fic, SPN: tell him something pretty (Dean/Cas-ish), PG13
All right, obligatory sort-of-fix-it 6x22 coda coming right up. It wasn't what I thought I'd go for yesterday but I had the idea this morning and it wanted to be written so there you go.
Title: tell him something pretty
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Cas-ish (it's pretty on the platonic side for the moment), Sam, Bobby, Chuck, Balthazar.
Word count: ∼5000
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: coda for 6x22.
Warnings: amnesia fic, a healthy dose of language and most probably of blasphemy as well. Also [hidden because it's a possible spoiler for the fic and a hint to what happened in 6x22 though it's nothing triggering] God's ethics are pretty questionable.
Disclaimer: if SPN was mine I wouldn't be writing fix-it fic.
Summary: “It’s so strange,” Cas says then. “It should be different. I don’t remember much about you. Just your name and a few other things. But - I feel like I know you just the same.” or, wherein Dean and Cas's first meeting after the finale doesn't go as Dean had figured at all.
A/N: so I was trying to come up with some fix-it scenario, I had this idea and I figured I'd just go with it. I'm not even sure where it came from but I liked the premise. Using for my kissbingo square face: forehead. Title is from a Deadwood episode.
The first time Dean sees Castiel after he opens Purgatory inside him, it’s not what he had imagined.
He had come up with a lot of possible scenarios during the last week - but none of them is quite what happens in reality.
Because opening Bobby’s front door after hearing a loud, crashing sound and finding Castiel on the porch, his body still, his clothes torn, a line of blood falling from the corner of his lips hadn’t been on the list.
Dean kneels next to him before he can wonder how do you go from god to this, turns him over on his back. He’s breathing, and he looks beat up but fine otherwise. He’s pale, though, and thin, and there are lines on his very human face that weren’t there before. And when he touches Castiel, Dean realizes that his skin is cold as ice. It doesn’t add up. It just doesn’t, but Dean shakes Castiel’s shoulder anyway, seeing if there’s any chance that he might wake up. Castiel stirs, slightly, moving like everything hurts, and then he opens his eyes, painfully slow.
Dean is afraid of what he’ll see in them - if it’s the supposed god that Castiel was last time he looked into his eyes, Dean isn’t sure that he wants to look back. If it’s his friend, instead - shit, what would they even say? And then he meets Castiel’s stare and - it’s neither. His eyes are wide, staring at Dean like he knows him, but then they become wider, and Dean sees pure panic.
“Hey, Cas, what -” Dean starts, and then Castiel looks up at him again.
“Do you - do you know my name?” Castiel asks, his voice rough, so rough.
“I - yes, I do. You don’t - you don’t remember me?”
“You’re - you’re Dean, aren’t you?”
Dean nods, once, carefully.
“I know that,” Castiel whispers. “But I don’t know anything else.”
“You mean that… that you don’t know who you are?” Dean asks, and Castiel shakes his head once, his hands going to his elbows, his frame shaking.
“I can’t - I don’t remember anything. And I’m cold,” Castiel whispers, his eyes panicked again, shivering like he’s freezing, and of course he is. When Dean touched him his skin had felt like ice, hadn’t it?
Shit.
There are things Dean regrets. Like not trusting Castiel the one time he asked even if he had fucked up - hasn’t he done that for Sam enough? If he had maybe it wouldn’t have come to that. If only he hadn’t turned his back on Cas at the goddamn last second when he had been the one person Cas had asked.
And he still can’t erase from his head that the first thing Castiel had asked for when he wasn’t Cas anymore was - was for them to love him. Fuck. Guy did a lot of stupid things, but in retrospective, working with Crowley was the main one and it’s nothing worse than what Dean and Sam had done already. He just - he grabs Castiel’s shoulder, hauls him in, sees if it’s accepted and when it is, he crashes their frames against each other. Cas is freezing, indeed, and he’s clinging at him like he’s a lifeline, and he doesn’t even remember -
Dean doesn’t know what the fuck is going on and they’ll have to research later, but he doesn’t move until Castiel isn’t quite that freezing anymore. And even when he drags him inside the house, he keeps him close.
--
“Clean slate,” Dean says slamming the shot glass on the kitchen table. Castiel passed out half an hour ago and he’s currently on the panic room’s cot. Sam nods, and he looks pale and tired as well, but then again when you overcome your memories of Hell Dean figures that you’re allowed. Sam says that he’s okay now - and if it means that Dean can live without worrying about the wall crashing every ten seconds, then he’s okay. And he has another thing to thank Cas for, except that he can’t.
“You mean - nothing?” Bobby asks, getting himself a glass, too.
“Nope. He knows who I am - in the sense that he remembered my name and he knows we know each other, but apart from that? Zero. Also he’s as human as it goes. I don’t - I have no idea what happened. And he’s freezing all the damn time. Right now he’s wearing three sweaters and he still has a vampire’s body temperature, or something.”
There’s silence then. Bobby drinks his glass, then pours some more alcohol. Sam shakes his head and keeps on turning another empty glass in his hands. Dean thinks he should have another drink but he isn’t sure it’s a good idea.
“What do we do?” Sam asks then, braving to break the silence and asking the one million dollars question.
Dean sighs, rubbing his temple. “We - well, guess we should find out why. And apart from that - just, I’ll keep an eye on him. And before you two ask - I owe him.”
Bobby stares at him like he isn’t convinced and Dean tries to find a way to put it that doesn’t sound like a chick flick.
“Listen, he lied to us, fine, but he was trying to save our asses. And even if he did lie to us, everything he did until the last second was save our asses. Yours too, Sam.”
Dean had been pissed at the beginning, but now that he has seen that Sam could take his memories - he’s relieved that they don’t have to worry about that anymore. And Cas did drag Sam out in the first place, too. Sam nods at that, not denying it.
“And - well, what the fuck did we do for months? Yeah, we worked for Crowley. I mean, I was - I can’t help thinking that if I said yes the last time he asked me to stick by him he wouldn’t have done it. He could have told us before and he made his mistakes, but then again since when he’s been that great at dealing with that kind of thing? He’s still an angel, after all. Was. And fine - he fucked up big time. Everyone here did. And I can’t turn my back on him when he doesn’t even know what the hell he did.”
