Lay It All On Me (Fic, Supernatural)
Title: Lay it all on me
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Cas
Characters: Dean, Cas, Sam, Bobby
Content alert: violence, hurt!Cas, depressed!Cas, angst
Word count: 10,688 circa
Summary: Sam wants Dean to talk to Cas. About feelings, and shit. Dean doesn't see the point, but when he starts to have vivid dreams of the angel he fears his subconscious might be trying to tell him something.
A/note: Written for a prompt @ SPN Kink Meme: http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/105944.html?thread=40041176#t40041176. Grateful assistance given by Ayrdaomei (though it was a while back because this has been sitting in my WIP folder for more than a year!)
“So, you’re going to speak to him, right?”
Dean didn’t bother looking up to see Sam’s expression. He didn’t have to; he could already feel the weight of his brother’s expectations, insistence.
“And say what, Sam? Hey, Cas, sorry you’re nearly human, that’s gotta suck. Anything I can do to make it better?”
When Sam got up, and shoved the chair back so hard it scraped along the linoleum, Dean figured he was expecting something a little different.
“Yeah, if you want to make it sound like you’re a shit friend who doesn’t actually care.”
Dean snapped his head up to glare Sam out. What the fuck did it matter what he said? Cas was nearly human now, thanks to them and the apocalyptic shit storm brewing right over their heads. What difference would it make to an angel teetering on the edge? Who was about to make a permanent fall into a bleak, painful and probably short existence as a human being?
Words weren’t going to fix this. Nothing Dean could do was going to either, and he didn’t see the point in reaching out to Cas only for them both to realise he had nothing to offer him. No way to stop this from happening, and no way to make it any easier.
“You’re the girl in this family, Sammy,” he said, finally. “Why don’t you go hug it out with him? See if it makes him feel any better.”
He finished packing his duffel, glanced once at where Cas was still more unconscious than asleep, and hefted his gear out to the car.
**
But he should have known better than to think Sam was going to let it go. Every time Dean turned around, Sam was staring at him. When he avoided looking at his brother at all, he could still feel Sam trying to catch his eye probably with that this is a very big thing we need to discuss, Dean - with words look on his face.
Like Cas needed his nose rubbed in it. Dean couldn’t see how reminding Cas of the situation would be like anything other than marking days off a calendar. Yeah, ok, his final fall wouldn’t be that precise - although Dean wondered if Cas could maybe tell when it would happen to the second, like he had a fuel gauge or something - but it had to be hanging over him.
Dean knew it for a fact. Cas wasn’t that demoralised just because he couldn’t find God, although that was clearly a big part of it. But he was facing a change so huge that Dean was scared for him, whether Cas was or not.
And if Cas was scared, Dean knew the angel would never admit it. No matter whether he sat him down and tried to pry it out of him or not. He would stick to the game plan, which was survive long enough to find his Dad and plead him with to come home and put a stop to the apocalyptic house party the rest of his kids had thrown in his absence.
And if that didn’t work, find a way to stop Lucifer and Michael from sorting out their differences in a way that burned the world.
It seemed like a tall order when it was two humans and the only decent angel in heaven. Once that angel became a human with zero experience of actually being a human - well, Dean figured the odds wouldn’t just not be in their favour, they’d be so freaking poor that nobody on Earth would take that bet.
Including him, and he had everything tied up in it.
He got what Sam was trying to do, he really did. But there was no point putting Cas in a situation which encouraged him to ask for comfort that Dean wasn’t able to give.
**
They ended up driving straight through into the next day, except for a stop for fuel, and booked a triple at some motel just outside of Regada.
While Sam checked the room and the bathroom for hex bags and the like, and Dean salted all the windows, Castiel burned some sigils into the walls and the back of the door.
Dean watched him, and couldn’t miss how drained it seemed to make him - like the energy he was pouring into the protective markings was coming from somewhere vital.
Cas caught him staring.
“We’re never getting another security deposit back as long as we live, are we?” he said, hoping Cas didn’t call him on it.
“If we leave the room unwarded, that would be the least of our worries. And you paid for this room on a stolen credit card, so any deposit wouldn’t be returned to you anyway.” Cas sat down on the closest bed, and just slumped in on himself.
Dean put the canister of salt down on the table - just the door to go, but he’d be heading out for food soon, so no point in laying down a line he was going to be breaking in a couple of minutes - and sat down next to the angel.
“Not feeling so great, huh?”
Cas huffed at him. He never looked up, just kept staring at the floor.
“Cas?”
“No, Dean, I’m not feeling so great. If you don’t need anything, I’m going to try and rest.”
Before Dean could say yea or nay, Cas was slipping sideways, and lifting his legs up so he could stretch out. Dean managed to get out of the way in time, and he doubted Cas was even registering at that point that he’d almost kicked him in the stomach.
“Yeah, you charge up or whatever,” Dean said. “I’m gonna make a food run, I’ll bring you something back.”
Sam glanced down at Cas as he came out of the bathroom. “We’re good. He ok?”
Dean watched Cas’s chest rise and fall, easy, regular. So much forrest. He was totally out of it.
“Thought he was gonna faint putting wards on the room,” Dean said. “Shit, Sammy, this is going faster than I thought it would.”
Sam stood over the sleeping angel. He looked back briefly at Dean. “If you want to hit the diner, I’ll get him out of his clothes.” He must have seen the look on Dean’s face. “He can’t sleep like that, Dean. I’ll do it - spare your manly blushes.”
Dean shot him the finger and then tossed the salt container at him. “Do the door before you get your kink on,” he said, and left before Sam could come up with anything to fire back at him.
The tin of salt included.
**
He brought back food for all three of them, though he wasn’t sure if Cas would want to eat or even be awake when he returned to the room.
The angel was still sleeping, though sans coats, shirt, pants and shoes. Sam had seemed amazed he’d managed to almost totally strip Cas without him even stirring once.
“That is not a good sign,” he told Dean, around a mouthful of salad. “He’s almost more unconscious than asleep, Dean.”
Dean didn’t disagree, but since he didn’t know any doctors who specialised in angels he also didn’t know what to do about it. “Rest is rest,” he said. “If we can get him to just not throw any angel mojo around for a few hours, he’ll probably feel better.”
“Right,” Sam said. “Because there’s every chance of that happening. He’s pretty much all that’s in between us and our grand destinies. That’s presuming he doesn’t wake up and try to fly away on his God hunt right off the bat.”
“Fuck, no,” Dean said. “It’d be like letting somebody drunk drive.”
“You want to try and take away his keys?”
Dean shot him a dagger of a glare. “Yeah, you’re freaking hilarious, Sam. I’ll just tell him he’s grounded.”
Sam balled up his napkin and whacked Dean in the head with it. “There’s seriously something wrong with you. Maybe one of these days, we’ll figure it out. I live in hope.”
Dean forced a grin, but he certainly didn’t feel it. Living in hope seemed pretty pointless.
**
Normally, he’d have taken the bed closest to the door, but since Cas had already passed out on it he ended up taking the middle one.
He was still between Sam and the door, but it didn’t feel right not being able to protect Cas in the same way. Especially with how vulnerable he was. But he figured any attempt he made at looking out for Cas like he looked out for Sam would be rebuffed. He was an Angel of the frigging Lord. He didn’t need a shabby offer of protection from a guy he could launch across the room. He didn’t need reminding that once he lost his Grace, Dean could own him seven ways from Sunday.
If Cas wanted to talk, if he needed anything, Dean knew the angel would just tell them. But he was probably older than dirt, had lived through full on celestial battles, was a freaking soldier. He didn’t need his hand held, or to be babied. However rough things got, Dean was sure Cas would keep on going. It was what he was built for, but it was more than that - there was something solid and defiant that ran through Cas. He might be running on empty, but he wouldn’t stop.
The other angels they’d encountered might be dicks with wings, but Dean had come to see Cas was practically a different species. Which was just as well, or he and Sam would both be either dead or possessed by now.
Their survival, their safety, all of it they owed to Cas, and Dean couldn’t really do anything to help the angel with what was coming. Except be there, for all that was worth - which was probably not much, given that Cas wasn’t exactly the reaching out for comfort type.
Finally, tugged down by exhaustion and worry, Dean fell asleep.
**
There were a few kids running around the play area. Dean leaned back on the bench, watching them with a little envy. He’d hadn’t ever really thought about a family, not until the past couple of years. Personally, he thought the idea was nuts. The only hunters to ever have a partner or kids were the ones who’d already had them before something crashed into their lives like a runaway truck. Nobody in the job settled down with anybody; random hook ups or friends with benefits was as good as it got.
What it said about him, that he waited until losing dad, selling his soul to get Sam back, and then helping start the Apocalypse, before he realised he did actually want to wake up to the same person every damn morning, he had no idea.
Though it probably wasn’t good.
He heard the sound of wings furling, and turned to see Castiel sitting on the next bench.
“Hello, Dean.”
Dean frowned. “Am I dreaming you here or are you actually here?”
“I…” Castiel looked around him, brow furrowed. “I’m unsure. Do you have need of me?”
“Right now? Uh, no, unless Freddy shows up.”
Castiel tilted his head slowly to one side. “I’m not familiar with him. Does he pose a threat to you?”
Dean chuckled, shook his head. “No, it’s a… Ok, it doesn’t matter. Cas, how are you doing?”
There, he’d done it. Of course, when he told Sam, his brother would insist it didn’t count since this was a dream. If he told Sam, because that meant telling Sam he’d had a dream with Cas in it.
Which just wasn’t happening because Sam would want to talk about that, and what it might mean, forever.
It took him a moment to realise Cas hadn’t answered.
Dean turned around and found the bench empty. The angel was gone.
“You’re a douche in my dreams, too,” he complained. “Would it kill you to say bye once in a while?”
**
They spent the next five days alternating between chasing down possible leads on Lucifer - they weren’t about to square up to him, but it made sense to know where he was - and trying to get rid of a poltergeist with staying power.
By the time they were ready to leave town, even Cas was broken and bruised and looking like someone had knocked him down with a truck and then reversed to make sure they’d done it right.
“This job sucks,” Dean proclaimed, thought since he waited until he’d flopped face first onto the bed, his complaint was muffled.
Sam uttered a groan that might have been agreement, sympathy or just from pain. Maybe all three. He staggered into the bathroom, and Dean heard the shower start up.
Only Cas was silent.
Dean rolled over and sat up. Cas was sitting by the small table in the kitchen, looking a little out of it. The right side of his face was still caked with blood, and Dean could see the start of what was going to be an impressive black eye in the morning if the angel hadn’t healed by then.
The hunter forced himself to his feet, gritting his teeth against the solid block of pain that had once been his back, and went over to where Cas sat.
“Hey. Cas. Castiel!” He snapped his fingers in front of Cas’s face, had to do it a couple of times before the angel focused on him.
“Yes. What?” He actually scowled at Dean.
Confusion, temper. “Don’t be a grumpy little angel,” Dean warned. He pressed the back of his hand against Cas’s forehead, didn’t feel it too clammy, and then tilted the angel’s head back so he had to look up at the ceiling light.
“What are you doing?” Cas sounded stuck between confused and annoyed and Dean figured the only reason he wasn’t sitting on his ass halfway across the room was because it was him. Profound bond, blah, blah, thou shalt not kick the ass of the righteous man, blah, blah, blah.
“I’m trying to make sure you don’t have a concussion. Or that you’re going into shock.” Both the angel’s eyes reacted identically to the light, though, so Dean figured that was the best he could do under the circumstances.
“I don’t. I’m not.” He raised his hand, as if to wave Dean off, so the hunter stepped back. Dude probably wasn’t used to getting poked or prodded - he didn’t figure Heaven for being all that caring a place, or full of brotherly concern. He didn’t know if Cas had ever gotten hurt before coming into their lives, but he bet if he had that he’d probably been expected just to suck it up and keep going.
“Ok. You gotta let me know if that changes, Cas. Can you check Sam out too? I don’t think he’s got concussion,” he added, when he saw Cas’s head snap around towards the bathroom. “But that thing slammed him down pretty hard.”
Cas stood up, a little unsteadily, but shook his head when Dean went to grab hold of him. He put a hand on Dean’s shoulder, studied him for a moment. “Your injuries are minor. They should be gone completely in a few days. I’ll examine Sam when he comes out. Dean. I’m sorry I can’t heal either of you.”
