions come and play?
Or maybe he’d just dream it and then she wouldn’t be there.
Either, or, he was terrified.
He hated it. And he hated how he acted, always so paranoid. He hovered, like a frickin’ helicopter parent, over Ben and he hated when either of them were out of his sight. He knew they were concerned about that and a little scared. That was probably the thing he hated the most. He didn’t mind going crazy--much--but he cared about the fact they were starting to get scared of him.
‘Course, he probably deserved it.
He shifted slightly as Lisa clambered into bed and curled up against him again, her wet hair on his shirt-covered shoulder and her breath ghosting his arm. He smelled the raspberry scent of her shampoo and let out a long sigh. He fitted himself against her and rested his nose against her pillow, eyes drifting shut.
“Goodnight, Dean,” Lisa murmured, stroking his chest, “have sweet dreams.”
Doubtful.
***
The world was dark. That wasn’t too unusual. Lisa had gotten him to install some black-out blinds so she could sleep in even when he got up at six to go to his construction job--something that fit him well enough, but felt bizarre, he got a paycheck, for chrissake. Yet, his face was pressed against something hard, something rougher than the wooden floor of the bedroom, even. He shivered, eyes still partially closed--not really sure he wanted to see where he was. Sure, he could be on the floor--but why the roughness? And why wasn’t his alarm going off? Had he just fallen on the wood via manic flailing and woken himself?
He opened his eyes. Still dark. He squinted again and turned onto his back. What he was lying on was hard, too--and his shoulders, lower back, and pelvis ached. Bright light flooded his eyes and his question was answered. The darkness spun away as sunlight washed over his face. He squinted hard and swallowed. His throat felt sore, dry, and he began to notice phantom pain elsewhere. He frowned and sat up--which nearly left him flopping back down to the concrete he was on. He hissed out a breath but steeled himself.
He’d had worse.
He looked around, still squinting, and noticed some of the concrete was painted pale green--which made a few muscles in his back tense. No way. No way in heck.
He dragged his legs up under him and crawled out from wherever he was, heading towards light. Everything snapped into focus then--the green grass and wildflowers, growing more or less wildly, the pines on the hill across the way, and the sound of cars, the thump-thump-thump of tires going over a sectioned bridge, and he was left gaping.
He was on an underpass.
Like a hobo.
His mouth opened and he tried to ask just what was going on--monsters and heavenly feather-bags were prone to answering--but a soft noise just came out instead. He hastily felt himself down, checking his pockets and checking for injuries. He found scars on his arms he was sure he hadn’t had before and he found no sign of a cell phone, just about six dollars in change. He swore.
What was this? Frickin’ Quantum Leap?
Angels, he decided. It had to be angels. They were the only sort of dicks that could pull something like this off. Well, mostly. If this was real. He had the feeling it was. Yet, they’d been leaving him alone.
But I never do catch a break, do I?
He looked up at the sky, noting the sun’s teetering position. It was past noon.
Need to move.
In the end, Dean ended up walking a few miles down a crazy-ass highway with cars seemingly trying to hit him for at least an hour. He wasn’t sure why it took so long and his foot was doing this weird dragging thing if he let it (bad news? probably) and, all in all, he was trying to ignore how he frickin’ ached all over. He’d wonder if he’d been hit by a car if that hadn’t already happened already. You know, while he was in another car. Close enough. He felt sort of like that.
He stumbled over to a gas station then, which had a lovely payphone sitting outside of it and a pool of murky, brackish water in the middle of its gravel drive. Basically, it was a crap place. Not that he cared. He’d seen worse.
He walked over to the payphone and leaned himself against the metal. A second later he was pulling off, yelping, because it felt like it was on fire. Which reminded him about that fact he was sweating through the clothes he was wearing which left him scowling at the black plastic phone and then using his sleeve to get it off its cradle. He put it to his ear and put in a few quarters before tapping out Bobby’s phone number. Sure, he hadn’t wanted to call him before but now he was in the middle of blazing nowhere, pretty obviously hurt, and he had no idea what was going on. He chewed on the inside of his mouth as the phone rang and rang and rang. He had no idea if Lisa and Ben were okay, either.
His insides twisted at that thought, recurring as it was. He’d call them next. He just didn’t want to worry Lisa if he didn’t need to.