“Guess you’ve got a point,” Bobby agrees. Dean hopes he’ll get over Ellie at some point - he gets it, he really freaking gets it, but he has his share of blame in this whole clusterfuck. He can’t just wash his hands off it.
Then he hears screaming from the panic room. Raw screaming, that reminds him too much of Sam’s when he was detoxing from demon blood. He meets Sam’s eyes - he’s thinking the same.
“Go,” Sam says, “me and Bobby will just try to see if there’s something to research about this.”
Dean nods, then stands up and runs to the panic room. When he gets in, he sees Cas looking at his surroundings like he doesn’t remember where he is. He looks terrified, nothing less. Dean moves and sits down on the edge of the cot, a hand on Cas’s arm.
“Hey,” he says, shaking it slightly, “it’s - you’re fine, what happened?”
“I don’t - I saw light. So much light. And I felt like burning, but it wasn’t exactly that. And - I felt like I knew I was doing a horrible thing but I can’t remember what. And everything hurt, but I don’t know why, and - why do I feel like there’s a void inside me?”
It hits Dean like a punch to the gut - of course you’d feel empty if you had all those goddamn souls inside you. But he can’t - how do you tell someone that they used to be a god? Even if they haven’t been for long? Castiel just looks as lost as he looked when they trapped him inside that ring of fire and Dean doesn’t think further. He just moves forward, takes Castiel’s arm, hauls him in again, holding him close. And damn but he is cold, sweaters or not.
“I don’t know,” Dean lies. “We don’t need to find out now.”
Castiel doesn’t say anything, but fuck, he melts against Dean as if it's the last thing he does, and he doesn’t even remember who Dean is and he still trusts him this much.
Dean thinks he might cry if he doesn’t stop thinking about this.
--
He’s sitting next to the bed, his hand casually tangled in Castiel’s hair. Castiel is still shivering as he sleeps, but apart from that he looks as okay as it gets. Dean has no idea of how long it’ll last.
Then Sam comes into the room, and thankfully doesn’t comment on the scene.
“Found anything?”
“Nope. We looked into strange weather, demonic activity, spirit activity, everything. And - nothing. Except that there isn’t much supernatural activity around right now at all, from what it seems. Which might be strange, but still, it doesn’t tell us anything.”
“Well,” Dean says, “guess we’ll have to go the old way.”
“Which means?”
“Ever read Sherlock Holmes, Sam? We should just put what we have together and draw conclusions. Let’s take out the impossible. Whatever remains, as improbable as it gets, would probably be it.”
“Fine. So, what we know is that a week ago he had all of Purgatory’s souls inside him which made him - well, a god. Now he’s human, he doesn’t remember anything and he feels cold all the time. I could only guess that’s because the souls aren’t there anymore, but that doesn’t solve the main problem. Which is, who pulled them out in the first place?”
Dean is about to answer ‘who the hell knows’ when it suddenly all clicks into place.
“Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“Sam, follow me a second. He was a god. And I doubt that killing a god or well, making him human, is something anyone can do. The only thing that could do it -”
“… would be another god. More powerful than - oh fuck. Dean, do you mean that God with the capital G is back?”
“Well, he’d be more powerful than Cas here. Heck, Cas was a god because he was stuffed with souls, but… God would be God because he is, not because he needs some Red Bull soul juice.”
“So you mean that He just went and came back from wherever he is and fixed this whole mess?”
Dean nods and suddenly he feels filled with rage.
Because seriously. Fine, Castiel has fucked up a whole damn lot, and where was God in all of this? Leaving him to fuck up because he couldn’t give a shit and then fixing it all by - by doing this? He takes away his hand - Cas lets out a small noise of displeasure and Dean decides that he isn’t dealing with this any longer.
He stands up, crosses his arms and looks up.
“Hey, you stupid son of a bitch!”
“Dean, what are you -”
“Sam, shut up. Yes, I mean you. I’m pretty sure this room isn’t God-proof, and we went through enough crap because you decided that you were going MIA. So just come down here and show your face and explain us what the fuck is going on and how we fix Cas here, because I’m done with playing your games. And I don’t give a shit that you’re God - it’s not like I believed that you existed until I was fucking thirty, anyway.”
For a second, there’s silence. And then -
“… hi, Sam. Hi, Dean.”
Dean is sure he’s going to faint.
Because Chuck has just appeared out of nowhere outside the door of the panic room, and he looks every bit as awkward as he used to even if he’s dressed slightly better and he doesn’t look too drunk and -
Dean is sure that if he doesn’t faint, his brain will get permanent damage just from accepting the notion.
“Chuck…? You are God?”
There’s an awkward nod.
Seriously?
“You… you always have been?”
“Gabriel wasn’t the only one on witness protection,” Chuck/God answers, and Dean needs to sit down again because he’s going to faint.
“And you let all that happen?” Dean almost screams, wondering if he can punch God. He’s half-sure that he should at least try, if only to have the satisfaction.
“I could say that it’s why you have free will, but - okay. Well. I made a mistake.”
“You made a mistake,” Sam repeats. He doesn’t look like he’s having much luck processing, too.
“I figured that angels would learn after the first Apocalypse not happening. I guess they don’t, after all. And I was hoping that he’d release the souls after being done until the last second, but - well. Yeah. I guess I couldn’t ask too much of him, as good as he has done until now.”
“What do you mean?”
“That he’s the only one who understood the lesson I was trying to teach to all the rest,” Chuck/God says, moving into the room, looking at Castiel (who’s still slightly shaking in his sleep). “I guess that he understood it even too well.”
“Did you do it?”
“I had take those souls away. I also had to set an example. Free will doesn’t mean opening Purgatory and let it overcome you.” He sounds a lot less awkward now, and Dean feels the room filling up with tension.
But like hell that it’ll be what makes him fall to his knees. He’s too pissed on everyone’s behalf (except probably Raphael) to even think about agreeing with Chuck. Or God. Fuck, he doesn’t even know how he should call Him in his head.
“And so you make him human and wipe his head clean? Are you fucking insane? He might have done some stupid shit, but he doesn’t deserve that! And at least you could have done a thorough job instead of leaving things halfway.”
“What do you mean?” Chuck/God asks, sounding genuinely curious. And looking at Dean like he’s a kid that doesn’t know any better.
