fic: when air was less solid than the soul (4/6) [dean/castiel, supernatural]
Title: when air was less solid than the soul, two | the imperfection of men, (second half)
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, this is a work of fiction.
Warnings: spoilers for Supernatural season 4, 5 and 6 (this part: 5x04 + 5x15 until 5x18)
Summary: Alongside the well-known story of two brothers, there’s another tale to be told in the midst of Heaven and Hell, the apocalypse and the Mother walking the earth. Chuck - ever the little bitch - just decided to leave it out. (Or in other words: how a man and an angel fell in something a lot like love… and hit rock-bottom.)
A/N: Again, my apologies for being so damn slow at writing and posting. I hope there are still people following the story. On another note: I know, it’s a lame case they’re working, sorry for that. Apparently writing cases ain’t my strong suit (hence part of the delay), but it was necessary for the plot. Another part of the delay is that I no longer have a beta, but I decided to post this part anyway. So first off, feedback for this chapter would be even more appreciated than normally; and apart from that, if anyone feels like picking up the beta process, let me know. :)
( previous part: two | the imperfection of men, (first half) )
when air was less solid than the soul
two | the imperfection of men, (second half)
6
They find him dead somewhere between the car wreckages near his house. Bullet through the head. Finished himself of before “those croat sons of bitches” could get to him. They try hard not to look at the parts of his mutilated body where the croats ripped off chunks of dead flesh. Try to just focus on what the bullet tells them. He died like a hunter, now he just needs to be burned like one.
They don’t want to draw the attention from any more assailants, so they burn the body inside the panic room. It’s as good as outside, they figure, there’s enough ventilation.
Afterward, they go up to the house. It’s late, so they just as well can spend the night - and, as it turns out, knock back half the contents of Bobby’s liquor cabinet. Dean drinks a lot more than him, trying to drown his sorrow with booze.
Cas should probably have seen the drunken rage coming, but he’s too numb to care, as he mixed in some pills along with the scotch he’s having. When it starts, he just lets Dean yell and curse and smash bottles until he calms down again. Until tears start to form in his eyes. And that’s new - well, it’s old, actually, but he hasn’t seen Dean cry in so long it comes like a surprise.
It gets him on his feet, gets him to try and think through the haze of drugs and alcohol, to resurface in his own consciousness. He walks towards Dean, reaches for his arm. ‘Dean.’
That’s all he’s got - he can’t think of a single word he’s supposed to say.
‘What?’ Dean yells at him, his voice breaking. ‘He was the only sane person left for me to care about. He was everything I had after Sammy left.’
‘You’ve still got me,’ Cas whispers, the words spilling over his lips before he can stop them. ‘I’m here for you.’ He knows it’s a weak argument, knows his presence isn’t longer much of a bargain. But it’s all he has to offer.
Dean laughs in a way that should have been bitter, but he just doesn’t seem to have the energy left for it.
‘Yeah, I’ve got you alright, always had and always will.’ For a moment he lets himself go, rests his head on Cas’s shoulder, allows himself a moment of weakness. ‘You were my angel, weren’t you? But then what are you now?’ His head falls to the side, giving his lips access to Castiel’s throat and he lets them hover there, trails them towards his jaw while not-quite-touching.
‘It’s still like that. Losing my powers and that ridiculous trench coat didn’t change a thing.’ And that’s the biggest lie he’s ever told, but he wants to believe it, wants to go back for a moment.
Dean seems to share his wish, ‘cause suddenly their lips are pressed together, and that is something new entirely. He never kissed him in this vessel. He feels his heart clench - this, this emotion, it’s like -
and then the connection of their lips is broken and Dean pushes him away.
‘Dean -’
‘Fuck off,’ the man growls and punches him in the jaw.
He falls to the floor, startled. Dean takes a full bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and goes for the stairs. ‘You take the first watch.’
Cas stays where he is. His jaw is hurting but he’s becoming too numb to feel anything anymore.
7
‘Right there, that’s the place!’ Sam pointed through the window towards a plain, white house. With the ease of years and years of driving the Impala all over the country, Dean pulled up in the tight spot between two twentieth-century piece of shit cars in front of the neighbors.
‘Okay, game face.’ He checked the batch in his uniform one last time and got out of the car. ‘Which one are you again?’
‘Detective Wayne.’
When they rang the doorbell, Dean was all ready and set to rattle off the usual nonsense. That wasn’t exactly how it went though. The door opened and a very tired looking - very human - Emma Novak stared them down.
It got awkward for a moment.
‘Cas?’ Sam asked eventually, uncertain. Dean shot him a look that was supposed to convey something along the lines of: dude, seriously.
‘You’re those Winchester guys then?’ she asked, not exactly in a very friendly tone. For some reason she looked at Dean like he was some bag of garbage she forgot to take out. ‘I thought Castiel would show up himself when I asked for help, didn’t think he’d sent you.’
‘He didn’t,’ Dean provided. ‘We picked up this case from the local paper. How d’you know about us?’
She stepped aside to let them into the house. ‘Most of the time, riding along with your angel friend feels a lot like a having a bad trip while watching Star Wars. But there’s been moments I was right up there in his head.’ She looked at Dean again, more subtle this time. ‘Though the last few times he’s tried very hard to keep me as much in “a galaxy far far away” as he can.’
Dean had to admit it; he liked the way this lady talked. However, the way she watched him was another matter - he preferred Cas to stare at him from behind the Novak’s trademark eyes.
‘What “last few times”?’ Sam asked curiously. ‘Cas uses you a lot?’
‘You know what, chit-chat’s over,’ Dean came between. ‘We’ve got this case to work.’
Emma flashed him a shrewd smile and led them into the living room.
