fic, Supernatural: Four Times Dean Winchester Broke Something And One He Didn't (Dean/Castiel), PG13
... aaand, I'm back on the alphabet meme prompts! I just want to finish it. It has become a matter of honor, lol. And er, I dunno when I'll manage to answer any comments to this because it's late already and I'm off tomorrow morning, so if I don't answer for the next two days sorry for that.
Title: Four Times Dean Winchester Broke Something And One Time He Didn’t
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Dean/Castiel, duh.
Words: 3454 (seriously, I fail at brevity.)
Summary: what the title says plus, how Castiel managed to fix everything somehow.
Spoilers: up until 4x22.
Disclaimer: er, no, not mine. I wish.
A/N: for invisiblelove who wanted broken for the alphabet meme. Uh. Er. This is probably the most uneven five things fic I ever wrote mainly because the first four sections are kinda short and the fifth is longer than said four put together, but it decided to go this way. Also using for sacred_20 #5, healing.
The first time. (or the Led Zeppelin tape).
Dean is going to Stanford to ask for Sam’s help when the car’s radio breaks down with his Favorite Zeppelin Tunes tape in, exactly during Ramble On.
He pulls over as soon as he finds the space and proceeds to inspect the damage; the cassette, a mixtape he made with Sam’s kind of unwilling help two months before he left, is gone for good. The gray plastic is slightly cracked and when he pulls it out, the black tape is half out; what isn’t in, is torn and twisted and he can’t do much to repair it.
Fuck, he thinks. For a second the thinks he should just throw it away, but then he remembers Sam pretending to be bored as hell while Dean maneuvered the original tapes and made Sam read the tracklist. And it had been a work of fucking art; the tunes were his favorite, sure, but the order was everything but random and he had spent at least one week on it. Whoever said that making mixtapes is an ability that has to be mastered, said the right thing.
He just tries to put the tape back in its place as much as possible, then shoves the cassette in its box and takes the radio out along with the tools he keeps in the back of his car. It’s not like Dean Winchester doesn’t fucking know his way around a car, and his baby in particular.
When he hits the road again half an hour later, Robert Johnson’s voice fills the Impala and Dean thinks that if it wasn’t for Dad being missing, this would be a fucking tragedy.
Little does he know that this is the last time in his life when he’s allowed to think of a broken tape as a tragedy.
The second time. (Or Hell.)
The rack is where Dean breaks the first seal and at the same time breaks himself; he feels his humanity crack under the sound of his voice, tiny and weak as it says yes on the first day of his thirty-first year.
He can’t hear the sound of the first Seal breaking as the last drop of blood he will share while being on the rack drops into the fire below him; but even if he could, he wouldn’t care. He’s past that already.
Alastair asks if he has heard right, and when Dean answers yes, his voice sounds only remotely human to his ears, and strangely it matters less than one could have expected.
The third time. (Or Sam.)
He wishes he could take back what he said as soon as the words leave his lips; he realizes how wrong he was when he meets Sam’s hurt eyes and the first punch collides with his mouth.
He almost welcomes it; the skin doesn’t break under Sam’s closed fist, though, and Dean just hits back because fuck if he knows another way.
It’s all wrong though, wrong, wrong, but he doesn’t know how could he get it right, even if to be honest he hasn’t known how to get things right with Sam since a painfully fucking long while.
Then Sam turns his back and Dean says another thing he knows he will regret forever; as his brother leaves the room, Dean feels the only bond that matters shattering and he knows that at least half of it is his fault.
If he can’t mend it, he doubts he’ll ever learn to live with it, not when it has always been there; but about mending it, he doubts he ever could. The fact that everything he did earlier has become for nothing hovers there in the back of his mind; he doesn’t dwell on it too much, though. Every single part of him aches hard enough without adding that, too, and he can’t remember a pain so sharp and overwhelming since the forty years before the day he woke up in a coffin.
The fourth time. (Or Castiel.)
He’s deliberate as he pushes the statue of that angel down; it hits the floor almost in slow motion and then it shatters in a thousand tiny pieces of pristine white porcelain.
The sound is close to music to Dean’s ears, except that then Castiel appears and he can’t meet his eyes and they talk and Dean can’t even manage to punch the self-righteous son of a bitch.
