Fic: Hallelujah, Act III/III
Hallelujah
Act III
Master post of all chapters and art here.
When Michael left his body, he apparently left Dean in a coma for
Act III
Past
When Michael left his body, he apparently left Dean in a coma for three days. At least, that’s what Castiel told Dean when he woke up with a shitload of tubes sticking out of his body.
“I fucking hate catheters,” Dean said as he tried to sit up more comfortably in the hospital bed. “Guess this means I’m not dead though.”
“Yes,” Castiel said, and he took Dean’s hand. Dean stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before Castiel let go, and Dean felt a twinge of-of something at the absence. “Sam and Bobby stepped out for a coffee. They will return shortly.”
“So we’re in the clear?” Dean asked, reclining back on his thin, decidedly un-fluffed pillows. It felt strange to be able to move his arms and legs again, strange to be able to control where he looked, the words his mouth formed. “World saved, evil vanquished, all that jazz?”
“Yes,” Castiel said again. “Everyone has been celebrating.”
“And what about you?” Dean raised an eyebrow, and even that felt like a small victory. “No parade floats for you?”
“I was waiting for you.”
9 weeks after the war
“Wake up. Oh my god, please wake up.” Dean groans and shifts, trying to get away from the shrieking noise in his ear, but then a hand grabs his shoulders and shakes. “Please, you have to wake up!”
Dean opens his eyes and the hazy face of a 30-something year old woman with big, blonde hair and bubblegum pink lipstick smeared across her lips and cheek comes into focus. “What’s going on?”
“We have to get off the bus,” she says, taking his elbow and tugging. “Come on, let’s just get off and then we can talk.”
Dean nods and gets to his feet, stumbling only slightly as he makes it to the bus aisle. His neck still hurts and his head throbs dully with the familiar ache of a hangover, but he manages to make it off the bus and into the garage in one piece.
Dean and the blonde woman follow the line of people disembarking out of the garage and into a building labeled, ‘The Port Authority.’ Once inside, Dean stops. The bus terminal is huge, swarming with people, and totally unfamiliar to him. “Okay, who are you and what’s going on?”
The blonde woman rubs her eyes and sighs. “My name’s Tammy. We met last night but you were pretty trashed by the time we started talking. Guess you must have blacked out.”
“Tammy.”
Flashes of the previous day begin to come back to him: getting his ass chewed out by Castiel before he took off again, Dean getting kicked out of the motel room by an irate motel manager, and then Dean finally making his way to the nearest bar to drink the shitty day away.
He’d gotten absolutely bombed after a few hours and, at some point, bored with drinking alone at the bar. He’d ended up making friends (and then enemies) at the pool table before zeroing in on the blonde in the corner: Tammy. But none of that explained the bus or the fact that they were in a completely different city.
“Yeah, I remember the bar. But why were we on a bus?”
Tammy squints at him. “You don’t remember leaving?” At Dean’s headshake no, she continues, “You couldn’t remember where you’d parked your car so we started walking to my place.”
“And ended up on a bus?” Dean remembers her agreeing to leave with him, giggling, as he put his arm around her waist. He remembers walking through a moonlit night and then staring into the inky darkness of a large body of water. “Was there-did we cross a bridge or something?”
Tammy groans. “Oh yeah, you were like, obsessed with that bridge. You wouldn’t leave until I suggested we go somewhere instead.”
“Really?” Apparently, Dean had been out of his mind enough to be turning down the opportunity for sex for a bridge, of all things.
Tammy snorts as if she can’t quite believe it herself while she rifles through her purse and eventually pulls out a tiny mirror. “Yeah, so I made a deal with you. Get off the bridge and then we’d get the hell out of Dodge. It worked, I guess.”
“So where’d we go?” Dean takes in the huge bus terminal around him, ticketing counters along the walls and people rushing around like ants focused on getting the last crumbs of food on the floor. “Where are we?”
Tammy finishes wiping the lipstick off her cheek and puts away her mirror. “I think we might be in New York.”
“The… city?” Dean pauses. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Tammy ties her poofy hair back in a ponytail and suddenly looks older, wearier. “I think I suggested we go to Miami but you wanted LA, and then we compromised on New York. Or something.” She sighs again. “I don’t know what we were thinking. I was so out of my mind yesterday night and my head is fucking killing me right now.”
“You’re telling me,” Dean says. “Look, let’s get something to eat, okay? I’m starving.”
Tammy agrees and they step into the first restaurant they see: a pizza place with ugly orange tables and dull fluorescent lighting overhead.
They both order two slices of pizza with drinks, and take a seat at a booth towards the back of the half-filled restaurant. They eat in silence-Tammy texting up a storm on her cell phone while Dean tries his damnedest to remember what happened last night.
He still has his wallet, which is filled with several hundred dollars worth of cash (apparently he’d hustled some drunken pool successfully last night as well) and a bus ticket stub, so it seems that Tammy is probably telling the truth about their inebriated escapades. He can’t remember too much after the bar--other than staring down at the surface of dark water and the feeling that if he only could reach out and touch it, he’d be able to find something incredible on the other side.
When Tammy finishes her food, she goes to the bathroom and Dean takes a second to call Castiel. All the calls go straight to voicemail, and Dean gives up after the third try and calls Bobby instead.
“Dean?” Bobby picks up after the fifth ring and does not sound happy about it. “Do you know what time it is?”
Dean glances at the clock on the wall and winces: 7:30 AM. “Sorry, Bobby. I didn’t realize how early it was where you are.”
Bobby grunts. “Well now that you’ve got me up, what is it?”
Dean fishes out the key with the name of the motel he’d been staying at where Miles nearly slit his throat. “I need you to help me get my stuff back. I would call the motel myself, but I don’t have my laptop with me.”
“And you can’t just drive your ass back to get your stuff?”
Dean winces at the thought of his baby sitting abandoned in the shitty motel parking lot, and prays Miles hasn’t touched her. “Yeah, I got no car either. It’s kind of a long story, but the short version is that I’m in New York City with no car and none of my stuff.”
Bobby sighs irritably, but Dean can hear him shuffling in the background. “Alright, what do you want me to do?”
Dean finishes giving Bobby all the relevant information about the same time that Tammy comes back from the bathroom.
“So I’m gonna get a bus back,” she says flatly as she drops into the seat across from Dean. All her makeup’s been wiped off, he notices.
“Okay.”
“What are you gonna do?” she asks, seemingly only marginally interested in the answer. “You weren’t from around town, right?”
“Yeah I, uh, I don’t know.” Dean rubs his face. “I think I’m gonna stick around here for a while. Figure out my next move.”
“Yeah, okay. That sounds good. Well.” She stands up. “Um. Good luck, I guess.”
“Thanks. Same to you, Tammy.”
He watches her go.
* * * * * * * *
Castiel isn’t picking up. Dean leaves a series of progressively more pissed off messages on his phone before giving up and heading into the one poorly kept bathroom at the back of the pizza place and locking the door behind him.
“Cas,” Dean says, breathing through his mouth because the stench inside is truly foul. “Cas, I know you can hear me. I’ve been calling and calling-where are you? I know you’re out there, and I need you to come get me and bring me back to Bobby’s.”
Dean waits a few minutes, but nothing happens. “Cas, I’m not kidding around here. This place stinks and I don’t have my car.” Dean waits another ten minutes before some guy starts banging on the door.
“Hey man, I’ve been waiting out here for twenty minutes!” the guy yells, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming out.” Dean pushes open the door and gets shoved aside without a word, bathroom door slamming shut. Guess he really needed to go.
A second later, Dean’s phone begins to ring.
“Guess who just showed up with all your stuff,” Bobby says without preamble. “Your very own guardian angel.”
“He’s not-" Dean stops. “Whatever. Is my car there too?”
Bobby grunts affirmatively. “And he said he took care of the Miles problem. Whatever that means.”
“Miles? That’s-" unexpected, Dean thinks, but doesn’t say. “Tell him to get his feathery butt over here to pick me up too.”
“Tell him yourself,” Bobby replies. “I’m going back to bed.” He hangs up, muttering something about idiots that wake him up at ass o’clock in the morning for things that don’t even need doing.
Dean stares at the phone for a long minute before calling Castiel again. The call goes straight to voicemail-again-and he tries to leave a message in a slightly nicer tone. “Hey, Cas, I dunno if you’re busy doing something right now, but I really need a lift here since I’m back east and my car’s where you left it-at Bobby’s. So if you could call me sometime soon, I’d really appreciate it. You know where I am.”
* * * * * * * *
Dean waits around the Port Authority for a few hours, aimlessly wandering through it, browsing the overpriced ‘I Love NY’ shot glasses and T-shirts and leafing through a copy of The Daily Post that someone left behind on a bench.
He gets sick of it after a while and decides to go outside-he’s never been to New York before, so what the hell. Might as well see more than the inside of a bus terminal.
The first thing that greets Dean when he steps outside is an incredibly powerful wave of disparate smells: car exhaust mingled with roasted peanuts on top of day-old urine. The next thing that hits him is the noise-not that the interior of the Port Authority was some kind of library state, but now there’s a powerful cacophony of car horns and screeching wheels and the general din of hundreds of voices all around him.
And of course, there are the people. There are worried tourists asking for directions, panhandlers begging for change, and some guy in a monkey costume dancing around while a delighted group of onlookers clap and cheer. Streams of people push past Dean, and he feels vaguely like he’s back in Deanville again, being pinned in by crowds and suffocated.
