Chapter Text
The bunker sits, silent, still. It cannot predict earthquakes, but on this particular afternoon when a 5.6 ripples across the Kansas landscape, it at least knows how to lock down against them. The doors shut. The systems go on hold until the world’s gone still again, except for the rattle of books on the shelves. Inside, they wait for it to end, and when it finally does there’s very little damage.
Save for two, very minor things.
The bunker knows how to protect itself.
Dean looks up from where he’s found himself under the table when the shaking finally stops. The lights flick back on at half-power, flooding red light over Castiel’s features. The angel sits on the stool across from him, unmoving.
“Jesus, Cas. Nice survival instincts, there.”
Castiel looks down at him curiously.
“There are several tons of earth above us, Dean. Were the bunker to collapse, a table would only prolong your suffering.”
Dean pulls himself out from under the oak table with a shrug, dusting himself off— was that a Cheeto? Gross—
“Eh, spent a few months in southern California as a kid. Drills every five minutes— who’d think they’d stick? Earthquake, under desk. Stop drop ’n roll, tornado, doorframe, ‘this is your brain on drugs’, all that junk…” He pushes a lamp back into the center of the table from where it’d nearly rattled off.
Castiel slides off the stool, crouching by the bookshelf to pick up a fallen paperweight. There are books scattered across the floor, a broken beer bottle near the armchair. Something old, ceramic, and probably important had spread dusty splinters near the stairs. If Sam wasn’t on a run in town, he’d be upset— that, or spouting even more earthquake factoids in Dean’s ear, because that’s really what he wants to hear at the moment.
Dean tilts his head up, frowning at the ceiling as he realizes that he doesn’t hear the whir of the air vents either. He stills.
“...That was natural, right?”
It’s been quiet for what feels like weeks, ever since God and the Darkness just… left. No Lucifer, no hunts, no world-ending catastrophe, and Dean has been hovering somewhere between tentative calm and just about ready to slice ‘n’ dice the first thing that looks at him sideways.
“I sense nothing unusual.”
Dean relaxes partway; that was something, at least. “Earthquakes in friggin’ Kansas,” he grouses. “I’d say end times, if we hadn’t run that horse into the ground ten times over.”
Castiel straightens, placing the bronze globe back on the shelf before he turns, considering the air.
“...Do you smell that, Dean?”
“Smell what? Ah— c’mon, don’t tell me something sprung a leak.”
“No. Not that. Something more ...familiar.”
Dean tries in vain to find anything other than the faint smell of old paper that never quite faded from the war room, and shrugs.
“I got nothin’, Cas.” Dean shakes his head, “Hey, I’m gonna take a look around, see if anything aside from the lights’ve gone hinky. I figure maybe a fuse blew somewhere. Hell, maybe they’re gamed to pop off in case of a quake- Men of Letters planned for just about everything else, so I mean, who knows. You coming?”
Castiel nods after a moment, trailing after.
“Good, ‘cause I hate opening up that damn fusebox.”
The door to the electrical room is— well, there isn’t one, not since Dean had gone at it with black eyes and a claw hammer. He’d taken the scraps that were left off the hinges afterward, painstakingly sweeping up every splinter, the same meticulously hamfisted way he’s tried to clean up every other mess his fall had made.
It’s always work to get the fusebox pried open. The metal is warped somewhere vital — again, him— and the hinges are perpetually jammed.
Naturally, it opens like a flower under Castiel’s touch.
Dean rolls his eyes, leaning past him to run his fingers over each switch, finding several popped. He makes a small, satisfied sound, flipping them and listening for the cool rush of air.
Nothing happens. He tries again, frowning at the general vicinity of the ceiling as the dull red lights blink vapidly at him.
“Isn’t that one for the lighting system?” Castiel points out over his shoulder, gravel against his ear, and Dean nearly swears, skin prickling from the bolt of his jaw to his gut.
“What, you’re an electrician now?”
“It’s labeled, Dean.”
Dean squints— sure enough, there are neat little tape labels by some of the switches, even though they’re all numbered (no doubt by some chart in one a thousand other weird little manuals to this place). He recognizes Sam’s angular scrawl on the labels, marking off the need to know stuff.
The ones he’d flipped had mostly been unlabeled, and small enough he hadn’t noticed them missing before— so hopefully, nothing too catastrophic.