---
Half an hour before, they’d driven into Fairmont - Minnesota - stopping at a gas station. Sam’s eye had caught the front page of the local paper and just like that, they’d had a case. A seventeen year old boy was accused of killing his two best friends while sneaking into their high school at night. Tricky thing was, the boy and both his parents swore he’d been home all night.
Emma Novak, apparently, was the boy’s aunt. She was staying at his sister’s to console her and her husband as their son, Jamie, was taken into custody. They got the information they needed really fast. Emma had told her sister that they were friends of her who managed a private detective bureau and that she’d called them for help. It made Dean hate it a tiny bit less that they’d ran into her. She explained to them that Jamie was caught on one of the security camera’s in the school, slaughtering his friends - with a chainsaw from the woodworking class, which Dean found a bit cliché. On the other hand, though, just as the paper had told them, there was no doubt that Jamie hadn’t been home, for he ran a fever that night and his mother had checked up on him more than once.
When she was done talking, Dean threw his brother a meaningful glance. Shapeshifter. He’d put money on that guess. Sam nodded absentmindedly in agreement and Emma, who had caught their small telepathic exchange, asked: ‘What do you think could explain this?’
Dean shot a look at the sister and husband and coughed. ‘We have to look into it a bit more before we can draw any conclusions, but we’ve had cases like this before, where the murderer impersonates someone else to put the blame on.’
‘You’ve seen it before?’ Jamie’s dad asked confused. ‘You mean it’s the same person, like a serial killer?’
‘No,’ Sam cut in. ‘Just the same technique.’ He stood up and Dean followed suit. ‘We’ll get back to you when we know more.’
Emma showed them out. At the door, she gave them her phone number. ‘Call me when anything comes up.’ Her eyes flitted over Dean. ‘And if you see Castiel, ask the bastard when exactly he was planning to help us out.’
They said their goodbyes and got in the car again. Dean got the engine running. ‘How about we do start out with that? Calling Cas, I mean. Might spare us a lot of time.’ He maneuvered them out of the parking space and got into second gear. ‘And I hate these suits. Why don’t we get Cas to steal the tape from the security camera from the police station, we watch it, and he flies it back in?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Sounds like a plan.’
‘What plan?’
‘JESUS!’ Dean cursed as he pressed down on the brakes. He threw an angry look into the rearview mirror and was met by the eyes of a confused angel.
‘Why were you surprised?’ Cas asked. ‘You called for me.’
‘I didn’t,’ Dean grunted out. ‘I just said your name while talking about calling you.’
‘That is practically calling me, Dean,’ Cas said bluntly.
He decided to ignore the truth in that statement and picked up speed again. It felt weird being around Cas. Ever since the night in Bobby’s guestroom, some strange feeling had settled in his stomach. Or rather in his lungs. As if it became hard to breath when the guy wasn’t around - and even harder when he was. Which didn’t make sense.
‘Emma asked for my help. I have been searching the town for whatever creature that murdered the schoolboys,’ Cas told them. It was so like him that he hadn’t actually told Emma he was in fact helping, Dean thought. ‘The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be anything supernatural present at all.’ His brow pulled together in annoyance.
‘No doubt that it’s a shapeshifter,’ Sam said slowly. ‘And what, normally you would be able to detect it’s presence?’
‘Yes. From a mile away.’ Cas seemed sure of that.
‘It’s Sunday morning,’ Dean said.
Sam raised his eyebrows and Cas just stared, waiting for an explanation.
‘It happened at the high school,’ Dean offered. ‘The murderer impersonated a student. I’d bet a month worth of drinking that the shifter is either a student at the school or someone from the staff.’ While driving, he noticed a diner further down the street. Bingo. ‘Whoever did it could be out of town for the weekend, so with a bit of luck we walk into the school on Monday and Cas can point the fucker right out.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘That sounds like a possible guess,’ Sam eventually said. ‘So you do have brains.’
‘Of course I have.’ Dean pretended to be upset, then nodded towards the diner. ‘No fries for you.’
‘I couldn’t care less,’ Sam grinned.
‘No biologically grown vegetable mash for you. Bitch.’
‘Jerk.’
Dean shot another look at the rearview mirror and saw Cas watching the street and houses pass by trough the window. There was an almost invisible smile on his face and he seemed relaxed, slouching into the cushions of the backseat. Normally, he wasn’t exactly one to slouch.
Dean focused on finding a parking spot. His lungs felt too fucking tight again.
---
Easiest case ever. Cas stole the security tape and two laser-eyes later they had proof it was a shifter. While he returned the recording, Sam and Dean went to interrogate the families of the victims. They didn’t get much information out of it, until one of the dads told them about a murder that happened a couple of months ago. Old lady cut to pieces by some crazy person with a hatchet. No trails on the culprit.
By the time they got back into the car, Dean had bet fifty bucks on the guy who gave the woodworking class. Sam didn’t seem convinced just yet. Too obvious or something. Well fuck the average CSI plotline, sometimes cases just were obvious.
From that point they just had to wait for Monday to arrive. They got a motel room, dropped of their stuff and met up with Emma Novak in what seemed to be the only decent bar in town. When they walked in, they saw her talking to Cas.
The first thing that shot through his head was: god, this is going to be awkward, and he made a mental note to drink as much booze as he could is as little time possible.
‘All done then?’ Emma asked.
Dean ordered four beers, as Sam answered: ‘We think so. Should be over on Monday.’
‘And how exactly are you gonna get Jamie out of this mess?’ she asked, looking between the three of them. ‘Killing this shapeshifter isn’t exactly going to get him out of jail, is it?’
‘When we get to him, we’ll give him a choice,’ Sam explained. They already talked it over. ‘Change into Jamie and hand himself over as some kind of doppelganger or get smitten by an angel.’
She didn’t seem convinced. Dean handed out the beers.
