[FIC] it was for freedom

[wormstaches]

Title: it was for freedom
Author: wormstaches
Rating: r
Genre and/or Pairing: AU, ripping your soul out, Dean/Castiel, (mentions of Ruby/Anna, Castiel/Others, Dean/Others)
Spoilers: none, it's an AU
Warnings: internalized homophobia, sexuality crisis, drug use, language, sexual content
Word Count: ~4000
Summary: they build a city out of memories, and kiss in the spaces between the forgotten moments of a lifetime
It's always been Dean and Castiel, ever since they were young boys in their conservative Midwestern hometown. It's Dean and Castiel even as they build their own lives away from each other, with the constant reminder of "Boys don't kiss in Kansas." And they keep thinking it can stay that way, until it all comes crashing down.
A/N: I just want to apologize for writing this,
Inspired by Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

Dean thinks he’s beautiful at the flea market the winter they drive to New York together, as he runs his fingers over speckled glass bottles and old tins, dust flocking to his coat, breath billowing out and rasping against the stubble he’s growing. Dean catches his elbow, throat tight and long lashes stiff with cold, action hovering in his bones, but he says nothing, just pries the cracking clothbound book he is holding from his hands, thumb brushing Cas’s knuckles, and buys it for him.



They meet two punks in torn tights and creepers, pale legs mottled from cold, hair gathered at their shoulders between thick leather jackets and studded denim vests. They are sitting in an iced alley, smoking cigarettes and they run across the city with them “the night is young, country boys!”  Dean is drunk on the frigid thrill, Cas’s arm looped around his elbow.

Ruby is in central park feeding pigeons in a fur coat and red lipstick that looks like blood against the gathering snow. She looks at them like something good to eat, setting the bag of breadcrumbs on the bench and fitting between them, buckled high-heeled shoes clattering on the path. They buy her French fries at a diner and Dean is fascinated with the way she licks the ketchup off them.

They shed the Impala’s backseat where they were sleeping in a knot of limbs for Anna and Meg’s one room apartment. They curl up on the floor, backs brushing and Dean wakes one morning with Cas’s arm around his waist. He doesn’t push Cas off as he should and goes back to sleep.

They celebrate New Years on the roof of the apartment building with a cooler of beer and a dozen people they don’t know the names of. Beneath the dizzy flings of the fireworks Dean feels Cas’s lips brush against his ear at the shriek of midnight and finds his hand with his own, squeezing before his fingers ghost away. Meg is smoking, leaning over the edge of the building, shrieking gleefully at the cars zipping by below, honking like howling wolves, and Cas goes to stand with her.

They all drive to Chicago that summer in a van with a drum kit and blown out speakers cluttered against one wall, creating a small nook between them filled with blankets that smell like wood smoke and cold. One wall is covered in CD shards and bits of broken mirror and the other in peeling posters from punk shows held in basements in the suburbs. The van tears into town with Ruby hollering out the window and Cas and Dean leap in with only a duffel bag between them without looking back. They take off down the interstate screaming for freedom and Cas leans out the window, watching the fields of Kansas race past. Dean thinks he looks like a bird ready to take flight.

Cas loses his virginity to Meg one night while Ruby and Anna sing along to a screeching CD in the front seat. Their black rosary sways from the rearview mirror like a metronome, reflecting the lights of passing cars on the road. Dean lies on his side and watches Cas and Meg’s hazy backlit forms undulate in the nook through the white membrane of the kick drum. He finds tears but is not crying and thinks he could stay like this forever.

He calls Mary at a rest stop and makes himself miss her amongst the sound of flushing toilets through the brick wall at his back. He watches Anna and Ruby standing across the narrow road that winds off the freeway to the stop, between two bedraggled trees, smoking and pointing at the sparrows darting above them.

They climb back into the van and Meg and Cas are eating ice cream and nachos, wrapped in sheets and he takes a chip without asking. Cas is watching him and Dean doesn’t know what for, but he watches him back until Meg nudges Cas and Cas rolls away, slipping on pants and sliding down beside Dean, opposite her, back curled against the wall and this is how it should be. They roll down the windows and let the air whip in and out and over their skin.

