Closer 1/2 (Sequel to Good Vibrations)
Title: Closer
Fandom/Pairing: Supernatural - Dean and Cas boning.
Author: Ainoche
Words: 9220
Warnings: Men banging each other. Sam being a pain in the ass. AU after 7.18-ish. We're pretending that after Sam and Dean left Cas with Meg, this shit went down.
Summary: At his brother's insistence, Dean returns to find Cas at the asylum to see what can be done to fix him.
-- -- --
It was almost too good, having Sam back. The guy slept six or so hours a night, drank a normal amount of coffee, told jokes, had a conscience, wanted to drive. It had taken him some time to get there, to find a new rhythm, to get over what had happened with Cas, but once they'd tracked down a freaky Japanese drinking monster a couple of towns over, Sam was practically perfect.
And he let Dean stew in his own juices, like a good brother. He just sat in the passenger seat and suggested they head back the way they'd come like it was casual and Dean hadn't noticed they were doing one hundred mile wide doughnuts around a certain hospital. The fact that he had managed to drive them completely around the city in question had not escaped Sam's attention, either, though he hadn't said a word about it. Instead, he selected cases that were unimportant and brought them closer, presented valid arguments for why they needed to go despite the impending threat from the Leviathans, and made a face every time Dean drove in the longest route to their new destination. It had almost become a game, but that it wasn't fun for either of them.
"Dean," Sam sighed at him when he stopped to turn on another country road that would keep them as far from Cas as possible. "You realize you're taking us three hundred miles out of the way triangulating like this."
"What you talking about? It's scenic." Dean turned to gesture out the window and found himself pointing at a field surrounded by barbed wire, at the corner of which a heifer was having the steamiest, smelliest crap he'd ever seen a cow produce. "I can't get enough of it." He said through a grimace.
"You're running away."
"From what?"
"Feathers."
Dean had to look at Sam then, completely caught off guard. They did not talk about the awkward times that they accidentally walked in on one another slightly before or slightly after or smack in the middle of flogging the dolphin, and they did not bring up words or phrases they might have heard in the process. And Dean had never told Sam that no, he hadn't nicknamed his junk Feathers, he'd called Cas that, in a moment of fantasy. Sam didn't know that Cas had left Dean a recording of himself reading what amounted to an erotic short story. Sam didn't know that Cas had given up halfway through and beat the bishop thinking about Dean. And Sam didn't know that Dean had unleashed a little pent up sexual frustration to that recording before he'd stumbled into the amnesiac angel.
What Sam didn't know would be the death of Dean. Especially if the younger Winchester kept his eyebrows raised in that perfectly knowing sort of way.
"Feathers? What? You think I'm an ornithophobe now?"
Sam's eyes narrowed and his mouth turned into a thin line. "I think you're a Casophobe, Dean."
Dean put his foot to the gas pedal and drove them through the stop sign. "Sam, we've been over this. There's nothing we can do for him right now. Not without some... divine intervention or something." He tried to keep his eyes on the road, but he couldn't really focus on it. "I know that you didn't wanna leave him there - I didn't want to either, but Crowley isn't gonna look for an angel in plain sight and we don't have the resources to hunt things and babysit him. We haven't got good options."
"I know we don't but... I just..." Sam did something with his hands then, turned them over, looked at his palms, before he stilled himself. "You helped me, Dean. When I didn't know what was real and what wasn't, you figured out a way to hold back the tide. It wasn't forever, but Cas deserves some help with this. We can't let him rot in there like... like leftovers or something."
Dean felt his heart crawl up inside his throat and swell there, choking off his argument. He wanted Cas out, too, wanted him safe, wanted him free. He also wanted to go back in time and fix the bullshit that had happened, but he couldn't. Cas had forgotten about him. Cas had gotten married. And when he'd had all of his thoughts and memories and powers returned to him, Cas hadn't said a word about that stupid recording. He had stared. Like his old self, he'd taken all the guilt on himself and looked at Dean like he was the only thing in the world.
Dean did not know what he was supposed to have done, but he knew he hadn't done the best thing. And he knew that Sam was right. Driving in circles wasn't going to make the problem go away, ever.
"Have you got a plan, then?" He asked, and felt his stomach clench, his hands go cold. It was like a fear response, but he had no idea why he'd be feeling it.
"Yeah. Talk."
