log; dean winchester & matt murdock WHO: Dean Winchester & Matt Murdock WHEN: Monday, March 7th, night WHERE: Matt's apartment (living room) WHAT: Matt grabs Dean after he's gently ushered out of The Rose and they head back to Matt's place to talk. WARNING(S): Dean's drunk as shit. Also he's an alcoholic.
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Dean was drinking again.
Well, no, he always drank, but it was lighter and more casual the more at ease he was with his life. With Cas "gone", and Jo and Bobby here after dying for something he asked them to do, drinking seemed like the only thing that made sense up to a point.
So he did. A little too much. A lot too much. And he just couldn't hold his liquor like he used to.
Nate had (politely) ushered him out when he ran out of alcohol vouchers (which took a while) and was clearly looking kind of wobbly. If Dean hadn't run into Matt outside the bar, he didn't know where he would have gone, but Matt took pity on him and his slurred admission that he didn't want to go home and offered him a spot on his couch instead.
Felicia didn't protest when he showed up, but she did shrug it off with a "Sure, whatever" before retreating back into the room she shared with Matt. Dean sat down heavily on the couch, immediately slumping back. "What's her problem?"
"Rough patch," said Matt, frowning.
It was a long rough patch. It was probably his fault. His depression was still weighing on him, but he'd made an effort to ask for help, and he was even starting to feel better just feeling like there was hope and he didn't have to handle it alone. He didn't feel like the walls were closing in, at least.
He sat down on the opposite couch, listening to the sound of Dean's heart. "This is about Cas," he said quietly. "I know it is. I'm sorry."
"Maybe I'm just a drunk," Dean muttered, letting his head rest back on the couch and grateful he didn't have to try to keep eye contact. "My dad was a drunk. Bobby's a drunk. Maybe I'm just drunk. Why're you in a rough patch?"
"Because I don't get out of bed unless I want someone to hit me," Matt answered flatly. He quietly removed his dark glasses and made a move to clean them on the edge of his shirt. Even if smudges didn't affect his vision, he still kept them clean.
Dean snorted. "That makes me part of the problem, doesn't it? Sorry."
"I'm the problem, but yeah." Matt set his glasses on the coffee table and slumped back on the couch. He was still bruised from one fight or another, with a cut on his nose and a black eye.
"She'll get over it. Or she won't. I don't know, I'm shit at relationships. Never been good with women for very long." Dean briefly considered falling asleep on Matt's couch and never bothering to get up.
Matt tipped his head slightly. "What about Cas?"
"Never been very good for Cas, either." They're close enough — and it's been long enough — that Dean doesn't flinch.
"This situation with Cas right now, Dean, that's not your fault."
"Yeah, it is. It's a long story with a lot of bullshit, but Cas wouldn't have been in a position to deal with Lucifer at all if it wasn't for me. Every time Cas tries to help me with something, he gets hurt." Dean shook his head and let out a long breath.
Matt was quiet, taking time to digest this. He'd been in this position before. He knew how it felt to feel responsible for someone's choices, to put someone into a terrible position. "I want to tell you that he made that choice for himself, but… I can't. That makes me a hypocrite."
"We'll fix it," Dean said firmly, more for himself than anyone else. "We've iced the Devil before, we'll do it again. It's just fucking exhausting."
"Is it hurting Cas?" Matt asked, leaning forward. "Being possessed. Is it killing him?"
"Sharing with an angel is like… being strapped to a comet. Lucifer's a hell of a lot stronger than he is, too. It'll kill him eventually." Dean fidgeted, staring at the ceiling while he spoke. "Archangels need special vessels. Me and Sam are the only ones here who could handle him without falling apart, it's a bloodline thing. The last guy Lucifer was in started … deteriorating, like his skin started burning off in patches. Guess he was part of the right bloodline but not close enough to ours to survive."
"And Cas — his vessel — isn't part of that bloodline at all."
"No. Jimmy Novak's an angel vessel, but…" Dean shrugged. "No."
Matt cursed under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. "So what's keeping him alive now?"
"It's not instant. Lucifer can ride it out in Cas's body until it literally falls apart and isn't worth possessing anymore." Dean sounded detached because he was trying not to visualize it, Cas slowly dying under Lucifer's weight.
