Fic: The Second Hand Unwinds 1/2 (Supernatural; Dean/ Castiel AU, PG-13)
Title: The Second Hand Unwinds 1/2
Author: misachan
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9K (Total 18,440)
Summary: Dean wakes up one morning to find that while only one night passed for him the rest of the world has moved ahead eight years. That's a lot to catch up on, and repairing the mess his long absence made of his life and the lives of those around him would be easier if he had any idea what in the hell had happened. Then one night Dean spots a stranger in a trenchcoat watching him and knows he's found his first clue. An AU based on Disney's Flight of the Navigator, written for super_disney.
Dean blinked awake in the early morning light, checked the clock on the bedside table and swore. He hadn't meant to stay out the whole night and now he was going to have to book it to get back soon enough to shower and get ready for school. Not that he really cared one way or another if he got to school on time, but if he got Sam there one second late Dean knew the kid would bitch about it the rest of the day.
Still, he took the second to stretch and get his bearings. He felt weird and hung over, although he would swear he'd only had two beers and one of those hard lemonade things.... Dean realized he didn't actually remember the name of the girl who'd insisted he'd try the hard lemonade and whose bedroom he was currently lounging around in. Crap. Double crap, because he was pretty sure they were in the same homeroom.
Dean slipped out of the bed and looked around for his clothes; he was a little weirded out to find them neatly folded at the foot of the bed and filed away the knowledge that whoever-she-was was kind of a neat freak. Something about the room itself pinged him as wrong, too; he could swear the sheets had been a Hello Kitty pattern, not the boring floral one there now. If they'd gotten up to something freaky enough that they'd had to change the sheets then and there Dean hoped he'd remember it.
He pushed the thought aside. He had to get back to Bobby's, get Sam off to school and, most importantly, avoid any morning-after clinginess. Just as he'd gathered himself enough to make his escape Dean heard a sound by the door; he spun around and saw a little girl, three or four at the most, leaning against the door and staring up at him, her eyes wide. "Hey," Dean said, hoping she hadn't been there long enough to watch him get dressed. "I'm a friend of...I'm a friend," he said, suddenly wondering if climbing out the window was an option. The urge only intensified when the girl backed up and shouted "Mommy! Mommy! There's a strange man here!"
Dean didn't need any more prompting; he opened the window, swung himself out and dropped down, rolling when he fell to make a safe if not exactly graceful landing. The last thing he needed was angry parents making trouble for him, although Dean could swear the chick had said her parents were away for the week and he didn't think she'd mentioned any little sisters.
He put all that out of his mind. There didn't seem to be any alarms being raised and Dean crept along the side of the house, eager to get in his baby and be gone.
Dean pulled up short when he got to driveway and didn't see a black Impala parked there. He scanned the street but his car wasn't parked along the curb, either; after a few minutes of searching side streets he leaned against a telephone pole and tried to figure what in the hell had happened last night. Had they come in her car? It would be weird if they did; Dean liked to do the driving and half the time he thought girls liked his ride better than they liked him. But there was a car in the driveway, just not his, and if her parents had been out he knew he would have parked there. He wondered for a second if it had gotten stolen, but his phone was dead and he couldn't call around to see. Dean decided to just get to Bobby's and deal with it there.
It was about a twenty minute walk to Bobby's place just outside town and Dean didn't know how he didn't realize how run down the place was before. He swore the clutter from the scrap yard had multiplied over night. He didn't see his car here either and genuinely started to worry; his key didn't open the lock but the front door was always kind of fussy (Bobby liked it that way. He always said that anything that kept the idjits of the world away from his house was fine by him.) After a few minutes of fiddling with the lock Dean got it to slide open, sneaking inside and almost tripping over a box of whatever it was Bobby'd just parked in the hallway, Dean was afraid to look. "I swear, you're turning into a fucking hoarder, Bobby," he said, navigating his way around stacks of books. "Sam! Get your ass up, you're gonna be late for school!" There was no answer and Dean cursed his brother's ability to sleep through an air raid.
The kitchen was cold. Dean paused for a second in the doorway, a little flutter of wrong circling its way around his spine. Bobby was an obscenely early riser and even if he always said Dean and Sam were old enough to cook their own damn breakfast half the time he did it anyway, and either way he always made coffee. "Bobby? Sam? Everything okay?" He stomped his way up the stairs, trying to keep the worry from turning into panic. Bobby wasn't as young as he used to be and God knew he didn't take care of himself.
He had just reached the top of the stairs when he heard the sound of a door opening behind him. "Now you stop right there."
Dean turned around to see Bobby just outside the door to his bedroom and pointing a shotgun right at Dean. Because of course he was. "Jesus, Bobby, could you be any more paranoid? You're gonna hurt someone with that some day."
All Bobby did was stare. "Dean?"
Dean didn't know if worry even started to describe what he was feeling. Bobby was looking at Dean like was a ghost, and he'd never heard Bobby's voice sound like that. Old and fragile. If there was one thing Bobby Singer didn't do, it was fragile. "Who else would I be?"
Bobby dropped the shotgun to the floor like he'd forgotten he was holding it - everything about that was wrong, aside from his dad Dean had never met someone who took guns more seriously than Bobby - and he walked toward Dean, touching his arm like he wanted to make sure Dean was solid. "You look exactly the same," he whispered, like he was talking to himself. "How in the world can you look the same?"
"I don't...Bobby, what's wro---"
Bobby wrapped him up in an enormous hug, tight enough that Dean couldn't breathe for a second. "Boy, where in the hell have you been?"
"I...I hooked up with some girl, it's no big deal, I do that all the time." Dean was horrified to realize the old man was crying. It hit Dean all at once that something must have happened to Sam, an accident or something while Dean was out and no one could find him because his phone died. "Bobby, it was just one night, what happened?"
Bobby shook his head. "Dean, you've been gone eight years."
***
Dean balanced the photo album on lap and tried to keep his head from spinning. "Sam's taking the next flight out," Bobby said, sitting on the couch next to Dean.
"Can't believe the little brat's in college."
"In college, hell, about to start law school. Got a free ride and everything." He turned the page to a photo of Sam in his high school graduation gown, staring glumly at the camera. "No one deserves it more than him."
"How come he's the only one not smiling here?" Dean asked, pointing at the picture.
"Kid's had a rough time."
Dean kept paging through the pictures, looking at missed birthday parties as Sam went from a scrawny fourteen-year-old to a floppy-haired adult in the span of a few pages. "How come there's no picture from the fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays? He hide from the camera for two years?"
"Something like that."
Dean closed the book and looked up at Bobby; he kept staring at Dean like he expected him to disappear. "I'm not going anywhere, Bobby. You know that."
"Where were you all this time? You fell off the face of the earth, we had the cops, the FBI, everyone looking for you. They tried to say you'd just run off but we both knew you'd never do that."
"Of course I fucking wouldn't." Dean leaned against the couch, his hands over his face. "I don't know, Bobby. I swear, it's just been one night for me. It's like I slept through eight years."
"If you'd slept you'd have aged. How in the hell can you still be eighteen?"
Dean just let out a sigh. "I don't know. Sure as hell wish I did." He rubbed his eyes, absolutely refusing to cry. "When's Sam gonna get here?"
"Around noon, depending on how his flights go. The weather's been bad around Denver and he's gotta make a connection there."
"Can't wait." He stretched a kink out of his neck; he didn't know how he could have apparently slept for eight years and still be so tired. "Do I even want to ask about my car?"
The corners of Bobby's mouth twitched up. "Under cover out back. Haven't touched it in years, so I can't say what shape it's in...."
"She'll run for me."
His eyelids were drooping and Bobby clapped him on the shoulder. "You should head upstairs. You've got a hell of a day tomorrow."
Dean nodded vaguely and headed upstairs, so overloaded with information he felt drunk. It was hard to believe he could have really lost eight years, not when Bobby's house was the same; more cluttered maybe, more worn, but still familiar. The crack that ran up along the bannister, the way you had to watch the third step from the top because the edge was worn away, Dean knew all of it so well he could almost believe it had only been one night.
Seeing his room didn't help. Oh, Sam's side of the room was different, the wall stripped bare of the Star Wars posters and other stuff that lingered in Dean's memory, but from what he could see his own side hadn't been touched. Like Bobby had been waiting for him. "Jesus, Bobby. This is kind of sad."
He kicked off his shoes and stretched out. It was weird trying to sleep without Sam on the other side of the room. He closed his eyes, hoping that maybe if he wanted it hard enough all of this would just be a long, terrible dream.
There was something he hadn't told Bobby, something he hadn't noticed until he'd stripped to take a much needed shower and caught his reflection in the mirror. He couldn't feel it and he didn't know what it meant, but there was a handprint across his left shoulder, like someone had branded it there. Dean studied it for a long, long moment, his heart pounding, then he put his shirt back on to cover it and turned off the light.
***
A clap of thunder jarred Dean awake. He cracked his eyes open and groaned when he saw the empty bed and bare wall across the room; all of that apparently had happened. He rolled over, his head pounding, and checked to make sure he'd closed the window.
A flash of lightning illuminated the room and Dean felt his blood freeze. In that instant he'd seen a man standing in the corner of the room watching him, a dark-haired man wearing a trenchcoat, his arms crossed over his chest; Dean hit the lights and tumbled out of the bed, ready for the fight.
No one was there. Dean thought he'd heard a sound, almost like a bird in flight, but the room was empty and he was alone.
***
Dean pulled the tarp off of the car, his heart clenching at seeing his baby's paint dull and covered in dust. The driver's side door creaked when he opened it; Dean slid inside, running his fingers across the dashboard and along the curve of the steering wheel. "You miss me, girl?" he whispered, adjusting the rearview mirror. He put the key in the ignition and winced when the engine only sputtered.
"It's been eight years, Dean. I told you it might not start."
"I'll get her to start." Dean popped the hood, grabbing his toolkit and getting to work.
"You want some help---?"
"I got this, Bobby," he said, already poking at the transmission.
He saw Bobby shake his head. "You holler if you want any help. I've got some calls to make."
Dean barely even heard him, too consumed in trying to undo the damage his absence had done. At least that was something he could fix.
He lost track of time, the way he always did when he worked on his car, so he didn't know how long it was before he heard steps crunching up the gravel path. "Told you, Bobby, I'm good out here."