- - -
Dean had expected Sam to talk based on their conversation in the car, but that was not, apparently, the younger Winchester's plan. He got them up to the room, opened the door, and shoved his brother inside with the quiet insistence that he needed to find a bathroom or a vending machine or a patient he might have met while he was there. Dean did not have the time to properly protest. He was in the hall and then the door was shutting, and Cas was sitting on the white mattress with his hands on his knees, his eyes turned up like he did not actually see anyone anymore.
For a moment, Dean stood there, next to the closed door, and wet his lips with his tongue. The room was painfully small for two people, claustrophobic. He was so close to Cas he could make out individual eyelashes and he hadn't even stepped closer to the bed.
Words escaped him. The lack of expression on the angel's face tied them up in his head, trapped them behind his lips. The things that came to mind were bitter in the back of his throat, saccharine in his mind, but only silence filled the space between them.
"Hey..." He started lamely, and shivered at the mere tilt of Castiel's head. Curiosity burned behind those foggy blue eyes and he swallowed, curled his hands into fists. It was so stupid. He'd prayed for this moment, and yet it was nearly impossible to say the things he'd said to the bathroom ceiling, more painful than stitching his own wounds. He found himself wishing he hadn't left Bobby's flask in the car. "You doing alright, Cas?"
The man on the bed didn't speak to him or move, he simply turned his eyes back down toward the floor.
"C'mon Cas, at least tell me the food is decent."
"You aren't allowed to call me that," Cas turned his eyes up before he looked at his hands. "You are not real, and you aren't allowed to call me that."
Dean felt himself move before he knew what he was doing, felt his hand ghost across Cas's fingers and capture them in a hold that the angel did not attempt to escape from. Someone's breath caught. It wasn't until his knees were pressed to the hard tile floor that Dean realized he'd placed himself between the angel's legs, kneeling as if in front of an altar.
"No, it's me, Cas. It's me. I'm not Lucifer."
"Dean." His name was like a whispered prayer. "No. You can't be-"
"Shut up, Cas." Dean growled. "You don't think I'm real? What about our profound bond, huh? What was that? A joke?"
"No-"
"Then why-"
Cas hissed and pulled just a little away, though the reaction wasn't at all as strong as it could have been. "You can't be real. Dean wouldn't come back for me."
"I'm real. You don't think I'm real? Why? You didn't think I'd come back for you?" Dean didn't know what he was planning until he'd taken Cas's face in his hands. He met the angel's eyes and held them. There was fear and confused and hope there, mixed up so he couldn't make out what Cas was thinking. Dean knew what he was going to do then, could feel the desire building up inside of him until it constituted a need, but he didn't move, too caught up in his words. "You pulled my soul out of Hell, Cas, you dragged me out of the Pit with one hand, you screamed at me until my ears bled, you fought Heaven to help me. You were my family. You are my family." He heard himself pause for breath and hated the moment he hesitated. "And I'm sorry. But I'm real, I am, and I can't tell you anything that'll make everything okay, but you gotta trust me on this, you gotta tie yourself to me and pull it all together. Because I can't leave you like this - Sam won't let me leave you like this and after that stupid recording-"
Cas inhaled softly and Dean was shocked that he could feel the intake of air on his lips. Cas didn't speak over him, but his mouth moved like he wanted to, like he wanted to deny every word. Under Dean's hands he felt Cas stiffen, felt his flesh turn to marble.
"You want something you can hold on to? Fine. Hold on to your pants, Cas, because I've only got one thing I can think of and it ain't givin' you a scar." Dean leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Castiel's, open, inviting, desperate. At first there was no response, not even an acknowledgment that he'd touched the angel, and then the lips against his parted gently and a curious, tender tongue pressed momentarily to his lower lip before it slipped just a little further.
Dean wasn't sure what he had expected from the kiss. A part of him thought that Cas would bite him and shove him off, but the idea vanished like smoke in the wind the instant Cas responded. After that, Dean found himself thinking about adultery and the legality issues with marrying a man with no memory and how much of Emmanuel had been Cas and how much none of that mattered. Cas could kiss. He got it. And the hand that crept up and touched Dean on the shoulder fit perfectly over the place where a hand-print had once marred the hunter's skin.
Parting was slow and frightening, mostly because Dean didn't know what to expect. The last thing on his list was likely Cas leaning into him and smelling his hair, his hand like a vice on Dean's arm.
"I can't see you as you, Dean," Cas said in a whisper, "But scents have never been false to me before."
"Keep your eyes closed, then." It seemed like simple logic.