The lights come back to life with a muted flicker, and he gives the box another once-over before shoving the door shut with a creak. It still takes him jamming his shoulder against it to get it closed all the way, but it’s almost satisfying.
Castiel had been waiting patiently as Dean tinkered, but his attention draws away. Dean straightens as he heads toward the door.
“What’s up, Cas?”
“...That smell, again. It’s so familiar.”
Still, Castiel sounds curious more than anything, and Dean’s shoulders loosen. Following Castiel winds them deeper into the bunker, past bedrooms and halls and empty doorways.
Their trail ends at the stairwell to the garage. Curls of pale smoke lick out from underneath the closed door in tenuous wisps.
“The hell…” Dean trails off.
They dissipate in a stop-motion snarl of fog as Castiel opens the door calmly and walks inside.
“Cas—”
Gray spills down the stairs, twisting and coiling around Castiel’s ankles. He leaves a gash in the thin haze as he strides in, and Dean’s right on his heels only to find the angel staring down at a long, jagged crack in the cement floor.
Dean grabs Castiel’s shoulder to pull him back. He’s already got the neck of his own shirt pulled up, pressed over his mouth and nose just in case, and his voice is muffled but still annoyed.
“Careful! Shit, is this— gas? That could be toxic, probably a leak, we’ve gotta get out—”
Castiel shakes his head, eyes flicking to Dean’s for a moment. It’s probably supposed to be reassuring.
“It’s only steam. Something… natural, I believe. Not chemical fumes.”
Dean eyes him, but tugs his shirt back down into place anyway. “Cas, if I’m sucking up asbestos right now, you’re the one fixing it,” he grumbles, raking his hands through his hair. “Steam… so you think there’s a leaking pipe or some kinda, I don’t know, groundwater or something under there?”
“It’s possible. The earthquake may have shaken something out of place.”
Dean nods slowly, considering the ragged seam. “And now, maybe it’s running up against something hot. A pipe, maybe. Could be what’s causing all this steam…”
It’s already starting to dwindle, a dull seep instead of a rush.
“Hell,” Dean mutters, bending over to look at the broken floor. “I don’t think we have anything to fix this, either.” He fishes his phone out of his back pocket, “Maybe Sam’s still in town, we could have him pick up—”
“Pick up what?”
Sam’s broad shoulders emerge from the stairwell, climbing up to frown at the crack and then, at them. Despite it, Dean can’t help the familiar frisson of relief at seeing him.
“Sam! Hey, you feel that shaker?”
“Hard to miss. I was at the Gas ‘n Sip, the cashier nearly had a heart attack.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said. So— I’m assuming that’s not a deadly gas leak, judging by how you’re both just standing there, breathing it all in.”
“Steam,” Castiel offers helpfully, and Dean seconds it with a flippant nod, the kind that says sure, why not more than anything else.
Sam raises both brows, and Dean shrugs at him.
At some point in the last several minutes, the crack has stopped leaking entirely, silent and still. Now, it’s just a jagged split, barely big enough to jam your fingers in and shallow enough that if you did, your hand wouldn’t fit all the way— especially if your hands were broad as Castiel’s, as he does just that.
“Hey—”
“—That’s not hot?” Sam asks over Dean’s exasperation.
“Warm.” Castiel stands, brushing his hand against his coat with a considering frown, “and somewhat damp.”
Dean opens his mouth, because if there’s not a joke there about somewhat damp crevices then who is he, seriously, but another glance at Castiel’s hands and he fumbles the pass. He settles for giving him a look as Sam’s stupid mouth curves.
“...I’ll look up how to patch it,” Sam offers. “Just concrete, probably.”
“And in the meantime, if that’s the worst of it? Halle-freakin’-lujah. C’mon. Let’s make sure this place is all still in one piece.”
It doesn’t take long for the three of them to canvasse the rest of the bunker, converging again in the kitchen with nothing new. It’s midafternoon by Dean’s internal clock; his phone confirms it as much as the stifling warmth. It’s late summer in Lebanon, Kansas, and unseasonably warm, even underground and buffered by concrete and wards and who knows what else.
The realization that it actually shouldn’t be that hot is how they figure out that the ventilation may be working well and good, but any sort of temperature control? Nonexistent.
They spend two hours and some change painstakingly tracing what seems like miles of winding pipes and vents until they reach what seems like it could just maybe be the source of the problem.
This, however, leaves them staring up at a latticework vent in the kitchen twelve feet over their heads.
