the wilderness, and other assorted death traps
A Dean/Cas Pinefest Evergreen Mini Challenge fic
Prompt Two: Mirror, bite, teacup, alternate universe.
(the additional prompt that sparked the actual story: archaeologist/adventure au… dean as josh gates, cas as long-suffering cameraman on expedition looking for buried treasure)
Rated T, 3924 Words
Summary:
The film crew of Dean's hit archaeology adventure tv show are just about the toughest people he's ever met. That doesn't mean Dean's not also the biggest mother hen any of them have ever met. Especially when it comes to Cas.
Read it below, or on AO3!
“Why does it seem like so many historical gun makers were just a little nutty?” Dean mused as he hiked up the low ridge, followed by the camera crew struggling to keep up with him and record his every move. There was an audible sigh of relief from his sound guy when he stopped halfway up the hill and turned back to the camera with a wry grin. “We already know the story of the Winchester Mystery House— no relation, I swear,” he added, holding up both hands in surrender to his future audience. “But today we’re here on the outskirts of what was once the frontier mining town of Sunrise, Wyoming to uncover the unholy secrets of Samuel Colt, as we look for long lost evidence the one very specific gun that supposedly won the west from the forces of Hell itself. I’m Dean Winchester, and you’re watching Hunting the Unknown.”
He finished his little speech as Cas swept the camera’s lens up from his face, over his shoulder and and panned out over the as-yet unexplored vistas of the valley of Sunrise beyond. Or, at least unexplored as far as their eventual viewers will experience it when that little blurb becomes the intro bumper for the episode.
Well, if Ron actually ended up picking that take in editing. Thanks to Charlie, Dean had already given four or five iterations of that little speech over the last twenty minutes. His crew had hiked up and down the hill just as many times, and they were all just about ready to pack it in for the day. The sun had been setting the entire time, after a very long day of running all over the valley filming. Because through the magic of television, they almost never filmed an entire episode of the show in order. Everyone’s night began to look up when Charlie called cut, gave him a weary thumbs up, and announced they were packing it in until morning.
“Okay everyone, we got an early night tonight. The final night shoot with the local cowboys got pushed back to tomorrow, so we’re getting an extra day on Thursday to wrap up anything else we might need to film out here.” She barely glanced up at them as she read off the confirmation of their new schedule from her tablet.
The crew had already started their slow and careful trek back down the rocky hillside as the last light of dusk rapidly dissolved. Since Charlie just stood there tapping at her glowing screen, Dean waited patiently for her to finish, but then ran out of patience when even Cas hefted his equipment bag over his shoulder and gave him a little hand gesture indicating he was gonna head back to the vehicles to pack up his gear with the rest of the crew. Dean sighed, and figured it was about time to get Charlie moving, too, before they were stranded just standing on the treacherous hillside in the dark.
“So I guess we’re stuck camping out for at least another night, then?”
The question pulled Charlie’s attention away from her screen, at least, and she carefully tucked it into her bag before replying. “Yeah, tonight and tomorrow. Then we get to head back to civilization for the last few interviews.” She smirked at him and elbowed him in the side. “Not to mention real showers, and solid walls and doors between us.”
Dean blew out a relieved breath and then held out a hand in a sweeping after you gesture down the slope. “I mean, the big tent hasn’t actually been half bad this time,” he started as they picked their way down the hillside in the failing light of dusk. “At least the weather’s been cooperating and we haven’t been baked, frozen, or flooded for once.”
Charlie snorted, probably recalling any one of dozens of past episodes they filmed under decidedly less pleasant circumstances. “Well, let’s just hope it holds for the next thirty-six hours.”
By the time they made it back to where they’d parked the glorified all terrain golf carts they’d been riding around the wilderness for the last few days while filming, the rest of the crew had finished packing their gear and were already headed back toward their camp. Cas had left a hastily scrawled note stuck to the steering wheel of the remaining vehicle informing him that it had been unanimously decided that it was Dean’s turn to make dinner, again. As if he’d ever trust anyone else to man the grill. He rolled his eyes and shoved the note into his pocket as Charlie dropped her gear in the bed of the vehicle and he climbed in behind the wheel. The cooking almost always fell to him when they were camping out, and honestly, he didn’t even mind. His crew deserved the best grub they could muster up, and Dean was the best cook of the bunch. And really, the rest of the crew still had a bunch of work to do, and Dean was essentially done for the day. It would be a dick move to just lounge around while everyone else toiled away until someone else was free to make dinner.
