(no subject)
Title: A Ramblin' Man (Lord I Was Born) [3/3]
Author: nirvana_falling
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Lisa sort of, inevitable Dean/Cas
Spoilers: 5x22, everything ever
Word Count: 7066 (loooong)
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: UNBETAED BUT IF YOU BETA IT I WILL GIVE YOU MY FIRSTBORN. I still have an apparent crush on the South. There will most assuredly be a followup to this but it will be forced to wait for some more X-Files madness.
Dean would have liked to say, later, that the reunion of the brothers Winchester consisted of a lot of manly backslapping, and that he boxed Sam’s ears or something and they agreed to stop being fucking dumbasses about everything. It did end up going a little like that, much later.
As it actually happened, Sam was a little confused and incredibly pissed off to come back to his apartment to find Dean and Cas standing over some stranger who had clearly just been pistol-whipped, and most likely by Dean.
Dean can’t actually say exactly what Sam said when he saw them; the whole thing is a mess of Sam shrieking about his privacy and God damn it can’t Dean let each of them have their lives and Dean trying to explain that Malcolm was going to kill Sam and if anything, he deserved an apology. The whole thing, which was on the brink of dissolving into a hissy slap-fight, ended when Cas stepped in between them two of them and just stood there. He didn’t touch them, or say anything, just let Sam and Dean rage on around him until the whole thing got too awkward.
“If you’re done, both of you,” he growled, giving Sam and Dean each a dark look, “acting like children, there are more immediate problems.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed, and Cas looked almost hopeful, but Dean saw the bitchface and knew exactly what was coming, “the stranger you were pistol-whipping in my room!”
“He was trying to kill you!” And before Sam could snap back with the same ‘I can look after myself’ shtick Cas sighed, and said,
“Dean’s right. Malcolm may have succeeded in killing you had we not intervened.”
Dean smirked. Sam’s bitchface (number 8) promised revenge later. “What do you suggest we do with him, Cas?”
“I had planned on explaining the situation to him calmly, but you handily ruined any chance we had of doing that.”
“What did you expect me to do? You heard what he said.” When Cas didn’t dignify that with a response, Dean said, “Can’t you give him revelation or something? Reveal the error of his ways and all that?”
“Sounds good to me,” Sam added.
“I could,” Cas admitted. He tilted his head and regarded Malcolm for a long minute, while Malcolm flailed in place. Dean exchanged a confused look with Sam and shrugged, until it dawned on him that Cas had probably been holding Malcolm in place the whole time he and Sam had been arguing. So, yeah, maybe he had overreacted, but you wouldn’t catch him admitting that to Sam within the next five years.
Finally Cas moved forward and took Malcolm’s head between his hands and bent it forward. Malcolm tried to wrench away, but Dean caught his eye and shook his head; he remembered the strength of angels. Malcolm eventually stilled and Cas leaned forward to place his lips upon Michael’s forehead, and left them there for longer than Dean was comfortable with. When Cas pulled away Malcolm remained with his head bent forward, his breaths coming in a slow, even pattern.
“It is done,” Cas said, “we can leave.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Sam said, hands held up. “I live here, you know. I paid my rent and everything.”
“Sam, dammit, I’ve spent months looking for you, I’m not just leaving you here.”
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Dean, I left you alone for both our goods, you know. You deserve a life with Lisa, and, Dean, I just want to rest.”
“I’m not hunting, Sammy. I went looking for you because Cas told me you might be in danger,” Dean said.
“Dean,” Sam started, but Dean shook his head.
“Figure yourself out, Sam. I’ll be in town for a couple of days.”
Cas was waiting outside Sam’s door, with the same blank expression he used to weather most of the apocalypse. Dean just shook his head and said, “Come on, help me find where I parked the Impala. Wasn’t paying too much attention to the signs at the time.”
And then Sam came barreling out of the CVS and said something to the effect of, “Jesus, fine, Dean, I’m am so sick of this bullshit,” and then the manly backslapping commenced. It only lasted for a few minutes because, while Dean could tolerate that kind of thing in private, any sort of public display of genuine affection made his skin crawl. It was probably some sort of allergic reaction produced by all of his testosterone. He thought he heard Cas mutter, “Oh thank, God,” but that must have been some sort of feelings-induced hallucination, since Cas would never take the Name in vain.
“Seriously, though, Dean,” Sam said as he steered them through downtown Savannah, “how are things with Lisa?”
“Well, she hasn’t gotten rid of me yet,” Dean said with a shrug. “I don’t know, Sam, you know I’m not cut out for that kind of life. It took me months to learn to sleep for more than four hours a night, and then your favorite angel put an end to that pretty quickly.”
“Lucifer?” Sam yelped, and, yeah, that turned a few heads. Dean laughed and nodded.
“Michael, too,” he said, and Sam’s eyes widened gratifyingly.
Dean told Sam the story of his season in Hell all the way to the diner Sam had insisted had the best diner food he’d tasted in years. The Pankake Palace was a hole in the wall kind of diner, with red plastic booths and a line of stools at the counter, and a checkered interior, like something out of the fifties, but dirty, now.
“That’s when Cas showed up?” Sam asked as they slid into a booth.
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “He told me-what did you tell me Cas? And come on, sit down, don’t just stand there, you’re getting in the way-anyway, yeah, that’s when Cas showed up.”
Cas took the seat next to Dean. “Heaven is fond of symmetry.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“That’s what I told Dean,” Cas explained, as the waitress brought coffee for Sam and Dean. They ordered; dean got a burger and Sam got pancakes and Cas just shook his head, and the waitress smiled at Sam like she knew him.
“She’s cute, Sammy,” Dean said, smirking.
“Dean, seriously? We’re friends. I’m not,” Sam sighed, “I’m not going to do anything like that, not until I’ve put more time between me and Hell.”
“You might want to think about that one again, because guess who I talked to while I was looking for your sorry ass all over the lower forty-eight?”
“Who, Dean?” Sam asked. He rolled his eyes towards Castiel, who only raised an eyebrow.
“Sarah Blake. You remember her, don’t you? Aw, you do!” Dean teased as Sam struggle valiantly against the blush rising on his cheeks. “Anyway, she wanted me to have you call her when I found you. I’ve got her number and everything.” He scribbled it on a napkin and shoved it across the table to Sam, who pocketed without a word, but while doing a damn good impression of a tomato.
He made a couple of pretty weak attempts at asking Dean how things were with Lisa, which Dean, obviously refused to acknowledge. The awkwardness vanished after that. They became brothers again, whose whole lives had revolved around each other since they could remember. Cas even talked; after a little prodding (read: Dean wouldn’t shut up about it) he finally told them what he exactly he did upstairs.
“Gabriel and I,” Cas started, and Sam immediately interrupted. Dean rolled his eyes, he could have told Cas that would happen; Sam was about as fond of Gabriel as Dean was.
“Gabriel’s alive?” Sam squawked.
“Yes,” Cas told him, in the same even, measured tones he had told Dean. “Gabriel, I’m sure you remember, helped us a great deal.”
“Yeah, after messing with us about as much as Satan,” Sam muttered. “And he killed Dean, like, a hundred and twenty times!”
“Yeah, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear he’s back, either,” Dean said.
“Gabriel was restored to life, and to his archangel role in Heaven, but,” Cas stopped and looked both of them in the eye, “he is not permitted the same…indulgences that I am.”
“Indulgences?” Dean asked. “Cas, you’re practically the last person who would indulge in anything.”
He got a look from both of them for that, but Cas answered, “Earth. Gabriel is forbidden from leaving Heaven, for the time being. He has proven too flighty to be allowed much freedom.”
“I’m sure he’s a real peach, with all that,” Dean said and rolled his eyes.
“He has been crueler than most situations warrant.”
“Isn’t that the sort of thing you guys want to prevent?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” Cas sighed, “and that is why I am there.”
“Can you really afford to take all this time off, then?” And Dean was going to kill Sam himself, even if he wouldn’t let Malcolm do it, because Sam, who’s perfectly good and talking and wheedling and convincing and all that, has never known when to shut his goddamn mouth.
“Things are not so dire in Heaven,” Cas said, and added, as he looked away, “that I am forbidden this.”
After that conversation mostly stalled, but the meal was winding down anyway, and Sam had caused him so much trouble that he had no problem with pushing Cas out of the booth and winking at Sam. “Thanks for lunch, Sammy.” He grabbed Cas’s wrist and walked off before Sam could make anything more than an indignant noise in the back of his throat.
Outside, in the shimmering heat of the Savannah summer, that reminded Dean why he loved the bleak middle of the country, where at least the air never filled with water this way, once he had gotten far enough away from the diner that he didn’t think Sam would come looking and demand money, he turned to Castiel. “So, Cas,” he got out, and then he sort of stalled. Cas only stared at him, so Dean inhaled sharply and kept going, “thanks. For all this, I mean, for finding Sam and not making me do it alone and, God, I don’t know. Everything.”