It’s unnerving, coming from someone with Chuck’s face.
“He’s cold like he has permanent hypothermia and he’s screaming about feeling empty half of the fucking time, which I could believe since he had all of that inside him and I suppose you’d feel pretty hot for a general rule, if you carried it. If he remembered that, I could think that fine, you wanna punish him, it makes sense to make him suffer. But he doesn’t and I can’t even tell him because he has no idea so he’s basically hurting all over like a bitch and he doesn’t even know why. Do you realize how fucked is that?”
“Well,” Chuck answers, smirking, “maybe it’s a test for you, too.”
“What - listen, I’ve had enough of your tests, if -”
“See, you’re taking his side even if you flat-out slammed the door in his face last time. I think you passed this particular test already - I can guarantee you that it’ll be the last.”
“Wait - you mean you aren’t at least fixing his memories?”
“Nope. Sorry, but I think that it would be… let’s say, a cosmic bad idea. He has always felt a lot more than any angel ever should - and I think you know how bad guilt can get, Dean. Also, considering what you asked him to do recently, you’re the last person that could give me advice about it.”
Dean gives him a nod, because he does get that, but -
“See? You’ll get it, don’t worry. And now I really, really have to fix another couple of things that Cas here should have left alone - maybe we’ll see each other again.”
Then he gives them the stupid awkward trademark Chuck wave and he disappears.
No one even moves for the next five minutes.
Sam is the first to break the silence. “Are you - was that even real?”
“If it hadn’t been two of us seeing it, I’m pretty sure I’d have thought I was hallucinating,” Dean answers, noticing that Cas’s expression has suddenly become distressed. He reaches out, his hand going to Cas’s neck, his thumb running all over its side. It half-works - his features are smoother in no time. Sam coughs and says he’ll be upstairs, and for once Dean is grateful that Sam can be perceptive.
He looks down at Castiel, who is pretty much curling up against his hand, as if he’s touch-starved and -
Fuck.
It hits Dean all of a sudden. Chuck has brought away the memories, but he implied that he left everything else where it was. What Castiel wanted before he probably wants now even if he doesn’t know it, and what he felt before he feels now even if he doesn’t know why, and if he looks touch-starved then he probably is touch-starved.
Among all the rest.
Shit. Not counting that whenever he wakes up screaming, among the first three things Castiel usually says, is that he feels alone.
“Shit,” he mutters, barely audible, feeling his eyes sting, “I failed you big time, didn’t I? Not like you are that great at this caring and sharing thing, but I guess that as the human part of this stupid relationship I should know better. And I still think that your dad is an idiot because you deserved to hear this properly, not when you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
Right now he’s also feeling guilty about Ben and Lisa and what he asked Cas to do, many thanks to Chuck for reminding him of that - it seems like a bad case of poetic justice, right now. He still thinks they’ll be better off like this but - yeah. Maybe he should have thought about it twice. But that’s not the point.
The point is that Cas did remember him out of all he could have remembered (not Heaven, not being an angel, but Dean), and the fact that he hasn’t asked about anything else for now - who they are, why do they know each other, why is Dean giving a shit at all - is enough to make Dean feel like someone put a hundred pounds weight over his heart.
If only he had told Cas earlier all the things he said in the end when it was too late already.
And then he sees Cas stirring, opening his eyes slowly. He doesn’t flinch at Dean’s hand still tangled in his hair, and he’s obviously still cold, but this has to be the first time he wakes up like he should and not with cold sweat breaking all over his face.
“Hey,” Dean whispers, trying to keep his voice steady. “You all right?”
“I think so,” Castiel answers, not making any attempt to move.
“Did you - how did you sleep?”
“It was nice,” Castiel says, his voice slightly slurred. “I still - nothing I dream of makes sense.”
“What was it about?”
“This time - I just felt relieved. I felt like I was bursting, and then I wasn’t anymore. It hurt.” His voice is still rough, maybe a bit deeper - but it’s fine, it’s steady and not shaking. “Then I felt - like being cleansed from the inside out. And that hurt, too, but I didn’t - I wasn’t feeling alone. It wasn’t as bad as before,” he says, under his breath, and Dean almost swears and then bites his tongue. This is the first time during which they touched while Castiel slept. He’s half-sure it’s connected at least.
“Why are you doing this?” Castiel asks again, putting him out of his train of thought. His head is slightly tilted, and - shit. It’s such a Cas thing to do that Dean can’t help the stupid lone tear running out of his eye. He wipes it away, shaking his head.
“It’s - we’re friends,” he says, and it’s okay. It’s exactly what he wants to say. It feels like the only thing he can say. “We’re close. We were. Before this.”
“I - it feels like it,” Castiel agrees. “It still doesn’t explain -”
“Cas, I know you don’t remember that and maybe you never will, but I care about you. And - I probably hadn’t said it enough before, or shown it before, but I do and I’m doing this because I want to. Don’t ever think that I don’t. And if you have questions to ask - I’m not even sure I can answer all of them, but just shoot.”
Castiel’s eyes widen, barely, but there’s something about them - Dean can’t pinpoint what but he thinks it lights up his entire face. Which just about makes Dean lose it. It’s so similar to the way Cas used to look at him sometimes, like he had all his attention on Dean, like there wasn’t no one else he’d rather look at. On one side it hurts like a bitch that Cas doesn’t remember everything that went on between them, because that’s a whole damn lot to forget, good and bad things, but on the other - memories or not, it’s still Cas. It’s all in the way he moves and acts and looks at him. At times Dean had wondered what would have happened if they were - well, other people. If he wasn’t a hunter and Cas was just a regular awkward person. He doesn’t want to like this, and he doesn’t - he’d rather deal with the real fallout, but as things are, he’ll try to make the best out of the situation.
“Everything feels so disconnected,” Cas says then, and when Dean realizes that he’s calling him Cas in his head again, instead of Castiel as he had during the last week, he feels relieved. “I feel like there’s something preventing me from putting the picture together. But - I wasn’t like you, was I?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dean, I couldn’t feel like someone burned something out of me, if I was a normal person.” Cas’s voice is quiet, and Dean is done with pretenses.
“You weren’t. You - you used to be an angel.” He’s about to add our angel but he doesn’t say that. It’s too much already. “And the only one I’ve ever met who wasn’t a total dick. Or at least a partial one.”