"Dean?"
Dean dropped his wrench into the dirt. He turned around and saw a man in a sharp suit standing at the edge of the scrapyard. "Sammy?" Dean would never admit it to himself but he wouldn't have recognized Sam if he'd passed him on the street. "That you?"
"Dean?" the man whispered again, a tremor to the word this time and that, that was his brother's voice. "Bobby told me but I didn't believe him, I couldn't...."
Dean walked over to him, stopping himself from throwing his arms around Sam at the last second. "Shit, I'm covered in oil-"
"I don't care." Sam practically picked Dean up, he hugged him so hard. "I thought I was never going to see you again. I thought you were gone."
"Never, Sam. That would never happen."
"Everyone tried to make me think you'd just run out but I knew you wouldn't...." he whispered into Dean's hair, his voice cracking.
"I don't believe you're fucking taller than me."
"I don't believe you're this short."
"Bitch."
"Jerk." Sam finally let him go and Dean rubbed feeling back into his arms. "Where have you been all this time? What happened?"
"I have no idea, Sam. I swear I don't. It was like one night passed for me. You should've seen Bobby, I think I almost gave him a heart attack."
"I don't blame him. Just looking at you, it's like...God, I feel like I'm fourteen again."
Dean felt an uneasy silence press down between them, all the worse because the last person on Earth he ever thought he'd feel awkward around was his little brother. Now that the reunion part was over and done with Dean just didn't know what to say. "So, um...heard you conned your way into law school."
Sam grinned, clearly relieved Dean had broken the silence first. "Yeah. I start the last week in August."
"Do you know what kind of...?"
"Adoption law."
Dean shook his head. "Figured you go for a do-gooder specialty."
Sam nodded over Dean's shoulder. "What's wrong with the car?"
"Poor girl's been neglected."
"You want some help fixing her up?"
Dean's chest burned. He remembered teaching Sam the different parts of the engine on this car. "Pretty sure I'd like that more than anything." He gave Sam a critical once-over. "As long as you don't mind getting that fancy suit dirty."
***
The work took most of the day, and even if he and Sam never did find their old groove it felt so good to be right next to his brother Dean almost didn't care. When they went to bed that night, Sam back in his old bed across the room even though he really was too tall for it now, Dean could almost pretend things could just snap back to normal.
That lasted until he woke up in the morning and found Sam already gone. "What to you mean he just left?" Dean asked Bobby, too upset to even start picking at his eggs. "I thought we'd finish the car today."
"All he told me is that he had a paper to write and needed to head to the library. He does still need to graduate college before he gets to law school, you know."
Dean supposed that made sense. It would make more sense if he didn't know that the library opened at ten and it was still only 8:30, but he got the definite impression Bobby wanted him to leave this one alone. "Guess we can finish working on it when he gets back."
"Speaking of school," Bobby said, giving Dean a look that was almost an apology, "You're going on Monday."
"Aw, c'mon Bobby, you're kidding."
"Don't you give me that. I promised your father I'd make you two graduate and just because Sam went above and beyond doesn't mean you're in the clear."
Dean jabbed at the now cold eggs with his fork. "Talk about giving a guy a chance to adjust."
"You should be thanking me. At first they wanted you to start the year over. I talked the principal into giving you time served. You can graduate in June and be done with it."
"Man, that's just the last thing I thought I'd have to worry about." He pushed the eggs around his plate, the slight appetite he'd sat down with now gone entirely. "Is Sam okay?"
"How do you mean?"
Dean didn't like how carefully Bobby said that. "I don't know. He's just quiet. I mean, he was never the chattiest kid in the world but not like this. I tried to get him to talk about school but he brushed me off every time. Sam loves talking about school."
"Did love talking about school. Eight years is a long time, Dean. He's grown now, you can't expect him to act the same way he did when he was just a kid."
Dean finally pushed his plate away. "I'm gonna go find him. Something's wrong, I know it, and we're gonna hash it out right now."
"I wouldn't go out there---"
"Bobby, I know you're trying to help but believe me, I got this."
He'd barely opened the front door when a flashbulb went off full in his face. "Dean!" shouted a strange voice while he tried to blink the spots away from his vision. "Dean what can you tell us?"
"Where were you all those years?" said another voice, a male one this time. "Were you kidnapped?"
Dean felt like every reporter in South Dakota was camped out at his front door; he counted ten before he gave up, half with a full camera crew, and he saw one of the network news vans parked across the street. He opened his mouth to answer that last question, but before he could say anything (which was a good thing, because Dean had no idea how to answer these questions) another male voice called out, "We'll give you an exclusive, Dean! All the time you want!"
He heard someone shush the man, then someone else, Dean couldn't begin to keep track, said, "Why haven't you aged? Would you submit to a DNA test?"
More questions came, an endless stream of them that all blended together into so much gibberish; before Dean could start talking and embarrass himself he felt Bobby grab his arm and yank him back from the doorway, shutting it in the reporters' faces. He didn't think he'd ever loved the old man more in his life. "That's why I didn't want you to go outside."
"What the hell, Bobby?"
"You came back after eight years looking like you took a quick nap, Dean. That's an honest-to-God miracle, did you think the vultures wouldn't start circling?" He pushed Dean toward the back of the house. "Here, sneak out the back if you're set on leaving. I'll distract them."
Dean had no idea what that meant, and a mean, panicky part of him hoped Bobby intended to distract them with his shotgun. He slipped through the crooked wooden door out back and circled around, seeing that Bobby had indeed brought his shotgun out for his little meeting with the press. Dean knew it was a bad idea to stick around and took off for a side street, pulling his hood up in the hopes he could avoid being recognized and ratted out by some random passerby. He just hoped Bobby didn't get himself arrested.
Dean still knew the streets but a lot of the landmarks he depended on for navigation were gone; the corner market that had the best roast beef in the state was a travel agency, the old dance studio was had been torn down to make room for a farmer's market, and the video store was gone completely, just an empty building with a faded sign. He got turned around more than once trying to find the library, only realizing once he finally did find it what a circus his being seen standing next to Sam could turn into. He decided to risk heading for home; hopefully Bobby had frightened everyone away and he could start the day over.
Then from the corner of his eye Dean saw a flash of a tan trenchcoat. He whipped his head around just in time to see a dark-haired man disappear around a corner. Dean felt his heart pound as he took off running after him. "Hey! Hey you, in the coat! Who the hell are you?" He almost caught up with him once, jumping back just in time to avoid getting hit by the crosstown express and watch helplessly as his quarry disappeared around another corner. It was the man who'd been in his room, Dean knew it, and he was going to find out why.
He searched for the rest of the day without even a single sighting of the stranger in the trenchcoat, long enough for Dean to start doubting his senses. He finally headed for home at dusk, so tired he didn't even remember to check if the press was still massed outside his door.
They weren't, fortunately, and Dean at least found the presence of mind to pull all the shades before peeling off his jacket and dropping down into a chair in the kitchen, his head in his hands. There was a covered dish in his usual place, a post-it note stuck to it reading, "You missed dinner, idjit," and Dean smiled for the first time all day. He didn't even bother heating the food up, so hungry he just wolfed it down, then he put the dish in the sink and got up to find Bobby and Sam. It didn't take long to realize the house was dark; he found a page of movie times ripped from that day's newspaper tacked up on the corkboard in the hall. It stung for a second that they'd gone without him, but he figured it was his own fault for running out without his phone. Even if he did really hustle and manage to catch up with them, with his luck the reporters would just swoop back in and ruin it for everyone.
And anyway, he supposed Sam and Bobby had a lot to talk about. Him, specifically.
Dean flopped into Bobby's ancient armchair and turned on the game, needed something to make the house less quiet. He wondered how Bobby had stood it all that time Sam was off at school and he was...well, wherever it was he'd been.
He woke the next morning still in the chair, a blanket thrown over him. When he wandered into the kitchen for breakfast Sam brought up helping him finishing fixing the car without Dean having to say a single word, and Dean sent Bobby a silent look of thank you before they both went out the door.
***
It took two more days for Dean to spot the man in the trenchcoat again. He was lurking in the alley behind the old hardware store and tried to slip back into the shadows when Dean spotted him, but Dean was determined he wasn't getting away so easy this time. He knew something his creepy stalker didn't: the alley behind the block of stores there might twist around but it stopped in a dead end. Dean smiled to himself when the man tried to retreat further into the alley, the way he had days before. This time Dean had him.
It took a few minutes of sneaking around corners, but finally Dean managed to reach out and snag the man by his collar. "Now tell me who you are, you fucking...."
The man was gone. The man was gone and in his place there was a thing, a tower of light as big as a skyscraper. Dean tumbled backward, tripping over a tipped-over garbage can as he stared up at it, pain stabbing through his eyes like knives; he saw six unfurled wings, like they were made from rays of the sun and his mind couldn't decide whether the thing had one face or none or four, everything was just so bright.
Then in an instant he felt a hand clamp over his eyes, the light blinking out like he'd imagined it. "Well, the cloaking mechanism clearly doesn't work," he heard someone sigh, the voice deep and rasping. His eyes burned so much for a second he thought he'd caught fire; he felt wetness trailing down his face and didn't know if it was tears or blood. "Dean, open your eyes and look at me."
Dean followed the command, in too much pain to question it; he didn't see anything except darkness and felt himself start to shake. "Oh God. Oh God, I'm blind."
He felt a hand tip his chin up. "You damaged your retinas," he heard that strange voice say with another little sigh.
"I don't want to be blind."
"They can be repaired." Dean felt fingers press against his temple. "You'll have to come with me." Before he could even think about arguing he felt cold wrap around him, his stomach churning and trying to climb up through his mouth as a force pulled him through space.
When he came to he found himself on a metal table, not like an operating room table but one that was all curves, suspended in mid-air with seemingly nothing to support it. The metal was smooth and warm to the touch, a faint vibration running through it that reminded Dean of a heartbeat. It took a few minutes for him to wake up enough to realize he could see again and a few more until he was sure he wasn't about to cry. The ceiling above him was metal like the table and domed, supportive cross hatching running all the way across it. Lights embedded in the walls blinked in random patterns, and on an enormous video screen Dean could see various maps and diagrams and notes, all written in a language he couldn't read.