Sam’s the first to break the muggy silence.
“...So. What do we know about century-old air conditioning systems?”
“I’m gonna go ahead and guess ‘not enough’ for five hundred, Alex.” Dean sighs. “...I’ll grab a ladder.”
And somehow, despite Dean’s lack of enthusiasm (or practical knowledge of any ventilation systems that aren’t directly connected to the Impala), he finds himself the one up on top of the ancient, tottering ladder they dug up from the back of some storage room.
Below, having been assigned to tool duty, Castiel lays out the contents of the rusty toolbox in neat rows by size.
Dean resettles his maglite between his teeth, studying the layout. A fine film of dust lies pristinely over everything, nothing touched in ages. Stifling a sneeze as he starts to dig into the mess, he tries not to think about the miles of empty air between his feet and the floor.
“This is way more friggin’ complicated than it’s got any right to be. Half of this… who knows. It’s like we’ve got everything under the sun up here…”
Dean catches sight of half a dozen sigils he sort of recognizes, little patterns wending through a rat’s nest of colored lines, circuits and runes scribed into metal and old plastic-dipped wires.
No wonder this place flew under the radar.
The real trick is picking out what's actually part of the air system. He just figures houses, bunkers, whatever— they’re pretty much like cars, right? They’ve both got bits to keep them going, and it all works together. It’s just a puzzle, he tells himself pointedly as he uncovers yet another goddamn tangle of copper and plastic.
But unlike most puzzles, there's way too much magic and mysticism tied up in all this shit to make heads or tails of. Give him a carburetor, a radiator- that, he can get it running in no time. This? It's bullshit. A bitch and a half all twisted up together— maybe if he wasn’t sweltering half to death he’d be seeing it clearer.
And he must have voiced at least some of that out loud, because Sam is already agreeing from below.
“I mean, Dean, there’s a lot we just don’t know about this place.”
Dean scowls at the dust smeared all the way up his elbows, like he can stare right through the flimsy ceiling tiles and light Sam on fire. Just a little. Just enough to singe off some of his dumb flippy hair.
“No, Sam, really. Is that the problem.”
There’s no response and Sam is out of eyeshot, so he can only assume Sam is making an equally dumb face at Cas. Wimp.
Dean swears again as he follows another rune-scribed wire to dusty, dingy nowhere.
“This dinosaur-ass piece of crap… Cas, hand me the pliers.”
“Maybe you should try that green wire. Should it be hanging like that?”
“Green— what, immortal being but you’re colorblind? It’s blue. Quit with the backseat driving, Cas.”
“You can’t drive from the backseat, Dean. And we’re not in a car."
Dean cranes back to glare down at him, jerking instead as the ladder wobbles and his pulse jumpstarts.
“Sam, you better be holding this thing-”
“I have it.” He hears Castiel’s voice instead, the ladder steadying almost instantly, “Sam left to go look at the electrical panel again and see if he’s missed anything.”
“What?! How long’s he been gone?? If I die—”
“I have you,” Castiel repeats. Dean’s boot treads find balance on the metal steps like he’s testing them.
“Sure. Sure, just— I’m gonna be pissed if a nine-foot drop is what kills me, alright? Hold it steady.”
“Yes, the great Dean Winchester, fallen by domestic accident while defunct angel watches. The headlines would disappoint many, I’m sure.”
First things first, Dean jams his hand down far enough into view to flip him off— but mostly he’s strangely comforted by Castiel’s dry tone. Something about it always helps put things in perspective. Even when that perspective is majorly annoying.
If Dean was overly warm before, wriggling around inside the cramped crawlspace is just plain stifling. He’d discarded his overshirt ages before, tying it around his waist. The hair on his neck prickles with sweat, caked in fine dust.
At least it looks like he might finally be getting somewhere. There’d been several false starts, rabbit trails before he found something broken— and if it's broken and he can get his hands on it? Hell if he can’t fix it somehow.
Another twist, a wincing scrape of wrench on metal, and he feels more than hears something start to churn. Sullen air whispers against his side from the vent he's pressed up against, and he whoops, knocking the wrench against the ceiling tile. He slides the panel closed before he’s scurrying down the ladder. He even jumps the last couple feet, now that the ground is solidly in sight.
Hell if he can’t get his own goddamn house in order.
He holds the wrench out to Castiel with a grin, “Tim ‘the Toolman’ Taylor can kiss my handy ass—”
“Kind of a deep cut there, don’t you think so, Dean?” Sam leans into the kitchen.
