The Dean Winchester (dean) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-05-01 00:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, dean winchester, stefan salvatore |
Who: Dean Winchester and Stefan Salvatore
When: Friday, April 22
Where: Stefan’s place
What: Stefan says goodbye to his friend
Rating/Warnings: TVD Drama, vampires, werewolves, talk of sickness/dying
Status: Complete when posted
Dean insisted upon coming over to say goodbye to Stefan. Stefan was sweaty and in incredible amounts of pain, wandering around his house aimlessly. He’d already been to see Bubbles, and the way he’d left her was weighing on him. She was broken on the outside. Stefan was broken on the inside. And his shoulder was covered in horrible, black lines, boils, ripping open in places where the werewolf venom was spreading. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by dark circles, his complexion was yellow.
All in all, Stefan wasn’t doing well. He was still on his feet, but he was struggling with the weight of invisible phantoms and hallucinations. Seeing Dean would hopefully ground him back in reality.
He went to answer the door at the sound of the knock. Anna was out, and Stefan wasn’t sure where Lexi or Caroline were. If they were even home.
~*~
Holding up a six pack of beer, Dean said, "Somebody order some beer and a hunter? Tough. You got both. Also? There is tequila. This is the time for tequila if there was ever time for tequila."
Stefan looked worse than Dean had thought he'd be. His color was terrible which surprised him. Vamps generally didn't change color from anything other than blood loss. They could be bled dry without dying. In his world, Dean knew the only way to take one out was to sever the head. The way Stefan looked made him think it might be a mercy killing if someone helped him along the way.
There was no such thing as mercy in Dean Winchester's world.
"I swear, man, if you weren't what you are? I'd tell you how you looked like the walking dead. As it stands? That's too cliche even for me."
~*~
“I’d let Satan himself in through the front door if he brought beer and tequila.” Stefan had no idea that his words might ring different bells for Dean Winchester that they would have rung for anyone else. But he stepped to the side to admit his friend and now boss into the house.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m the one dying here, and you can’t even be nice and lie to me.” Stefan teased, thankful for a reason to smile. He hadn’t had one in a while, and wasn’t expecting one again until the end. Which was going to be… painful. And soon.
Stefan closed the door behind Dean. “Bust open that tequila, would ya?”
~*~
Dying was something Dean Winchester didn't take as seriously as other people did. There was something about being resurrected over and over which had a guy passing death off as nothing more serious than a head cold. He hated the way it seemed to be settling its cloak around Stefan's shoulders, the great wings of death coming to wrap around him to take him wherever he was bound for when he left this plane.
He opened the tequila and looked around before taking a deep draw directly from the bottle, handing it over to Stefan afterwards, "Nice place. Wish I were here visiting under better circumstances. Next time, right?"
Dean sounded as if his voice was the result of swallowing a mixture of gravel and glass; for a moment, his mind pulled up his father telling him to take his brother and run. There would be no taking Stefan anywhere as there was nowhere to run to where he could get away from this. Orange County seemed to take in the laws differently than other places. It seemed to take in every reality's individual laws even when those laws contradicted other laws already in place.
"I figured we could forgo the glasses since I'm not doing your dishes and you clearly aren't in any shape to do them yourself. Wait. Unless you have a hot maid here? You got one of those tucked away?"
~*~
Stefan drank straight from the bottle, too. What he had wasn't catching, and even if it was, the alcohol was gonna kill off almost anything they passed back and forth, anyway. Dean was a good guy--one of the few good men that Stefan was particularly close with in Orange County. The vampire considered himself to be incredibly lucky to have such a man come visit him only hours before he died.
A little snort escaped him. He held the bottle back out to Dean. "I wish I had a hot maid tucked away. I'm sure Anna would do the dishes. She's... around somewhere." Anna wasn't dealing with the idea that Stefan was dying very well. She'd spent a good portion of the day crying, then locked herself away in her room. Stefan couldn't blame her. She'd lost her parents relatively recently, and the girl hadn't processed all of that really well, either.
"But I couldn't ask her to do that for me. So we'll just pass it back and forth like teenagers outside a seven-eleven."