Back at camp, Dean only took a minute or two to get himself cleaned up and then made the rounds checking on everyone else. Kevin sorted through and tested all their electronics and batteries, while Claire and Victor checked the footage they’d just shot on a small monitor and made notes for their editor. Benny had hauled a stack of firewood over to where Dean was expected to start cooking, and was mostly distracted building up the stack of logs in the fire pit. As long as his team didn’t need him for anything immediate, he figured he could take just another minute or two for what passed as alone time with Cas while they were on a shoot.
Dean also had a pretty good idea of why Cas had rushed off the second they got back. When Cas completely bypassed the kettle, not even sparing a glance for his usual post-shooting caffeine fix, Dean knew it was serious. He made a quick detour, filling up Cas’s favorite steel camp mug that everyone jokingly referred to as his teacup for him, and only then heading for the tent. He glanced around the camp to make sure everyone was still busy, and then ducked through the big tent’s door flap.
Just like their one long trestle table outside that served as dining space, workstations, and even a makeshift surgical theater on a few occasions, the single tent that sheltered them on most of their more remote adventures was about as bare-bones as it comes. At least it was tall enough for everyone on the crew to stand up straight and walk around in, which made it a massive step up from the original tent the network had tried to saddle them with before their show had become a hit.
Considering how much of their lives they spent living out of it, they’d also quickly learned how to use their gear crates and a spare bed sheet to partition off one corner of the tent to ensure there was at least one place in camp they could retreat to for a moment of what passed for privacy. When they were all literally living on top of each other— sometimes for weeks at a time— the small space had become sacred to the entire crew. Even still, it wasn’t often that anyone actually spent more than a few minutes at a time in there. It was barely large enough to change clothes in, but there was a full-length mirror and a bright light in there that pretty much all of them checked themselves out in at least once a day before heading out to potentially be captured on film and broadcast to half the planet. All of them understood they’d be spending a lot of time in the wilderness when they’d signed on to work with Dean, so it wasn’t like they were under the delusion that they’d look glamorous if they happened to be caught on camera. That didn’t mean they all didn’t want to at least look like they were passingly familiar with the concept of living in a society and not feral creatures who just crawled out of a hole in the ground.
With its large mirror and passable lighting, the little privacy cubicle served one other important function: assessing minor injuries and tending various wounds. Which was exactly what Cas was attempting to do when Dean walked in on him. He’d dropped his shirt on the ground at his feet and stood close to the mirror, with an assortment of first aid supplies laid out on the nearest equipment trunk.
“This is the fortress of solitude, Dean,” Cas grumbled as he twisted around trying to dab antiseptic ointment onto the scratches on the back of his shoulder. “You’re making it difficult to live up to its name.”
Dean winced, finally getting a good look at the injury Cas had brushed off a few hours ago when he’d taken a spill into a ravine during filming. Considering the wilderness terrain they were accustomed to hiking through, falling down was practically par for the course for all of them on a daily basis. Dean had accepted Cas’s hand-waving that he was fine without question. They all usually did, unless it was immediately obvious that someone was too injured to keep on filming. To be fair, that was an exceedingly rare occurrence. Minor stumbles and bumps and bruises— with a side helping of wounded pride and gentle teasing from the rest of the crew— were normally the worst of it. Cas’s current scratches easily landed under that heading of nuisance injuries, but for Dean, Cas was different.
Dean loved his entire crew, but he love-loved Cas. It had taken a year or two when they’d first started working together for them both to realize it. It had also taken a lot of eye-rolling and taunting from the rest of the crew for them to finally stop dancing around each other and formally accept their relationship. They’d always acted a bit like an old married couple, but after years of actually being one, they’d given up any pretense that they could keep that aspect of their relationship completely separate from their work lives.
“Aw, come on, Cas, you’re holding up dinner, already,” Dean said, huffing out a breath, setting Cas’s mug down and then absently snatching the ointment tube out of Cas’s hand while inspecting the truly minor abrasion on the back of his shoulder.
Cas leaned back against Dean, sighing and closing his eyes. In the mirror Dean could see all the tension flow out of his face, even if his words still sounded terse and grumpy. “You’re the one holding up dinner, Dean. We can’t eat until you cook.”
Dean wrapped his arms around Cas and dropped a kiss behind his ear. “Yeah, well, I had to make sure you weren’t in here bleeding to death, first. Plus, you forgot your tea.”
Cas laughed, turning just enough in Dean’s arms to approve of his wound treatment in the mirror. He gave Dean a proper kiss and then gently pushed him away. “As you can see, I’ll survive. Unless I starve to death.” After a moment, he remembered his tea and picked it up, inspecting it before taking a sip. “Thank you for the caffeine, though.”