Dean fights his way through the teeming masses of people and tries to find a piece of sidewalk that’s empty and not a major thoroughfare. This proves surprisingly difficult as the constantly moving crowds quickly shift to cover any free space on the sidewalk. He finds himself being moved by the crowd rather than moving through it, and somehow ends up on a quieter street corner a block or so away from the Port Authority, not entirely sure how he got there.
Dean takes a deep breath and stares up at the sky, which is mostly blocked by tall skyscrapers. The patches of it he can see are dotted with grim, gray clouds and he shivers, wishing he had his jacket with him. He decides at that moment that he’s had enough of New York and its smelly streets and ridiculous numbers of people; he wants out.
“Cas,” Dean says lowly, checking to make sure no one around him hears. But no one gives him so much as a glance, and feels brave enough to say Castiel’s name a little more loudly.
He gives up after about ten minutes and starts thinking about alternative ways out of the city. He could go back to the Port Authority and catch a bus westward, then hitch his way to Bobby’s, but the prospect of being on a bus for ten hours while hungover is not exactly appealing to him. Flights are out of the question (even if Dean could get a ticket and find the airport) and he doubts he’ll find a lot of truckers in the immediate area taking cargo out west.
Dean eyeballs the cars parked along the street but trying to lift one in broad daylight with so many witnesses is pretty much the epitome of a bad idea.
The familiar pounding in the back of his head reminds Dean how much he needs to sit down and just be hungover for a while-preferably in a quiet room with no other people. It pisses him off to waste the money on a hotel while he waits for Castiel to come pick him up, but he can’t really see any other good option right now.
Dean stops at the first place on the street that has ‘Hotel’ in the name (he’s not entirely sure if motels are something that exist in a city like New York) and steps through the well-appointed lobby to the marble reception desk.
“I need a room for the night with a single bed,” Dean says to the neatly groomed receptionist (in a suit and tie, no less), who eyes Dean’s ratty jeans and wrinkled T-shirt.
“We have rooms starting at $250 a night,” the receptionist replies and Dean nearly chokes. At that rate, even the healthy wad of cash in Dean’s pocket will barely be enough to last him three nights if Castiel continues taking his sweet time to arrive.
“Do you have anything, you know,” Dean leans on the desk and the receptionist frowns at the smudges he leaves. “Anything, you know. Less. Uh. Less?”
“$250 is our starting rate for available rooms,” the receptionist replies flatly, and Dean pulls back.
“Okay then. Thanks anyway,” Dean says as he heads out the door.
Dean scouts out other nearby hotels and rates. A few are completely booked already, two are even more expensive, and four or five are comparable. One hotel is $50 cheaper and that’s when Dean gives up on finding any accommodations in the area.
He descends into the nearest subway station and finds himself impressed by the state of disrepair and grime of its interior. He gets a subway map from the napping attendant in the glass stall (who seems rather annoyed about being woken up to do his job), buys a Metro card, and sees no less than three rats running across the train tracks when he gets onto the platform.
Dean hops on the first train heading downtown and picks a stop in Brooklyn at random. When he gets off, he scurries above ground as quickly as possible and breathes in the not quite fresh air (which still beats the fishy smell of the homeless guy that Dean accidentally sat down next to).
He spots a hotel not half a block away and heads toward it eagerly. It’s exactly what he’s been searching for: run down and vaguely seedy. When he gets inside, a bored kid in sweats and headphones in his ears intones, “80 bucks a night, one bed, no negotiation,” without even glancing up from his magazine. Dean rejoices.
The room he gets is tiny-Dean’s pretty sure he’s stayed in motels with closets bigger than this room-but there’s a bed, a TV, and a bathroom, and that’s all he really needs.
Dean falls back onto the bed, kicks off his shoes, and frowns when the bed begins to quiver underneath him. There’s no Magic Fingers (and Dean’s out of quarters even if there were), and then Dean realizes that the entire room is trembling. He wonders if it might be an earthquake (Does New York get earthquakes? He can’t recall) and then hears the familiar screeching of the subway along the tracks beneath him.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Dean says as he looks around and notices all the furniture is bolted down to the floor, and the one anemic painting of a bicycle on the wall is hanging at a hopelessly crooked angle.
A few more subway trains pass underneath him before Dean starts to adjust to the surreality of it all and relaxes. In any case, the hangover and sleep deprivation eventually catch up with him and Dean passes out-rattling or no rattling.
* * * * * * * *
Dean comes out of the bathroom, drying his hands on a small towel and finds Castiel standing next to the bed.
“Hello, Dean.”
“Hello yourself.” Dean tosses the towel on the dresser and cross his arms over his chest.
“Your face and hands are flushed,” Castiel says, peering at him curiously.
“Yeah, well, gotta wash the blood off,” Dean says, looking down at his reddened and raw hands. “Never really can, though.”
Castiel frowns. “What blood?”
“From my dreams. Nightmares,” Dean corrects himself. “It’s like I still have the blood of those people all over my face and my hands, bits of their brains and skin in my eyelashes and nostrils. You remember that day, don’t you?”
“That was…” Castiel stares at the painting of the bicycle over Dean’s left shoulder. “That was a difficult day.”
“You know Michael didn’t wipe the pieces of those people off me at first?” Dean runs a hand over his face, almost expecting it to come away smeared with blood. “Just left it there for a week or two. Didn’t even care.”
Castiel meets Dean’s eyes. “It’s been gone a while now.”
Dean looks over at the clean white towel. “Yeah. Sure.”
“You shouldn’t dwell on these things,” Castiel says.
“If you can find me an off switch for my brain, I’ll happily flip it.” Dean smiles humorlessly. “Can you take me back to Bobby’s now? I’m tired of this scene.”
“No.”
Dean blinks. “No?”
“No,” Castiel repeats with no elaboration.
“No, as in you physically can’t because you’ve lost your angel mojo?”
“No, as in I can, but I won’t,” Castiel replies, tone neutral and measured.
“That’s...” Dean finds himself at a loss. “I’m not sure I’m getting why not here. It’ll take half a second and I’m the one that won’t be pooping for a week.”
“I told you once already and I’m telling you again.” Castiel narrows his eyes and draws himself up to his full height. “I am not your servant. And I do not exist to be at your beck and call.”
“Beck and call? Since when do you-" When Castiel’s lips thin to nothing, Dean shakes his head. “Look, it’s your fault I’m here to begin with, so the least you could do is get me back to where I started.”
“My fault?” Castiel says, voice not nearly so level anymore. “Please, enlighten me on how I could possibly be responsible for your ridiculous drunken antics and the consequences thereof?”
“Don’t give me that high horse crap,” Dean says as his own voice begins to rise as well. “You were the one that warped me to a town so boring all I could do there was drink-"
“All you ever do is drink-"
“And if you hadn’t brought me there,” Dean says loudly over Castiel, “I wouldn’t have ended up on the bus with some random woman heading to New York.”
“I saved your life, you ungrateful-" Castiel stops himself and turns away. “Are you telling me I should have simply left you?”
“I’m saying I never asked for your help,” Dean snaps. “I’m saying that you interfered-"
“Oh, so you get angry when I transport you away from a psychopath intent on murdering you but otherwise I’m supposed to exist as your personal relocation device?” Castiel’s fists are clenching at his sides, but he’s still facing away from Dean.
“Why the fuck are you even fighting this, Cas?” Dean shouts, the urge to punch something welling up in his chest. “It takes a minute, tops, and now that you’ve got your mojo back-"
“That is not the point-"
“Then what is the point?” Dean grabs Castiel’s shoulder and spins him around. “Fucking look at me when I’m talking to you!”
“Don’t touch me,” Castiel says, staring at Dean’s fingers still on his shoulders.
“Or what?” Dean takes an aggressive step forward right up into Castiel’s face. “You’ll kill me?”
“That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?” Castiel whispers, before grabbing Dean by the waist, and yanking him forward so they’re pressed together, chest to chest, lips only inches away. “That’s all you want.”
“I don’t want anything,” Dean replies, breaths coming out harsh and labored. He closes the remaining distance between them and kisses Castiel, hard and rough with teeth.
For a second, Castiel doesn’t respond, and then his mouth opens up, not so much giving in as fighting back against Dean’s onslaught with teeth and tongue of his own.
Dean surges forward, pushing Castiel until he falls back on the bed behind him, sending up a loud creak and whine of bedsprings. He grabs at Castiel’s belt and unbuckles it, not breaking away from the bruising kiss, and not bothering with the niceties like Castiel’s coat or shirt. As soon as the belt is undone, he unzips Castiel’s pants and shoves his underwear down, reaching in to grab at Castiel’s dick, which is already hard.
“Dean,” Castiel pants as Dean reaches forward to jack him roughly. “Dean, this is-"
“I’ve got lube on the nightstand,” Dean cuts in harshly, meeting Castiel’s eyes without flinching.
After a moment, Castiel reaches back to get the lube. In the meanwhile, Dean undoes his fly and shoves his pants and underwear down to free his dick. When Castiel passes Dean the lube, he squeezes a generous amount out, and reaches forward to finger Castiel open.
Until Castiel stops him. “No.”
“What the hell is with you?” Dean asks as Castiel pushes his hand away. “Do you want to do this or not?”
“Not like this,” Castiel says, and rolls them over on the bed effortlessly, pinning Dean back by his shoulders, trench coat falling down around them like an absurd tent.