Cas snorts, barely, and Dean can’t help noticing how much he’s shivering. He hopes it’ll be over at some point - you can’t live feeling like you’re at the south pole all the time. “That’s - that’s nice to know,” Cas answers, quietly. “Would it - can I tell you something which I think is highly inappropriate?”
He looks strangely small, with the two sweaters he’s wearing, his head still resting on the pillow.
“I’m not one who cares about appropriate, Cas,” Dean says, meeting Cas’s eyes. Cas licks his lips, such a human gesture that Dean feels that weight being put over his heart all over again.
“It’s strange, I suppose. I’m not sure of how I should put it. But… you make me feel good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I… I told you, everything feels disconnected and if I try to focus on the few things I remember, I just can’t. It’s… almost as if something is preventing me from doing it. And I don’t know why I feel like there’s a void inside me, but if you’re here - it just goes away.” Cas turns his head on his side then, his frame shaking harder, and shit. Shit.
Dean doesn’t even know what he’s doing but before he realizes it, his hand is wrapped around Cas’s, their fingers entwined, and he’s sitting on the side of the bed and not on the chair. Cas sits up, carefully, not pulling his hand away. Actually, he gives a tentative squeeze and Dean is half-sure that he’ll get overwhelmed sooner rather than later.
“Did that get worse?” Dean asks.
“I did something horrible, didn’t I?” Cas doesn’t even have the grace to answer the right question - and the way he’s looking at Dean, like he knows but just can’t tell what, is gutting him. “I must have. This - this can only be a punishment, isn’t it? It’s so cold.”
“You did - shit, you did a pretty crappy thing. And taken a lot of stupid decisions for a good reason, and I had my share of responsibility for that, too, but - regarding the cold thing, I think it’s fucking unfair.”
“How bad was that?”
Good question. Who knows what Cas did in his god-like week? Dean curses Chuck/God/whoever in his head before clearing his throat, trying to find a proper answer.
Then he decides, fuck with trying to word it properly and to make it sound less bad. He’ll go for the whole thing. “It was pretty fucking bad. But I can see why you did it. You had your reasons and the circumstances were… well, a clusterfuck. But for all I care, it doesn’t matter, okay? You’re having a pretty horrible time right now and you had it even worse before, and you didn’t deserve any of it. I’m not - I don’t care.” And then, before Cas can answer, he leans down on his side. He reaches for an extra blanket under the bed - it’s soft wool, enough to make a normal person feel under a furnace during the winter. He lets Cas’s hand go for one second, enough to take the blanket and wrap it around the both of them. The cot is barely big enough, but they do more or less fit, and when he puts an arm around Cas’s shoulder, Cas goes with it at once. He’s still chilly, but in ten minutes he isn’t shivering as much.
They don’t say anything, but Cas leans into him and they do fit, and it feels nice enough. Dean’s head is at level with Cas’s right now, and he doesn’t know why he’s staring at Cas’s lips, but then Cas moves closer. They don’t kiss, not quite, but Cas puts his head right over Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s cheek is buried in soft, dark hair and this has no right to feel as peaceful as it does. But it does.
“Do you think I could ever feel warm again?” Cas asks quietly at some point, and Dean arranges the quilt so that it’s covering them almost completely.
If anyone deserves that it’s you, Dean would like to answer, but it’s too much and he doesn’t know if he can say that without his voice cracking.
“I’m pretty sure it’s just your body being in shock. At some point you will.” He tries to sound convincing, hoping desperately that it doesn’t turn out to be a lie. “And if you don’t, I guess I’ll just keep you piled under a whole damn lot of blankets,” he adds. What he means is I’m not giving up on you from now on, and he really hopes it passed through. He leans forward, just a bit, and Cas turns and looks up at him and shit, Dean doesn’t even know what possesses him to kiss Cas on his forehead but he had done it for Sam enough times back then, and it can’t miss the point. It’s not a brief kiss nor an extremely long one - Dean makes a point of making Cas realize that he means it.
It doesn’t miss the point. Cas relaxes back against him, still not quite warm but not freezing either. “It’s so strange,” Cas says then. “It should be different. I don’t remember much about you. Just your name and a few other things. But - I feel like I know you just the same.”
“It’s like that for me too,” Dean whispers, his voice shaky, but as he leans down to press a soft kiss to Cas’s hair as well, he can’t help feeling like they’ll be fine. Even if this situation is a clusterfuck and even if God isn’t really all that he’s cracked up to be. But if anything Cas is here and more or less himself and Dean thinks that it’s more than enough to work with.
--
“Are you sure that you don’t want to -” Sam asks, and Balthazar raises a hand, interrupting him.
“Listen. I died and I just came back to life in your stupid kitchen, which I figure is my stupid absent father’s doing. I just learned that Cassie doesn’t remember anything on top of that. And while I don’t blame him that much for what he did - I should have been way more careful and I knew he was about to go off the rails, I am absolutely not sure that going downstairs is a good idea. Especially if he’s snuggling with your brother, and it was about damn time.”
“Hey, what -”
“Shut up. It was. Now. I’m going to sit down, drink some of this lovely scotch and think this stupid situation through, also because I guess there is a reason why I am still an angel and he isn’t. And believe me, if it means that I am supposed to take care of matters in Heaven, I’ll need to drink a lot more than this entire liquor cabinet. If you want to sit down and provide me some company, then fine. If you don’t, still fine, but if there’s one thing I know, is that I’m about to get properly wasted. Or as close as I can get to it.”
And with that, Balthazar downs half of that glass in one go.
Sam should really just leave him to his business, but Balthazar looks half shocked and half totally out of his depth, and Sam figures it’s only understandable. And he also knows how much it sucks not to have anyone around in that case. He sighs and sits down - at least, out of the two angels that popped out of nowhere in this house in the last five days, he got the easy-to-deal-with one.
“Fine. I’ll have a beer, you can have your whiskey, just get as wasted as you want.”
Balthazar shoots him a grateful look that’s gone in about half a second. Then he finishes the rest of the glass.
Sam pretends to drink his beer and thinks that for how crappy He is at his job, at least God is trying here. Too late, but Sam has his experience with crappy fathers, so he’ll just stay here for now and look at how things go and try not to freak out too much. It doesn’t sound like a bad plan for the foreseeable future.
