Behind a Stranger's Eyes

[docepax]

Title: Behind a Stranger's Eyes
Author: kadiel_krieger
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, Reference to past sexual encounters
Spoilers: Vague Season 5
Summary: Choices are all Castiel has left to offer.
Author notes: I kept as close to the prompt as I possibly could, hopefully it delivers what you were looking for. It turned out slightly more angsty than I was going for. Many thanks to the wondrous and always sexy thevinegarworks for putting my prose in tidy order. (PROMPT: Future!fic, Dean and Sam have settled down (sort of) and Castiel comes back, because he misses Dean.) Written for rockstarpeach in the deancas_xmas exchange.



There comes a time in every man's life when the bones start to creak a little more loudly. When, magically rejuvenated body and all, aches that once hung on for a couple of days stick around for weeks and motel mattresses with their questionable stains and kinking springs lead nowhere but into insomnia no matter how hard the hunt. That's when smart money says it's time to hang up the bandolier of rock salt shells and leave the new breed to their auto-action Super Soakers loaded with holy water, their rainbow-colored hair and the Enochian ink carving patterns into their soft little faces.

If Lucifer's rise did one good thing, it inspired a new generation of kids to hunt. They're cocky and careless, too confident for anyone's good, but most of the really big baddies fucked off when Lucifer went wherever he went. Dean only hopes it doesn't take one of them winding up dead to drive home the hard facts of the life they've chosen. Not that he can really blame them. Hell, if he'd witnessed Satan’s ass being handed to him at the tender age of six, he might've turned out the same - more flash and fire than skill, more attached to the romanticized notion of the job than anything resembling reality.

There's still plenty out there that needs killing - creatures either too stupid or tenacious to get gone while the getting was good, and he can't say he minds having a couple dozen extra hands around to help. They’re good kids either way, most of them war orphans who have a vested interest in vengeance, and it's worth it for the couple that have evolved into bonafide hunters. Whether it’s because they’ve seen too much or lived too hard, he’ll never know. All he does know is that the fierce certainty of purpose in Danny's eyes when he makes a clean kill, the quiet barely-bridled rage when Grace puts three in the back of a runner is as close as he's ever felt to having the kids he never will.

Right now, he’s just thanking his lucky stars they took all their youthful exuberance elsewhere for Christmas. A couple of days without the three-in-the-morning boot clomping and being forced to break up feats of unlawful bendy-ness like the world's biggest hypocrite sits just fine with him. He gets that they're happy to be alive, way more than even they do, but he's too old for this shit, this isn't a dorm, and the "Great Apocalypse" ended more than a decade ago.

Shit, it's finally happened. He's turned into Bobby.

Bobby's house groans back its agreement, windows rattled loose in wooden frames by the blizzard's bluster, and Dean decides that despite his advancing years, the most mature response he's capable of involves two middle fingers and some emphatic gesticulation. For about ten seconds he has the urge to get shit-faced on eggnog and show the house who's the fucking Tony Danza, but then he remembers Bobby's gone, that the deed reads Dean and Samuel Winchester, and that after five years he still can't think of it as theirs.

Some might say he has trouble letting go. Not that he has any more interest in listening now than he ever has. But if he did, Sammy'd be at the head of that particular I-told-you-so parade.

It's the principle of the thing.

Then again, his brother hasn't been the same since Lucifer's fall, and Bobby's death hit both of them hard. Probably because there wasn't an evil nasty to pummel after it happened and blood clots don't exactly respond to threats of violence. He'd spent a week at the bottom of a bottle and come out the other side mostly intact. Sammy gave up his guns the day after Bobby's funeral and never looked back. The fight they'd had - him drunk, Sam stubborn and sober - was the kind that never really mended, the kind that ended with a slammed screen door, Sam's boots thudding hollow against the porch steps, and a quick spit of gravel. hey'd been forgiving each other the impossible for so long it'd become habit. When Sam turned up two weeks later, Dean had done the only thing he's ever been able to do - let Sam back in.

They never talked about it again.

That doesn't mean he misses having Sam at his back any less. Hell, he misses Sam period, because for all they're still sharing the same space, he's never felt further removed from his brother's life. At least when he’d been away at Stanford the absence left them both with an excuse. It’s different now. Every morning, Sam's up at four and out the door on his way into the city. He runs a shelter by day, gives pro bono law advice by night, and stumbles back through the door at ten both happier and more exhausted than ever.