"So there's time, at least." It was the most optimistic thing that Matt could offer right now. There was no positive spin to put on this situation. Castiel was going to die if they didn't get rid of Lucifer. Hell, a lot more people could die in the meantime.
"What does Lucifer want?" he asked. "What's his game, here?"
"I don't know. He might not even know, if he was just dragged here like the rest of us, but he hates everyone except for his brothers. Even if he's playing nice now, he'll get bored and start getting rid of people just for the hell of it, if he doesn't come up with an actual plan." This had been easier when Lucifer had some kind of direction. Now Dean didn't know which areas to cover.
Matt frowned. "So you don't think there's any way to work with him on this. You just think he'll cause chaos if he doesn't have active plans to kill you."
"He's the actual Devil, Matt, not that weird piano-playing version we have running around." Dean rubbed at his eyes. "Maybe he was decent thousands of years ago, but he's been locked in the Cage since then. He'd have gone crazy by now, especially being stuck in there with Michael the last few years."
"Worth a shot. I was trying to be optimistic. Shame that never works out." Matt ran a hand back through his hair. "So what do we do? Are there traps for angels like there are for demons?"
"Some, yeah, there's a limit with archangels. We're … figuring something out." With a groan, Dean added, "Can we talk about anything else right now, man?"
Matt's mouth twitched. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. What do you want to talk about? My life's not full of great news, either."
"Shit, I don't know." Dean went quiet for a few long moments, and then: "You ever think all this shit would be easier if your dad was here?"
Matt sat up a little straighter. "Seriously, that's where you're going with this?"
"...No?"
"No, it's fine, just… yeah. Yeah, I do think it'd be easier if my dad was here," Matt admitted. "I think about it a lot. I think about him a lot. But I also know he'd have a real hard time with what I do. So I try not to think about it too much."
"Think the first thing my dad would do was smack me for the mess I've gotten into around here." Dean sounded almost wistful for it. "I'd deserve it. Old man always had more sense than I did."
"My dad never wanted me to use violence to solve my problems," said Matt with a crooked little smile. He had a cut on his lip from being punched in the mouth.
Dean snorted and laughed. "They'd hate each other. My dad gave Bobby crap when I was a kid for taking me to the park instead of making me practice with a shotgun."
Matt frowned. "My dad made a living with his fists. He wanted me to be something more than that, and get out of Hell's Kitchen. Turns out I went to Harvard, but I stayed in Hell's Kitchen."
"Sam got into Stanford on a scholarship — pre-law, go figure — and Dad stopped picking up the phone." Shaking his head, Dean went a little quiet before he added, "We got into some pretty nasty fights after that. Sammy still came back, so I guess it didn't matter that much in the long run."
"What the fuck is wrong with your dad?" Matt asked, frowning and leaning back in his seat. "Kid gets into college and he's not happy about it?"
"Sam left. Dad spent our entire lives hunting the thing that killed Mom and saving people. When you've got tunnel vision that bad, everything else looks less important. He took it like Sam was ungrateful, or didn't care, he was picking an education over saving lives. Sam didn't mean to leave for good, but that was Dad: you did what he said or you fucked off." Dean didn't sound particularly upset about it anymore. John had been dead for nearly ten years now, and it was easier to feel like his flaws weren't so bad in hindsight. "I stayed, obviously. The hell I was gonna go, you know? I dropped out of high school when I got sick of repeating grades and it got creepy hitting on the cheerleaders."
Matt leaned over to rest against the arm of the couch, chin in his hand. It looked like he wasn't paying attention, his gaze sightlessly focused on the wall, but he was listening better than most. "College wasn't in the cards for you, or did you feel like your brother just had a better shot?"
"What? No. My grades always sucked. After my first real hunt, I'd always rather be out with my dad than doing my homework. We moved too much, anyway." Dean shrugged. He never thought of school as something he was sad about missing. "Stopped going when I was seventeen."
"You happy with that choice?" Matt asked.