Sam went on: ‘And then when Jamie’s out of trouble - thanks, Dean - Cas flies in and he gets smitten anyway.’
They all looked at Cas, who was eyeing the beer that Dean handed him. He mumbled: ‘I didn’t like the taste of beer very much, last time.’
‘Just have a drink with us, dude.’ Dean smacked him on the back.
‘”Last time”? When did you have beer before?’ Sam asked surprised.
‘Now that’s a good story,’ Dean laughed. ‘So we were at this whorehouse…’
All in all, the evening didn’t turn out as bad as he had imagined it. If he was honest, he was actually having fun. Several girls slipped him their number and when the haze of the alcohol kicked in, he started thinking that maybe he should call one of them. It wasn’t as if he would be missed. Emma was dancing on her own next to the jukebox - which she seemed to own by that point, glaring at anyone who tried to pick a number of their own. Not gonna argue, he thought, she’s playing some fine music. He decided then and there that he did like her. By the bar, Sam was teaching Cas coin tricks. Just their kind of nerdy.
He wasn’t going to be missed at all. He stalked into the bathroom to get away from all the noise and got the phone numbers out. The only question that remained: which one would he call? There was that typical blonde, the brunette with the southern accent, the Asian girl - and okay, maybe she wasn’t that busty but life wasn’t a porn magazine, now was it?
‘Dean.’
He looked up, startled. Emma was in front of him, slightly drunk, red-cheeked and with her hair all over the place. ‘I have to use the bathroom, go guard the juke and if anyone even looks at Christina fucking Anguilera, punch ‘em in the face.’
He smiled. ‘You know, if you were to drive shotgun in my car, I might actually consider to let you pick the music.’
‘Somehow I think that was meant as quite the compliment,’ she laughed and moved closer to him. His breath got caught from the familiarity of it. He knew the feel of that body close to his, although it had been different. She seemed to pick up on the change in his mood and her face straightened. She moved even closer and spoke next to his ear: ‘Is it me or am I right and do you feel incredibly attracted to me?’
She’d said it loudly, but the music drowned it out to a whisper. She knew. Of course she did.
‘I do,’ he answered, and it was a whisper this time, but she read it right off his lips.
‘And I don’t suppose he has anything to do with that?’ The look in her eyes was cunning and he wanted to curse. Hadn’t she been drunk just a fucking minute before? But then again, so had he, and right now he was on red alert.
He thought about her question and - with reluctance - faced the fact that the answer to it might be one that made him uncomfortable. Too uncomfortable to say it out loud.
‘Hardly,’ he said in a drawl and put up a smirk. It felt strained and probably looked it too.
She huffed. ‘Well, thank god for that. I was really starting to doubt his angelic intentions towards the use of my body.’ She licked her lips. ‘You still plan on calling one of those numbers?’
‘What? Oh.’ He looked at the pieces of paper in his hands. Slowly, he let the phone numbers slip from between his fingers and fall to the dirty, beer stained floor. No, he wasn’t going to call them. Didn’t want to anymore. In fact, all he really wanted was to join Sam and Cas in their stupid coin game. But she had him cornered. And in all honesty, he had himself cornered.
He leaned forward and caught Emma’s lips in a kiss. She chuckled softly and kissed him back - same mouth, different kiss. He shut of his thoughts and let her lead him into a bathroom stall.
Last time he fucked some girl in a bathroom, he’d still been a teenager. This was nothing like that time. Blue light threw shadows over their slick skin and he trailed them with his fingers where they touched her lithe body, rediscovering patterns he already knew by heart. Their moans and gasps died out into the noise slipping through the walls but he tried to swallow them nevertheless. Tried to swallow all his goddamn thoughts with it. She cried out a distorted version of his name and he choked on one that wasn’t hers.
When they’d straightened their selves up and stepped back into the humid atmosphere of music, cigarette smoke and writhing bodies, Dean felt the haze from before fall over him again. Something even worse than Anguilera was filling the room, but he didn’t notice. What he did notice was Cas, facing their direction and looking up over Sam’s shoulder when they entered. His face was far from unreadable, but Dean decided to be blind for the words written all over it. He turned to Emma and saw a small, satisfied smile on her lips, directed at Cas.
The angel flipped a coin up high and Dean couldn’t help but follow it with his eyes - spinning up higher still, until it landed in Sam’s suddenly outstretched hand and Cas was gone. No one but the three of them had seen him disappear and Dean wondered how that was possible, how anyone could not see him, not follow his every move. Not feel his absence.
Dean felt it to his very core.
---
He’d been right, it was the woodworking teacher. Only thing he had wrong, was that she was a woman. Not when she died, though, when she died she was a seventeen year old boy that looked a lot like a kid called Jamie, locked away in a cell. The doctor said it’d been a heart attack. The entire case baffled the cops and then a week later, they’d filed it away and already forgotten all about it.
8
So that is the end of it then. Maybe he isn’t an angel anymore, but he knows these things.
Cas enters Dean’s cabin slowly, silently. Not to hush his approach, because he knows Dean can feel him coming near, smell him, probably. He’s cleaning out the Colt one last time. It doesn’t need to be, but it gives him a reason to hold it in his hands - hold it close. Cas knows that. He knows that man.
‘You all set?’ Dean asks, his voice gruff. He doesn’t turn around just yet.
Cas contemplates the question. ‘I am. Ready and set for absolutely anything.’
Dean’s shoulders tense. Of course he understands the meaning of those words. After all, he knows Castiel too.
Cas walks closer until he’s right behind him. Breathing in the scent of the man that tore him down from heaven, he smiles and raises his hands to cover the strained muscles beneath the leather jacket. It’s death quiet between them, even when he lowers his hands to stroke along Dean’s sides.
‘Well, almost ready, that is.’
