For you Song Prompt Emma! There's a heartbeat, somewhere, Love, I'm gonna find you there. In the darkness, sleepless, Love, I wanna have you near. (Never Sleep Alone by Kaskade)
It takes Castiel just over a day to find the lair of the djinn.
Every hour is an hour too many, but as he pulls up outside the old abandoned warehouse by the quarry with a squeal of tires, he knows this has to be the one. All the signs point to this place, and he feels it in his chest, like a tugging behind his sternum.
Despite every instinct screaming at him to bust in there and get to his husband as quickly as possible, Castiel knows that he has to be careful about this. He can’t rescue Dean if he also ends up captured by the djinn, after all, and so he forces himself to stay calm.
The sun is just starting to set, the rust-gold light casting long shadows across the landscape, and these are what Castiel sticks to as he makes his way up to the edge of the warehouse. There’s a door on the side wall—it’d be idiotic to try and bust through the front—so that’s what he makes his way over to. It’s padlocked, but the metal has clearly seen better days, and it only takes a couple of hard hits from the handle of Castiel’s knife to break through it.
The air inside smells of mildew and disuse, and Castiel wrinkles his nose as he quietly pushes the door open. The ground inside is littered with dirt and debris, and all the light disappears as the door closes behind him. Castiel turns on his flashlight, tightens his grip on the handle of his knife, and presses forward into the heart of the building.
It doesn’t take him long to find the lair itself, nestled right in the heart of the building. Castiel glimpses the faintest trace of light at the end of one of the corridors and follows it as it gets stronger and brighter, until he peeks around the corner of the corridor to find that it opens out into a large room, lit by a handful of dusty lightbulbs strung from the ceiling.
There’s a lot of debris and junk littering the room, but none of that is what gets Castiel’s attention.
No, what gets Castiel’s attention is the sight of Dean in the middle of the room, his hands tied together above his head, completely unconscious.
Castiel’s heart thuds against his ribcage in fear, and he squints in the dimness of the room, looking for a twitch, a blink, any sign of life—
The shallow rise and fall of his chest. A breath. He’s still alive, but he might not have much time.
Luckily, Castiel has been taught how to hunt by the best.
“Where are you, you blue son of a bitch?” he shouts as he steps into the room, shoving his flashlight back into his pocket and spinning the knife in his grip. “If you want me, you’re going to have to come and get me.”
He doesn’t have time to dance around the djinn, or go looking for it. He has to kill it, and only then can he go to Dean. Aware, and having claimed the empty space in the middle of the room, he has the high ground.
This djinn is quiet and quick on its feet, though: Castiel only hears a single footfall as warning and spins right as it lunges at him.
A series of dodges and missed blows, feet scraping for purchase on the debris-littered concrete, steel flashing in the dim light and glowing blue eyes far too close for comfort. The djinn is strong, but Castiel is stronger.
He sinks his silver knife between its ribs, and is over by Dean’s side before it even hits the ground.
“Dean,” he says, frantic as he pulls at the knots securing Dean’s hands above his head. “Dean, can you hear me?”
The ropes give way all at once, and Castiel scrambles to catch his husband, sinking to the ground with Dean in his arms. He presses his hand against Dean’s chest and feels his heart beat, weakly, beneath his fingers. “Love, I’m here. I’ve got you, Dean, please, open your eyes.”
The next few seconds feel like some of the longest in all of Castiel’s existence, but finally, finally… Dean’s lashes flutter, and his eyes open just a little—as though even that much movement is costing him so much energy.
“Cas,” he says, his voice barely a rasp. “What—“
“You were captured,” Castiel tells him. “It’s dead now. I—I’m just glad I found you in time.”
He gets Dean out of the warehouse and secured in the passenger seat of the Impala, much to Dean’s resentment. If he can barely keep his eyes open, though, there’s no way he’s driving a car, and so Castiel puts up with his grumbling because he came scarily close to losing Dean today.
It’s only once they’re halfway back to the motel, one of Dean’s cassettes playing quietly over the stereo, that Castiel asks, “What did you dream about?” He’s not sure he wants to know, but part of him is morbidly curious to know what Dean’s life might look like if his greatest wish were granted.
But Dean just shrugs one shoulder, nonchalant. “Didn’t really dream about anything,” he says, looking out the window at the trees that pass by in the wash of the Impala’s headlights. “It was just… black, mostly.”
Castiel frowns. “But… djinn dreams are supposed to show you your greatest wish, right? Why was it just black?”
Dean smiles, slow and soft, and turns to watch Castiel in the dimness of the dashboard lights. It’s a knowing smile, affectionate and fond and full of so many other emotions that Castiel couldn’t put a name to but feels resonating in his heart.
“I guess the djinn just didn’t know what story to make up,” Dean says, his voice soft, “…because I’ve already got everything I could ever ask for.”
