a happy place to dream about (slice of life horror, multi-chaptered)
Dean's rudderless when he limps ashore in West Cibola. 23, with nobody and nothing but a couple bucks and a broken-down old car to his name. It's October. Nothing's been right for a long time.
He turns 24 in a rundown long-stay motel room with an under the table turned actual job at an washed-up dive bar— the only place that'd take him without a real job history or a permanent address. It’s way off the tourist strip and the money’s terrible, but it’s steady.
Two years and some change later, just as the restlessness really starts to seep in, he meets Chuck Shurley for the first time.
That he knows of.
[Read on AO3]
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CHP 2 (and Castiel interlude) is UP!
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Chuck frowns. He thumbs blood off Dean’s cheek with a soft shush.
“You’re not even the main character,” Chuck reminds him, gently.
Reminds them both, possibly.
Dean’s only response is a wracking cough that dwindles down into miserable, damp wheeze. More blood dribbles down his chin. Chuck shakes his head. He leans in as if to catch Dean’s eyes.
“Don’t worry so much. This whole moment, it won’t exist as soon as I end it. No one’s gone. There’s no ending. The pain you’re feeling? It isn’t even real, not really.”
Dean’s stare through him is dim and searching. Uncomprehending. Chuck scoffs.
“Don’t look at me like that. We’ve met, I promise.”
Too many times by now, really.
Chuck doesn’t often enter the narrative, but he’s found it’s been happening more and more often lately, and all for the same reason. Even right now: Chuck’s keeping this very scene going, even though he already knows it's a narrative dead end. Just to focus on Dean Winchester, dying offscreen in a puddle of his own blood and still distracting. Just for a few more minutes in the same air.
It’s not fair. It’s ruining Chuck’s focus on his perfect narrative.
Chuck takes one limp hand. He traces his fingertips lightly over Dean’s knuckles, one at a time. Dean almost notices that too, hand jerking against Chuck’s touch. Chuck simply tightens his grip.
“I’m fixing it,” he promises Dean. “I have this… version of you, in the wings. You, but everything you’re just…”, he tsks once, considering, “not built for.”
He lifts Dean’s bloodied knuckles to his mouth. His teeth test the pressure of his skin, gently, feeling the bone and joint underneath. Dean stares at him, glassy and distant. Opens his mouth like he’s trying to respond; nothing comes out but a thin trickle of blood.
It’s like he never runs out of ways to bleed.