Dean had to accept the dismissal for what it was. They rarely got any more alone time than that when they were out in the field on a shoot. They both had understood that when they’d finally gotten together after dancing around each other for so long. The ongoing tension level between them didn’t really improve all that much as a result. Most of the time while they were in the wilderness, it still felt like they were pining away for each other, nearly as badly as they had when they’d both still believed their feelings were unrequited. The rest of the crew had largely learned to ignore them, for the sake of everyone’s sanity. Dean and Cas had long ago surrendered their own sanity to the job. At least they were going through it together… mostly.
There was a special kind of torture to being together all the time while still having to maintain a professional distance. Sure, they could set up their sleeping bags side by side in the big tent, but everyone else was also crashed out all around them. Even when they were in a location with actual somewhat-modern infrastructure, they often found themselves having to share sleeping quarters with the rest of the crew. Dean could deal with it most of the time. It was the life he’d knowingly signed up for, and he wouldn’t honestly trade it for anything. At least not most days. He stopped for just a moment to compose himself before pushing his way back out through the tent flap to get started on dinner, casting one last glance over his shoulder at Cas’s silhouette through the bed sheet curtain, and sighing. They’d finally have some quality alone time in less than forty-eight hours. He convinced himself he could wait and then walked out to distract himself by making dinner.
Dean hadn’t been at it very long— not even long enough for the fire to heat up the grill— when a shocked and anguished scream and a loud crashing noise startled everyone in camp, and likely also every living creature within a half mile radius. He nearly dropped the entire platter of skewered chicken and vegetables he’d been about to set out over the coals in his rush back to Cas, but managed to set it down on the end of the table before bolting for the tent flap once again. He didn’t stop outside this time, just barreled through it out of sheer panicked instinct at the sound of Cas in agony.
“Cas?” Dean asked, his voice frantic and thready, because Cas was nowhere to be seen on first glance. He’d already turned the lights out in the changing cubicle, so he’d probably been fully dressed and on his way toward the door. Dean checked up his dead sprint so he wouldn’t accidentally add to Cas’s pain and distress by barreling into him or running right over him in the dark.
“It bit me, Dean,” Cas wailed, as Dean’s eyes adapted to the darkness. At least he had a vector and relative distance estimate on Cas’s location, which proved redundant when Claire came through the flap behind him and switched on the main light.
Dean had already been looking in the right direction, and blinked in the sudden brightness at the minor disaster it revealed. For some reason Dean couldn’t understand, Cas was sprawled out on the ground, half buried under the avalanche of gear crates that had been neatly stacked like a retaining wall just a few minutes earlier. Cas had only managed to get his shirt pulled halfway on, and from the way he’d apparently fallen on it, the fabric now only served to entrap his arms as he flailed away, shoving crates off himself and evidently in a significant amount of pain.
For Cas to show that strong a reaction to anything was alarming in itself. Dean had just had that proven out again that afternoon. He hadn’t even realized Cas had hurt himself at all when he’d landed on his back in that ditch until hours later— until just a few minutes earlier when he helped Cas treat the scrapes. Dean’s entire crew was made up of the sort of people who would walk it off rather than make a fuss about having been hurt. They were professionals who would suck it up and keep working through pretty much anything that didn’t completely knock them flat. Seeing any of them hurt bad enough to make a fuss was such a jarring and unfamiliar sight that Dean froze for a moment, his blood running cold at the thought of Cas being so seriously injured he was reduced to writhing in agony on the ground. His paralysis lasted less than a second before he practically flung himself to the ground beside Cas and began frantically but methodically examining him from head to foot.
Well, from foot to head, anyway, since Dean had landed beside Cas’s boots. And if something had bitten him, the only things Dean could think of that could’ve snuck into their tent unnoticed and landed a bite that would cause that much pain— as alarming as the thought was— were most likely going to be hiding near ground level.
“What’s wrong, Cas? What bit you?” He examined Cas’s feet and ankles, or at least what he could see of them with his boots still firmly tied. “Please don’t tell me we all missed a rattler hiding in here.”
That was the only potentially deadly snake in the area, and it baffled Dean for a moment. Rattlesnakes almost always gave a warning rattle before biting. Before Dean could even finish that thought through to its logical conclusion, Cas groaned again as he finally pulled himself up enough to tug his shirt off once again.
“Not a snake, Dean. That,” Cas said, tossing the shirt toward Dean’s knee, and then clutching at his left forearm.
Dean glanced down at the wadded up flannel, confused. “Your shirt bit you?”
Cas rolled his eyes despite still clearly being in a considerable amount of pain. “The thing inside my shirt bit me. From what I could tell in the dark, I believe it’s likely a scorpion.”