Dean frowned at him. Where the hell had that come from? “I know,” he said. “Look, Cas…. We got the shitty end of the stick, here. It’s just the three of us against everything outside that door, but we are going to make it through, ok? Whether you’re a full angel or not.”
Cas looked away, and Dean nodded to himself. There, job done, Cas spoken to; now maybe Sam would let the whole thing drop.
Speaking of his brother, Sam came out of the bathroom then, a towel wrapped around his middle.
He jumped when Cas wordlessly took two steps towards him and put his hand on Sam’s arm. “Hey, hey, what?”
“There aren’t any internal injuries,” Cas said. “Sam, you’re sore and bruised, but like Dean you’ll be better in a few days. You both just need to sleep. Can I help with that?”
Sam gave Dean a confused look. “Uh… No, I’m good, Cas. I’m gonna be out of it the minute my head hits the pillow.”
The angel glanced at Dean, but he shook his head. “No need for angel whammy, Cas. You save your strength, looks like you need your mojo more than we do right now.”
He was a little surprised when he saw Sam shooting him a bitch face over the angel’s head. What the fuck had he said now?
Cas sat back down at the table. “Then I’ll remain here and watch over you.”
Sam didn’t say anything much after that, until he was changed into a tee and a pair of sleep shorts and under the covers. “Night, Dean, Cas.”
Dean didn’t miss the inflection in Sam’s voice when he spoke his name. Fine, whatever had triggered his full on bitch mode could wait until tomorrow for him to sort out. Right now, he needed rest. It was a six-hour drive back to Bobby’s tomorrow, and he wasn’t doing it on no sleep because he fretted all night over the Sasquatch and his hair trigger feelings.
“Yeah, night,” he grumbled.
He watched Cas watching him for a bit, grateful that at least this time he didn’t seem exhausted enough to need to sleep, before he was finally able to fall over himself.
**
Dean shielded his eyes at the sudden glare of light around him. He looked around in confusion, his surroundings alien and unfamiliar. It was a long, clinical looking corridor, all white. Doors were set frequently down both sides, each one frosted glass with a name stencilled on.
Where the hell was this supposed to be? He stood for a moment, tried to remember if he’d ever been anywhere like this, or maybe seen it in a movie. But nothing tugged at his memories. This was nowhere he’d ever been or watched on TV or even read about. Yet it was so detailed, Dean felt almost sure it was an actual place.
Since he was stuck there until he woke up, or started dreaming about something else, he figured he might as well go with it. He started walking, glancing curiously at the names on the doors he passed. They all started with P, and Dean wondered if maybe this was some kind of prison.
“Better than Shawshank,” he whispered to himself, feeling like being quiet and undiscovered here was the smart way to go but not knowing why. There didn’t seem to be anybody around, and he couldn’t hear anything from behind any of the doors.
It was just weird.
He saw movement up ahead, just a flash of colour standing out against the white, but before he could react one of the doors near him opened and he was tugged inside.
Dean fought immediately, tried to twist his way out of the grip and maybe bust a bone at the same time, but he was held easily in place.
By Castiel.
Dean jerked in surprise, but Cas put a finger to his lips and Dean obediently fell silent. He stayed still, suddenly aware of something moving past the door. No shadow fell over the glass, he didn’t hear any noise, but the sensation of presence was undeniably, uncomfortably close.
And then it wasn’t, and Castiel let him go.
“What the fuck is this?” Dean snapped. “Please tell me I’m really dreaming, and we haven’t been whammied or kidnapped or something.”
“You’re dreaming,” Castiel said, and turned around and walked away.
Dean jogged after him, aware for the first time that they weren’t actually in a room. He stopped in his tracks as Castiel walked away across a wide green lawn, bordered by tall trees. There was a guy holding the string of a kite, watching the wind tug at his toy as the tail snapped and danced behind it.
“Cas,” he said. He managed to catch Cas up, and got ahead of him. “Where the hell are we? What’s going on?”
“This is Heaven,” the angel explained. He sounded frustrated, like that was something Dean should have been able to work out on his own. “One of many.”
“Right. I get it. I don’t get it. There’s more than one?” He shrugged at the annoyed look Cas gave him; this was a dream, why he even expected it to make sense he didn’t know, but that expression was so Cas that for a moment Dean wondered if the angel was actually here rather than just another weird facet of his sleeping mind.
“There are as many as there are souls. Each one is contained in his own vision of Paradise. A favourite place, a warm memory.” He pointed to the guy with the kite. “This is his. I… I find it soothing, here. It’s easy to watch him.”
Dean stared at the guy for a moment, but he didn’t feel soothed or find it anything other than creepy and kind of boring. “Does he know we’re here?” he asked, feeling a little stupid, because this was a dream. He wasn’t here, Cas wasn’t here, the grown up guy playing with a kite wasn’t here.
“No,” Cas said. “We can move in and out of the individual Heavens without their occupants being aware.”
“Voyeuristic angels,” Dean said. “Why am I not surprised.”
Castiel turned on him angrily. “We are responsible for these souls. We create these places for humans to have somewhere to feel safe for the rest of their eternity. We guard them. Is it too much to ask that we can share in it, when we don’t have any such place of our own?”
Dean took a step back, instinctively. He’d seen Cas pissed before, but this was some weird combo of angry and upset and…
“Cas,” he started, but the words ground to a halt in his throat. Damn, Sam was so much better at this than him. He wanted to ask if Cas didn’t feel safe, if he felt like he didn’t have some place he could go where he could do whatever he wanted. Fly a damn kite if it came to it.
But he already knew Cas didn’t. He was cut off from Heaven, and even before that he’d been a servant of God, a captain of a garrison (and he’d lost that too, thanks to getting too close to them, ending up under Uriel’s command). He’d probably never had anywhere like this; any safe place he’d found he’d had to borrow.
“There’s no need for me to be anything here,” Cas said, finally. The temper had left him; now he just looked shattered, like he’d taken one too many hits and only sheer stubbornness was keeping him on his feet. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
That stung a little, but Dean didn’t know what to say. Then he spotted the bench - stone, sitting just in front of the trees. He grabbed Castiel’s wrist, tugged the angel towards it. Castiel didn’t protest or react as Dean pushed him down onto the bench and then sat down next to him.
“So we’ll stay here for a bit,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me about kite guy? Hell of a hobby.”
Castiel raised sad eyes to the soul staring up at the kite, unaware of their presence in his eternity.
“His name,” Castiel said, “is Phillip. He was forty-three years old when he died….”
**
When Dean woke up the next morning, he felt as low as he’d ever been. The dream lingered, like someone had broken bad news to him and though he’d tried to sleep through it he’d woken up the next morning to realise nothing had changed.
Castiel was gone, and Sam was sitting alone at the table, eating some toast.
“Mmmm,” he said, around a mouthful, which Dean took to mean the greasy take away bag next to the other chair was for him, and good morning all rolled into one.
“Cas take off?” Dean asked, unnecessarily.
Sam rolled his eyes at him, swallowed, and said, “No, he’s in my pocket.”
Dean sat down, slid a takeout container from the bag, and carefully opened it. “He’d fit. Would it kill the guy to wait until I’m up before he just flits off again?”
Sam took a swig of coffee and then wiped his fingers on a napkin. “He’s got shit to do, Dean. Though I did try to get him to stay a little longer - he still wasn’t fully healed. But he was pretty keen to go.”
Dean fingered at the toast and bacon in front of him. He didn’t have any appetite suddenly. And maybe it was time to share. “I’ve been dreaming about him.”
Sam stared at him. “Ok. That’s uh, not anything I expected to hear you say. Ever. What kind of dreams, Dean?” He schooled his features into that I’m definitely not mocking you, nope, not all all expression.
“Fuck you,” Dean snapped. He sat in silence for a moment, and then saw the shamed look on his brother’s face. “Just… I’ve had a couple of ‘em lately. First one wasn’t too bad; last night - was fucking awful.”
Sam didn’t say much of anything for a bit, so they ate in silence. When they were done, he grabbed the takeout containers and put them in the garbage.
“Ok, joking aside,” he said, as he started packing up his gear. “What happened in the dreams?”
Dean gave him the short version and Sam listened.
“Do you think maybe you’re feeling a little guilty?” he asked, finally.
“Guilty?” Dean snorted at him, shook his head. “What the hell have I got to feel guilty about?”
Sam gave him a look, the one that said they might be brothers but sometimes he wondered. “Dean, we’re kind of to blame for what’s happening to him.”
“We’re not,” Dean snapped. “We’re not the ones who came up with this shitty destiny thing those fucks are so obsessed with. We’re not the ones that want to burn everybody so Lucifer and Michael can get over their fucking angst by murdering each other. Cas… Cas is the only one who chose to stand by us, and Earth. I know he’s had it rough-“ he ignored the disbelieving huff he got from Sam, “but he knew what would happen. We’ve all had to make choices with poor frigging options. It’s just how it is.”
“Ok, maybe so,” Sam relented. “But it doesn’t change the fact that his entire world has been turned upside in the space of a few months and he has nobody to talk to about it. He’s on one side of this and his entire family is on the other. Anyway, I think what you’re really feeling guilty about is that you still haven’t spoken to him. Reached out to him. Guy’s probably hurting, Dean. Who else has he got now except us?”
“Lucky old him,” Dean muttered. “So you think I’m what? Giving myself a dry run before I can ask him if he’s doing ok?”
Sam finished stowing the last of his things in his duffel. “Or you’ve suddenly developed some psychic ability to drag him into your dreams. I’m going to have to do this, aren’t I? Because you’re either going to stall until it’s too late or let him tell you he’s fine and then walk away like your job is done.”
He flashed guiltily back to the first dream. Ok, that had kind of been his plan unless Sam had ever given up on this crazy notion of his that Cas needed a shoulder to cry on. And it had probably been what had caused the second dream. Cas was fine; this was all Sam projecting his inner angst onto them and now it was directing weird emo-dramas in Dean’s head once he went to sleep.
Ok, maybe not fine, but he hadn’t once done anything to suggest he needed to talk, or whatever. It probably wasn’t an angel thing, and he still felt forcing Cas to open up about something that had to be pretty frigging terrifying wasn’t a great idea. He figured Cas was maybe like him in that regard; talking wouldn’t change it, so in the meantime he was going to push it aside and keep going until he couldn’t.
Shitty coping mechanism, and he knew it personally, but if it was all you had….
“How about,” Dean said, as he got up and grabbed his own bag, “we stop trying to psychoanalyse him and just leave the guy alone? But if you really wanna be the one to draw a big fucking line under the fact that he’s maybe got weeks before he becomes a different species and ask him how he feels about that, you go right ahead. Go poke that sore, Sam. Let me know what comes out of it.”
They didn’t speak much for the next few hours, and Dean was more relieved than ever when the salvage yard finally came into view.
**
There were no more Cas-dreams for a few nights. Dean wasn’t sure why - maybe after the bust up with Sam, his mind had accepted there wasn’t going to be a grand discussion of feelings with the angel, and so there was no need to be prepping for it during sleep. Or maybe his quick fix had worked; each night he’d drunk more than he should have and was probably more passed out than asleep.
Bobby and Sam both saw what he was doing - it was kind of hard to hide anything from those two - but neither of them commented.
Dean was glad; now if Sam would just treat this thing with Cas the same way. A guy’s issues were his own. What the hell use were words, anyway.
The only important one he was holding to right now, was no. A no from him and a no from Sam, go fuck yourselves, angels, thank you very frigging much.
And then, the night before they were due to leave, Dean figured he’d probably better cut back on the booze a little so he could drive in a straight line the next morning.
That was before he realised Bobby and Sam were now tag teaming him, and the older hunter came up into his room.
“No,” Dean said, when he saw the disgruntled look on Bobby’s face. He clearly didn’t want to be doing this either.
“Yeah,” Bobby insisted, all the same, and came in. He grabbed the bottle of liquor from Dean’s beside table, and threw the damn thing out of the window.
“Fuck me, what the hell!” Dean started up, and Bobby gave him a shove back down.
“Don’t you cuss me in my own damn house, Dean Winchester. Sam thinks you’re drinking up here to avoid thinking about that angel. Now I know it’s more than that, but all the same what’s the problem with reaching out to the guy?”
“Since when were you a member of the Castiel fan club?”
He winced a little, saw the temper and frustration - and worry - on Bobby’s face. “I’m saying talk to him, not marry him. I got no real time for any of the God brigade, ‘cept for maybe that one. Because he hauled your ass out of the Pit, Dean, put you back together and gave you back to us.”
