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janie_tangerine--
“Have you ever tried looking inside the drawers?” Dean asks some time later. It’s probably the lamest pillow talk he has ever had with anyone, but for some reason his eyes ended up on the only piece of furniture in the room which actually has a couple.
Eddie, who is currently lying next to him on the hard bed, the both of them still naked, just shrugs.
“Not really. I assumed they’d be empty. The cupboard is, anyway. But if you’re dying to know, by all means, be my guest.” His voice is slightly flirty again and Dean finds that he really doesn’t mind; anyway, he stands up and moves across the room, picking his discarded jeans along the way.
Drawer number one is empty, he finds out when he opens it.
Drawer number two is an entire other story.
Dean blinks and stares at the content for a good ten seconds, then shrugs and turns towards Eddie.
“Any chance you know what is this?” he asks, taking out of the drawer a huge revolver, the handle made of sandal wood, most definitely a pretty fucking fine gun and nothing someone who doesn’t know exactly what to do with it could handle.
Eddie is out of the bed in a second, not even picking the clothes along the way, and takes the gun from him in a haste; he stares at it for a good while, turning it in his hands, looking at it from every angle, his expression one of total surprise.
His hands are shaking when he’s apparently done.
“Christ, that’s my fucking gun. Or well. Roland’s gun, but he kinda gave that to me. I think you saw that.”
“Did you have just one?”
“Yeah, why…”
Dean eyes the drawer and Eddie’s skin becomes the color of ash when he realizes that there’s the other gun in the set in there, too. Along with enough bullets to last for a while.
--
When they get out of the house, the door closes with a sound of finality and Dean sees a gunslinger running across the desert again, and fuck if that sand isn’t bothersome; he coughs a couple of times, then turns to Eddie, who is currently turning both of the guns in his hands.
“The fuck does this mean? I mean, what am I even supposed to do with these if I’m stuck here?”
“Beats me, pal. But shouldn’t they be… not here?”
“Well, yeah. One’s supposed to be in some dumpster in NY. The other… well, Roland should have it, right?”
“Maybe. Or, I dunno, but if he’s looping or whatever it’s called every time then he… never gave it to you in theory, right? He should start fresh with the both of them.”
“Yeah,” Eddie asks, his voice suddenly grim, “you probably have a point. Fuck this. Seriously, fuck this.”
He’s looking at the guns like he’d destroy them if he could, and Dean is about to ask what the fuck is going on, but then Eddie shakes his head and his laugh is bitter.
“It just feels like some kind of second hand prize. You worked your ass off, you helped your almighty hero become a better person, and since no one was going to have a use for these, you can keep them for a souvenir. It’s not like he remembers you, anyway.”
Dean can see the point even too well. And Christ, he isn’t good at cheering people up, Sam was the one who could. He isn’t even good at making people feel better just by being there and staying silent. That was Cas’s thing, not his. Fuck, he wishes so much that he’d get another chance. But now he doesn’t and there isn’t much he can do, and so even if it’s chick-flick and he feels ridiculous, as soon as Eddie lays one of the guns on the ground he comes closer and grabs his hand.
It feels goddamn fucking ridiculous but Eddie’s palm turns alongside his and then there’s a crushing grip around his fingers, and so he doesn’t let go.
--
It doesn’t change that there needs to be an explanation.
Dean thinks about it as he watches Eddie shooting people while naked for the second time. After all, Sam could have been the college smart one, but even if Dean never considered himself that much of a genius, he hunted alone for years and fuck, he even finished Finnegan’s Wake, and he also understood it along the way; he can work this shit out. And so, since he also did read his share of mystery novels and saw enough detective movies, he decides to just take an example and try some deduction, here.
So. He’s dead and stuck in the afterlife with another dead guy. The afterlife might be another world, for all they know. Check.
They might be dead, but their hearts beat, they have blood flowing, they most definitely feel pain and pleasure and they most definitely emit fluids when it’s required. So they really don’t look dead. Check.
He and the dead guy knew each other from another time, sort of, and they like each other. Quite enough. Check.
