Ramblin' Man [Part 1]
Title: A Ramblin' Man (Lord I Was Born) [1/ untold millions]
Author: nirvana-falling
Rating: PG-13 for this part
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Lisa, inevitable Dean/Cas
Spoilers: 5x22, everything ever
Word Count: 3411
Summary: After Lucifer's back in his cage and Dean's where he thinks he ought to be, Cas comes by with a job he can't refuse.
Notes: Dudes, I'm pretty stoked about this. Also, it's unbetaed, and I will give my right pinky for someone to go over it.
Things were rough with Lisa, at first, but for whatever reason she seemed to think being with him was worth putting up with the fact that he would lay out salt lines without thinking and only slept four hours a night, and, yeah, waking up to the same person for months was strange for Dean, but it was his last promise to Sam and he didn’t exactly mind having what he wanted for once.
So they muddled along and Dean thought that maybe things would work, and then May came, blowing past April with bright sun and flowers and Sam’s birthday. With the exception of those four years Sam spent in California, Dean had been there for every one of his birthdays, and though the Winchesters never made a production out of, well, anything, it mattered. And it mattered that Sam wasn’t there, so Lisa left him alone after the second gruff dismissal and Dean and Jack Daniels celebrated the day together.
He’d been expecting strange dreams but when Lisa woke him with urgent hands all he could think was “Goddammit,” but he was still wary of taking the Name in vain so he held his tongue and tried to remember how to breathe. His lungs still felt heavy with blood and his shoulders ached from where he had hung. Lisa’s eyes were brown and wide with worry, but all he could tell her was “Hell.”
Over the bathroom sink he hung his head and quietly tried not to retch. It wasn’t coincidence and he knew, had May the second carved into his bones next to those Enochian symbols, but if he had four months of this lying ahead of him someone upstairs was going to be hearing about it.
He still had no truck with prayer, though, and Lisa’s knock at the door brought him back to bed. She whispered something that sounded like an apology as he drifted off to sleep, but her voice faded when another filled his head.
“I thought we put you back in your cage.”
“Yes,” Lucifer agreed, wearing a refurbished Nick, “you did lock us up.”
Fuck. Michael.
“It’s real cute that you two managed to set aside your differences. I didn’t know Hell offered couple’s therapy.”
“You seem to forget that my brother and I were cut from the same cloth,” a voice from behind him said.
Michael had, for reasons Dean could probably guess, decided to appear as John Winchester, circa 1973. He and Lucifer stood on either side of Dean, calm, menacing forces.
“So what exactly is this? Revenge? Because there are a lot of people you could blame for ending up in the Pit.”
Michael’s smile was something Dean never wanted to see again.
“No,” Lucifer answered. “But now that there is no angelic influence around you,” and Michael smirked, “you’re free to remember. Dean,” he said, earnest and eager in the way Sam had described him, “you went to Hell. Nothing can erase that from you. Not ever.”
Well, who was he to disagree with an archangel. Hell, two archangels.
So it went on, and after the third week he had stopped screaming and after the sixth Lisa had stopped looking at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Functioning on little to no sleep was nothing new to him, so he was still able to work his shitty mechanic’s job and take Ben places on the weekend and have the apple pie life he’s always wanted during the day.
At night, of course, he returned to Hell.
The whole thing had actually gotten a little repetitive, since he had already lived through it once. Which was why, when he woke up three months later with Alistair’s face grinning down at him and the hooks free of his shoulders he knew exactly what was happening the next night. He told Lisa he had to work late, found Jack and rented a motel room on the outskirts of town.
He still got complaints about the screaming. Lucifer had been particularly thoughtful with these last ten years, allowing Dean to somehow simultaneously torture and watch himself torture. It was exquisite, and as someone who was once in the business, Dean had to admire it.
“Dean,” Lisa said when he came back, more hangdog than he’d ever looked in his entire life, he was sure.
“Lisa, look,” he started but the hurt deep in her eyes cut him off. “It’s Hell. I can’t stop dreaming about Hell, and I probably never will.”
“Oh, Dean,” and she slid her hand up his arm, up, but before she could slot her hand over the brand Dean pulled away.
“No,” he said, more thinking to himself than anything else, “not yet. Don’t grip me there yet.”
“Yet?”