‘Stop it.’ Dean turns around in a swift move and grips him by the wrists. He looks a bit scared, overcome by the sudden boldness. But Cas just keeps smiling. It’s his very last “last night on earth”, so he has no reason not to be bold anymore.
‘Seriously, Dean?’ he hums. ‘I’m gonna be dead before another day has passed. You’re really going to stop me?’ He moves closer still, until he's breathing against the man’s jaw. ‘Stop me from doing something that you’ve craved?’
The grip on his wrists loosens and he knows he’s won. Quite easily too. With a grin shortly pressed against the stubble on Dean’s throat, he starts to slip down the trembling body, onto his knees. Carefully, he works his way into Dean’s pants, earning him a gasp and an increasing hardness beneath his hands. Dean leans back against the table on which he was cleaning the Colt - forgotten now - and lets his head fall back a bit.
‘Cas - fuck - I’m -’ Sorry.
He doesn’t want to hear it, so he swallows him down, reducing him to a cursing, winded mess. It’s a sad way to say goodbye. It is, but he’d always wanted to make Dean feel, and now he can. So he gives it his all. When he knows he’s getting him close to the finish line, Cas removes his mouth and stands, suddenly. To his own surprise, Dean pulls him in by his shirt and presses his face into the crook of his neck, his breaths short and shallow. Cas keeps working him with one hand and slips the other beneath his clothes, covering the scar that fits his fingers perfectly.
It’s like an electric charge passes between them and Dean comes, biting out his name. That one vowel makes him think of angels and music and a home he no longer has. He doesn’t miss it much. He presses a kiss to the side of Dean’s head and supports him for as long as he’s trying to catch his breath.
Time kicks in again shortly after that. One second he’s trailing his hand away from the scar to rake it through Dean’s sweaty hair, the next moment the man is stumbling away from him, fastening his pants. Cas wipes his hand on the rag next to the Colt and stares at Dean through half lidded eyes, getting a look in return. Again, he’s slightly surprised that Dean isn’t acting evasive. Calmly, he hands him the gun.
‘Now I’m really ready.’
---
It’s back, just a snippet of it, dancing between his fingertips. He stole it right away from Dean’s hand-shaped scar. The last bit of grace that’s left of him, for years now nestled in a human soul. It feels nice.
He looks around for a piece of paper. Now that he has the means for it, he’s got a message to write to some clueless angel.
9
‘So… what are you waiting for?’ Sam gave Cas an inquiring look. ‘Shouldn’t you go and fly off to Babylon for that holy branch thing?’
Cas just kept sitting on the sofa, looking dazed. ‘I - I’d like to wait for a bit.’
‘Dude’s got a point,’ Dean said. ‘Think of all the hazards of drunk flying.’
Sam grinned and grabbed his jacket. ‘I’ll go around town and see if there’s any other trouble.’
‘Sure.’ What Dean really wanted to say was: don’t leave me alone with him. But that would probably sound rude and Sam might start asking questions. So he watched his brother go and after the door fell closed, he awkwardly searched for something to say. When he came up with zero ideas, he stepped towards the little kitchen.
Cas grabbed him by the arm with the force of an excavator. Yeah, he was so screwed.
‘Why do you drink, Dean?’ Cas asked in a tired voice.
Dean looked at him. A drunk Cas could have been really funny in any other situation. But not in this one, not when the cause was God being an asshole dad. He sighed. ‘I enjoy it,’ he answered in all honesty. ‘But most of all for the same reason you did today. Because it numbs some of it out.’
‘Not enough of it.’ Cas dropped his head back on the couch and looked up at him, seeming completely miserable. But then he smiled a little. ‘It’s not just my Father. That I could have handled - after all I’m a… “a badass angel of the Lord”.’ He smiled a bit more, before his face straightened again. ‘But then there’s you and it all gets tangled up and it - I think it hurts, Dean, I think I can feel pain now. Why do you do that?’
Dean’s throat was so dry that he was afraid he couldn’t talk anymore. Never had he felt the need to take care of someone as much as he did at that instant. ‘I don’t know wh-’
‘But maybe,’ Cas interrupted him, ‘maybe I should have listened to him. It was a fair warning. But I just thought…’ He trailed of in silence. Slowly, he tried to stand, leaning heavily on Dean’s arm - which he hadn’t let go of. Once he was upright, he locked their eyes. ‘Did you enjoy copulating with Emma Novak?’ Dead on.
This time Dean really couldn’t get any words out. Cas tilted his head and smiled again, briefly, in a sad way. Suddenly their foreheads were touching and before Dean could stop the angel, so were their lips. Just a second, a soft press of mouths and it was gone and Cas was saying: ‘Let’s go back to how we were before, because this isn’t working. And now excuse me, there’s something I should go and get.’ The grip on his arm vanished and Cas was gone too.
---
When he drove away from Lisa’s place, he wondered what a life with her and Ben would have been like. Coming home to a family after a day’s work, scheduled meals, visiting friends and neighbors... Thinking of it didn’t hurt like it sometimes did when he thought of all the things he would never have. Settling down wasn’t in the cards for him. After all, he had an apocalypse to prevent from happening.
As he reached the highway, Ben Harper’s Waiting on an Angel started to play on the radio. He was seriously beginning to believe that the universe hated his guts. After a few verses, inevitably, his thoughts landed on Cas and in his mind he kept switching the angel between his two vessels. But there was only one (almost) true form of him - he realized that and he wondered: why do I do it indeed?
10
Each blow felt like he got hit by a sledgehammer and Dean reveled in it. The physical pain numbed out everything else - made him deaf for the things Castiel was yelling at him.
‘… all of it for you…. everything!’
But Dean didn’t need to hear it to understand. He knew what each of them had done for and to the other and he knew Cas wasn’t beating him up solely for running to Michael. He was also beating him up because he’d ran away from him.
