The Last Guys on the Bench // Part 5
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Some time soon after that, Dean decides it’s time to start helping out around camp. He can’t sit on his ass eating the (rabbit, ugh) food Sam gives him and sleeping ‘til 2 PM every day; that makes him not all that different from the pictures he’s seen of the fucked-up corn syrup zombies.
“Good,” Sam says, and he looks so understanding Dean wants to throw up all over him.
Sarah helps him move into his cabin, even if all he’s got is his old bag. “Cas have his own cabin, too?” she asks, examining the space under one of Dean’s new shelves with her tongue poked out, like it’s really important she figures out whether Dean’s shitty, beat-up, old brown boots look better to the left or the right of his shitty, beat-up, old black boots.
“Yep.” Jody had taken Cas off for his grand tour. “Not like he really needs it.” Guy’s an angel; he doesn’t sleep, or have any use for anything in the bathroom. He doesn’t even own any clothes other than his trenchcoat and the hospital scrubs. Dean hopes Sam’s told the other people around camp all about Cas, because it takes a little while to get used to him.
It’s not until he totally catches Sarah’s quick smile that he realizes how that comment came across, and he mentally smacks himself across the back of his head a little bit. Doesn’t bother to correct what he said, or elaborate, though, even as he wonders what the hell Sam told Sarah about him and Castiel.
Being around camp is weird. So much of Dean was always tangled up with being the charming one, shooting big, easy grins at pretty women in bars and big scary truckers alike. Sure, he was a jackass and ninety percent crap deep down, but people liked him off the bat.
Now, he limps around like a man haunted - and really, he is, by fuckin’ everything - Sammy by his side, sometimes putting a hand on his forearm. “I’m fine,” Dean growls, shaking Sam’s hand off him. Even if the whole idea of really talking to anyone rattles him deep down.
*
Sometimes, Sam comes back from supply runs with sweat and blood clotted on his skin, mixed with black goop. Really not a good look, Dean wants to joke, but he’s too horrified by what the hell could’ve happened out there.
“Sammy, you can’t - you gotta let me go too, I can’t think that you’re out there and I’m here and you could just -”
Sam bites his lip on the other side of the picnic table, and drops a pretty heavy-duty needle down onto the table in front of Dean. Dean grumbles, but he picks the needle up and moves next to Sam. He was always better at this, anyway.
Sam stinks, of course, and Dean makes an exaggerated disgusted noise when he pretty ungracefully plops down next to his brother. It’s the sewer stink of the Leviathan, of course, the metallic sting of blood, the sharp whiskey tang so the sewing hurts like less of a son of a bitch.
Dean realizes he hasn’t been drinking since he came back to Earth. Before he went to Purgatory, clearing the empty bottles off the side table when he woke up had become second nature. Huh, go figure.
He sews in mostly silence, cringing when he pokes the needle through skin and when Sam grits his teeth and makes little half-gasps of pain. It’s on the meat of his forearm, too, the easiest part to patch up, but Dean’s heartbeat doesn’t stop thumping too fast until he stands back up, and Sam runs his finger over the new suture. The finger comes up clean, and Dean just nods to himself.
“It was bad enough when I had to pull Garth - what became of him - away, man,” Sam tells Dean, once he’s standing up. And - shit, yeah, Dean hasn’t seen Garth at all, has he? Fuck. Dean’s gaze flicks toward the ground, unable to meet Sam’s, because God knows what the hell the guy’s been dealing with these past years.
“I’ve already dragged you out to the car once before, and Bobby had to help me out.” There’s a pause, a long one, where Dean’s mouth flops open uselessly a couple of times, but no words can fill that kind of quiet. “I just got you back, Dean.”
Dean just nods. This is the kind of language he speaks, where every pause in conversation isn’t just silence but rather every loss he’s ever felt sinking into his bones and gnawing at the back of his brain until it felt solid. “Okay.” He still wants to help, to save people; that’ll never stop gnawing at the back of his brain, too, the thing that makes all his limbs go and functions tick on.