When Castiel murmurs Dean, his voice low and sounding just so small and nothing but threatening, all the contrary of what should be, Dean thinks for a second that maybe, if Castiel had a heart and if it could break, it’d have made the same noise that statue did as it fell on the floor.
And then he says they’re done again because there’s nothing else he can say, even if he wishes it didn’t have to come to this (and how ironic, that’s exactly what Castiel had said before); when the echo of porcelain breaking fills his ears again, it hurts to hear it.
Castiel, of course, is gone.
The time he didn't break anything. (Or how Castiel somehow fixed it all.)
When Castiel and Chuck appear out of the blue in the back of Ruby’s car and it actually looks like Chuck is the one carrying Castiel, whose shirt is bloody and whose breath is ragged (and really, an angel breathing at all is enough to freak Dean out), Dean feels grateful that Sam is driving because he’d have crashed them all somewhere. Well, he wasn’t going to drive Ruby’s car on principle. As he casts glance after glance at Castiel from the front seat, he can’t help thinking that it just isn’t right, this is not how Cas should be, and it was because of me is all that goes through his head.
They go to Bobby’s; apocalypse is coming anyway and Dean would rather try to plan something in some place he knows than waste time searching for a motel. Also because it’s not like a group such as theirs is bound to pass unobserved. Apart from the problem of a scared-out-of-his-mind prophet of the Lord with them, there’s no way they can hide a wounded Castiel, and hospitals are out of question. Dean wonders how much time they have left and hopes that it’s more than the day they’ll need to reach South Dakota from fucking Maryland.
--
Dean volunteers for taking care of Castiel’s injuries, he owes him that much; he closes the door as Bobby makes arrangements and mutters that his house just became a hostel, that’s the fucking truth. Dean smirks, then turns towards the bed where they placed Castiel earlier and he almost screams because blue eyes are staring into his and Castiel had been out for hours and he hadn’t expected him to wake up anytime soon. Then he lets out a breath of relief, even if maybe it’d have been better for Castiel if he had stayed out.
“Hey. So you made it,” he offers, realizing that it sounds just as worried as he feels. “Want me to have a look at those wounds?”
He doesn’t say that it’s strange that Castiel is wounded at all.
“I would be grateful,” Castiel whispers, taking the coat off. Dean bites his tongue when he sees that the shirt is completely soaked in blood.
“Woah. I thought you could…”
“Heal? Yes, but not when...”
“Right. Fine, let’s see,” Dean interrupts, imagining already how it goes and not wanting to hear any of it. He doesn’t know if he can deal with it, too.
Dean comes closer, Bobby’s first-aid kit in his hands; he winces as he takes the shirt off. He throws it in a corner; it’s useless, by this point. The wounds look worse than they are, though; they might have bled a lot, but they’re all superficial. He cleans them carefully, noticing that even if the peroxide must sting Castiel doesn’t give a sign that he’s feeling any kind of pain; when he’s done, he’s left with a couple of gashes on Castiel’s shoulders and one along his forearm. He stitches everything up with a certain care (and definitely some skill) and his hands are covered in blood when he’s done.
“There you go, all fixed up. Now I guess you could use to eat something, if... you want me to go fetch something from downstairs?”
“It’s fine. Thank you. I will take care of the rest myself now.”
“You sure that you don’t need anything else?”
For a second Castiel looks at him and there’s such longing in his eyes that Dean feels a lump forming in his throat, Castiel’s expression strangely raw and direct; but it’s gone two seconds later as the angel shakes his head.
“I will be alright. Thanks again.”
“Cas. It really isn’t the time. We… you… fuck, whatever it is that you need, don’t you think I owe you one?”
“That’s the point,” Castiel whispers, so low that Dean barely hears it. “What I might need from you, I don’t want it because you... owe me one.” He says it like he’s speaking in a foreign tongue, not meeting Dean’s eyes. That lump in his throat threatens to strangle him as he looks at Castiel; the room is bathed in the warm, soft light of the sun rising and he stands against a sky that goes from orange to pink to blue wearing only his trousers, his arms crossed over his chest. Beautiful, Dean thinks automatically before shaking his head and wondering what the fuck is passing through his head now.
“But…”
“You don’t owe me nothing. What I did was my choice, and I’d do it all over again if only because I got to choose.”
