I wrote this post-apocalyptic Dean/Cas short story for @malmuses quite some time ago and then sort of forgot it existed. I just remembered, decided to read it and went, "Hey! This is alright!" So I'm posting it. Please enjoy. :)
Relationships: Dean/Cas
Rating: T
Tags: Post-Apocalypse, Zombies, Reunion, Kiss, Second Chances, Hopeful Ending
Warm
Castiel imagined his reunion with Dean many times.
In some versions, Dean embraced him tenderly, tears streaming down his face as he begged forgiveness for leaving Castiel behind and vowed to love him until the end of time.
In others, Dean shot him in the head and left him for dead a second time.
But there’s something strangely prosaic about the actual reality of it: Dean yanking at his arm with a grip that’s tight to the point of pain, pulling him to the edge of the clearing and into the shelter of the trees.
Of course, Castiel wasn’t fool enough to approach Dean during the daytime. No, he waited until after dark, slinking around the edges of the makeshift camp Dean and his unit had set up. Waiting for a moment when Dean was alone.
Even then, Castiel almost missed his chance out of sheer nerves. His heart beat a frantic rhythm against his ribs as he stepped out of a patch of shadows, raised his hands to show he was unarmed and whispered, “Hello, Dean.”
Dean’s face fell slack. For the span of two seconds, he looked vulnerable. But the very next moment, his eyes shuttered, rendering his expression an impenetrable mask. It was then that he grabbed hold of Castiel and started pulling him towards the treeline.
They’ve made it into the shelter of the forest now. Dean tugs impatiently at Castiel’s arm to urge him further, safely out of sight of anyone in the camp. There’s danger in venturing so far from the other humans, though Castiel suspects this isn’t the right moment to point that out. (He may have regained his own humanity, but many of the Affected have not. Some of them could be lurking in the forest even now, waiting to devour unwary travelers.)
They walk for another minute or so. Finally, Dean seems satisfied with the amount of concealment afforded by their surroundings. The trees here tower far above them, their bark cracked with age, their trunks wide enough to hide two grown men from prying eyes.
Dean slams Castiel up against one of them. His left forearm digs into Castiel’s chest, holding him in position, while his right hand grips Castiel’s chin, tight enough to hurt. (But God, how wonderful it is to be able to feel that hurt again. Castiel remembers much too well what it was like to feel nothing at all except awful, all-consuming hunger.)
Dean’s eyes flit across Castiel’s face, unsure of where to land. Though it’s nighttime, the moon is nearly full and the stars are out, affording Castiel a good enough view of Dean’s face to see the fear there, the anger, the bewilderment. But maybe, just maybe, a tiny spark of hope too. Until now, Castiel was afraid that his long absence might have extinguished any hope Dean used to have left.
“Cas?”
Dean’s voice is rougher than Castiel remembers. As if he’s more accustomed to using it for shouting these days, than for the tender endearments he used to press into Castiel’s skin.
“It’s me,” Castiel confirms. The words come out garbled because Dean still has a tight hold on his chin.
Dean’s hands drop, and he steps away. Though his touch was violent, Castiel misses it immediately.
All of Dean’s breath seems to rush out of him. He shakes his head, over and over, bunching his fists at his sides. A muscle ticks in his jaw. There’s so much tension in him. There always used to be, and Castiel used to know just how to help Dean let it go. He wonders if he still has that power.
“How?” Dean asks. He sounds lost. “How can you be here? I… I saw.” He shakes his head again, then takes a step back toward Castiel, pointing a finger straight at his face. “I did. I saw that thing take you down. I saw it… tear into your throat, and I…” Dean breaks off, and Castiel realizes to his shock and consternation that Dean is about to cry. In the moonlight bleeding through the tree canopy above them, Castiel can tell there’s a gleam in Dean’s eyes, and his face is a study in guilt and grief. “You didn’t make it. I know you didn’t.” A single tear trickles down his cheek and Dean wipes at it angrily. The motion smears the patch of dirt on his cheeks. Castiel allows himself a moment of wistfulness for the days when people had the means to wash up regularly. Those days are long gone.
With infinite caution, Castiel steps away from the tree at his back, closer to Dean. Dean doesn’t retreat, but Castiel doesn’t miss the way he subtly widens his stance, bracing for an attack.
“You were right, Dean. I didn’t. For a while, I was… like them.” He doesn’t need to elaborate. They both know well enough that Castiel is talking about the snarling, ravenous monsters who used to be their friends, family members and neighbors. “But I got better.”
This time, the shake of Dean’s head seems almost dazed, as if he wants to believe but can’t. “That’s impossible, Cas. Once you turn into one of those things, there’s… there’s no coming back.”
“There is,” Castiel insists. “See for yourself.” Slowly, telegraphing his move, he reaches for Dean’s hand and places it once more against his face. His cheek this time.