"Good. You're awake."
Dean turned his head and saw the dark-haired man leaning against another console, his sleeves rolled up and trenchcoat toss over a chair. "Did we fly here?"
"Of course not," the man said, as if that was a ridiculous statement. "That was a short-range teleport."
"You were in my bedroom," he said, still trying to get his wits back around him.
The man nodded. "Yes, I was."
"Why?"
"You're not adjusting as you should be. I wanted to discover why."
And suddenly everything was very clear. "You did this to me. You're why I skipped ahead eight years."
The man looked down at the floor. "Yes."
"Who the fuck are you?"
"My name is Castiel."
"Castiel what?"
Castiel tilted his head to the side. "We don't have family names as you do."
"'We don't....'" Dean felt his heart hammering as he looked around the strange, metallic room, slowly realizing he should replace the word room with ship. "You're not from Earth."
"That's true."
"You kidnapped me."
Castiel ran his tongue over his lips, and Dean felt fury take hold at seeing such a human gesture from this thing. "I would argue with that wording."
"What the fuck are you? Why did you take me?"
"I'm a researcher," Castiel said, and Dean couldn't believe he had the nerve to sound offended. "My purpose is to study and catalogue organisms from different worlds."
"You...." Dean narrowed his eyes. "Did you probe me?"
Castiel tilted his head to the side again, as if he didn't quite understand the question. "I...studied you, certainly. My examinations were entirely noninvasive, if that's what's concerning you."
"Right," Dean said with a bitter, scoffing laugh. "Noninvasive for eight fucking years."
"The tests are comprehensive but time consuming. That's why you were put in stasis the entire time, so you could be returned to the moment you were collected with no knowledge anything had been amiss."
"Yeah, that worked out real fucking well."
Castiel let out a soft sigh, his brow furrowing. "The human life force is too fragile to withstand time travel. It's a very rare complication. And even when it does occur, most of my subjects don't have nearly the amount of trouble adjusting you've shown."
"I'm not your subject." Dean pushed himself up so he was sitting. "And what kind of other subjects? How many other people have you done this to?"
"You're the first human I've collected," Castiel snapped. "That's why I didn't know how you would react to the time travel."
"And you thought I would just adjust? I'm not some chipmunk you can release out into the woods, losing eight years is a big deal!"
"Eight years is a relatively inconsequential span of time, even for a creature with your life span. Would you rather I let you die?"
"I want to know what you did to me. You said the tests you ran were noninvasive, right?" Dean said, a savage twist to the words. When Castiel nodded, Dean rolled up his sleeve, exposing the handprint scar. "Then explain this."
Castiel's lips went thin. "When I realized the time travel was going wrong I had to stop it manually. That happened when I pulled you out." He reached out as if he meant to touch the mark, pulling back when Dean flinched. "That was the only time I touched you, Dean, I swear," he said instead, those intense blue eyes locking with Dean's.
"Aside from whatever you were doing to me for eight years."
"Ten years," Castiel corrected. When Dean looked up he continued, "the experiments span ten years. We managed to go back two before I realized the process was killing you. And as I said before, the tests were entirely noninvasive."
Ten years. Dean felt his skin crawl just at the thought. "That big glowy thing in the alley. That was you?"
Castiel nodded. "That was my true form. Your eyes aren't structured in a way that would allow you to perceive me safely."
"How come they're not exploding from my sockets now?"
"I'm using a matter converter to make my form better match yours. It should be more effective than the glamour I was using," he said, as if that made any kind of sense.
"Why me?" Dean whispered. "Why did you take me?"
Castiel's brow furrowed again. "You're into full adulthood, in perfect health and are considered an attractive reproductive partner by others of your kind. In addition, you represent the culturally dominant race and sex for your species, at least on this particular section of the planet. You're a very good representative of your species, Dean."
"Stop talking about me like I'm some guinea pig."
Castiel looked baffled. "When did I speak to you as if you were a southern hemisphere rodent?"
Dean shook his head. "Take me back. Right now, take me back."
"No. It would be fatal."
"I'll risk it."
"I won't risk killing you. And at any rate, my ship was damaged during the last aborted time jump. Even if you could survive the process I have to make extensive repairs. You'll just have to adjust...."
Dean jumped off the table and punched Castiel in the mouth before he could say another word. He watched the alien stagger back off his feet, silver blood trickling from his split lip. "You made me miss eight years of my brother's life. When our dad died I promised him it was going to be okay, I was always gonna be right there and I wasn't because of you." He waited for Castiel to attack him back but he stayed on the floor, that first flash of fury melting into something that looked a lot like shame. "Take me back home." Castiel nodded, getting back to his feet and pressing his fingers back to Dean's forehead. When Dean opened his eyes again he was at his front door.
The first thing Dean did was grab a bottle of Bobby's good scotch and drink until he could forget any of that ever happened.
***
If there was one good thing about notoriety, it was the girls who just had to find out if Dean was for real. Dean was pretty sure there was some kind of dare going on between the girls in his history class but if it let him make out with chicks in halter tops in alleys he really didn't care what kind of stories they were passing around about him. The girl he was kissing now was named Betty or Bonnie, some name that started with a B, Dean couldn't remember just then; all he knew was that she sat two rows behind him and had sauntered up to his locker after class and asked if he wanted to "have some fun." There were worse ways to adjust back to high school.
Dean let her press him against the wall behind the movie theater, grinning when she slid one hand past his waistband. "Girls work fast nowadays."
She giggled. "Welcome to the future, Dean Winchester."
It was a terrible line but Dean didn't care. He'd just managed to unhook her bra when he looked over her shoulder and saw Castiel leaning against the opposite wall of the alley, his head cocked to the side and brow furrowed as he watched them. Dean jumped back, almost banging his head against the wall. "Jesus."
Betty-Bonnie turned around and screamed, first shrinking back against Dean then pulling back like he was on fire. Dean didn't know why she decided this was his fault but she slapped him so hard his ears rang. "Freak," she spit out before stomping out of the alley.
"Thanks, Cas."
Castiel frowned. "That's not my name. I told you, it's...."
"Your name is long and girly and I'll call you what I want." Dean sighed, running one hand through his hair. "Why the hell are you here?"
"You pointed out that my understanding of your culture is...deficient. Since I'm stranded here while making repairs I thought I might remedy that." He crossed his arms, looking at Dean like he was some kind of fascinating insect. "What's the purpose of that behavior? The pressing of mouths together?"
Dean slumped against the wall. "Kissing, you mean?"
Castiel nodded once. "It's not part of the reproductive act."
Dean buried his face in his hands. He was not about to have the Talk with a space alien. "Sure it is. I mean, usually you're hoping it gets you there, but it doesn't have to."
"But then what's the purpose of it?"
"It...I don't know, it feels good. It gets the blood pumping, y'know?" he said, although he could see Castiel really didn't. "It's just something two people do when they figure out they like each other. Maybe it leads to sex - and man, I don't know what sex is for you guys, but trust me, it's awesome, way more than just a reproductive act - but it doesn't have to, it's fun on its own. Hell, sometimes it's how you let someone know you like them that way in the first place."
"Did you have special regard for that female?"
Dean sighed. This was going to take a while. "I didn't even know her name. I'm not real picky about who I'll kiss, I guess, but not everyone's like that. And it is different when it's someone you really like. Lots of times it's easier to get up your courage and just kiss someone than try to tell them you like them in the first place."
Castiel let out a soft, frustrated breath. "Your species is complicated. I have trouble with your non-verbal communication," he admitted. "Perhaps if I'd collected more samples...."
"No," Dean snapped, taking a step toward Castiel who for his part backed away, clearly confused by Dean's sudden anger. "You don't do this to anyone else, you hear me?"
"I'm not planning to. I just want to understand."
Dean rubbed his forehead, trying to push back the ache growing from his temples. "I get that," he said, although he refused to apologize to this thing. "Look, if you really have stuff you need to know about us you can ask me. Just don't drag anyone else into this."
"That...could be valuable," he said, as if mulling that over. "Would you be willing to submit to further examination, as well? There are several tests that can only be performed on a responsive subject."
Dean sighed. "I guess, if it'll keep you from getting curious enough to kidnap anyone else. Just...I don't know, call me your patient if you have to call me something. Subject just makes me feel like a rat in a maze. And no cutting me open or anything like that."
He saw Castiel's mouth go tight. "I'm not a butcher, Dean. I have no interest in harming you."
"Could've fooled me," Dean said under breath.
Before Dean could react Castiel stepped toward him, his eyes narrowed as he examined Dean and standing close enough that Dean could feel him breathing. He resolved that the first thing he was going to teach the guy was a little thing called personal space. "How are your eyes?"
"Um...Okay. Good, even. I think whatever you did actually made me see better."
Castiel nodded. "They're an interesting color."
"Thanks?" Castiel nodded again, stepping back. "Your lip looks healed up," Dean said, not sure why he'd blurted that out.
Castiel seemed pleased Dean had noticed. "I heal quickly." He glanced around quickly before stepping back toward Dean, dropping his voice low. "My ship is docked several blocks east of here, disguised as a shuttered storefront. It's an illusion, a stronger version of the one I wore the night you caught me in the alleyway. You shouldn't have any trouble finding it." And Dean realized he did know exactly the place Castiel was talking about, he must have passed it dozens of times. "I'll program the defenses to allow you entry."
"I thought your ship was broken."
"Only the propulsion systems," he said with a frustrated sigh. It reminded Dean of how sometimes his baby's engine would seize up for no reason and Dean was surprised to feel that sudden flash of sympathy wash through him. He hoped Castiel hadn't noticed. "The interior and security systems work fine." It looked for a second like he wanted to say something else but couldn't find the right words. "I look forward to seeing you." Then he teleported away with that strange sound of wings.
Dean decided to cut his losses and head home before his day could get any weirder.
***
Castiel's tests weren't really so bad, all things considered. Mostly it was just electrodes attached to his pressure points, not so different than if he was getting a stress test or an ekg. These were wireless, though, and a hell of a lot more comfortable than the ones he'd put up with when Bobby'd insisted he'd go to the hospital to get checked out after his dramatic return. The first few times Castiel tested how he reacted to stimuli, heat and cold and things like that, but never anything painful. It was actually kind of relaxing, sometimes, even though Dean would rather put bamboo under his nails than admit that out loud. Dean gave the ship a lot of credit for that; he'd grown to really like the place, the graceful curves of it and how it seemed way bigger than it realistically could be. He'd asked Castiel about that once, gotten a lecture on differing theories of dimensional space and never asked again.