“And what if I wanted to, and not because I think I owe you?”
“It’s not something you’d want.”
“Who says?”
“Dean, I wouldn’t push it, if I were you.”
“Well, I beg to fucking differ.”
“Fine, then.”
Castiel’s hand shakes as it brushes his cheek and his lips barely touch Dean’s, but the intention is unmistakable. It’s barely a kiss really, Dean has an idea that his own first kiss when he was twelve had been way, way less chaste than this one is, and to think that until now it held the first place in the chart; nonetheless, a shiver runs through his spine and it feels a lot more intimate than most. And Dean has kissed quite the number of people, so he does have an idea of what he’s talking about.
Castiel doesn’t bolt out or anything when it’s over, but doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes; fuck, Dean thinks, quite the change since he got into that barn and took a knife out of his heart. Or when he threatened to send me back to the pit.
Then again, one year ago Castiel hadn’t switched sides and hadn’t passed through some fucking conscience crisis and through Bible Camp.
Dean realizes why Castiel said what he said before, though, just as he realizes that it’s all on him, now. He closes his eyes and tries to think straight. It’s obvious what’s at stake here, and the fact that he is fucking grateful doesn’t mean he has to do anything out of repayment. Actually, he gets why Castiel wouldn’t want it. He takes a breath and thinks about it. He thinks about the kiss. He thinks about how it felt. He imagines that this happened before Castiel was hauled back in heaven. Would I want to do it again?, is the question, and Dean’s eyes snap open in surprise when the answer his head gives is yes. That yes keeps on spinning through his head. Damn. He wasn’t even aware of feeling anything of that kind towards Castiel, that’s fucking sure, but now it just somehow makes sense and even if he can’t name the feeling, not really, he isn’t sure that it’s all born out of gratitude.
Either way, he could fuck everything up; serves him good for insisting, but he can’t say that he’ll think about it. There is no time to think about it and so he does things the usual way and acts instead.
“Cas?”
“Yes?”
“If I told you I wanted to do it again?”
“Dean, this is not a game. I’d appreciate it if…”
“I’m not joking. And I know. I just need to understand something.”
“And you would understand it if we did it again?”
“Probably.”
Dean has never felt so much like a fucking girl as now, no shit. He can’t remember how many times he’s been told the same thing but he doesn’t think about it as he kisses Castiel again, this time taking care to do things properly. Castiel sighs as he parts his lips and Dean’s skips a beat as their tongues meet in a tentative way of sorts; the kiss deepens but it stays slow and Dean can’t help noticing that Castiel is kissing him like he didn’t feel worthy of the act and that he’s doing the same. And then he realizes that it’s the only thing that feels wrong here and so he plunges his tongue deeper; as he does, Castiel’s hands grip both of his shoulders, one right over where the scar is and Dean brings him closer without really thinking. It feels good. It feels better than good. It feels like Castiel is raising him out again and putting the pieces together a second time, more or less, except that this time Dean actually remembers it.
He doesn’t pull apart when the kiss breaks.
“So, did you decide?” Castiel asks, and Dean knows. He doesn’t answer and as he kisses Castiel again and hands grip his shoulders tighter and bring him even closer, he wonders if Castiel feels as whole as he does.
--
He’d have stayed, but Castiel had stood up and said he should have a talk with Sam; and well, he’s right. It isn’t like they actually talked since Maryland. And he knows he has to, even if true to history he’d be really, really glad to postpone.
But considering where postponing or not doing at all brought the both of them, maybe it’s time that he actually changes habits, and that his brother does the same.
Sam is sitting in the kitchen, turning an empty glass of water between his hands and looking utterly miserable. Well, no surprise here. He takes care to be as noisy as possible as he gets closer, but Sam doesn’t raise his head.
“Sam?”
Sam shrugs, but doesn’t say anything.
“Hey, I’m getting offended here. Believe me, I lost my good share of fights, but never against a glass.”
Sam cracks a very, very small smile and puts the glass away. When he looks up at Dean, he looks dead tired, and who blames him. His shoulders are shaking, too. Damn, Dean thinks, then shakes his head. It isn’t the moment for arguing, or for thinking that there’s another detox on the horizon.