It looks good on him, and while Dean may not understand, he knows better than to question. Sam’s happy, maybe for the first time, and that’s good enough for Dean.

For a while anyway.

Two Sundays ago, he’d finally asked Sam what the hell he gets out of it, why he spends his days tending to battered runaways when he could be fixing a much bigger problem. Sam had just stared past him over the lip of his mug at the bedraggled pile of sleeping bags and tattooed twenty-somethings, and said, "Says the guy running Xavier's Home for Wayward Wannabe Hunters."

Fuck Sam.

Maybe Dean just doesn't want to think about how quiet the house gets when it's empty. Maybe he's pissed and feeling shitty about it, because Sam didn't ask to be stranded by the freak snowstorm currently dropping the forty-eighth inch of snow on Sioux Falls in as many hours. Maybe it's because it's Christmas and that he hates being the dick who suggested the kids find somewhere else to be. Maybe it’s just because he stupidly thought he could fix this with a six-pack and a Chiefs game.

Maybe, just maybe, he wanted to admit that he's kind of done hunting too.

Not that he'd mentioned it to Sam or that the whole holiday family togetherness schtick has ever really worked out well for them, but he’d been counting on karma to give them a fucking break.

As far as he's concerned, karma can take a flying leap.

The only thing he’s sure of is that he’s not going to sit around feeling fucking sorry for himself. Instead, he cracks open a beer, cranks Zep II on Bobby's second-hand stereo, and sprawls on one of the four Goodwill couches littering the living room. He's halfway through "Heartbreaker" and a fourth bottle when he starts to drift and can almost feel the road sliding smoothly past the Impala's tires, the wind in his hair, the sun on his face, Sammy's smile burning so bright around the edges it almost blinds him.

Could be five minutes or an hour later that a floorboard creaks, and when Dean opens his eyes it's not Sammy hovering in the six inches beyond the crescent scuffs his boot heels have left on the coffee table. It's someone - something - else. That startles him right the hell out of his candy-coated lethargy, makes him go for the Beretta he keeps tucked between the couch cushions because even with the wards wrapped around this place, there's no such thing as too careful. If he let someone get this close without so much as a tingle of the old Spidey senses, it's definitely time to give up on hunting.

No, it has to be a something and a crafty one at that to slip by unnoticed. Doesn't matter that it's wearing what looks to be either a college professor or a librarian, the unnatural stillness with which it waits puts it firmly enough into the inhuman column that Dean thumbs the safety off. What he doesn't expect as he stares down the barrel at it is the slow, deep drawn breath and the reverent spill of his name from its lips.

"Dean."

That can't be good.

"If you're the ghost of Christmas past, you can just poof back to where-the-fuck-ever you came from. Got no interest in morality plays tonight. Or like, ever."

A smile tugs at the corner of its mouth, a subtle softening that Dean might have missed if he weren't so focused. His gut cinches into a series of strangely familiar knots - an abstract sort of deja vu, like someone walked over his grave in an alternate reality and he's got the shiver of it riding his bones. The thing doesn't make a move to strike or defend or do much of anything but stare at him with an unsettling intensity and cock its head like a damned parakeet.

It does say, "If anyone would dare presume to know what I am, who I am, it would be you. But no, I'm not a ghost," and shoves its hands in its pockets.

The tension comes again, that pull against his spine zinging out on his skin, twisting him up until he's sure his intestines are getting ready to spill themselves into a neat pile on the floor. It's strange enough to make Dean lower his gun to meet its gaze.

He's absently grateful he flicked the safety back on when he hears the pistol clatter against hardwood, but he's too everything, to think beyond that. It's - his, the vessel’s - eyes are brown instead of a ridiculous blue, but there's no mistaking him for anyone else and Dean has no explanation for why he didn’t see it to begin with.

"Castiel?"

No explanation beyond the fact that it’s fucking impossible, anyway.

He still remembers how panic rode the heels of his relief - remembers watching Lucifer’s vessel crumple inexplicably and pitch forward into a shallow puddle, remembers turning a wild smile on Sam and then back over his shoulder at Castiel, remembers how his throat closed up when he saw the light go out of Castiel’ eyes and the vessel formerly known as Jimmy Novak scattered to the wind. Six months he’d searched, phone calls made between jobs while Sam was asleep, a handful of nights spent vaguely inebriated and yelling himself mute in cornfields, parking lots of abandoned warehouses, even the junkyard when he got sick and fucking tired of rumors and psychics and dead ends. Six months before Bobby cornered him on the tail end of a spectacular bender with an “Idjit” followed by, “He’s gone, Dean."