~*~
It was Dean's turn to scoff at the idea of sitting in front of some convenience store swapping bottles. He had no idea what that was like in either life. During his dreams, Dean Winchester was a hunter from a family of hunters in a long legacy of hunters. Dean Winchester was the son of a fucked-up alcoholic in this world. He had no ability to relate to 'normal' in either reality because he wasn't normal anywhere.
"I passed my bottle at the bar, thanks. Never did the convenience store thing. My old man was an alcoholic. I'd worry about that except I think I got enough issues without worrying over something that minor."
He took a small draw from the bottle as he looked around. The place looked classy the way Stefan was classy. Dean could imagine he'd picked out all the decor himself. He wondered where Stefan's family was in all this. Did they know what he was? Were they like him? Had he cut them off when his Dreams had taken over?
A thousand questions could come to mind when someone knew they only had a little time left with a person they cared for, but before that time? They took them for granted. It was as if they neglected asking anything because they knew they could always ask later until there wasn't a later. This could be the last time Dean spent time with Stefan; he didn't have many friends to begin with and having one less?
Didn't sit right with him.
"So now we go and sit down, I think. I like the idea of getting you falling down drunk, but I don't like the idea of having to carry you to bed, Prince Charming."
~*~
Stefan Salvatore hadn't been normal in his Dream world since the Civil War. In this world, it'd been... well, a few months, really. He'd turned into a vampire on October first of last year, so before that things had been relatively normal. Aside from the Dreams, of course.
"I'd rather pass a bottle in my living room than a bar. They frown upon customers putting their mouths on the bottles there." Unless they were compelled not to care. Stefan was trying his best not to do too much of that, but it came up sometimes.
The house was only partially Stefan's. Anna and Lexi had incredible taste. Stefan didn't mind simply being along for the ride on that part. He followed Dean around the living room, accepting the bottle back when his friend was willing to give it, and gulping hungrily from the mouth of it.
A little chuckle escaped him. "Good luck getting me falling down drunk." He said. His vampire body burned off the alcohol rapidly, making it very difficult for him to get drunk of any kind. "But I do enjoy the mental image of you holding me in a fireman's grip."
~*~
"Yeah, I know. It's a crime to be this sexy, but what can I say? I'm a natural born criminal."
Dean took the bottle to take another drink as he collapsed onto the couch, patting the place beside him for Stefan. They could share a couch. Exchange old war stories. Talk about anything other than the fact Stefan clearly wasn't in good shape and Dean had zero clues as to how to help him in this world. If they'd been in his world? He could have dispatched him to Purgatory and fished Stefan back out again no worse for wear.
Life was different in the OC.
Letting his head fall back against the sofa, Dean asked, "Is there anything at all we can do? There's gotta be something we can try other than sitting here drinking until you literally die from it."
~*~
Stefan moved over to the sofa and sat down gingerly. The bite venom had spread through most of his back by now, causing blue veins of pain and blisters to be visible on the exposed parts of his upper arm and neck. He leaned back against the sofa, then exhaled. It was obvious he was in pain. Lots of pain. But as he settled against the cushion, it seemed to lessen just a little.
"There's only one cure for a werewolf bite. It doesn't exist in this world, only in my Dream World." Stefan explained. "It's the blood of a vampire werewolf hybrid named Klaus Mikaelson. And though he exists in this world, he's not a vampire werewolf hybrid." Stefan took another long gulp from the bottle. He was starting to feel the affects of the alcohol now, though the other things he felt were still stronger.
“So we drink. That’s about all we can do.”
~*~
Dean couldn't argue with the certainty in Stefan's voice. He nodded to show he had heard. He understood. There was no indication he agreed with what Stefan believed. Dean wasn't going to argue with him either. Time and a place for everything, right?
This was the time for drinking.
"So we drink."
They were both the kind who knew what it was to be the victim of someone else's master plan. Dean didn't want to compare scars. He didn't want to talk about dying. All he wanted to do was share space with a man he considered his friend when that man might not have anything more than time left to his name.
"On the bright side? You've still got great hair and I make a great fashion accessory. Means you might go out sitting pretty. I'll drink to that if nothing else."
He toasted nothing before taking a swig of tequila and passing the bottle to Stefan.
Ninety-nine bottles and all that crap.