.
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, this is a work of fiction.
Warnings: spoilers for Supernatural season 4, 5 and 6 (this part: 5x04 + 5x15 until 5x18)
Summary: Alongside the well-known story of two brothers, there’s another tale to be told in the midst of Heaven and Hell, the apocalypse and the Mother walking the earth. Chuck - ever the little bitch - just decided to leave it out. (Or in other words: how a man and an angel fell in something a lot like love… and hit rock-bottom.)
A/N: Again, my apologies for being so damn slow at writing and posting. I hope there are still people following the story. On another note: I know, it’s a lame case they’re working, sorry for that. Apparently writing cases ain’t my strong suit (hence part of the delay), but it was necessary for the plot. Another part of the delay is that I no longer have a beta, but I decided to post this part anyway. So first off, feedback for this chapter would be even more appreciated than normally; and apart from that, if anyone feels like picking up the beta process, let me know. :)
( previous part: two | the imperfection of men, (first half) )
when air was less solid than the soul
two | the imperfection of men, (second half)
6
They find him dead somewhere between the car wreckages near his house. Bullet through the head. Finished himself of before “those croat sons of bitches” could get to him. They try hard not to look at the parts of his mutilated body where the croats ripped off chunks of dead flesh. Try to just focus on what the bullet tells them. He died like a hunter, now he just needs to be burned like one.
They don’t want to draw the attention from any more assailants, so they burn the body inside the panic room. It’s as good as outside, they figure, there’s enough ventilation.
Afterward, they go up to the house. It’s late, so they just as well can spend the night - and, as it turns out, knock back half the contents of Bobby’s liquor cabinet. Dean drinks a lot more than him, trying to drown his sorrow with booze.
Cas should probably have seen the drunken rage coming, but he’s too numb to care, as he mixed in some pills along with the scotch he’s having. When it starts, he just lets Dean yell and curse and smash bottles until he calms down again. Until tears start to form in his eyes. And that’s new - well, it’s old, actually, but he hasn’t seen Dean cry in so long it comes like a surprise.
It gets him on his feet, gets him to try and think through the haze of drugs and alcohol, to resurface in his own consciousness. He walks towards Dean, reaches for his arm. ‘Dean.’
That’s all he’s got - he can’t think of a single word he’s supposed to say.
‘What?’ Dean yells at him, his voice breaking. ‘He was the only sane person left for me to care about. He was everything I had after Sammy left.’
‘You’ve still got me,’ Cas whispers, the words spilling over his lips before he can stop them. ‘I’m here for you.’ He knows it’s a weak argument, knows his presence isn’t longer much of a bargain. But it’s all he has to offer.
Dean laughs in a way that should have been bitter, but he just doesn’t seem to have the energy left for it.
‘Yeah, I’ve got you alright, always had and always will.’ For a moment he lets himself go, rests his head on Cas’s shoulder, allows himself a moment of weakness. ‘You were my angel, weren’t you? But then what are you now?’ His head falls to the side, giving his lips access to Castiel’s throat and he lets them hover there, trails them towards his jaw while not-quite-touching.
‘It’s still like that. Losing my powers and that ridiculous trench coat didn’t change a thing.’ And that’s the biggest lie he’s ever told, but he wants to believe it, wants to go back for a moment.
Dean seems to share his wish, ‘cause suddenly their lips are pressed together, and that is something new entirely. He never kissed him in this vessel. He feels his heart clench - this, this emotion, it’s like -
and then the connection of their lips is broken and Dean pushes him away.
‘Dean -’
‘Fuck off,’ the man growls and punches him in the jaw.
He falls to the floor, startled. Dean takes a full bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and goes for the stairs. ‘You take the first watch.’
Cas stays where he is. His jaw is hurting but he’s becoming too numb to feel anything anymore.
7
‘Right there, that’s the place!’ Sam pointed through the window towards a plain, white house. With the ease of years and years of driving the Impala all over the country, Dean pulled up in the tight spot between two twentieth-century piece of shit cars in front of the neighbors.
‘Okay, game face.’ He checked the batch in his uniform one last time and got out of the car. ‘Which one are you again?’
‘Detective Wayne.’
When they rang the doorbell, Dean was all ready and set to rattle off the usual nonsense. That wasn’t exactly how it went though. The door opened and a very tired looking - very human - Emma Novak stared them down.
It got awkward for a moment.
‘Cas?’ Sam asked eventually, uncertain. Dean shot him a look that was supposed to convey something along the lines of: dude, seriously.
‘You’re those Winchester guys then?’ she asked, not exactly in a very friendly tone. For some reason she looked at Dean like he was some bag of garbage she forgot to take out. ‘I thought Castiel would show up himself when I asked for help, didn’t think he’d sent you.’
‘He didn’t,’ Dean provided. ‘We picked up this case from the local paper. How d’you know about us?’
She stepped aside to let them into the house. ‘Most of the time, riding along with your angel friend feels a lot like a having a bad trip while watching Star Wars. But there’s been moments I was right up there in his head.’ She looked at Dean again, more subtle this time. ‘Though the last few times he’s tried very hard to keep me as much in “a galaxy far far away” as he can.’
Dean had to admit it; he liked the way this lady talked. However, the way she watched him was another matter - he preferred Cas to stare at him from behind the Novak’s trademark eyes.
‘What “last few times”?’ Sam asked curiously. ‘Cas uses you a lot?’
‘You know what, chit-chat’s over,’ Dean came between. ‘We’ve got this case to work.’
Emma flashed him a shrewd smile and led them into the living room.