A lot of times the tests were nothing more than Castiel having Dean talk while he studied read outs on his computer screen; Dean guessed they were brain waves but he'd never asked. "Why all the questions about my dad today?"
"You react very strongly to them."
"Yeah. Guess so." He let out a long breath. "He died a week after I turned eighteen. He was in the service, y'know? Total badass. I always figured I'd go in too, but obviously I had to take care of Sam. Our mom died when he was just a baby so with my dad gone it was just the two of us. Well, and Bobby too, I guess, but that's different. I tell you, thank God I was eighteen when Dad died, who knows what would have happened to me and Sam if we'd been younger." He remembered how Sam had held it together through the entire funeral service, even when the honor guard had given him the flag, and how that had all fallen apart the second they got home. "I keep thinking about how Sam basically lost me and Dad within, God, barely eight months of each other. I don't know how he stayed upright."
Castiel didn't respond and Dean didn't have anything else to say. The silence stretched on long enough that Dean had almost fallen asleep when Castiel finally spoke, his voice very soft. "Why do you submit to this so easily, Dean?"
"What do you mean?"
Castiel turned halfway around so he could catch Dean's eye. "I've been watching you," he said, not responding when Dean muttered stalker under his breath. "You push back when others try to coerce you. You're very stubborn."
Dean decided to take that as a compliment. "Honestly?"
"Always."
Dean sighed. "I know how this sounds, but sometimes it's like this is the only part of my life that makes sense anymore. I mean, you're an alien and I'm a human so you want to figure me out, that's fucked up but I can wrap my mind around it."
Castiel looked back up at his screen. "Should I interpret that to mean your adjustment hasn't become any smoother?"
Dean stared up at the delicate cross hatching that made up the vaulted ceiling; they'd started glowing a soft rose when he'd stepped through the door, like the ship was a living thing happy to see him. "It sucks. I never liked school but this is a thousand times worse. Everyone who'd been in my class before have all either moved away or they're married with kids, and the people I'm around now...I mean, they're younger than Sam. They were ten years old when I left. The girls are hot but once we start talking our childhoods don't match up and it gets weird. I feel fucking old, Cas." He scowled, crossing his arms over his chest before Castiel motioned for him to stop. "And I don't know what happened to music in eight years but the crap these kids listen to sucks." He shook his head. "Jesus, I sound like Bobby."
"I'm sure the culture shock will fade."
"It's not just that. Everyone knows me. They hear my name and everyone knows I'm that guy, the walking time capsule. I feel like I'm in a zoo half the time, and it's not just the kids, it's the teachers, too." He drummed his fingers against the table.
"Your pulse rate is rising."
"Yeah, I bet it is." He sighed. "My English teacher is a year younger than me. A year younger than I should be, I mean, she was a junior when I was a senior and we went out for, like, two months. Now I have to call her Miss and act like I don't know she likes to get spanked. And she looks at me like I'm dirt, like she's pissed I'm still a teenager and she's not, like I did it personally to spite her. And we've still got reporters calling at all hours, and lately there's been this weirdo from DC calling, saying I 'owe it to medical science' to let him take samples from me. I'm worried I'm gonna wake up one day and he'll just be at the front door." He laced his fingers behind his head. "Sometimes it feels like this is the only place where I don't feel like a total freak, fucked up as that is."
"Have things improved between you and Sam?"
Dean let out a long sigh. "I don't know. I just want things to go back the way they were. Maybe that's not fair, but in my head he's still this dorky fourteen-year-old. I think I'm probably pushing too hard. It's like we forgot how to talk to each other."
Castiel tapped his fingers against the console, his expression thoughtful. "I have brothers and sisters as well. Many of them. I haven't seen any of them since I left to pursue my work, a very long time ago."
Dean leaned up on his elbows. He'd never gotten Castiel to talk about himself before. "So what's the deal with you guys? Do you, I don't know, hatch or what?" Castiel just gave him a look, like that was a ridiculous question and Dean decided to let that drop. "What do you do with all this stuff you're collecting?" he asked instead, nodding toward Castiel's absurdly huge computer. "You're not prepping an invasion force or anything, are you?"
"Hardly," he said, but he seemed to get that Dean was kidding. "I send the raw data and my interpretations back to be archived and examined. It's our goal to examine and catalogue all life." There was something almost wistful in his expression. "It's a futile goal, of course. The universe is much too vast."
"So what kind of feedback are you getting back?"
His expression clouded. "Unfortunately our communications are less sophisticated than our data streaming."
"So, what? How often do you hear back?"
Castiel glanced back at him. "I'm very far from home, Dean. This galaxy wasn't even on our charts. At first communication was frequent but as I ventured out further it became more sporadic. I don't know why. Interference, perhaps. Or just merely distance."
There was an ache in his voice that caught Dean off guard. "You don't hear back at all anymore, do you."
Castiel shook his head. "Not in a very long time."
"How do you know anyone's still getting the stuff you send back? How do you even know the place is still there?"
He wished he could take that back when he saw that quick, pained flash in Castiel's eyes; he still hadn't forgiven the guy but suggesting Hey, how do you know your planet hasn't blown up? was a pretty dick thing to do. Even the colors in the ship got darker for a second, like it was telling Dean to shut up. "The thought's occurred to me," he admitted. "We have enemies. There's no way to know for sure, I suppose."
"So why do you bother? Not the going around examining things, I get you're a scientist and they're nerds like that, but why send stuff back?"
"I believe your people call it faith."
Dean supposed he could get behind that. He knew that if was separated from Sam he would never give up on seeing him again. "So, are there really little green men in flying saucers out there?"
"Your culture's myths are fascinating. No, there aren't, at least none I've seen." That distant, wistful expression was back. "You'd be surprised at how few truly sapient races there are in the universe, Dean. And of those, how few are friendly. That night you caught me in that alley was the first time I'd spoken to a another being in one thousand years. As you view them, at any rate."
Dean felt his mind tried to grapple with that before giving up in horror. No wonder he'd thought losing eight years would be no big deal if he counted his own age in thousands. "How are you not crazy?" Dean said, sitting up on the table. "Crazier, anyway?"
"I've grown used to the solitude." He tilted his head at Dean in the way he had when Dean was doing something he didn't understand. "There's no need for sympathy. I understood what was before me when I accepted this calling. It's understood that most researchers never return." He walked back toward Dean and started to remove the electrodes, as carefully as if Dean was made of glass. "I've taken enough of your time for today," he said, then Dean heard that wingbeat and found himself standing outside his door.
***
Dean walked in to find Sam at the kitchen table, books spread over every available flat surface and his computer on his lap. "Whatcha working on?"
"My professors let me take my two final classes online, but I still have to get everything in on time. I never realized how much I missed the campus library. And how is Bobby still on dial-up? Who does that?"
Dean pulled up a chair, careful not to knock over Sam's book tower. "Any way I can help?"
"I'm good, Dean."
"C'mon. I always help you with your homework."
Sam's lips quirked up. "I kind of remember it more as you trying to get me to do your homework."
Okay, so maybe that was technically true. "I've helped. Remember the science fair?"
"My homework's a little more complicated than putting formulas on posterboard now."
"I still helped. And you won that year."
Sam went back to typing. "I appreciate the interest, Dean, but I've gotta put down five thousand words by the end of the night."
Just then Sam's phone went off, letting Dean catch a glimpse of a blond girl's picture and the name JESS before Sam snatched the phone away and silenced it. "Heeeeey. Who's that?"
"None of your business," Sam muttered, but Dean knew that blush.
"Sam has a girlfriend," Dean sing-songed at him.
"Fiancee," he mumbled, and even the tips of his ears were red now.
"Fiancee? Seriously? How long?"
"A few months now."
"Does Bobby know?"
"Of course Bobby knows. He's the one who told me to get over myself and ask. He just used the word idjit more."
"That's awesome, Sammy---"
"Don't call me that." Sam sighed, rubbing his forehead.
Dean just watched him for a long moment. "Are you pissed off at me?"
Sam just sighed again. "Of course not."
"You sure? Because this is exactly how you act when you're pissed off at me. You didn't even want to tell me you were engaged."
"That's not true."
"It's not? If your phone hadn't gone off, when would you have told me?" Suddenly it hit Dean what was really going on here. "She doesn't know I'm back." Sam didn't answer and Dean knew he was right. "What the fuck, Sam?"
"When Bobby told me you were back I didn't believe it. I couldn't believe it, so I made something up."
"And you just never told her."
Sam let out a long breath. "It's just...how do I tell someone about this? I mean, look at you. You're my older brother but suddenly you're four years younger than me. How do you explain something like that?"
Dean studied his brother for a long second. "I'm not going anywhere, Sam."
"How am I supposed to believe that?" Sam snapped at him, his voice cracking in a way that tied Dean in knots. "You fell off the face of the Earth once, who's to say you won't again? You said yourself you don't know what happened."
Dean stayed quiet, his stomach churning. When he'd said that he hadn't known, that had been true then, but he sure as hell knew now. For a second he was tempted to spill everything to Sam but the anger in his brother's voice held him back. He remembered how Castiel had looked around before telling him the location of his ship and it hit him suddenly how naïve it had been to tell Dean that. Cas was trapped here. Every movie he'd ever seen about the government finding out about aliens flashed through his mind, and it startled Dean to realize that angry as he still was he didn't want to see the guy hurt.
Dean wanted to think Sam would keep the secret, and he knew full well the nerdy kid he'd known would have kept it without a second thought, but it sank through him like a poison that Dean didn't know his brother at all. "Yeah," Dean said, his mouth dry. "I don't know what happened."
Sam rubbed his eyes. "Sorry. I didn't mean to say all that. I'm just under a ton of stress right now. I really need to get this done," he said, almost apologetically.
"Hey, it's cool," he said, getting up to leave, and nothing had ever hurt as much as that flash of relief on Sam's face. "Let me know if I can do anything to help, okay?" he shouted over his shoulder as he headed upstairs. Sam raised one hand as he left, buried back in his work, and Dean knew full well he wouldn't.