The sun rises and the heat sets in and they drive all day in just their underwear, shameless and spitting cherry seeds they bought at a farm stand out the window. Cas’s legs are long and lithe in the shaking sunbeams filling the van. He watches Dean as Dean’s fingers linger above Cas’s knee, gently removing his hand when his thumb slides beneath his thigh. They find themselves ephemeral and everlasting in the sprinting gray of the road. When the sun goes down and they are solitary in the world of the road, they open the windows and scream, letting the sound be eaten up by the land.

They reach Chicago the next day and spend a week in the feverish, rainy town. They go to concerts at one in the morning and sleep in parking lots and Dean is in love with the place.

He and Cas are on a coffee run and Cas is fiddling with the tips of his hair. It has grown just past an attractive length and he says, “She’s a bitch.”

“Who?” Dean asks.

“Meg.”

“Oh. She did fuck you, though.”

Cas shrugs. “I kind of thought it would be more special, but she sort of just laughed and said thanks and that she was hungry.”

“What does special mean anyways,” Dean says by way of answer and Cas looks at him with his head tilted and eyes roving skyward and somehow Dean knows the gesture is saying “Us.”

“Not much,” Cas replies.

They buy coffee with the last six singles in Dean’s wallet; the pie slice punch card and two crumpled receipts beside a picture of Sam and Mary with John’s face scribbled out tell him it’s time to go home.

Cas wants to go with the group all the way to San Francisco, but Dean grabs his shoulder and says, “I promised I would take care of you.” Cas smiles and they walk back to the car, fingers hooking in their strides.

They do shrooms on their last night; Anna finds them on a shelf in the van and they drive, heedless of caution and laughing at everything. Dean tells Cas he’s beautiful in another fit of action and Cas smiles full-toothed in a way he never has. They make out in the nook until they come down and fall asleep.

They drop the boys off at the edge of a field of Kansan corn and Dean is filled with an aching sense of nostalgia. He holds Cas’s hand as they drive off, screaming out the window, blasting Stravinsky, a piece of rolling paper with phone numbers and a promise to write in Dean’s pocket.

He knows he will never see them again and that they’ll never write, either.

“I guess it’s just a memory now,” Dean says when the van disappears in the heat waves of the road.

“Isn’t that all anything is,” Cas muses in reply.

He doesn’t kiss Cas, although this becomes one of a multitude of memories in which he should have, and he doesn’t kiss him even in his room as Cas’s lips trip over the freckles on his collarbone, tongue hot like the van’s leather seats. As Cas insists Dean reminds him, “Boys don’t kiss in Kansas” and Cas gets up and puts his shirt on and leaves. Dean watches him wade through the field in the moonlight, just silver and shadow and thinks he looks like a memory. And perhaps, that is what he is. He finds tears but is not crying.

Dean doesn’t kiss him when he goes to college or they buy Mistletoe from two boys on the corner when Cas comes home for break or as he squeezes Cas’s hand as he climbs into the cab on New Year’s Day to go to the airport and back to school.

He doesn’t kiss him either when Dean finds him in his yellow kitchen in Maryland, listening to Stravinsky and Cas tells him he’s met someone, that she’s great and they’re driving to San Francisco together in the wrong kind of van and Dean leaves after an unbearable afternoon of small talk only Cas is invested in, wondering why memories converge.

They move to San Francisco eventually and Dean flies out for the wedding to be best man even though he’s long since lost the title of Cas’s best friend; although he supposes that was never the label for what they were. He arrives a week early and helps get the last things done. Cas has the three of them do everything together and Dean isn’t sure whether he or she is the third wheel. It doesn’t feel like a competition, but Dean thinks if it did he would be winning, and he feels bad for not feeling bad about the truth of this. He knows she notices, too, as Cas’s eyes fall from her effortlessly when he walks in the room and Dean tells himself it is the conglomeration of experience between them, nothing more-- two boys stretched out bare-chested and thin-legged in the back of a van.