“He didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart. He was just following orders like a good little robot.” And where the hell had that come from? Dean caught a glimpse of the stunned look on Bobby’s face, felt his cheeks grow hot with shame, and then couldn’t meet Bobby’s eyes.
He knew then he’d been right; if there had to be a talk about this, then it would be better coming from Sam. Dean had never bought into that righteous man shit, but he’d never felt so unlike what Cas thought of him as he did just then.
“Your fucking gratitude is overwhelming,” Bobby snapped. “Whose orders was he following when he slit his own damn arm to get you out of Heaven? When he let that archangel turn him into a hundred pounds of bloody pulp? I figure none of us are getting out of this alive, boy, but the truth is our chances are better while that angel’s around and functioning. So if you wanna be so damn cold over it, then look at it like it’s for your good and not his. Or not. I don’t care. Just have the damn talk with him or let Sam do it. But either way, make sure it gets done.”
Bobby turned his chair around and wheeled back out of the room, managing to slam the door behind him.
Dean hear the whirr of the chairlift as it took him back downstairs, and let his head slump back hard against the wall. Fine. He’d let Sam speak to Cas, if Cas wanted to speak to him, and then his smart ass little brother could deal with the fallout from that crazy idea.
He was going to keep to a minimum safe distance.
**
“You drink too much,” Castiel said.
Dean looked around him, curiously. They were standing on a flat desert ridge, the night air cold. He shivered, and Cas rested a hand on his shoulder. Immediately, warmth blossomed out from his touch, and Dean made a grateful noise.
“I drink enough,” he said. “It’s all about the balance. I’ve got great balance.”
Castiel glanced at him, briefly, before looking back out across the desert. “You’ve been practically unconscious the past three nights. It’s hard to… You don’t dream when you’re intoxicated.”
“Wow, you’re right,” Dean said. And thank you, Bobby, for another few hours of nocturnal weirdness. He was starting to think these dreams had nothing to do with Cas. He was just a prop, a way for his sub-conscious to beat him up even when he was asleep.
“And your liver is showing damage. Remember that I can’t heal you, Dean.”
Dean shrugged off the warning. “I’ve seen the future, remember? I looked pretty spry for the dick saviour of humanity, right up until Lucifer ganked me.”
Damn it. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to think about that ever again. It was just some twisted fantasy Zachariah had cooked up and shoved in his brain to make him think he had no choice but to let Michael in.
“One possible future,” Castiel said. “None of us know how this will all end.”
Dean turned on him. “I know how it doesn’t. It doesn’t end with me or Sam saying yes to either of those bastards, and it doesn’t end with you stoned out of your gourd every day and then getting torn apart by Croats.”
Castiel stared at him calmly, but Dean could see there was sadness in his eyes. Like Castiel wanted to believe in Dean’s version of the future but knew that really? One of them self-deluding was enough.
“It’s more likely I’ll die before this war is over,” the angel said. He looked away again. “My survival was always improbable. The odds are too great.”
Dean grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him, but couldn’t get that look of casual acceptance off his face. “No fucking way,” he snarled. “Not happening. That’s what you think? And you’re just okay with that. Got no problem.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m ok with it or not,” Castiel said. “I’m fading, Dean. And even if I still had the full Grace of Heaven within me, even if I was still an angel, the end would likely be the same. There are thousands of angels, and thousands of demons, and one of me. But if I can, before I die, I will try to find a way to permanently protect you both. To find my Father, and ask him to return to us and stop all of this.”
Dean let him go. This, this was why he hadn’t wanted to sit Cas down and talk things out. All he could offer in opposition to Castiel’s conviction on how things would turn out were angry denials; he couldn’t present facts or probabilities. Truth was, probably Cas would get killed. And much as Dean wanted to keep ferociously refusing to accept Lucifer finally worming his way inside Sam, he just couldn’t. He’d never thought Sam would get addicted to demon blood, or turn into some stranger wearing his brother’s skin. He’d never thought anything could get between them. He’d got that so wrong, who was to say he was right in this?
But there was one thing he wasn’t going to let go. “You are still an angel.”
He watched a soft, sad little smile play across Castiel’s lips. “Hardly the definition of one.”
Dean turned Castiel towards him. “Screw definitions.” He pulled Castiel against him, hugged him so tight that even Sam would have squawked about crush injuries. “You are to me. And that is never gonna change, Cas.”
He woke up to Bobby hollering upstairs to him, something about breakfast being on the table for the next five minutes after which it’d be in the trash.
Dean sat up with a groan. Right now, a hangover and a few hours of Sam’s driving would be better than the lingering weariness of another night-time chitchat with his sub-conscious in the shape of a falling angel.
**
The next three hunts came at them thick and fast, like all the monsters knew time was ticking for them as well as humanity.
A ghost in Birchley, a possessed teacher at a college in Wrexley, NY, and then Dean’s all time personal favourite, a witch hexing newlyweds in Vegas.
By the time they were done, Dean felt like exhaustion was his default state of being and it was all he and Sam could do to drag themselves to the motel room they’d booked and make it safe.
“Fuck that bitch, she is not ruining this city for me,” he said, voice shaky but determined. Up until now, they’d never had a hunt here. Not that jobs had never come up, but they’d always fielded them off. Showed just a little selfishness for once.
But this time around, there hadn’t been anybody to pass the ball to, and the curses visited on the couples had been too nasty to ignore.
“Only the wedding chapels,” Sam said. He flopped down onto his bed. “So our yearly vacation can remain non-traumatic. Unless, you know, you drunk-marry or something.”
He didn’t have the energy for a pithy comeback, so settled for shooting Sam the finger.
Neither of them had the strength to worry about showers or food, and Dean lay for a while listening to Sam snore. Delicate little snores that had no place coming from something his brother’s size.
The noise eventually lulled him into sleep, and part of him wanted to fight it because sleep seemed to equal dreams lately, but the battle was lost the minute his eyes shut, and in a few minutes he was as sound as Sam.
**
He was kind of surprised to find himself in another motel room. This was the best his head could come up with? Was his imagination that limited?
He was sitting on the edge of a bed, and he felt it move behind him. Cas was lying there, eyes open and staring up at the ceiling; his hands were resting on his stomach.
“Cas?” Dean twisted around, a little weirded out but hey, ok - it wasn’t quite as creepy as the guy with the kite. “Uh…what are you doing?”
“Resting,” Cas said. He didn’t move at all, not even to look over. “I get tired more easily as my Grace fades. Searching…avoiding my siblings…. It’s exhausting.”
Dean figured as much. How much power did it take flitting about constantly from one side of the world to the other, all the while trying to hide from every other angel in existence?
“Maybe you just need to take a break. I don’t mean a couple of hours in some sleazy motel room.” Because even in the dark, he could see this was a place even they might have turned their noses up at, and they’d stayed in some pretty shitty places. “You know… A proper rest. If you need someplace safe to stop, head for Bobby’s. He’s got the panic room, you can stay there.”
Cas propped himself up on his elbows. The coat slipped down off his shoulders, and Dean realised it was the closest he’d ever come to seeing Cas without it. It was practically like seeing him naked, but he didn’t look away.
This was his dream after all.
“I can’t stop. I shouldn’t even be here. There’s no time, Dean. I don’t understand where He is, why He isn’t answering me. He must know what’s happening; how can He ignore this?”
Dean ached at the sudden dismay on Castiel’s face. This was the first time he’d heard Cas talk about his God hunt with anything other than determination. It was sometimes a couple of weeks between them seeing the angel, and Dean realised he’d probably underestimated just how hard and wide Cas had been searching.
To him, a couple of weeks meant driving through a couple of towns and cities, chasing down contacts and leads, networking with anybody he thought could help.
Cas could fly across the frigging planet; in two weeks he could have been in a thousand cities, underground caves, isolated forests.
Deserts.
“Cas,” he started, because he had to know even if he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Is this your dream or mine?”
He wasn’t expecting an answer, but he definitely wasn’t expecting Cas to sit up sharply like he’d received an electric shock.
“You have to go,” he said.
“What?” Dean tried to grab hold of him; Cas suddenly looked terrified. “Why?”
But he knew the answer instinctively; the room felt smaller suddenly, constricted, and he heard the low hum as Castiel’s blade appeared in his hand.
“Now!” Castiel said, and gave him a hard shove.
Dean jerked awake, coming upright too fast. The room spun, and he groaned at the sensation. He was slick with cold sweat, and the sudden movement had woken all his aches and pains as well.
Sam was on his feet, alerted by his brother’s movements, and he had a gun in his head.
“What? What’s wrong?” His brother turned a wild gaze around the room. “Are we in trouble?”
Dean didn’t realise his hands were trembling until he reached for his cell. “Not us,” he said, and dialled Castiel’s number.
**
He didn’t get an answer, not to the countless calls he made, or the messages he left on the angel’s voicemail, or to the dozen or so texts.
Sam tried to reassure him. These were just dreams. He was worried about Cas, he was projecting.
Dean let him talk. He didn’t have time to persuade Sam around, to convince him that the dreams hadn’t felt like dreams. Especially that last one: Castiel’s fear so palpable, the sensation of presence so full of threat that he’d expected the walls and ceiling to cave in on them at any moment.
Somehow, he and Cas were…lucid dreaming, but the one that had woken him up had been more like a nightmare.
And they weren’t his dreams, he knew that now. He had no idea what Heaven looked like, didn’t know it was one per customer instead of some cloud based nature reserve where everybody floated around wearing white pantsuits and having their dreams come true.
All of it… All of it belonged to Cas.
Finally, Sam seized the cell phone from his hands and put it down out of reach. “Do you remember anything about the motel room?” he asked.
Dean shut his eyes, but all he could think was that Cas had been there alone, vulnerable, and now he wasn’t answering his phone.
“It was shitty,” he managed. His voice cracked a little, and he cleared his throat. “There wasn’t anything I could see to say where it was, Sam. And he’s probably not even there now. Either he ran, or they got him.”
Sam rested a huge hand on the back of his neck. “They’d have to be pretty fast to catch Castiel,” he told Dean. “And pretty tough to keep him.”
Dean nodded, gratefully. Both were true. Cas had made Zachariah almost shit his pants, the great and mighty superior, but in the dream it had felt like an army of angels were bearing down on them.
Maybe they’d never see Cas again. Never find out what happened to him.
Except even then they’d know. If he just dropped off the radar, it’d only mean one thing.
He reached past Sam, picked up the phone and started to redial.
**
Dean spent the next two weeks at Bobby’s. He hadn’t given up trying to call Castiel, but eventually his voicemail was too full to leave any more messages. Being at Bobby’s wasn’t a panacea for all their woes, but it definitely helped.
Bobby had listened to him relating what had happened, and was inclined to believe that Castiel was reaching out to Dean in his dreams, whether they were Dean’s or vice versa. He also thought from the sound of it that it was unintentional, unlike the first time it had ever happened which had been when Cas had sent them an SOS.
Dean started to wonder if that was what Cas was doing this time too, asking for the help he needed while he was asleep because he couldn’t when he was awake. Or maybe didn’t even know he wanted to.
And he’d essentially turned his back on Cas, refused to speak to him. Ignored Sam being right, again, and now he’d probably lost Cas for good.
At least if he’d spoken to him, it wouldn’t have left Cas thinking he had to go things alone.
But in addition to being a place of safety, Bobby’s house also had two other major benefits. It had a huge resource of books on lore and magic, and Dean was working his way steadily through them to find a spell they could use to track an angel.
They had a spell to summon one, but with Castiel’s grace on the wane, Dean didn’t want to go yanking him across the world unless it was a last resort.
The second good reason to be at Bobby’s was that he’d told Cas he should come here. With the sigils on their ribs, Cas couldn’t find them like he had before. And maybe the reason he wasn’t answering his phone was that he didn’t have it anymore. So if Cas was ok, and if he was looking for them, it made sense that he’d head for the salvage yard.
Even if he didn’t find them there, he could shelter with Bobby until they came back or Bobby could clue him in on their whereabouts.
But after a fortnight, Dean started to lose hope. Crazy wild fears found a home inside him and he couldn’t push them out.
Maybe Cas had lost the last of his grace and died. Sure, Cas figured if that happened, he’s just change to a human. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d got shoved out of his vessel, and what happened then to an angel in its trueform that lost the last of its grace?
