InsaneJournal

Who? AU!Dean & Darcy R.
What? Walking her to her place, possibly crashing there, angsttastic goodtimes, etc.
Where? Roadhouse, random streets or whatever, the complex.
When? After his commpost/arrival
Rating? Probably not super high, but contains: crazy angst / mentions of firey death / potentially vaguely suicidalish!Dean, probably swearing, etc.


If Dean’s watch was right, it had been three hours and twenty-four minutes. It felt like three seconds and three years all at once, the time stretched and warped, and Dean’s hands were blistered, wrapped in clean white gauze and his lungs ached from the smoke. He could still smell it, it was on him, in him, it wasn’t ever going to go away. His mouth and throat felt like they were full of ash, and he tried not to think about the source of it, about the fact that some of that ash, some of the smoke all over him, was Sam.

Sam was dead.

Sam, with his normal and his safety... he’d dreamed of being normal his entire life, of having a home that stayed in one place, a job that wasn’t hunting and a family that wasn’t them... and what did it get him, in the end? Nothing. It got him killed, turned his hopes and dreams and normal, safe life to ashes, along with everything else.

Now Dean was somehow in Lawrence of all places - one of the last places he ever wanted to be again, Paulo Alto and Lawence and apparently this was the universe’s first choice for a place to drop him, a great way to kick him when he’s already down. Simple and effective - throw one more reminder at him about how all of this was his fault and watch him fall down.

Dean didn’t know if he trusted this Darcy woman - but she was offering a place to stay, and company, background noise at the least, so he didn’t have to hear the roaring fire or splintering wood in the spaces where sound belonged. It could still be a trap, he supposed - but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care, if it was. What harm would it do? It’s not like he had any reason outside of pure self-preservation, and at this point that wasn’t exactly high on his priority list.

Following the directions she’d given, he ended up outside a bar - apparently this was where he was supposed to be, rather than just following his own direction, because right now being drunk would be wonderful, but not yet. First, he’d said he’d walk this woman home, and she was either nice or devious enough to be offering him somewhere to crash, and if she was playing some kind of game he’d deal with it, and if she wasn’t he’d deal with that, too, and this whole screwed up alternate reality situation thing, make sure it wasn’t going to be a problem (because, damnit, whether he liked it or not he still cared, and if this was a job he couldn’t just walk away from it)...

...and sooner or later he’d slip away from all of them long enough to-

The smile he offered when she came into view was almost as fake as the driver’s license in his wallet, but it held up, and it didn’t wobble or break. He knew he had to look bad - palms wrapped in gauze, soot and ash on his skin and the smell of smoke had to be carrying, he couldn’t smell anything else, and he had a feeling if he looked in the mirror he’d just look wrong, dead - but that didn’t mean he was going to make it worse by breaking down right now, thanks.

“Hey. Darcy, right?”