"I guess? I don't think about it. Not like a diploma would make my job easier. I got a GED eventually." It had been a bitch to get it, too, with all the moving around. At some point his dad had ditched him somewhere and Dean had insisted on staying long enough to take the test. They'd bickered about it for weeks afterward when John had been hurt on a solo hunt and blamed Dean for not being backup at the time.
Matt raised his eyebrows, looking genuinely impressed. Yes, he was highly educated, he'd fought tooth and nail to go to Columbia and Harvard, but knowing Dean's personal history, knowing that Dean didn't have any support in the matter and he moved around all the time, Matt was able to understand how difficult that was.
"So it does matter to you," he said after a moment. "It matters a lot."
"I guess it seemed important at some point." Dean wasn't necessarily lying, but it was clear from the way he fidgeted that he wasn't being completely truthful. He was leaving out that he'd been in his early twenties by then, that he'd been pissed that his dad had told Sam to stay gone and driving around with John all the time after that, alone, had been goddamn exhausting.
"Formal education's important, but…" Matt shrugged, his tone softening a little. "In the end, it's just a piece of paper. It doesn't actually mean much. You're a hell of a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for, Dean."
Dean snorted. "Yeah, all right. How the hell did you survive college? Was it like pushing a rock up a hill the whole time? People are dicks, it couldn't have been easy."
"Honestly..? Foggy," said Matt quietly. "That and a lot of people don't want to be dicks to the blind guy. It was more accessibility hurdles than anything else. Making sure I could get all the required reading, that I could get my papers in. No one's making it harder for me on purpose, but I had a lot of stumbling blocks. And I did a lot of it on no sleep, because Foggy's nickname comes from the fact that he snores. Christ."
"That bad, huh? I grew up living out of motel rooms, snoring was just part of the package." Scratching the back of his neck, Dean added, "I'm sorry he's not here. I could tell how close you two were, even from different realities."
"I…" Matt's expression closed off a little, and he nodded. "He's … I never had a brother," he explained. "I was an only child, I didn't have friends when I was in school. It was just me and my dad, and then after school I was being trained by Stick. I didn't have anyone my age. But Foggy … he's like my brother. More than my brother. It doesn't matter what reality we're from. He's always going to be that person for me."
Foggy being gone had devastated Matt. He'd been in a depressive spiral for nearly two months, now, and he was having a hard time climbing back out.
"He might show again. Might even be the one who knows you, too." It was hard to say how comforting that was. Mount Weather wasn't a nice place to live most of the time.
"Doubt it," said Matt. "Besides, it… his cancer's in full remission, but if something happens, I don't want him to be in a place like this."
"What kind of cancer?"
"Ewing's sarcoma. They found it in his hip. It's… yeah, it's been hell treating it, but they think he's all right for now," said Matt, quietly relieved. He didn't believe things were over, but for right now they were out of the woods. "Losing Foggy here felt like I really lost him, and I just…" Haven't been able to recover.
"Haven't been the same…?" Dean wasn't trying to rub it in, and maybe he came off more growly than he meant to as his inebriation slowly sobered into a hangover, but he meant to be empathetic.
"Sounds about right," Matt muttered. "I'm trying to dig myself out and trying not to be so annoyingly depressing to other people, but that's easier said than done."
"When you figure out how to do that, call me." Dean snorted. He had a hard time believing people wanted him around in general, but with Cas gone, he was insufferable. He drank more, he didn't clean up after himself, and he knew he was snappy with people even when he didn't mean to be.
"Claire thinks I should be talking to mental health. Hell, I think I should be talking to mental health. I just haven't gotten around to it yet," said Matt with a shrug. "I probably need a cocktail of antidepressants they don't have and there's not a lot therapy can do for me that getting punched can't."
"Maybe she's right? I dunno. Some people are depressed because life is goddamn depressing."
"I know the difference between life being depressing and me being depressed. It's different. Not by much, but … different." Matt sighed, trying to listen to Felicia in the other room. He didn't want to talk about her, not now. Not when Felicia was right here. He knew she was feeling the strain on their relationship and she wasn't happy, and Matt needed to do something for her sake. It wasn't just about him anymore, he couldn't hole up by himself and pretend he was fine every time he left his apartment.