He always had to be strong for Sammy, had it drilled into his mind since he was four years old. Letting someone else be strong for him is just - it’s a new thing that has to settle in, calm the constant churning thing inside him. He’s faced down the Devil; he’s just gotta let time take its toll here.
Time, and going against what his nature’s been for his entire life.
*
So he hates it, but he stays behind while hunts happen. There are more games of Monopoly with Castiel, and Go Fish, Dean staring at Cas’ fingers shuffling the cards before he flicks his eyes up to meet Cas’ gaze. Not like there’s anywhere else to look.
The claustrophobia of it all gets itchy after a while. Dean tosses two red cards down on the table and feels himself twitch, shifting restlessly in his chair. It’s reminding him too much of them playing Sorry!, just them and the walls of the cabin with the world outside breathing down and how the fuck can Cas stay so calm? Goddamn angels. (Dean really needs to think of a better word for that.)
“Perhaps we should see if anyone else is around the camp,” Cas says, palms fitting neatly around the cards to stack them up evenly again. Dean would snap at him not to read his mind again, only he’s pretty sure that Cas didn’t have to in order to know what the hell was bothering him.
A slim man with a messy mop of hair is carrying two enormous water jugs back to a cabin. There’s no effort there, no loud grunting like Dean would do, no sheen of sweat over his skin; the muscles in his skinny arms don’t bulge. Definitely not human. Dean realizes he knows this guy a second before Castiel raises his head, offers him one of his close-mouthed but genuine smiles, and greets, “Inais.”
“Castiel,” Inais replies, and it sounds like an exhale. “Sam told me about how he was planning to get you and his brother back.” The guy’s just holding the water jugs right there, without bothering to set them down or anything. God, angels are such weirdos.
It’s even weirder when Inais nods to Dean. “I’m sorry that the last time I saw you, my garrison attempted to destroy your existence on Earth,” he says, big frown wrinkling all his features. The guy’s clearly been picking up his physical reactions from like, soap operas or some shit. “Hester always was very direct.”
“I thought you were dead,” Cas tells him, a heaviness behind his eyes.
Inais actually sighs, which is kind of hilarious because it’s so loud and huffy. Soap operas, seriously. “I sent Liwet and Micah to guard the prophet, but when I checked on them they were… gone. I was the only member of the garrison left, and I knew I wouldn’t be welcomed back in Heaven after we had all failed terribly.”
Dean looks down at the ground at only member of the garrison left. That’s their family, and it’s been ripped apart piece by piece. He’s not planning on starting an angel fan club any time soon, for the most part, but hey, he gets it. And all that loss is mostly due to his own shit, if he’s being honest.
“Well, I’m here,” Cas tells Inais. He grips his brother’s hands in his own, and Inais looks startled. “I was the cause for so much of that, it’s the least -”
“Hey, Cas, no,” Dean interrupts, mostly because he can’t stand to see Cas whittled away by so much doubt and self-loathing, enough that he starts resembling him. If he’s a teeny bit - weirded out, yeah, that’s it - by the way Cas’ hands practically envelop Inais’ much smaller ones, well he’s not telling anyone anything.
Inais doesn’t quite have the headtilt Dean sees on Cas, like if he thinks really hard whatever he’s dealing with will turn into two gigantic puzzle pieces and snap together easily, but he still crooks his neck to the side a bit to look at Dean and Castiel. Dean meets Inais’ eyes, but it’s so weird to look at an angel that’s not Cas like that.
“I’ll return to my post. It’s good to see you again, brother,” is all Inais says before he heads off. He throws them another look as he’s moving to a cabin in the distance; he’s not very subtle about it, either.
Dean doesn’t know how long passes, even if it can’t be more than a couple of minutes; his brain’s having issues wrapping around the idea of time again. It’s still dark out, at least, when Cas says, “I suppose you think you were the cause of all that.”