“Fuck you, Cas,” Dean snarls, twisting underneath him, trying to get some traction to throw Castiel off. “I wanna fuck you, I don’t want--"
“I thought I’d already made it clear I don’t care what you want,” Castiel says, not budging an inch.
The weight of Castiel’s body and the way he’s holding Dean completely immobile brings back a flood of memories: being choked to death by Miles, being flung and trapped against the wall by Lucifer, and being bound to the rack by a cackling Alistair. It’s crazy, because this is Castiel and Dean knows that no matter how fucked up things get between them he’d never hurt Dean--and yet he can’t suppress the rising sense of panic in his throat, the tightening in his chest that makes it impossible to breathe.
Castiel looks into Dean’s eyes and instantly backs away, nearly falling off the bed his haste. “Dean,” he says, eyes wide and horrified. “I didn’t-"
Dean holds a hand out to stop Castiel from continuing as he rolls onto his side and tries to catch this breath. The tightness in his chest remains, lessening somewhat, but he can still feel his heart pounding. “It’s fine,” Dean says after a tense minute of silence. He curls into himself, arms crossed protectively over his torso. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Castiel says, and he doesn’t come closer, which is a relief. “I should have-I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, hey, you were caught up in the moment,” Dean tries and fails to smile. “It’s all part of the game of angry hatesex.”
“I don’t hate you, Dean,” Castiel whispers, and Dean closes his eyes.
“You should probably go,” Dean says, flashes of memory still racing through his mind.
He doesn’t need to look to know Castiel’s gone.
* * * * * * * *
“Hey, Dean.”
Dean nearly drops the phone when he hears Sam’s voice across the line. “Sam?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Sam says. “How-how are you?”
“I’m, uh-" good, Dean wants to say automatically. But it isn’t true, and Sam will know it. “I’m alive. In New York now.”
“Wow, really?” Dean can practically see Sam’s surprised expression in his mind’s eye. “How’s that?”
“Smells like a goddamn urinal. Too many people. And my room shakes every time the F train passes. Sadly, that’s not a euphemism.”
Sam chuckles, and Dean almost smiles himself. “Why are you still there, then?”
Dean considers telling Sam the truth-the whole complicated business with Miles and Castiel and a drunk bus trip concluding with Dean freaking out like some insane wuss during sex. But Sam doesn’t need to hear that. “I wanna see the Empire State Building before I go.”
There’s silence on the other end, and when Sam starts talking again, the smile is gone. “Yeah.”
“So how’s New Mexico?” Dean asks, shifting the phone to his other ear.
“Good. Lots of sun and wide open spaces.”
“Right, yeah, good for thinking things over or whatever,” Dean says. “You reach Nirvana yet?”
There’s another silence. “Dean, I. I wanted to tell you that I said yes.”
“What?” Dean replies, no idea what Sam’s talking about-or at least, not wanting to know.
“That’s why I called. To come clean and stop keeping secrets from you, stop lying to protect you-to stop doing all the things I resent when you do them to me,” Sam says all the words in a rush, like he’d prepared a canned speech in advance and tripped over half of it.
Dean stares out the small, greasy window of his room into the dingy alley nearby. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was after you-after Michael took over, about five months into he war. We were getting our asses handed to us and there was nothing Michael could do about it. Lucifer was too strong already.” Sam pauses. “We needed to poison the well.”
Dean’s grip on the phone tightens. “What did you do?”
“I did what I had to,” Sam says. He doesn’t sound sorry.
“Goddamnit, Sam. The whole point of me saying yes so that you-"
“Don’t you think I know that? God, it’s like the story of my fucking life by now!” Sam replies harshly. “Dean Winchester sacrifices himself again for his screwed up little brother, and in other news, the sun rises and then it sets.”
“Sam-"
“Don’t ‘Sam’ me, Dean,” Sam interrupts. “Those people, those deaths-words can’t begin to describe how awful it was, how sick it made me. But their deaths were supposed to be on my head, not yours. I should have been the one to bear it, not you.”
“And I was supposed to let Lucifer keeping killing people until you gave in?” Dean replies tightly.
“You were supposed to trust me! Wasn’t that the whole point of spending some time apart and then coming back together again? Are you ever going to really forgive me for the mistakes I've made, or are you just going to hold them over my head forever?”
“Sam.” Dean doesn’t know what else to say.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t call to start a fight.” Sam takes a shaky breath. “I called because my spiritual mentor told me that I wouldn’t be able to move on until I’d dealt with the issues in my past and-"
“Spiritual mentor?” Dean repeats disbelievingly. “You’re kidding me, right? You’re listening to some bullshit new age con artist now?”
“Here name is Mathilda and she’s not a con. She’s really helped me-"
“Mathilda? Jesus fucking Christ, have you learned nothing from Ruby? Another hot piece of ass who wants to help you and give you all the answers-"
“It’s not like that,” Sam yells, and Dean starts. “For one thing, she’s sixty-years-old, married, and has two kids. For another thing, she doesn’t want anything from me, and doesn’t care about my destiny or my past other than in the way they’re holding me back.”
“Holding you back from what?”
“From living a semi-functional life.” Sam lets out a noise that sounds halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I said yes. I performed a ritual beforehand that would weaken Lucifer as soon as he took control. I thought I could manage him but I couldn’t and he-he made me do things. Things I can’t-"
“We won, though,” Dean interrupts, because he doesn't want to hear this. “Lucifer lost, in the end.”
“It doesn’t feel like we won,” Sam says, and Dean can barely hear him..
“We won,” Dean repeats. It sounds hollow.
Sam takes another deep breath. “Mathilda thinks I should start forming more relationships with people who aren’t bogged down by-by insane amounts of baggage. She says it would be good for me not to be so isolated after all this.”
Dean sags back against the wall. “Isolated, huh?”
“Yeah.” Sam stops, and seems almost to be waiting for Dean to say something. But Dean doesn’t know what Sam’s waiting for, so he says nothing instead. “Look, Dean, I’ll call you, okay? I’ll… I’ll call you.”
10 weeks after the war
Dean doesn’t know why he’s still in New York. After a week of sitting in the hotel, watching bad TV while the subway rattles the ice in his whiskey, Dean eventually ventures out into the world again to hustle more pool, though finding a bar that’s big enough to have a pool table turns out to be more of a challenge than Dean expects. He eventually finds a few places somewhat nearby, brings in a nice haul of cash and manages to swipe a guy’s credit card as well. It’s enough to keep him set for another couple of weeks if he’s smart about it.
Dean starts taking the subway to random stops, wanders around wherever he gets off for a while until he grows bored or tired, and then goes back to his hotel room.
One day he ends up in lower Manhattan, near the remains of the former World Trade Center. He had thought (when he’d given any thought to the matter) that Ground Zero would be like some gaping wound in the earth, or a pit surrounding the tattered skeletons of the twin towers. Instead, it’s just a giant construction site with a fence erected from tall wood planks surrounding the entire perimeter. When Dean looks up at the sky, he can see the outlines of cranes and other heavy machinery, but there is a curious absence in the skyline that makes everything seem strangely off balance.
Dean stares at one of the fence boards, which is spray painted with the words ‘No Bills,’ and contemplates breaking in. He probably could easily since there’s no security or cops nearby, but there doesn’t seem to be a point.
Dean goes back to the hotel that night and pours himself an extra large glass of whiskey. Then he moves onto the rest of the bottle.
* * * * * * * *
“How was class?”
“Oh, you know, it’s whatever.” There are two girls chatting rather loudly across from Dean on the subway, one wearing a hot pink scarf and the other a neon orange jacket. They both appear to be college aged. “My professor would not stop talking about Deanology, though. I mean, it’s almost the end of the semester and I just want to know what’s going to be on the final exam.”
“Deanology?” Orange Jacket replies. “Isn’t that the new cult out in Kansas or the Midwest or whatever?”
“Apparently it’s everywhere,” Pink Scarf replies with an eye-roll. Dean slides lower in his seat behind his newspaper. “And my professor is a recent convert.”
“Dude, he cannot seriously believe that some guy named Dean became an angel and saved the world,” Orange Jacket scoffs. “That’s nuts!”
“Oh, he believes. He hardcore believes ever since his sister escaped one of those towns that big tornado hit. He keeps talking about how he wants to move out to one of those freaky communes and help rebuild or whatever.”
“And give up tenure? Holy crap.” Orange Jacket shakes her head. “A few natural disasters and suddenly everyone finds God. Or Dean. Whatever.”
“I know, right? It’s craziness.” Pink Scarf gets up. “Hey, here’s our stop.”
* * * * * * * *
The Empire State building, as it turns out, is not that difficult to get to. Dean takes the subway to the stop closest to it on the map, then follows all the signs pointing tourists towards it.
“You going to the Empire State Building?” A guy carrying a huge poster emblazoned with a photo of the building waves at Dean.
“Yeah, I guess,” Dean replies cautiously.
“Alright!” the guy grins and launches into a spiel about being an official rep for the attraction (the ugly uniform he’s stuck wearing does seem to corroborate this claim) and that there are two ways to get to the top of the building: waiting in line for three hours like all the other suckers, or paying $55 to hop a fast train to the top.
“$55 for an elevator ride,” Dean says. “Are you serious?”
“Well, you get a hell of a show and an experience.” The guy points to the other side of his poster which features a photo of a bunch of tourists cheering in front of a movie screen. “And it’s fast!”
“Yeah, forget it,” Dean says, walking away. “I’m gonna get a slice of pizza instead.”
