american oracle

the seam

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 bunkers 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 airvents 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 scents the air, 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.