A few people mill around the camp, but it’s pretty late and most of them are probably trying to catch up on any sort of precious goddamn sleep. Dean’s here instead, not answering with anything but a shrug. Because ouch, but also true. “Dean, after Stull, do you remember -”
“Peace or freedom.” Of course he does. Not real easy to forget, even as the entire world went heavy with this haze of hurt and guilt and rage all around him. “Think we both took freedom, and it’s a real son of a bitch.”
“That’s one decision I wouldn’t change.”
Cas’ eyes still light up like all of Heaven’s behind them whenever someone says Paradise, an instinct he’s probably never going to shed, but Dean doesn’t doubt him for a second. He wouldn’t change that about himself, either. There’s so much darkness and destiny tied into his life; you can’t take away him sticking the middle finger to fate.
“Yeah,” he comes up with, at last, exaggerating his yawn. Too late to pry into his deepest emotional depths, clearly. (Yeah, and so’s five-thirty AM, if he’s being honest.) “I should go get some sleep.”
“I’ll keep watch here.”
Smiling still feels odd, like doing that doesn’t belong on his face, but he offers one up to Cas before he heads back to his cabin.
*
Strangely enough, Inais and Claire are as close as anyone gets here. Together, they’re constantly sitting on the steps of the big cabin she shares with some of the other younger kids who are here - God, they should all be in college, they remind Dean of Sammy at that age, bright as hell and wasting it in a world, a life, they never wanted, without even the ability to get out for a few peaceful years like Sam did - shoulders and knees bumping as they talk. Inais has the usual lack-of-personal-space thing going on that Dean’s pretty damn familiar with, and Claire just doesn’t seem to care much.
“Wouldn’t have thought you’d be BFF with angels,” he says one day, while they’re sitting at one of the picnic tables at the camp. Claire’s all excited about her salad; Dean’s, well, less so. He’ll break out of this place himself to go get some friggin’ meat to put in this thing, at least.
She shoots him a look, like she knows how totally pathetic his attempt to use BFF is and isn’t even gonna bother to comment on it, it’s so sad. “Inais is… he’s friendlier than Castiel. He didn’t…” She trails off, and takes another bite of salad. “Got along with Paschal, too, while he was here.” Dean doesn’t even know the guy, and he was probably just another asshole angel, but something inside him still twists unpleasantly at the way Claire’s voice gets a little wobbly at the end.
“So you’re like the angel whisperer or something?”
“Paschal told me and Sam some people are more like angel catnip, you know,” she offers as means of a response. Claire doesn’t talk much - maybe that’s why she gets along well with Inais, cuz angels are always brushing off silly humans and their dumb words, anyway - but she fixes Dean with another one of her looks again.
Dean sneaks out some of Sarah’s photos. Paschal’s in the oldest vessel he’s ever seen an angel occupy by far, a portly and pale man, face weighed down in wrinkles. He’s probably old enough to be Dean’s grandfather, never mind Claire’s. Still looks kinda badass, holding himself ramrod-stiff like the rest of the angels. Dean’s gotta laugh that Sarah’s got her arm slung around him, but it only means Paschal crowded his arms in closer to himself.
“What are you looking at?” It’s Cas, of course, popping into existence right behind him.
Quickly, Dean snaps the photo album shut. “Nothing much.” He doesn’t know if Paschal was in Castiel’s garrison, or whatever. Maybe he should ask, but it’d almost be worse if Paschal was a member of his little foxhole. Like, God knows there were enough other people in that photo album Dean hasn’t seen around camp, and maybe he doesn’t want to know.
Knowing means he’d have to care, and there’s too much of that spread out in his gut.
“Wanna play Monopoly? Could get Jody if you want,” he asks. He’s pretty sure Cas can see right through his bullshit faux cheeriness, and the angel even narrows his eyes at him before nodding his head, once. Cas doesn’t ask, though.