Cas smiled and Dean realized he was still holding Cas’s wrist. He didn’t drop it till Cas had said, “you’re welcome.”
It took longer to find the Impala than Dean was entirely comfortable with, but they found her in the end, unmolested on a side street. Cas fluttered off to Heaven and Dean muddled his way through a series of squares and finally got back to the Sandman.
Once there, his phone sat on the table, accusing.
Dean didn’t deal with accusation well.
“Lisa,” he said when she picked up, “I’m in Savannah.”
“Long way from New York.”
“Hunters don’t go down South much. Figures Sam would end up hiding away here.”
“You found him?” She sounded genuinely happy, excited.
“Yup, happy as a goddamn clam. Made him buy me lunch for all the trouble.”
“Are you headed back, then?” That was when Dean perked up, because something in her tone was forced. He ran through a million scenarios in his head, each worst than the last before he answered.
“Actually, Lisa, look, I just found Sam, and it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to be brothers, and I know it’s been a long time,” he trailed off.
“It’s fine, Dean,” Lisa sounded sad in the same soft way she had when Dean told her what he had about Hell. “I’ve been doing some thinking since you left. It has been a long time, and Dean,” her voice broke, “Dean, I can’t do this. I can’t wait for you to decide you’re ready for this.”
“Lisa,” Dean started, but she kept talking, and her voice was thick with tears though Dean never actually heard he cry.
“I’m not twenty anymore, Dean, I’m a mother and an adult and, Dean, it’s just, we had a weekend.” Here Lisa paused and sniffed. “I know you and Ben get on so well, I don’t mind if you came see him, he’d probably love that, but, Dean, you don’t need to come back.”
“Alright.” He didn’t know what else to say to her. Dean had always told Sam he wasn’t cut out for normal life, but deep, deep inside he’d always hoped he was wrong about that as he was about so many other things. Of course, of course he’d be right.
“Do you,” Lisa cleared her throat, “do you need anything from the house?”
“I’ve got everything.”
“Really? You only took a duffel.”
“Duffel’s all a hunter needs,” he told her.
“Oh, oh, okay.”
They sat on the line then, for what felt like an hour just breathing, until Lisa finally said, “Dean, I’m sorry, I am, and I did love you, in a way, but it’s just,” she stopped. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
The aftermath was nothing like Dean had ever experienced. With Cassie there had been anger and sorrow, but mostly the hard edge of “I told you no one would believe you, no one would take a hunter, no one normal.” But Lisa had known, Lisa hadn’t cared, Lisa had seen him go through Hell again, and he’d managed to fuck it up.
He didn’t know if he had loved her, but he had loved the idea of her: dinner at seven and a kid and sleeping eight hours a night. Sam had hidden himself in the hot lap of the South to give him that, and he’d gone and thrown it all away. Dean didn’t even really want to drink; while it would make him feel better, it would also make him feel good enough to call Lisa, and, oh, yeah, maybe this was why she wanted to end things.
In the end, he did have a beer, but with the three dollar barbecue from across the street that was way better than it had any right to be, and pulled him way too far out of his funk for his inner thirteen year old girl’s liking. Dean had always had a thing for food.
And, because the universe was conspiring to prevent him from having as awful of a day as he thought he was, well, excluding the fact that he found Sam again, which sort of made it one of his top ten days, ever, Dr. Sexy was running on Bravo or some shit network like that which always made Dean feel like a complete girl.
He ended up passing out somewhere around the seventh hour and woke up to his cell phone ringing directly into his face.
“What?” Dean grumbled, scrubbing his face with his free hand.
“Morning to you too, Sunshine,” Sam chirped. Dean didn’t know what time it was, but it was way too dam early for Sam to be this chipper.
“Sam? What the hell?”
“Dude, Dean, it’s like, ten-thirty. Were you still asleep?”
“That a crime, now?”
“No,” Sam admitted, “but you never sleep this late. What’s going on?”
“Never been allowed to sleep this late, you mean,” Dean muttered.
“Seriously, Dean,” Sam said, and got that super serious tone he always did when he decided to talk about Dean’s deeply, deeply repressed feelings. Dean felt nauseous.
“Sam,” he started, but before he got another syllable out Sam sighed and Dean knew he was three seconds away from making Cas bring Dean to his apartment or something, so they could have this conversation face to face, so Dean chose the lesser of two evils and nutted up. “Lisa called last night,” he told Sam.
Sam, for once, didn’t say anything.
“She’s, uh, she’s done with me. I mean, she did try to be nice about it, she’s not a bitch or anything, so don’t really blame her for it. It was all me. I mean, I have been gone for months,” Dean said, and stopped. He had nothing else to say, not really. He could hear Sam breathing on the other end of the line.
“Wow, Dean,” Sam’s voice was weird sounding, too soft, and shaken, “I don’t t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, bitch.”
“Fine, you jerk,” Sam said, and for a moment Dean thought he was actually pissed, but he added, “come over here.”
“I swear to God, Sam, if you think we’re going to have some sort of girl-talk thing,” Dean started.
“What? No. Dean, I’m not actually a girl. You do know that, right?”
Dean hummed into his phone and hung up. He was going to do exactly what Sam had asked, of course, but he didn’t have to soothe Sam’s gender confusion, too.
When he finally found a parking spot somewhere within a two mile radius of Sam’s apartment, because apparently the entire city had decided to park right there, and was a block away from the CVS, Sam barreled into him.
“Turn around, we’re having breakfast.” It was an order, so Dean just rolled his eyes and followed Sam through a series of increasingly picturesque shoes to Clary’s, where Sam winked at the hostess and got them seated before Dean could start complaining about the kind of places that made you actually wait to sit down.
Their waitress was a typical Southern blonde: bright and tan, all smiles and crinkled brown eyes while she took their orders and flirted shamelessly with Sam. Dean was almost insulted, but Sam had clearly been putting a lot of work into the girl, so he let it slide.
“French toast, Dean? You’re going to die of a heart attack before hunting gets you.”
“I crawled back out of Hell, Sammy, I’m not going to get taken out by some freaking toast.”
“Actually,” Sam pointed out, gesturing at Dean with his straw, “Cas pulled you out.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Sam.”
Sam only rolled his eyes and put his straw back in his drink. “So, Lisa,” he started, and when Dean made a face that he knew looked like a deer in headlights Sam rolled his eyes. “Calm down, would you? I’m not going to make you talk about your feelings. Wouldn’t want you puking all over your toast.”
“So what about her?”
“We’re going fishing.” Sam said it with so much pride that Dean didn’t have the heart to tell him fishing had nothing to do with Lisa.
“Great?”
“You like fishing,” Sam insisted, “It’s, like, your happy place or something.”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, Cas told me about that dream you have where you’re just sitting on a dock, fishing. Sounds nice,” Sam admitted with a shrug.
God, for once, or twice, or something, but who’s counting, apparently decided to cut Dean a break, because before Sam could say anything else ridiculous, their waitress rounded the corner, bearing French toast and a reprieve for Dean. Sam knew that mealtime, or at least the part where there was still food left on the table, was a strict no-bullshit zone.
The toast was stuffed with peanut butter and bananas, so bursting with fat and cholesterol and whatever else Sam will undoubtedly yell at him about that he could actually taste it. He loved it.
Sam grinned at him over his seafood omelet, showing a few too many teeth for anyone’s comfort, really, and said round a mouthful, “Told you this place was good.”
“No you didn’t,” Dean told him through an even bigger mouthful, “you just sort of shoved me around.”
“Same thing.”
They didn’t talk again until they were done. Sam waved the waitress over for the check and ended up chatting with her for what felt like forever, while Dean contemplated escaping before he remembered that Sam knew the city better than he did, and, also, probably wouldn’t even let him make it out of the restaurant.
“You’re paying, right?” Dean asked once the waitress had left, her whole face bright like Georgia sun, “Since you’re enjoying yourself so much.”
“Shut up,” Sam muttered, but his ears turned red and he did pay.
Outside, he asked Dean where the Impala was, and told Dean he’d meet him there. He did, too, but only after Dean spent something in the order of twenty minutes slowly melting into a puddle of, like, repression and badass right on the sidewalk.
Sam carried two fishing poles with him, and a tackle box that looked like something out of Dean’s nightmares.
“Old fortune teller gave it to me when I got here,” Sam explain with a shrug, “and I didn’t really know how to say no.”
Dean pushed aside the inevitable joke, and eyed the poles. “How’re you gonna get those in my baby, without jabbing me in the back of the head.”
“They’ll fit just fine,” Sam sighed.
