Dean/Cas Mini-Bang: feel the tide (you and i now) (3/4)
Castiel sways, “Sam will be back soon.”
The hunter nods and takes in the room. Same one he’d been sleeping in before finding himself in Lawrence. “Never figured out how I got there in the first place,” Dean complains.
Castiel's attention focuses squarely on Dean, eyes once again filled with that indescribable otherworldliness behind them the hunter could never truly define. He tilts his head ever so slightly, “I called for you and...you came to find me.” He chokes, staggering back, his knees hitting the edge of the bed and spitting blood.
Dean rushes to the angel’s side, helping to ease him down onto the thin bedspread. “Hold on,” he mutters and runs to the door. He glances through the window before throwing it open, seeing Sam turn into the parking lot in the car he hates and waits there for the thirty seconds it takes him to park in front of the room.
“Where were you, Dean?” Sam demands as he gets out of the car, resisting the urge to pull his older brother into a hug. He looks him over but Dean brushes him off.
“I’m fine, Sammy. Can you pop the trunk?” He heads over to the back of the car and knocks on it for emphasis.
Brows drawn together in confusion, Sam nods, “Yeah, sure.” He continues to give his brother a strange look as he does so, wandering back to flip the switch under the driver’s seat. “What is it?”
When Dean sees it, he stares for a moment. The way it’s creased and familiar. He remembers clutching it to himself that first night Cas was gone and making excuses to himself, readied for anyone else who might ask, that it was only because he couldn’t decided whether or not to keep it. Of course he would, though. There was never any real question of it. The trench coat was iconic of Cas, too much a part of him in Dean’s mind to be shredded like every other memory had been. He wishes that he had kept more of the people he’d lost, but it had been too hard then, to see reminders of his failures in every icon and every photograph. When that trench coat had washed up to him, it had seemed like a sign and he couldn’t resist reaching into the water, taking it, no matter what it might have caused Sam and Bobby to think. It was important.
He grabs it, feels the thick fabric on his fingertips again, and slams the trunk closed.
Sam looks at him questioningly, “Dean? What are you…” He trails off as Dean walks past him into the hotel room.
Dean crouches beside the bed, at eye level with Cas, who seemed to be phasing in and out of consciousness. He holds the bundled coat up to him, “I thought you might want this back.”
Cas acknowledges it, giving a slight nod, before his eyelids flicker and he’s out again.
Dean covers him with it like a blanket, basking in the sentimentality of it only as long as he performs the act. Cas had always been overly attached to that trench coat. It feels right to give it back to him, to complete the image he held in his mind.
Sam stands in the doorway, door still swung open. His mouth opens and closes, taking in the shock of seeing Castiel there. “Dean,” he whispers furtively, as if Cas is in any state to wake up again anytime soon, and shuts the door. “What the hell happened?” He glances between his brother and the angel, trying to process as much as he can before Dean speaks.
“I’ve got a story for you, don’t worry,” Dean tells him, taking a swig from his flask and belatedly realizing how much less he’d been drinking over the past couple of days. “How long was I gone?”
~
Dean explains what happened, leaving out certain details. Sam doesn’t need to know about his feelings or how hard it was to see their parents again. He does, however, give Sam the other sandwich Mary had packed for him and Cas, only to see Sam tearing up. “Hey,” he says, “Don’t get emotional over a damn peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
Sam swallows, nodding, but Dean can still see him staring at the bread reverently. They’re both quiet for a moment besides the huffing sigh Dean lets out. Sam glances over from the table to the bed where Cas lies, unaware of the world. “He was human? Like…human human?” Sam asks, knowing the answer.
Dean clears his throat, ignoring the emotions that bubble up inside of him, “Yeah. He was.”
~
Cas dips his feet in the water, watching Dean move towards him.
“Hey,” Dean calls, treading water. “You gotta learn to swim sometime, Cas. It’s unacceptable you didn’t already know.” He’s smiling, teasing him. He gets close enough to wrap his arms around Castiel’s legs.
“I never had reason to,” Cas tells him, looking down.
Dean makes a noncommittal noise, “You weren’t a very curious kid, were you?” He laughs.
“I wasn’t…” He stops. What had he meant to say? He almost said he wasn’t human. He shakes his head, “I guess not.”
“We’re gonna have to fix that,” Dean says. “Next time, we’ll bring Sammy out here with us. I bet he’d be able to teach you. He always had more patience than I did, and, you? You’d be a lost cause.”
Dean tilts his head up, pulling himself partially out of the water through use of Castiel’s legs. Cas leans down, kissing him.
They smile at each other, but the world begins to dim. The water goes black and Castiel feels panic rise, recoiling as Dean disappears and the sky breaks apart.