*
Dean isn’t sure how to explain to someone that you’ve met them before - only, in an alternate universe that was supposed to be everyone’s worst-case scenario, so he just nods wearily to Risa when she slides a nice big bowl of soup and dumplings across the table to him.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she says, with a tight smile. It’s not an uncomfortable one, just the way she is. Dean’s actually glad for his greediness, because his mouth is full of dumplings so he can only smile and nod back. Talking’s not involved on his part. Maybe it’s not a burger, maybe he’ll never have a burger or pie, oh God pie, ever again, but fuck he missed food. “Heard a lot about you. You’re lucky to have a brother who cares so much. A freakin’ angel, too, apparently.”
He shrugs, uncomfortably. Bringing up the people who care never stops making him uneasy. If it’s all that obvious, the people who don’t wish him as well as Risa does have to know that, too. “I am,” he tells her, anyway, because it’s not like he deserves any of what they’ve given him. “How’d you, um, end up here.”
“I’m a vegan.” She holds up the plate of scrawny broccoli, as if to demonstrate. “Leviathan never got around to putting their little death syrup in all the healthy food. Roommates weren’t so lucky.” Her fork pokes at the food. “Learned to fight the Leviathan off, at least, and Sam and Meg found me a while back. Stuck with ‘em since.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy when I found out what Meg was, either.” No-nonsense. Dean likes that. “She hasn’t led me wrong yet, though.”
Small talk seems to have become a skill that doesn’t come to Dean any more - God, it used to be so fucking easy to go to a bar and talk to whoever about the weather or anything, but you go to Purgatory and Hell and turns out all that shit goes away - so he’s glad when there’s a swoosh of wings. Risa looks up in alarm to see Castiel standing there, studying the food intently.
“Guessing you’re Castiel,” she greets, as she offers up a hand. He glances at it the same as he looked at the food. “You’re not much like Inais, are you?”
“Inais was always far more involved with matters of diplomacy and communication,” Cas says rather primly, sitting down at the long bench next to Dean. “I ran strategy in my garrison for a long time.”
Risa actually smiles at that. “We’ll probably get along fine, then.”
Dean knows Cas comes off as more than a little awkward when talking to any human that’s not him. Hell, the guy’s pretty fucking awkward talking to him, too. “If you say so,” Cas tells her, not unfriendly even if it’s still very Cas. “It’s good to meet you.”
Looking for something to talk about, Dean turns on the television nestled in the top corner between two walls. Must be a Saturday night baseball game, or something, because what used to be a baseball stadium’s on the field. Only now all the grass just outside the field of play is ridiculously overgrown, a crazy green tangle. The pitcher’s practically bursting out of his uniform, and the batter just stares blankly at the baseballs he’s lobbing toward him.
“Even I’m aware this is not how baseball is normally played,” Cas comments. No announcer’s on the game, either, and it’s creepy to watch the batter take a long, lazy swing at a pitch that lands ten feet in front of home plate.
“This is the world now, huh.” All Dean can do is boggle, helplessness sticking to him as long as he stays in his seat.
Risa’s turned away from the screen, stealing a spoonful of Dean’s soup. “We’re trying to make it better.” She doesn’t sound defeated, not yet. He’s pretty sure she’d use the same tone to order this soup in a restaurant - if any of them weren’t full of the toxic sludge they put in corn syrup these days - as she would leading a group of them into battle. He can dig it.
“Big damn heroes, huh?” Dean knows it’s a pop culture reference, but he must really be losing it if he can’t recognize it right away. “Well, hey. I get it.”
The not-really-baseball isn’t all that interesting, so they turn it off after only a little while. Dean spends a few minutes trying to get Cas to taste one of the soup dumplings, while Cas comes dangerously close to whining as he explains that it would be a waste of precious food that he can’t taste anyway. All of Risa’s smiles as she watches them squabble are so flat, but Dean’s pretty sure it doesn’t mean they’re not genuine.