He was right, too, Dean had to admit, as he drove in a direction his internal compass told him was mostly south but somehow a little east, too. The heat of the South clung to him, dragged him down, and he didn’t like it, didn’t trust it. Sam seemed at peace with it though, one hand out of the window and skimming through the air and his ridiculous hair whipping around his face, and a grin on his face that made Dean think of a big, shaggy dog, like a Labrador or a St Bernard.
Sam had him pull over by the foot of a bridge, and before Dean could even point out that the bridge was too high and apparently pretty heavily trafficked, Sam pointed out a small span of bridge, thin and metal and much closer to the water.
“Why do you always have to be so negative?” Sam moaned and Dean turned to look at him.
“I’m the negative one, Sammy? Seriously? Don’t make me start.”
“Point,” Sam admitted. “But, seriously, Dean, I know this Lisa thing is probably tearing you up and if you want to rip yourself to shreds over it, then I guess there’s nothing I can do about it, but you’re not some consumptive Regency heroine trapped in the garret with only her ruined virtue to keep her company in the cold, dark world.”
Dean looked at Sam, face blank mostly because he didn’t even know what sort of reaction to have to Sam’s outburst. Judging from the way Sam was cycling between angry bitchface, sarcastic bitchface, the puppy dog eyes, and the general, confused face, he didn’t either.
Dean settled for, “I don’t even know what the fuck a garret is.”
Sam turned a color somewhere between eggplant and tomato, and Dean took a pole and the demonic tackle box while Sam tried to figure out how to form words.
“Is that really all you’ve got to say for yourself, Dean?” Sam spluttered when he eventually settled in next to Dean on the bridge.
“Yeah, Sammy, it is,” Dean said, with an edge in his voice that warned Sam to back off.
“Fine,” Sam snapped, and he cast. Dean watched the arc of his line across the sky, the flash of the hook with its sad bit of frozen shrimp plopping into the water.
They just fished, in the sort of silence they used to have when they were twelve and eight, or nine and five, in the backseat of the Impala, while the deep and heavy heat of Savannah pressed against their clothes and wormed its way under their skin, and the sun mounted higher and higher into the sky. Sam caught a trout and Dean caught a bigger one, and that dissolved into a petty argument before Dean even really landed the thing.
Sam put his pole down with a huff, and said, “I’m going to go get fresh bait, give me the keys.”
“It isn’t going to make you any better, you know.”
“Shut up,” Sam grumbled, but Dean offered the keys and Sam took them.
Alone, Dean took a pull from one of the beers Sam had, surprisingly, had the sense to bring, and watched the bob of his cork along the river. He’d already shed his jacket when the sun had been at its peak, but Dean couldn’t imagine how people actually lived in this weather, let alone wore jeans. At least a breeze was finally kicking up, not that they couldn’t have used that like an hour and a half ago.
Dean had never really cared for the South, those few times they had skirt around its edges, and he blamed the heat, usually, because he could deal with the cold-you just put on a fucking jacket and a pair of thick socks and tough it out-but when it got hot like this he had no idea what you did except simultaneously throw yourself into the ocean and lock yourself in an air conditioned room.
If he had to be completely honest about it, though, even though Sam seemed weirdly content and well-adjusted, the South creeped him the fuck out. Maybe it had everything to do with the fact that Sam didn’t remember Kansas, and Dean did, and he wasn’t accepting any of that ‘Kansas isn’t in the South’ bullshit, because the Midwest and the Great Plains areas didn’t make him feel like something was crawling underneath his skin. Still, if Sam wanted to spend a few more days in Savannah, Dean was willing to let him. This deep into the roiling, barely-contained madness of the South, he almost couldn’t notice it, in the way you didn’t notice corn after the first few miles through Illinois farmland.
He was absentmindedly waving at a cloud of gnats-yet another reason he wasn’t staying here longer than Sam forced him to-when the bugs seemed to lose interest. Dean looked up, already wary because it must have been something supernatural to drive gnats away, and there was Castiel.
He leaned against the railing next to Dean, his gaze trained out over the water. Dean waited, and when it didn’t seem like Castiel had anything to say, Dean cleared his throat and said, “You’re missing your coat.”
Not stellar, but he wasn’t really at the top of his game.
Cas made a soft noise that was almost amused. “Sam suggested I leave it behind. He said it would look suspicious.”
“In this heat? Yeah, it would,” Dean agreed. Then, “Wait? When did Sam warn you about your coat?”
“I saw him this morning, before you met him.”
“Cas,” Dean started, and before he continued he pulled in a few harsh breaths through his nose, trying to calm down, “was this your idea? Did you put Sam up to this? I’m not some fragile little girl, you know, I don’t know where you guys got that impression-“ He probably could have kept going in the vein for hours, even though he knew all he was doing was digging himself a hole so deep that it would save Lucifer and Michael all the work of getting around Cas’s sigils.
“No, Dean,” Cas told him, “Sam thought of this himself. And,” he added, giving Dean something like the evil eye, “I did not tell him about Lisa.”
Dean let out a sigh. “Go on, then. Do you want to tell me what an idiot I was, too?”
“If anything, Dean, I should be apologizing. It was I who asked you to leave in the first place.”
“I was the one who agreed,” Dean countered.
“It was not a thing you would have said no to,” Cas pointed out, and Dean nodded.
“Still, Cas, even if you got me to leave, I was the one who screwed it up. Not calling, not stopping by, that was all me.”
“Did you ever think that maybe,” here Cas paused and Dean was painfully aware of the way he licked his lips, quick, human, “that was not where you belonged.”
A line of tension ran down Castiel’s back, so Dean caught his eye, deliberately, before he answered. “Yeah, I do, all the time, but what else is there gonna be for me, Cas?”
Cas only stared at him, but there had never been an “only” in Cas’s stares. He and Dean stared at each other in a way that, when Dean looked back on it, was completely ridiculous. People didn’t look at each other like that, and, okay, Cas wasn’t people, but none of the angels had ever looked at anyone like that. Because it was a ridiculous, intense, meaningful stare, and Cas could keep it focused on him without even blinking for forever, so Dean was on the way to saying or doing something monumentally stupid when Sam used the gift of barging in that God gave all little brothers for good, finally.
“Hey, Cas,” Sam said, as he wedge himself past the two of them, carrying two chairs and a couple of bags. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming, so I only brought two chairs.”
“It is fine.”
“Here,” Sam said over his shoulder, “sandwich.”
“Subway, Sammy, really?”
“Shut up, it was on my way. So, Cas” Sam deliberately turned his head away from Dean and Dean rolled his eyes, “how long are you here?”
“It depends.”
“On?”
“Gabriel,” Cas sighed. “Currently, my presence is not required in Heaven, but I have learned to assume that Gabriel is plotting something at all times.”
“Took you this long?” Dean asked, and regretted it immediately when Cas turned his attention back to Dean and Dean’s mouth went dry.
“I had hoped that his resurrection, proof of Our Father’s favor, would make him less…”
“Malicious?” Sam offered, the same time as Dean suggested,
“Less of a douchebag?”
“Something like that,” Castiel agreed. “He is still difficult.”
“Can’t you just smite him with your new and improved angel powers?” Dean asked.
“I may be significantly more powerful than before, but Gabriel is still an archangel. His age and experience far exceed mine, and he is certainly creative.”
“That’s a word for it,” Sam agreed.
“But you’re sticking around until Gabriel actually blows shit up, right?” Dean asked. He hoped he didn’t sound needy, but the look Sam gave him pretty much squashed that.
“Yes,” Cas told him. Dean was pretty sure there was something like a smile in the curve of Cas’s lips.
“Good,” Sam said, and Dean had to remind himself that he had gone looking for Sam, and he loved his little brother even when he was barging in on things that may or may not be construed as moments. “You can help me with this idiot,” Sam continued, “since know he thinks he doesn’t have anything to do with himself.”
“I tried following your advice,” Dean snapped, “and look how that turned out.”
“Excuse me for wanting you to be happy,” Sam retorted. “I was wrong, okay, I admit it, the Lisa thing was better in theory and, you know, at the end of the world, than it was in practice, but you’re not making things any easier, you know.” Dean opened his mouth to give Sam a piece of his mind, but Sam just barreled on, “Yeah, you can blame yourself, and yeah, you probably should because you failed on, like, the basic fucking level of remembering she existed, but isn’t that a sign? You were pretty content on the road, it sounded like. Seriously,” Sam made a pissed off noise in the back of his throat, “Dean, you’re not going to die alone at the age of forty. Things are looking up, pull your head out of your ass.” When Dean thought he was finally done, Sam added, “And now I’m done with this. Cas, he’s your problem.”
“When hasn’t he been,” Castiel muttered, and both Winchesters stared at him.
“Did you just make a joke?” Dean asked.
“Gabriel is not entirely useless,” Cas told him and Dean grinned.
“I don’t know,” he teased, “I’m not sure if I like you running me down with those new skills. I guess it is better than you beating me up in an alleyway, though.”