---
Half an hour before, they’d driven into Fairmont - Minnesota - stopping at a gas station. Sam’s eye had caught the front page of the local paper and just like that, they’d had a case. A seventeen year old boy was accused of killing his two best friends while sneaking into their high school at night. Tricky thing was, the boy and both his parents swore he’d been home all night.
Emma Novak, apparently, was the boy’s aunt. She was staying at his sister’s to console her and her husband as their son, Jamie, was taken into custody. They got the information they needed really fast. Emma had told her sister that they were friends of her who managed a private detective bureau and that she’d called them for help. It made Dean hate it a tiny bit less that they’d ran into her. She explained to them that Jamie was caught on one of the security camera’s in the school, slaughtering his friends - with a chainsaw from the woodworking class, which Dean found a bit cliché. On the other hand, though, just as the paper had told them, there was no doubt that Jamie hadn’t been home, for he ran a fever that night and his mother had checked up on him more than once.
When she was done talking, Dean threw his brother a meaningful glance. Shapeshifter. He’d put money on that guess. Sam nodded absentmindedly in agreement and Emma, who had caught their small telepathic exchange, asked: ‘What do you think could explain this?’
Dean shot a look at the sister and husband and coughed. ‘We have to look into it a bit more before we can draw any conclusions, but we’ve had cases like this before, where the murderer impersonates someone else to put the blame on.’
‘You’ve seen it before?’ Jamie’s dad asked confused. ‘You mean it’s the same person, like a serial killer?’
‘No,’ Sam cut in. ‘Just the same technique.’ He stood up and Dean followed suit. ‘We’ll get back to you when we know more.’
Emma showed them out. At the door, she gave them her phone number. ‘Call me when anything comes up.’ Her eyes flitted over Dean. ‘And if you see Castiel, ask the bastard when exactly he was planning to help us out.’
They said their goodbyes and got in the car again. Dean got the engine running. ‘How about we do start out with that? Calling Cas, I mean. Might spare us a lot of time.’ He maneuvered them out of the parking space and got into second gear. ‘And I hate these suits. Why don’t we get Cas to steal the tape from the security camera from the police station, we watch it, and he flies it back in?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Sounds like a plan.’
‘What plan?’
‘JESUS!’ Dean cursed as he pressed down on the brakes. He threw an angry look into the rearview mirror and was met by the eyes of a confused angel.
‘Why were you surprised?’ Cas asked. ‘You called for me.’
‘I didn’t,’ Dean grunted out. ‘I just said your name while talking about calling you.’
‘That is practically calling me, Dean,’ Cas said bluntly.
He decided to ignore the truth in that statement and picked up speed again. It felt weird being around Cas. Ever since the night in Bobby’s guestroom, some strange feeling had settled in his stomach. Or rather in his lungs. As if it became hard to breath when the guy wasn’t around - and even harder when he was. Which didn’t make sense.
‘Emma asked for my help. I have been searching the town for whatever creature that murdered the schoolboys,’ Cas told them. It was so like him that he hadn’t actually told Emma he was in fact helping, Dean thought. ‘The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be anything supernatural present at all.’ His brow pulled together in annoyance.
‘No doubt that it’s a shapeshifter,’ Sam said slowly. ‘And what, normally you would be able to detect it’s presence?’
‘Yes. From a mile away.’ Cas seemed sure of that.
‘It’s Sunday morning,’ Dean said.
Sam raised his eyebrows and Cas just stared, waiting for an explanation.
‘It happened at the high school,’ Dean offered. ‘The murderer impersonated a student. I’d bet a month worth of drinking that the shifter is either a student at the school or someone from the staff.’ While driving, he noticed a diner further down the street. Bingo. ‘Whoever did it could be out of town for the weekend, so with a bit of luck we walk into the school on Monday and Cas can point the fucker right out.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘That sounds like a possible guess,’ Sam eventually said. ‘So you do have brains.’
‘Of course I have.’ Dean pretended to be upset, then nodded towards the diner. ‘No fries for you.’
‘I couldn’t care less,’ Sam grinned.
‘No biologically grown vegetable mash for you. Bitch.’
‘Jerk.’
Dean shot another look at the rearview mirror and saw Cas watching the street and houses pass by trough the window. There was an almost invisible smile on his face and he seemed relaxed, slouching into the cushions of the backseat. Normally, he wasn’t exactly one to slouch.
Dean focused on finding a parking spot. His lungs felt too fucking tight again.
---
Easiest case ever. Cas stole the security tape and two laser-eyes later they had proof it was a shifter. While he returned the recording, Sam and Dean went to interrogate the families of the victims. They didn’t get much information out of it, until one of the dads told them about a murder that happened a couple of months ago. Old lady cut to pieces by some crazy person with a hatchet. No trails on the culprit.
By the time they got back into the car, Dean had bet fifty bucks on the guy who gave the woodworking class. Sam didn’t seem convinced just yet. Too obvious or something. Well fuck the average CSI plotline, sometimes cases just were obvious.
From that point they just had to wait for Monday to arrive. They got a motel room, dropped of their stuff and met up with Emma Novak in what seemed to be the only decent bar in town. When they walked in, they saw her talking to Cas.
The first thing that shot through his head was: god, this is going to be awkward, and he made a mental note to drink as much booze as he could is as little time possible.
‘All done then?’ Emma asked.
Dean ordered four beers, as Sam answered: ‘We think so. Should be over on Monday.’
‘And how exactly are you gonna get Jamie out of this mess?’ she asked, looking between the three of them. ‘Killing this shapeshifter isn’t exactly going to get him out of jail, is it?’
‘When we get to him, we’ll give him a choice,’ Sam explained. They already talked it over. ‘Change into Jamie and hand himself over as some kind of doppelganger or get smitten by an angel.’
She didn’t seem convinced. Dean handed out the beers.
Sam went on: ‘And then when Jamie’s out of trouble - thanks, Dean - Cas flies in and he gets smitten anyway.’