“That’s, that’s where I was pulled up, the last time.” She still looked troubled, but Dean shrugged and stepped into her space, curled his hand around the back of her neck and tried to forget. Lisa melted into him, warm and forgiving.
Not, of course, that forgiveness had anything to do with it.
On September eighteenth, Dean woke up with a restlessness underneath his skin, and for the first time in months he went through the day trying to sleep. When he finally did succumb, with Lisa curled beside him in post-coital afterglow, he pushed and shoved at the fabric of time within the dream, but his hands never sped up as they sliced through human flesh. The last soul he had ever laid into was a middle-aged man, whose arms had been corded with muscle and whose screams had been long in coming.
When he woke he kept his eyes closed, afraid to look over and find Lisa gone, Ben gone, the whole house dissolved back into a horribly patterned motel room, and-
“Cas?”
He looked up and, yes, there was Cas, standing over him in that ridiculous ensemble, still gripping Dean tight. Cas opened his mouth to say something, but Lisa woke up and screamed, and her scream brought Ben running, and then Ben panicked, and Castiel just stood there, staid as always, his hand flat on Dean’s shoulder.
Once everything had quieted down Dean swallowed and said, “So, uh, this is Cas. He, uh, pulled me out the first time.”
“Heaven has always been overly fond of symmetry,” Cas said, and let go with what Dean would have called a grin if he hadn’t known him. Dean rose with a kiss to Lisa’s temple and shepherded Ben back to his room with a promise of “I’ll tell you in the morning.” Castiel watched with a look that was almost fond.
In the kitchen Dean manfully refrained from pouring himself another glass of Jack; Lisa had finally brought up his less than subtle dependency on drinking. Cas gave him the same flat, wide-eyed stare that he had for two years and Dean finally felt like he knew what was going on.
Well, actually, he didn’t. But at least this was a side of Cas he knew, the mechanical angel side, and that only meant one thing. “What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing,” Cas told him, with another quirk of his lips. “I was not lying when I told you Heaven enjoyed symmetry.”
“Couldn’t your, uh, etchings” Dean gestured to his ribs, “have stopped Lucifer from finding me?”
“They do.” Cas told him, and when Dean didn’t respond, he continued, “Neither Lucifer nor Michael will be able to actually find your body, but Lucifer does have a point.”
“Oh, good. Satan has a point?”
The contemptuous look Castiel gave Dean was comforting in its familiarity. “While I did restore your body and soul,” he emphasized that word, Famine’s words still buried in both of their minds, “Lucifer is right. His touch is something greater than anyone could fully scrub from you.”
“So he’s always going to be in the back of my head? I thought that was,” Dean trailed off. It had been Sam’s job, and of all the things Dean didn’t speak of Sam was first.
“Only during those months you were dead. He can’t do anything to you now, certainly not with me here.”
“The angelic influence,” Dean said.
“You could call it that.”
“Okay. Seriously, man, what is up with you? You’re acting all,” Dean waved a hand in Castiel’s general direction, “I don’t know, human, what with all the facial expression.”
“Gabriel said it would be more convincing.”
“Gabriel?”
Castiel shrugged. “With Michael gone, Heaven was a bit short on archangels. Besides, Gabriel passed the test, too.”
“Right, right, whatever.” Dean paced around the kitchen. “Convincing of what? I thought you said Heaven didn’t have any more dirty jobs for me.”
“We don’t,” Castiel told him. “But there is something I thought you might be interested in doing.”
“What?” Dean decided that this actually merited a drink, poured himself one and figured he’d explain everything to Lisa in the morning.
“Sam,” Cas began and in the long pause between his words Dean drained the glass and poured another, “Would you help me find Sam?”
Dean found that even if he opened his mouth he couldn’t talk without tears pricking at the corners of his eyes so he just shut up and stared at Cas in a way that indicated that he wanted a fucking explanation, immediately.
“I am…concerned for Sam,” Cas said and Dean’s hackles went up instantly. The last time anyone in Heaven had been concerned for or with Sam, he’d been drinking demon blood like it was his job.
“Cas,” Dean started and continued even though his voice was wet and choked, “don’t you dare tell me that Lucifer’s walking around out there in Sam’s skin. Just don’t.”
