(no subject)

[always_enduphere]

The chapel is small.  Built for mourners on the edge of the dead, its walls are clean and white, sturdy, meant for shelter.  Wood and brick, not meant to contain the darkness now held within them, twitching in the form of the body strapped prone to a hasty trap made of splintered pews.

It's quiet inside, removed enough from the city that the only sounds are rattling breaths from the body in chains, snatches of anxious voices and the occasional rumble of the floor, creaking and groaning from unseen onslaught, but holding.

There's an energy in the air, an electricity that raises hackles along with hairs, pouring from the ravaged body in an angry throb, but within the trap it can't do more than rattle walls, beneath the chains that smoke its skin, it can't do more than hiss curses on borrowed breath, and promise agonies yet to come.

In the center of the trap, the thing wearing Dean Winchester bares its teeth, blinking black towards any with stomach left to look at him.

Comments

[likeaplanet]

"Okay," I say, stopping where I stand, only because of sharper pain in his voice, blood sliding wet and dark from his lips.

It won't be long, now. Whatever the fuck Sam and Cas are doin', they better hurry the fuck up.

"Just hold on for us a little bit longer, okay?" None of us are leaving this fuckin' chapel until this is over, one way or another. All of us know that.

[always_enduphere]

"M'so fucking tired." It's meant in warning, but it comes out a plea. He's so tired, hollowed out and stuffed up with something worse than death, worse than anything he's felt since the rack. Dean just wants it to stop, and he doesn't care that Neil can't make it, he just needs it heard. "Please. God, make it stop."

[likeaplanet]

"God," I breathe, the sound of it hitching on a sob, and I want to move in closer, I want to touch him and let him know it's gonna be okay, but I don't want to cause him any more pain. He's trying to fucking hard to keep that thing under control, and getting too close is just gonna make it worse for him.

"We're gonna make it stop, Dean. I promise."

[always_enduphere]

Neil means it. He's sure, and for once, Dean doesn't dismiss him for an amateur in all this. He's seen too much, is still bearing the scars of too much, and maybe he doesn't know all the whys and hows but Neil's not backing down, and he's got Sam and Cas and Mike to stand with.

Somehow, it makes it easier to hold the demon down a moment longer, raise his gaze past his own blood splattered boots and find Neil's own. "You're a good friend. Sorry I never told you that."

[likeaplanet]

I'm not sure if he never has. Not here, in this city, but maybe a long time ago. But it's not like I ever worried. We were always easy friends, the two of us, and it wasn't something we ever needed to talk about. But after everything that's happened, maybe I'd forgotten it.

But now, standing on the edge of this fuckin' devil's trap, it seems a little too much like a final goodbye. Saying things he might not have, otherwise, 'cause he might not ever get the chance again.

"Shit, man. Don't tell me you're fuckin' sorry right now, please. You can tell me again when you're not bleedin' out the fuckin' mouth, okay?"