They all looked at Cas, who was eyeing the beer that Dean handed him. He mumbled: ‘I didn’t like the taste of beer very much, last time.’
‘Just have a drink with us, dude.’ Dean smacked him on the back.
‘”Last time”? When did you have beer before?’ Sam asked surprised.
‘Now that’s a good story,’ Dean laughed. ‘So we were at this whorehouse…’
All in all, the evening didn’t turn out as bad as he had imagined it. If he was honest, he was actually having fun. Several girls slipped him their number and when the haze of the alcohol kicked in, he started thinking that maybe he should call one of them. It wasn’t as if he would be missed. Emma was dancing on her own next to the jukebox - which she seemed to own by that point, glaring at anyone who tried to pick a number of their own. Not gonna argue, he thought, she’s playing some fine music. He decided then and there that he did like her. By the bar, Sam was teaching Cas coin tricks. Just their kind of nerdy.
He wasn’t going to be missed at all. He stalked into the bathroom to get away from all the noise and got the phone numbers out. The only question that remained: which one would he call? There was that typical blonde, the brunette with the southern accent, the Asian girl - and okay, maybe she wasn’t that busty but life wasn’t a porn magazine, now was it?
‘Dean.’
He looked up, startled. Emma was in front of him, slightly drunk, red-cheeked and with her hair all over the place. ‘I have to use the bathroom, go guard the juke and if anyone even looks at Christina fucking Anguilera, punch ‘em in the face.’
He smiled. ‘You know, if you were to drive shotgun in my car, I might actually consider to let you pick the music.’
‘Somehow I think that was meant as quite the compliment,’ she laughed and moved closer to him. His breath got caught from the familiarity of it. He knew the feel of that body close to his, although it had been different. She seemed to pick up on the change in his mood and her face straightened. She moved even closer and spoke next to his ear: ‘Is it me or am I right and do you feel incredibly attracted to me?’
She’d said it loudly, but the music drowned it out to a whisper. She knew. Of course she did.
‘I do,’ he answered, and it was a whisper this time, but she read it right off his lips.
‘And I don’t suppose he has anything to do with that?’ The look in her eyes was cunning and he wanted to curse. Hadn’t she been drunk just a fucking minute before? But then again, so had he, and right now he was on red alert.
He thought about her question and - with reluctance - faced the fact that the answer to it might be one that made him uncomfortable. Too uncomfortable to say it out loud.
‘Hardly,’ he said in a drawl and put up a smirk. It felt strained and probably looked it too.
She huffed. ‘Well, thank god for that. I was really starting to doubt his angelic intentions towards the use of my body.’ She licked her lips. ‘You still plan on calling one of those numbers?’
‘What? Oh.’ He looked at the pieces of paper in his hands. Slowly, he let the phone numbers slip from between his fingers and fall to the dirty, beer stained floor. No, he wasn’t going to call them. Didn’t want to anymore. In fact, all he really wanted was to join Sam and Cas in their stupid coin game. But she had him cornered. And in all honesty, he had himself cornered.
He leaned forward and caught Emma’s lips in a kiss. She chuckled softly and kissed him back - same mouth, different kiss. He shut of his thoughts and let her lead him into a bathroom stall.
Last time he fucked some girl in a bathroom, he’d still been a teenager. This was nothing like that time. Blue light threw shadows over their slick skin and he trailed them with his fingers where they touched her lithe body, rediscovering patterns he already knew by heart. Their moans and gasps died out into the noise slipping through the walls but he tried to swallow them nevertheless. Tried to swallow all his goddamn thoughts with it. She cried out a distorted version of his name and he choked on one that wasn’t hers.
When they’d straightened their selves up and stepped back into the humid atmosphere of music, cigarette smoke and writhing bodies, Dean felt the haze from before fall over him again. Something even worse than Anguilera was filling the room, but he didn’t notice. What he did notice was Cas, facing their direction and looking up over Sam’s shoulder when they entered. His face was far from unreadable, but Dean decided to be blind for the words written all over it. He turned to Emma and saw a small, satisfied smile on her lips, directed at Cas.
The angel flipped a coin up high and Dean couldn’t help but follow it with his eyes - spinning up higher still, until it landed in Sam’s suddenly outstretched hand and Cas was gone. No one but the three of them had seen him disappear and Dean wondered how that was possible, how anyone could not see him, not follow his every move. Not feel his absence.
Dean felt it to his very core.
---
He’d been right, it was the woodworking teacher. Only thing he had wrong, was that she was a woman. Not when she died, though, when she died she was a seventeen year old boy that looked a lot like a kid called Jamie, locked away in a cell. The doctor said it’d been a heart attack. The entire case baffled the cops and then a week later, they’d filed it away and already forgotten all about it.
8
So that is the end of it then. Maybe he isn’t an angel anymore, but he knows these things.
Cas enters Dean’s cabin slowly, silently. Not to hush his approach, because he knows Dean can feel him coming near, smell him, probably. He’s cleaning out the Colt one last time. It doesn’t need to be, but it gives him a reason to hold it in his hands - hold it close. Cas knows that. He knows that man.
‘You all set?’ Dean asks, his voice gruff. He doesn’t turn around just yet.
Cas contemplates the question. ‘I am. Ready and set for absolutely anything.’
Dean’s shoulders tense. Of course he understands the meaning of those words. After all, he knows Castiel too.
Cas walks closer until he’s right behind him. Breathing in the scent of the man that tore him down from heaven, he smiles and raises his hands to cover the strained muscles beneath the leather jacket. It’s death quiet between them, even when he lowers his hands to stroke along Dean’s sides.
‘Well, almost ready, that is.’