The dead guy found two guns, one of which he used to own, in a drawer. Guns that should in theory be elsewhere. One in a dumpster, one lost in… either time or space. Conveniently, there’s two of them. So, someone must have taken the effort to take them and put them there. Also, dead guy would’ve never found them if Dean hadn’t been around. Check.
So, he might have been here because he was meant to find the guns. Good theory. Plausible, even. It still doesn’t explain anything, because if they found them then they obviously need to do something with them, and it can’t be sitting around a house in the sand.
Wait.
Dean stands up and moves forward, not worried about the whole screen thing (it moves along with them). They’re still in a desert, in theory, but the sand isn’t there anymore. The air is clean and while for that minute in which they saw both the man in black and the Roland guy it was fucking hot, now it’s chilly.
And when Dean woke up it was the exactly same thing.
“Eddie?” he asks, his voice shaking. “Can you answer me a question?”
Eddie turns to him and rushes to his side, probably having noticed that Dean’s entire frame is also half-shaking.
“What the fuck?”
“I think I got it. But I need an answer. Each time this loop started, you felt like you were in the desert just at the beginning, right? I mean, whenever it starts you feel sand and heat and wind and then it stops and there’s just the whole seeing-your-life thing, right?”
“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but I never really…”
“Oh Jesus fucking Christ almighty,” Dean whispers, his voice shaking, because he thinks he has it, and if he does, then they’re not done with the world yet. Or the world isn’t done with them. Or this world isn’t, at least.
“Man, you’re scaring the hell out of me. What…”
“The beginning. It isn’t like the rest. The beginning is real.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow and shakes his head.
“I’m not following you. What the fuck do you even mean?”
“I mean, have you ever tried leaving during that minute? Because I think we could. I mean. Think about it. This thing follows us around and doesn’t let us go far, but the air is clean, there isn’t sand, the temperature is okay. We can’t leave. But if we tried when we actually can feel the place we’re in?”
Eddie’s eyes suddenly widen in understanding and then he falls on his knees to the ground. Dean joins him. He really doesn’t have the force to stand up.
“It means that whoever’s in fucking charge is actually…”
“I think they’re giving you a chance to fix things before they even start. I… I think that every time it starts, we’re in one of the loops. Or maybe always the same one. We just never jumped into it, but if we did we could just, follow them, your pal and the other one, I mean, and maybe catch up with ‘em, and… I mean, think about it. You didn’t find the guns before, and no way you could do it without them. But suddenly I end up here instead of goddamn Heaven or Hell. And having been in both of them, well, you know… That’s my goddamn world. It’d have made sense if I had ended up there. Except that I’m here. And guess what, we already met once, we hit off pretty nicely…”
“That’s an understatement,” Eddie snickers, and Dean feels some of the tension draining.
“Yeah, well, that. Then I find the guns. Which apparently, are two.”
Eddie’s eyes widen again as he nods.
“Sounds to me like someone wants me to be part of this, too.”
“Oh, Jesus. Yeah. We could follow them. I could reach Roland before he starts making mistakes again. And we were four in our ka-tet, and I know how the whole thing works, and if Jake turns up, which I think might happen at this point, we’d be four before he even spoke to goddamn Flagg, and… and oh fuck. You could actually go back.”
“What?” Dean almost shouts. He hadn’t taken that into account.
“Yeah. I mean, either we find the black sphere thing again or whatever, but there are ways to open a door on a specific world. So even if that archangel killed you in your own, if you find the right door or if you make it the right one, you could definitely take a nice trip back. You saw how Susannah did, right?”
Eddie’s slightly smiling now, and Dean can feel his own face matching the expression.
“Fuck, you’re right. And if you don’t get yourself killed maybe you could go up that Tower with your guy and maybe that’s what it takes to break the loop? Or you can convince him not to go up at all. If he remembers you, ‘course…”
“Dude. I have his own guns. And I know him well fucking enough. I’ll make him.” Eddie is downright grinning now, and Dean thinks he’s, too, and damn, they might actually have a way out of here.