Dean exhales shakily. “You’re warm,” he whispers.
Castiel nods. “They aren’t warm. I wasn’t. But now I am.”
Throughout their relationship, Dean always had a knack for surprising Castiel — whether it was with a particularly thoughtful gift, or with his almost preternatural ability to sense Castiel’s darker moods and lighten them.
Dean surprises Castiel now. He surges forward across what little distance remains between them.
And then their lips touch for the first time in more than three years.
Two of those years, Castiel spent driven by the constant, vise-grip hunger to hunt and feed. Six months, he spent slowly clawing his way back to himself. And the final six months, he spent traveling the country, searching for Dean in the ruins of civilization.
The kiss isn’t gentle. It stings and bruises, as if Dean, too, has spent his time hungry. But this is a different kind of hunger: one full of heat and joy and the beautiful confusion of loving someone.
When Dean finally breaks the kiss, he keeps his hand on Castiel’s cheek, as though to lose that contact would mean losing faith that this is real. That they’re here, together.
“Are there… are there more?” Dean asks quietly. “More like you?”
Castiel nods. The motion shifts Dean’s hand against his face, so Castiel covers it with his own. He doesn’t want Dean’s touch to leave him; not again. “I met quite a few.”
Dean swallows, hard. “How did we not know about this?”
There’s not as much mystery in it as Dean might think. Castiel has heard plenty of tales from other former Affected: of the giant fortress at New Lebanon, armed to the teeth, which only sends out occasional patrols, but is otherwise self-sufficient. Built by John Winchester and his sons.
It took Castiel weeks of lurking in New Lebanon’s vicinity before he happened upon this patrol led by Dean himself.
Still, there will be time to get into all that later. “You know now,” Castiel says simply.
“Yeah.” Dean licks his lips, a nervous tic that means he’s lost in thought; Castiel always found it incredibly distracting. (He still does.) When he snaps back to himself, Dean’s free hand curls around the back of Castiel’s neck, pulling him closer until they’re locked in an embrace. Dean smells like sweat and motor oil.
“Come with us,” he whispers. “If… if Sammy and Dad see… if they see what happened to you, they’ll believe there’s a way to come back from all this. They have to.”
Castiel wishes he could share Dean’s optimism. Sam was always a good person, if perhaps a little too enamored of his own cleverness, but John Winchester… he’s not a man inclined to change his mind once it’s made up. Still, Castiel didn’t search this long or come this far to let Dean out of his sight again.
“Alright,” he says.
The dawning of Dean’s smile is the most beautiful thing he’s seen since the dead started eating the living.
The world is still broken; still replete with monsters and terror. But Dean is here, and Castiel is warm, and maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of something better.
***
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Stephen King's The Dark Tower did the multiverse trope before it was cool
I was 16-17 when the live-action adaptation was announced and decided to read the Dark Tower series since I wasn't about to watch the movie. A week and a half later, I've ran through the main series like a drug addict through a mile-long line of coke and I'm reading the prequels and standalone material like "Wind Through the Keyhole" to get more content. Lemme explain:
The World of Roland Deschain is part-western, part-metafiction, part-scifi, part-post apocalypse, and part-fantasy. To mix all these genres together, Stephen King simply layered them on top of each other. To summarize: thousands of years before the start of our main story, a highly advanced human civilization waged war on every level (nuclear, chemical, biological, etc) and wiped themselves out, leaving robots, AI, mutated creatures, and broken-down tech behind them. Later, a collection of kingdoms known as "Baronies" arise and here is when Roland Deschain, our hero, is born. The kingdoms combine elements of medieval fantasy and the Western genres. There's wizards and magic, but also horses and guns. Instead of sword and sorcery, it's gun and sorcery, with Roland's gun being forged from King Arthur's own sword so gunslingers are basically medieval knights with codes of honor and customs.
Before book 1 begins, Roland's world as he knew it is ended and he must find the Dark Tower to prevent all of the multiverse from collapsing. Turns out that before the super-advanced society collapsed into global war, they figured out how to make portals to other universes and that the Dark Tower is the hub of all known reality. The Tower stands on six "beams" of metaphysical material but the people of the old world replaced them with their own material in a bid to warp reality for their own gain. Before they could, their world fell and the Beams have spent millennia slowly rotting since they're now made from real material. Due to this rot, the reality Roland inhabits has basically been on its deathbed for a long time. Time and the cardinal directions are eldritch and wonky, the poisons and radiation released during the war of the ancients still taint the soil and mutate the animals into monstrosities, and deserts dominate the landscape. What robots that survived their creators' destruction are all sociopathic and insane from the isolation. There are tears in reality that let in creatures or can take you to other realities and what humans remain are scavengers and eke out poor livings. The series has something for everyone so even if you aren't invested in the plot, you'd still be impressed at how cowboys, robots, mutants, magic, and demons can exist in technically the same universe.
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