Maybe Cas had found God, and pushed too hard, and God had destroyed him. Because Dean knew if Cas had found his Dad, and for whatever reason God had refused to help or turned away, Cas wouldn’t just take that. He’d keep after Him, and Dean wasn’t convinced of the patience or kindness of God.
Not after everything that had happened, and would if they lost this war.
In his darkest moments, he wondered if Cas had just given up. Either dumped his phone and went into hiding, or decided the Winchesters, humanity, weren’t worth it after all and went crawling back home to Zachariah.
When he thought like that, he hated himself enough that he went out back with a hammer and beat the shit out of as many of Bobby’s old wrecks as he could until his arms hurt and his muscles ached and shook.
Cas would never, never abandon or betray them. Not that Dean would have blamed him if he had decided to just leave them to it and pull a Gabriel. He’d bled the most of them in this fight, he’d died for them, and Dean just saw more of the same on the road ahead.
But he knew that wasn’t it. Cas was out there, probably had a very good reason for not getting back in touch with them, and Dean hoped it was because it just wasn’t safe, and not because he was getting tortured and murdered by his so called family.
**
He ended up turning in early that night, heart sick and exhausted. He didn’t know where Cas was, so couldn’t go to him. He had no way of finding out either; there wasn’t exactly a missing persons hotline for angels.
All he could do was wait, and waiting had never been his strong point, not when it was to find out if somebody that mattered to him was alive or dead, safe or in trouble and needing a rescue.
Finally, he fell asleep, hoping against hope that he could find Cas there since he’d couldn’t find him in the waking world.
**
He heard the flutter of wings and blinked drowsily at a familiar figure standing over him.
“Cas!” He jumped up and pulled the angel into a hug. “Fuck, you scared me. What the hell, man!”
He leaned back, squinting in the darkness. Cas looked like hell. His cheek was bruised, a yellowish stain that covered almost the whole side of his face. There was blood on his shirt, and when Dean tugged it open, he could see a wound that was nearly all the way closed but not there yet.
“Those bastards,” he snarled. He turned and shoved Cas down onto the bed. “They jumped you in that motel room, didn’t they?”
Cas didn’t answer; Dean carefully cupped his face so the angel had to look at him. “Cas? Come on, you in there?”
“Yes,” Cas said, finally. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Because I told you to come here, remember? I said to you. You did good. Now just hold tight, I’m gonna get Sam and we’re gonna clean the rest of that cut out and stitch it up, okay?”
He wasn’t ready for Castiel to grab his wrist and hold him there. “No. You can’t wake Sam.”
Dean stared at him for a moment before it hit him. “Because I’m not awake either am I? And you’re not, or you wouldn’t be here. Where are you, Cas? What happened? I’ve been trying to find you.”
“It took time to evade them when I escaped the motel room. I’m not sure how they found me - I thought I’d been careful - but I have to be sure they aren’t following me before I can come to you.”
“Are you hurt like this? I mean, outside of our dreams?”
“It’ll pass.”
“Fuck you, that’s not an answer. It’s worse, isn’t it? You’re…you’re editing this. Show me, dammit. I don’t want you hiding anything from me.”
Cas looked away, and Dean wanted to shake him, but all he could manage was an angry, “Cas!”
“How would it help,” Cas said. “You can’t come to me any more than I can come to you. If they’re watching me they would take you. And Sam. I won’t allow it.”
Dean crouched down in front of him. “And I’m not gonna allow you to bleed out alone somewhere. We can sigil the place up so they can’t get any of us in here. Have you got enough mojo to reach us?”
When Cas looked back at him, Dean drew in a sharp breath. Blood dripped from his nose. There was a bitch of a cut above his right eye. But that wasn’t the worst of it; Dean had to tug Castiel’s shirt closed to dampen the blue glow from the now open wound on his chest.
“Damn you, Cas, this didn’t happen two weeks ago.”
“They’ve been hunting me since then; I’ve had a few…close calls.”
“Where are you?”
Cas looked around, as if the surroundings he saw weren’t the ones Dean did. “I’m actually not sure. That can’t be right. We always know where we are, when we are. Dean, how can I not know where I am?”
He’d never seen Cas panic before and it almost brought the same reaction out in him.
“But you know where I am, right? You know where Bobby’s is.”
Cas nodded, and then moaned as if that simple movement brought him pain.
“So come to me, Cas. Come on, get here. We’ll take care of you. Please, Cas, please try.”
He heard someone yelling his name, loud and frantic, and when he shot upright in bed, Cas was gone.
**
Dean stumbled the last few steps, and had to brace himself against the wall to stop from slamming his head off it. He pushed away from it and ran into Bobby’s lounge, half ready for what he expected to see. All the same, it wedged the breath in his throat and froze him to the spot.
Bobby was gripping the arms of his wheelchair so hard Dean was sure he’d leave fingerprints in the metal. He knew Bobby hated feeling helpless just like they did, but right now it had to be even harder.
Sam was pulling Cas up into his arms; the angel was out cold, his head lolling back.
There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t bloody or bruised. If anything it looked worse than it had in the dream.
“Yeah, little help,” Sam snapped, as he tried to lift Cas up. That jerked Dean free and he grabbed Cas’s legs and backed his way out of the lounge and downstairs to the panic room.
“I didn’t think he was this bad, I mean I knew he was hurt…” Dean panted as they set Cas down on the bed.
“You knew? Dean, did you see him in your dreams again?”
“His, they were his dreams,” Dean said. He quickly filled Sam in. They could hear the whirr of Bobby’s chairlift as the older man came to join them. “I had to fight with him to get him to come to us. He’s been on the run for two weeks, Sam, too scared to get in touch with us in case he led those bastards right to us.”
Bobby rolled his way across the ramp that bridged the doorway and thrust the first aid kit he’d brought at the brothers.
“Stitch ‘n’ bitch,” he ordered, and came close enough to see the damage as Sam and Dean set to stripping the angel. “Boy, they don’t hold back because of kin, do they?”
Dean couldn’t say anything. This, like everything else that had happened to Cas, was their fault. No matter what he’d said to Sam. He was the one who’d let Sam get killed, and then sold his soul and ended up breaking in Hell. And Sam, Sam had killed Lilith which was how Cas had gotten killed the first time.
It felt like the universe had a debt to settle with them, and Cas had picked up their tab in blood.
**
Dean didn’t even remember falling asleep, but the grunt of annoyance from Cas brought him to the angel’s side.
Cas was sitting up on the panic room bed; the blankets they’d covered him with were shoved aside, which left him just in his boxers though he didn’t seem to notice or care. His attention was fixated on the sling they’d put on his right arm - Bobby had dug it out of storage, where it had been since Dean had busted up his shoulder a couple of years back - and he seemed perplexed by it.
His fingers fiddled with the clasp on the sling itself, and then followed the line of the straps that secured it to his body. With a sudden frustration, he grabbed one of them and started to pull.
“Woah, woah, hold on, I’ll take it off,” Dean said. He sat down next to the angel and gently pushed his hand away. “If you’re healed.”
Cas gave him a baleful look. “I’m fine.”
Dean looked him over. Of course Cas would say he was fine. This was his dream, and in the last one Dean had to practically drag the truth out of him. Or maybe it was his own dream this time, and he desperately wanted Cas to be ok and not beaten up and unconscious on a bed in the basement.
But the angel did look ok - the cuts and bruises had faded - and it was just a dream, so what did it matter if Dean helped? He reached over and undid the clasps that held the sling in place and carefully took it off.
“Don’t move that arm yet,” he ordered, and then felt his way along the elbow, watching Cas carefully for any signs of pain.
Just because it was a dream, didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do this right.
Cas watched him, and when Dean seemed satisfied, he said, “Thank you.”
Dean sat back a bit. “Don’t thank me.”
“You helped me get here when I didn’t know where I was. You, and Sam, and Bobby cared for me. Why wouldn’t I thank you, Dean?”
Well, it was now or never. Maybe the sling would still be on Cas when they both woke up, but at least now he knew that whatever conversation they had here they’d both still remember when they weren’t dreaming.
Cas making it back to them was proof of that.
“Because I haven’t exactly been an A+ friend to you, Cas. Sam’s been after me to talk to you for weeks, to get you to talk about everything that’s happening. I just… I’m not exactly great with shit like that, and I didn’t want to make you feel any worse. And I genuinely thought these were just dreams, but even then I wasn’t sure what to say.”
Cas stared down at his hands. “There isn’t much to say, but I appreciate the thought. Dean, all of this was my choice. I knew what would happen once I rebelled. It’s… It’s difficult and it’s frightening and it hurts, Dean, and maybe more than I thought it would. I…I’m wondering now if I put too much faith in myself, in my ability to deal with all of this. To stop them.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Cas scared, or hurt, but it was the first time he’d seen him look so broken.
Instinct won out; he tugged Cas around and pulled the angel into his arms, hugged him as tight as he could. He wouldn’t be able to do this when they were awake, not until Cas got better, but he could do it now.
“We are going to stop them,” Dean said. “Cas, I gotta make sure you know. That you’ll always have a place with us. Maybe it won’t be safe, and it won’t be like that guy’s dream - hell, I can’t even promise you a decent motel room, but you threw in with us and that makes you part of this fucked up family. For whatever it’s worth. No matter how this goes.”
“It’s worth a great deal,” Cas said, but his voice wasn’t too steady, and Dean wondered if Cas believed him. This was a dream, after all, and he’d hardly been constant in his dealings with the angel who’d pulled him out of hell.
Cas probably didn’t have reason to put much faith in him, and that felt like someone had cold cocked him.
“I never wanted you to get hurt,” he whispered against Cas’s ear. “And if there was any way I could protect you from this, I’d damn well do it. I’m sorry, Cas. You say this was your choice, but we all know all of this just got shoved on us. It isn’t fair. But don’t stop having faith in yourself, Cas. I haven’t.”
Cas gave a tiny shrug. “It’s unlikely that we’ll win.”
“Maybe.” Dean reached up and cupped the back of the angel’s head. “Or maybe we’ll deliver the beatdown of the century to those bastards. All I know is that we’ll keep fighting until it’s over, one way or another. Together, Cas.”
He leaned back, desperate to see something other than pain and fear and doubt when he looked at his friend. He wanted Cas to see that he meant it; that he knew this was a dream but still real, and hoped that Cas would carry this with him when he woke up.
If he didn’t, Dean would tell him again and again, as often as he had to. He wasn’t going to chicken out again. Cas was too important to worry about boundaries, or his problem with expressing anything that wasn’t anger or frustration or hurt.
He could see Cas wasn’t convinced; the angel looked earnest, like he wanted desperately to believe what Dean was telling him, and maybe was trying to but for Dean’s sake.
“What’s it gonna take?” he asked. “To get you to listen.”
Cas didn’t say anything; he started to duck away but Dean made a sound of disapproval - no way had he come this far to let the angel shut down on him now.
When he leaned in, closed the distance between them, and pressed his lips to the angel’s he didn’t even know why he did it. He hadn’t even known he was going to, but it just seemed like a natural progression. Like he’d been reaching for Cas all this time and finally he was close enough, and this was something he should have done sooner.
It was a massive liberty, but Cas didn’t push him away. He didn’t pull him in, either, and Dean felt a moment of panic.
He moved back, cautiously, and forced himself to look the angel in the face. “Cas?”
“Sam,” Cas said, and glanced apologetically at the doorway.
Sam was standing there, eyes and mouth wide, and it would have been comical if it hadn’t been so frigging horrific.
“Right,” Sam said, finally, and then he was gone. It sounded like he tripped up the stairs, but he got up and kept going.
“Fuck,” Dean said. “So I guess we’re not dreaming then. You can lie to me about that if you want.”
Cas looked hurt for a moment, but then Dean saw him tuck it away. “No, I’m afraid we’re both awake this time.”
“Dammit, Cas,” Dean snapped. “Don’t. I just… Look. I felt like shit before for trying to talk to you in a dream. It was easier to say those things to you, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t mean every word, Cas. Everything I said. Everything I did.”
He grabbed Cas by the shoulders - he could now, this was real and Cas had healed - and held on until Cas looked at him.
“Everything,” Dean said, and then he kissed him again.
It was as chaste as before, but Dean knew he wouldn’t rush things with Cas even if he could. It was enough that he could see the honest want on the angel’s face when he sat back.
Maybe words weren’t as useless as he’d thought, but actions - actions he preferred.