They dance to Stravinsky at the rehearsal dinner and Dean feels betrayed, watching Cas watch him over her shoulder from a seat by the wine. They stand at the back for the next song since dancing together would be weird and as she dances with her father Dean says, “She’s beautiful,” but what he really means is, “You’re beautiful,” and Cas just nods. He thinks he sees Ruby in the crowd but it’s just another dark-haired woman in a stole and he wonders if Cas even tried to find them to send invitations and if Ruby and Anna are lesbians with dogs named after the Clash yet. He thinks: boys kiss in San Francisco and they ditch Cas’s own bachelor party to go back to the hotel. Cas takes his hand and guides him into the room they booked just for tonight because the bride and bridegroom can’t sleep together the night before the ceremony. Cas’s hands are fixed on Dean’s hips as Dean unbuttons his shirt and they leave the lights off because it’s easier to pretend in the dark. Dean kisses him and feels the memory sear onto his bones and wonders why he only remembers his mistakes and that surely he will remember this as Cas pushes him onto the bed, easing clothes off, fingers brushing against his still summer-flushed skin with a tenderness they only reserve for each other. Dean kisses him carefully and taking his time, feeling guilty for not feeling guilty as Cas stretches him open, slotting their legs together and burying his face in his shoulder, arms tight around him. There are many ways they could do this but they only do it like this, imbuing each movement with meaning because they both know this is the last chance they will ever have. And perhaps that is why they are doing this, the night before all is said and done, doing and saying it all and Dean whispers, “You’re beautiful,” in the aftermath, their damp foreheads pressed together, eyes closed and processing.

He wakes to Cas’s feet, always cold, pressed against his calves and waits for him to wake. He does, looking at Dean without saying anything and getting out of bed, sliding into his clothes. “I love you.” Dean nods and Cas is out the door. Dean runs into her on his way to get his suit from the dry cleaning in the lobby and meets her eyes as a test, but finds no guilt, only bitterness. She should be guilty.

The ceremony is perfect and on a beach right beside the Bridge in the Presidio. Cas says “I do” although Dean half-hopes he would trip on the words and as he kisses her he feels tears and sees them in Cas’s eyes as he pulls away. Neither of them is crying. Everyone thinks it’s happiness on Cas’s behalf as she sobs dramatically in his arms and it partially is, Dean knows, because for whatever part of Cas stayed with Dean last night, Cas does love her, really truly, because he’s not the kind of man to marry for a lie. They both smile in the pictures but when Dean looks through the album Cas is sad in the backgrounds of the shots in which the camera isn’t focused on him. He is sadder than the day the van disappeared over the hill and Dean knows he is also guilty for not being guilty.

They sit in the sand barefoot, ties undone around their necks, down the beach from the wedding party. Her dress is swirling like foam around her ankles as she chases seagulls with the children. Fog is rolling over the bridge and into the city, mingling with the sunlight.

Cas sighs. “I’ll remember this,” and Dean knows he means precisely this moment.

“What about your wedding?” Dean asks and Cas shrugs, eyes going skyward.

“Just memories.”

Dean agrees with silence and they shift closer, regrets collecting between them and Dean wonders if Cas remembers his mistakes too, although Cas is the kind of man who wouldn’t think of them as mistakes.

The fog is closer now and words play between them. The air salty and they watch her run with the kids into the waves, water eating up the fabric of her dress, turning it gray.

“That dress was fucking expensive,” Cas says and Dean laughs and almost says he would be several thousand dollars richer if he’d married a guy, but decides not to.

Cas’s breath smells like roses and saltwater and they stay like that for a moment, faces close, memories hovering between them, light diffusing like through a kick drum skin and Dean’s throat is tight. Cas gets to his feet and dusts sand off his pants and in the foglit light he thinks he’s beautiful as he crosses the beach, the water devouring his footprints. He rolls up his pant-legs and dances with her in the water, holding her in his arms. Dean feels the wet on his cheeks and thinks it is fog, but it runs like rivers beneath his nails as he wipes it away.

Cas calls him on the phone that night, voice echoing as he sits in the bottom of the shower, teetering on the edge of a panic attack. “I’m scared to touch her. She’ll know.”

“Then leave her,” Dean says before he can stop himself. Cas hangs up with a click.

Cas drives him to the airport, leaving her glowering at the kitchen table. He drives smoothly, hands white on the wheel. They pause outside the terminal and don’t look at each other. Dean doesn’t kiss him. He climbs out and gets his duffle bag and flies back to Kansas; where boys don’t kiss.

Their phone calls become rigid and small-worded, laden with things they don’t say, travelling the wires with their words, too. The two in San Francisco become three and Dean supposes that it is really the end, now. He wonders if there was anything at all or if it was just try it and see if it hurts. Either way, he learned something. He waits for the headlights of the rent-a-car to cleave through the tall grass that has overtaken the cornfield and thinks he hasn’t learned anything. They arrive and as she introduces the girl-- Deanna-- in clipped tones, Cas looks at Dean and Dean doesn’t look at him because how wrong is it for Cas to name his daughter after him.