“No,” Cas said slowly, looking at Dean as though he were mad. “Lucifer is back in his cage, I know. And I hope you would too.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Of course, Dean had a thousand scenarios, nightmares he’d been hoarding since he was four, a meticulous catalog of every awful thing that could ever happen to his baby brother.
“While we may know that Sam is entirely himself, it is unlikely that other hunters do. You two are not popular with them, if I recall.”
“No, Cas, starting the Apocalypse doesn’t really make you many friends.” Dean finally sat, head in his hands as he concentrated on just breathing, letting himself fall back into the rhythm of the hunting life. “You knew,” he said after a moment, accusing, “you knew that I’d go with you if you just said Sam’s name.” And, okay, Dean realized that wasn’t exactly a revelation; everyone who’d ever met the brothers Winchester knew that they had gaping blind spots shaped like each other, but Dean had hoped, hoped that maybe the long months would dull that ache, the ache of knowing that he would leave the life he’d always wanted, and still wants, and will probably always want, if Sam needed him. It had always been Sam.
“Dean,” and the frustration in Cas’s voice was a small victory, “shut up.”
He laughed a little, a broken sound in the back of his throat. “Did Gabriel teach you to be this sassy?” And, god, he had thought he was done with that period of his life where he called angels sassy.
“No. That would have been you and Sam, actually.”
“Oh,” and Dean could see Cas charging up for some huge diatribe that just was not capable of dealing with at the moment. “Look, Cas, help me load up the car and I’ll leave in the morning.”
He didn’t get up, though, and Castiel touched the top of his head with two fingers. The feeling of peace settling into his skin reminded him of the Apocalypse days, but he didn’t complain.
They packed the Impala in total silence, which bothered Dean not at all, since any talking would just have distracted him from the overwhelming guilt. He had tried to explain his relationship with Sam to Lisa, but there was no good way to say, “My brother and I are kind of disgustingly codependent,” especially not to the woman you were living with. Dean had tried.
When he came back to their room, Lisa was up, reading. She set the book down in her lap, one of Dean’s Vonneguts, and looked him in the eye. “So,” she said, “that was Cas.”
“Castiel, bona fide angel of the Lord.”
“What was he doing here? I thought you said it was over, Dean.” She didn’t sound angry, just sad, and all the excuses he had drained out of him.
“Cas, he, well, he wants me to help him find Sam.” And, yes, Dean’s voice broke over Sam’s name, the one syllable he had never allowed past his lips since the world didn’t end.
“Your brother’s alive?”
“Apparently. Cas wouldn’t lie about something like that.” He lay down next to Lisa, and she moved to pillow her head on his chest, and for moment they lay together like that, until Lisa looked up at him and asked,
“When are you leaving?” Dean wanted to protest, but here she was giving him an out and Dean rarely got such perfect opportunities to be a coward.
“In the morning. I’ll probably stop at Bobby’s first, ask if he’s heard anything.”
“Even if you hadn’t? You and your brother seemed so close.” Dean had to fight a snort at that, the understatement of the century. “Would he really not tell you he was okay?”
“Probably thinks he’s doing it for my own good,” Dean laughed, dry.
“Maybe it is.”
“Lisa,” Dean started, and maybe the out had been more like an opportunity to dig himself into the second-deepest hole he’d ever been. “Lisa, he’s my brother.”
She didn’t say anything to that, and Dean fell asleep what felt like hours later, his hand still in her hair.
Dean woke up at eight, later than he’d expected to, but still early enough that Lisa’s absence surprised him. Of course, she was waiting for him in the kitchen, and Ben, too, seated at the table. They both turned to look at him when he came in, and Lisa gave Dean a worn smile.
“Where are you going?” Ben asked. Dean recognized that tone, the same vaguely accusatory one Sam had used on their father before he learned where exactly John went when he said he had to go work. Sam had hated being lied to; when Dean’d finally spilled the beans Sam didn’t talk to him or John for three weeks.
“To find my brother,” Dean explained, around the lump in his throat. “D’you remember Sam at all?”
“He’s alive?” Ben perked up.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Yeah, he is.” It hit him then, and he couldn’t help smiling: he was going to find his little brother.
“You’re gonna come back, though, right?” Ben asked, giving Dean a wary look.
“Of course,” Dean said, as much to Lisa as her son.