“Hey. Listen, I’m… I’m sorry. I never should have said what I said in that room. Not that I don’t still think that you acted like the oversized moron you are, but I shouldn’t have said that. I never… screw it, you didn’t get my voicemail, did you?”
Sam raises an eyebrow. “Actually, I did. And it wasn’t all that different.”
“The fuck? Sorry but it was.”
“Not really.” Sam’s voice is so miserable that Dean feels chilled to the bone.
“Can I… can I hear it? If you still have it.”
“Suit yourself.”
Sam throws the phone at him and Dean barely catches it; his hands shake as he searches for the lost call and he feels like throwing up when he hears his voice saying things he never said. No wonder that Sam went through with it, he thinks, and then really feels like retching even if he has barely eaten anything in three days, and he definitely feels like crushing the fucking phone against the wall.
“That’s crazy as fuck. I never said this!”
“And what did you say, then?”
Dean is about to answer when another hand grabs the phone. It’s Castiel, who seemingly is still perfectly capable of sneaking up on him without making a sound.
“He’s not lying.”
“What the… Cas, what’s up with that?”
“Do you really think that my superiors hadn’t set up… any precautions?”
His voice is low and Dean feels alarmed when Sam glances at Castiel in a way which is everything but friendly, but Castiel seemingly doesn’t notice. He closes his hand around the cellphone, lets out a breath, turns it in his fingers.
“Try now,” Castiel whispers as he places the phone on the table at which Sam is sitting. Then he leaves. Sam takes it back in his hands and puts it next to his ear, looking everything but convinced. And then his eyes widen and his legs tremble as he stands up. When it’s over he hears it again and Dean thinks that he can’t remember seeing him so devastated in his whole life. And that’s saying a lot.
The phone falls on the table as Sam takes a breath. “Fuck. I’m… I just… I can’t believe that…”
“Hey. It’s… alright, Lucifer’s on the rise but I mean… it’s alright. We both fucked up and that’s it. Don’t…” He wants to say don’t beat yourself up, but he keeps his mouth shut. It just doesn’t sound like the appropriate thing to say, even if Dean would like to know what the fuck is the appropriate thing to say. He doesn’t think that there’s one. “I mean, you acted like an idiot and you never said a thing, but I didn’t insist either and maybe I should have, and I shouldn’t have said that anyway. Come on, do you really think I’d give up on you at this point?”
There’s silence again. Sam stands, Dean thinks that it’s not the time to care about chick flick moments and just throws his arms around Sam, and he lets out a breath of relief he didn’t know he had been holding when Sam holds him back so hard that it hurts. And it feels so good that he can’t even begin to describe it.
--
Dean had thought they could try to come up with a plane just after, but he had forgotten that his brother still had demon blood to clear out of his system and while there wasn’t need for the panic room, Sam stays holed up in Bobby’s guest room and they figure that it’s not like they can’t wait. If the Apocalypse starts, so be it; if not, they can wait four days. And while most of the time Dean ignores Sam saying that he can deal with it alone and spends a good half of the day in the room with him, now he wants to go for a drive, just because. Well, fine, he can have a break, right? Then he thinks why not, and asks Castiel if he wants to come. Castiel nods and ten minutes later Dean is driving without a destination, the scenery always the same and nothing that suggests that the world is going to end. They don’t talk, not really; Dean doesn’t even turn the music on, he doesn’t think that Castiel is the kind who likes Metallica, when he hears a noise and sees that Castiel is looking through the tapes box.
“What…?”
“It was there. Do you mind?”
“Uh. No. Suit yourself. If you want to listen to something, just pop it in.”
He won’t give Castiel the shotgun shuts his cakehole speech.
“Why do you keep a broken one?”
Dean glances at his left; Castiel is holding between his fingers that blasted Zeppelin tape which got busted when he was going to see Sam at Stanford.
“Oh. That one. It broke a while ago. But… it used to be my favorite. I kept it just for kicks. I know it’s useless but… sentimental value, you might say.”
Castiel nods at him and doesn’t say anything; Dean keeps on driving and just doesn’t register it when he hears the noise of a tape being pushed in. After all he had told Cas to choose something, right?
He almost crashes the car when Ramble On starts, and exactly from the point it was when that tape died years ago. He stops the Impala and looks at Castiel in disbelief.