He got up and closed the panic room door.
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Cas
Characters: Dean, Cas, Sam, Bobby
Content alert: violence, hurt!Cas, depressed!Cas, angst
Word count: 10,688 circa
Summary: Sam wants Dean to talk to Cas. About feelings, and shit. Dean doesn't see the point, but when he starts to have vivid dreams of the angel he fears his subconscious might be trying to tell him something.
A/note: Written for a prompt @ SPN Kink Meme: http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/105944.html?thread=40041176#t40041176. Grateful assistance given by Ayrdaomei (though it was a while back because this has been sitting in my WIP folder for more than a year!)
“So, you’re going to speak to him, right?”
Dean didn’t bother looking up to see Sam’s expression. He didn’t have to; he could already feel the weight of his brother’s expectations, insistence.
“And say what, Sam? Hey, Cas, sorry you’re nearly human, that’s gotta suck. Anything I can do to make it better?”
When Sam got up, and shoved the chair back so hard it scraped along the linoleum, Dean figured he was expecting something a little different.
“Yeah, if you want to make it sound like you’re a shit friend who doesn’t actually care.”
Dean snapped his head up to glare Sam out. What the fuck did it matter what he said? Cas was nearly human now, thanks to them and the apocalyptic shit storm brewing right over their heads. What difference would it make to an angel teetering on the edge? Who was about to make a permanent fall into a bleak, painful and probably short existence as a human being?
Words weren’t going to fix this. Nothing Dean could do was going to either, and he didn’t see the point in reaching out to Cas only for them both to realise he had nothing to offer him. No way to stop this from happening, and no way to make it any easier.
“You’re the girl in this family, Sammy,” he said, finally. “Why don’t you go hug it out with him? See if it makes him feel any better.”
He finished packing his duffel, glanced once at where Cas was still more unconscious than asleep, and hefted his gear out to the car.
**
But he should have known better than to think Sam was going to let it go. Every time Dean turned around, Sam was staring at him. When he avoided looking at his brother at all, he could still feel Sam trying to catch his eye probably with that this is a very big thing we need to discuss, Dean - with words look on his face.
Like Cas needed his nose rubbed in it. Dean couldn’t see how reminding Cas of the situation would be like anything other than marking days off a calendar. Yeah, ok, his final fall wouldn’t be that precise - although Dean wondered if Cas could maybe tell when it would happen to the second, like he had a fuel gauge or something - but it had to be hanging over him.
Dean knew it for a fact. Cas wasn’t that demoralised just because he couldn’t find God, although that was clearly a big part of it. But he was facing a change so huge that Dean was scared for him, whether Cas was or not.
And if Cas was scared, Dean knew the angel would never admit it. No matter whether he sat him down and tried to pry it out of him or not. He would stick to the game plan, which was survive long enough to find his Dad and plead him with to come home and put a stop to the apocalyptic house party the rest of his kids had thrown in his absence.
And if that didn’t work, find a way to stop Lucifer and Michael from sorting out their differences in a way that burned the world.
It seemed like a tall order when it was two humans and the only decent angel in heaven. Once that angel became a human with zero experience of actually being a human - well, Dean figured the odds wouldn’t just not be in their favour, they’d be so freaking poor that nobody on Earth would take that bet.
Including him, and he had everything tied up in it.
He got what Sam was trying to do, he really did. But there was no point putting Cas in a situation which encouraged him to ask for comfort that Dean wasn’t able to give.
**
They ended up driving straight through into the next day, except for a stop for fuel, and booked a triple at some motel just outside of Regada.
While Sam checked the room and the bathroom for hex bags and the like, and Dean salted all the windows, Castiel burned some sigils into the walls and the back of the door.
Dean watched him, and couldn’t miss how drained it seemed to make him - like the energy he was pouring into the protective markings was coming from somewhere vital.
Cas caught him staring.
“We’re never getting another security deposit back as long as we live, are we?” he said, hoping Cas didn’t call him on it.
“If we leave the room unwarded, that would be the least of our worries. And you paid for this room on a stolen credit card, so any deposit wouldn’t be returned to you anyway.” Cas sat down on the closest bed, and just slumped in on himself.
Dean put the canister of salt down on the table - just the door to go, but he’d be heading out for food soon, so no point in laying down a line he was going to be breaking in a couple of minutes - and sat down next to the angel.
“Not feeling so great, huh?”
Cas huffed at him. He never looked up, just kept staring at the floor.
“Cas?”
“No, Dean, I’m not feeling so great. If you don’t need anything, I’m going to try and rest.”
Before Dean could say yea or nay, Cas was slipping sideways, and lifting his legs up so he could stretch out. Dean managed to get out of the way in time, and he doubted Cas was even registering at that point that he’d almost kicked him in the stomach.
“Yeah, you charge up or whatever,” Dean said. “I’m gonna make a food run, I’ll bring you something back.”
Sam glanced down at Cas as he came out of the bathroom. “We’re good. He ok?”
Dean watched Cas’s chest rise and fall, easy, regular. So much forrest. He was totally out of it.
“Thought he was gonna faint putting wards on the room,” Dean said. “Shit, Sammy, this is going faster than I thought it would.”
Sam stood over the sleeping angel. He looked back briefly at Dean. “If you want to hit the diner, I’ll get him out of his clothes.” He must have seen the look on Dean’s face. “He can’t sleep like that, Dean. I’ll do it - spare your manly blushes.”
Dean shot him the finger and then tossed the salt container at him. “Do the door before you get your kink on,” he said, and left before Sam could come up with anything to fire back at him.
The tin of salt included.
**
He brought back food for all three of them, though he wasn’t sure if Cas would want to eat or even be awake when he returned to the room.
The angel was still sleeping, though sans coats, shirt, pants and shoes. Sam had seemed amazed he’d managed to almost totally strip Cas without him even stirring once.
“That is not a good sign,” he told Dean, around a mouthful of salad. “He’s almost more unconscious than asleep, Dean.”
Dean didn’t disagree, but since he didn’t know any doctors who specialised in angels he also didn’t know what to do about it. “Rest is rest,” he said. “If we can get him to just not throw any angel mojo around for a few hours, he’ll probably feel better.”
“Right,” Sam said. “Because there’s every chance of that happening. He’s pretty much all that’s in between us and our grand destinies. That’s presuming he doesn’t wake up and try to fly away on his God hunt right off the bat.”
“Fuck, no,” Dean said. “It’d be like letting somebody drunk drive.”
“You want to try and take away his keys?”
Dean shot him a dagger of a glare. “Yeah, you’re freaking hilarious, Sam. I’ll just tell him he’s grounded.”
Sam balled up his napkin and whacked Dean in the head with it. “There’s seriously something wrong with you. Maybe one of these days, we’ll figure it out. I live in hope.”
Dean forced a grin, but he certainly didn’t feel it. Living in hope seemed pretty pointless.
**
Normally, he’d have taken the bed closest to the door, but since Cas had already passed out on it he ended up taking the middle one.
He was still between Sam and the door, but it didn’t feel right not being able to protect Cas in the same way. Especially with how vulnerable he was. But he figured any attempt he made at looking out for Cas like he looked out for Sam would be rebuffed. He was an Angel of the frigging Lord. He didn’t need a shabby offer of protection from a guy he could launch across the room. He didn’t need reminding that once he lost his Grace, Dean could own him seven ways from Sunday.
If Cas wanted to talk, if he needed anything, Dean knew the angel would just tell them. But he was probably older than dirt, had lived through full on celestial battles, was a freaking soldier. He didn’t need his hand held, or to be babied. However rough things got, Dean was sure Cas would keep on going. It was what he was built for, but it was more than that - there was something solid and defiant that ran through Cas. He might be running on empty, but he wouldn’t stop.
The other angels they’d encountered might be dicks with wings, but Dean had come to see Cas was practically a different species. Which was just as well, or he and Sam would both be either dead or possessed by now.
Their survival, their safety, all of it they owed to Cas, and Dean couldn’t really do anything to help the angel with what was coming. Except be there, for all that was worth - which was probably not much, given that Cas wasn’t exactly the reaching out for comfort type.
Finally, tugged down by exhaustion and worry, Dean fell asleep.
**
There were a few kids running around the play area. Dean leaned back on the bench, watching them with a little envy. He’d hadn’t ever really thought about a family, not until the past couple of years. Personally, he thought the idea was nuts. The only hunters to ever have a partner or kids were the ones who’d already had them before something crashed into their lives like a runaway truck. Nobody in the job settled down with anybody; random hook ups or friends with benefits was as good as it got.
What it said about him, that he waited until losing dad, selling his soul to get Sam back, and then helping start the Apocalypse, before he realised he did actually want to wake up to the same person every damn morning, he had no idea.
Though it probably wasn’t good.
He heard the sound of wings furling, and turned to see Castiel sitting on the next bench.
“Hello, Dean.”
Dean frowned. “Am I dreaming you here or are you actually here?”
“I…” Castiel looked around him, brow furrowed. “I’m unsure. Do you have need of me?”
“Right now? Uh, no, unless Freddy shows up.”
Castiel tilted his head slowly to one side. “I’m not familiar with him. Does he pose a threat to you?”
Dean chuckled, shook his head. “No, it’s a… Ok, it doesn’t matter. Cas, how are you doing?”
There, he’d done it. Of course, when he told Sam, his brother would insist it didn’t count since this was a dream. If he told Sam, because that meant telling Sam he’d had a dream with Cas in it.
Which just wasn’t happening because Sam would want to talk about that, and what it might mean, forever.
It took him a moment to realise Cas hadn’t answered.
Dean turned around and found the bench empty. The angel was gone.
“You’re a douche in my dreams, too,” he complained. “Would it kill you to say bye once in a while?”
**
They spent the next five days alternating between chasing down possible leads on Lucifer - they weren’t about to square up to him, but it made sense to know where he was - and trying to get rid of a poltergeist with staying power.
By the time they were ready to leave town, even Cas was broken and bruised and looking like someone had knocked him down with a truck and then reversed to make sure they’d done it right.
“This job sucks,” Dean proclaimed, thought since he waited until he’d flopped face first onto the bed, his complaint was muffled.
Sam uttered a groan that might have been agreement, sympathy or just from pain. Maybe all three. He staggered into the bathroom, and Dean heard the shower start up.
Only Cas was silent.
Dean rolled over and sat up. Cas was sitting by the small table in the kitchen, looking a little out of it. The right side of his face was still caked with blood, and Dean could see the start of what was going to be an impressive black eye in the morning if the angel hadn’t healed by then.
The hunter forced himself to his feet, gritting his teeth against the solid block of pain that had once been his back, and went over to where Cas sat.
“Hey. Cas. Castiel!” He snapped his fingers in front of Cas’s face, had to do it a couple of times before the angel focused on him.
“Yes. What?” He actually scowled at Dean.
Confusion, temper. “Don’t be a grumpy little angel,” Dean warned. He pressed the back of his hand against Cas’s forehead, didn’t feel it too clammy, and then tilted the angel’s head back so he had to look up at the ceiling light.
“What are you doing?” Cas sounded stuck between confused and annoyed and Dean figured the only reason he wasn’t sitting on his ass halfway across the room was because it was him. Profound bond, blah, blah, thou shalt not kick the ass of the righteous man, blah, blah, blah.
“I’m trying to make sure you don’t have a concussion. Or that you’re going into shock.” Both the angel’s eyes reacted identically to the light, though, so Dean figured that was the best he could do under the circumstances.
“I don’t. I’m not.” He raised his hand, as if to wave Dean off, so the hunter stepped back. Dude probably wasn’t used to getting poked or prodded - he didn’t figure Heaven for being all that caring a place, or full of brotherly concern. He didn’t know if Cas had ever gotten hurt before coming into their lives, but he bet if he had that he’d probably been expected just to suck it up and keep going.
“Ok. You gotta let me know if that changes, Cas. Can you check Sam out too? I don’t think he’s got concussion,” he added, when he saw Cas’s head snap around towards the bathroom. “But that thing slammed him down pretty hard.”
Cas stood up, a little unsteadily, but shook his head when Dean went to grab hold of him. He put a hand on Dean’s shoulder, studied him for a moment. “Your injuries are minor. They should be gone completely in a few days. I’ll examine Sam when he comes out. Dean. I’m sorry I can’t heal either of you.”