End.
Title: tell him something pretty
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Cas-ish (it's pretty on the platonic side for the moment), Sam, Bobby, Chuck, Balthazar.
Word count: ∼5000
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: coda for 6x22.
Warnings: amnesia fic, a healthy dose of language and most probably of blasphemy as well. Also [hidden because it's a possible spoiler for the fic and a hint to what happened in 6x22 though it's nothing triggering] God's ethics are pretty questionable.
Disclaimer: if SPN was mine I wouldn't be writing fix-it fic.
Summary: “It’s so strange,” Cas says then. “It should be different. I don’t remember much about you. Just your name and a few other things. But - I feel like I know you just the same.” or, wherein Dean and Cas's first meeting after the finale doesn't go as Dean had figured at all.
A/N: so I was trying to come up with some fix-it scenario, I had this idea and I figured I'd just go with it. I'm not even sure where it came from but I liked the premise. Using for my kissbingo square face: forehead. Title is from a Deadwood episode.
The first time Dean sees Castiel after he opens Purgatory inside him, it’s not what he had imagined.
He had come up with a lot of possible scenarios during the last week - but none of them is quite what happens in reality.
Because opening Bobby’s front door after hearing a loud, crashing sound and finding Castiel on the porch, his body still, his clothes torn, a line of blood falling from the corner of his lips hadn’t been on the list.
Dean kneels next to him before he can wonder how do you go from god to this, turns him over on his back. He’s breathing, and he looks beat up but fine otherwise. He’s pale, though, and thin, and there are lines on his very human face that weren’t there before. And when he touches Castiel, Dean realizes that his skin is cold as ice. It doesn’t add up. It just doesn’t, but Dean shakes Castiel’s shoulder anyway, seeing if there’s any chance that he might wake up. Castiel stirs, slightly, moving like everything hurts, and then he opens his eyes, painfully slow.
Dean is afraid of what he’ll see in them - if it’s the supposed god that Castiel was last time he looked into his eyes, Dean isn’t sure that he wants to look back. If it’s his friend, instead - shit, what would they even say? And then he meets Castiel’s stare and - it’s neither. His eyes are wide, staring at Dean like he knows him, but then they become wider, and Dean sees pure panic.
“Hey, Cas, what -” Dean starts, and then Castiel looks up at him again.
“Do you - do you know my name?” Castiel asks, his voice rough, so rough.
“I - yes, I do. You don’t - you don’t remember me?”
“You’re - you’re Dean, aren’t you?”
Dean nods, once, carefully.
“I know that,” Castiel whispers. “But I don’t know anything else.”
“You mean that… that you don’t know who you are?” Dean asks, and Castiel shakes his head once, his hands going to his elbows, his frame shaking.
“I can’t - I don’t remember anything. And I’m cold,” Castiel whispers, his eyes panicked again, shivering like he’s freezing, and of course he is. When Dean touched him his skin had felt like ice, hadn’t it?
Shit.
There are things Dean regrets. Like not trusting Castiel the one time he asked even if he had fucked up - hasn’t he done that for Sam enough? If he had maybe it wouldn’t have come to that. If only he hadn’t turned his back on Cas at the goddamn last second when he had been the one person Cas had asked.
And he still can’t erase from his head that the first thing Castiel had asked for when he wasn’t Cas anymore was - was for them to love him. Fuck. Guy did a lot of stupid things, but in retrospective, working with Crowley was the main one and it’s nothing worse than what Dean and Sam had done already. He just - he grabs Castiel’s shoulder, hauls him in, sees if it’s accepted and when it is, he crashes their frames against each other. Cas is freezing, indeed, and he’s clinging at him like he’s a lifeline, and he doesn’t even remember -
Dean doesn’t know what the fuck is going on and they’ll have to research later, but he doesn’t move until Castiel isn’t quite that freezing anymore. And even when he drags him inside the house, he keeps him close.
--
“Clean slate,” Dean says slamming the shot glass on the kitchen table. Castiel passed out half an hour ago and he’s currently on the panic room’s cot. Sam nods, and he looks pale and tired as well, but then again when you overcome your memories of Hell Dean figures that you’re allowed. Sam says that he’s okay now - and if it means that Dean can live without worrying about the wall crashing every ten seconds, then he’s okay. And he has another thing to thank Cas for, except that he can’t.
“You mean - nothing?” Bobby asks, getting himself a glass, too.
“Nope. He knows who I am - in the sense that he remembered my name and he knows we know each other, but apart from that? Zero. Also he’s as human as it goes. I don’t - I have no idea what happened. And he’s freezing all the damn time. Right now he’s wearing three sweaters and he still has a vampire’s body temperature, or something.”
There’s silence then. Bobby drinks his glass, then pours some more alcohol. Sam shakes his head and keeps on turning another empty glass in his hands. Dean thinks he should have another drink but he isn’t sure it’s a good idea.
“What do we do?” Sam asks then, braving to break the silence and asking the one million dollars question.
Dean sighs, rubbing his temple. “We - well, guess we should find out why. And apart from that - just, I’ll keep an eye on him. And before you two ask - I owe him.”
Bobby stares at him like he isn’t convinced and Dean tries to find a way to put it that doesn’t sound like a chick flick.
“Listen, he lied to us, fine, but he was trying to save our asses. And even if he did lie to us, everything he did until the last second was save our asses. Yours too, Sam.”
Dean had been pissed at the beginning, but now that he has seen that Sam could take his memories - he’s relieved that they don’t have to worry about that anymore. And Cas did drag Sam out in the first place, too. Sam nods at that, not denying it.
“And - well, what the fuck did we do for months? Yeah, we worked for Crowley. I mean, I was - I can’t help thinking that if I said yes the last time he asked me to stick by him he wouldn’t have done it. He could have told us before and he made his mistakes, but then again since when he’s been that great at dealing with that kind of thing? He’s still an angel, after all. Was. And fine - he fucked up big time. Everyone here did. And I can’t turn my back on him when he doesn’t even know what the hell he did.”
“Guess you’ve got a point,” Bobby agrees. Dean hopes he’ll get over Ellie at some point - he gets it, he really freaking gets it, but he has his share of blame in this whole clusterfuck. He can’t just wash his hands off it.