“What… it was broken!”
“Not anymore,” Castiel answers, the right corner of his lips turned up in a smirk, and Dean just smiles back, starts the car again and turns up the volume.
End.
Title: Four Times Dean Winchester Broke Something And One Time He Didn’t
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Dean/Castiel, duh.
Words: 3454 (seriously, I fail at brevity.)
Summary: what the title says plus, how Castiel managed to fix everything somehow.
Spoilers: up until 4x22.
Disclaimer: er, no, not mine. I wish.
A/N: for invisiblelove who wanted broken for the alphabet meme. Uh. Er. This is probably the most uneven five things fic I ever wrote mainly because the first four sections are kinda short and the fifth is longer than said four put together, but it decided to go this way. Also using for sacred_20 #5, healing.
The first time. (or the Led Zeppelin tape).
Dean is going to Stanford to ask for Sam’s help when the car’s radio breaks down with his Favorite Zeppelin Tunes tape in, exactly during Ramble On.
He pulls over as soon as he finds the space and proceeds to inspect the damage; the cassette, a mixtape he made with Sam’s kind of unwilling help two months before he left, is gone for good. The gray plastic is slightly cracked and when he pulls it out, the black tape is half out; what isn’t in, is torn and twisted and he can’t do much to repair it.
Fuck, he thinks. For a second the thinks he should just throw it away, but then he remembers Sam pretending to be bored as hell while Dean maneuvered the original tapes and made Sam read the tracklist. And it had been a work of fucking art; the tunes were his favorite, sure, but the order was everything but random and he had spent at least one week on it. Whoever said that making mixtapes is an ability that has to be mastered, said the right thing.
He just tries to put the tape back in its place as much as possible, then shoves the cassette in its box and takes the radio out along with the tools he keeps in the back of his car. It’s not like Dean Winchester doesn’t fucking know his way around a car, and his baby in particular.
When he hits the road again half an hour later, Robert Johnson’s voice fills the Impala and Dean thinks that if it wasn’t for Dad being missing, this would be a fucking tragedy.
Little does he know that this is the last time in his life when he’s allowed to think of a broken tape as a tragedy.
The second time. (Or Hell.)
The rack is where Dean breaks the first seal and at the same time breaks himself; he feels his humanity crack under the sound of his voice, tiny and weak as it says yes on the first day of his thirty-first year.
He can’t hear the sound of the first Seal breaking as the last drop of blood he will share while being on the rack drops into the fire below him; but even if he could, he wouldn’t care. He’s past that already.
Alastair asks if he has heard right, and when Dean answers yes, his voice sounds only remotely human to his ears, and strangely it matters less than one could have expected.
The third time. (Or Sam.)
He wishes he could take back what he said as soon as the words leave his lips; he realizes how wrong he was when he meets Sam’s hurt eyes and the first punch collides with his mouth.
He almost welcomes it; the skin doesn’t break under Sam’s closed fist, though, and Dean just hits back because fuck if he knows another way.
It’s all wrong though, wrong, wrong, but he doesn’t know how could he get it right, even if to be honest he hasn’t known how to get things right with Sam since a painfully fucking long while.
Then Sam turns his back and Dean says another thing he knows he will regret forever; as his brother leaves the room, Dean feels the only bond that matters shattering and he knows that at least half of it is his fault.
If he can’t mend it, he doubts he’ll ever learn to live with it, not when it has always been there; but about mending it, he doubts he ever could. The fact that everything he did earlier has become for nothing hovers there in the back of his mind; he doesn’t dwell on it too much, though. Every single part of him aches hard enough without adding that, too, and he can’t remember a pain so sharp and overwhelming since the forty years before the day he woke up in a coffin.
The fourth time. (Or Castiel.)
He’s deliberate as he pushes the statue of that angel down; it hits the floor almost in slow motion and then it shatters in a thousand tiny pieces of pristine white porcelain.
The sound is close to music to Dean’s ears, except that then Castiel appears and he can’t meet his eyes and they talk and Dean can’t even manage to punch the self-righteous son of a bitch.
When Castiel murmurs Dean, his voice low and sounding just so small and nothing but threatening, all the contrary of what should be, Dean thinks for a second that maybe, if Castiel had a heart and if it could break, it’d have made the same noise that statue did as it fell on the floor.