“I gave up everything for you, Dean, do you really think I would honestly disparage you?”
“Cas,” Dean said, “it was a joke. Gabriel not cover that part? I know,” he added, voice softer.
Cas looked him up and down, just a quick flicker of his eyes, but after spending practically two years in a staring match with him, Dean knows when Cas’s eyes aren’t locked on his.
“Look,” Sam said, and that was two strikes against him, so he had better find the best pie in Savannah or Dean would, well, Dean would put Nair in his shampoo and then he wouldn’t even be able to hide the abomination that was his forehead, “not like I’m against this, I mean, I’m all for it, but could you keep the flirting for when I’m not around?”
“Dude, what the hell? We’re not flirting.”
“Uh, yeah, you are,” Sam said. With a flick of his wrist, he cast and the line soared past Dean.
“Cas, tell him, we’re not.” When Dean tried to look over at Cas, the angel ducked his head, clearly avoiding eye contact. “Cas?”
“Told you,” Sam sing-songed. When Dean didn’t respond, he looked up and assumed bitchface number fourteen: you’re a dumbass.
“You really didn’t know, Dean?”
“Know what?”
Sam just stared at him, and his bitchface intensified. Behind Dean, Cas cleared his throat.
“Sam may be referring to the fact that I have feelings for you,” Cas said. He sounded embarrassed, which would normally be a big thing for Dean, in his apparently ongoing quest to humanize an angel of the Lord, but that was overshadowed by the fact that Cas had effectively declared his undying love for Dean.
He tried to force some sort of response out, at least some sort of anger or manly dismissal, but literally nothing came to mind.
“It’s pretty obvious, man,” Sam added from somewhere beyond the scope of Dean’s perception.
The thing about Cas, for Dean, was that Cas had this amazing and sort of annoying ability to give Dean a case of tunnel vision rivaled only by his relationship with Sam. He’d given as much thought to that as he ever gave anything, that is, enough to know that Cas meant something to him, and to be relieved when Cas had come for him back at Lisa’s, enough for Cas to become one of the constants in Dean’s life.
He already had his brother, Bobby as father-figure when John fell into the earth, so he never really thought twice about the way Cas sort of filled this life-partner void. Dean Winchester may not have been secure in his worth as a human being, but he knew he was more of an all-around badass than pretty much anyone else he would come across.
Not all of this actually ran through Dean’s head as he looked at Cas, but it came together for the first time, and so Dean resolutely ignored Sam’s presence and pressed forward.
Kissing Cas, at first, was like kissing anyone else: lips, teeth, tongue and the slow slide of two bodies against one another, until Cas pulled himself together enough to really respond and then, then it was like trying to kiss lightning. Cas was stronger than Dean, and he let it show, sloppy, as he maneuvered Dean against the railings of the bridge and only Sam’s hunter’s reflexes saved the fishing pole from falling.
Cas didn’t know exactly what to do with his hands, or his tongue, he moved them awkwardly, but he learned absurdly fast, and even in his clumsiness he was never shy. Dean was pretty sure his knees were going to turn into jelly or he was going to fall off of the bridge by the end of what was supposed to be just a kiss. Not, of course, that there was ever a “just” with Cas.
Dean pulled away slowly, freeing himself inch by inch from Cas’s unsurprisingly iron grip. Over Cas’s shoulder he could see Sam, who was covering his face but also staring at them through his fingers. Dean grinned at Cas and raised his eyebrows at Sam who took the hint and stopped staring, but rolled his eyes.
Dean collected his pole and baited it with one of the fresh shrimp Sam had brought, cast and settled against the rail, Cas a solid warmth against his side.
All in all Dean stayed in Savannah for two weeks, mostly because Sam insisted it would be a good idea for them to have a vacation, even after Dean pointed out that the past year had basically been one long rest. Still, Sam wouldn’t budge on the issue, so Dean gave in and ended up on Sam’s couch.
“No point in paying for a hotel room,” he pointed out.
“Fine,” Sam agreed, “but I swear, if you have sex on my couch I’ll summon Gabriel and let him help me decide what to do with you.”
“You hate Gabriel.”
“I know,” Sam told him, so Dean figured he’d respect Sam’s wishes for once.
It wasn’t difficult, since Cas had somehow acquired relatively normal but completely anti-Winchester (mostly Dean) view that sex was a big, emotional Thing. “You’ve been talking to Sam, haven’t you,” Dean accused, sitting up forcing Cas to climb off of him, which was incredibly depressing but within the apparent theme of the entire encounter.
“It’s more that he talks to me,” Cas said. “I just happen to listen.”
“You grow out of it,” Dean reassured him, and ran his hand up the line of Cas’s jaw.
Later, Sam cornered him while Cas was gone and asked, “Are you serious about this thing with Cas?”
“What?”
“Look, I know he can look after himself and I’m not like, his brother or anything, but twelve hours is a pretty impressive turnaround time.”
Dean didn’t even want to dignify that with a response; he was an asshole, yeah, but he wasn’t that much of one. As he shouldered his way past Sam, his little brother grabbed his arm and wrenched him still.
“Fine,” Dean spat, “yes, I’m serious. Let’s never talk about this again.”
“Fine,” Sam sounded about three seconds away from actually sticking his tongue out, “I don’t actually enjoy playing Dear Abbey with you, you know.”
Dean made a noise in the back of his throat.
“Like, I’m not your little sister,” Sam said, and he sounded earnest and serious enough that Dean had to crack a smile, and Sam rolled his eyes.
“Can I call you Abbey anyway?”
“Dammit, Dean.”
Cas, in an impeccable display of his simultaneously amazing and awful sense of timing, zapped into the Impala just as Sam, leaning against the door and skimming his hand through the thick summer air, asked, “So it Cas a homewrecker, or what?”
Dean choked on his laughter, and when he looked up his eyes caught Cas’s in the rearview mirror and only years of dangerous driving saved him from a head on collision.
“I don’t seem to recall having destroyed any homes,” Cas said, once Sam had stopped shrieking and Dean’s hands had stopped shaking.
“What?” Dean asked.
“That’s,” Sam managed, “that’s not exactly what homewrecker means.”
“No,” Dean said, “no, we are not going down this road.”
“Why not?” Cas asked.
“Because now I’m picturing you with some twenty-year old girl as your vessel, you know what I’m tlaing about, Sammy?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam agreed, “blonde and tan-“
“With the dark eye makeup-“
“And, well, you know,” Sam made a gesture around his chest that Dean knew meant “absolutely massive breasts.”
Cas glowered from the back seat. Dean thought about explaining, but that sort of look could only mean bad news for him, and he figured that he’d been in enough deep holes during his lifetime without having to dig this one, too.
Sam, clearly, did not think the same way.
“Basically, a homewrecker is someone who lets or convinces someone else who’s already in a relationship to cheat on their significant other.”
“I didn’t do that,” Cas told him.
“No,” Sam agreed, but Dean knew, from his tone and the way his mouth quirked up, that he wasn’t going to let this go anytime soon, “but you did convince Dean to leave Indiana.”
“Sam,” Dean warned, “let it go. It wasn’t the right place for me, anyway. I would have left eventually. Hell, Lisa probably would have kicked me out anyway.”
“Yeah,” Sam said with a shrug. “It’s just a funny image, a homewrecking angel.”
Dean shrugged and Cas’s reflection lost the tension around its mouth. “You got any more pressing questions for us, Sam?”
“Nope, I’m good,” Sam told him with a shiteating grin, and leaned back. “I’m going to sleep, don’t do anything to me.”
“Me?” Dean questioned, wide eyed. Sam just glared at him through one open eye.
After twenty miles Sam settled into sleep, complete with little whistle-snores. Dean reached out and turned down the music (Dylan, strange for him but not for the mood of the day, hot and hazy and rambling).
“Hey.” He caught Castiel’s eyes in the mirror again.
“Hello,” Cas replied. A smile danced around his eyes and lips. “Where are we going?”
Dean ducked his head to hide a grin, but he can still feel it threatening to split his face apart, crinkling the edges of his eyes and spreading warmth down his spine. “Bobby’s first. He’s already going to kill me for not telling him I found Sam right away, might as well try not to make it any worse.”
“A good idea,” Cas said.
“After that?” Dean went on, “Who knows? Anywhere. Maybe we’ll settle down. You saw Sam, practically nested in Savannah. I’m thinking more in the Midwest, though. Near enough that I can visit Ben, you know? I think it’s time for us to stop hunting,” he confessed, “we’re tired, and,” he trailed off, “I don’t know. Hunting doesn’t feel right anymore, but I don’t know where to go from here.”
Behind him Cas exhaled and leaned forward. Dean felt his fingers brush the back of Dean’s neck, soft and warm as they curled through the short hairs there, a strange reassurance.