Dean frowned at him. Where the hell had that come from? “I know,” he said. “Look, Cas…. We got the shitty end of the stick, here. It’s just the three of us against everything outside that door, but we are going to make it through, ok? Whether you’re a full angel or not.”
Cas looked away, and Dean nodded to himself. There, job done, Cas spoken to; now maybe Sam would let the whole thing drop.
Speaking of his brother, Sam came out of the bathroom then, a towel wrapped around his middle.
He jumped when Cas wordlessly took two steps towards him and put his hand on Sam’s arm. “Hey, hey, what?”
“There aren’t any internal injuries,” Cas said. “Sam, you’re sore and bruised, but like Dean you’ll be better in a few days. You both just need to sleep. Can I help with that?”
Sam gave Dean a confused look. “Uh… No, I’m good, Cas. I’m gonna be out of it the minute my head hits the pillow.”
The angel glanced at Dean, but he shook his head. “No need for angel whammy, Cas. You save your strength, looks like you need your mojo more than we do right now.”
He was a little surprised when he saw Sam shooting him a bitch face over the angel’s head. What the fuck had he said now?
Cas sat back down at the table. “Then I’ll remain here and watch over you.”
Sam didn’t say anything much after that, until he was changed into a tee and a pair of sleep shorts and under the covers. “Night, Dean, Cas.”
Dean didn’t miss the inflection in Sam’s voice when he spoke his name. Fine, whatever had triggered his full on bitch mode could wait until tomorrow for him to sort out. Right now, he needed rest. It was a six-hour drive back to Bobby’s tomorrow, and he wasn’t doing it on no sleep because he fretted all night over the Sasquatch and his hair trigger feelings.
“Yeah, night,” he grumbled.
He watched Cas watching him for a bit, grateful that at least this time he didn’t seem exhausted enough to need to sleep, before he was finally able to fall over himself.
**
Dean shielded his eyes at the sudden glare of light around him. He looked around in confusion, his surroundings alien and unfamiliar. It was a long, clinical looking corridor, all white. Doors were set frequently down both sides, each one frosted glass with a name stencilled on.
Where the hell was this supposed to be? He stood for a moment, tried to remember if he’d ever been anywhere like this, or maybe seen it in a movie. But nothing tugged at his memories. This was nowhere he’d ever been or watched on TV or even read about. Yet it was so detailed, Dean felt almost sure it was an actual place.
Since he was stuck there until he woke up, or started dreaming about something else, he figured he might as well go with it. He started walking, glancing curiously at the names on the doors he passed. They all started with P, and Dean wondered if maybe this was some kind of prison.
“Better than Shawshank,” he whispered to himself, feeling like being quiet and undiscovered here was the smart way to go but not knowing why. There didn’t seem to be anybody around, and he couldn’t hear anything from behind any of the doors.
It was just weird.
He saw movement up ahead, just a flash of colour standing out against the white, but before he could react one of the doors near him opened and he was tugged inside.
Dean fought immediately, tried to twist his way out of the grip and maybe bust a bone at the same time, but he was held easily in place.
By Castiel.
Dean jerked in surprise, but Cas put a finger to his lips and Dean obediently fell silent. He stayed still, suddenly aware of something moving past the door. No shadow fell over the glass, he didn’t hear any noise, but the sensation of presence was undeniably, uncomfortably close.
And then it wasn’t, and Castiel let him go.
“What the fuck is this?” Dean snapped. “Please tell me I’m really dreaming, and we haven’t been whammied or kidnapped or something.”
“You’re dreaming,” Castiel said, and turned around and walked away.
Dean jogged after him, aware for the first time that they weren’t actually in a room. He stopped in his tracks as Castiel walked away across a wide green lawn, bordered by tall trees. There was a guy holding the string of a kite, watching the wind tug at his toy as the tail snapped and danced behind it.
“Cas,” he said. He managed to catch Cas up, and got ahead of him. “Where the hell are we? What’s going on?”
“This is Heaven,” the angel explained. He sounded frustrated, like that was something Dean should have been able to work out on his own. “One of many.”
“Right. I get it. I don’t get it. There’s more than one?” He shrugged at the annoyed look Cas gave him; this was a dream, why he even expected it to make sense he didn’t know, but that expression was so Cas that for a moment Dean wondered if the angel was actually here rather than just another weird facet of his sleeping mind.
“There are as many as there are souls. Each one is contained in his own vision of Paradise. A favourite place, a warm memory.” He pointed to the guy with the kite. “This is his. I… I find it soothing, here. It’s easy to watch him.”
Dean stared at the guy for a moment, but he didn’t feel soothed or find it anything other than creepy and kind of boring. “Does he know we’re here?” he asked, feeling a little stupid, because this was a dream. He wasn’t here, Cas wasn’t here, the grown up guy playing with a kite wasn’t here.
“No,” Cas said. “We can move in and out of the individual Heavens without their occupants being aware.”
“Voyeuristic angels,” Dean said. “Why am I not surprised.”
Castiel turned on him angrily. “We are responsible for these souls. We create these places for humans to have somewhere to feel safe for the rest of their eternity. We guard them. Is it too much to ask that we can share in it, when we don’t have any such place of our own?”
Dean took a step back, instinctively. He’d seen Cas pissed before, but this was some weird combo of angry and upset and…
“Cas,” he started, but the words ground to a halt in his throat. Damn, Sam was so much better at this than him. He wanted to ask if Cas didn’t feel safe, if he felt like he didn’t have some place he could go where he could do whatever he wanted. Fly a damn kite if it came to it.
But he already knew Cas didn’t. He was cut off from Heaven, and even before that he’d been a servant of God, a captain of a garrison (and he’d lost that too, thanks to getting too close to them, ending up under Uriel’s command). He’d probably never had anywhere like this; any safe place he’d found he’d had to borrow.
“There’s no need for me to be anything here,” Cas said, finally. The temper had left him; now he just looked shattered, like he’d taken one too many hits and only sheer stubbornness was keeping him on his feet. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
That stung a little, but Dean didn’t know what to say. Then he spotted the bench - stone, sitting just in front of the trees. He grabbed Castiel’s wrist, tugged the angel towards it. Castiel didn’t protest or react as Dean pushed him down onto the bench and then sat down next to him.
“So we’ll stay here for a bit,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me about kite guy? Hell of a hobby.”
Castiel raised sad eyes to the soul staring up at the kite, unaware of their presence in his eternity.
“His name,” Castiel said, “is Phillip. He was forty-three years old when he died….”
**
When Dean woke up the next morning, he felt as low as he’d ever been. The dream lingered, like someone had broken bad news to him and though he’d tried to sleep through it he’d woken up the next morning to realise nothing had changed.
Castiel was gone, and Sam was sitting alone at the table, eating some toast.
“Mmmm,” he said, around a mouthful, which Dean took to mean the greasy take away bag next to the other chair was for him, and good morning all rolled into one.
“Cas take off?” Dean asked, unnecessarily.
Sam rolled his eyes at him, swallowed, and said, “No, he’s in my pocket.”
Dean sat down, slid a takeout container from the bag, and carefully opened it. “He’d fit. Would it kill the guy to wait until I’m up before he just flits off again?”
Sam took a swig of coffee and then wiped his fingers on a napkin. “He’s got shit to do, Dean. Though I did try to get him to stay a little longer - he still wasn’t fully healed. But he was pretty keen to go.”
Dean fingered at the toast and bacon in front of him. He didn’t have any appetite suddenly. And maybe it was time to share. “I’ve been dreaming about him.”
Sam stared at him. “Ok. That’s uh, not anything I expected to hear you say. Ever. What kind of dreams, Dean?” He schooled his features into that I’m definitely not mocking you, nope, not all all expression.
“Fuck you,” Dean snapped. He sat in silence for a moment, and then saw the shamed look on his brother’s face. “Just… I’ve had a couple of ‘em lately. First one wasn’t too bad; last night - was fucking awful.”
Sam didn’t say much of anything for a bit, so they ate in silence. When they were done, he grabbed the takeout containers and put them in the garbage.
“Ok, joking aside,” he said, as he started packing up his gear. “What happened in the dreams?”
Dean gave him the short version and Sam listened.
“Do you think maybe you’re feeling a little guilty?” he asked, finally.
“Guilty?” Dean snorted at him, shook his head. “What the hell have I got to feel guilty about?”
Sam gave him a look, the one that said they might be brothers but sometimes he wondered. “Dean, we’re kind of to blame for what’s happening to him.”
“We’re not,” Dean snapped. “We’re not the ones who came up with this shitty destiny thing those fucks are so obsessed with. We’re not the ones that want to burn everybody so Lucifer and Michael can get over their fucking angst by murdering each other. Cas… Cas is the only one who chose to stand by us, and Earth. I know he’s had it rough-“ he ignored the disbelieving huff he got from Sam, “but he knew what would happen. We’ve all had to make choices with poor frigging options. It’s just how it is.”
“Ok, maybe so,” Sam relented. “But it doesn’t change the fact that his entire world has been turned upside in the space of a few months and he has nobody to talk to about it. He’s on one side of this and his entire family is on the other. Anyway, I think what you’re really feeling guilty about is that you still haven’t spoken to him. Reached out to him. Guy’s probably hurting, Dean. Who else has he got now except us?”
“Lucky old him,” Dean muttered. “So you think I’m what? Giving myself a dry run before I can ask him if he’s doing ok?”
Sam finished stowing the last of his things in his duffel. “Or you’ve suddenly developed some psychic ability to drag him into your dreams. I’m going to have to do this, aren’t I? Because you’re either going to stall until it’s too late or let him tell you he’s fine and then walk away like your job is done.”
He flashed guiltily back to the first dream. Ok, that had kind of been his plan unless Sam had ever given up on this crazy notion of his that Cas needed a shoulder to cry on. And it had probably been what had caused the second dream. Cas was fine; this was all Sam projecting his inner angst onto them and now it was directing weird emo-dramas in Dean’s head once he went to sleep.
Ok, maybe not fine, but he hadn’t once done anything to suggest he needed to talk, or whatever. It probably wasn’t an angel thing, and he still felt forcing Cas to open up about something that had to be pretty frigging terrifying wasn’t a great idea. He figured Cas was maybe like him in that regard; talking wouldn’t change it, so in the meantime he was going to push it aside and keep going until he couldn’t.
Shitty coping mechanism, and he knew it personally, but if it was all you had….
“How about,” Dean said, as he got up and grabbed his own bag, “we stop trying to psychoanalyse him and just leave the guy alone? But if you really wanna be the one to draw a big fucking line under the fact that he’s maybe got weeks before he becomes a different species and ask him how he feels about that, you go right ahead. Go poke that sore, Sam. Let me know what comes out of it.”
They didn’t speak much for the next few hours, and Dean was more relieved than ever when the salvage yard finally came into view.
**
There were no more Cas-dreams for a few nights. Dean wasn’t sure why - maybe after the bust up with Sam, his mind had accepted there wasn’t going to be a grand discussion of feelings with the angel, and so there was no need to be prepping for it during sleep. Or maybe his quick fix had worked; each night he’d drunk more than he should have and was probably more passed out than asleep.
Bobby and Sam both saw what he was doing - it was kind of hard to hide anything from those two - but neither of them commented.
Dean was glad; now if Sam would just treat this thing with Cas the same way. A guy’s issues were his own. What the hell use were words, anyway.
The only important one he was holding to right now, was no. A no from him and a no from Sam, go fuck yourselves, angels, thank you very frigging much.
And then, the night before they were due to leave, Dean figured he’d probably better cut back on the booze a little so he could drive in a straight line the next morning.
That was before he realised Bobby and Sam were now tag teaming him, and the older hunter came up into his room.
“No,” Dean said, when he saw the disgruntled look on Bobby’s face. He clearly didn’t want to be doing this either.
“Yeah,” Bobby insisted, all the same, and came in. He grabbed the bottle of liquor from Dean’s beside table, and threw the damn thing out of the window.
“Fuck me, what the hell!” Dean started up, and Bobby gave him a shove back down.
“Don’t you cuss me in my own damn house, Dean Winchester. Sam thinks you’re drinking up here to avoid thinking about that angel. Now I know it’s more than that, but all the same what’s the problem with reaching out to the guy?”
“Since when were you a member of the Castiel fan club?”
He winced a little, saw the temper and frustration - and worry - on Bobby’s face. “I’m saying talk to him, not marry him. I got no real time for any of the God brigade, ‘cept for maybe that one. Because he hauled your ass out of the Pit, Dean, put you back together and gave you back to us.”