The guy deflates visibly, but lets Dean go. “Have a nice day!”
Dean rounds the corner of the block as quickly as he can and goes into the first pizza place he spots. As he takes a bite of his piping hot slice he does have to admit that for all its flaws, New York has the best damn pizza he’s ever tasted.
“Hey.” Dean looks up from his food in time to see a disheveled old man with wild, flyaway hair and ragged clothes slide into the chair across from him.
“Uh,” Dean says, unsure of whether it’s time to fight or fly; he really wants to just sit and eat his pizza. “Do I know you?”
“What?” The man-probably homeless-scoffs. “That’s silly! We’ve never met before. Why would you know me?” While Dean’s trying to figure out if he’s regular or Deanville brand crazy, the man continues. “So why are you in town?”
Dean glances around the crowded pizza place and notes the lack of any open seats he ccould escape to, and decides to humor the old man for the length of time it takes to finish his meal. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Besides, how do you know I’m not from around here?”
“You? A New Yorker? Yeah right!” The man barks a laugh. “Anyway, if you’re not in town because you wanna be, what are you looking to find then?”
Dean frowns. “I’m not looking for anything.”
“Sure you are.” The old man’s eyes bore into Dean’s for a second, shockingly blue. “Everyone’s looking for something. Including you.”
Dean bites into his crust. “What am I supposed to say? Some bullshit about true love, or the meaning of life, or the answers to all my burning questions? Gimme a break-I’m trying to get by like everyone else, that's all.”
“Oh, I see.” The man nods sagely and sits back in his chair, seemingly satisfied by that answer. “I understand now.”
Dean’s not sure why he’s even bothering with trying to follow a conversation with some crazy homeless guy, but he supposes he’s still got a few sips of his soda left to go. “Understand what?”
But the man nods and mutters something under his breath-not paying attention to Dean’s question at all-before looking up again. “Hey. Can you punch me in the face?”
Dean blinks and then stands. “I’m gonna go now.”
* * * * * * * *
“Did you hear about the visiting exhibit at the Met?” Some douchebag in a blue suit asks his equally douchey friend (who is not wearing a suit).
“No,” Douche Friend replies. “Is it good?”
“It’s amazing.” Suited Douchebag says. “You ever seen Guernica by Picasso?”
“No way!” Douche Friend says, seeming impressed. “That’s on loan to the Met?”
“Limited time only.” Suited Douchebag sounds smug. “I have a friend who works over there who invited me in for a preview event-you know, before it opened to the general public.”
“What’s it like in person?”
“A revelation,” Suited Douchebag responds immediately. “Life-changing. I’m not a crier or anything, but damn, that piece really hit me in the gut, you know? Some people were sobbing in front of the thing.”
“Wow,” Douche Friend says.
“Yeah, you should definitely check it out if you have the chance. I’m telling you, it’ll rock your world, man.”
* * * * * * * *
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a massive, imposing structure with about a billion steps leading up to its front entrance. The lobby is even bigger than the exterior suggests, filled to the brim with roving herds of people and security guards.
Dean buys a ticket and finds the Guernica exhibit easily; there are signs all over the place and nearly every damn person in the place is heading towards it.
The exhibition room is, like everything else in the museum, large with high ceilings. There seems to be one focal point for the room: a staggeringly huge monochrome painting on the far wall. Other than that, there are only a few small sketches of bullfights, and hardly anyone is paying attention to those.
The crowd gathered around the painting-presumably Guernica-is pretty dense, and there’s a security guard standing by to yell at people to stay a respectful distance away and not take pictures. Dean weaves through the crowd until he gets to the front, where he has an unimpeded view of the painting.
It’s a Picasso, so Dean expects it look messed up-Cubist or whatever. It’s painted in varying shades of black and white and grey, and features the disembodied heads and limbs of wailing people and animals: a mother and child, a demented bull, and a strange horse rising above it all. Everything is distorted, fragmented, confused.
Dean looks at it and feels… nothing.
He sneaks glances at the people around him, tracking their reactions. Most are gazing in awed and reverent silence, a few are murmuring in amazement, and one woman is openly weeping. Seems the Suited Douchebag wasn’t kidding about that.
Dean turns back at the painting and notes the carefully controlled chaos, the grimness of the color and subject matter, and the technical skill required to paint on such a large scale.
But even though he sees the screaming faces, the twisted bodies, the violence of the scene--it’s not a revelation, or a transcendent experience. It doesn’t even evoke the level of emotion that the average subway ad does for Dean (usually annoyance). Dean just feels… blank. Empty.
He walks away from the painting and lets other eager viewers take his place. So he doesn’t get the appeal of some famous painting-so what? It shouldn’t bother him because that guy on the train was a douchebag and for all he knows all those people in that exhibition room are douchebags too.
But standing in the crowd of all those people who apparently saw and felt what Dean couldn’t-well, it kind of pisses him off. Fucking Suited Douchebag and his fucking promises about life-changing revelations.
Dean goes back to his hotel and tries to put the painting out of his mind. But it persists--the nagging wonder at why he couldn’t see what those other people were seeing; why he couldn’t experience what they experienced.
He falls asleep thinking about that painting, turning it over in his head and thinking about that one woman’s tears.
11 weeks after the war
The next day, Dean goes back to the Museum. And the day after that. And the day after that day. Each day he spends hours prowling around the exhibit, examining the piece from every angle and every distance. Each day proves as fruitless as the last, with Dean no closer to the answer than before.
On the fifth day, it occurs to Dean as he’s scouring the floor map for a bathroom that there’s a whole museum’s worth of art beyond the one visiting exhibition.
When he leaves the bathroom, Dean stops n front of the mummy’s sarcophagus on a raised pedestal and has to concede that it is at least a little cool.
He wanders through the Egyptian wing, circling pieces of ancient statuary, pausing in front of translations of hieroglyphs. He finds himself asking for the first time: what else is here?
Dean begins to walk around the museum in earnest. Some art he doesn’t like (boring portraits of kids in stuffy old clothes) and some of it he does (spectacular landscapes depicting Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon).
Dean eventually finds himself in the Islamic Art section, surrounded by intricately embroidered carpets and a free-standing alcove covered in blue geometric designs and calligraphy; according to the explanatory plaque, the alcove is a ‘mihrab,’ a place of worship and sanctuary.
There are other, smaller pieces as well. Pieces of deep blue parchment written on in gold script, and, strangely enough, bowls also covered in calligraphy. Dean isn’t sure when dinnerware started being considered art, but one bowl with elegant, sweeping sides and simple black decoration catches his eye anyway.
Dean presses close enough to the glass that his nose leaves a smudge, and stares down into the bowl. It’s white, with delicate designs at the rim and a single swirl of calligraphy at the bottom. It’s such a simple thing, really-some bowl with barely any decoration, and yet here it is in a museum, waiting under lights and behind glass.
* * * * * * * *
“Dean.”
Dean glances in the direction of the voice. “Cas.”
“You’ve been standing here for hours,” Castiel says, coming up beside Dean. “First the painting and now this?”
“Pretty bizarre, right? At least with Guernica I could say it was a famous piece of art. This… this is just a damn bowl.” Out of the corner of his eye, Dean can see Castiel’s profile, the way he peers intently through the glass as if searching for answers himself. “Besides, how do you know I’ve been hanging out here for a while? You been watching me?”
“I am always watching you, Dean,” Castiel says. He sounds tired, and Dean wonders if he's always sounded this weary or if this is something new. Dean probably should have taken the time to notice, before.
Dean closes his eyes. “You been keeping tabs on Sammy too?”
“Of course.” Before Dean can ask, “He’s fine.”
“Well, he’s got that spiritual mentor or whatever now, so of course he’s fucking fine.” Something constricts in Dean’s throat. “I… I don’t think he’s coming back, though. I don’t think he wants to.”
Castiel doesn’t really need to say anything in response to how pathetic that sounds, which is why it surprises Dean when he does. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s better this way,” Dean lies. “We can’t be hunters without anything to hunt anyway.”
“The monsters will come back. In time.”
“But I can’t go back. Not to the way I used to be.” Castiel is staring at Dean now, and Dean wants to stare back but he can’t. He can’t. “I’m not some ordinary guy, and I’m not a Savior either.”
“Dean,” is all Castiel says, and his voice sounds sad, sadder than he’s ever been.
“You know that the calligraphy at the bottom of that thing translates to ‘peace’?” Dean says suddenly, gesturing at the bowl. “Can you imagine that? You could find peace at the bottom of every bowl of cereal in the morning.”
“It’s just a word,” Castiel replies gently.
“Yeah.” Dean finally manages to look up and meet Castiel’s eyes, and what he sees there scares him, makes him want to pull away. He takes a deep breath instead. “I just. I’m not doing so good. You know, on my own.”
“I know,” Castiel says, and his expression is so soft that Dean can’t take it.
“I…” Dean puts a hand over his face, covers his mouth with his palm so his voice can only creep out, quiet and so small. “I want you to stay.” It’s too much to ask, too much to hope that Castiel hasn’t already made his decision to go, to think he might actually stay on Earth for-for what? For Dean?
When Dean peeks through his fingers, Castiel is still there.
“Then I’ll stay,” Castiel says as he takes Dean’s hand into his own. And this time, when Dean stares down at where their fingers interlock, Castiel doesn’t let go.
“Okay,” Dean whispers. “Okay.”
fin
Poll FB Hallelujah Act III
Act III
Master post of all chapters and art here.