"But how will I know-"
Dean kissed him again, faster this time, and fought down the butterflies that sprang to life in his gut every time he did it. "Lucifer ever kissed you before?"
"No." There was something like disgust in the answer.
"Then that's how you know."
"Kissing is how I know where we're going?"
Dean frowned. That made more sense than he wanted to admit. Also, Cas knew the plan even before it had been made. "Just... give me a minute. I need to get Sam to distract some people." Because he was getting Cas out. He had to. He didn't know what the plan was after that, but he was going to start there. "I'll hold your hand the whole Goddamn way to the car if I have to. You gonna be alright for a minute alone?"
"Yes." Cas sound sure of it. "And Dean..."
"Save it." The last thing he needed to hear at the moment was a thank you or an apology. He stood up slowly, let his fingers linger just a little too long on Cas's palm, let his eyes run tender lines from hip to chest to the length of Cas's throat. Softly, because he didn't want any passing orderly to magically hear through the wall, he whispered, "Cas... I'm gonna find a way to save you. I don't have it yet, but it isn't here. And I'm too tired of screwing things up to do it anymore." He knew they didn't need to be having this conversation here, but they had to, before he lost his courage and embraced his pride and never said a word about it. "Where'd we go wrong?"
"We talked about this. When I started to work with Crowley..."
"No, Cas. Us. Where'd I miss the cues for that?"
Slowly, the angel opened his eyes and looked up at him, though Dean had no way of knowing if Cas could actually see him. It wasn't important though, not when his voice came out in a soft, rasping whisper. "I don't know," Cas looked away before he met Dean's eyes again. "I never knew until it was too late."
The knock on the door warned Dean to step aside before the door came open and Sam stuck his head inside. "Should I go pull the fire alarm?" Was all he said, like he could read Dean's mind or something.
"Unless you can come up with something better."
- - -
Cas didn't notice that they weren't in the Impala until Dean suggested Sam drive, and then he cracked his eyes open, glanced at the car, and shut them again, his fingers wound greedily in Dean's. He jumped when the engine started, but calmed himself fairly quickly, acting as if it hadn't happened. He seemed nervous. There was something about how he sat that made it obvious. That was part of the reason why Dean saw no issue slipping into the backseat beside him. Cas opened his eyes and stared blankly out the window, his eyebrows knitted together and his lips pulled down in an expression that was two-thirds exhausted, one-third disbelieving.
"Whatever happened to your car, Dean? This car is..." He looked up, looked at the seats, let his eyes linger on the empty passenger seat. "Different."
"We, um... retired the Impala for a little. Some serial killers had a similar ride, so we thought we'd lie low and put it in the shop for a bit." Dean told him, glazing over a few of the grimier details. There were a few things he hadn't told Cas the last time they'd been together, too caught up in trying to save Sam's life, too nervous and tongue-tied to get beyond the word wife. Now, he regretted it. Now, it made him feel like an ass. "This is... Bobby's old car."
"I see." Cas didn't ask about Bobby. Maybe that was better.
Sam cleared his throat and drove them out to the road, taking his sweet time. "Here," he reached into the passenger side foot well and tossed back a bag of clothing. "I grabbed what I could while the guy at the desk was... distracted."
Dean momentarily released Cas's hand while he tugged open the plastic bag. "Distracted?"
"He didn't believe there was a fire, so I punched him," Sam didn't meet Dean's eyes in the mirror when he said it, but he shrugged like he could have done a lot worse. Inside the bag there were a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans that looked about the right size, a woman's blouse, and a brown coat that Sam must have grabbed on purpose, a pair of black socks. That coat wasn't going to stay away from Cas, it seemed. Even death and insanity couldn't keep the two of them apart.
"You're getting pretty violent in your old age, Sammy," Dean muttered.
"You would have pulled a gun."
"Would not," Dean denied softly, though it was true, and produced an AC/DC T-shirt that he approved of, though he wasn't sure what Cas would think of the band. "Put this on."
Cas looked at him, looked at the shirt like it was made from something unpleasant, and started to tug off the clothes the hospital had given him. Under the fabric his skin was unblemished. There were no visible scars. The expanse of his chest and stomach that he revealed might have been a shade darker than Dean remembered, smooth and toned. It wasn't until Dean's fingertips brushed the protrusion of Cas's hip that he realized his thoughts had gone from concerned for the angel's safety to something entirely different, something that did not belong in the backseat while Sam was driving.