On to Part 2
Back to Masterpost
Author: misachan
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9K (Total 18,440)
Summary: Dean wakes up one morning to find that while only one night passed for him the rest of the world has moved ahead eight years. That's a lot to catch up on, and repairing the mess his long absence made of his life and the lives of those around him would be easier if he had any idea what in the hell had happened. Then one night Dean spots a stranger in a trenchcoat watching him and knows he's found his first clue. An AU based on Disney's Flight of the Navigator, written for super_disney.
Dean blinked awake in the early morning light, checked the clock on the bedside table and swore. He hadn't meant to stay out the whole night and now he was going to have to book it to get back soon enough to shower and get ready for school. Not that he really cared one way or another if he got to school on time, but if he got Sam there one second late Dean knew the kid would bitch about it the rest of the day.
Still, he took the second to stretch and get his bearings. He felt weird and hung over, although he would swear he'd only had two beers and one of those hard lemonade things.... Dean realized he didn't actually remember the name of the girl who'd insisted he'd try the hard lemonade and whose bedroom he was currently lounging around in. Crap. Double crap, because he was pretty sure they were in the same homeroom.
Dean slipped out of the bed and looked around for his clothes; he was a little weirded out to find them neatly folded at the foot of the bed and filed away the knowledge that whoever-she-was was kind of a neat freak. Something about the room itself pinged him as wrong, too; he could swear the sheets had been a Hello Kitty pattern, not the boring floral one there now. If they'd gotten up to something freaky enough that they'd had to change the sheets then and there Dean hoped he'd remember it.
He pushed the thought aside. He had to get back to Bobby's, get Sam off to school and, most importantly, avoid any morning-after clinginess. Just as he'd gathered himself enough to make his escape Dean heard a sound by the door; he spun around and saw a little girl, three or four at the most, leaning against the door and staring up at him, her eyes wide. "Hey," Dean said, hoping she hadn't been there long enough to watch him get dressed. "I'm a friend of...I'm a friend," he said, suddenly wondering if climbing out the window was an option. The urge only intensified when the girl backed up and shouted "Mommy! Mommy! There's a strange man here!"
Dean didn't need any more prompting; he opened the window, swung himself out and dropped down, rolling when he fell to make a safe if not exactly graceful landing. The last thing he needed was angry parents making trouble for him, although Dean could swear the chick had said her parents were away for the week and he didn't think she'd mentioned any little sisters.
He put all that out of his mind. There didn't seem to be any alarms being raised and Dean crept along the side of the house, eager to get in his baby and be gone.
Dean pulled up short when he got to driveway and didn't see a black Impala parked there. He scanned the street but his car wasn't parked along the curb, either; after a few minutes of searching side streets he leaned against a telephone pole and tried to figure what in the hell had happened last night. Had they come in her car? It would be weird if they did; Dean liked to do the driving and half the time he thought girls liked his ride better than they liked him. But there was a car in the driveway, just not his, and if her parents had been out he knew he would have parked there. He wondered for a second if it had gotten stolen, but his phone was dead and he couldn't call around to see. Dean decided to just get to Bobby's and deal with it there.
It was about a twenty minute walk to Bobby's place just outside town and Dean didn't know how he didn't realize how run down the place was before. He swore the clutter from the scrap yard had multiplied over night. He didn't see his car here either and genuinely started to worry; his key didn't open the lock but the front door was always kind of fussy (Bobby liked it that way. He always said that anything that kept the idjits of the world away from his house was fine by him.) After a few minutes of fiddling with the lock Dean got it to slide open, sneaking inside and almost tripping over a box of whatever it was Bobby'd just parked in the hallway, Dean was afraid to look. "I swear, you're turning into a fucking hoarder, Bobby," he said, navigating his way around stacks of books. "Sam! Get your ass up, you're gonna be late for school!" There was no answer and Dean cursed his brother's ability to sleep through an air raid.
The kitchen was cold. Dean paused for a second in the doorway, a little flutter of wrong circling its way around his spine. Bobby was an obscenely early riser and even if he always said Dean and Sam were old enough to cook their own damn breakfast half the time he did it anyway, and either way he always made coffee. "Bobby? Sam? Everything okay?" He stomped his way up the stairs, trying to keep the worry from turning into panic. Bobby wasn't as young as he used to be and God knew he didn't take care of himself.
He had just reached the top of the stairs when he heard the sound of a door opening behind him. "Now you stop right there."
Dean turned around to see Bobby just outside the door to his bedroom and pointing a shotgun right at Dean. Because of course he was. "Jesus, Bobby, could you be any more paranoid? You're gonna hurt someone with that some day."
All Bobby did was stare. "Dean?"
Dean didn't know if worry even started to describe what he was feeling. Bobby was looking at Dean like was a ghost, and he'd never heard Bobby's voice sound like that. Old and fragile. If there was one thing Bobby Singer didn't do, it was fragile. "Who else would I be?"
Bobby dropped the shotgun to the floor like he'd forgotten he was holding it - everything about that was wrong, aside from his dad Dean had never met someone who took guns more seriously than Bobby - and he walked toward Dean, touching his arm like he wanted to make sure Dean was solid. "You look exactly the same," he whispered, like he was talking to himself. "How in the world can you look the same?"
"I don't...Bobby, what's wro---"
Bobby wrapped him up in an enormous hug, tight enough that Dean couldn't breathe for a second. "Boy, where in the hell have you been?"
"I...I hooked up with some girl, it's no big deal, I do that all the time." Dean was horrified to realize the old man was crying. It hit Dean all at once that something must have happened to Sam, an accident or something while Dean was out and no one could find him because his phone died. "Bobby, it was just one night, what happened?"
Bobby shook his head. "Dean, you've been gone eight years."
***
Dean balanced the photo album on lap and tried to keep his head from spinning. "Sam's taking the next flight out," Bobby said, sitting on the couch next to Dean.
"Can't believe the little brat's in college."
"In college, hell, about to start law school. Got a free ride and everything." He turned the page to a photo of Sam in his high school graduation gown, staring glumly at the camera. "No one deserves it more than him."
"How come he's the only one not smiling here?" Dean asked, pointing at the picture.
"Kid's had a rough time."
Dean kept paging through the pictures, looking at missed birthday parties as Sam went from a scrawny fourteen-year-old to a floppy-haired adult in the span of a few pages. "How come there's no picture from the fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays? He hide from the camera for two years?"
"Something like that."
Dean closed the book and looked up at Bobby; he kept staring at Dean like he expected him to disappear. "I'm not going anywhere, Bobby. You know that."
"Where were you all this time? You fell off the face of the earth, we had the cops, the FBI, everyone looking for you. They tried to say you'd just run off but we both knew you'd never do that."
"Of course I fucking wouldn't." Dean leaned against the couch, his hands over his face. "I don't know, Bobby. I swear, it's just been one night for me. It's like I slept through eight years."
"If you'd slept you'd have aged. How in the hell can you still be eighteen?"
Dean just let out a sigh. "I don't know. Sure as hell wish I did." He rubbed his eyes, absolutely refusing to cry. "When's Sam gonna get here?"
"Around noon, depending on how his flights go. The weather's been bad around Denver and he's gotta make a connection there."
"Can't wait." He stretched a kink out of his neck; he didn't know how he could have apparently slept for eight years and still be so tired. "Do I even want to ask about my car?"
The corners of Bobby's mouth twitched up. "Under cover out back. Haven't touched it in years, so I can't say what shape it's in...."
"She'll run for me."
His eyelids were drooping and Bobby clapped him on the shoulder. "You should head upstairs. You've got a hell of a day tomorrow."
Dean nodded vaguely and headed upstairs, so overloaded with information he felt drunk. It was hard to believe he could have really lost eight years, not when Bobby's house was the same; more cluttered maybe, more worn, but still familiar. The crack that ran up along the bannister, the way you had to watch the third step from the top because the edge was worn away, Dean knew all of it so well he could almost believe it had only been one night.
Seeing his room didn't help. Oh, Sam's side of the room was different, the wall stripped bare of the Star Wars posters and other stuff that lingered in Dean's memory, but from what he could see his own side hadn't been touched. Like Bobby had been waiting for him. "Jesus, Bobby. This is kind of sad."
He kicked off his shoes and stretched out. It was weird trying to sleep without Sam on the other side of the room. He closed his eyes, hoping that maybe if he wanted it hard enough all of this would just be a long, terrible dream.
There was something he hadn't told Bobby, something he hadn't noticed until he'd stripped to take a much needed shower and caught his reflection in the mirror. He couldn't feel it and he didn't know what it meant, but there was a handprint across his left shoulder, like someone had branded it there. Dean studied it for a long, long moment, his heart pounding, then he put his shirt back on to cover it and turned off the light.
***
A clap of thunder jarred Dean awake. He cracked his eyes open and groaned when he saw the empty bed and bare wall across the room; all of that apparently had happened. He rolled over, his head pounding, and checked to make sure he'd closed the window.
A flash of lightning illuminated the room and Dean felt his blood freeze. In that instant he'd seen a man standing in the corner of the room watching him, a dark-haired man wearing a trenchcoat, his arms crossed over his chest; Dean hit the lights and tumbled out of the bed, ready for the fight.
No one was there. Dean thought he'd heard a sound, almost like a bird in flight, but the room was empty and he was alone.
***
Dean pulled the tarp off of the car, his heart clenching at seeing his baby's paint dull and covered in dust. The driver's side door creaked when he opened it; Dean slid inside, running his fingers across the dashboard and along the curve of the steering wheel. "You miss me, girl?" he whispered, adjusting the rearview mirror. He put the key in the ignition and winced when the engine only sputtered.
"It's been eight years, Dean. I told you it might not start."
"I'll get her to start." Dean popped the hood, grabbing his toolkit and getting to work.
"You want some help---?"
"I got this, Bobby," he said, already poking at the transmission.
He saw Bobby shake his head. "You holler if you want any help. I've got some calls to make."
Dean barely even heard him, too consumed in trying to undo the damage his absence had done. At least that was something he could fix.
He lost track of time, the way he always did when he worked on his car, so he didn't know how long it was before he heard steps crunching up the gravel path. "Told you, Bobby, I'm good out here."
"Dean?"