And then he says they’re done again because there’s nothing else he can say, even if he wishes it didn’t have to come to this (and how ironic, that’s exactly what Castiel had said before); when the echo of porcelain breaking fills his ears again, it hurts to hear it.
Castiel, of course, is gone.
The time he didn't break anything. (Or how Castiel somehow fixed it all.)
When Castiel and Chuck appear out of the blue in the back of Ruby’s car and it actually looks like Chuck is the one carrying Castiel, whose shirt is bloody and whose breath is ragged (and really, an angel breathing at all is enough to freak Dean out), Dean feels grateful that Sam is driving because he’d have crashed them all somewhere. Well, he wasn’t going to drive Ruby’s car on principle. As he casts glance after glance at Castiel from the front seat, he can’t help thinking that it just isn’t right, this is not how Cas should be, and it was because of me is all that goes through his head.
They go to Bobby’s; apocalypse is coming anyway and Dean would rather try to plan something in some place he knows than waste time searching for a motel. Also because it’s not like a group such as theirs is bound to pass unobserved. Apart from the problem of a scared-out-of-his-mind prophet of the Lord with them, there’s no way they can hide a wounded Castiel, and hospitals are out of question. Dean wonders how much time they have left and hopes that it’s more than the day they’ll need to reach South Dakota from fucking Maryland.
--
Dean volunteers for taking care of Castiel’s injuries, he owes him that much; he closes the door as Bobby makes arrangements and mutters that his house just became a hostel, that’s the fucking truth. Dean smirks, then turns towards the bed where they placed Castiel earlier and he almost screams because blue eyes are staring into his and Castiel had been out for hours and he hadn’t expected him to wake up anytime soon. Then he lets out a breath of relief, even if maybe it’d have been better for Castiel if he had stayed out.
“Hey. So you made it,” he offers, realizing that it sounds just as worried as he feels. “Want me to have a look at those wounds?”
He doesn’t say that it’s strange that Castiel is wounded at all.
“I would be grateful,” Castiel whispers, taking the coat off. Dean bites his tongue when he sees that the shirt is completely soaked in blood.
“Woah. I thought you could…”
“Heal? Yes, but not when...”
“Right. Fine, let’s see,” Dean interrupts, imagining already how it goes and not wanting to hear any of it. He doesn’t know if he can deal with it, too.
Dean comes closer, Bobby’s first-aid kit in his hands; he winces as he takes the shirt off. He throws it in a corner; it’s useless, by this point. The wounds look worse than they are, though; they might have bled a lot, but they’re all superficial. He cleans them carefully, noticing that even if the peroxide must sting Castiel doesn’t give a sign that he’s feeling any kind of pain; when he’s done, he’s left with a couple of gashes on Castiel’s shoulders and one along his forearm. He stitches everything up with a certain care (and definitely some skill) and his hands are covered in blood when he’s done.
“There you go, all fixed up. Now I guess you could use to eat something, if... you want me to go fetch something from downstairs?”
“It’s fine. Thank you. I will take care of the rest myself now.”
“You sure that you don’t need anything else?”
For a second Castiel looks at him and there’s such longing in his eyes that Dean feels a lump forming in his throat, Castiel’s expression strangely raw and direct; but it’s gone two seconds later as the angel shakes his head.
“I will be alright. Thanks again.”
“Cas. It really isn’t the time. We… you… fuck, whatever it is that you need, don’t you think I owe you one?”
“That’s the point,” Castiel whispers, so low that Dean barely hears it. “What I might need from you, I don’t want it because you... owe me one.” He says it like he’s speaking in a foreign tongue, not meeting Dean’s eyes. That lump in his throat threatens to strangle him as he looks at Castiel; the room is bathed in the warm, soft light of the sun rising and he stands against a sky that goes from orange to pink to blue wearing only his trousers, his arms crossed over his chest. Beautiful, Dean thinks automatically before shaking his head and wondering what the fuck is passing through his head now.
“But…”
“You don’t owe me nothing. What I did was my choice, and I’d do it all over again if only because I got to choose.”
“And what if I wanted to, and not because I think I owe you?”
“It’s not something you’d want.”
“Who says?”
“Dean, I wouldn’t push it, if I were you.”