Dean pulled a pen out of his pocket and used it to prod at the shirt. If there was a freaked out, irritable scorpion hiding in the folds of cloth, he didn’t really want to become its second victim of the night. He’d survive, of course, but it would still be unpleasant. His probing quickly uncovered the collar of Cas’s shirt, which he used to hoist the offending garment into the air and give it a gentle shake. A small scorpion dropped to the ground and immediately scuttled off toward the nearest tent wall in search of darkness and shelter. They watched it go, and then Dean turned and grinned at Cas.
“He’s just a little guy, Cas. I think you probably scared him.”
Cas sighed, giving his stung hand a cursory examination and then holding out his other hand toward Dean for his shirt. Dean handed it over and then got to his feet. He offered to pull Cas up, which Cas gratefully accepted as the rest of the crew that had run into the tent at all the commotion dispersed again once they realized Dean was likely about to put on a display of doting sweetness that they didn’t have to endure.
“I’ll go get you an ice pack for that, then,” Claire said as she herded everyone out.
“Thank you, Claire,” Cas replied over Dean’s shoulder while he pulled his certified scorpion-free shirt back on.
“You know, scorpions don’t bite,” Dean said quietly, staying right up in Cas’s personal space as he buttoned his shirt. “They sting.”
“I’ll try to remember that next time one of them bites me, then,” Cas replied, repressing a laugh despite being in what had to be an annoying amount of pain.
“Yeah, well,” Dean said, scratching at the back of his own neck and ducking his head a little bit. He lowered his voice even more, so his words wouldn’t carry out through the flimsy tent walls. “When you yelled, my first thought was rattlesnake. I know we’ve got protocols that cover that sort of thing, but we’re a long way from the nearest hospital out here, too.”
Cas’s repressed smile morphed into the fondness Dean had grown accustomed to seeing on his face any time the two of them managed to get a little alone time. He only realized in that moment how much he’d missed seeing it over the last few weeks of filming.
“We really need a vacation, don’t we,” Cas replied, adjusting his collar and then pulling Dean into a hug.
Dean laughed against Cas’s neck and hugged him back before pulling away to finally get a close look at the sting on the back of Cas’s wrist.
“We’ve sort of been on vacation for a month already,” Dean told him as he bent down for an alcohol swab and the antihistamine cream. Conveniently, Cas had knocked the trunk containing the first aid supplies over in the ruckus, and it now sat open and spilling its contents by their feet. When he stood back up and began tending to Cas’s new injury, he glanced up at Cas’s face with a smirk. “What we probably need is to lock ourselves in at home for a week.”
Cas considered that while he watched Dean tend to his hand, sighing with relief as the ointment began to soothe away the sting. He waited for Dean to finish his work and look back up at him again, and then shrugged.
“That does have a certain appeal,” Cas replied. “But at this point I think I’d settle for locking ourselves away in the first place we encounter that had indoor plumbing, solid walls, and an acceptable catering service.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, well I gotta confess, if it was a snake that got you, I might’ve had just a split second of deliriously fantasizing about the two of us getting to spend the night in the ER, in something resembling an actual bed. So yeah, we might’ve been out here in the wilderness too long.”
Cas looked slightly horrified at that as he shook his head at Dean. “Well, I’m personally glad it didn’t come to that, then.”
Dean sighed, giving Cas’s hand a squeeze and then leaned in for a kiss. “Day after tomorrow, we’re back in the real world. Or at least back in a real hotel room. You think you’ll survive until then?”
Cas snorted. “Now that I’m on high alert for scorpions, I think it’s likely, yes, Dean.”
“Good,” Dean grumbled out, satisfied. “Keep an eye out for rattlers, while you’re at it. It would suck to finally get some alone time and have to spend it in the hospital.”
He pointed a warning finger at Cas as he crouched down and began picking up everything Cas had knocked over, rebuilding their makeshift privacy cubicle while Cas stood there watching him. Among the items he retrieved was Cas’s spilled cup of tea. When Dean was done, he stood up with a groan, and handed Cas his empty cup with an apologetic smile. Cas sighed.
“I didn’t even get to finish it,” he said, frowning down at the empty cup.
“I’ll make you another cup before I start dinner. It’s the least I can do after everything you’ve been through,” Dean replied with a smirk.
He threw an arm around Cas’s shoulders and began leading him out of the tent. He paused just long enough to drop a kiss on Cas’s cheek before he pushed open the tent flap.
“I swear, I’ll make it all up to you the day after tomorrow. Real tea in a real teacup, and a real bite or two.” Dean raised an eyebrow to get his point across.
Cas rolled his eyes, but grinned. “I’m sure you will.”
Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed it, you can also find it on AO3 to give it some love there! :)