Then he hears screaming from the panic room. Raw screaming, that reminds him too much of Sam’s when he was detoxing from demon blood. He meets Sam’s eyes - he’s thinking the same.
“Go,” Sam says, “me and Bobby will just try to see if there’s something to research about this.”
Dean nods, then stands up and runs to the panic room. When he gets in, he sees Cas looking at his surroundings like he doesn’t remember where he is. He looks terrified, nothing less. Dean moves and sits down on the edge of the cot, a hand on Cas’s arm.
“Hey,” he says, shaking it slightly, “it’s - you’re fine, what happened?”
“I don’t - I saw light. So much light. And I felt like burning, but it wasn’t exactly that. And - I felt like I knew I was doing a horrible thing but I can’t remember what. And everything hurt, but I don’t know why, and - why do I feel like there’s a void inside me?”
It hits Dean like a punch to the gut - of course you’d feel empty if you had all those goddamn souls inside you. But he can’t - how do you tell someone that they used to be a god? Even if they haven’t been for long? Castiel just looks as lost as he looked when they trapped him inside that ring of fire and Dean doesn’t think further. He just moves forward, takes Castiel’s arm, hauls him in again, holding him close. And damn but he is cold, sweaters or not.
“I don’t know,” Dean lies. “We don’t need to find out now.”
Castiel doesn’t say anything, but fuck, he melts against Dean as if it's the last thing he does, and he doesn’t even remember who Dean is and he still trusts him this much.
Dean thinks he might cry if he doesn’t stop thinking about this.
--
He’s sitting next to the bed, his hand casually tangled in Castiel’s hair. Castiel is still shivering as he sleeps, but apart from that he looks as okay as it gets. Dean has no idea of how long it’ll last.
Then Sam comes into the room, and thankfully doesn’t comment on the scene.
“Found anything?”
“Nope. We looked into strange weather, demonic activity, spirit activity, everything. And - nothing. Except that there isn’t much supernatural activity around right now at all, from what it seems. Which might be strange, but still, it doesn’t tell us anything.”
“Well,” Dean says, “guess we’ll have to go the old way.”
“Which means?”
“Ever read Sherlock Holmes, Sam? We should just put what we have together and draw conclusions. Let’s take out the impossible. Whatever remains, as improbable as it gets, would probably be it.”
“Fine. So, what we know is that a week ago he had all of Purgatory’s souls inside him which made him - well, a god. Now he’s human, he doesn’t remember anything and he feels cold all the time. I could only guess that’s because the souls aren’t there anymore, but that doesn’t solve the main problem. Which is, who pulled them out in the first place?”
Dean is about to answer ‘who the hell knows’ when it suddenly all clicks into place.
“Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“Sam, follow me a second. He was a god. And I doubt that killing a god or well, making him human, is something anyone can do. The only thing that could do it -”
“… would be another god. More powerful than - oh fuck. Dean, do you mean that God with the capital G is back?”
“Well, he’d be more powerful than Cas here. Heck, Cas was a god because he was stuffed with souls, but… God would be God because he is, not because he needs some Red Bull soul juice.”
“So you mean that He just went and came back from wherever he is and fixed this whole mess?”
Dean nods and suddenly he feels filled with rage.
Because seriously. Fine, Castiel has fucked up a whole damn lot, and where was God in all of this? Leaving him to fuck up because he couldn’t give a shit and then fixing it all by - by doing this? He takes away his hand - Cas lets out a small noise of displeasure and Dean decides that he isn’t dealing with this any longer.
He stands up, crosses his arms and looks up.
“Hey, you stupid son of a bitch!”
“Dean, what are you -”
“Sam, shut up. Yes, I mean you. I’m pretty sure this room isn’t God-proof, and we went through enough crap because you decided that you were going MIA. So just come down here and show your face and explain us what the fuck is going on and how we fix Cas here, because I’m done with playing your games. And I don’t give a shit that you’re God - it’s not like I believed that you existed until I was fucking thirty, anyway.”
For a second, there’s silence. And then -
“… hi, Sam. Hi, Dean.”
Dean is sure he’s going to faint.
Because Chuck has just appeared out of nowhere outside the door of the panic room, and he looks every bit as awkward as he used to even if he’s dressed slightly better and he doesn’t look too drunk and -
Dean is sure that if he doesn’t faint, his brain will get permanent damage just from accepting the notion.
“Chuck…? You are God?”
There’s an awkward nod.
Seriously?
“You… you always have been?”
“Gabriel wasn’t the only one on witness protection,” Chuck/God answers, and Dean needs to sit down again because he’s going to faint.
“And you let all that happen?” Dean almost screams, wondering if he can punch God. He’s half-sure that he should at least try, if only to have the satisfaction.
“I could say that it’s why you have free will, but - okay. Well. I made a mistake.”
“You made a mistake,” Sam repeats. He doesn’t look like he’s having much luck processing, too.
“I figured that angels would learn after the first Apocalypse not happening. I guess they don’t, after all. And I was hoping that he’d release the souls after being done until the last second, but - well. Yeah. I guess I couldn’t ask too much of him, as good as he has done until now.”
“What do you mean?”
“That he’s the only one who understood the lesson I was trying to teach to all the rest,” Chuck/God says, moving into the room, looking at Castiel (who’s still slightly shaking in his sleep). “I guess that he understood it even too well.”
“Did you do it?”
“I had take those souls away. I also had to set an example. Free will doesn’t mean opening Purgatory and let it overcome you.” He sounds a lot less awkward now, and Dean feels the room filling up with tension.
But like hell that it’ll be what makes him fall to his knees. He’s too pissed on everyone’s behalf (except probably Raphael) to even think about agreeing with Chuck. Or God. Fuck, he doesn’t even know how he should call Him in his head.
“And so you make him human and wipe his head clean? Are you fucking insane? He might have done some stupid shit, but he doesn’t deserve that! And at least you could have done a thorough job instead of leaving things halfway.”
“What do you mean?” Chuck/God asks, sounding genuinely curious. And looking at Dean like he’s a kid that doesn’t know any better.
It’s unnerving, coming from someone with Chuck’s face.