It was just a remnant, a leftover piece of his brief stint with humanity. He doesn’t stir when it ends, doesn’t remember it happening. His body--his vessel--continues to lie on the bed, but his fingers grip the edge of the trench coat, feeling a phantom hand covering his own.
“Shhh,” Dean whispers. “It’s too early to be up. I, for one, can’t stand going without my beauty sleep.” He wraps his arm around Castiel and kisses the back of his neck, falling back into unconsciousness.
~
Sam and Dean play a game of cards and Sam tells Dean he only disappeared for about a day.
“And you didn’t go out there searching, Sam?” Dean teases, gesturing to the room.
“I kinda…” Sam sighs, smirking, “You don’t remember anything?”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I remember a lot of things. What?” he asks gruffly.
“I think you said something to me last night before you…went time-traveling.” He leans back, palms on the table, and looks around, “I think you told me you needed to find someone, that you needed to go. I wanted to go with you, but…I thought it was a dream when I first woke up after that. You were gone. I thought I must’ve gone back to sleep.”
“Huh.” Dean quirks his mouth, “Guess I don’t remember it. Cas kinda said the same thing.”
Sam stands up, cautioning a quick, calculating glance at his and deciding not to press. “Want another beer?” he asks, grabbing the empty bottle Dean had been playing with.
“Sure,” the older Winchester replies automatically. He came when Cas called to him, through time and space. That was some weird sci-fi shit there. It also said something he hadn’t examined too closely about his relationship with Cas. The fact that his subconscious mind replied to a request like that with what seemed to be an enthusiastic “yes” reminded Dean of the dreams he’d had. The nightmares of what had happened since Cas had swallowed up all those souls, of Cas walking into the water. There had been more, of course, about Amy and Bobby and all the other lives he felt responsible for ending, but Cas…was here.
“Why did you go there anyway?” Sam sits down across from him again, sliding a beer along the tabletop until it rests next to Dean’s fingers.
Shrugging, Dean removes the bottle cap and takes a long swig, “I don’t know.”
Sam nods and looks back to the beds, “Where are you gonna sleep tonight?”
“What do you mean?” Dean asks, grinning. “He’s on your bed.”
Sam glares at him. “No, Dean. That,” he points to Cas, “is your responsibility tonight. I’m taking the bed not covered in unconscious angel of the lord.”
~
Despite the half-assed fight Dean puts up for what was his bed--for the nights they stayed here, at least--he resigns himself to finding somewhere else to sleep.
Sam has no qualms falling asleep while Dean continues to do this. The lights are off and Dean searches the room for a couch, to no avail. He is not sleeping on the floor. He doesn’t like drawing attention to the fact that he’s over thirty, but it does mean he’s too old to put his back in that amount of discomfort and be ready to hunt the next day--not that it would actually stop him.
His eyes keep wandering to the bed. Unlike Sam with his giant limbs, taking up practically every inch of space on his bed, Cas has kept to the side of the bed Dean had helped him onto, leaving half of it unoccupied. Nothing is happening, will happen, he assures himself, but still he hesitates.
Cas isn’t even under the covers. There would be layers between them. Dean strips down to a t-shirt and boxers and climbs in.
Cas doesn’t so much as shift.
~
Dean climbs, but the branches break away as he reaches further up. He can’t stop now, wouldn’t have anywhere to turn, but there’s something up ahead, bright and warm. He needs to reach it, to be pulled into its energy and bask in it.
~
Dean wakes up to find Castiel facing him, eyes open. He’s wearing the trench coat properly now and Dean just stares at him for a moment. He can hear the soft sounds of Sam snoring from the other bed and figures he hasn’t been caught--doing what, he doesn’t know.
He rubs at his eyes breaking eye contact. “Thanks,” he murmurs, “for yesterday.”
Castiel sits up on the edge of the bed, “I brought you there. It was only right for me to bring you back, if I could.”
“Yeah,” Dean says, “Right. I forgot how much that time travel mojo messed with you.”
“No more painful than becoming…me again,” he hesitates over the words. The way he felt as a human seems to grow more distant with each passing second. He can still feel the infatuation he had for Dean--because it’s not love. He’s not human enough to think that it is, nor does he have the imagination to delude himself into believing Dean could ever feel something for him. He wasn’t even human--and he shouldn’t have wanted it anyway, or so he reminds himself when there’s a brief discomfort in his chest, tight and almost out of place considering that he’s only inhabiting the body.
Dean swallows, and says something he reserves mostly for Sam, and, even then, rarely, “Do you want to talk about it?” It’s such a chick-flick moment he wants to mock himself, but instead he stares at Castiel, waits. He saw how Cas had hesitated, that he didn’t really want to take back his grace for a minute there. He doesn’t know whether things would be easier or harder if Cas could’ve stayed that way.