“Seems like we both can gain something outta this, huh?”
“My friend, that’s pretty much it, if you ask me. And that stated, if next time this starts we’re really trying to get out, take this.”
Eddie hands him one of the guns and Dean almost refuses to take it; when he does, his fingers are slightly trembling.
“Are you sure? I really…”
“Man, I never learned to shoot with two fucking guns at the same time. And if you’re coming with me, you’re not coming weaponless.”
“I never shot anything with a beauty like this!”
Eddie just rolls his eyes and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Man, seriously, you’re perfectly fucking worthy of a goddamn gun. Trust me on that.”
Then he turns all of a sudden, takes his, checks it for a second, then aims and shoots five perfectly aligned holes in the wall of the house.
“Show me what you got,” he says then, and fuck, Dean thinks, he’s different while handling a gun. It seems like it’s another of his limbs, and well, fucking makes sense. Guy was a gunslinger, of course he can shoot.
It’s not like Dean can’t shoot, either.
“I’m game,” he says, and then he aims. The gun feels incredibly heavy in his hand, but his fingers fit just right around the handle, and he knows a good weapon when he handles one. And this is a pretty fucking fine beauty. And Dean learned how to shoot before his twelfth birthday and Eddie’s right, he can’t just start finding himself unworthy of guns which aren’t his and are way finer than anything he ever shot some son of a bitch with.
He narrows his eyes, aims a couple of inches below Eddie’s holes and shoots.
After, there’s a second row of five identical holes under the first in the wall.
Eddie whistles as soon as he notices it.
“Man, you’re goddamn fucking worthy of shooting with that, for all I care.”
Dean barely hears him; he’s too satisfied with himself to care, and then it hits him. He hasn’t felt like this in ages. Like he could take over the world with just that gun in his hand and someone watching his back. Like he can do something and do it well. And he hasn’t felt a rush at shooting at something in a very, very long while.
He has an idea that however it ends, he surely won’t get bored. And if he ever manages to get back home and see Sam and Cas again, he most definitely won’t make the same mistakes and he’ll sure as fuck won’t waste it as he wasted the last six months feeling sorry for himself.
“Well,” he says then, tucking the gun inside the waistband of his jeans, marveling at how great it fits there, “then we’re a team?”
Eddie literally beams at him as he slaps his shoulder. “Fuck yes, we are. Now we just need to wait it out. Damn, waiting is going to feel so horrible. We’re barely at the beginning of the whole thing.”
“I guess we’ll just keep each other entertained until then?” Dean asks again, and damn, he hasn’t sounded this cocky in ages.
“So we’re friends with benefits now, at least until we get out of here?” Eddie retorts, moving just slightly closer, and Dean thinks he likes the sound of that.
“Deal,” he answers, and the kiss coming after isn’t anything like the one that happened when he sealed another kind of contract.
--
They get out of the house as soon as the darkness seems to be lifting. Just a bit, but Eddie is an expert, and says they’ll have to be out in the dark for just seconds.
They are, and then there’s a desert in front of them. Sand, and heat, and wind, and it feels real.
“Are we ready?” Eddie asks, the gun in his hand.
“Lead the way,” Dean answers, his voice steady and sure, as he draws out his own.
--
Someplace else, and we can’t say where and when because it really transcends space and time, someone else is watching everything from his metaphorical first row seat, and he’s smiling like someone who knows what’s a job well done when he sees one. As they leave the house, a candy wrapper is disintegrated into the air and a bar of very fine chocolate materializes in its place.
“Well, Dean, now you can’t say I never did anything for you, either, especially since you did realize you had to say yes,” he says, even though he didn’t do that just for Dean. He never really liked the way that part of the universe worked, so he’s just solving two problems with one action. And thank fuck he likes book series, or he’d have never found out about that particular part of the universe.
Hey, there are a bunch of worlds, one can’t know them all.
“This’ll be fucking fun,” he smirks, and then he snaps his fingers and starts digging in the box of chocolates that just materialized.
--
The man in black flew across the desert and three gunslingers followed.