*
There are only a couple of people at camp that Meg lets give her any shit. Dean suspects Risa would be one of them, but there’s too much respect there for Risa to ever give her any crap, which is so goddamn weird.
One of them is Tamara, because call Meg what you want and God knows he’s tossed some of the more colorful words in his vocabulary at her, but stupid definitely isn’t the word to describe her. (“That was like a big frat party for all of us,” Meg sighs, when Dean brings up Isaac choking down drain cleaner. “Past is past.”) Also not surprisingly, one of the others is Charlie. Or Gabby, now. Not that Gabby’s tossing out a lot of insults, really.
“I know, it’s kinda cringe-worthy,” she explains, fingers moving quickly across her keyboard. The girl doesn’t even have a cabin, just a nice wooden floor with a tent set up around it, and she’s still got all this wireless, solar-powered cloaking shit, not to mention her other computer stuff. If Dean didn’t already feel perpetually inferior, Gabby’d be good for doing that. “I’m soooo not a Gabby, I don’t think. Just, Gabriel defeats the Leviathan in the Bible, so -”
“Gabriel was a dick,” Dean says. “I mean, a helpful dick at the end. But a dick.”
“Sam told me the same thing when I explained this name to him.” Gabby laughs. Somehow she stuffed a whole bunch of bobbleheads into her tent too, and they rattle along with her laughter. “I’ve been a part of it for a while now, but man, you guys have a weird life.”
*
Weird. Yeah. Understatement.
Dean’s glad he’s with Sam the first time they run into the freaky babies, otherwise he would’ve shot ‘em full of silver and salt. Not that it would’ve done much.
They’re just black humanoid things, scaly with a completely smooth face. They’re almost like the weird scaled creatures Dean and Cas ran into in Purgatory, only they’re smaller and jet-black. Their silent, four-legged shuffle wrenches at Dean’s gut in a way that’s both scary and downright sad. “We think they came from parents who were affected by the Leviathan,” Sam explains, though his face has gone the sort of pale that suggests he’ll never get used to it. “You know, their mom ate some bad cake or something. They come by in waves.”
No one at the camp even knows what to do with ‘em at this point; everyone tosses out the processed food they do find and watch them wordlessly stare at it.
“What -” Dean has to ask, because one of these poor kids just can’t stop gazing at a stale cake they found. They don’t eat, they just stare, empty, before they trample over the food in their attempt to go elsewhere. As for Dean himself, he’s trying not to drool over the abandoned cake, and he knows it’s stale and everything, he can just feel the frosting dissolve under his tongue -
“You can’t save everyone,” Risa responded, voice hard and sad at once. “There’s work to do.” And she moves off. It’s not long before Dean does, too, Sam walking too close and casting him dark looks.
Dean looks back at him. They both need it.
*
Dean’s been through a lot of shit, both awful and just truly weird. But he’s pretty sure he’s never sat through anything like a friggin’ committee meeting to save what’s left of Earth, at a circular table with Sam on one side of him - and Meg on the other side of him - and the Alpha Vamp on the other.
(Gabby’s in a corner of the room, tapping away practically gleefully at a laptop and humming while she does it. “To cloak all of you guys? Needs some serious power. I’m talking like, Avada Kedavra power. Without, you know, the whole killing people thing,” she’d explained, and Dean had just let his eyebrow go up high. Well, at least Sammy had been laughing.)
“No hello, Winchester?” the Alpha asks. Dude actually looks kinda down on his luck, in baggy and faded army fatigues of all things.
Dean blinks. “Uh, sure. Hi. What are you doing here?”
He’s still got that same creepy-ass smile. “I’m not any more interested in that slime that thinks it rules every Petri dish it can get to poisoning my food than you are. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now.”
The only response Dean can think of is smiling back and nodding. So, they’re all holding hands around the campfire and singing Kumbaya so that they can go back to a different hell breaking loose, once they’ve solved the current hell that’s breaking loose. Fuckin’ fantastic. Smiles and body shots all around.