When Michael left his body, he apparently left Dean in a coma for
Act III
Past
When Michael left his body, he apparently left Dean in a coma for three days. At least, that’s what Castiel told Dean when he woke up with a shitload of tubes sticking out of his body.
“I fucking hate catheters,” Dean said as he tried to sit up more comfortably in the hospital bed. “Guess this means I’m not dead though.”
“Yes,” Castiel said, and he took Dean’s hand. Dean stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before Castiel let go, and Dean felt a twinge of-of something at the absence. “Sam and Bobby stepped out for a coffee. They will return shortly.”
“So we’re in the clear?” Dean asked, reclining back on his thin, decidedly un-fluffed pillows. It felt strange to be able to move his arms and legs again, strange to be able to control where he looked, the words his mouth formed. “World saved, evil vanquished, all that jazz?”
“Yes,” Castiel said again. “Everyone has been celebrating.”
“And what about you?” Dean raised an eyebrow, and even that felt like a small victory. “No parade floats for you?”
“I was waiting for you.”
9 weeks after the war
“Wake up. Oh my god, please wake up.” Dean groans and shifts, trying to get away from the shrieking noise in his ear, but then a hand grabs his shoulders and shakes. “Please, you have to wake up!”
Dean opens his eyes and the hazy face of a 30-something year old woman with big, blonde hair and bubblegum pink lipstick smeared across her lips and cheek comes into focus. “What’s going on?”
“We have to get off the bus,” she says, taking his elbow and tugging. “Come on, let’s just get off and then we can talk.”
Dean nods and gets to his feet, stumbling only slightly as he makes it to the bus aisle. His neck still hurts and his head throbs dully with the familiar ache of a hangover, but he manages to make it off the bus and into the garage in one piece.
Dean and the blonde woman follow the line of people disembarking out of the garage and into a building labeled, ‘The Port Authority.’ Once inside, Dean stops. The bus terminal is huge, swarming with people, and totally unfamiliar to him. “Okay, who are you and what’s going on?”
The blonde woman rubs her eyes and sighs. “My name’s Tammy. We met last night but you were pretty trashed by the time we started talking. Guess you must have blacked out.”
“Tammy.”
Flashes of the previous day begin to come back to him: getting his ass chewed out by Castiel before he took off again, Dean getting kicked out of the motel room by an irate motel manager, and then Dean finally making his way to the nearest bar to drink the shitty day away.
He’d gotten absolutely bombed after a few hours and, at some point, bored with drinking alone at the bar. He’d ended up making friends (and then enemies) at the pool table before zeroing in on the blonde in the corner: Tammy. But none of that explained the bus or the fact that they were in a completely different city.
“Yeah, I remember the bar. But why were we on a bus?”
Tammy squints at him. “You don’t remember leaving?” At Dean’s headshake no, she continues, “You couldn’t remember where you’d parked your car so we started walking to my place.”
“And ended up on a bus?” Dean remembers her agreeing to leave with him, giggling, as he put his arm around her waist. He remembers walking through a moonlit night and then staring into the inky darkness of a large body of water. “Was there-did we cross a bridge or something?”
Tammy groans. “Oh yeah, you were like, obsessed with that bridge. You wouldn’t leave until I suggested we go somewhere instead.”
“Really?” Apparently, Dean had been out of his mind enough to be turning down the opportunity for sex for a bridge, of all things.
Tammy snorts as if she can’t quite believe it herself while she rifles through her purse and eventually pulls out a tiny mirror. “Yeah, so I made a deal with you. Get off the bridge and then we’d get the hell out of Dodge. It worked, I guess.”
“So where’d we go?” Dean takes in the huge bus terminal around him, ticketing counters along the walls and people rushing around like ants focused on getting the last crumbs of food on the floor. “Where are we?”
Tammy finishes wiping the lipstick off her cheek and puts away her mirror. “I think we might be in New York.”
“The… city?” Dean pauses. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Tammy ties her poofy hair back in a ponytail and suddenly looks older, wearier. “I think I suggested we go to Miami but you wanted LA, and then we compromised on New York. Or something.” She sighs again. “I don’t know what we were thinking. I was so out of my mind yesterday night and my head is fucking killing me right now.”
“You’re telling me,” Dean says. “Look, let’s get something to eat, okay? I’m starving.”
Tammy agrees and they step into the first restaurant they see: a pizza place with ugly orange tables and dull fluorescent lighting overhead.
They both order two slices of pizza with drinks, and take a seat at a booth towards the back of the half-filled restaurant. They eat in silence-Tammy texting up a storm on her cell phone while Dean tries his damnedest to remember what happened last night.
He still has his wallet, which is filled with several hundred dollars worth of cash (apparently he’d hustled some drunken pool successfully last night as well) and a bus ticket stub, so it seems that Tammy is probably telling the truth about their inebriated escapades. He can’t remember too much after the bar--other than staring down at the surface of dark water and the feeling that if he only could reach out and touch it, he’d be able to find something incredible on the other side.
When Tammy finishes her food, she goes to the bathroom and Dean takes a second to call Castiel. All the calls go straight to voicemail, and Dean gives up after the third try and calls Bobby instead.
“Dean?” Bobby picks up after the fifth ring and does not sound happy about it. “Do you know what time it is?”
Dean glances at the clock on the wall and winces: 7:30 AM. “Sorry, Bobby. I didn’t realize how early it was where you are.”
Bobby grunts. “Well now that you’ve got me up, what is it?”
Dean fishes out the key with the name of the motel he’d been staying at where Miles nearly slit his throat. “I need you to help me get my stuff back. I would call the motel myself, but I don’t have my laptop with me.”
“And you can’t just drive your ass back to get your stuff?”
Dean winces at the thought of his baby sitting abandoned in the shitty motel parking lot, and prays Miles hasn’t touched her. “Yeah, I got no car either. It’s kind of a long story, but the short version is that I’m in New York City with no car and none of my stuff.”
Bobby sighs irritably, but Dean can hear him shuffling in the background. “Alright, what do you want me to do?”
Dean finishes giving Bobby all the relevant information about the same time that Tammy comes back from the bathroom.
“So I’m gonna get a bus back,” she says flatly as she drops into the seat across from Dean. All her makeup’s been wiped off, he notices.
“Okay.”
“What are you gonna do?” she asks, seemingly only marginally interested in the answer. “You weren’t from around town, right?”
“Yeah I, uh, I don’t know.” Dean rubs his face. “I think I’m gonna stick around here for a while. Figure out my next move.”
“Yeah, okay. That sounds good. Well.” She stands up. “Um. Good luck, I guess.”
“Thanks. Same to you, Tammy.”
He watches her go.
* * * * * * * *
Castiel isn’t picking up. Dean leaves a series of progressively more pissed off messages on his phone before giving up and heading into the one poorly kept bathroom at the back of the pizza place and locking the door behind him.
“Cas,” Dean says, breathing through his mouth because the stench inside is truly foul. “Cas, I know you can hear me. I’ve been calling and calling-where are you? I know you’re out there, and I need you to come get me and bring me back to Bobby’s.”
Dean waits a few minutes, but nothing happens. “Cas, I’m not kidding around here. This place stinks and I don’t have my car.” Dean waits another ten minutes before some guy starts banging on the door.
“Hey man, I’ve been waiting out here for twenty minutes!” the guy yells, and Dean rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming out.” Dean pushes open the door and gets shoved aside without a word, bathroom door slamming shut. Guess he really needed to go.
A second later, Dean’s phone begins to ring.
“Guess who just showed up with all your stuff,” Bobby says without preamble. “Your very own guardian angel.”
“He’s not-" Dean stops. “Whatever. Is my car there too?”
Bobby grunts affirmatively. “And he said he took care of the Miles problem. Whatever that means.”
“Miles? That’s-" unexpected, Dean thinks, but doesn’t say. “Tell him to get his feathery butt over here to pick me up too.”
“Tell him yourself,” Bobby replies. “I’m going back to bed.” He hangs up, muttering something about idiots that wake him up at ass o’clock in the morning for things that don’t even need doing.
Dean stares at the phone for a long minute before calling Castiel again. The call goes straight to voicemail-again-and he tries to leave a message in a slightly nicer tone. “Hey, Cas, I dunno if you’re busy doing something right now, but I really need a lift here since I’m back east and my car’s where you left it-at Bobby’s. So if you could call me sometime soon, I’d really appreciate it. You know where I am.”
* * * * * * * *
Dean waits around the Port Authority for a few hours, aimlessly wandering through it, browsing the overpriced ‘I Love NY’ shot glasses and T-shirts and leafing through a copy of The Daily Post that someone left behind on a bench.
He gets sick of it after a while and decides to go outside-he’s never been to New York before, so what the hell. Might as well see more than the inside of a bus terminal.
The first thing that greets Dean when he steps outside is an incredibly powerful wave of disparate smells: car exhaust mingled with roasted peanuts on top of day-old urine. The next thing that hits him is the noise-not that the interior of the Port Authority was some kind of library state, but now there’s a powerful cacophony of car horns and screeching wheels and the general din of hundreds of voices all around him.
And of course, there are the people. There are worried tourists asking for directions, panhandlers begging for change, and some guy in a monkey costume dancing around while a delighted group of onlookers clap and cheer. Streams of people push past Dean, and he feels vaguely like he’s back in Deanville again, being pinned in by crowds and suffocated.