He kisses Cas on the porch beneath the buzzing porch light while she makes dinner and Deanna watches cartoons and feels Cas’s breath catch on his lips, fingers at his hips before he pulls away, eyes dark and hissing, “Boys don’t kiss in Kansas,” before going back inside and helping her shell peas. Dean tears the lantern down and watches it smash on the lawn unforgivingly. No one asks what the noise was when he returns to set the table.

Cas is the perfect father and the perfect husband and Dean can see how much he loves both of them in his eyes but when they look away he can see how much Cas loves him, too, and he knows he’s not the only one who doesn’t entirely believe him. He comes into Dean’s room, next to the guest room the three of them are staying in-- Deanna in the murphy bed-- and kisses Dean up against the wall before he steps back in a hurry and leaves.

He drives them to the airport three days later because Deanna can’t miss more than one day of school (and Dean sees Cas roll his eyes as she says this even though he’s obviously not supposed to). She and Deanna sit in the backseat and Cas rides shotgun how he always did. Dean holds his hand between the gearshift, out of sight and his nails are hard and scraping as they pull to a stop and Cas moves to unbuckle his seatbelt. Dean stays put because there is no reason for him to get out, and she looks between them before unbuckling Deanna and pulling both of them out of the car. Dean pops the trunk and the top goes up, blocking the back window with a shadow. Dean kisses him once and twice and a third time, lingering, and Cas’s lips tremble each time he does.

“I love you,” Dean says, and Cas practically throws himself out of the car, prying the suitcases from her fingers and slamming the trunk shut. He doesn’t look back at Dean or say goodbye, just strides into the airport. He pauses after the first set of doors, to take Deanna’s hand as she tries to keep up with him and Dean notices the distance between Cas and her, and that he is a truly great father, for many reasons; many of them being Dean, he realizes painfully.

He calls him once, when they get in, and his voice is rough, maybe from bad sleep on the plane, but Dean can hear the tears sticking like thorns in his throat. “Me too,” he says, and hangs up. Dean goes out onto the porch and sits in a chair with a sagging seat, an unopened beer at his feet, and watches the grass wave, like it’s dancing, and the stars, bright in Kansas, dull in New York and Chicago and San Francisco, and realizes how much he appreciates them; they remind him of Castiel. He’s never seen anything so free.

Dean finds a girl playing pool with a shot of Jack at her elbow. She has black hair that hangs in waifish tendrils down her back, and blue eyes the color of a lake where it meets the horizon. She likes regular sex and she likes him. She becomes a fixture at his kitchen table, sheet bundled and draping like angel wings and Dean decides her jaw and gaze are sharp enough to let her stay.

He loves her in the sense that he loves the crease he has made for himself in her, and the one she has made in him.

Cas comes to visit some months later with Deanna, and neither of them says anything about the fact that she didn’t come with them. Dean’s alone in the house; she’s away for the week, driving to some concert with her work friends and Dean has realized he only misses her when he thinks about missing her.

Deanna sleeps in the guest room and Cas puts her to bed by crouching next to her pillow and saying, “You get the guest room to yourself now because you’re a big girl,” and Dean watches him through the door from the hall. Cas gets to his feet and sees him. He closes the door behind himself as he moves towards Dean and they meet in a clash of silences and mistakes like a string being struck by a bow.

“Can you just kiss me and not say anything,” Cas asks him, tugging at his skin with his lips, scrabbling at his clothes with his fingers.

“I don’t mind,” Dean replies, cataloguing this mistake before he even categorizes it as thus, and they fall into the bed, just fingertips and memory. It’s been done before, it all has, and they know this-- that they are nothing new, that their story has been told before. They are just hoping to do it justice. There is no need to be patient this time. The sheets still smell like her and if Cas notices, he says nothing as Dean fucks him into the mattress, biting a pillow to keep from crying out.

Cas is cooking and Dean is drinking coffee and watching him and the twist of his wrists, the sizzle of eggs and bacon the only sound below Deanna’s chattering voice as she grips the houseline far too big for her and talks to her.

“Yeah, mommy, it’s really pretty here.”