Fuck no.

A thousand things out there would know enough to pull off a convincing mimic, could lift the basic details from his memory without even touching him. It's not like the Winchester brothers are famous in supernatural circles or anything, and it's not like the angel was ever a specific kind of weird. No fucking way it's Castiel. Which is, of course, why he dropped his gun like some dipshit romance novel heroine.

Yeah, he's awesome at this.

Luckily, he still has the silver blade in his boot. That would rule out half a dozen different kinds of nasty. Dean shifts and reaches, tries to cover it up as a stretch.

"If it will set your mind at ease, by all means."

Even better. The psychic ones are always a bitch to kill. It gives Dean pause though, his fingertips hovering somewhere between knee and ankle, makes him glance up again. If it showed up just to fuck with him, it's doing a decent job. As a rule, creepy-crawlies are more into bloody violence and if that's on the agenda, this dude’s sucking it up big time- what with unarmed enemies being so much easier to kill and all.

Still.

Dean's hand closes around the hilt of his knife, and when he pulls it free, the thing doesn’t so much react as it stares at him more intently before dutifully fumbling open the crisp, blue-checked cuff of its dress shirt. And yeah, that's a little strange, but it's not until he strides the three slow steps around the end of the coffee table, wraps his fingers around its wrist, and nestles the edge of his blade against a stretch of ridiculously pale skin that Dean falters.

It couldn't be.

But when he says, "Castiel?" again, he feels the pulse under his thumb quicken and stutter.

"Good things do happen, Dean."

This close, with the low-level hum of power tugging his jaw tight, the clean scent of evergreen saplings and rain heavy on the air, denial seems a pretty fucking stupid place to set up base camp. Instead, he does the only thing he can - eases back a couple steps and sheathes the blade without drawing blood, lets himself really remember.

"Not in my experience," he mutters and clenches his fists, choosing to focus on his knuckles going hard and white instead of acknowledging the recognition that flashes across unfamiliar features.

"Dean."

If he could, he'd pluck his name out of Castiel's mouth. Mostly because it's never just his name - not the way he's used to hearing it anyway - and it stirs memories better left alone, makes him ache in places he thought he'd razed and scrubbed clean a long fucking time ago.

It puts him on edge.

"I'd ask what brings you, but I'm sure I don't really want to know,"

"I'm not here to ask anything of you, certainly you know that," Castiel says, his brows pulled together in a tight little furrow that doesn't look the same on his new face.

Not that it's a bad face, or good face, or a face that Dean can qualify at all, it's just...different, because somehow the angel manages to wear whoever this poor stiff is as comfortably as he wore Jimmy all those years ago. Maybe it's just the same general level of disheveled he's reacting to, the near-constant impulse he once had to straighten Castiel's tie translating into a low-level urge to tuck the tag back into this new vessel's vest.

Last time it had taken the threat of Lucifer’s rise to bring their fine, feathered friends down into the muck and now he’s supposed to buy that Castiel’s out joy riding?

Bullshit.

There's something, he just has to dig for it.

"Funny."

"Faithless as ever."

Which really is funny, especially coming from the only angel in existence that actually kept the faith in the face of the apocalypse, the crippling exile that stripped him down to a mere shadow of himself. In two and a half years worth of pointless, fruitless searching, he never once wavered in his devotion to that absentee Father. It's funnier still because he's right, even after all Dean's seen, heard, and done he’s never believed in some omnipotent asshole sinking the signposts of destiny for every living creature. Once upon a time, he’d absolutely had faith in something, but it sure as hell wasn't God.

Yeah. Hilarious, really.

"Now that's just...did they install a new sense of humor or something?"

"Dean, please. You don't understand..."

Awesome. Lectures, even better. Dean uses the opportunity to weave his way back to the couch, barely resisting the temptation to flick his wrist and crank the volume out of spite. He does toe his boots off and kick his heels up on the coffee table, then twists the cap off another beer.

Might as well get comfortable since, you know, angels love to hear themselves talk.