Cas stopped with the new shirt gathered in one hand and met Dean's eyes. There was a tug between them, something Dean couldn't describe, like a tether that made him think Cas was closer to him that he should be, even if they could not be close enough.
"Are you alright, Dean?" The angel's voice came out smooth and controlled, and he peered at the hunter as if he could see into Dean's soul.
"Yeah," Dean could hardly find his voice. "Fine."
- - -
The town they stopped in was small. A cow town. The three of them got out of the car as one, and Dean found himself silently amazed at how well Cas seemed to hold himself together. He sometimes stared too long at things, occasionally shivered, and sometimes looked at Dean like he wasn't sure who he was looking at, but that went away fairly quickly. It was like Cas could will Lucifer away, which didn't seem possible. There was also that tender tug that Dean couldn't define, but maybe that was the Mexican food they'd had the night before.
Still, he let Sam go check them in alone, and tried to come up with different ways he could talk to Cas, different things they might say. He didn't like anything he came up with.
The angel leaned on the side of Bobby's car and looked at him, his hands tucked into the pockets of his bloody trench coat. He looked at home wearing it. He looked at ease. And when Dean leaned on the Chevelle next to him, it was almost like Cas hadn't gone lunatic because of Lucifer.
"We don't know anything new about getting rid of Lucifer," Dean played with his lighter in his pocket, the better not to look at Castiel while he told him. "But on the drive over Sam gave me some ideas. You gotta ignore him. And keep yourself rooted in something real - pain or whatever - just something that feels different than anything he can do to you. You don't need to sleep, right? I mean, you're still an angel so..." He had to look then, because it wasn't like Cas to let him ramble on indefinitely, and that invisible tug was still there, far more than heartburn.
"But you still came for me." Cas looked at him through the shadow of his eyelashes, confusion evident behind the light in his eyes.
"We couldn't just let you sit there forever," Dean tried to forget that he'd wanted to do just that if it meant not having to face this moment. "We don't have anyone else left. Everyone else is dead. Everyone. And you might be a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but..."
"You need me?"
"I want you."
The words cut into the air between them and bled silence. Cas's tried to speak, but the words caught up around his tongue. Which didn't help anything. Dean didn't know where to go from there, either. There couldn't be a safe topic with a layered phrase hanging between them like that.
Sam came out of the front of the motel before Dean could string sentences together and tossed him the keys to their door.
"I'm gonna..." Sam started, and then paused, maybe because he'd walked into the wall of awkwardness that hung around Cas and his brother. "Go for a drive. Grab a soda. You can, um..." He made a vague gesture with his hands that seemed to involve Dean and Cas getting closer to each other before he dropped his arms to his sides. "Do whatever."
"We just got Cas out, Sam, maybe we should have a look at the books togeth-"
"Right! Books! I'll hit the library."
"Sam-"
"Maybe do some research on feathers while I'm there."
The truth hit Dean like a fist to the gut. Sam knew. Sam had probably listened to the whole recording the instant Cas was finished with it, and if he hadn't, he'd edited the manuscript with Cas before it had reached the final stage. How else had Cas learned a number of Dean's kinks and screwed them up so royally? Dean felt his mouth go dry. But if Sam knew, why did Sam know? What did he know?
His questions must have been evident on his face, because Sam smiled at him. "It doesn't take a genius, Dean. Really, if you could watch yourselves stare at each other, you'd see it, too." He clapped Cas on the shoulder then and his grin turned tight. "Welcome back, Cas. And thank you. I should have said that sooner."
Dean didn't even know what to do with himself. He just stood there and watched his brother hug Cas and bit his tongue.
"I'm sorry, Sam," Dean could hardly hear the words.
"Me, too."
"I'll go hit the books, you two get the room." Dean hissed, and immediately regretted it. The face Sam pulled and the frown Cas directed at him were just too much alike, even if the two men had no features in common. "What? It's like that scene from Brokeback Mountain, but from the front."
"You watched that movie?" Sam cocked an eyebrow.
Dean pointed at the car. "Go look for your damn books before I punch you."
Sam disentangled himself from Castiel and moved slowly around the front of the Chevelle, holding in some biting comment. He kept it caged behind his teeth until he had the driver's door open. "So cowboy-on-cowboy, not just tutu-on-tutu?"
"Get in the car!"
"I mean, I know you've been obsessed with Dick recently-"
"Sam-"
It was good that Cas didn't know what was funny. It was also good that Sam got in the car and drove off.
- - -