“Wherever you go,” Cas told him, “there will be a place for you.”
Author: nirvana_falling
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Lisa sort of, inevitable Dean/Cas
Spoilers: 5x22, everything ever
Word Count: 7066 (loooong)
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: UNBETAED BUT IF YOU BETA IT I WILL GIVE YOU MY FIRSTBORN. I still have an apparent crush on the South. There will most assuredly be a followup to this but it will be forced to wait for some more X-Files madness.
Dean would have liked to say, later, that the reunion of the brothers Winchester consisted of a lot of manly backslapping, and that he boxed Sam’s ears or something and they agreed to stop being fucking dumbasses about everything. It did end up going a little like that, much later.
As it actually happened, Sam was a little confused and incredibly pissed off to come back to his apartment to find Dean and Cas standing over some stranger who had clearly just been pistol-whipped, and most likely by Dean.
Dean can’t actually say exactly what Sam said when he saw them; the whole thing is a mess of Sam shrieking about his privacy and God damn it can’t Dean let each of them have their lives and Dean trying to explain that Malcolm was going to kill Sam and if anything, he deserved an apology. The whole thing, which was on the brink of dissolving into a hissy slap-fight, ended when Cas stepped in between them two of them and just stood there. He didn’t touch them, or say anything, just let Sam and Dean rage on around him until the whole thing got too awkward.
“If you’re done, both of you,” he growled, giving Sam and Dean each a dark look, “acting like children, there are more immediate problems.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed, and Cas looked almost hopeful, but Dean saw the bitchface and knew exactly what was coming, “the stranger you were pistol-whipping in my room!”
“He was trying to kill you!” And before Sam could snap back with the same ‘I can look after myself’ shtick Cas sighed, and said,
“Dean’s right. Malcolm may have succeeded in killing you had we not intervened.”
Dean smirked. Sam’s bitchface (number 8) promised revenge later. “What do you suggest we do with him, Cas?”
“I had planned on explaining the situation to him calmly, but you handily ruined any chance we had of doing that.”
“What did you expect me to do? You heard what he said.” When Cas didn’t dignify that with a response, Dean said, “Can’t you give him revelation or something? Reveal the error of his ways and all that?”
“Sounds good to me,” Sam added.
“I could,” Cas admitted. He tilted his head and regarded Malcolm for a long minute, while Malcolm flailed in place. Dean exchanged a confused look with Sam and shrugged, until it dawned on him that Cas had probably been holding Malcolm in place the whole time he and Sam had been arguing. So, yeah, maybe he had overreacted, but you wouldn’t catch him admitting that to Sam within the next five years.
Finally Cas moved forward and took Malcolm’s head between his hands and bent it forward. Malcolm tried to wrench away, but Dean caught his eye and shook his head; he remembered the strength of angels. Malcolm eventually stilled and Cas leaned forward to place his lips upon Michael’s forehead, and left them there for longer than Dean was comfortable with. When Cas pulled away Malcolm remained with his head bent forward, his breaths coming in a slow, even pattern.
“It is done,” Cas said, “we can leave.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Sam said, hands held up. “I live here, you know. I paid my rent and everything.”
“Sam, dammit, I’ve spent months looking for you, I’m not just leaving you here.”
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Dean, I left you alone for both our goods, you know. You deserve a life with Lisa, and, Dean, I just want to rest.”
“I’m not hunting, Sammy. I went looking for you because Cas told me you might be in danger,” Dean said.
“Dean,” Sam started, but Dean shook his head.
“Figure yourself out, Sam. I’ll be in town for a couple of days.”
Cas was waiting outside Sam’s door, with the same blank expression he used to weather most of the apocalypse. Dean just shook his head and said, “Come on, help me find where I parked the Impala. Wasn’t paying too much attention to the signs at the time.”
And then Sam came barreling out of the CVS and said something to the effect of, “Jesus, fine, Dean, I’m am so sick of this bullshit,” and then the manly backslapping commenced. It only lasted for a few minutes because, while Dean could tolerate that kind of thing in private, any sort of public display of genuine affection made his skin crawl. It was probably some sort of allergic reaction produced by all of his testosterone. He thought he heard Cas mutter, “Oh thank, God,” but that must have been some sort of feelings-induced hallucination, since Cas would never take the Name in vain.
“Seriously, though, Dean,” Sam said as he steered them through downtown Savannah, “how are things with Lisa?”
“Well, she hasn’t gotten rid of me yet,” Dean said with a shrug. “I don’t know, Sam, you know I’m not cut out for that kind of life. It took me months to learn to sleep for more than four hours a night, and then your favorite angel put an end to that pretty quickly.”
“Lucifer?” Sam yelped, and, yeah, that turned a few heads. Dean laughed and nodded.
“Michael, too,” he said, and Sam’s eyes widened gratifyingly.
Dean told Sam the story of his season in Hell all the way to the diner Sam had insisted had the best diner food he’d tasted in years. The Pankake Palace was a hole in the wall kind of diner, with red plastic booths and a line of stools at the counter, and a checkered interior, like something out of the fifties, but dirty, now.
“That’s when Cas showed up?” Sam asked as they slid into a booth.
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “He told me-what did you tell me Cas? And come on, sit down, don’t just stand there, you’re getting in the way-anyway, yeah, that’s when Cas showed up.”
Cas took the seat next to Dean. “Heaven is fond of symmetry.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“That’s what I told Dean,” Cas explained, as the waitress brought coffee for Sam and Dean. They ordered; dean got a burger and Sam got pancakes and Cas just shook his head, and the waitress smiled at Sam like she knew him.
“She’s cute, Sammy,” Dean said, smirking.
“Dean, seriously? We’re friends. I’m not,” Sam sighed, “I’m not going to do anything like that, not until I’ve put more time between me and Hell.”
“You might want to think about that one again, because guess who I talked to while I was looking for your sorry ass all over the lower forty-eight?”
“Who, Dean?” Sam asked. He rolled his eyes towards Castiel, who only raised an eyebrow.
“Sarah Blake. You remember her, don’t you? Aw, you do!” Dean teased as Sam struggle valiantly against the blush rising on his cheeks. “Anyway, she wanted me to have you call her when I found you. I’ve got her number and everything.” He scribbled it on a napkin and shoved it across the table to Sam, who pocketed without a word, but while doing a damn good impression of a tomato.
He made a couple of pretty weak attempts at asking Dean how things were with Lisa, which Dean, obviously refused to acknowledge. The awkwardness vanished after that. They became brothers again, whose whole lives had revolved around each other since they could remember. Cas even talked; after a little prodding (read: Dean wouldn’t shut up about it) he finally told them what he exactly he did upstairs.
“Gabriel and I,” Cas started, and Sam immediately interrupted. Dean rolled his eyes, he could have told Cas that would happen; Sam was about as fond of Gabriel as Dean was.
“Gabriel’s alive?” Sam squawked.
“Yes,” Cas told him, in the same even, measured tones he had told Dean. “Gabriel, I’m sure you remember, helped us a great deal.”
“Yeah, after messing with us about as much as Satan,” Sam muttered. “And he killed Dean, like, a hundred and twenty times!”
“Yeah, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear he’s back, either,” Dean said.
“Gabriel was restored to life, and to his archangel role in Heaven, but,” Cas stopped and looked both of them in the eye, “he is not permitted the same…indulgences that I am.”
“Indulgences?” Dean asked. “Cas, you’re practically the last person who would indulge in anything.”
He got a look from both of them for that, but Cas answered, “Earth. Gabriel is forbidden from leaving Heaven, for the time being. He has proven too flighty to be allowed much freedom.”
“I’m sure he’s a real peach, with all that,” Dean said and rolled his eyes.
“He has been crueler than most situations warrant.”
“Isn’t that the sort of thing you guys want to prevent?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” Cas sighed, “and that is why I am there.”
“Can you really afford to take all this time off, then?” And Dean was going to kill Sam himself, even if he wouldn’t let Malcolm do it, because Sam, who’s perfectly good and talking and wheedling and convincing and all that, has never known when to shut his goddamn mouth.
“Things are not so dire in Heaven,” Cas said, and added, as he looked away, “that I am forbidden this.”
After that conversation mostly stalled, but the meal was winding down anyway, and Sam had caused him so much trouble that he had no problem with pushing Cas out of the booth and winking at Sam. “Thanks for lunch, Sammy.” He grabbed Cas’s wrist and walked off before Sam could make anything more than an indignant noise in the back of his throat.
Outside, in the shimmering heat of the Savannah summer, that reminded Dean why he loved the bleak middle of the country, where at least the air never filled with water this way, once he had gotten far enough away from the diner that he didn’t think Sam would come looking and demand money, he turned to Castiel. “So, Cas,” he got out, and then he sort of stalled. Cas only stared at him, so Dean inhaled sharply and kept going, “thanks. For all this, I mean, for finding Sam and not making me do it alone and, God, I don’t know. Everything.”