“Haven’t heard much about Crowley lately,” Meg pouts, at one point during the meeting. “He’s way underground. In Canada, I hear. Guess I could dangle Castiel to get his ugly hide to show up, but Precious Moments is just too useful. Can’t go risking him.”
“Meg, you totally care,” Sam tells her, elbowing her side gently. Nope, Dean’s still not used to his brother being this close with any demon, especially this one.
“Yes, it would also ruin my post-apocalyptic brand of angel-demon Hallmark cards.” The bite in her voice makes the Alpha Vamp actually wince. Honestly, Dean’s kind of impressed. “You got me, Sam.”
“Crowley’d probably be useful, too, right?” a tall blonde man with a neckbeard asks from across the table. It’s not an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it neckbeard either, just your garden variety I-am-a-goddamn-douchebag neckbeard.
“You’d think so,” Meg sighs. She’s definitely done the most talking here, and Dean’s pretty sure she’s taken charge of this meeting. Isn’t that a lovely thought. “Not like he wants the chompers messing with his plans, either.”
“If only anyone knew what his plans were.” A short, tawny-haired woman, who Dean is getting the distinct vibe of not human from. He slides his hand along his thigh and up to his belt, just to feel that the knife’s still there.
“Dean,” Sam hisses, to him, and he can only grunt because yeah, he just got totally busted. “Kayla’s fine, I promise.”
It’s just fucking bizarre. Brave new world, indeed, being BFF with things he’d rather be spraying in the face with a salt gun. Saving people, hunting things, teaming up with other things to stop the worse things. Weird shit happens when you gotta save the world.
“One tricky bastard, Crowley,” Meg sighs. Dean wonders if she ever had these little pow-wows with her brother and dad. He kinda wants to throw up at the thought of it. “Dean, stop being a brat, you’re not helping.”
He contemplates kicking one of the legs of Meg’s chair, but he’s pretty sure that’d just be proving her point. So he just crosses his arms and tries not to glare at anyone who says anything.
“I think you’ll be alright,” the Alpha Vamp practically purrs to him at the end of the goddamn committee meeting, his palm pressed flat against the back of the chair. The alpha doesn’t actually touch Dean, but he’s pretty sure he’s still gonna take a shower when they get back to their cabins.
*
Of course, Dean doesn’t get a chance to shower because Cas is playing checkers with Jody Mills on one of the rickety tables by his cabin. He’s pretty sure she’s getting her ass kicked, but she’s still grinning about it, about getting her ass kicked by an angel who’s still prone to droning on about bees and butterflies every now and then, and hasn’t changed out of his hospital scrubs and that damn trenchcoat. Dean always liked Jody, but she’s kind of a saint, to be honest.
“Didn’t feel like going to the pow-wow, huh,” he asks, fighting the urge to dig fingers into Cas’ hair to get his attention. (What? It’s there, and messy, and tempting.)
Cas offers up a half-ass attempt at a snort. “I’m not sure I would be welcome there, considering the alphas that were present.”
“BFD. How many times did you try to smite Meg?”
“Meg and I have an understanding.” Dean totally doesn’t bristle at that. “But Dean, I do - worry how helpful I can be.”
Dean sits down at the table, nodding at Jody, who doesn’t look like she minds at all. “What do you mean?”
Cas flicks his eyes to the table, then back to Dean again. So it’s gonna be like that. But Dean gets it.
“You do what you can, okay? Sam’s friggin’ babying me too, I don’t know how much he’s even gonna let us help out, but… look, the crap with the Leviathan, maybe it would’ve gone better if we’d all gone through it together. But we’re all stuck together in this shithole now, okay? So you let me know if I’m fucking up and I’ll let you know if you’re fucking up.” He nods to Jody. “Goes for you too.”
“Right.” She smiles back, but it doesn’t meet her eyes; she glances back and forth between the two of them, searching.