“He’s cold like he has permanent hypothermia and he’s screaming about feeling empty half of the fucking time, which I could believe since he had all of that inside him and I suppose you’d feel pretty hot for a general rule, if you carried it. If he remembered that, I could think that fine, you wanna punish him, it makes sense to make him suffer. But he doesn’t and I can’t even tell him because he has no idea so he’s basically hurting all over like a bitch and he doesn’t even know why. Do you realize how fucked is that?”
“Well,” Chuck answers, smirking, “maybe it’s a test for you, too.”
“What - listen, I’ve had enough of your tests, if -”
“See, you’re taking his side even if you flat-out slammed the door in his face last time. I think you passed this particular test already - I can guarantee you that it’ll be the last.”
“Wait - you mean you aren’t at least fixing his memories?”
“Nope. Sorry, but I think that it would be… let’s say, a cosmic bad idea. He has always felt a lot more than any angel ever should - and I think you know how bad guilt can get, Dean. Also, considering what you asked him to do recently, you’re the last person that could give me advice about it.”
Dean gives him a nod, because he does get that, but -
“See? You’ll get it, don’t worry. And now I really, really have to fix another couple of things that Cas here should have left alone - maybe we’ll see each other again.”
Then he gives them the stupid awkward trademark Chuck wave and he disappears.
No one even moves for the next five minutes.
Sam is the first to break the silence. “Are you - was that even real?”
“If it hadn’t been two of us seeing it, I’m pretty sure I’d have thought I was hallucinating,” Dean answers, noticing that Cas’s expression has suddenly become distressed. He reaches out, his hand going to Cas’s neck, his thumb running all over its side. It half-works - his features are smoother in no time. Sam coughs and says he’ll be upstairs, and for once Dean is grateful that Sam can be perceptive.
He looks down at Castiel, who is pretty much curling up against his hand, as if he’s touch-starved and -
Fuck.
It hits Dean all of a sudden. Chuck has brought away the memories, but he implied that he left everything else where it was. What Castiel wanted before he probably wants now even if he doesn’t know it, and what he felt before he feels now even if he doesn’t know why, and if he looks touch-starved then he probably is touch-starved.
Among all the rest.
Shit. Not counting that whenever he wakes up screaming, among the first three things Castiel usually says, is that he feels alone.
“Shit,” he mutters, barely audible, feeling his eyes sting, “I failed you big time, didn’t I? Not like you are that great at this caring and sharing thing, but I guess that as the human part of this stupid relationship I should know better. And I still think that your dad is an idiot because you deserved to hear this properly, not when you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
Right now he’s also feeling guilty about Ben and Lisa and what he asked Cas to do, many thanks to Chuck for reminding him of that - it seems like a bad case of poetic justice, right now. He still thinks they’ll be better off like this but - yeah. Maybe he should have thought about it twice. But that’s not the point.
The point is that Cas did remember him out of all he could have remembered (not Heaven, not being an angel, but Dean), and the fact that he hasn’t asked about anything else for now - who they are, why do they know each other, why is Dean giving a shit at all - is enough to make Dean feel like someone put a hundred pounds weight over his heart.
If only he had told Cas earlier all the things he said in the end when it was too late already.
And then he sees Cas stirring, opening his eyes slowly. He doesn’t flinch at Dean’s hand still tangled in his hair, and he’s obviously still cold, but this has to be the first time he wakes up like he should and not with cold sweat breaking all over his face.
“Hey,” Dean whispers, trying to keep his voice steady. “You all right?”
“I think so,” Castiel answers, not making any attempt to move.
“Did you - how did you sleep?”
“It was nice,” Castiel says, his voice slightly slurred. “I still - nothing I dream of makes sense.”
“What was it about?”
“This time - I just felt relieved. I felt like I was bursting, and then I wasn’t anymore. It hurt.” His voice is still rough, maybe a bit deeper - but it’s fine, it’s steady and not shaking. “Then I felt - like being cleansed from the inside out. And that hurt, too, but I didn’t - I wasn’t feeling alone. It wasn’t as bad as before,” he says, under his breath, and Dean almost swears and then bites his tongue. This is the first time during which they touched while Castiel slept. He’s half-sure it’s connected at least.
“Why are you doing this?” Castiel asks again, putting him out of his train of thought. His head is slightly tilted, and - shit. It’s such a Cas thing to do that Dean can’t help the stupid lone tear running out of his eye. He wipes it away, shaking his head.
“It’s - we’re friends,” he says, and it’s okay. It’s exactly what he wants to say. It feels like the only thing he can say. “We’re close. We were. Before this.”
“I - it feels like it,” Castiel agrees. “It still doesn’t explain -”
“Cas, I know you don’t remember that and maybe you never will, but I care about you. And - I probably hadn’t said it enough before, or shown it before, but I do and I’m doing this because I want to. Don’t ever think that I don’t. And if you have questions to ask - I’m not even sure I can answer all of them, but just shoot.”
Castiel’s eyes widen, barely, but there’s something about them - Dean can’t pinpoint what but he thinks it lights up his entire face. Which just about makes Dean lose it. It’s so similar to the way Cas used to look at him sometimes, like he had all his attention on Dean, like there wasn’t no one else he’d rather look at. On one side it hurts like a bitch that Cas doesn’t remember everything that went on between them, because that’s a whole damn lot to forget, good and bad things, but on the other - memories or not, it’s still Cas. It’s all in the way he moves and acts and looks at him. At times Dean had wondered what would have happened if they were - well, other people. If he wasn’t a hunter and Cas was just a regular awkward person. He doesn’t want to like this, and he doesn’t - he’d rather deal with the real fallout, but as things are, he’ll try to make the best out of the situation.
“Everything feels so disconnected,” Cas says then, and when Dean realizes that he’s calling him Cas in his head again, instead of Castiel as he had during the last week, he feels relieved. “I feel like there’s something preventing me from putting the picture together. But - I wasn’t like you, was I?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dean, I couldn’t feel like someone burned something out of me, if I was a normal person.” Cas’s voice is quiet, and Dean is done with pretenses.
“You weren’t. You - you used to be an angel.” He’s about to add our angel but he doesn’t say that. It’s too much already. “And the only one I’ve ever met who wasn’t a total dick. Or at least a partial one.”