Cas shakes his head, “It’s just…there still. I’ll forget it.”
“Do you want to?” Dean asks, sitting up. Castiel’s eyes flicker from his own down to his lips. There’s something there that’s gone unsaid.
~
Mary prods Cas a little more, “He seems like a dick, but…do you like him?”
“Of course,” Castiel tells her. “Dean and his brother, they were like family to me once.”
She rolls her eyes, “That’s not what I meant.” She smiles, “Although I think I already know the answer. There’s no accounting for taste.” Mary places a hand on his knee, inexplicably concerned for him, expression turning more serious, “Is there anything you can do now? To fix things?”
“I’d do anything to redeem myself to him,” Cas says. After a second, he adds, softer, “If he’ll let me.”
She looks at him sadly for a moment, “I think he wants to forgive you, even if he doesn’t show it. He seems like he could use someone.” She shakes her head, “No…like he needs someone.”
Cas looks at her and she can see hope war with disbelief in his features, like he wouldn’t know how to hide it if he wanted to. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s enough.
Mary wishes there was more she could do for him, to tell Dean not everyone was trying to hurt him like he thought. She knew he had his reasons, could see it, had heard what he had said about Castiel, but…it was obvious he couldn’t go on like that. Castiel’s intentions now appeared nothing but pure, ready to make amends. It was something she could appreciate seeing.
~
On instinct, Dean’s hand reaches up, close to Castiel’s jaw. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but whatever it was could be blamed on his only recent consciousness. He leans in, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s screaming about what he thinks he’s doing. He’s not thinking, and that’s it. His lips are close enough to Castiel’s that a breath could brush them together.
He hears Sam grumble and his brain kicks in full force. He pushes himself off the bed and runs a hand over his mussed hair, “You want coffee, Sammy?” He walks to the bathroom sink and splashes water over his face, hoping it will keep his unfortunate blush at bay.
Sam grunts as he stretches in the bed. He processes the question, “Yeah. There’s a Starbucks across the street. You gonna go?”
“I’m not paying five dollars for a cup of coffee, Sam. Just because I went away for a couple of days doesn’t mean I don’t remember this conversation from…yesterday. Uh…” He scrunches up his face, knowing how strange that came out.
Cas stands against the wall, staring after Dean.
Dean glances back and catches his eye, inhaling a sharp breath, “Okay. Fine. I’ll go. But I’m calling dibs on the first shower. You can waste a hundred gallons of water on your giant body while I’m gone.”
Sam grins triumphantly, he blinks his bleary eyes, “You bringing Cas?”
Dean pauses, “Maybe.” He doesn’t want to tell Sam that he needs to be alone, to tell him why. He was just around Cas so much, that must’ve been it.
~
During his shower, Dean thinks over what he had almost done. He rolls his eyes at himself. What the hell had he been doing? He had nearly kissed Cas. He can laugh now about how ridiculous it was. It probably had something to do with the way Cas had looked at him, how close he was, the way he had looked at his lips. When Cas had been human, gripping his shirtsleeve, afraid to take in his grace because he knew what it would do to him, Dean had wanted to comfort him in whatever way he could. Now, that they had almost kissed...
He stops there. That was a whole new realm of weird he’d be getting into. Then again, his mom had some reason to--
Dean scrubs at his body, closing his eyes and singing Led Zeppelin songs to himself.
Maybe that was what was messing with him. It was hard to explain that you couldn’t help having a hard to define relationship with the angel who pulled you out of hell.
~
John takes the wrench from Dean, a nod of gratitude. “Who taught you about cars?” he asks.
Dean bites his tongue and doesn’t say, “You did,” instead grunting and picking up the tool chest, setting it on the hood of the car. He clears his throat, “My dad. He used to work on them, back in the day.”
John glances sidelong at him, “Were you two close?”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “After my mom died, he and my little brother, they were all I had. Now it’s just me and…my brother.” Neither he nor Cas ever mention Sam’s name in order not to send up red flags in his parents’ heads. It’s better that way, if more complicated.
John looks at the window, where Cas helps Mary clear the table, “What about him? Isn’t he--” He moves shiftily, “He is, or was, at least, close to you.” His words come out stuttered and uneven. It’s none of John’s business what these two men are to each other. From the sound of it, they were soldiers, the kind that had gone into a war together. That kind of bond was hard to break, even harder to build though. He was a marine, he’d had plenty of friends, but Dean and Cas were different.
Dean makes a noncommittal noise, “Well, we’ll see.”
Taking that as his cue to drop the conversation, John does, nodding and asking for Dean to retrieve something for him, just to break the silence.
[ continue ]