Because, really, how crazy would he sound if he called now? Hey, Lisa, I sort of don’t know where I am and look like I got into a bad fight with a wendigo?
Not that he knew what he looked like.
He sighed, realizing Bobby wasn’t picking up, and dialed another of his numbers.
“Come on, Bobby,” he mumbled, “don’t be frickin’ outside right now.”
“Hello?”
That wasn’t Bobby’s voice. Dean froze. It definitely wasn’t Bobby’s voice. All feminine and quiet, questioning. He tried to quell his automatic panic. Why would some chick answer Bobby’s phone?
Unless he finally hooked up with someone.
Which would be nice, I guess; but sort of horrific to imagine.
Then there was the whole he-didn’t-answer-the-phone thing, which Dean wasn’t touching with a ten foot pole.
“Hello?” the woman asked again, voice starting to sound impatient.
“Hi,” he said finally, leaning against the metal of the phone booth now with his jacket-covered side. “Is Bobby there?”
“What? Who’s Bobby? Who is this?”
Dean frowned. “Bobby Singer,” he said, “obviously. I’m Dean. Just get him for me, will you?”
“I’m sorry. You have the wrong number.” And the call cut out with a click.
A muscle in Dean’s jaw twitched and he slammed down the phone. Bitch. He stepped away from the phone booth, pissed, and walked towards the gas station’s only building, a dark, squat brick thing with enough posters in the windows to block his view of the interior.
He stopped when his toes hit the central puddle, though, and what he saw was probably the weirdest thing out of all of this. He still had on his beat-up old jacket but he was wearing a mix-match consisting of black jeans, battered white sneakers, a purplish-black band shirt, and said jacket.
His eyebrows rose to the highest point they could manage on his face when he realized he was wearing frickin’ eyeliner, not that you could tell very well with the whole bruising thing he had going on his nice face.
Whoever temporarily ruined his ability to pick up chicks was seriously getting their butt handed to them, by the way.
Also, make-up? What sort of sicko put make-up on a guy after they knocked them out? That just wasn’t kosher.
Dean walked into the tiny gas station, into the relief of the icebox-like interior and blue-white light. He shivered slightly, sweat cooling almost instantly, and then he walked up to the girl behind the counter. She automatically tensed up, her black-lined eyes widening until the whites were showing to an amazing extent. He frowned, only to remember he looked like a vagabond that had been in a bar fight. Then he tried out a patented placating grin and looked at the girl’s name tag while he took the rest of her in. Slightly heavy with a shirt covered in glittery roses and unreadable words and vest combo that he could see; shiny black hair and doe eyes. Not his type, really--he barely felt a thing, if anything--but she was cute-ish.
“Hi,” he said softly, “I’m going to go buy a water.”
She barely nodded, hands still firmly under the counter, probably holding a gun or posed to push a call-the-cops button; neither which would be good for him. He walked back to the back, tried to avoid looking too hopefully at the beer, and grabbed some sort of water that probably didn’t taste like chicken or something that was decidedly not like water and sort of burned on the way down.
People who drank bottled water were decidedly weird. Who liked to taste metal and chemicals all the time?
‘Course, he drank beer and cola all the time, so who was he to judge?
He shrugged to himself and walked back to the counter, putting the bottle lightly on the very edge. The girl still jumped. He would feel bad but now she was just being panicky.
Of course, he didn’t work at a gas station, either. People were very unpredictable monsters, really.
“How much?” he asked then.
She blinked.
“For the water?” He put all his coins on the countertop, anyway. He attempted to be prepared even if he never had been a Boy Scout. Being his father’s son quite made up for it.
“Oh” was all she got out as her hands finally snapped into motion, red nails clicking against the bottle, buttons on the system, and coins as she rang him up.
“So,” he asked, trying to sound conversational and smiling widely, “where is this little place?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?”
“This gas station,” he said. “Where have I ended up? Sorry. Didn’t read the exit sign.”
“You didn’t drive up in a car,” she said, almost an accusation, like it was a personal slight against her.
“No,” he said. “I had sweat in my eyes and couldn’t see the sign, though.”
She gave him an odd look and pointed at a rack behind him.
He turned and nearly fell over.
He was pretty sure he'd never wanted to be back in the general of this place, ever.