End.
“Have you ever tried looking inside the drawers?” Dean asks some time later. It’s probably the lamest pillow talk he has ever had with anyone, but for some reason his eyes ended up on the only piece of furniture in the room which actually has a couple.
Eddie, who is currently lying next to him on the hard bed, the both of them still naked, just shrugs.
“Not really. I assumed they’d be empty. The cupboard is, anyway. But if you’re dying to know, by all means, be my guest.” His voice is slightly flirty again and Dean finds that he really doesn’t mind; anyway, he stands up and moves across the room, picking his discarded jeans along the way.
Drawer number one is empty, he finds out when he opens it.
Drawer number two is an entire other story.
Dean blinks and stares at the content for a good ten seconds, then shrugs and turns towards Eddie.
“Any chance you know what is this?” he asks, taking out of the drawer a huge revolver, the handle made of sandal wood, most definitely a pretty fucking fine gun and nothing someone who doesn’t know exactly what to do with it could handle.
Eddie is out of the bed in a second, not even picking the clothes along the way, and takes the gun from him in a haste; he stares at it for a good while, turning it in his hands, looking at it from every angle, his expression one of total surprise.
His hands are shaking when he’s apparently done.
“Christ, that’s my fucking gun. Or well. Roland’s gun, but he kinda gave that to me. I think you saw that.”
“Did you have just one?”
“Yeah, why…”
Dean eyes the drawer and Eddie’s skin becomes the color of ash when he realizes that there’s the other gun in the set in there, too. Along with enough bullets to last for a while.
--
When they get out of the house, the door closes with a sound of finality and Dean sees a gunslinger running across the desert again, and fuck if that sand isn’t bothersome; he coughs a couple of times, then turns to Eddie, who is currently turning both of the guns in his hands.
“The fuck does this mean? I mean, what am I even supposed to do with these if I’m stuck here?”
“Beats me, pal. But shouldn’t they be… not here?”
“Well, yeah. One’s supposed to be in some dumpster in NY. The other… well, Roland should have it, right?”
“Maybe. Or, I dunno, but if he’s looping or whatever it’s called every time then he… never gave it to you in theory, right? He should start fresh with the both of them.”
“Yeah,” Eddie asks, his voice suddenly grim, “you probably have a point. Fuck this. Seriously, fuck this.”
He’s looking at the guns like he’d destroy them if he could, and Dean is about to ask what the fuck is going on, but then Eddie shakes his head and his laugh is bitter.
“It just feels like some kind of second hand prize. You worked your ass off, you helped your almighty hero become a better person, and since no one was going to have a use for these, you can keep them for a souvenir. It’s not like he remembers you, anyway.”
Dean can see the point even too well. And Christ, he isn’t good at cheering people up, Sam was the one who could. He isn’t even good at making people feel better just by being there and staying silent. That was Cas’s thing, not his. Fuck, he wishes so much that he’d get another chance. But now he doesn’t and there isn’t much he can do, and so even if it’s chick-flick and he feels ridiculous, as soon as Eddie lays one of the guns on the ground he comes closer and grabs his hand.
It feels goddamn fucking ridiculous but Eddie’s palm turns alongside his and then there’s a crushing grip around his fingers, and so he doesn’t let go.
--
It doesn’t change that there needs to be an explanation.
Dean thinks about it as he watches Eddie shooting people while naked for the second time. After all, Sam could have been the college smart one, but even if Dean never considered himself that much of a genius, he hunted alone for years and fuck, he even finished Finnegan’s Wake, and he also understood it along the way; he can work this shit out. And so, since he also did read his share of mystery novels and saw enough detective movies, he decides to just take an example and try some deduction, here.
So. He’s dead and stuck in the afterlife with another dead guy. The afterlife might be another world, for all they know. Check.
They might be dead, but their hearts beat, they have blood flowing, they most definitely feel pain and pleasure and they most definitely emit fluids when it’s required. So they really don’t look dead. Check.
He and the dead guy knew each other from another time, sort of, and they like each other. Quite enough. Check.