"But that's … look. You want help with Cas, you just point me in the right direction and tell me what to do."
In the other room, Felicia had sat down on the bed and propped her tablet up on a pillow so she could watch it while she picked a comb through her hair. There were a few things loaded up to the server that didn't star people who were actually living in the compound. Normally she didn't have many compunctions about setting up in the living room to do whatever she wanted, and sitting on a couch surely would have been more comfortable, but she still hadn't really warmed up to Dean after he'd possessed Alison and Matt a few months ago, even if he was human now.
"We're doing what can be done at this point," Dean said, unsatisfied. "I'm not even useful right now."
"What's the plan? Is there a plan?"
"There's a plan. Not sure it's entirely legal, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't want you or your cop girlfriend overhearing it." Dean said it with an affectionate smirk.
Matt started to smile. "You know a good attorney if you need help, I'll stand by you with just about anything you choose to do."
"We may need it. Not sure yet. If they want to imprison me or exile me after this, then fine. As long as Lucifer's out of the game and Cas is free, I couldn't really give a shit."
"If Cas wakes up and you're not okay, he's not going to be fine with that," said Matt, as gently as he could. "Lucifer's bad news. You're not going to not have support of the people here, Dean. No one's going to exile you for getting the devil out of your partner."
"Cas and I aren't…" It started like a rejection of something, or a denial, but Dean shifted and sat up straight, gesturing in a way that Matt probably wouldn't pick up on. "Neither of us are okay. I don't think we'll ever be okay people. I mean, hell, the first time we met I was…" He trailed off, shook his head. "He's never seen me undamaged. He'll be coming home to the same old same old."
Matt frowned. "So?"
"So… I'm not worried about me."
"He'll want you here, whether you're 'okay' or not. He's not going to care if you're fine, but he's going to want you. So just … don't throw yourself away," said Matt. "I get it. I get the impulse."
"You know what's dumb, though? I really thought we'd be fine here and that this shit wouldn't even be able to happen. What a joke, right?" It was what Dean got for being complacent here, thinking they could live their day to day without having to pretend to be people they weren't but still not being asked to risk their lives all the time.
"What did happen?" Matt asked. "How did he even get here? How did he get into Cas? Angels need consent, you said."
"He probably got it at home, yeah. Cas volunteered himself to be Lucifer's vessel because Lucifer's the only one who can fight something called The Darkness, 'cause… why fucking not The Darkness, right? Lucifer beat it last time." Dean shook his head, his jaw grinding. The more he talked about it, the more he hated it. "Then Cas got one of those update things and boom, Lucifer's here."
"That's bullshit," Matt muttered, rubbing at his temples. "We're going to solve this, all of us. You're going to solve this. And you're going to save him. You just have to hold out hope, all right?"
He tipped his head a little. "That means drinking less."
Dean laughed. "You my sponsor now, Matt?"
"You smell terrible. And you're not going to save Cas if you're too drunk to function."
"I'm fine."
"No. You're not. You gotta cut back, Dean."
"I'm fine," Dean repeated, sitting up a little straighter like that would make him look more sober. "So I had a heavy night. I've got reasons."
Matt leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It was the kind of stance where most people would have made pointed eye contact, but Matt couldn't. "I know. I know you do. And some nights you'll feel like you're going to break. But you can't break. Not right now. You can't break because Cas still needs you."
"Seriously, dude? Don't pull an Intervention on me. I've probably been drunk for the last twenty years, I'm not stopping now."
...That sounded worse than it was supposed to, didn't it?
Matt shrugged a shoulder. "I grew up with an alcoholic, Dean. And he was the one who taught me that it doesn't matter how many times you get knocked down. What matters is getting back up."
"I don't need inspirational taglines, okay? I'm good," Dean assured him, a little too quickly. "I'm fine. I roll out of bed every morning whether I'm sober or not."
Matt waited for a few seconds, like he was hoping Dean would say something else — but when he got nothing, he sighed and slumped back. "All right," he said. And that was that. Matt didn't have the energy to give a pep talk to another broken person.
"Yeah."
Dean dragged his tablet out of his jacket to check it, like he'd see anything that made the situation better. He didn't.