“Well, I beg to fucking differ.”
“Fine, then.”
Castiel’s hand shakes as it brushes his cheek and his lips barely touch Dean’s, but the intention is unmistakable. It’s barely a kiss really, Dean has an idea that his own first kiss when he was twelve had been way, way less chaste than this one is, and to think that until now it held the first place in the chart; nonetheless, a shiver runs through his spine and it feels a lot more intimate than most. And Dean has kissed quite the number of people, so he does have an idea of what he’s talking about.
Castiel doesn’t bolt out or anything when it’s over, but doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes; fuck, Dean thinks, quite the change since he got into that barn and took a knife out of his heart. Or when he threatened to send me back to the pit.
Then again, one year ago Castiel hadn’t switched sides and hadn’t passed through some fucking conscience crisis and through Bible Camp.
Dean realizes why Castiel said what he said before, though, just as he realizes that it’s all on him, now. He closes his eyes and tries to think straight. It’s obvious what’s at stake here, and the fact that he is fucking grateful doesn’t mean he has to do anything out of repayment. Actually, he gets why Castiel wouldn’t want it. He takes a breath and thinks about it. He thinks about the kiss. He thinks about how it felt. He imagines that this happened before Castiel was hauled back in heaven. Would I want to do it again?, is the question, and Dean’s eyes snap open in surprise when the answer his head gives is yes. That yes keeps on spinning through his head. Damn. He wasn’t even aware of feeling anything of that kind towards Castiel, that’s fucking sure, but now it just somehow makes sense and even if he can’t name the feeling, not really, he isn’t sure that it’s all born out of gratitude.
Either way, he could fuck everything up; serves him good for insisting, but he can’t say that he’ll think about it. There is no time to think about it and so he does things the usual way and acts instead.
“Cas?”
“Yes?”
“If I told you I wanted to do it again?”
“Dean, this is not a game. I’d appreciate it if…”
“I’m not joking. And I know. I just need to understand something.”
“And you would understand it if we did it again?”
“Probably.”
Dean has never felt so much like a fucking girl as now, no shit. He can’t remember how many times he’s been told the same thing but he doesn’t think about it as he kisses Castiel again, this time taking care to do things properly. Castiel sighs as he parts his lips and Dean’s skips a beat as their tongues meet in a tentative way of sorts; the kiss deepens but it stays slow and Dean can’t help noticing that Castiel is kissing him like he didn’t feel worthy of the act and that he’s doing the same. And then he realizes that it’s the only thing that feels wrong here and so he plunges his tongue deeper; as he does, Castiel’s hands grip both of his shoulders, one right over where the scar is and Dean brings him closer without really thinking. It feels good. It feels better than good. It feels like Castiel is raising him out again and putting the pieces together a second time, more or less, except that this time Dean actually remembers it.
He doesn’t pull apart when the kiss breaks.
“So, did you decide?” Castiel asks, and Dean knows. He doesn’t answer and as he kisses Castiel again and hands grip his shoulders tighter and bring him even closer, he wonders if Castiel feels as whole as he does.
--
He’d have stayed, but Castiel had stood up and said he should have a talk with Sam; and well, he’s right. It isn’t like they actually talked since Maryland. And he knows he has to, even if true to history he’d be really, really glad to postpone.
But considering where postponing or not doing at all brought the both of them, maybe it’s time that he actually changes habits, and that his brother does the same.
Sam is sitting in the kitchen, turning an empty glass of water between his hands and looking utterly miserable. Well, no surprise here. He takes care to be as noisy as possible as he gets closer, but Sam doesn’t raise his head.
“Sam?”
Sam shrugs, but doesn’t say anything.
“Hey, I’m getting offended here. Believe me, I lost my good share of fights, but never against a glass.”
Sam cracks a very, very small smile and puts the glass away. When he looks up at Dean, he looks dead tired, and who blames him. His shoulders are shaking, too. Damn, Dean thinks, then shakes his head. It isn’t the moment for arguing, or for thinking that there’s another detox on the horizon.
“Hey. Listen, I’m… I’m sorry. I never should have said what I said in that room. Not that I don’t still think that you acted like the oversized moron you are, but I shouldn’t have said that. I never… screw it, you didn’t get my voicemail, did you?”