Dean fights his way through the teeming masses of people and tries to find a piece of sidewalk that’s empty and not a major thoroughfare. This proves surprisingly difficult as the constantly moving crowds quickly shift to cover any free space on the sidewalk. He finds himself being moved by the crowd rather than moving through it, and somehow ends up on a quieter street corner a block or so away from the Port Authority, not entirely sure how he got there.
Dean takes a deep breath and stares up at the sky, which is mostly blocked by tall skyscrapers. The patches of it he can see are dotted with grim, gray clouds and he shivers, wishing he had his jacket with him. He decides at that moment that he’s had enough of New York and its smelly streets and ridiculous numbers of people; he wants out.
“Cas,” Dean says lowly, checking to make sure no one around him hears. But no one gives him so much as a glance, and feels brave enough to say Castiel’s name a little more loudly.
He gives up after about ten minutes and starts thinking about alternative ways out of the city. He could go back to the Port Authority and catch a bus westward, then hitch his way to Bobby’s, but the prospect of being on a bus for ten hours while hungover is not exactly appealing to him. Flights are out of the question (even if Dean could get a ticket and find the airport) and he doubts he’ll find a lot of truckers in the immediate area taking cargo out west.
Dean eyeballs the cars parked along the street but trying to lift one in broad daylight with so many witnesses is pretty much the epitome of a bad idea.
The familiar pounding in the back of his head reminds Dean how much he needs to sit down and just be hungover for a while-preferably in a quiet room with no other people. It pisses him off to waste the money on a hotel while he waits for Castiel to come pick him up, but he can’t really see any other good option right now.
Dean stops at the first place on the street that has ‘Hotel’ in the name (he’s not entirely sure if motels are something that exist in a city like New York) and steps through the well-appointed lobby to the marble reception desk.
“I need a room for the night with a single bed,” Dean says to the neatly groomed receptionist (in a suit and tie, no less), who eyes Dean’s ratty jeans and wrinkled T-shirt.
“We have rooms starting at $250 a night,” the receptionist replies and Dean nearly chokes. At that rate, even the healthy wad of cash in Dean’s pocket will barely be enough to last him three nights if Castiel continues taking his sweet time to arrive.
“Do you have anything, you know,” Dean leans on the desk and the receptionist frowns at the smudges he leaves. “Anything, you know. Less. Uh. Less?”
“$250 is our starting rate for available rooms,” the receptionist replies flatly, and Dean pulls back.
“Okay then. Thanks anyway,” Dean says as he heads out the door.
Dean scouts out other nearby hotels and rates. A few are completely booked already, two are even more expensive, and four or five are comparable. One hotel is $50 cheaper and that’s when Dean gives up on finding any accommodations in the area.
He descends into the nearest subway station and finds himself impressed by the state of disrepair and grime of its interior. He gets a subway map from the napping attendant in the glass stall (who seems rather annoyed about being woken up to do his job), buys a Metro card, and sees no less than three rats running across the train tracks when he gets onto the platform.
Dean hops on the first train heading downtown and picks a stop in Brooklyn at random. When he gets off, he scurries above ground as quickly as possible and breathes in the not quite fresh air (which still beats the fishy smell of the homeless guy that Dean accidentally sat down next to).
He spots a hotel not half a block away and heads toward it eagerly. It’s exactly what he’s been searching for: run down and vaguely seedy. When he gets inside, a bored kid in sweats and headphones in his ears intones, “80 bucks a night, one bed, no negotiation,” without even glancing up from his magazine. Dean rejoices.
The room he gets is tiny-Dean’s pretty sure he’s stayed in motels with closets bigger than this room-but there’s a bed, a TV, and a bathroom, and that’s all he really needs.
Dean falls back onto the bed, kicks off his shoes, and frowns when the bed begins to quiver underneath him. There’s no Magic Fingers (and Dean’s out of quarters even if there were), and then Dean realizes that the entire room is trembling. He wonders if it might be an earthquake (Does New York get earthquakes? He can’t recall) and then hears the familiar screeching of the subway along the tracks beneath him.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Dean says as he looks around and notices all the furniture is bolted down to the floor, and the one anemic painting of a bicycle on the wall is hanging at a hopelessly crooked angle.
A few more subway trains pass underneath him before Dean starts to adjust to the surreality of it all and relaxes. In any case, the hangover and sleep deprivation eventually catch up with him and Dean passes out-rattling or no rattling.
* * * * * * * *
Dean comes out of the bathroom, drying his hands on a small towel and finds Castiel standing next to the bed.
“Hello, Dean.”
“Hello yourself.” Dean tosses the towel on the dresser and cross his arms over his chest.
“Your face and hands are flushed,” Castiel says, peering at him curiously.
“Yeah, well, gotta wash the blood off,” Dean says, looking down at his reddened and raw hands. “Never really can, though.”
Castiel frowns. “What blood?”
“From my dreams. Nightmares,” Dean corrects himself. “It’s like I still have the blood of those people all over my face and my hands, bits of their brains and skin in my eyelashes and nostrils. You remember that day, don’t you?”
“That was…” Castiel stares at the painting of the bicycle over Dean’s left shoulder. “That was a difficult day.”
“You know Michael didn’t wipe the pieces of those people off me at first?” Dean runs a hand over his face, almost expecting it to come away smeared with blood. “Just left it there for a week or two. Didn’t even care.”
Castiel meets Dean’s eyes. “It’s been gone a while now.”
Dean looks over at the clean white towel. “Yeah. Sure.”
“You shouldn’t dwell on these things,” Castiel says.
“If you can find me an off switch for my brain, I’ll happily flip it.” Dean smiles humorlessly. “Can you take me back to Bobby’s now? I’m tired of this scene.”
“No.”
Dean blinks. “No?”
“No,” Castiel repeats with no elaboration.
“No, as in you physically can’t because you’ve lost your angel mojo?”
“No, as in I can, but I won’t,” Castiel replies, tone neutral and measured.
“That’s...” Dean finds himself at a loss. “I’m not sure I’m getting why not here. It’ll take half a second and I’m the one that won’t be pooping for a week.”
“I told you once already and I’m telling you again.” Castiel narrows his eyes and draws himself up to his full height. “I am not your servant. And I do not exist to be at your beck and call.”
“Beck and call? Since when do you-" When Castiel’s lips thin to nothing, Dean shakes his head. “Look, it’s your fault I’m here to begin with, so the least you could do is get me back to where I started.”
“My fault?” Castiel says, voice not nearly so level anymore. “Please, enlighten me on how I could possibly be responsible for your ridiculous drunken antics and the consequences thereof?”
“Don’t give me that high horse crap,” Dean says as his own voice begins to rise as well. “You were the one that warped me to a town so boring all I could do there was drink-"
“All you ever do is drink-"
“And if you hadn’t brought me there,” Dean says loudly over Castiel, “I wouldn’t have ended up on the bus with some random woman heading to New York.”
“I saved your life, you ungrateful-" Castiel stops himself and turns away. “Are you telling me I should have simply left you?”
“I’m saying I never asked for your help,” Dean snaps. “I’m saying that you interfered-"
“Oh, so you get angry when I transport you away from a psychopath intent on murdering you but otherwise I’m supposed to exist as your personal relocation device?” Castiel’s fists are clenching at his sides, but he’s still facing away from Dean.
“Why the fuck are you even fighting this, Cas?” Dean shouts, the urge to punch something welling up in his chest. “It takes a minute, tops, and now that you’ve got your mojo back-"
“That is not the point-"
“Then what is the point?” Dean grabs Castiel’s shoulder and spins him around. “Fucking look at me when I’m talking to you!”
“Don’t touch me,” Castiel says, staring at Dean’s fingers still on his shoulders.
“Or what?” Dean takes an aggressive step forward right up into Castiel’s face. “You’ll kill me?”
“That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?” Castiel whispers, before grabbing Dean by the waist, and yanking him forward so they’re pressed together, chest to chest, lips only inches away. “That’s all you want.”
“I don’t want anything,” Dean replies, breaths coming out harsh and labored. He closes the remaining distance between them and kisses Castiel, hard and rough with teeth.
For a second, Castiel doesn’t respond, and then his mouth opens up, not so much giving in as fighting back against Dean’s onslaught with teeth and tongue of his own.
Dean surges forward, pushing Castiel until he falls back on the bed behind him, sending up a loud creak and whine of bedsprings. He grabs at Castiel’s belt and unbuckles it, not breaking away from the bruising kiss, and not bothering with the niceties like Castiel’s coat or shirt. As soon as the belt is undone, he unzips Castiel’s pants and shoves his underwear down, reaching in to grab at Castiel’s dick, which is already hard.
“Dean,” Castiel pants as Dean reaches forward to jack him roughly. “Dean, this is-"
“I’ve got lube on the nightstand,” Dean cuts in harshly, meeting Castiel’s eyes without flinching.
After a moment, Castiel reaches back to get the lube. In the meanwhile, Dean undoes his fly and shoves his pants and underwear down to free his dick. When Castiel passes Dean the lube, he squeezes a generous amount out, and reaches forward to finger Castiel open.
Until Castiel stops him. “No.”
“What the hell is with you?” Dean asks as Castiel pushes his hand away. “Do you want to do this or not?”
“Not like this,” Castiel says, and rolls them over on the bed effortlessly, pinning Dean back by his shoulders, trench coat falling down around them like an absurd tent.