After that he didn’t feel quite so bad about helping himself to the bacon she was making, and the three of them had settled into an almost normal round of morning chatter when Cas popped into the kitchen. Lisa screamed and Ben dropped his bacon on the floor, where Dean gave it a look and then promptly remembered that he was no longer in the phase of his life where the five second rule was really appropriate, or necessary.
“Time to go?” He asked.
“Yes,” Cas agreed. “It will take several hours to reach Bobby’s, at least.”
“Right, right.” Dean said as he rose. Ben hugged and Dean rested a hand on the boy’s head.
When he’d been freed from that embrace, Lisa moved towards him and slid one hand along his jaw. Dean could smell her shampoo, something green and fresh, and moved to kiss her. Instead, she moved away and brought he r other hand up to face, and stroked her thumbs along his cheekbones. She opened her mouth to speak and then Dean did kiss her, quick and ravenous because he knew exactly what she was going to say and it wasn’t something he knew how to hear.
“Dean,” Lisa started when he pulled away, but he was already heading towards the doorway, and Cas was this vaguely irritated and probably amused figure off to his side, and it was very, very easy to fall back into the pattern of leaving that he had perfected years ago.
“I’m sorry.” He meant it, too, said it while looking straight into her eyes but it didn’t make his exit any less of a flight.
Outside, though, Dean could breathe, finally. The purr of the Impala’s engine hadn’t changed in her months spent trapped in suburbia. His tapes were still there, in the same haphazard groupings they had been for years. It wasn’t as though Dean hadn’t driven since the end of the world, because he certainly had, but he hadn’t gone anywhere. He wasn’t used to permanency, to returning to the same place day and day out. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be.
In the passenger seat, Cas made an aggravated noise in the back of his throat.
“Alright, Jesus, we’re going! Uh, sorry about that. Old habits, you know.”
“I’m sure.”
Dean flicked on some AC/DC and they rode in a companionable silence for about an hour, until he looked down and saw the gas gauge dangerously close to empty. Of all the things he had remembered to get the night before: his old duffel full of clothes, the shotguns and the silver, the pounds of salt and an emergency batch of holy water, bibles and weird ritual weapons, and, of course Ruby’s knife, he had forgotten gas.
“Fuck. Hey, Cas, I’m gonna have to stop at the next gas station.”
“Alright.” Cas didn’t even turn at the announcement. He kept staring out the open window, his hair moving a little bit in the breeze. It was warm for September, and outside green and golden waves of corn rippled and fairly shone in the sunlight. For miles around Dean could see nothing but road and swaying stalks, and a kind of peace settled in the air, until on the horizon a gas station loomed.
Dean filled up the Impala and made small talk with the man behind the counter in the way he had his entire life, calm and easy, with something common in him brought to the forefront, the dust creased in his boots or the calluses worn into his palms. Not once did he glance in the car to see if Castiel was still there.
When he slid back behind the wheel he glanced over, and Cas was there, staring back at him.
“Don’t you have, you know, heavenly duties to get back to?”
“You would prefer I left?
Dean didn’t really know how to reply to that.
“I had assumed you would want company,” Cas explained.
“It’s not that I don’t want you here, Cas, but I don’t get it. You never rode with us before when you could zap yourself around.”
“No,” Castiel admitted, “I did not. And I will admit that I find this method of transportation confining.” Dean opened his mouth the defend the Impala, but Cas continued, “But I doubt that you would enjoy this trip alone.” Again, he stopped Dean from replying. “God does not mind that I am…fond of you and your brother. He finds it encouraging.”
“Encouraging? I thought you got your leash tightened last time they though you were fond of one of us mud monkeys.”
Castiel glared. “Uriel and Zachariah’s opinions are far from the word of God. Things in Heaven are changing. The angels are changing. I am no longer considered an embarrassment.”
“They thought you were an embarrassment? And you still went back?”
“Embarrassment is perhaps not the right word. The Enochian does not translate well to your language. Aberration, perhaps?”
“Doesn’t make it any better, Cas.”
“As I said, that term is no longer applied to me.” That seemed to close the matter, as far as Dean could tell, since Cas thinned his lips and turned his head to watch the corn go by again. The wind against his cheeks probably was the closest Cas could get to flying or zapping or whatever while caged in the Impala.