Sam raises an eyebrow. “Actually, I did. And it wasn’t all that different.”
“The fuck? Sorry but it was.”
“Not really.” Sam’s voice is so miserable that Dean feels chilled to the bone.
“Can I… can I hear it? If you still have it.”
“Suit yourself.”
Sam throws the phone at him and Dean barely catches it; his hands shake as he searches for the lost call and he feels like throwing up when he hears his voice saying things he never said. No wonder that Sam went through with it, he thinks, and then really feels like retching even if he has barely eaten anything in three days, and he definitely feels like crushing the fucking phone against the wall.
“That’s crazy as fuck. I never said this!”
“And what did you say, then?”
Dean is about to answer when another hand grabs the phone. It’s Castiel, who seemingly is still perfectly capable of sneaking up on him without making a sound.
“He’s not lying.”
“What the… Cas, what’s up with that?”
“Do you really think that my superiors hadn’t set up… any precautions?”
His voice is low and Dean feels alarmed when Sam glances at Castiel in a way which is everything but friendly, but Castiel seemingly doesn’t notice. He closes his hand around the cellphone, lets out a breath, turns it in his fingers.
“Try now,” Castiel whispers as he places the phone on the table at which Sam is sitting. Then he leaves. Sam takes it back in his hands and puts it next to his ear, looking everything but convinced. And then his eyes widen and his legs tremble as he stands up. When it’s over he hears it again and Dean thinks that he can’t remember seeing him so devastated in his whole life. And that’s saying a lot.
The phone falls on the table as Sam takes a breath. “Fuck. I’m… I just… I can’t believe that…”
“Hey. It’s… alright, Lucifer’s on the rise but I mean… it’s alright. We both fucked up and that’s it. Don’t…” He wants to say don’t beat yourself up, but he keeps his mouth shut. It just doesn’t sound like the appropriate thing to say, even if Dean would like to know what the fuck is the appropriate thing to say. He doesn’t think that there’s one. “I mean, you acted like an idiot and you never said a thing, but I didn’t insist either and maybe I should have, and I shouldn’t have said that anyway. Come on, do you really think I’d give up on you at this point?”
There’s silence again. Sam stands, Dean thinks that it’s not the time to care about chick flick moments and just throws his arms around Sam, and he lets out a breath of relief he didn’t know he had been holding when Sam holds him back so hard that it hurts. And it feels so good that he can’t even begin to describe it.
--
Dean had thought they could try to come up with a plane just after, but he had forgotten that his brother still had demon blood to clear out of his system and while there wasn’t need for the panic room, Sam stays holed up in Bobby’s guest room and they figure that it’s not like they can’t wait. If the Apocalypse starts, so be it; if not, they can wait four days. And while most of the time Dean ignores Sam saying that he can deal with it alone and spends a good half of the day in the room with him, now he wants to go for a drive, just because. Well, fine, he can have a break, right? Then he thinks why not, and asks Castiel if he wants to come. Castiel nods and ten minutes later Dean is driving without a destination, the scenery always the same and nothing that suggests that the world is going to end. They don’t talk, not really; Dean doesn’t even turn the music on, he doesn’t think that Castiel is the kind who likes Metallica, when he hears a noise and sees that Castiel is looking through the tapes box.
“What…?”
“It was there. Do you mind?”
“Uh. No. Suit yourself. If you want to listen to something, just pop it in.”
He won’t give Castiel the shotgun shuts his cakehole speech.
“Why do you keep a broken one?”
Dean glances at his left; Castiel is holding between his fingers that blasted Zeppelin tape which got busted when he was going to see Sam at Stanford.
“Oh. That one. It broke a while ago. But… it used to be my favorite. I kept it just for kicks. I know it’s useless but… sentimental value, you might say.”
Castiel nods at him and doesn’t say anything; Dean keeps on driving and just doesn’t register it when he hears the noise of a tape being pushed in. After all he had told Cas to choose something, right?
He almost crashes the car when Ramble On starts, and exactly from the point it was when that tape died years ago. He stops the Impala and looks at Castiel in disbelief.
“What… it was broken!”
“Not anymore,” Castiel answers, the right corner of his lips turned up in a smirk, and Dean just smiles back, starts the car again and turns up the volume.
End.