Dean’s gotten a lot of glances like that in his life. Mostly from strangers, just innocent bystanders, but truth be told he’d interacted with fewer and fewer of those as time went on. Or maybe he drove them away, something in the set of his shoulders and his gait that was a giant neon flashing Keep Away sign. All hunters got it after a while, he figured.
Didn’t make the looks go away, the questioning glances between him and Sam or him and Cas. It’s like they all knew there was some kind of story there, like they could tell all the shit they’d slogged through together just at a glimpse. Ha.
He’s my brother, Dean could say about Sam, even if no one but him could understand the heft of those words. Cas was - Cas, and he was even harder to define. Jody knew more than most, but it was still only a fraction.
Dean shakes the thoughts off - there isn’t time for thinking this much, not with the world the way it is these days - and offers up a smile to both Cas and Jody as he gets up and goes to wash the reek from a thousand things that’d be bloodthirsty for him in any other situation off of his body.
*
Well, they may be at the very possible end of the world here, but at least Old Navy still exists, apparently. Sam does everything other than strapping a leash on Dean as they head out, and Dean carps about it - he might be all bony and not used to the world after all the shit in Purgatory, sure, but he’s not eight years old, and he could take care of himself at eight anyway - but it’s weirdly nice that Sam’s got like three-quarters of the camp looking after his back.
Dean gets in the Impala - seriously, he has to fight the urge to drop to his knees and kiss her everywhere or something, it’s just been way too long - and drives, Sam giving him directions, Cas in the backseat.
“Stop being gross, Dean,” Sam sighs when Dean moans as he traces his hands over his baby’s steering wheel. And yeah, a lot of things change, but the more they do the more they stay the same, really.
All the half-Leviathan babies that Dean has to step over clustered outside the entrance should’ve been a clue, but the Old Navy they stop at is in an obvious state of disarray. Khakis hang off the shelves; jeans are tossed in sloppy piles on the floor. Some teenagers roam the store, but they’re like the human equivalent of the t-shirts that all droop half-off their hangers, limp and totally pathetic.
“This is so creepy,” Dean whispers, loudly, to Sam, as he plucks a t-shirt up off the floor. Not his taste at all, and there are giant black smears across the front. This is gross, not him just being a little excited to see Baby again.
“Would you believe me if I told you that you get used to it after a little while?” Sam takes the shirt from Dean, pinching it between two fingers carefully. His nose wrinkles when he notices the stain. He lets the shirt drop to the floor again, and Dean kicks it under the display case.
“Not really.”
Sam snorts, the noise that indicates one of them is totally talking out of their ass. “Good, cuz I actually haven’t.”
“This is very unpleasant,” Cas agrees, appearing out of nowhere behind them like always. His arms are heaped with clothes, the pile so high Dean can’t see his mouth and only the bridge of his nose is visible. “These are clean, however.”
“Might as well get a bunch of stuff for camp,” Dean agrees, pulling some of the stuff off the pile to carry just so Cas doesn’t look so completely ridiculous. “And some new clothes for you,” he adds as they head off together. “Can’t wear… that… forever, you know?”
Cas quirks his head, as if considering that question. “I’m keeping the trenchcoat,” he declares. Dean smothers down his smile at that.
A little while later, Dean paces outside Cas’ dressing room, hoping the guy knows how to button up shirts and put on pants properly. He’s kinda half-expecting Cas to call him in there to help out, because the guy’s got no sense of social norms at all. Honestly, he’s considering himself actually lucky that the only other people in the store are zonked-out corn syrup zombies and Sam; someone coming up to him and asking why he’s waiting outside the men’s dressing rooms would be real fuckin’ awkward.
It’s funny to think of Cas puzzling over how to undo the drawstring on the pants, and figuring out how to work his muscles to lift his shirt over his head. Dean assumes Cas was the one who physically put him back together again after Hell, even if he’s never bothered to ask, but the guy still looks baffled by the body that’s his own, now, sometimes. Dude stares at his own hands like he’s on bad acid (Dean’s not proud of it, but he’s been there too, okay).