Cas smiled and Dean realized he was still holding Cas’s wrist. He didn’t drop it till Cas had said, “you’re welcome.”
It took longer to find the Impala than Dean was entirely comfortable with, but they found her in the end, unmolested on a side street. Cas fluttered off to Heaven and Dean muddled his way through a series of squares and finally got back to the Sandman.
Once there, his phone sat on the table, accusing.
Dean didn’t deal with accusation well.
“Lisa,” he said when she picked up, “I’m in Savannah.”
“Long way from New York.”
“Hunters don’t go down South much. Figures Sam would end up hiding away here.”
“You found him?” She sounded genuinely happy, excited.
“Yup, happy as a goddamn clam. Made him buy me lunch for all the trouble.”
“Are you headed back, then?” That was when Dean perked up, because something in her tone was forced. He ran through a million scenarios in his head, each worst than the last before he answered.
“Actually, Lisa, look, I just found Sam, and it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to be brothers, and I know it’s been a long time,” he trailed off.
“It’s fine, Dean,” Lisa sounded sad in the same soft way she had when Dean told her what he had about Hell. “I’ve been doing some thinking since you left. It has been a long time, and Dean,” her voice broke, “Dean, I can’t do this. I can’t wait for you to decide you’re ready for this.”
“Lisa,” Dean started, but she kept talking, and her voice was thick with tears though Dean never actually heard he cry.
“I’m not twenty anymore, Dean, I’m a mother and an adult and, Dean, it’s just, we had a weekend.” Here Lisa paused and sniffed. “I know you and Ben get on so well, I don’t mind if you came see him, he’d probably love that, but, Dean, you don’t need to come back.”
“Alright.” He didn’t know what else to say to her. Dean had always told Sam he wasn’t cut out for normal life, but deep, deep inside he’d always hoped he was wrong about that as he was about so many other things. Of course, of course he’d be right.
“Do you,” Lisa cleared her throat, “do you need anything from the house?”
“I’ve got everything.”
“Really? You only took a duffel.”
“Duffel’s all a hunter needs,” he told her.
“Oh, oh, okay.”
They sat on the line then, for what felt like an hour just breathing, until Lisa finally said, “Dean, I’m sorry, I am, and I did love you, in a way, but it’s just,” she stopped. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
The aftermath was nothing like Dean had ever experienced. With Cassie there had been anger and sorrow, but mostly the hard edge of “I told you no one would believe you, no one would take a hunter, no one normal.” But Lisa had known, Lisa hadn’t cared, Lisa had seen him go through Hell again, and he’d managed to fuck it up.
He didn’t know if he had loved her, but he had loved the idea of her: dinner at seven and a kid and sleeping eight hours a night. Sam had hidden himself in the hot lap of the South to give him that, and he’d gone and thrown it all away. Dean didn’t even really want to drink; while it would make him feel better, it would also make him feel good enough to call Lisa, and, oh, yeah, maybe this was why she wanted to end things.
In the end, he did have a beer, but with the three dollar barbecue from across the street that was way better than it had any right to be, and pulled him way too far out of his funk for his inner thirteen year old girl’s liking. Dean had always had a thing for food.
And, because the universe was conspiring to prevent him from having as awful of a day as he thought he was, well, excluding the fact that he found Sam again, which sort of made it one of his top ten days, ever, Dr. Sexy was running on Bravo or some shit network like that which always made Dean feel like a complete girl.
He ended up passing out somewhere around the seventh hour and woke up to his cell phone ringing directly into his face.
“What?” Dean grumbled, scrubbing his face with his free hand.
“Morning to you too, Sunshine,” Sam chirped. Dean didn’t know what time it was, but it was way too dam early for Sam to be this chipper.
“Sam? What the hell?”
“Dude, Dean, it’s like, ten-thirty. Were you still asleep?”
“That a crime, now?”
“No,” Sam admitted, “but you never sleep this late. What’s going on?”
“Never been allowed to sleep this late, you mean,” Dean muttered.
“Seriously, Dean,” Sam said, and got that super serious tone he always did when he decided to talk about Dean’s deeply, deeply repressed feelings. Dean felt nauseous.
“Sam,” he started, but before he got another syllable out Sam sighed and Dean knew he was three seconds away from making Cas bring Dean to his apartment or something, so they could have this conversation face to face, so Dean chose the lesser of two evils and nutted up. “Lisa called last night,” he told Sam.
Sam, for once, didn’t say anything.
“She’s, uh, she’s done with me. I mean, she did try to be nice about it, she’s not a bitch or anything, so don’t really blame her for it. It was all me. I mean, I have been gone for months,” Dean said, and stopped. He had nothing else to say, not really. He could hear Sam breathing on the other end of the line.
“Wow, Dean,” Sam’s voice was weird sounding, too soft, and shaken, “I don’t t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, bitch.”
“Fine, you jerk,” Sam said, and for a moment Dean thought he was actually pissed, but he added, “come over here.”
“I swear to God, Sam, if you think we’re going to have some sort of girl-talk thing,” Dean started.
“What? No. Dean, I’m not actually a girl. You do know that, right?”
Dean hummed into his phone and hung up. He was going to do exactly what Sam had asked, of course, but he didn’t have to soothe Sam’s gender confusion, too.
When he finally found a parking spot somewhere within a two mile radius of Sam’s apartment, because apparently the entire city had decided to park right there, and was a block away from the CVS, Sam barreled into him.
“Turn around, we’re having breakfast.” It was an order, so Dean just rolled his eyes and followed Sam through a series of increasingly picturesque shoes to Clary’s, where Sam winked at the hostess and got them seated before Dean could start complaining about the kind of places that made you actually wait to sit down.
Their waitress was a typical Southern blonde: bright and tan, all smiles and crinkled brown eyes while she took their orders and flirted shamelessly with Sam. Dean was almost insulted, but Sam had clearly been putting a lot of work into the girl, so he let it slide.
“French toast, Dean? You’re going to die of a heart attack before hunting gets you.”
“I crawled back out of Hell, Sammy, I’m not going to get taken out by some freaking toast.”
“Actually,” Sam pointed out, gesturing at Dean with his straw, “Cas pulled you out.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Sam.”
Sam only rolled his eyes and put his straw back in his drink. “So, Lisa,” he started, and when Dean made a face that he knew looked like a deer in headlights Sam rolled his eyes. “Calm down, would you? I’m not going to make you talk about your feelings. Wouldn’t want you puking all over your toast.”
“So what about her?”
“We’re going fishing.” Sam said it with so much pride that Dean didn’t have the heart to tell him fishing had nothing to do with Lisa.
“Great?”
“You like fishing,” Sam insisted, “It’s, like, your happy place or something.”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb, Cas told me about that dream you have where you’re just sitting on a dock, fishing. Sounds nice,” Sam admitted with a shrug.
God, for once, or twice, or something, but who’s counting, apparently decided to cut Dean a break, because before Sam could say anything else ridiculous, their waitress rounded the corner, bearing French toast and a reprieve for Dean. Sam knew that mealtime, or at least the part where there was still food left on the table, was a strict no-bullshit zone.
The toast was stuffed with peanut butter and bananas, so bursting with fat and cholesterol and whatever else Sam will undoubtedly yell at him about that he could actually taste it. He loved it.
Sam grinned at him over his seafood omelet, showing a few too many teeth for anyone’s comfort, really, and said round a mouthful, “Told you this place was good.”
“No you didn’t,” Dean told him through an even bigger mouthful, “you just sort of shoved me around.”
“Same thing.”
They didn’t talk again until they were done. Sam waved the waitress over for the check and ended up chatting with her for what felt like forever, while Dean contemplated escaping before he remembered that Sam knew the city better than he did, and, also, probably wouldn’t even let him make it out of the restaurant.
“You’re paying, right?” Dean asked once the waitress had left, her whole face bright like Georgia sun, “Since you’re enjoying yourself so much.”
“Shut up,” Sam muttered, but his ears turned red and he did pay.
Outside, he asked Dean where the Impala was, and told Dean he’d meet him there. He did, too, but only after Dean spent something in the order of twenty minutes slowly melting into a puddle of, like, repression and badass right on the sidewalk.
Sam carried two fishing poles with him, and a tackle box that looked like something out of Dean’s nightmares.
“Old fortune teller gave it to me when I got here,” Sam explain with a shrug, “and I didn’t really know how to say no.”
Dean pushed aside the inevitable joke, and eyed the poles. “How’re you gonna get those in my baby, without jabbing me in the back of the head.”
“They’ll fit just fine,” Sam sighed.