“Bobby’s, then?” Dean offered with a conciliatory shrug, and he was pretty damn sure he saw Cas smile.
Author: nirvana-falling
Rating: PG-13 for this part
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Lisa, inevitable Dean/Cas
Spoilers: 5x22, everything ever
Word Count: 3411
Summary: After Lucifer's back in his cage and Dean's where he thinks he ought to be, Cas comes by with a job he can't refuse.
Notes: Dudes, I'm pretty stoked about this. Also, it's unbetaed, and I will give my right pinky for someone to go over it.
Things were rough with Lisa, at first, but for whatever reason she seemed to think being with him was worth putting up with the fact that he would lay out salt lines without thinking and only slept four hours a night, and, yeah, waking up to the same person for months was strange for Dean, but it was his last promise to Sam and he didn’t exactly mind having what he wanted for once.
So they muddled along and Dean thought that maybe things would work, and then May came, blowing past April with bright sun and flowers and Sam’s birthday. With the exception of those four years Sam spent in California, Dean had been there for every one of his birthdays, and though the Winchesters never made a production out of, well, anything, it mattered. And it mattered that Sam wasn’t there, so Lisa left him alone after the second gruff dismissal and Dean and Jack Daniels celebrated the day together.
He’d been expecting strange dreams but when Lisa woke him with urgent hands all he could think was “Goddammit,” but he was still wary of taking the Name in vain so he held his tongue and tried to remember how to breathe. His lungs still felt heavy with blood and his shoulders ached from where he had hung. Lisa’s eyes were brown and wide with worry, but all he could tell her was “Hell.”
Over the bathroom sink he hung his head and quietly tried not to retch. It wasn’t coincidence and he knew, had May the second carved into his bones next to those Enochian symbols, but if he had four months of this lying ahead of him someone upstairs was going to be hearing about it.
He still had no truck with prayer, though, and Lisa’s knock at the door brought him back to bed. She whispered something that sounded like an apology as he drifted off to sleep, but her voice faded when another filled his head.
“I thought we put you back in your cage.”
“Yes,” Lucifer agreed, wearing a refurbished Nick, “you did lock us up.”
Fuck. Michael.
“It’s real cute that you two managed to set aside your differences. I didn’t know Hell offered couple’s therapy.”
“You seem to forget that my brother and I were cut from the same cloth,” a voice from behind him said.
Michael had, for reasons Dean could probably guess, decided to appear as John Winchester, circa 1973. He and Lucifer stood on either side of Dean, calm, menacing forces.
“So what exactly is this? Revenge? Because there are a lot of people you could blame for ending up in the Pit.”
Michael’s smile was something Dean never wanted to see again.
“No,” Lucifer answered. “But now that there is no angelic influence around you,” and Michael smirked, “you’re free to remember. Dean,” he said, earnest and eager in the way Sam had described him, “you went to Hell. Nothing can erase that from you. Not ever.”
Well, who was he to disagree with an archangel. Hell, two archangels.
So it went on, and after the third week he had stopped screaming and after the sixth Lisa had stopped looking at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Functioning on little to no sleep was nothing new to him, so he was still able to work his shitty mechanic’s job and take Ben places on the weekend and have the apple pie life he’s always wanted during the day.
At night, of course, he returned to Hell.
The whole thing had actually gotten a little repetitive, since he had already lived through it once. Which was why, when he woke up three months later with Alistair’s face grinning down at him and the hooks free of his shoulders he knew exactly what was happening the next night. He told Lisa he had to work late, found Jack and rented a motel room on the outskirts of town.
He still got complaints about the screaming. Lucifer had been particularly thoughtful with these last ten years, allowing Dean to somehow simultaneously torture and watch himself torture. It was exquisite, and as someone who was once in the business, Dean had to admire it.
“Dean,” Lisa said when he came back, more hangdog than he’d ever looked in his entire life, he was sure.
“Lisa, look,” he started but the hurt deep in her eyes cut him off. “It’s Hell. I can’t stop dreaming about Hell, and I probably never will.”
“Oh, Dean,” and she slid her hand up his arm, up, but before she could slot her hand over the brand Dean pulled away.
“No,” he said, more thinking to himself than anything else, “not yet. Don’t grip me there yet.”
“Yet?”