“Fuck you, Cas,” Dean snarls, twisting underneath him, trying to get some traction to throw Castiel off. “I wanna fuck you, I don’t want--"
“I thought I’d already made it clear I don’t care what you want,” Castiel says, not budging an inch.
The weight of Castiel’s body and the way he’s holding Dean completely immobile brings back a flood of memories: being choked to death by Miles, being flung and trapped against the wall by Lucifer, and being bound to the rack by a cackling Alistair. It’s crazy, because this is Castiel and Dean knows that no matter how fucked up things get between them he’d never hurt Dean--and yet he can’t suppress the rising sense of panic in his throat, the tightening in his chest that makes it impossible to breathe.
Castiel looks into Dean’s eyes and instantly backs away, nearly falling off the bed his haste. “Dean,” he says, eyes wide and horrified. “I didn’t-"
Dean holds a hand out to stop Castiel from continuing as he rolls onto his side and tries to catch this breath. The tightness in his chest remains, lessening somewhat, but he can still feel his heart pounding. “It’s fine,” Dean says after a tense minute of silence. He curls into himself, arms crossed protectively over his torso. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Castiel says, and he doesn’t come closer, which is a relief. “I should have-I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, hey, you were caught up in the moment,” Dean tries and fails to smile. “It’s all part of the game of angry hatesex.”
“I don’t hate you, Dean,” Castiel whispers, and Dean closes his eyes.
“You should probably go,” Dean says, flashes of memory still racing through his mind.
He doesn’t need to look to know Castiel’s gone.
* * * * * * * *
“Hey, Dean.”
Dean nearly drops the phone when he hears Sam’s voice across the line. “Sam?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Sam says. “How-how are you?”
“I’m, uh-" good, Dean wants to say automatically. But it isn’t true, and Sam will know it. “I’m alive. In New York now.”
“Wow, really?” Dean can practically see Sam’s surprised expression in his mind’s eye. “How’s that?”
“Smells like a goddamn urinal. Too many people. And my room shakes every time the F train passes. Sadly, that’s not a euphemism.”
Sam chuckles, and Dean almost smiles himself. “Why are you still there, then?”
Dean considers telling Sam the truth-the whole complicated business with Miles and Castiel and a drunk bus trip concluding with Dean freaking out like some insane wuss during sex. But Sam doesn’t need to hear that. “I wanna see the Empire State Building before I go.”
There’s silence on the other end, and when Sam starts talking again, the smile is gone. “Yeah.”
“So how’s New Mexico?” Dean asks, shifting the phone to his other ear.
“Good. Lots of sun and wide open spaces.”
“Right, yeah, good for thinking things over or whatever,” Dean says. “You reach Nirvana yet?”
There’s another silence. “Dean, I. I wanted to tell you that I said yes.”
“What?” Dean replies, no idea what Sam’s talking about-or at least, not wanting to know.
“That’s why I called. To come clean and stop keeping secrets from you, stop lying to protect you-to stop doing all the things I resent when you do them to me,” Sam says all the words in a rush, like he’d prepared a canned speech in advance and tripped over half of it.
Dean stares out the small, greasy window of his room into the dingy alley nearby. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was after you-after Michael took over, about five months into he war. We were getting our asses handed to us and there was nothing Michael could do about it. Lucifer was too strong already.” Sam pauses. “We needed to poison the well.”
Dean’s grip on the phone tightens. “What did you do?”
“I did what I had to,” Sam says. He doesn’t sound sorry.
“Goddamnit, Sam. The whole point of me saying yes so that you-"
“Don’t you think I know that? God, it’s like the story of my fucking life by now!” Sam replies harshly. “Dean Winchester sacrifices himself again for his screwed up little brother, and in other news, the sun rises and then it sets.”
“Sam-"
“Don’t ‘Sam’ me, Dean,” Sam interrupts. “Those people, those deaths-words can’t begin to describe how awful it was, how sick it made me. But their deaths were supposed to be on my head, not yours. I should have been the one to bear it, not you.”
“And I was supposed to let Lucifer keeping killing people until you gave in?” Dean replies tightly.
“You were supposed to trust me! Wasn’t that the whole point of spending some time apart and then coming back together again? Are you ever going to really forgive me for the mistakes I've made, or are you just going to hold them over my head forever?”
“Sam.” Dean doesn’t know what else to say.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t call to start a fight.” Sam takes a shaky breath. “I called because my spiritual mentor told me that I wouldn’t be able to move on until I’d dealt with the issues in my past and-"
“Spiritual mentor?” Dean repeats disbelievingly. “You’re kidding me, right? You’re listening to some bullshit new age con artist now?”
“Here name is Mathilda and she’s not a con. She’s really helped me-"
“Mathilda? Jesus fucking Christ, have you learned nothing from Ruby? Another hot piece of ass who wants to help you and give you all the answers-"
“It’s not like that,” Sam yells, and Dean starts. “For one thing, she’s sixty-years-old, married, and has two kids. For another thing, she doesn’t want anything from me, and doesn’t care about my destiny or my past other than in the way they’re holding me back.”
“Holding you back from what?”
“From living a semi-functional life.” Sam lets out a noise that sounds halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I said yes. I performed a ritual beforehand that would weaken Lucifer as soon as he took control. I thought I could manage him but I couldn’t and he-he made me do things. Things I can’t-"
“We won, though,” Dean interrupts, because he doesn't want to hear this. “Lucifer lost, in the end.”
“It doesn’t feel like we won,” Sam says, and Dean can barely hear him..
“We won,” Dean repeats. It sounds hollow.
Sam takes another deep breath. “Mathilda thinks I should start forming more relationships with people who aren’t bogged down by-by insane amounts of baggage. She says it would be good for me not to be so isolated after all this.”
Dean sags back against the wall. “Isolated, huh?”
“Yeah.” Sam stops, and seems almost to be waiting for Dean to say something. But Dean doesn’t know what Sam’s waiting for, so he says nothing instead. “Look, Dean, I’ll call you, okay? I’ll… I’ll call you.”
10 weeks after the war
Dean doesn’t know why he’s still in New York. After a week of sitting in the hotel, watching bad TV while the subway rattles the ice in his whiskey, Dean eventually ventures out into the world again to hustle more pool, though finding a bar that’s big enough to have a pool table turns out to be more of a challenge than Dean expects. He eventually finds a few places somewhat nearby, brings in a nice haul of cash and manages to swipe a guy’s credit card as well. It’s enough to keep him set for another couple of weeks if he’s smart about it.
Dean starts taking the subway to random stops, wanders around wherever he gets off for a while until he grows bored or tired, and then goes back to his hotel room.
One day he ends up in lower Manhattan, near the remains of the former World Trade Center. He had thought (when he’d given any thought to the matter) that Ground Zero would be like some gaping wound in the earth, or a pit surrounding the tattered skeletons of the twin towers. Instead, it’s just a giant construction site with a fence erected from tall wood planks surrounding the entire perimeter. When Dean looks up at the sky, he can see the outlines of cranes and other heavy machinery, but there is a curious absence in the skyline that makes everything seem strangely off balance.
Dean stares at one of the fence boards, which is spray painted with the words ‘No Bills,’ and contemplates breaking in. He probably could easily since there’s no security or cops nearby, but there doesn’t seem to be a point.
Dean goes back to the hotel that night and pours himself an extra large glass of whiskey. Then he moves onto the rest of the bottle.
* * * * * * * *
“How was class?”
“Oh, you know, it’s whatever.” There are two girls chatting rather loudly across from Dean on the subway, one wearing a hot pink scarf and the other a neon orange jacket. They both appear to be college aged. “My professor would not stop talking about Deanology, though. I mean, it’s almost the end of the semester and I just want to know what’s going to be on the final exam.”
“Deanology?” Orange Jacket replies. “Isn’t that the new cult out in Kansas or the Midwest or whatever?”
“Apparently it’s everywhere,” Pink Scarf replies with an eye-roll. Dean slides lower in his seat behind his newspaper. “And my professor is a recent convert.”
“Dude, he cannot seriously believe that some guy named Dean became an angel and saved the world,” Orange Jacket scoffs. “That’s nuts!”
“Oh, he believes. He hardcore believes ever since his sister escaped one of those towns that big tornado hit. He keeps talking about how he wants to move out to one of those freaky communes and help rebuild or whatever.”
“And give up tenure? Holy crap.” Orange Jacket shakes her head. “A few natural disasters and suddenly everyone finds God. Or Dean. Whatever.”
“I know, right? It’s craziness.” Pink Scarf gets up. “Hey, here’s our stop.”
* * * * * * * *
The Empire State building, as it turns out, is not that difficult to get to. Dean takes the subway to the stop closest to it on the map, then follows all the signs pointing tourists towards it.
“You going to the Empire State Building?” A guy carrying a huge poster emblazoned with a photo of the building waves at Dean.
“Yeah, I guess,” Dean replies cautiously.
“Alright!” the guy grins and launches into a spiel about being an official rep for the attraction (the ugly uniform he’s stuck wearing does seem to corroborate this claim) and that there are two ways to get to the top of the building: waiting in line for three hours like all the other suckers, or paying $55 to hop a fast train to the top.
“$55 for an elevator ride,” Dean says. “Are you serious?”
“Well, you get a hell of a show and an experience.” The guy points to the other side of his poster which features a photo of a bunch of tourists cheering in front of a movie screen. “And it’s fast!”
“Yeah, forget it,” Dean says, walking away. “I’m gonna get a slice of pizza instead.”