Dean dropped his wrench into the dirt. He turned around and saw a man in a sharp suit standing at the edge of the scrapyard. "Sammy?" Dean would never admit it to himself but he wouldn't have recognized Sam if he'd passed him on the street. "That you?"
"Dean?" the man whispered again, a tremor to the word this time and that, that was his brother's voice. "Bobby told me but I didn't believe him, I couldn't...."
Dean walked over to him, stopping himself from throwing his arms around Sam at the last second. "Shit, I'm covered in oil-"
"I don't care." Sam practically picked Dean up, he hugged him so hard. "I thought I was never going to see you again. I thought you were gone."
"Never, Sam. That would never happen."
"Everyone tried to make me think you'd just run out but I knew you wouldn't...." he whispered into Dean's hair, his voice cracking.
"I don't believe you're fucking taller than me."
"I don't believe you're this short."
"Bitch."
"Jerk." Sam finally let him go and Dean rubbed feeling back into his arms. "Where have you been all this time? What happened?"
"I have no idea, Sam. I swear I don't. It was like one night passed for me. You should've seen Bobby, I think I almost gave him a heart attack."
"I don't blame him. Just looking at you, it's like...God, I feel like I'm fourteen again."
Dean felt an uneasy silence press down between them, all the worse because the last person on Earth he ever thought he'd feel awkward around was his little brother. Now that the reunion part was over and done with Dean just didn't know what to say. "So, um...heard you conned your way into law school."
Sam grinned, clearly relieved Dean had broken the silence first. "Yeah. I start the last week in August."
"Do you know what kind of...?"
"Adoption law."
Dean shook his head. "Figured you go for a do-gooder specialty."
Sam nodded over Dean's shoulder. "What's wrong with the car?"
"Poor girl's been neglected."
"You want some help fixing her up?"
Dean's chest burned. He remembered teaching Sam the different parts of the engine on this car. "Pretty sure I'd like that more than anything." He gave Sam a critical once-over. "As long as you don't mind getting that fancy suit dirty."
***
The work took most of the day, and even if he and Sam never did find their old groove it felt so good to be right next to his brother Dean almost didn't care. When they went to bed that night, Sam back in his old bed across the room even though he really was too tall for it now, Dean could almost pretend things could just snap back to normal.
That lasted until he woke up in the morning and found Sam already gone. "What to you mean he just left?" Dean asked Bobby, too upset to even start picking at his eggs. "I thought we'd finish the car today."
"All he told me is that he had a paper to write and needed to head to the library. He does still need to graduate college before he gets to law school, you know."
Dean supposed that made sense. It would make more sense if he didn't know that the library opened at ten and it was still only 8:30, but he got the definite impression Bobby wanted him to leave this one alone. "Guess we can finish working on it when he gets back."
"Speaking of school," Bobby said, giving Dean a look that was almost an apology, "You're going on Monday."
"Aw, c'mon Bobby, you're kidding."
"Don't you give me that. I promised your father I'd make you two graduate and just because Sam went above and beyond doesn't mean you're in the clear."
Dean jabbed at the now cold eggs with his fork. "Talk about giving a guy a chance to adjust."
"You should be thanking me. At first they wanted you to start the year over. I talked the principal into giving you time served. You can graduate in June and be done with it."
"Man, that's just the last thing I thought I'd have to worry about." He pushed the eggs around his plate, the slight appetite he'd sat down with now gone entirely. "Is Sam okay?"
"How do you mean?"
Dean didn't like how carefully Bobby said that. "I don't know. He's just quiet. I mean, he was never the chattiest kid in the world but not like this. I tried to get him to talk about school but he brushed me off every time. Sam loves talking about school."
"Did love talking about school. Eight years is a long time, Dean. He's grown now, you can't expect him to act the same way he did when he was just a kid."
Dean finally pushed his plate away. "I'm gonna go find him. Something's wrong, I know it, and we're gonna hash it out right now."
"I wouldn't go out there---"
"Bobby, I know you're trying to help but believe me, I got this."
He'd barely opened the front door when a flashbulb went off full in his face. "Dean!" shouted a strange voice while he tried to blink the spots away from his vision. "Dean what can you tell us?"
"Where were you all those years?" said another voice, a male one this time. "Were you kidnapped?"
Dean felt like every reporter in South Dakota was camped out at his front door; he counted ten before he gave up, half with a full camera crew, and he saw one of the network news vans parked across the street. He opened his mouth to answer that last question, but before he could say anything (which was a good thing, because Dean had no idea how to answer these questions) another male voice called out, "We'll give you an exclusive, Dean! All the time you want!"
He heard someone shush the man, then someone else, Dean couldn't begin to keep track, said, "Why haven't you aged? Would you submit to a DNA test?"
More questions came, an endless stream of them that all blended together into so much gibberish; before Dean could start talking and embarrass himself he felt Bobby grab his arm and yank him back from the doorway, shutting it in the reporters' faces. He didn't think he'd ever loved the old man more in his life. "That's why I didn't want you to go outside."
"What the hell, Bobby?"
"You came back after eight years looking like you took a quick nap, Dean. That's an honest-to-God miracle, did you think the vultures wouldn't start circling?" He pushed Dean toward the back of the house. "Here, sneak out the back if you're set on leaving. I'll distract them."
Dean had no idea what that meant, and a mean, panicky part of him hoped Bobby intended to distract them with his shotgun. He slipped through the crooked wooden door out back and circled around, seeing that Bobby had indeed brought his shotgun out for his little meeting with the press. Dean knew it was a bad idea to stick around and took off for a side street, pulling his hood up in the hopes he could avoid being recognized and ratted out by some random passerby. He just hoped Bobby didn't get himself arrested.
Dean still knew the streets but a lot of the landmarks he depended on for navigation were gone; the corner market that had the best roast beef in the state was a travel agency, the old dance studio was had been torn down to make room for a farmer's market, and the video store was gone completely, just an empty building with a faded sign. He got turned around more than once trying to find the library, only realizing once he finally did find it what a circus his being seen standing next to Sam could turn into. He decided to risk heading for home; hopefully Bobby had frightened everyone away and he could start the day over.
Then from the corner of his eye Dean saw a flash of a tan trenchcoat. He whipped his head around just in time to see a dark-haired man disappear around a corner. Dean felt his heart pound as he took off running after him. "Hey! Hey you, in the coat! Who the hell are you?" He almost caught up with him once, jumping back just in time to avoid getting hit by the crosstown express and watch helplessly as his quarry disappeared around another corner. It was the man who'd been in his room, Dean knew it, and he was going to find out why.
He searched for the rest of the day without even a single sighting of the stranger in the trenchcoat, long enough for Dean to start doubting his senses. He finally headed for home at dusk, so tired he didn't even remember to check if the press was still massed outside his door.
They weren't, fortunately, and Dean at least found the presence of mind to pull all the shades before peeling off his jacket and dropping down into a chair in the kitchen, his head in his hands. There was a covered dish in his usual place, a post-it note stuck to it reading, "You missed dinner, idjit," and Dean smiled for the first time all day. He didn't even bother heating the food up, so hungry he just wolfed it down, then he put the dish in the sink and got up to find Bobby and Sam. It didn't take long to realize the house was dark; he found a page of movie times ripped from that day's newspaper tacked up on the corkboard in the hall. It stung for a second that they'd gone without him, but he figured it was his own fault for running out without his phone. Even if he did really hustle and manage to catch up with them, with his luck the reporters would just swoop back in and ruin it for everyone.
And anyway, he supposed Sam and Bobby had a lot to talk about. Him, specifically.
Dean flopped into Bobby's ancient armchair and turned on the game, needed something to make the house less quiet. He wondered how Bobby had stood it all that time Sam was off at school and he was...well, wherever it was he'd been.
He woke the next morning still in the chair, a blanket thrown over him. When he wandered into the kitchen for breakfast Sam brought up helping him finishing fixing the car without Dean having to say a single word, and Dean sent Bobby a silent look of thank you before they both went out the door.
***
It took two more days for Dean to spot the man in the trenchcoat again. He was lurking in the alley behind the old hardware store and tried to slip back into the shadows when Dean spotted him, but Dean was determined he wasn't getting away so easy this time. He knew something his creepy stalker didn't: the alley behind the block of stores there might twist around but it stopped in a dead end. Dean smiled to himself when the man tried to retreat further into the alley, the way he had days before. This time Dean had him.
It took a few minutes of sneaking around corners, but finally Dean managed to reach out and snag the man by his collar. "Now tell me who you are, you fucking...."
The man was gone. The man was gone and in his place there was a thing, a tower of light as big as a skyscraper. Dean tumbled backward, tripping over a tipped-over garbage can as he stared up at it, pain stabbing through his eyes like knives; he saw six unfurled wings, like they were made from rays of the sun and his mind couldn't decide whether the thing had one face or none or four, everything was just so bright.
Then in an instant he felt a hand clamp over his eyes, the light blinking out like he'd imagined it. "Well, the cloaking mechanism clearly doesn't work," he heard someone sigh, the voice deep and rasping. His eyes burned so much for a second he thought he'd caught fire; he felt wetness trailing down his face and didn't know if it was tears or blood. "Dean, open your eyes and look at me."
Dean followed the command, in too much pain to question it; he didn't see anything except darkness and felt himself start to shake. "Oh God. Oh God, I'm blind."
He felt a hand tip his chin up. "You damaged your retinas," he heard that strange voice say with another little sigh.
"I don't want to be blind."
"They can be repaired." Dean felt fingers press against his temple. "You'll have to come with me." Before he could even think about arguing he felt cold wrap around him, his stomach churning and trying to climb up through his mouth as a force pulled him through space.
When he came to he found himself on a metal table, not like an operating room table but one that was all curves, suspended in mid-air with seemingly nothing to support it. The metal was smooth and warm to the touch, a faint vibration running through it that reminded Dean of a heartbeat. It took a few minutes for him to wake up enough to realize he could see again and a few more until he was sure he wasn't about to cry. The ceiling above him was metal like the table and domed, supportive cross hatching running all the way across it. Lights embedded in the walls blinked in random patterns, and on an enormous video screen Dean could see various maps and diagrams and notes, all written in a language he couldn't read.
"Good. You're awake."