The dead guy found two guns, one of which he used to own, in a drawer. Guns that should in theory be elsewhere. One in a dumpster, one lost in… either time or space. Conveniently, there’s two of them. So, someone must have taken the effort to take them and put them there. Also, dead guy would’ve never found them if Dean hadn’t been around. Check.
So, he might have been here because he was meant to find the guns. Good theory. Plausible, even. It still doesn’t explain anything, because if they found them then they obviously need to do something with them, and it can’t be sitting around a house in the sand.
Wait.
Dean stands up and moves forward, not worried about the whole screen thing (it moves along with them). They’re still in a desert, in theory, but the sand isn’t there anymore. The air is clean and while for that minute in which they saw both the man in black and the Roland guy it was fucking hot, now it’s chilly.
And when Dean woke up it was the exactly same thing.
“Eddie?” he asks, his voice shaking. “Can you answer me a question?”
Eddie turns to him and rushes to his side, probably having noticed that Dean’s entire frame is also half-shaking.
“What the fuck?”
“I think I got it. But I need an answer. Each time this loop started, you felt like you were in the desert just at the beginning, right? I mean, whenever it starts you feel sand and heat and wind and then it stops and there’s just the whole seeing-your-life thing, right?”
“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but I never really…”
“Oh Jesus fucking Christ almighty,” Dean whispers, his voice shaking, because he thinks he has it, and if he does, then they’re not done with the world yet. Or the world isn’t done with them. Or this world isn’t, at least.
“Man, you’re scaring the hell out of me. What…”
“The beginning. It isn’t like the rest. The beginning is real.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow and shakes his head.
“I’m not following you. What the fuck do you even mean?”
“I mean, have you ever tried leaving during that minute? Because I think we could. I mean. Think about it. This thing follows us around and doesn’t let us go far, but the air is clean, there isn’t sand, the temperature is okay. We can’t leave. But if we tried when we actually can feel the place we’re in?”
Eddie’s eyes suddenly widen in understanding and then he falls on his knees to the ground. Dean joins him. He really doesn’t have the force to stand up.
“It means that whoever’s in fucking charge is actually…”
“I think they’re giving you a chance to fix things before they even start. I… I think that every time it starts, we’re in one of the loops. Or maybe always the same one. We just never jumped into it, but if we did we could just, follow them, your pal and the other one, I mean, and maybe catch up with ‘em, and… I mean, think about it. You didn’t find the guns before, and no way you could do it without them. But suddenly I end up here instead of goddamn Heaven or Hell. And having been in both of them, well, you know… That’s my goddamn world. It’d have made sense if I had ended up there. Except that I’m here. And guess what, we already met once, we hit off pretty nicely…”
“That’s an understatement,” Eddie snickers, and Dean feels some of the tension draining.
“Yeah, well, that. Then I find the guns. Which apparently, are two.”
Eddie’s eyes widen again as he nods.
“Sounds to me like someone wants me to be part of this, too.”
“Oh, Jesus. Yeah. We could follow them. I could reach Roland before he starts making mistakes again. And we were four in our ka-tet, and I know how the whole thing works, and if Jake turns up, which I think might happen at this point, we’d be four before he even spoke to goddamn Flagg, and… and oh fuck. You could actually go back.”
“What?” Dean almost shouts. He hadn’t taken that into account.
“Yeah. I mean, either we find the black sphere thing again or whatever, but there are ways to open a door on a specific world. So even if that archangel killed you in your own, if you find the right door or if you make it the right one, you could definitely take a nice trip back. You saw how Susannah did, right?”
Eddie’s slightly smiling now, and Dean can feel his own face matching the expression.
“Fuck, you’re right. And if you don’t get yourself killed maybe you could go up that Tower with your guy and maybe that’s what it takes to break the loop? Or you can convince him not to go up at all. If he remembers you, ‘course…”
“Dude. I have his own guns. And I know him well fucking enough. I’ll make him.” Eddie is downright grinning now, and Dean thinks he’s, too, and damn, they might actually have a way out of here.