“Shut it, Al. You and hidey-ho neighborino over here just keep on sittin’ on your thumbs and luxuriate in all the cool air, just make all the cracks you want— I am taking a shower.” Dean announces, making a detour to the fridge to snag a cold one, “and this? Is coming with me.”
“You do shower beers now?” Sam raises a brow.
“I don’t see how that would improve the experience of either the beer or the shower,” Castiel remarks.
“Good points. Y’know what? I’m taking two.” Dean replies cheerily. He tilts the bottles at them with a wink as he strides out of the room.
Later, cooled down even if the water was somehow barely below body temperature, Dean returns to the kitchen relaxed. He drops the glass empties into the recycling bin Sam insisted they should try.
“You know, if tossing our beer bottles in a different trash can is what saves the world, Sammy, either we aren’t working hard enough or we’ve been going about this entirely the wrong way.”
“With how many we go through, I really don’t know.” Sam replies dryly from where he’s sitting across from Castiel at the kitchen table, several old manuals laid out in front of him.
Meanwhile, Castiel is already doing that forehead-wrinkling deep recall kind of look. Dean immediately shakes his head to stave him off.
“Cas, how about if you don’t share exactly how many, I’ll make us some sweet-ass victory burgers?”
“Domestic triumph always did suit you, huh?” Sam teases as Castiel perks. Dean’s already rifling through the fridge, good mood undaunted.
“Go ahead, keep it up. All you’ll be getting is...” he peers in disgust at something from the back of the fridge, “...sentient lettuce? Jesus.”
Dinner is like any other night, despite the heaviness of the air. The stove radiates a more normal heat, and the burgers are flipping delicious, if Dean says so himself.
To be fair, he’s spent more trial and error time than he cares to count up figuring out what went into a burger that really made Cas’ mouth water. And, despite Sam’s grumbling about heart attacks and cholesterol, his brother always puts aside the salads and quinoa and unending broiled chicken whenever Dean cooks for them.
The air conditioner rattles a few times overhead as they eat, drawing alarmed looks, but nothing comes of it.
It’s still cool by the time Dean goes to sleep, so it seems like it’ll hold well enough. The air drifts over his skin before he drags his covers over himself, burrowing down into a pillow he’s had long enough to wear down to just the right shape instead of some bleach-sour motel pillow all lumpy with the weight of a hundred different heads.
There isn’t anything for now, and that’s okay, he tells himself, just like he tells himself all the time, as of late. No hunts, no Blade, no absentee gods or their amorous sisters.
Dean sleeps, and his dreams are full of strangeness, blurs of bayou fog and wet warmth, enough to suffocate in, that drags down and condenses in his straining lungs. Somehow, something about that bile blackness is familiar enough to feel like home, enough that he sinks instead of struggling—
He wakes to a drowning heat that pulses dully under his skin, sticking to drenched sheets. Everything is fog, curling in his peripheral vision in the dark. Above him, around him, pooling over his covers where he’d kicked them off. They’d tangled around his legs, and he’s barely shoved them off before he realizes it isn’t fog at all. It’s billowing steam, like before, and stark silence, and—
Dean swears and slings himself out of bed, rubbing away the haze in his eyes. Stretching for the lamp switch floods the room with too-bright light— and reveals nothing but clear air around himself, despite the pervasive heat. He blinks, scanning the room. In the top corner, the air vent spits out the frailest curls of steam.
He throws his knife back onto his rumpled bed and pulls on his robe, immediately regretting it in the muggy warmth and yanking it back off. Fuck it.
In the kitchen, he nearly runs right into Sam. Sam, holding two cups of tea, looking less concerned and more like a heat stroke victim, skin flushed pink and hair sticking to his neck.
Either way, Dean’s heartbeat slows.
“So, I think maybe your fixes didn’t hold,” Sam suggests, and as far as a just-woken Sam goes, it’s downright tactful.
“Yeah, no kidding.” Dean replies tartly.
Sam considers him. Dean’s still pulling on his shirt. Already, it sticks to his skin.
“...You hungry?” Sam offers, and before Dean can reply, Castiel appears out of the dim behind his brother.
“I see you’ve both noticed that the repairs have failed.”
Dean takes personal offense to this because 2am Dean has already reached his limit on blunt, but Sam’s already on the ball, waving a conciliatory hand in the air.