So yeah, dude might be a BAMF, but Dean is kind of expecting Castiel to come out of the dressing room wearing pants on his head. He’s really not expecting him to be all coordinated and shit. The flimsy wooden door to the changing room swings open, though, and Dean finds himself with the sudden urge to blink a few times.
Cas is probably one of those between-sizes guys when it comes to pants, and the ones he has on are a little too big. There’s a little stripe of stomach between the sagging jeans, and not that Dean is looking but the guy’s skin is far more tan than Dean would’ve thought, what with Cas wearing about seventeen layers all the time and yeah, okay, the fact that Dean probably assumed all angels were all white as the driven snow even when they’d broken every damn assumption he’d ever had about them -
But it’s still not as surprising as seeing Cas look so, well, normal in a gray t-shirt with a blue-and-gray checkered flannel over it. Dean is lucky Cas’ hair is all askew from taking his old shirt off and putting these new ones on, and he’s got a hard furrow between his eyes while he tries to figure out the price tag, because otherwise he could be any other hunter.
God, his feet are bare. Something about that strikes Dean as incomparably weird.
“This is alright?”
Dean totally doesn’t cough right into his hand. It’s surprising, is all. In its way, this is even stranger than the time Cas perched on his car with bees all over him. This is so normal.
“Yeah, you’re fine,” he comes up with, after what’s probably way too long. “We’ll get you some more shirts in that size, maybe a belt.” He looks at Cas pointedly. “You go get some underwear you want.” God, this is embarrassing for reasons he can’t even pinpoint.
They leave Old Navy without bothering to pay for anything - there are no cashiers, anyway, and sure, a couple of the kids in the store have name tags but fuck no, they’re not bothering to deal with that - Dean dragging like three bags of Castiel’s new clothes, and a bunch of other stuff for people at the camp. He’s pretty sure he got the bag with all the shoes, and it’s hard to hoist them all up even in the short walk back to the Impala. It’s the least he can do not to bitch about it.
*
Cas gets weird allergies from the clothes. For a while, it totally freaks Dean out - not that he’s admitting it - that Cas starts sneezing. Turns out, of course, all that shit had been on the shelf for God knows how long, and had gone all dusty. They’re just lucky it wasn’t Leviathan goop.
So there’s Cas. Dude can still teleport and chatters along with Inais in Enochian, but his nostrils are all inflamed red and he scratches at spots on his arm or chest with trepidation, clearly not used to that particular movement and interplay of muscles. Dean tosses him tissues when he’s in Gabby’s tent, trying to figure out the Leviathans’ movement across America, and they both shoot him a smile. It’s freaky big, in Cas’ case.
“You didn’t think of this before?” Tamara asks Dean, both their arms full of clothes. She never means to insult, she’s just brusque. Dean appreciates it; there’s no need for bullshit in an apocalypse.
“Didn’t really think angels get allergies.”
“Point taken.”
They haven’t found any laundromats in safe areas, weirdly enough, so they wash their clothes in a river. “Still safe,” Dean declares, pulling the tester out of the water. No sign of Leviathan or the shit they put in corn syrup. He fills a few jugs to filter back at camp before he starts dunking the shirts into the water, letting himself get hypnotized by the fabric pushing back against his hands. It’s so normal, he actually barks out a laugh.
“Castiel can’t, like, purify his own damn clothes?”
Dean shrugs. “Probably could.”
Truth be told, he still doesn’t really mind. When he gets back to camp, of course freakin’ tall Sammy helps him stretch out the clothesline; Cas watches, and apparently Dean slinging some of his new flannel shirts over the rope they’ve set up is the most friggin’ fascinating thing he has ever seen.
Cas goes back to the river and gets the jugs of water, placing them at Dean’s feet. Dean didn’t even ask him to go do it, and in return he only grins.
part 6 >>