‘Stop it.’ Dean turns around in a swift move and grips him by the wrists. He looks a bit scared, overcome by the sudden boldness. But Cas just keeps smiling. It’s his very last “last night on earth”, so he has no reason not to be bold anymore.
‘Seriously, Dean?’ he hums. ‘I’m gonna be dead before another day has passed. You’re really going to stop me?’ He moves closer still, until he's breathing against the man’s jaw. ‘Stop me from doing something that you’ve craved?’
The grip on his wrists loosens and he knows he’s won. Quite easily too. With a grin shortly pressed against the stubble on Dean’s throat, he starts to slip down the trembling body, onto his knees. Carefully, he works his way into Dean’s pants, earning him a gasp and an increasing hardness beneath his hands. Dean leans back against the table on which he was cleaning the Colt - forgotten now - and lets his head fall back a bit.
‘Cas - fuck - I’m -’ Sorry.
He doesn’t want to hear it, so he swallows him down, reducing him to a cursing, winded mess. It’s a sad way to say goodbye. It is, but he’d always wanted to make Dean feel, and now he can. So he gives it his all. When he knows he’s getting him close to the finish line, Cas removes his mouth and stands, suddenly. To his own surprise, Dean pulls him in by his shirt and presses his face into the crook of his neck, his breaths short and shallow. Cas keeps working him with one hand and slips the other beneath his clothes, covering the scar that fits his fingers perfectly.
It’s like an electric charge passes between them and Dean comes, biting out his name. That one vowel makes him think of angels and music and a home he no longer has. He doesn’t miss it much. He presses a kiss to the side of Dean’s head and supports him for as long as he’s trying to catch his breath.
Time kicks in again shortly after that. One second he’s trailing his hand away from the scar to rake it through Dean’s sweaty hair, the next moment the man is stumbling away from him, fastening his pants. Cas wipes his hand on the rag next to the Colt and stares at Dean through half lidded eyes, getting a look in return. Again, he’s slightly surprised that Dean isn’t acting evasive. Calmly, he hands him the gun.
‘Now I’m really ready.’
---
It’s back, just a snippet of it, dancing between his fingertips. He stole it right away from Dean’s hand-shaped scar. The last bit of grace that’s left of him, for years now nestled in a human soul. It feels nice.
He looks around for a piece of paper. Now that he has the means for it, he’s got a message to write to some clueless angel.
9
‘So… what are you waiting for?’ Sam gave Cas an inquiring look. ‘Shouldn’t you go and fly off to Babylon for that holy branch thing?’
Cas just kept sitting on the sofa, looking dazed. ‘I - I’d like to wait for a bit.’
‘Dude’s got a point,’ Dean said. ‘Think of all the hazards of drunk flying.’
Sam grinned and grabbed his jacket. ‘I’ll go around town and see if there’s any other trouble.’
‘Sure.’ What Dean really wanted to say was: don’t leave me alone with him. But that would probably sound rude and Sam might start asking questions. So he watched his brother go and after the door fell closed, he awkwardly searched for something to say. When he came up with zero ideas, he stepped towards the little kitchen.
Cas grabbed him by the arm with the force of an excavator. Yeah, he was so screwed.
‘Why do you drink, Dean?’ Cas asked in a tired voice.
Dean looked at him. A drunk Cas could have been really funny in any other situation. But not in this one, not when the cause was God being an asshole dad. He sighed. ‘I enjoy it,’ he answered in all honesty. ‘But most of all for the same reason you did today. Because it numbs some of it out.’
‘Not enough of it.’ Cas dropped his head back on the couch and looked up at him, seeming completely miserable. But then he smiled a little. ‘It’s not just my Father. That I could have handled - after all I’m a… “a badass angel of the Lord”.’ He smiled a bit more, before his face straightened again. ‘But then there’s you and it all gets tangled up and it - I think it hurts, Dean, I think I can feel pain now. Why do you do that?’
Dean’s throat was so dry that he was afraid he couldn’t talk anymore. Never had he felt the need to take care of someone as much as he did at that instant. ‘I don’t know wh-’
‘But maybe,’ Cas interrupted him, ‘maybe I should have listened to him. It was a fair warning. But I just thought…’ He trailed of in silence. Slowly, he tried to stand, leaning heavily on Dean’s arm - which he hadn’t let go of. Once he was upright, he locked their eyes. ‘Did you enjoy copulating with Emma Novak?’ Dead on.
This time Dean really couldn’t get any words out. Cas tilted his head and smiled again, briefly, in a sad way. Suddenly their foreheads were touching and before Dean could stop the angel, so were their lips. Just a second, a soft press of mouths and it was gone and Cas was saying: ‘Let’s go back to how we were before, because this isn’t working. And now excuse me, there’s something I should go and get.’ The grip on his arm vanished and Cas was gone too.
---
When he drove away from Lisa’s place, he wondered what a life with her and Ben would have been like. Coming home to a family after a day’s work, scheduled meals, visiting friends and neighbors... Thinking of it didn’t hurt like it sometimes did when he thought of all the things he would never have. Settling down wasn’t in the cards for him. After all, he had an apocalypse to prevent from happening.
As he reached the highway, Ben Harper’s Waiting on an Angel started to play on the radio. He was seriously beginning to believe that the universe hated his guts. After a few verses, inevitably, his thoughts landed on Cas and in his mind he kept switching the angel between his two vessels. But there was only one (almost) true form of him - he realized that and he wondered: why do I do it indeed?
10
Each blow felt like he got hit by a sledgehammer and Dean reveled in it. The physical pain numbed out everything else - made him deaf for the things Castiel was yelling at him.
‘… all of it for you…. everything!’
But Dean didn’t need to hear it to understand. He knew what each of them had done for and to the other and he knew Cas wasn’t beating him up solely for running to Michael. He was also beating him up because he’d ran away from him.
.