“Something must’ve come loose, that’s all. We should just leave it for now. It’s warm, but the air’s still moving- so the ventilation’s working, at least enough that we won’t suffocate in our sleep.”
“And?”
“So it’s not an emergency. We sweat it out and try to get some sleep. Then tomorrow, we can head into town, see if we can get it figured out.”
“We could just go right now—”
“It’s past 3, Dean. Nowhere’s open. Lebanon, remember?”
Dean’s shirt is stuck to him again, and he fans himself with a hand as sweat rolls down his throat to seep into his crewneck.
“Shit. Yeah… Yeah, okay. So tomorrow, we figure it out. Tonight, we just boil. Peachy.”
Sam hands him a cup of tea. It’s not his thing, even if Sam’s been trying to get him in on his whole plant water kick, but he’s thirsty, and it’s cooler than he is. He doesn’t recognize the flavor— it’s tart, earthy and sour on his tongue, and he pulls a face as he drinks it.
“C’mon, Dean, we survived whole summers in the Impala. At least here, there’s room to stretch out. We even have a few fans around, don’t we?”
“...I mean, probably,” Dean concedes, albeit grudgingly. “I call the one from this decade, though. You can have the one that wails like Mary Magdalene.”
“Hey, if that’s what it takes to get your head out of the gears and gets me back in bed? Fine, you big baby.”
Dean smirks as Sam’s broad frame lumbers out of the kitchen. He takes his half-empty mug to the sink, spinning on the tap to rinse it out, but yanks back just as quick as scalding hot water spills out, burning his fingers. He drops the mug. It clatters into the sink, spilling the loose pink and green leaves of the tea.
“Sonnuva bitch—”
His skin is already pinking sharply. It’s only a few fingers, but they’re stinging dry and hot and, well, that’s definitely gonna leave a mark. He waves his hand in the air to try and cool them, because twisting the tap to what’s generally the frigid prairie morning side doesn’t do anything to lower the temperature. He goes for the icebox next, only stilling when Cas steps up behind him and reaches out to clasp his hand in his own.
Dean automatically tries to brush him off, but it’s too late.
It’s hard to imagine warmth feeling great at the very moment— but healing the way Cas does it, it’s a soft film, one that wells up and burns under his skin until the outside doesn’t, and Cas lets him wave him off when it’s through— even if waving him off just means the angel cedes a few inches to propriety.
Dean shifts from foot to foot, turning to face Castiel fully. He’s barefoot, sweaty and sticky in rumpled pajamas— but not Cas, no. Castiel, as always, is dressed in full suit and tie, trenchcoat falling wrinkled over his shoulders. Not that Dean minds the look— to the contrary, anything else unsettles him on Cas— but when Dean’s not dressed, he doesn’t like the contrast. The balance is too pointedly off and the whole holy tax accountant thing feels all too real, leaving Dean a snotty immoral ape barefoot before a calculated wavelength of pure will.
To put it short, it’s not his thing.
“It’s three in the morning, Cas. You’ve gotta loosen up a little. Get you some PJs, pajama pants, just something other than salaryman on overtime, alright?”
“It’s past four, Dean. You’re aware that I don’t sleep. What would I possibly need pajamas for?”
“I don’t know, man, just— they’re nice. Sometimes it’s nice to put on something you can’t possibly be a productive member of society in.” Dean’s already accepted that he won’t get through to Cas on the matter, but he does reach out to loosen his tie another centimeter with a tug. Castiel crooks his brows at him as Dean yawns, big and messy.
“... You’re tired, Dean. Go to sleep.”
There’s not much he can argue there. Soon enough, he’s plugging in a creaky fan next to his bed and angling it for maximum air. It’d be cooler if he left the door open, but it feels strange- not like he hasn’t slept in dodgier places, basically out in the open even if his back’s against the wall or Sammy or shelter.
It’s barely half an hour before he’s given up even that, jamming the rickety old fan in the doorway and letting the door close on it, a whirring breeze that’s at least marginally cooler than his room is currently. It’s funny— he thought it’d be futile, trying to sleep that way, but here… It feels different, somehow.
Dean expects the prickling feeling of being watched to keep his eyelids light, but instead he’s the one keeping himself up. He just keeps staring at his hand.
Cas healed it; he knows he did. Dean knows that strange ripple of warmth down to the molecule. It looks normal at every angle he can find.
But somehow, it still stings.