“He didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart. He was just following orders like a good little robot.” And where the hell had that come from? Dean caught a glimpse of the stunned look on Bobby’s face, felt his cheeks grow hot with shame, and then couldn’t meet Bobby’s eyes.
He knew then he’d been right; if there had to be a talk about this, then it would be better coming from Sam. Dean had never bought into that righteous man shit, but he’d never felt so unlike what Cas thought of him as he did just then.
“Your fucking gratitude is overwhelming,” Bobby snapped. “Whose orders was he following when he slit his own damn arm to get you out of Heaven? When he let that archangel turn him into a hundred pounds of bloody pulp? I figure none of us are getting out of this alive, boy, but the truth is our chances are better while that angel’s around and functioning. So if you wanna be so damn cold over it, then look at it like it’s for your good and not his. Or not. I don’t care. Just have the damn talk with him or let Sam do it. But either way, make sure it gets done.”
Bobby turned his chair around and wheeled back out of the room, managing to slam the door behind him.
Dean hear the whirr of the chairlift as it took him back downstairs, and let his head slump back hard against the wall. Fine. He’d let Sam speak to Cas, if Cas wanted to speak to him, and then his smart ass little brother could deal with the fallout from that crazy idea.
He was going to keep to a minimum safe distance.
**
“You drink too much,” Castiel said.
Dean looked around him, curiously. They were standing on a flat desert ridge, the night air cold. He shivered, and Cas rested a hand on his shoulder. Immediately, warmth blossomed out from his touch, and Dean made a grateful noise.
“I drink enough,” he said. “It’s all about the balance. I’ve got great balance.”
Castiel glanced at him, briefly, before looking back out across the desert. “You’ve been practically unconscious the past three nights. It’s hard to… You don’t dream when you’re intoxicated.”
“Wow, you’re right,” Dean said. And thank you, Bobby, for another few hours of nocturnal weirdness. He was starting to think these dreams had nothing to do with Cas. He was just a prop, a way for his sub-conscious to beat him up even when he was asleep.
“And your liver is showing damage. Remember that I can’t heal you, Dean.”
Dean shrugged off the warning. “I’ve seen the future, remember? I looked pretty spry for the dick saviour of humanity, right up until Lucifer ganked me.”
Damn it. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to think about that ever again. It was just some twisted fantasy Zachariah had cooked up and shoved in his brain to make him think he had no choice but to let Michael in.
“One possible future,” Castiel said. “None of us know how this will all end.”
Dean turned on him. “I know how it doesn’t. It doesn’t end with me or Sam saying yes to either of those bastards, and it doesn’t end with you stoned out of your gourd every day and then getting torn apart by Croats.”
Castiel stared at him calmly, but Dean could see there was sadness in his eyes. Like Castiel wanted to believe in Dean’s version of the future but knew that really? One of them self-deluding was enough.
“It’s more likely I’ll die before this war is over,” the angel said. He looked away again. “My survival was always improbable. The odds are too great.”
Dean grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him, but couldn’t get that look of casual acceptance off his face. “No fucking way,” he snarled. “Not happening. That’s what you think? And you’re just okay with that. Got no problem.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m ok with it or not,” Castiel said. “I’m fading, Dean. And even if I still had the full Grace of Heaven within me, even if I was still an angel, the end would likely be the same. There are thousands of angels, and thousands of demons, and one of me. But if I can, before I die, I will try to find a way to permanently protect you both. To find my Father, and ask him to return to us and stop all of this.”
Dean let him go. This, this was why he hadn’t wanted to sit Cas down and talk things out. All he could offer in opposition to Castiel’s conviction on how things would turn out were angry denials; he couldn’t present facts or probabilities. Truth was, probably Cas would get killed. And much as Dean wanted to keep ferociously refusing to accept Lucifer finally worming his way inside Sam, he just couldn’t. He’d never thought Sam would get addicted to demon blood, or turn into some stranger wearing his brother’s skin. He’d never thought anything could get between them. He’d got that so wrong, who was to say he was right in this?
But there was one thing he wasn’t going to let go. “You are still an angel.”
He watched a soft, sad little smile play across Castiel’s lips. “Hardly the definition of one.”
Dean turned Castiel towards him. “Screw definitions.” He pulled Castiel against him, hugged him so tight that even Sam would have squawked about crush injuries. “You are to me. And that is never gonna change, Cas.”
He woke up to Bobby hollering upstairs to him, something about breakfast being on the table for the next five minutes after which it’d be in the trash.
Dean sat up with a groan. Right now, a hangover and a few hours of Sam’s driving would be better than the lingering weariness of another night-time chitchat with his sub-conscious in the shape of a falling angel.
**
The next three hunts came at them thick and fast, like all the monsters knew time was ticking for them as well as humanity.
A ghost in Birchley, a possessed teacher at a college in Wrexley, NY, and then Dean’s all time personal favourite, a witch hexing newlyweds in Vegas.
By the time they were done, Dean felt like exhaustion was his default state of being and it was all he and Sam could do to drag themselves to the motel room they’d booked and make it safe.
“Fuck that bitch, she is not ruining this city for me,” he said, voice shaky but determined. Up until now, they’d never had a hunt here. Not that jobs had never come up, but they’d always fielded them off. Showed just a little selfishness for once.
But this time around, there hadn’t been anybody to pass the ball to, and the curses visited on the couples had been too nasty to ignore.
“Only the wedding chapels,” Sam said. He flopped down onto his bed. “So our yearly vacation can remain non-traumatic. Unless, you know, you drunk-marry or something.”
He didn’t have the energy for a pithy comeback, so settled for shooting Sam the finger.
Neither of them had the strength to worry about showers or food, and Dean lay for a while listening to Sam snore. Delicate little snores that had no place coming from something his brother’s size.
The noise eventually lulled him into sleep, and part of him wanted to fight it because sleep seemed to equal dreams lately, but the battle was lost the minute his eyes shut, and in a few minutes he was as sound as Sam.
**
He was kind of surprised to find himself in another motel room. This was the best his head could come up with? Was his imagination that limited?
He was sitting on the edge of a bed, and he felt it move behind him. Cas was lying there, eyes open and staring up at the ceiling; his hands were resting on his stomach.
“Cas?” Dean twisted around, a little weirded out but hey, ok - it wasn’t quite as creepy as the guy with the kite. “Uh…what are you doing?”
“Resting,” Cas said. He didn’t move at all, not even to look over. “I get tired more easily as my Grace fades. Searching…avoiding my siblings…. It’s exhausting.”
Dean figured as much. How much power did it take flitting about constantly from one side of the world to the other, all the while trying to hide from every other angel in existence?
“Maybe you just need to take a break. I don’t mean a couple of hours in some sleazy motel room.” Because even in the dark, he could see this was a place even they might have turned their noses up at, and they’d stayed in some pretty shitty places. “You know… A proper rest. If you need someplace safe to stop, head for Bobby’s. He’s got the panic room, you can stay there.”
Cas propped himself up on his elbows. The coat slipped down off his shoulders, and Dean realised it was the closest he’d ever come to seeing Cas without it. It was practically like seeing him naked, but he didn’t look away.
This was his dream after all.
“I can’t stop. I shouldn’t even be here. There’s no time, Dean. I don’t understand where He is, why He isn’t answering me. He must know what’s happening; how can He ignore this?”
Dean ached at the sudden dismay on Castiel’s face. This was the first time he’d heard Cas talk about his God hunt with anything other than determination. It was sometimes a couple of weeks between them seeing the angel, and Dean realised he’d probably underestimated just how hard and wide Cas had been searching.
To him, a couple of weeks meant driving through a couple of towns and cities, chasing down contacts and leads, networking with anybody he thought could help.
Cas could fly across the frigging planet; in two weeks he could have been in a thousand cities, underground caves, isolated forests.
Deserts.
“Cas,” he started, because he had to know even if he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Is this your dream or mine?”
He wasn’t expecting an answer, but he definitely wasn’t expecting Cas to sit up sharply like he’d received an electric shock.
“You have to go,” he said.
“What?” Dean tried to grab hold of him; Cas suddenly looked terrified. “Why?”
But he knew the answer instinctively; the room felt smaller suddenly, constricted, and he heard the low hum as Castiel’s blade appeared in his hand.
“Now!” Castiel said, and gave him a hard shove.
Dean jerked awake, coming upright too fast. The room spun, and he groaned at the sensation. He was slick with cold sweat, and the sudden movement had woken all his aches and pains as well.
Sam was on his feet, alerted by his brother’s movements, and he had a gun in his head.
“What? What’s wrong?” His brother turned a wild gaze around the room. “Are we in trouble?”
Dean didn’t realise his hands were trembling until he reached for his cell. “Not us,” he said, and dialled Castiel’s number.
**
He didn’t get an answer, not to the countless calls he made, or the messages he left on the angel’s voicemail, or to the dozen or so texts.
Sam tried to reassure him. These were just dreams. He was worried about Cas, he was projecting.
Dean let him talk. He didn’t have time to persuade Sam around, to convince him that the dreams hadn’t felt like dreams. Especially that last one: Castiel’s fear so palpable, the sensation of presence so full of threat that he’d expected the walls and ceiling to cave in on them at any moment.
Somehow, he and Cas were…lucid dreaming, but the one that had woken him up had been more like a nightmare.
And they weren’t his dreams, he knew that now. He had no idea what Heaven looked like, didn’t know it was one per customer instead of some cloud based nature reserve where everybody floated around wearing white pantsuits and having their dreams come true.
All of it… All of it belonged to Cas.
Finally, Sam seized the cell phone from his hands and put it down out of reach. “Do you remember anything about the motel room?” he asked.
Dean shut his eyes, but all he could think was that Cas had been there alone, vulnerable, and now he wasn’t answering his phone.
“It was shitty,” he managed. His voice cracked a little, and he cleared his throat. “There wasn’t anything I could see to say where it was, Sam. And he’s probably not even there now. Either he ran, or they got him.”
Sam rested a huge hand on the back of his neck. “They’d have to be pretty fast to catch Castiel,” he told Dean. “And pretty tough to keep him.”
Dean nodded, gratefully. Both were true. Cas had made Zachariah almost shit his pants, the great and mighty superior, but in the dream it had felt like an army of angels were bearing down on them.
Maybe they’d never see Cas again. Never find out what happened to him.
Except even then they’d know. If he just dropped off the radar, it’d only mean one thing.
He reached past Sam, picked up the phone and started to redial.
**
Dean spent the next two weeks at Bobby’s. He hadn’t given up trying to call Castiel, but eventually his voicemail was too full to leave any more messages. Being at Bobby’s wasn’t a panacea for all their woes, but it definitely helped.
Bobby had listened to him relating what had happened, and was inclined to believe that Castiel was reaching out to Dean in his dreams, whether they were Dean’s or vice versa. He also thought from the sound of it that it was unintentional, unlike the first time it had ever happened which had been when Cas had sent them an SOS.
Dean started to wonder if that was what Cas was doing this time too, asking for the help he needed while he was asleep because he couldn’t when he was awake. Or maybe didn’t even know he wanted to.
And he’d essentially turned his back on Cas, refused to speak to him. Ignored Sam being right, again, and now he’d probably lost Cas for good.
At least if he’d spoken to him, it wouldn’t have left Cas thinking he had to go things alone.
But in addition to being a place of safety, Bobby’s house also had two other major benefits. It had a huge resource of books on lore and magic, and Dean was working his way steadily through them to find a spell they could use to track an angel.
They had a spell to summon one, but with Castiel’s grace on the wane, Dean didn’t want to go yanking him across the world unless it was a last resort.
The second good reason to be at Bobby’s was that he’d told Cas he should come here. With the sigils on their ribs, Cas couldn’t find them like he had before. And maybe the reason he wasn’t answering his phone was that he didn’t have it anymore. So if Cas was ok, and if he was looking for them, it made sense that he’d head for the salvage yard.
Even if he didn’t find them there, he could shelter with Bobby until they came back or Bobby could clue him in on their whereabouts.
But after a fortnight, Dean started to lose hope. Crazy wild fears found a home inside him and he couldn’t push them out.
Maybe Cas had lost the last of his grace and died. Sure, Cas figured if that happened, he’s just change to a human. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d got shoved out of his vessel, and what happened then to an angel in its trueform that lost the last of its grace?
