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[ Matt looks up, brightening. He is unironically thrilled that some combination of his navigational advice and Dean's natural capacity has successfully gotten him here. He's also a bit jealous of Dean's denim and flannel: Matt's closet in the manor seems to populate exclusively with costumes and the yuppiest nonsense imaginable. He's started stealing other people's clothes just to feel normal. ]

That's me, [ he says pleasantly. ] Dean? [ He gestures towards the empty chairs. ] Have a seat--or head to the bar first, I guess, I haven't had good luck getting anyone to come over here. I didn't want to start drinking without you.

In the flesh.

[ Can't blame him, if Dean's closet was full of dandy crap he'd be stealing other peoples shit, too. ]

Kind of you. Give me one second. [ He will in fact head to the bar, and reappear a few moments later with the entire bottle and his own glass. ] That's better.

[ The appearance of a whole bottle surprises Matt into a laugh. ]

Shit, maybe I should've started after all, [ he says. Matt plucks up his own glass and clinks it against the bottle's side. ] Cheers.

[ He takes a small, savoring sip of bourbon. Considers the taste as he swallows, the warmth in his throat. ]

As long as we're stuck here and our options are limited, I do appreciate that the booze tastes good.

[ He flashes a little grin, sly as he pours it and holds it up, taking a nice long sip. Thank God for small favors, it's good. ]

Cheers. [ What a dopamine hit, that taste, the heat that blooms in his chest. Much much better. ] No kidding. Already kind of a hellhole and shitty booze would be one hell of a dealbreaker.

[ Matt sighs. ]

Kind of a hellhole. Yeah. [ It's hard to be too depressed in the face of Dean's grin, at least. Matt takes another pull from his glass. ] So, I ... reread what I sent you from the hospital. [ His lips twitch. ] Thanks for bearing with me through all that. I can talk a little bit more about what I meant regarding energy harvesting, but honestly, I don't have a whole lot to show for how long I've been here, apart from theories.

Well, least that's familiar. There's a lot less screaming here than in hell, though.

[ And look, he has to laugh a little, because despite learning some shit it was kinda funny to talk to someone that high off pain meds. ]

No problem. I am curious about the harvesting thing. That's incredibly creepy.

[ Matt's eyebrows arch for his hairline at the invocation of a more literal kind of hell. Though Dean's not the first person to demonstrate familiarity with the place. Matt's roommate, the Literal Christian Devil, has that honor. ]

It's absolutely creepy, [ Matt agrees. He glances off into the distance as he tries to organize his thoughts. ] Okay, how I got to the harvesting idea is ...

One of the first things that happened when I arrived here is they threw a party with cake shaped astonishingly like human people. If you ate it, it gave you pretty strange appetites. [ Matt shrugs. ] I should've died. I don't know why I didn't. And afterwards, analyzing the leftover cake showed it was actually transfigured human remains ... and one of the kitchen staff I managed to track down with this girl Betty said that kind of thing happened "all the time."

[ Matt takes another sip from his glass. ]

Since then, that hasn't been the only grisly transformation moment. There was a "wolfman" over the summer who was actually just a wolf and a person spliced together. I tried to help them, but it didn't work. [ Matt's quiet a moment, subdued, before he rouses himself from his downward dip. ] Um. More transfigured corpses popped up. And I've noticed a kind of commonality in some of the weird urges we get around here. They tend to be arousal, atypical kinks, violence, or activation of trauma. Basically, things that create a lot of emotional energy.

I guess it could just be straight-up torture, but I wonder if this isn't some kind of generative cycle.

[ All of their bodies and spirits hitched to the grinding gears of change: bones elongating and contracting, blood greasing the skids. Energy rising like steam from the wreckage. ]

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cw: discussion of cannibalism, murder, body horror