Cas snorts, barely, and Dean can’t help noticing how much he’s shivering. He hopes it’ll be over at some point - you can’t live feeling like you’re at the south pole all the time. “That’s - that’s nice to know,” Cas answers, quietly. “Would it - can I tell you something which I think is highly inappropriate?”
He looks strangely small, with the two sweaters he’s wearing, his head still resting on the pillow.
“I’m not one who cares about appropriate, Cas,” Dean says, meeting Cas’s eyes. Cas licks his lips, such a human gesture that Dean feels that weight being put over his heart all over again.
“It’s strange, I suppose. I’m not sure of how I should put it. But… you make me feel good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I… I told you, everything feels disconnected and if I try to focus on the few things I remember, I just can’t. It’s… almost as if something is preventing me from doing it. And I don’t know why I feel like there’s a void inside me, but if you’re here - it just goes away.” Cas turns his head on his side then, his frame shaking harder, and shit. Shit.
Dean doesn’t even know what he’s doing but before he realizes it, his hand is wrapped around Cas’s, their fingers entwined, and he’s sitting on the side of the bed and not on the chair. Cas sits up, carefully, not pulling his hand away. Actually, he gives a tentative squeeze and Dean is half-sure that he’ll get overwhelmed sooner rather than later.
“Did that get worse?” Dean asks.
“I did something horrible, didn’t I?” Cas doesn’t even have the grace to answer the right question - and the way he’s looking at Dean, like he knows but just can’t tell what, is gutting him. “I must have. This - this can only be a punishment, isn’t it? It’s so cold.”
“You did - shit, you did a pretty crappy thing. And taken a lot of stupid decisions for a good reason, and I had my share of responsibility for that, too, but - regarding the cold thing, I think it’s fucking unfair.”
“How bad was that?”
Good question. Who knows what Cas did in his god-like week? Dean curses Chuck/God/whoever in his head before clearing his throat, trying to find a proper answer.
Then he decides, fuck with trying to word it properly and to make it sound less bad. He’ll go for the whole thing. “It was pretty fucking bad. But I can see why you did it. You had your reasons and the circumstances were… well, a clusterfuck. But for all I care, it doesn’t matter, okay? You’re having a pretty horrible time right now and you had it even worse before, and you didn’t deserve any of it. I’m not - I don’t care.” And then, before Cas can answer, he leans down on his side. He reaches for an extra blanket under the bed - it’s soft wool, enough to make a normal person feel under a furnace during the winter. He lets Cas’s hand go for one second, enough to take the blanket and wrap it around the both of them. The cot is barely big enough, but they do more or less fit, and when he puts an arm around Cas’s shoulder, Cas goes with it at once. He’s still chilly, but in ten minutes he isn’t shivering as much.
They don’t say anything, but Cas leans into him and they do fit, and it feels nice enough. Dean’s head is at level with Cas’s right now, and he doesn’t know why he’s staring at Cas’s lips, but then Cas moves closer. They don’t kiss, not quite, but Cas puts his head right over Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s cheek is buried in soft, dark hair and this has no right to feel as peaceful as it does. But it does.
“Do you think I could ever feel warm again?” Cas asks quietly at some point, and Dean arranges the quilt so that it’s covering them almost completely.
If anyone deserves that it’s you, Dean would like to answer, but it’s too much and he doesn’t know if he can say that without his voice cracking.
“I’m pretty sure it’s just your body being in shock. At some point you will.” He tries to sound convincing, hoping desperately that it doesn’t turn out to be a lie. “And if you don’t, I guess I’ll just keep you piled under a whole damn lot of blankets,” he adds. What he means is I’m not giving up on you from now on, and he really hopes it passed through. He leans forward, just a bit, and Cas turns and looks up at him and shit, Dean doesn’t even know what possesses him to kiss Cas on his forehead but he had done it for Sam enough times back then, and it can’t miss the point. It’s not a brief kiss nor an extremely long one - Dean makes a point of making Cas realize that he means it.
It doesn’t miss the point. Cas relaxes back against him, still not quite warm but not freezing either. “It’s so strange,” Cas says then. “It should be different. I don’t remember much about you. Just your name and a few other things. But - I feel like I know you just the same.”
“It’s like that for me too,” Dean whispers, his voice shaky, but as he leans down to press a soft kiss to Cas’s hair as well, he can’t help feeling like they’ll be fine. Even if this situation is a clusterfuck and even if God isn’t really all that he’s cracked up to be. But if anything Cas is here and more or less himself and Dean thinks that it’s more than enough to work with.
--
“Are you sure that you don’t want to -” Sam asks, and Balthazar raises a hand, interrupting him.
“Listen. I died and I just came back to life in your stupid kitchen, which I figure is my stupid absent father’s doing. I just learned that Cassie doesn’t remember anything on top of that. And while I don’t blame him that much for what he did - I should have been way more careful and I knew he was about to go off the rails, I am absolutely not sure that going downstairs is a good idea. Especially if he’s snuggling with your brother, and it was about damn time.”
“Hey, what -”
“Shut up. It was. Now. I’m going to sit down, drink some of this lovely scotch and think this stupid situation through, also because I guess there is a reason why I am still an angel and he isn’t. And believe me, if it means that I am supposed to take care of matters in Heaven, I’ll need to drink a lot more than this entire liquor cabinet. If you want to sit down and provide me some company, then fine. If you don’t, still fine, but if there’s one thing I know, is that I’m about to get properly wasted. Or as close as I can get to it.”
And with that, Balthazar downs half of that glass in one go.
Sam should really just leave him to his business, but Balthazar looks half shocked and half totally out of his depth, and Sam figures it’s only understandable. And he also knows how much it sucks not to have anyone around in that case. He sighs and sits down - at least, out of the two angels that popped out of nowhere in this house in the last five days, he got the easy-to-deal-with one.
“Fine. I’ll have a beer, you can have your whiskey, just get as wasted as you want.”
Balthazar shoots him a grateful look that’s gone in about half a second. Then he finishes the rest of the glass.
Sam pretends to drink his beer and thinks that for how crappy He is at his job, at least God is trying here. Too late, but Sam has his experience with crappy fathers, so he’ll just stay here for now and look at how things go and try not to freak out too much. It doesn’t sound like a bad plan for the foreseeable future.
End.