Dean turned his head and saw the dark-haired man leaning against another console, his sleeves rolled up and trenchcoat toss over a chair. "Did we fly here?"
"Of course not," the man said, as if that was a ridiculous statement. "That was a short-range teleport."
"You were in my bedroom," he said, still trying to get his wits back around him.
The man nodded. "Yes, I was."
"Why?"
"You're not adjusting as you should be. I wanted to discover why."
And suddenly everything was very clear. "You did this to me. You're why I skipped ahead eight years."
The man looked down at the floor. "Yes."
"Who the fuck are you?"
"My name is Castiel."
"Castiel what?"
Castiel tilted his head to the side. "We don't have family names as you do."
"'We don't....'" Dean felt his heart hammering as he looked around the strange, metallic room, slowly realizing he should replace the word room with ship. "You're not from Earth."
"That's true."
"You kidnapped me."
Castiel ran his tongue over his lips, and Dean felt fury take hold at seeing such a human gesture from this thing. "I would argue with that wording."
"What the fuck are you? Why did you take me?"
"I'm a researcher," Castiel said, and Dean couldn't believe he had the nerve to sound offended. "My purpose is to study and catalogue organisms from different worlds."
"You...." Dean narrowed his eyes. "Did you probe me?"
Castiel tilted his head to the side again, as if he didn't quite understand the question. "I...studied you, certainly. My examinations were entirely noninvasive, if that's what's concerning you."
"Right," Dean said with a bitter, scoffing laugh. "Noninvasive for eight fucking years."
"The tests are comprehensive but time consuming. That's why you were put in stasis the entire time, so you could be returned to the moment you were collected with no knowledge anything had been amiss."
"Yeah, that worked out real fucking well."
Castiel let out a soft sigh, his brow furrowing. "The human life force is too fragile to withstand time travel. It's a very rare complication. And even when it does occur, most of my subjects don't have nearly the amount of trouble adjusting you've shown."
"I'm not your subject." Dean pushed himself up so he was sitting. "And what kind of other subjects? How many other people have you done this to?"
"You're the first human I've collected," Castiel snapped. "That's why I didn't know how you would react to the time travel."
"And you thought I would just adjust? I'm not some chipmunk you can release out into the woods, losing eight years is a big deal!"
"Eight years is a relatively inconsequential span of time, even for a creature with your life span. Would you rather I let you die?"
"I want to know what you did to me. You said the tests you ran were noninvasive, right?" Dean said, a savage twist to the words. When Castiel nodded, Dean rolled up his sleeve, exposing the handprint scar. "Then explain this."
Castiel's lips went thin. "When I realized the time travel was going wrong I had to stop it manually. That happened when I pulled you out." He reached out as if he meant to touch the mark, pulling back when Dean flinched. "That was the only time I touched you, Dean, I swear," he said instead, those intense blue eyes locking with Dean's.
"Aside from whatever you were doing to me for eight years."
"Ten years," Castiel corrected. When Dean looked up he continued, "the experiments span ten years. We managed to go back two before I realized the process was killing you. And as I said before, the tests were entirely noninvasive."
Ten years. Dean felt his skin crawl just at the thought. "That big glowy thing in the alley. That was you?"
Castiel nodded. "That was my true form. Your eyes aren't structured in a way that would allow you to perceive me safely."
"How come they're not exploding from my sockets now?"
"I'm using a matter converter to make my form better match yours. It should be more effective than the glamour I was using," he said, as if that made any kind of sense.
"Why me?" Dean whispered. "Why did you take me?"
Castiel's brow furrowed again. "You're into full adulthood, in perfect health and are considered an attractive reproductive partner by others of your kind. In addition, you represent the culturally dominant race and sex for your species, at least on this particular section of the planet. You're a very good representative of your species, Dean."
"Stop talking about me like I'm some guinea pig."
Castiel looked baffled. "When did I speak to you as if you were a southern hemisphere rodent?"
Dean shook his head. "Take me back. Right now, take me back."
"No. It would be fatal."
"I'll risk it."
"I won't risk killing you. And at any rate, my ship was damaged during the last aborted time jump. Even if you could survive the process I have to make extensive repairs. You'll just have to adjust...."
Dean jumped off the table and punched Castiel in the mouth before he could say another word. He watched the alien stagger back off his feet, silver blood trickling from his split lip. "You made me miss eight years of my brother's life. When our dad died I promised him it was going to be okay, I was always gonna be right there and I wasn't because of you." He waited for Castiel to attack him back but he stayed on the floor, that first flash of fury melting into something that looked a lot like shame. "Take me back home." Castiel nodded, getting back to his feet and pressing his fingers back to Dean's forehead. When Dean opened his eyes again he was at his front door.
The first thing Dean did was grab a bottle of Bobby's good scotch and drink until he could forget any of that ever happened.
***
If there was one good thing about notoriety, it was the girls who just had to find out if Dean was for real. Dean was pretty sure there was some kind of dare going on between the girls in his history class but if it let him make out with chicks in halter tops in alleys he really didn't care what kind of stories they were passing around about him. The girl he was kissing now was named Betty or Bonnie, some name that started with a B, Dean couldn't remember just then; all he knew was that she sat two rows behind him and had sauntered up to his locker after class and asked if he wanted to "have some fun." There were worse ways to adjust back to high school.
Dean let her press him against the wall behind the movie theater, grinning when she slid one hand past his waistband. "Girls work fast nowadays."
She giggled. "Welcome to the future, Dean Winchester."
It was a terrible line but Dean didn't care. He'd just managed to unhook her bra when he looked over her shoulder and saw Castiel leaning against the opposite wall of the alley, his head cocked to the side and brow furrowed as he watched them. Dean jumped back, almost banging his head against the wall. "Jesus."
Betty-Bonnie turned around and screamed, first shrinking back against Dean then pulling back like he was on fire. Dean didn't know why she decided this was his fault but she slapped him so hard his ears rang. "Freak," she spit out before stomping out of the alley.
"Thanks, Cas."
Castiel frowned. "That's not my name. I told you, it's...."
"Your name is long and girly and I'll call you what I want." Dean sighed, running one hand through his hair. "Why the hell are you here?"
"You pointed out that my understanding of your culture is...deficient. Since I'm stranded here while making repairs I thought I might remedy that." He crossed his arms, looking at Dean like he was some kind of fascinating insect. "What's the purpose of that behavior? The pressing of mouths together?"
Dean slumped against the wall. "Kissing, you mean?"
Castiel nodded once. "It's not part of the reproductive act."
Dean buried his face in his hands. He was not about to have the Talk with a space alien. "Sure it is. I mean, usually you're hoping it gets you there, but it doesn't have to."
"But then what's the purpose of it?"
"It...I don't know, it feels good. It gets the blood pumping, y'know?" he said, although he could see Castiel really didn't. "It's just something two people do when they figure out they like each other. Maybe it leads to sex - and man, I don't know what sex is for you guys, but trust me, it's awesome, way more than just a reproductive act - but it doesn't have to, it's fun on its own. Hell, sometimes it's how you let someone know you like them that way in the first place."
"Did you have special regard for that female?"
Dean sighed. This was going to take a while. "I didn't even know her name. I'm not real picky about who I'll kiss, I guess, but not everyone's like that. And it is different when it's someone you really like. Lots of times it's easier to get up your courage and just kiss someone than try to tell them you like them in the first place."
Castiel let out a soft, frustrated breath. "Your species is complicated. I have trouble with your non-verbal communication," he admitted. "Perhaps if I'd collected more samples...."
"No," Dean snapped, taking a step toward Castiel who for his part backed away, clearly confused by Dean's sudden anger. "You don't do this to anyone else, you hear me?"
"I'm not planning to. I just want to understand."
Dean rubbed his forehead, trying to push back the ache growing from his temples. "I get that," he said, although he refused to apologize to this thing. "Look, if you really have stuff you need to know about us you can ask me. Just don't drag anyone else into this."
"That...could be valuable," he said, as if mulling that over. "Would you be willing to submit to further examination, as well? There are several tests that can only be performed on a responsive subject."
Dean sighed. "I guess, if it'll keep you from getting curious enough to kidnap anyone else. Just...I don't know, call me your patient if you have to call me something. Subject just makes me feel like a rat in a maze. And no cutting me open or anything like that."
He saw Castiel's mouth go tight. "I'm not a butcher, Dean. I have no interest in harming you."
"Could've fooled me," Dean said under breath.
Before Dean could react Castiel stepped toward him, his eyes narrowed as he examined Dean and standing close enough that Dean could feel him breathing. He resolved that the first thing he was going to teach the guy was a little thing called personal space. "How are your eyes?"
"Um...Okay. Good, even. I think whatever you did actually made me see better."
Castiel nodded. "They're an interesting color."
"Thanks?" Castiel nodded again, stepping back. "Your lip looks healed up," Dean said, not sure why he'd blurted that out.
Castiel seemed pleased Dean had noticed. "I heal quickly." He glanced around quickly before stepping back toward Dean, dropping his voice low. "My ship is docked several blocks east of here, disguised as a shuttered storefront. It's an illusion, a stronger version of the one I wore the night you caught me in the alleyway. You shouldn't have any trouble finding it." And Dean realized he did know exactly the place Castiel was talking about, he must have passed it dozens of times. "I'll program the defenses to allow you entry."
"I thought your ship was broken."
"Only the propulsion systems," he said with a frustrated sigh. It reminded Dean of how sometimes his baby's engine would seize up for no reason and Dean was surprised to feel that sudden flash of sympathy wash through him. He hoped Castiel hadn't noticed. "The interior and security systems work fine." It looked for a second like he wanted to say something else but couldn't find the right words. "I look forward to seeing you." Then he teleported away with that strange sound of wings.
Dean decided to cut his losses and head home before his day could get any weirder.
***
Castiel's tests weren't really so bad, all things considered. Mostly it was just electrodes attached to his pressure points, not so different than if he was getting a stress test or an ekg. These were wireless, though, and a hell of a lot more comfortable than the ones he'd put up with when Bobby'd insisted he'd go to the hospital to get checked out after his dramatic return. The first few times Castiel tested how he reacted to stimuli, heat and cold and things like that, but never anything painful. It was actually kind of relaxing, sometimes, even though Dean would rather put bamboo under his nails than admit that out loud. Dean gave the ship a lot of credit for that; he'd grown to really like the place, the graceful curves of it and how it seemed way bigger than it realistically could be. He'd asked Castiel about that once, gotten a lecture on differing theories of dimensional space and never asked again.