“Seems like we both can gain something outta this, huh?”
“My friend, that’s pretty much it, if you ask me. And that stated, if next time this starts we’re really trying to get out, take this.”
Eddie hands him one of the guns and Dean almost refuses to take it; when he does, his fingers are slightly trembling.
“Are you sure? I really…”
“Man, I never learned to shoot with two fucking guns at the same time. And if you’re coming with me, you’re not coming weaponless.”
“I never shot anything with a beauty like this!”
Eddie just rolls his eyes and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Man, seriously, you’re perfectly fucking worthy of a goddamn gun. Trust me on that.”
Then he turns all of a sudden, takes his, checks it for a second, then aims and shoots five perfectly aligned holes in the wall of the house.
“Show me what you got,” he says then, and fuck, Dean thinks, he’s different while handling a gun. It seems like it’s another of his limbs, and well, fucking makes sense. Guy was a gunslinger, of course he can shoot.
It’s not like Dean can’t shoot, either.
“I’m game,” he says, and then he aims. The gun feels incredibly heavy in his hand, but his fingers fit just right around the handle, and he knows a good weapon when he handles one. And this is a pretty fucking fine beauty. And Dean learned how to shoot before his twelfth birthday and Eddie’s right, he can’t just start finding himself unworthy of guns which aren’t his and are way finer than anything he ever shot some son of a bitch with.
He narrows his eyes, aims a couple of inches below Eddie’s holes and shoots.
After, there’s a second row of five identical holes under the first in the wall.
Eddie whistles as soon as he notices it.
“Man, you’re goddamn fucking worthy of shooting with that, for all I care.”
Dean barely hears him; he’s too satisfied with himself to care, and then it hits him. He hasn’t felt like this in ages. Like he could take over the world with just that gun in his hand and someone watching his back. Like he can do something and do it well. And he hasn’t felt a rush at shooting at something in a very, very long while.
He has an idea that however it ends, he surely won’t get bored. And if he ever manages to get back home and see Sam and Cas again, he most definitely won’t make the same mistakes and he’ll sure as fuck won’t waste it as he wasted the last six months feeling sorry for himself.
“Well,” he says then, tucking the gun inside the waistband of his jeans, marveling at how great it fits there, “then we’re a team?”
Eddie literally beams at him as he slaps his shoulder. “Fuck yes, we are. Now we just need to wait it out. Damn, waiting is going to feel so horrible. We’re barely at the beginning of the whole thing.”
“I guess we’ll just keep each other entertained until then?” Dean asks again, and damn, he hasn’t sounded this cocky in ages.
“So we’re friends with benefits now, at least until we get out of here?” Eddie retorts, moving just slightly closer, and Dean thinks he likes the sound of that.
“Deal,” he answers, and the kiss coming after isn’t anything like the one that happened when he sealed another kind of contract.
--
They get out of the house as soon as the darkness seems to be lifting. Just a bit, but Eddie is an expert, and says they’ll have to be out in the dark for just seconds.
They are, and then there’s a desert in front of them. Sand, and heat, and wind, and it feels real.
“Are we ready?” Eddie asks, the gun in his hand.
“Lead the way,” Dean answers, his voice steady and sure, as he draws out his own.
--
Someplace else, and we can’t say where and when because it really transcends space and time, someone else is watching everything from his metaphorical first row seat, and he’s smiling like someone who knows what’s a job well done when he sees one. As they leave the house, a candy wrapper is disintegrated into the air and a bar of very fine chocolate materializes in its place.
“Well, Dean, now you can’t say I never did anything for you, either, especially since you did realize you had to say yes,” he says, even though he didn’t do that just for Dean. He never really liked the way that part of the universe worked, so he’s just solving two problems with one action. And thank fuck he likes book series, or he’d have never found out about that particular part of the universe.
Hey, there are a bunch of worlds, one can’t know them all.
“This’ll be fucking fun,” he smirks, and then he snaps his fingers and starts digging in the box of chocolates that just materialized.
--
The man in black flew across the desert and three gunslingers followed.
End.