Dean likes Cas’s face when he looks at his daughter, it’s soft and warm like chocolate left out on a summer afternoon.

“And daddy is happy. He and Dean make happy sounds at night.”

The coffee sits on Dean’s tongue, bitter and acrid and unable to go down or fall from his lips. Cas’s wrists still and the pan sits on the stove, the bacon and eggs burning.

“Yeah, he’s right here. Daddy, mommy wants to talk to you.” Deanna holds out the phone and Cas turns the stove off, reaching for the phone without looking at Dean and perhaps this is what it is like to be a memory, he thinks, his eyes heavy in their sockets, as Cas places the phone to his ear, pats Deanna on the head, and leaves the room. His voice is tired in the hallway and Dean can’t make out the words nor can he bring himself to move and eavesdrop.

“Did I do something wrong?” Deanna asks, looking at Dean worriedly, and if there’s anything this little girl is, it’s Cas’s daughter.

“No,” Dean tells her, setting down his coffee and opening a cabinet in search of his favorite whiskey.

He passes Cas in the hall, but his back is to him and he’s hunched around the phone, as if protecting it. He goes upstairs and lies in his rumple-sheeted-bed that smells like Cas and takes gulp after gulp of whiskey until his whole body is raw and he swears he will never wash these sheets again he will just lie here and be in love with this smell of his mistakes because that’s all that’s left, mistakes, memories disfigured and stained and turned into regrets.

He hears Cas downstairs, yelling, and wonders where Deanna is, how she feels. His voice is tired and his words are tired, echoing up through the floorboards. You don’t understand. It’s not what you think. It’s not like that. I didn’t mean it. And Dean knows Cas is probably lying for the first time in his life because he knows none of those things are true.

Cas is pacing and his footsteps are loud and the sun drags itself across the sky and Dean lies there, letting the drunk leak out of his body as he lets go of the rest of his life before today and he wonders who is the most traumatized from this experience. Himself. Cas. Her. Deanna. He is sick but not guilty just sick of the weight of memories as they cloy on the bones, polluting the body.

The light has shifted by the time Cas stops talking to her. Footsteps down the hall, up the stairs, down the hall; he’s in the doorway in the room on the bed but not lying down not holding him just sitting on the edge. Dean could nudge him with his feet if he wanted. Cas looks small enough that if he did he would fall off. Cas looks as if he’s become a memory, that maybe he’s not really there at all.

“I’m leaving,” he says, voice dry as the skin of a kick drum.

Don’t, he doesn’t say.

“I can’t leave her.”

Yes, you can.

“Because what would that be like for Deanna?”

Dean reaches for him and Castiel stands up. “Boys don’t kiss in Kansas.”

Yes, they do.

“I love you,” Dean croaks.

Cas looks at him and all the sadness in their souls has shifted to his eyes, blue and bottomless and darkening as the sun sinks into the overgrown wheat field outside, drowning.

He says, “I love her,” and Dean wishes he meant, I love you.

He leaves as the sun does and the world falls into darkness inside and outside and all around.

IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou. He’s yelling it into the tears and pillow shoved in his mouth to block out the sound of memories screaming through his body and it takes on the sound of wheels thrumming on a road.

And they’re driving and driving and driving and the city builds itself around them rainy and gray-green. The wind playing through the interior of the van and out the other side whistles and it sounds like freedom and Dean finds himself falling in love again.

They walk through the park and they’re sitting on the bench: Ruby, Meg, and Anna. Their lips are red against the piles of snow and smoke spills from their mouths, graceful and languid. They’re feeding pigeons, gray birds gathered like clouds around the cold-mottled flesh of their bare legs and they’re laughing laughing laughing smiling glad to see them, reaching out. “good to see you, country boys!” and Dean and Cas are sitting down between them, hands diving like hungry mouths into the white paper bag with the torn edge full of bread. Fists of crumbs and crusts thrown into the crowd of pigeons, sticking to their fingers to their lips he kisses him and they are driving driving driving laughing.

He could stay like this forever.

Dean wakes with a start and his room is cold and he is alone and the field is still and empty and the stars have forgotten how to shine.

He is a skeleton. His flesh is memories and they are false and they have rotted away and he is left only with the bleached white bones of his mistakes. They are the only things that last.

He finds tears, and lets himself cry.