A lot of times the tests were nothing more than Castiel having Dean talk while he studied read outs on his computer screen; Dean guessed they were brain waves but he'd never asked. "Why all the questions about my dad today?"
"You react very strongly to them."
"Yeah. Guess so." He let out a long breath. "He died a week after I turned eighteen. He was in the service, y'know? Total badass. I always figured I'd go in too, but obviously I had to take care of Sam. Our mom died when he was just a baby so with my dad gone it was just the two of us. Well, and Bobby too, I guess, but that's different. I tell you, thank God I was eighteen when Dad died, who knows what would have happened to me and Sam if we'd been younger." He remembered how Sam had held it together through the entire funeral service, even when the honor guard had given him the flag, and how that had all fallen apart the second they got home. "I keep thinking about how Sam basically lost me and Dad within, God, barely eight months of each other. I don't know how he stayed upright."
Castiel didn't respond and Dean didn't have anything else to say. The silence stretched on long enough that Dean had almost fallen asleep when Castiel finally spoke, his voice very soft. "Why do you submit to this so easily, Dean?"
"What do you mean?"
Castiel turned halfway around so he could catch Dean's eye. "I've been watching you," he said, not responding when Dean muttered stalker under his breath. "You push back when others try to coerce you. You're very stubborn."
Dean decided to take that as a compliment. "Honestly?"
"Always."
Dean sighed. "I know how this sounds, but sometimes it's like this is the only part of my life that makes sense anymore. I mean, you're an alien and I'm a human so you want to figure me out, that's fucked up but I can wrap my mind around it."
Castiel looked back up at his screen. "Should I interpret that to mean your adjustment hasn't become any smoother?"
Dean stared up at the delicate cross hatching that made up the vaulted ceiling; they'd started glowing a soft rose when he'd stepped through the door, like the ship was a living thing happy to see him. "It sucks. I never liked school but this is a thousand times worse. Everyone who'd been in my class before have all either moved away or they're married with kids, and the people I'm around now...I mean, they're younger than Sam. They were ten years old when I left. The girls are hot but once we start talking our childhoods don't match up and it gets weird. I feel fucking old, Cas." He scowled, crossing his arms over his chest before Castiel motioned for him to stop. "And I don't know what happened to music in eight years but the crap these kids listen to sucks." He shook his head. "Jesus, I sound like Bobby."
"I'm sure the culture shock will fade."
"It's not just that. Everyone knows me. They hear my name and everyone knows I'm that guy, the walking time capsule. I feel like I'm in a zoo half the time, and it's not just the kids, it's the teachers, too." He drummed his fingers against the table.
"Your pulse rate is rising."
"Yeah, I bet it is." He sighed. "My English teacher is a year younger than me. A year younger than I should be, I mean, she was a junior when I was a senior and we went out for, like, two months. Now I have to call her Miss and act like I don't know she likes to get spanked. And she looks at me like I'm dirt, like she's pissed I'm still a teenager and she's not, like I did it personally to spite her. And we've still got reporters calling at all hours, and lately there's been this weirdo from DC calling, saying I 'owe it to medical science' to let him take samples from me. I'm worried I'm gonna wake up one day and he'll just be at the front door." He laced his fingers behind his head. "Sometimes it feels like this is the only place where I don't feel like a total freak, fucked up as that is."
"Have things improved between you and Sam?"
Dean let out a long sigh. "I don't know. I just want things to go back the way they were. Maybe that's not fair, but in my head he's still this dorky fourteen-year-old. I think I'm probably pushing too hard. It's like we forgot how to talk to each other."
Castiel tapped his fingers against the console, his expression thoughtful. "I have brothers and sisters as well. Many of them. I haven't seen any of them since I left to pursue my work, a very long time ago."
Dean leaned up on his elbows. He'd never gotten Castiel to talk about himself before. "So what's the deal with you guys? Do you, I don't know, hatch or what?" Castiel just gave him a look, like that was a ridiculous question and Dean decided to let that drop. "What do you do with all this stuff you're collecting?" he asked instead, nodding toward Castiel's absurdly huge computer. "You're not prepping an invasion force or anything, are you?"
"Hardly," he said, but he seemed to get that Dean was kidding. "I send the raw data and my interpretations back to be archived and examined. It's our goal to examine and catalogue all life." There was something almost wistful in his expression. "It's a futile goal, of course. The universe is much too vast."
"So what kind of feedback are you getting back?"
His expression clouded. "Unfortunately our communications are less sophisticated than our data streaming."
"So, what? How often do you hear back?"
Castiel glanced back at him. "I'm very far from home, Dean. This galaxy wasn't even on our charts. At first communication was frequent but as I ventured out further it became more sporadic. I don't know why. Interference, perhaps. Or just merely distance."
There was an ache in his voice that caught Dean off guard. "You don't hear back at all anymore, do you."
Castiel shook his head. "Not in a very long time."
"How do you know anyone's still getting the stuff you send back? How do you even know the place is still there?"
He wished he could take that back when he saw that quick, pained flash in Castiel's eyes; he still hadn't forgiven the guy but suggesting Hey, how do you know your planet hasn't blown up? was a pretty dick thing to do. Even the colors in the ship got darker for a second, like it was telling Dean to shut up. "The thought's occurred to me," he admitted. "We have enemies. There's no way to know for sure, I suppose."
"So why do you bother? Not the going around examining things, I get you're a scientist and they're nerds like that, but why send stuff back?"
"I believe your people call it faith."
Dean supposed he could get behind that. He knew that if was separated from Sam he would never give up on seeing him again. "So, are there really little green men in flying saucers out there?"
"Your culture's myths are fascinating. No, there aren't, at least none I've seen." That distant, wistful expression was back. "You'd be surprised at how few truly sapient races there are in the universe, Dean. And of those, how few are friendly. That night you caught me in that alley was the first time I'd spoken to a another being in one thousand years. As you view them, at any rate."
Dean felt his mind tried to grapple with that before giving up in horror. No wonder he'd thought losing eight years would be no big deal if he counted his own age in thousands. "How are you not crazy?" Dean said, sitting up on the table. "Crazier, anyway?"
"I've grown used to the solitude." He tilted his head at Dean in the way he had when Dean was doing something he didn't understand. "There's no need for sympathy. I understood what was before me when I accepted this calling. It's understood that most researchers never return." He walked back toward Dean and started to remove the electrodes, as carefully as if Dean was made of glass. "I've taken enough of your time for today," he said, then Dean heard that wingbeat and found himself standing outside his door.
***
Dean walked in to find Sam at the kitchen table, books spread over every available flat surface and his computer on his lap. "Whatcha working on?"
"My professors let me take my two final classes online, but I still have to get everything in on time. I never realized how much I missed the campus library. And how is Bobby still on dial-up? Who does that?"
Dean pulled up a chair, careful not to knock over Sam's book tower. "Any way I can help?"
"I'm good, Dean."
"C'mon. I always help you with your homework."
Sam's lips quirked up. "I kind of remember it more as you trying to get me to do your homework."
Okay, so maybe that was technically true. "I've helped. Remember the science fair?"
"My homework's a little more complicated than putting formulas on posterboard now."
"I still helped. And you won that year."
Sam went back to typing. "I appreciate the interest, Dean, but I've gotta put down five thousand words by the end of the night."
Just then Sam's phone went off, letting Dean catch a glimpse of a blond girl's picture and the name JESS before Sam snatched the phone away and silenced it. "Heeeeey. Who's that?"
"None of your business," Sam muttered, but Dean knew that blush.
"Sam has a girlfriend," Dean sing-songed at him.
"Fiancee," he mumbled, and even the tips of his ears were red now.
"Fiancee? Seriously? How long?"
"A few months now."
"Does Bobby know?"
"Of course Bobby knows. He's the one who told me to get over myself and ask. He just used the word idjit more."
"That's awesome, Sammy---"
"Don't call me that." Sam sighed, rubbing his forehead.
Dean just watched him for a long moment. "Are you pissed off at me?"
Sam just sighed again. "Of course not."
"You sure? Because this is exactly how you act when you're pissed off at me. You didn't even want to tell me you were engaged."
"That's not true."
"It's not? If your phone hadn't gone off, when would you have told me?" Suddenly it hit Dean what was really going on here. "She doesn't know I'm back." Sam didn't answer and Dean knew he was right. "What the fuck, Sam?"
"When Bobby told me you were back I didn't believe it. I couldn't believe it, so I made something up."
"And you just never told her."
Sam let out a long breath. "It's just...how do I tell someone about this? I mean, look at you. You're my older brother but suddenly you're four years younger than me. How do you explain something like that?"
Dean studied his brother for a long second. "I'm not going anywhere, Sam."
"How am I supposed to believe that?" Sam snapped at him, his voice cracking in a way that tied Dean in knots. "You fell off the face of the Earth once, who's to say you won't again? You said yourself you don't know what happened."
Dean stayed quiet, his stomach churning. When he'd said that he hadn't known, that had been true then, but he sure as hell knew now. For a second he was tempted to spill everything to Sam but the anger in his brother's voice held him back. He remembered how Castiel had looked around before telling him the location of his ship and it hit him suddenly how naïve it had been to tell Dean that. Cas was trapped here. Every movie he'd ever seen about the government finding out about aliens flashed through his mind, and it startled Dean to realize that angry as he still was he didn't want to see the guy hurt.
Dean wanted to think Sam would keep the secret, and he knew full well the nerdy kid he'd known would have kept it without a second thought, but it sank through him like a poison that Dean didn't know his brother at all. "Yeah," Dean said, his mouth dry. "I don't know what happened."
Sam rubbed his eyes. "Sorry. I didn't mean to say all that. I'm just under a ton of stress right now. I really need to get this done," he said, almost apologetically.
"Hey, it's cool," he said, getting up to leave, and nothing had ever hurt as much as that flash of relief on Sam's face. "Let me know if I can do anything to help, okay?" he shouted over his shoulder as he headed upstairs. Sam raised one hand as he left, buried back in his work, and Dean knew full well he wouldn't.
On to Part 2
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