“That’s, that’s where I was pulled up, the last time.” She still looked troubled, but Dean shrugged and stepped into her space, curled his hand around the back of her neck and tried to forget. Lisa melted into him, warm and forgiving.
Not, of course, that forgiveness had anything to do with it.
On September eighteenth, Dean woke up with a restlessness underneath his skin, and for the first time in months he went through the day trying to sleep. When he finally did succumb, with Lisa curled beside him in post-coital afterglow, he pushed and shoved at the fabric of time within the dream, but his hands never sped up as they sliced through human flesh. The last soul he had ever laid into was a middle-aged man, whose arms had been corded with muscle and whose screams had been long in coming.
When he woke he kept his eyes closed, afraid to look over and find Lisa gone, Ben gone, the whole house dissolved back into a horribly patterned motel room, and-
“Cas?”
He looked up and, yes, there was Cas, standing over him in that ridiculous ensemble, still gripping Dean tight. Cas opened his mouth to say something, but Lisa woke up and screamed, and her scream brought Ben running, and then Ben panicked, and Castiel just stood there, staid as always, his hand flat on Dean’s shoulder.
Once everything had quieted down Dean swallowed and said, “So, uh, this is Cas. He, uh, pulled me out the first time.”
“Heaven has always been overly fond of symmetry,” Cas said, and let go with what Dean would have called a grin if he hadn’t known him. Dean rose with a kiss to Lisa’s temple and shepherded Ben back to his room with a promise of “I’ll tell you in the morning.” Castiel watched with a look that was almost fond.
In the kitchen Dean manfully refrained from pouring himself another glass of Jack; Lisa had finally brought up his less than subtle dependency on drinking. Cas gave him the same flat, wide-eyed stare that he had for two years and Dean finally felt like he knew what was going on.
Well, actually, he didn’t. But at least this was a side of Cas he knew, the mechanical angel side, and that only meant one thing. “What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing,” Cas told him, with another quirk of his lips. “I was not lying when I told you Heaven enjoyed symmetry.”
“Couldn’t your, uh, etchings” Dean gestured to his ribs, “have stopped Lucifer from finding me?”
“They do.” Cas told him, and when Dean didn’t respond, he continued, “Neither Lucifer nor Michael will be able to actually find your body, but Lucifer does have a point.”
“Oh, good. Satan has a point?”
The contemptuous look Castiel gave Dean was comforting in its familiarity. “While I did restore your body and soul,” he emphasized that word, Famine’s words still buried in both of their minds, “Lucifer is right. His touch is something greater than anyone could fully scrub from you.”
“So he’s always going to be in the back of my head? I thought that was,” Dean trailed off. It had been Sam’s job, and of all the things Dean didn’t speak of Sam was first.
“Only during those months you were dead. He can’t do anything to you now, certainly not with me here.”
“The angelic influence,” Dean said.
“You could call it that.”
“Okay. Seriously, man, what is up with you? You’re acting all,” Dean waved a hand in Castiel’s general direction, “I don’t know, human, what with all the facial expression.”
“Gabriel said it would be more convincing.”
“Gabriel?”
Castiel shrugged. “With Michael gone, Heaven was a bit short on archangels. Besides, Gabriel passed the test, too.”
“Right, right, whatever.” Dean paced around the kitchen. “Convincing of what? I thought you said Heaven didn’t have any more dirty jobs for me.”
“We don’t,” Castiel told him. “But there is something I thought you might be interested in doing.”
“What?” Dean decided that this actually merited a drink, poured himself one and figured he’d explain everything to Lisa in the morning.
“Sam,” Cas began and in the long pause between his words Dean drained the glass and poured another, “Would you help me find Sam?”
Dean found that even if he opened his mouth he couldn’t talk without tears pricking at the corners of his eyes so he just shut up and stared at Cas in a way that indicated that he wanted a fucking explanation, immediately.
“I am…concerned for Sam,” Cas said and Dean’s hackles went up instantly. The last time anyone in Heaven had been concerned for or with Sam, he’d been drinking demon blood like it was his job.
“Cas,” Dean started and continued even though his voice was wet and choked, “don’t you dare tell me that Lucifer’s walking around out there in Sam’s skin. Just don’t.”
“No,” Cas said slowly, looking at Dean as though he were mad. “Lucifer is back in his cage, I know. And I hope you would too.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Of course, Dean had a thousand scenarios, nightmares he’d been hoarding since he was four, a meticulous catalog of every awful thing that could ever happen to his baby brother.