He was right, too, Dean had to admit, as he drove in a direction his internal compass told him was mostly south but somehow a little east, too. The heat of the South clung to him, dragged him down, and he didn’t like it, didn’t trust it. Sam seemed at peace with it though, one hand out of the window and skimming through the air and his ridiculous hair whipping around his face, and a grin on his face that made Dean think of a big, shaggy dog, like a Labrador or a St Bernard.
Sam had him pull over by the foot of a bridge, and before Dean could even point out that the bridge was too high and apparently pretty heavily trafficked, Sam pointed out a small span of bridge, thin and metal and much closer to the water.
“Why do you always have to be so negative?” Sam moaned and Dean turned to look at him.
“I’m the negative one, Sammy? Seriously? Don’t make me start.”
“Point,” Sam admitted. “But, seriously, Dean, I know this Lisa thing is probably tearing you up and if you want to rip yourself to shreds over it, then I guess there’s nothing I can do about it, but you’re not some consumptive Regency heroine trapped in the garret with only her ruined virtue to keep her company in the cold, dark world.”
Dean looked at Sam, face blank mostly because he didn’t even know what sort of reaction to have to Sam’s outburst. Judging from the way Sam was cycling between angry bitchface, sarcastic bitchface, the puppy dog eyes, and the general, confused face, he didn’t either.
Dean settled for, “I don’t even know what the fuck a garret is.”
Sam turned a color somewhere between eggplant and tomato, and Dean took a pole and the demonic tackle box while Sam tried to figure out how to form words.
“Is that really all you’ve got to say for yourself, Dean?” Sam spluttered when he eventually settled in next to Dean on the bridge.
“Yeah, Sammy, it is,” Dean said, with an edge in his voice that warned Sam to back off.
“Fine,” Sam snapped, and he cast. Dean watched the arc of his line across the sky, the flash of the hook with its sad bit of frozen shrimp plopping into the water.
They just fished, in the sort of silence they used to have when they were twelve and eight, or nine and five, in the backseat of the Impala, while the deep and heavy heat of Savannah pressed against their clothes and wormed its way under their skin, and the sun mounted higher and higher into the sky. Sam caught a trout and Dean caught a bigger one, and that dissolved into a petty argument before Dean even really landed the thing.
Sam put his pole down with a huff, and said, “I’m going to go get fresh bait, give me the keys.”
“It isn’t going to make you any better, you know.”
“Shut up,” Sam grumbled, but Dean offered the keys and Sam took them.
Alone, Dean took a pull from one of the beers Sam had, surprisingly, had the sense to bring, and watched the bob of his cork along the river. He’d already shed his jacket when the sun had been at its peak, but Dean couldn’t imagine how people actually lived in this weather, let alone wore jeans. At least a breeze was finally kicking up, not that they couldn’t have used that like an hour and a half ago.
Dean had never really cared for the South, those few times they had skirt around its edges, and he blamed the heat, usually, because he could deal with the cold-you just put on a fucking jacket and a pair of thick socks and tough it out-but when it got hot like this he had no idea what you did except simultaneously throw yourself into the ocean and lock yourself in an air conditioned room.
If he had to be completely honest about it, though, even though Sam seemed weirdly content and well-adjusted, the South creeped him the fuck out. Maybe it had everything to do with the fact that Sam didn’t remember Kansas, and Dean did, and he wasn’t accepting any of that ‘Kansas isn’t in the South’ bullshit, because the Midwest and the Great Plains areas didn’t make him feel like something was crawling underneath his skin. Still, if Sam wanted to spend a few more days in Savannah, Dean was willing to let him. This deep into the roiling, barely-contained madness of the South, he almost couldn’t notice it, in the way you didn’t notice corn after the first few miles through Illinois farmland.
He was absentmindedly waving at a cloud of gnats-yet another reason he wasn’t staying here longer than Sam forced him to-when the bugs seemed to lose interest. Dean looked up, already wary because it must have been something supernatural to drive gnats away, and there was Castiel.
He leaned against the railing next to Dean, his gaze trained out over the water. Dean waited, and when it didn’t seem like Castiel had anything to say, Dean cleared his throat and said, “You’re missing your coat.”
Not stellar, but he wasn’t really at the top of his game.
Cas made a soft noise that was almost amused. “Sam suggested I leave it behind. He said it would look suspicious.”
“In this heat? Yeah, it would,” Dean agreed. Then, “Wait? When did Sam warn you about your coat?”
“I saw him this morning, before you met him.”
“Cas,” Dean started, and before he continued he pulled in a few harsh breaths through his nose, trying to calm down, “was this your idea? Did you put Sam up to this? I’m not some fragile little girl, you know, I don’t know where you guys got that impression-“ He probably could have kept going in the vein for hours, even though he knew all he was doing was digging himself a hole so deep that it would save Lucifer and Michael all the work of getting around Cas’s sigils.
“No, Dean,” Cas told him, “Sam thought of this himself. And,” he added, giving Dean something like the evil eye, “I did not tell him about Lisa.”
Dean let out a sigh. “Go on, then. Do you want to tell me what an idiot I was, too?”
“If anything, Dean, I should be apologizing. It was I who asked you to leave in the first place.”
“I was the one who agreed,” Dean countered.
“It was not a thing you would have said no to,” Cas pointed out, and Dean nodded.
“Still, Cas, even if you got me to leave, I was the one who screwed it up. Not calling, not stopping by, that was all me.”
“Did you ever think that maybe,” here Cas paused and Dean was painfully aware of the way he licked his lips, quick, human, “that was not where you belonged.”
A line of tension ran down Castiel’s back, so Dean caught his eye, deliberately, before he answered. “Yeah, I do, all the time, but what else is there gonna be for me, Cas?”
Cas only stared at him, but there had never been an “only” in Cas’s stares. He and Dean stared at each other in a way that, when Dean looked back on it, was completely ridiculous. People didn’t look at each other like that, and, okay, Cas wasn’t people, but none of the angels had ever looked at anyone like that. Because it was a ridiculous, intense, meaningful stare, and Cas could keep it focused on him without even blinking for forever, so Dean was on the way to saying or doing something monumentally stupid when Sam used the gift of barging in that God gave all little brothers for good, finally.
“Hey, Cas,” Sam said, as he wedge himself past the two of them, carrying two chairs and a couple of bags. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming, so I only brought two chairs.”
“It is fine.”
“Here,” Sam said over his shoulder, “sandwich.”
“Subway, Sammy, really?”
“Shut up, it was on my way. So, Cas” Sam deliberately turned his head away from Dean and Dean rolled his eyes, “how long are you here?”
“It depends.”
“On?”
“Gabriel,” Cas sighed. “Currently, my presence is not required in Heaven, but I have learned to assume that Gabriel is plotting something at all times.”
“Took you this long?” Dean asked, and regretted it immediately when Cas turned his attention back to Dean and Dean’s mouth went dry.
“I had hoped that his resurrection, proof of Our Father’s favor, would make him less…”
“Malicious?” Sam offered, the same time as Dean suggested,
“Less of a douchebag?”
“Something like that,” Castiel agreed. “He is still difficult.”
“Can’t you just smite him with your new and improved angel powers?” Dean asked.
“I may be significantly more powerful than before, but Gabriel is still an archangel. His age and experience far exceed mine, and he is certainly creative.”
“That’s a word for it,” Sam agreed.
“But you’re sticking around until Gabriel actually blows shit up, right?” Dean asked. He hoped he didn’t sound needy, but the look Sam gave him pretty much squashed that.
“Yes,” Cas told him. Dean was pretty sure there was something like a smile in the curve of Cas’s lips.
“Good,” Sam said, and Dean had to remind himself that he had gone looking for Sam, and he loved his little brother even when he was barging in on things that may or may not be construed as moments. “You can help me with this idiot,” Sam continued, “since know he thinks he doesn’t have anything to do with himself.”
“I tried following your advice,” Dean snapped, “and look how that turned out.”
“Excuse me for wanting you to be happy,” Sam retorted. “I was wrong, okay, I admit it, the Lisa thing was better in theory and, you know, at the end of the world, than it was in practice, but you’re not making things any easier, you know.” Dean opened his mouth to give Sam a piece of his mind, but Sam just barreled on, “Yeah, you can blame yourself, and yeah, you probably should because you failed on, like, the basic fucking level of remembering she existed, but isn’t that a sign? You were pretty content on the road, it sounded like. Seriously,” Sam made a pissed off noise in the back of his throat, “Dean, you’re not going to die alone at the age of forty. Things are looking up, pull your head out of your ass.” When Dean thought he was finally done, Sam added, “And now I’m done with this. Cas, he’s your problem.”
“When hasn’t he been,” Castiel muttered, and both Winchesters stared at him.
“Did you just make a joke?” Dean asked.
“Gabriel is not entirely useless,” Cas told him and Dean grinned.
“I don’t know,” he teased, “I’m not sure if I like you running me down with those new skills. I guess it is better than you beating me up in an alleyway, though.”