Maybe Cas had found God, and pushed too hard, and God had destroyed him. Because Dean knew if Cas had found his Dad, and for whatever reason God had refused to help or turned away, Cas wouldn’t just take that. He’d keep after Him, and Dean wasn’t convinced of the patience or kindness of God.
Not after everything that had happened, and would if they lost this war.
In his darkest moments, he wondered if Cas had just given up. Either dumped his phone and went into hiding, or decided the Winchesters, humanity, weren’t worth it after all and went crawling back home to Zachariah.
When he thought like that, he hated himself enough that he went out back with a hammer and beat the shit out of as many of Bobby’s old wrecks as he could until his arms hurt and his muscles ached and shook.
Cas would never, never abandon or betray them. Not that Dean would have blamed him if he had decided to just leave them to it and pull a Gabriel. He’d bled the most of them in this fight, he’d died for them, and Dean just saw more of the same on the road ahead.
But he knew that wasn’t it. Cas was out there, probably had a very good reason for not getting back in touch with them, and Dean hoped it was because it just wasn’t safe, and not because he was getting tortured and murdered by his so called family.
**
He ended up turning in early that night, heart sick and exhausted. He didn’t know where Cas was, so couldn’t go to him. He had no way of finding out either; there wasn’t exactly a missing persons hotline for angels.
All he could do was wait, and waiting had never been his strong point, not when it was to find out if somebody that mattered to him was alive or dead, safe or in trouble and needing a rescue.
Finally, he fell asleep, hoping against hope that he could find Cas there since he’d couldn’t find him in the waking world.
**
He heard the flutter of wings and blinked drowsily at a familiar figure standing over him.
“Cas!” He jumped up and pulled the angel into a hug. “Fuck, you scared me. What the hell, man!”
He leaned back, squinting in the darkness. Cas looked like hell. His cheek was bruised, a yellowish stain that covered almost the whole side of his face. There was blood on his shirt, and when Dean tugged it open, he could see a wound that was nearly all the way closed but not there yet.
“Those bastards,” he snarled. He turned and shoved Cas down onto the bed. “They jumped you in that motel room, didn’t they?”
Cas didn’t answer; Dean carefully cupped his face so the angel had to look at him. “Cas? Come on, you in there?”
“Yes,” Cas said, finally. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Because I told you to come here, remember? I said to you. You did good. Now just hold tight, I’m gonna get Sam and we’re gonna clean the rest of that cut out and stitch it up, okay?”
He wasn’t ready for Castiel to grab his wrist and hold him there. “No. You can’t wake Sam.”
Dean stared at him for a moment before it hit him. “Because I’m not awake either am I? And you’re not, or you wouldn’t be here. Where are you, Cas? What happened? I’ve been trying to find you.”
“It took time to evade them when I escaped the motel room. I’m not sure how they found me - I thought I’d been careful - but I have to be sure they aren’t following me before I can come to you.”
“Are you hurt like this? I mean, outside of our dreams?”
“It’ll pass.”
“Fuck you, that’s not an answer. It’s worse, isn’t it? You’re…you’re editing this. Show me, dammit. I don’t want you hiding anything from me.”
Cas looked away, and Dean wanted to shake him, but all he could manage was an angry, “Cas!”
“How would it help,” Cas said. “You can’t come to me any more than I can come to you. If they’re watching me they would take you. And Sam. I won’t allow it.”
Dean crouched down in front of him. “And I’m not gonna allow you to bleed out alone somewhere. We can sigil the place up so they can’t get any of us in here. Have you got enough mojo to reach us?”
When Cas looked back at him, Dean drew in a sharp breath. Blood dripped from his nose. There was a bitch of a cut above his right eye. But that wasn’t the worst of it; Dean had to tug Castiel’s shirt closed to dampen the blue glow from the now open wound on his chest.
“Damn you, Cas, this didn’t happen two weeks ago.”
“They’ve been hunting me since then; I’ve had a few…close calls.”
“Where are you?”
Cas looked around, as if the surroundings he saw weren’t the ones Dean did. “I’m actually not sure. That can’t be right. We always know where we are, when we are. Dean, how can I not know where I am?”
He’d never seen Cas panic before and it almost brought the same reaction out in him.
“But you know where I am, right? You know where Bobby’s is.”
Cas nodded, and then moaned as if that simple movement brought him pain.
“So come to me, Cas. Come on, get here. We’ll take care of you. Please, Cas, please try.”
He heard someone yelling his name, loud and frantic, and when he shot upright in bed, Cas was gone.
**
Dean stumbled the last few steps, and had to brace himself against the wall to stop from slamming his head off it. He pushed away from it and ran into Bobby’s lounge, half ready for what he expected to see. All the same, it wedged the breath in his throat and froze him to the spot.
Bobby was gripping the arms of his wheelchair so hard Dean was sure he’d leave fingerprints in the metal. He knew Bobby hated feeling helpless just like they did, but right now it had to be even harder.
Sam was pulling Cas up into his arms; the angel was out cold, his head lolling back.
There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t bloody or bruised. If anything it looked worse than it had in the dream.
“Yeah, little help,” Sam snapped, as he tried to lift Cas up. That jerked Dean free and he grabbed Cas’s legs and backed his way out of the lounge and downstairs to the panic room.
“I didn’t think he was this bad, I mean I knew he was hurt…” Dean panted as they set Cas down on the bed.
“You knew? Dean, did you see him in your dreams again?”
“His, they were his dreams,” Dean said. He quickly filled Sam in. They could hear the whirr of Bobby’s chairlift as the older man came to join them. “I had to fight with him to get him to come to us. He’s been on the run for two weeks, Sam, too scared to get in touch with us in case he led those bastards right to us.”
Bobby rolled his way across the ramp that bridged the doorway and thrust the first aid kit he’d brought at the brothers.
“Stitch ‘n’ bitch,” he ordered, and came close enough to see the damage as Sam and Dean set to stripping the angel. “Boy, they don’t hold back because of kin, do they?”
Dean couldn’t say anything. This, like everything else that had happened to Cas, was their fault. No matter what he’d said to Sam. He was the one who’d let Sam get killed, and then sold his soul and ended up breaking in Hell. And Sam, Sam had killed Lilith which was how Cas had gotten killed the first time.
It felt like the universe had a debt to settle with them, and Cas had picked up their tab in blood.
**
Dean didn’t even remember falling asleep, but the grunt of annoyance from Cas brought him to the angel’s side.
Cas was sitting up on the panic room bed; the blankets they’d covered him with were shoved aside, which left him just in his boxers though he didn’t seem to notice or care. His attention was fixated on the sling they’d put on his right arm - Bobby had dug it out of storage, where it had been since Dean had busted up his shoulder a couple of years back - and he seemed perplexed by it.
His fingers fiddled with the clasp on the sling itself, and then followed the line of the straps that secured it to his body. With a sudden frustration, he grabbed one of them and started to pull.
“Woah, woah, hold on, I’ll take it off,” Dean said. He sat down next to the angel and gently pushed his hand away. “If you’re healed.”
Cas gave him a baleful look. “I’m fine.”
Dean looked him over. Of course Cas would say he was fine. This was his dream, and in the last one Dean had to practically drag the truth out of him. Or maybe it was his own dream this time, and he desperately wanted Cas to be ok and not beaten up and unconscious on a bed in the basement.
But the angel did look ok - the cuts and bruises had faded - and it was just a dream, so what did it matter if Dean helped? He reached over and undid the clasps that held the sling in place and carefully took it off.
“Don’t move that arm yet,” he ordered, and then felt his way along the elbow, watching Cas carefully for any signs of pain.
Just because it was a dream, didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do this right.
Cas watched him, and when Dean seemed satisfied, he said, “Thank you.”
Dean sat back a bit. “Don’t thank me.”
“You helped me get here when I didn’t know where I was. You, and Sam, and Bobby cared for me. Why wouldn’t I thank you, Dean?”
Well, it was now or never. Maybe the sling would still be on Cas when they both woke up, but at least now he knew that whatever conversation they had here they’d both still remember when they weren’t dreaming.
Cas making it back to them was proof of that.
“Because I haven’t exactly been an A+ friend to you, Cas. Sam’s been after me to talk to you for weeks, to get you to talk about everything that’s happening. I just… I’m not exactly great with shit like that, and I didn’t want to make you feel any worse. And I genuinely thought these were just dreams, but even then I wasn’t sure what to say.”
Cas stared down at his hands. “There isn’t much to say, but I appreciate the thought. Dean, all of this was my choice. I knew what would happen once I rebelled. It’s… It’s difficult and it’s frightening and it hurts, Dean, and maybe more than I thought it would. I…I’m wondering now if I put too much faith in myself, in my ability to deal with all of this. To stop them.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Cas scared, or hurt, but it was the first time he’d seen him look so broken.
Instinct won out; he tugged Cas around and pulled the angel into his arms, hugged him as tight as he could. He wouldn’t be able to do this when they were awake, not until Cas got better, but he could do it now.
“We are going to stop them,” Dean said. “Cas, I gotta make sure you know. That you’ll always have a place with us. Maybe it won’t be safe, and it won’t be like that guy’s dream - hell, I can’t even promise you a decent motel room, but you threw in with us and that makes you part of this fucked up family. For whatever it’s worth. No matter how this goes.”
“It’s worth a great deal,” Cas said, but his voice wasn’t too steady, and Dean wondered if Cas believed him. This was a dream, after all, and he’d hardly been constant in his dealings with the angel who’d pulled him out of hell.
Cas probably didn’t have reason to put much faith in him, and that felt like someone had cold cocked him.
“I never wanted you to get hurt,” he whispered against Cas’s ear. “And if there was any way I could protect you from this, I’d damn well do it. I’m sorry, Cas. You say this was your choice, but we all know all of this just got shoved on us. It isn’t fair. But don’t stop having faith in yourself, Cas. I haven’t.”
Cas gave a tiny shrug. “It’s unlikely that we’ll win.”
“Maybe.” Dean reached up and cupped the back of the angel’s head. “Or maybe we’ll deliver the beatdown of the century to those bastards. All I know is that we’ll keep fighting until it’s over, one way or another. Together, Cas.”
He leaned back, desperate to see something other than pain and fear and doubt when he looked at his friend. He wanted Cas to see that he meant it; that he knew this was a dream but still real, and hoped that Cas would carry this with him when he woke up.
If he didn’t, Dean would tell him again and again, as often as he had to. He wasn’t going to chicken out again. Cas was too important to worry about boundaries, or his problem with expressing anything that wasn’t anger or frustration or hurt.
He could see Cas wasn’t convinced; the angel looked earnest, like he wanted desperately to believe what Dean was telling him, and maybe was trying to but for Dean’s sake.
“What’s it gonna take?” he asked. “To get you to listen.”
Cas didn’t say anything; he started to duck away but Dean made a sound of disapproval - no way had he come this far to let the angel shut down on him now.
When he leaned in, closed the distance between them, and pressed his lips to the angel’s he didn’t even know why he did it. He hadn’t even known he was going to, but it just seemed like a natural progression. Like he’d been reaching for Cas all this time and finally he was close enough, and this was something he should have done sooner.
It was a massive liberty, but Cas didn’t push him away. He didn’t pull him in, either, and Dean felt a moment of panic.
He moved back, cautiously, and forced himself to look the angel in the face. “Cas?”
“Sam,” Cas said, and glanced apologetically at the doorway.
Sam was standing there, eyes and mouth wide, and it would have been comical if it hadn’t been so frigging horrific.
“Right,” Sam said, finally, and then he was gone. It sounded like he tripped up the stairs, but he got up and kept going.
“Fuck,” Dean said. “So I guess we’re not dreaming then. You can lie to me about that if you want.”
Cas looked hurt for a moment, but then Dean saw him tuck it away. “No, I’m afraid we’re both awake this time.”
“Dammit, Cas,” Dean snapped. “Don’t. I just… Look. I felt like shit before for trying to talk to you in a dream. It was easier to say those things to you, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t mean every word, Cas. Everything I said. Everything I did.”
He grabbed Cas by the shoulders - he could now, this was real and Cas had healed - and held on until Cas looked at him.
“Everything,” Dean said, and then he kissed him again.
It was as chaste as before, but Dean knew he wouldn’t rush things with Cas even if he could. It was enough that he could see the honest want on the angel’s face when he sat back.
Maybe words weren’t as useless as he’d thought, but actions - actions he preferred.
He got up and closed the panic room door.