“While we may know that Sam is entirely himself, it is unlikely that other hunters do. You two are not popular with them, if I recall.”
“No, Cas, starting the Apocalypse doesn’t really make you many friends.” Dean finally sat, head in his hands as he concentrated on just breathing, letting himself fall back into the rhythm of the hunting life. “You knew,” he said after a moment, accusing, “you knew that I’d go with you if you just said Sam’s name.” And, okay, Dean realized that wasn’t exactly a revelation; everyone who’d ever met the brothers Winchester knew that they had gaping blind spots shaped like each other, but Dean had hoped, hoped that maybe the long months would dull that ache, the ache of knowing that he would leave the life he’d always wanted, and still wants, and will probably always want, if Sam needed him. It had always been Sam.
“Dean,” and the frustration in Cas’s voice was a small victory, “shut up.”
He laughed a little, a broken sound in the back of his throat. “Did Gabriel teach you to be this sassy?” And, god, he had thought he was done with that period of his life where he called angels sassy.
“No. That would have been you and Sam, actually.”
“Oh,” and Dean could see Cas charging up for some huge diatribe that just was not capable of dealing with at the moment. “Look, Cas, help me load up the car and I’ll leave in the morning.”
He didn’t get up, though, and Castiel touched the top of his head with two fingers. The feeling of peace settling into his skin reminded him of the Apocalypse days, but he didn’t complain.
They packed the Impala in total silence, which bothered Dean not at all, since any talking would just have distracted him from the overwhelming guilt. He had tried to explain his relationship with Sam to Lisa, but there was no good way to say, “My brother and I are kind of disgustingly codependent,” especially not to the woman you were living with. Dean had tried.
When he came back to their room, Lisa was up, reading. She set the book down in her lap, one of Dean’s Vonneguts, and looked him in the eye. “So,” she said, “that was Cas.”
“Castiel, bona fide angel of the Lord.”
“What was he doing here? I thought you said it was over, Dean.” She didn’t sound angry, just sad, and all the excuses he had drained out of him.
“Cas, he, well, he wants me to help him find Sam.” And, yes, Dean’s voice broke over Sam’s name, the one syllable he had never allowed past his lips since the world didn’t end.
“Your brother’s alive?”
“Apparently. Cas wouldn’t lie about something like that.” He lay down next to Lisa, and she moved to pillow her head on his chest, and for moment they lay together like that, until Lisa looked up at him and asked,
“When are you leaving?” Dean wanted to protest, but here she was giving him an out and Dean rarely got such perfect opportunities to be a coward.
“In the morning. I’ll probably stop at Bobby’s first, ask if he’s heard anything.”
“Even if you hadn’t? You and your brother seemed so close.” Dean had to fight a snort at that, the understatement of the century. “Would he really not tell you he was okay?”
“Probably thinks he’s doing it for my own good,” Dean laughed, dry.
“Maybe it is.”
“Lisa,” Dean started, and maybe the out had been more like an opportunity to dig himself into the second-deepest hole he’d ever been. “Lisa, he’s my brother.”
She didn’t say anything to that, and Dean fell asleep what felt like hours later, his hand still in her hair.
Dean woke up at eight, later than he’d expected to, but still early enough that Lisa’s absence surprised him. Of course, she was waiting for him in the kitchen, and Ben, too, seated at the table. They both turned to look at him when he came in, and Lisa gave Dean a worn smile.
“Where are you going?” Ben asked. Dean recognized that tone, the same vaguely accusatory one Sam had used on their father before he learned where exactly John went when he said he had to go work. Sam had hated being lied to; when Dean’d finally spilled the beans Sam didn’t talk to him or John for three weeks.
“To find my brother,” Dean explained, around the lump in his throat. “D’you remember Sam at all?”
“He’s alive?” Ben perked up.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Yeah, he is.” It hit him then, and he couldn’t help smiling: he was going to find his little brother.
“You’re gonna come back, though, right?” Ben asked, giving Dean a wary look.
“Of course,” Dean said, as much to Lisa as her son.