The guy deflates visibly, but lets Dean go. “Have a nice day!”
Dean rounds the corner of the block as quickly as he can and goes into the first pizza place he spots. As he takes a bite of his piping hot slice he does have to admit that for all its flaws, New York has the best damn pizza he’s ever tasted.
“Hey.” Dean looks up from his food in time to see a disheveled old man with wild, flyaway hair and ragged clothes slide into the chair across from him.
“Uh,” Dean says, unsure of whether it’s time to fight or fly; he really wants to just sit and eat his pizza. “Do I know you?”
“What?” The man-probably homeless-scoffs. “That’s silly! We’ve never met before. Why would you know me?” While Dean’s trying to figure out if he’s regular or Deanville brand crazy, the man continues. “So why are you in town?”
Dean glances around the crowded pizza place and notes the lack of any open seats he ccould escape to, and decides to humor the old man for the length of time it takes to finish his meal. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Besides, how do you know I’m not from around here?”
“You? A New Yorker? Yeah right!” The man barks a laugh. “Anyway, if you’re not in town because you wanna be, what are you looking to find then?”
Dean frowns. “I’m not looking for anything.”
“Sure you are.” The old man’s eyes bore into Dean’s for a second, shockingly blue. “Everyone’s looking for something. Including you.”
Dean bites into his crust. “What am I supposed to say? Some bullshit about true love, or the meaning of life, or the answers to all my burning questions? Gimme a break-I’m trying to get by like everyone else, that's all.”
“Oh, I see.” The man nods sagely and sits back in his chair, seemingly satisfied by that answer. “I understand now.”
Dean’s not sure why he’s even bothering with trying to follow a conversation with some crazy homeless guy, but he supposes he’s still got a few sips of his soda left to go. “Understand what?”
But the man nods and mutters something under his breath-not paying attention to Dean’s question at all-before looking up again. “Hey. Can you punch me in the face?”
Dean blinks and then stands. “I’m gonna go now.”
* * * * * * * *
“Did you hear about the visiting exhibit at the Met?” Some douchebag in a blue suit asks his equally douchey friend (who is not wearing a suit).
“No,” Douche Friend replies. “Is it good?”
“It’s amazing.” Suited Douchebag says. “You ever seen Guernica by Picasso?”
“No way!” Douche Friend says, seeming impressed. “That’s on loan to the Met?”
“Limited time only.” Suited Douchebag sounds smug. “I have a friend who works over there who invited me in for a preview event-you know, before it opened to the general public.”
“What’s it like in person?”
“A revelation,” Suited Douchebag responds immediately. “Life-changing. I’m not a crier or anything, but damn, that piece really hit me in the gut, you know? Some people were sobbing in front of the thing.”
“Wow,” Douche Friend says.
“Yeah, you should definitely check it out if you have the chance. I’m telling you, it’ll rock your world, man.”
* * * * * * * *
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a massive, imposing structure with about a billion steps leading up to its front entrance. The lobby is even bigger than the exterior suggests, filled to the brim with roving herds of people and security guards.
Dean buys a ticket and finds the Guernica exhibit easily; there are signs all over the place and nearly every damn person in the place is heading towards it.
The exhibition room is, like everything else in the museum, large with high ceilings. There seems to be one focal point for the room: a staggeringly huge monochrome painting on the far wall. Other than that, there are only a few small sketches of bullfights, and hardly anyone is paying attention to those.
The crowd gathered around the painting-presumably Guernica-is pretty dense, and there’s a security guard standing by to yell at people to stay a respectful distance away and not take pictures. Dean weaves through the crowd until he gets to the front, where he has an unimpeded view of the painting.
It’s a Picasso, so Dean expects it look messed up-Cubist or whatever. It’s painted in varying shades of black and white and grey, and features the disembodied heads and limbs of wailing people and animals: a mother and child, a demented bull, and a strange horse rising above it all. Everything is distorted, fragmented, confused.
Dean looks at it and feels… nothing.
He sneaks glances at the people around him, tracking their reactions. Most are gazing in awed and reverent silence, a few are murmuring in amazement, and one woman is openly weeping. Seems the Suited Douchebag wasn’t kidding about that.
Dean turns back at the painting and notes the carefully controlled chaos, the grimness of the color and subject matter, and the technical skill required to paint on such a large scale.
But even though he sees the screaming faces, the twisted bodies, the violence of the scene--it’s not a revelation, or a transcendent experience. It doesn’t even evoke the level of emotion that the average subway ad does for Dean (usually annoyance). Dean just feels… blank. Empty.
He walks away from the painting and lets other eager viewers take his place. So he doesn’t get the appeal of some famous painting-so what? It shouldn’t bother him because that guy on the train was a douchebag and for all he knows all those people in that exhibition room are douchebags too.
But standing in the crowd of all those people who apparently saw and felt what Dean couldn’t-well, it kind of pisses him off. Fucking Suited Douchebag and his fucking promises about life-changing revelations.
Dean goes back to his hotel and tries to put the painting out of his mind. But it persists--the nagging wonder at why he couldn’t see what those other people were seeing; why he couldn’t experience what they experienced.
He falls asleep thinking about that painting, turning it over in his head and thinking about that one woman’s tears.
11 weeks after the war
The next day, Dean goes back to the Museum. And the day after that. And the day after that day. Each day he spends hours prowling around the exhibit, examining the piece from every angle and every distance. Each day proves as fruitless as the last, with Dean no closer to the answer than before.
On the fifth day, it occurs to Dean as he’s scouring the floor map for a bathroom that there’s a whole museum’s worth of art beyond the one visiting exhibition.
When he leaves the bathroom, Dean stops n front of the mummy’s sarcophagus on a raised pedestal and has to concede that it is at least a little cool.
He wanders through the Egyptian wing, circling pieces of ancient statuary, pausing in front of translations of hieroglyphs. He finds himself asking for the first time: what else is here?
Dean begins to walk around the museum in earnest. Some art he doesn’t like (boring portraits of kids in stuffy old clothes) and some of it he does (spectacular landscapes depicting Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon).
Dean eventually finds himself in the Islamic Art section, surrounded by intricately embroidered carpets and a free-standing alcove covered in blue geometric designs and calligraphy; according to the explanatory plaque, the alcove is a ‘mihrab,’ a place of worship and sanctuary.
There are other, smaller pieces as well. Pieces of deep blue parchment written on in gold script, and, strangely enough, bowls also covered in calligraphy. Dean isn’t sure when dinnerware started being considered art, but one bowl with elegant, sweeping sides and simple black decoration catches his eye anyway.
Dean presses close enough to the glass that his nose leaves a smudge, and stares down into the bowl. It’s white, with delicate designs at the rim and a single swirl of calligraphy at the bottom. It’s such a simple thing, really-some bowl with barely any decoration, and yet here it is in a museum, waiting under lights and behind glass.
* * * * * * * *
“Dean.”
Dean glances in the direction of the voice. “Cas.”
“You’ve been standing here for hours,” Castiel says, coming up beside Dean. “First the painting and now this?”
“Pretty bizarre, right? At least with Guernica I could say it was a famous piece of art. This… this is just a damn bowl.” Out of the corner of his eye, Dean can see Castiel’s profile, the way he peers intently through the glass as if searching for answers himself. “Besides, how do you know I’ve been hanging out here for a while? You been watching me?”
“I am always watching you, Dean,” Castiel says. He sounds tired, and Dean wonders if he's always sounded this weary or if this is something new. Dean probably should have taken the time to notice, before.
Dean closes his eyes. “You been keeping tabs on Sammy too?”
“Of course.” Before Dean can ask, “He’s fine.”
“Well, he’s got that spiritual mentor or whatever now, so of course he’s fucking fine.” Something constricts in Dean’s throat. “I… I don’t think he’s coming back, though. I don’t think he wants to.”
Castiel doesn’t really need to say anything in response to how pathetic that sounds, which is why it surprises Dean when he does. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s better this way,” Dean lies. “We can’t be hunters without anything to hunt anyway.”
“The monsters will come back. In time.”
“But I can’t go back. Not to the way I used to be.” Castiel is staring at Dean now, and Dean wants to stare back but he can’t. He can’t. “I’m not some ordinary guy, and I’m not a Savior either.”
“Dean,” is all Castiel says, and his voice sounds sad, sadder than he’s ever been.
“You know that the calligraphy at the bottom of that thing translates to ‘peace’?” Dean says suddenly, gesturing at the bowl. “Can you imagine that? You could find peace at the bottom of every bowl of cereal in the morning.”
“It’s just a word,” Castiel replies gently.
“Yeah.” Dean finally manages to look up and meet Castiel’s eyes, and what he sees there scares him, makes him want to pull away. He takes a deep breath instead. “I just. I’m not doing so good. You know, on my own.”
“I know,” Castiel says, and his expression is so soft that Dean can’t take it.
“I…” Dean puts a hand over his face, covers his mouth with his palm so his voice can only creep out, quiet and so small. “I want you to stay.” It’s too much to ask, too much to hope that Castiel hasn’t already made his decision to go, to think he might actually stay on Earth for-for what? For Dean?
When Dean peeks through his fingers, Castiel is still there.
“Then I’ll stay,” Castiel says as he takes Dean’s hand into his own. And this time, when Dean stares down at where their fingers interlock, Castiel doesn’t let go.
“Okay,” Dean whispers. “Okay.”
fin
Poll FB Hallelujah Act III