“I gave up everything for you, Dean, do you really think I would honestly disparage you?”
“Cas,” Dean said, “it was a joke. Gabriel not cover that part? I know,” he added, voice softer.
Cas looked him up and down, just a quick flicker of his eyes, but after spending practically two years in a staring match with him, Dean knows when Cas’s eyes aren’t locked on his.
“Look,” Sam said, and that was two strikes against him, so he had better find the best pie in Savannah or Dean would, well, Dean would put Nair in his shampoo and then he wouldn’t even be able to hide the abomination that was his forehead, “not like I’m against this, I mean, I’m all for it, but could you keep the flirting for when I’m not around?”
“Dude, what the hell? We’re not flirting.”
“Uh, yeah, you are,” Sam said. With a flick of his wrist, he cast and the line soared past Dean.
“Cas, tell him, we’re not.” When Dean tried to look over at Cas, the angel ducked his head, clearly avoiding eye contact. “Cas?”
“Told you,” Sam sing-songed. When Dean didn’t respond, he looked up and assumed bitchface number fourteen: you’re a dumbass.
“You really didn’t know, Dean?”
“Know what?”
Sam just stared at him, and his bitchface intensified. Behind Dean, Cas cleared his throat.
“Sam may be referring to the fact that I have feelings for you,” Cas said. He sounded embarrassed, which would normally be a big thing for Dean, in his apparently ongoing quest to humanize an angel of the Lord, but that was overshadowed by the fact that Cas had effectively declared his undying love for Dean.
He tried to force some sort of response out, at least some sort of anger or manly dismissal, but literally nothing came to mind.
“It’s pretty obvious, man,” Sam added from somewhere beyond the scope of Dean’s perception.
The thing about Cas, for Dean, was that Cas had this amazing and sort of annoying ability to give Dean a case of tunnel vision rivaled only by his relationship with Sam. He’d given as much thought to that as he ever gave anything, that is, enough to know that Cas meant something to him, and to be relieved when Cas had come for him back at Lisa’s, enough for Cas to become one of the constants in Dean’s life.
He already had his brother, Bobby as father-figure when John fell into the earth, so he never really thought twice about the way Cas sort of filled this life-partner void. Dean Winchester may not have been secure in his worth as a human being, but he knew he was more of an all-around badass than pretty much anyone else he would come across.
Not all of this actually ran through Dean’s head as he looked at Cas, but it came together for the first time, and so Dean resolutely ignored Sam’s presence and pressed forward.
Kissing Cas, at first, was like kissing anyone else: lips, teeth, tongue and the slow slide of two bodies against one another, until Cas pulled himself together enough to really respond and then, then it was like trying to kiss lightning. Cas was stronger than Dean, and he let it show, sloppy, as he maneuvered Dean against the railings of the bridge and only Sam’s hunter’s reflexes saved the fishing pole from falling.
Cas didn’t know exactly what to do with his hands, or his tongue, he moved them awkwardly, but he learned absurdly fast, and even in his clumsiness he was never shy. Dean was pretty sure his knees were going to turn into jelly or he was going to fall off of the bridge by the end of what was supposed to be just a kiss. Not, of course, that there was ever a “just” with Cas.
Dean pulled away slowly, freeing himself inch by inch from Cas’s unsurprisingly iron grip. Over Cas’s shoulder he could see Sam, who was covering his face but also staring at them through his fingers. Dean grinned at Cas and raised his eyebrows at Sam who took the hint and stopped staring, but rolled his eyes.
Dean collected his pole and baited it with one of the fresh shrimp Sam had brought, cast and settled against the rail, Cas a solid warmth against his side.
All in all Dean stayed in Savannah for two weeks, mostly because Sam insisted it would be a good idea for them to have a vacation, even after Dean pointed out that the past year had basically been one long rest. Still, Sam wouldn’t budge on the issue, so Dean gave in and ended up on Sam’s couch.
“No point in paying for a hotel room,” he pointed out.
“Fine,” Sam agreed, “but I swear, if you have sex on my couch I’ll summon Gabriel and let him help me decide what to do with you.”
“You hate Gabriel.”
“I know,” Sam told him, so Dean figured he’d respect Sam’s wishes for once.
It wasn’t difficult, since Cas had somehow acquired relatively normal but completely anti-Winchester (mostly Dean) view that sex was a big, emotional Thing. “You’ve been talking to Sam, haven’t you,” Dean accused, sitting up forcing Cas to climb off of him, which was incredibly depressing but within the apparent theme of the entire encounter.
“It’s more that he talks to me,” Cas said. “I just happen to listen.”
“You grow out of it,” Dean reassured him, and ran his hand up the line of Cas’s jaw.
Later, Sam cornered him while Cas was gone and asked, “Are you serious about this thing with Cas?”
“What?”
“Look, I know he can look after himself and I’m not like, his brother or anything, but twelve hours is a pretty impressive turnaround time.”
Dean didn’t even want to dignify that with a response; he was an asshole, yeah, but he wasn’t that much of one. As he shouldered his way past Sam, his little brother grabbed his arm and wrenched him still.
“Fine,” Dean spat, “yes, I’m serious. Let’s never talk about this again.”
“Fine,” Sam sounded about three seconds away from actually sticking his tongue out, “I don’t actually enjoy playing Dear Abbey with you, you know.”
Dean made a noise in the back of his throat.
“Like, I’m not your little sister,” Sam said, and he sounded earnest and serious enough that Dean had to crack a smile, and Sam rolled his eyes.
“Can I call you Abbey anyway?”
“Dammit, Dean.”
Cas, in an impeccable display of his simultaneously amazing and awful sense of timing, zapped into the Impala just as Sam, leaning against the door and skimming his hand through the thick summer air, asked, “So it Cas a homewrecker, or what?”
Dean choked on his laughter, and when he looked up his eyes caught Cas’s in the rearview mirror and only years of dangerous driving saved him from a head on collision.
“I don’t seem to recall having destroyed any homes,” Cas said, once Sam had stopped shrieking and Dean’s hands had stopped shaking.
“What?” Dean asked.
“That’s,” Sam managed, “that’s not exactly what homewrecker means.”
“No,” Dean said, “no, we are not going down this road.”
“Why not?” Cas asked.
“Because now I’m picturing you with some twenty-year old girl as your vessel, you know what I’m tlaing about, Sammy?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam agreed, “blonde and tan-“
“With the dark eye makeup-“
“And, well, you know,” Sam made a gesture around his chest that Dean knew meant “absolutely massive breasts.”
Cas glowered from the back seat. Dean thought about explaining, but that sort of look could only mean bad news for him, and he figured that he’d been in enough deep holes during his lifetime without having to dig this one, too.
Sam, clearly, did not think the same way.
“Basically, a homewrecker is someone who lets or convinces someone else who’s already in a relationship to cheat on their significant other.”
“I didn’t do that,” Cas told him.
“No,” Sam agreed, but Dean knew, from his tone and the way his mouth quirked up, that he wasn’t going to let this go anytime soon, “but you did convince Dean to leave Indiana.”
“Sam,” Dean warned, “let it go. It wasn’t the right place for me, anyway. I would have left eventually. Hell, Lisa probably would have kicked me out anyway.”
“Yeah,” Sam said with a shrug. “It’s just a funny image, a homewrecking angel.”
Dean shrugged and Cas’s reflection lost the tension around its mouth. “You got any more pressing questions for us, Sam?”
“Nope, I’m good,” Sam told him with a shiteating grin, and leaned back. “I’m going to sleep, don’t do anything to me.”
“Me?” Dean questioned, wide eyed. Sam just glared at him through one open eye.
After twenty miles Sam settled into sleep, complete with little whistle-snores. Dean reached out and turned down the music (Dylan, strange for him but not for the mood of the day, hot and hazy and rambling).
“Hey.” He caught Castiel’s eyes in the mirror again.
“Hello,” Cas replied. A smile danced around his eyes and lips. “Where are we going?”
Dean ducked his head to hide a grin, but he can still feel it threatening to split his face apart, crinkling the edges of his eyes and spreading warmth down his spine. “Bobby’s first. He’s already going to kill me for not telling him I found Sam right away, might as well try not to make it any worse.”
“A good idea,” Cas said.
“After that?” Dean went on, “Who knows? Anywhere. Maybe we’ll settle down. You saw Sam, practically nested in Savannah. I’m thinking more in the Midwest, though. Near enough that I can visit Ben, you know? I think it’s time for us to stop hunting,” he confessed, “we’re tired, and,” he trailed off, “I don’t know. Hunting doesn’t feel right anymore, but I don’t know where to go from here.”
Behind him Cas exhaled and leaned forward. Dean felt his fingers brush the back of Dean’s neck, soft and warm as they curled through the short hairs there, a strange reassurance.
“Wherever you go,” Cas told him, “there will be a place for you.”