After that he didn’t feel quite so bad about helping himself to the bacon she was making, and the three of them had settled into an almost normal round of morning chatter when Cas popped into the kitchen. Lisa screamed and Ben dropped his bacon on the floor, where Dean gave it a look and then promptly remembered that he was no longer in the phase of his life where the five second rule was really appropriate, or necessary.
“Time to go?” He asked.
“Yes,” Cas agreed. “It will take several hours to reach Bobby’s, at least.”
“Right, right.” Dean said as he rose. Ben hugged and Dean rested a hand on the boy’s head.
When he’d been freed from that embrace, Lisa moved towards him and slid one hand along his jaw. Dean could smell her shampoo, something green and fresh, and moved to kiss her. Instead, she moved away and brought he r other hand up to face, and stroked her thumbs along his cheekbones. She opened her mouth to speak and then Dean did kiss her, quick and ravenous because he knew exactly what she was going to say and it wasn’t something he knew how to hear.
“Dean,” Lisa started when he pulled away, but he was already heading towards the doorway, and Cas was this vaguely irritated and probably amused figure off to his side, and it was very, very easy to fall back into the pattern of leaving that he had perfected years ago.
“I’m sorry.” He meant it, too, said it while looking straight into her eyes but it didn’t make his exit any less of a flight.
Outside, though, Dean could breathe, finally. The purr of the Impala’s engine hadn’t changed in her months spent trapped in suburbia. His tapes were still there, in the same haphazard groupings they had been for years. It wasn’t as though Dean hadn’t driven since the end of the world, because he certainly had, but he hadn’t gone anywhere. He wasn’t used to permanency, to returning to the same place day and day out. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be.
In the passenger seat, Cas made an aggravated noise in the back of his throat.
“Alright, Jesus, we’re going! Uh, sorry about that. Old habits, you know.”
“I’m sure.”
Dean flicked on some AC/DC and they rode in a companionable silence for about an hour, until he looked down and saw the gas gauge dangerously close to empty. Of all the things he had remembered to get the night before: his old duffel full of clothes, the shotguns and the silver, the pounds of salt and an emergency batch of holy water, bibles and weird ritual weapons, and, of course Ruby’s knife, he had forgotten gas.
“Fuck. Hey, Cas, I’m gonna have to stop at the next gas station.”
“Alright.” Cas didn’t even turn at the announcement. He kept staring out the open window, his hair moving a little bit in the breeze. It was warm for September, and outside green and golden waves of corn rippled and fairly shone in the sunlight. For miles around Dean could see nothing but road and swaying stalks, and a kind of peace settled in the air, until on the horizon a gas station loomed.
Dean filled up the Impala and made small talk with the man behind the counter in the way he had his entire life, calm and easy, with something common in him brought to the forefront, the dust creased in his boots or the calluses worn into his palms. Not once did he glance in the car to see if Castiel was still there.
When he slid back behind the wheel he glanced over, and Cas was there, staring back at him.
“Don’t you have, you know, heavenly duties to get back to?”
“You would prefer I left?
Dean didn’t really know how to reply to that.
“I had assumed you would want company,” Cas explained.
“It’s not that I don’t want you here, Cas, but I don’t get it. You never rode with us before when you could zap yourself around.”
“No,” Castiel admitted, “I did not. And I will admit that I find this method of transportation confining.” Dean opened his mouth the defend the Impala, but Cas continued, “But I doubt that you would enjoy this trip alone.” Again, he stopped Dean from replying. “God does not mind that I am…fond of you and your brother. He finds it encouraging.”
“Encouraging? I thought you got your leash tightened last time they though you were fond of one of us mud monkeys.”
Castiel glared. “Uriel and Zachariah’s opinions are far from the word of God. Things in Heaven are changing. The angels are changing. I am no longer considered an embarrassment.”
“They thought you were an embarrassment? And you still went back?”
“Embarrassment is perhaps not the right word. The Enochian does not translate well to your language. Aberration, perhaps?”
“Doesn’t make it any better, Cas.”
“As I said, that term is no longer applied to me.” That seemed to close the matter, as far as Dean could tell, since Cas thinned his lips and turned his head to watch the corn go by again. The wind against his cheeks probably was the closest Cas could get to flying or zapping or whatever while caged in the Impala.
“Bobby’s, then?” Dean offered with a conciliatory shrug, and he was pretty damn sure he saw Cas smile.