"Of course I don't. My simple human brain can't possibly comprehend the workings of the fucking holy host," he says, then leans in to collect the last bottle, offer it to Castiel. "Beer?"

"Dean!"

Castiel's eyes flare wider, his gaze slip-sliding down until he's staring at the floor, and Dean watches, suffers through the couple awkward seconds that tick by before Castiel apparently remembers something of what it had been like in the end, the way it had felt to be breakable, touchable, and so close to human. It’s enough that he finally loosens up enough to move, take the bottle even though he doesn’t drink it, and while Dean's not sure whether it happens out of frustration or desire, at least Castiel is reacting.

Dean isn't - refuses to. So yeah, he's just wiping condensation off his hands when he puts palm to thigh, not thinking about the jolt that absolutely did not crawl up his arm when he handed Castiel the beer and their fingertips brushed together.

Nope.

"Yeah, last I checked I was still Dean, but you sure as fuck don't look like the Castiel I remember so I guess anything goes."

The problem with that particular brand of logic is that he does look like Castiel and feels like Castiel, and while Dean's not in any kind of place to wrap his head around why, he can say it's more a sense of resemblance than an actual one - recognition that sounds from somewhere deeper than the five natural senses and lights him up like an old pinball machine on permanent TILT.

"You believe I chose," Castiel says softly, and he sounds so much like the old him, his tone riddled with a strange marriage of benediction and accusation tangled up with frustration and something like disappointment.

It puts Dean on even ground, solid enough that when Castiel finally perches on the edge of the couch next to him, elbows settled against his knees, it doesn’t register quite the way it should. This dance, these steps, he knows - knows them like he knows how to wind Sam up, how to smooth him back down. It’s ingrained, easy as snapping a new clip home, he does it on instinct. Never with Castiel though. There’d been a time when the angel was the only creature up and kickin’ that Dean didn’t have to skirt his way around. Hell, there was a time when he couldn’t, when Castiel had known the truth of him wholly, effortlessly - even if he didn't know he knew.

It’s different now, and Dean still hasn’t decided how he feels about it.

"Of course you chose, everyone chooses. Makes complete sense."

Or maybe he has decided and would rather not think about it. Six of one, half a dozen.

"You also believe I left because I suddenly found you unworthy."

That’s about the time the label on his beer bottle turns from a mild distraction into fucking fascinating, and his world narrows to the gratifying the way the paper peels away and the tacky pull of adhesive under his fingertips until it's overrun by the slow creep of condensation. Eventually the silence wears on him, his paper-thin patience no match for angelic stoicism.

"Matter of time,” Dean says, because really it was, is, will always be just a matter of time for him - especially after what had happened, the secrets that passed between them in the stolen hours before they finally faced down Lucifer.

"Or simply bad timing,” Castiel whispers with that infuriating awe usually reserved for his name, and when Dean looks, when he can’t bear not to, there’s a softness in Castiel’ eyes that tells. It would be so easy to fall into, too easy, but Dean knows he doesn’t deserve it any more now than he did then.

So he snorts and says, "That was nothing," and tips back his beer.

"You forget yourself."

"No, I really, really don't."

"Then you forget me,” Castiel says, and it’s only a hair’s breadth away from that symbol-lined barn, hard and certain and not remotely human. “What I am, who I am. I know you, Dean. Will always know you. I watched you lay down Alistair's lash. I gave you back your breath. Nothing is the name you give those things you fear."

Which is so far from the truth, he's not going to even dignify it with a direct answer.

"A lot can change in twelve years."

"Some things never will."

"Well, I have."

"Not in any way that matters."

Fuck that. Fuck Castiel for thinking he knows anything anymore. He took off and left them to clean up the mess. Left them, period. Just up and...

"What the hell do you know about it?" he spits, and the couch creaks ominously when he pushes himself up and away, collecting his empties as an excuse to escape the impossible weight of Castiel's unwavering gaze. "You've been screwing around upstairs - braiding Michael's hair and shit."

The bottles clank together in the bottom of the garbage can, but don't break and Dean wishes they had, wishes they'd shattered and filtered down amongst this afternoon's spaghetti and last month's issue of Hot Rod. He feels somehow cheated, and it takes a concerted effort not to pull them out and try again. It's such an overwhelming urge that he's almost forgotten the who and the why and the when of thirty seconds ago. Until Castiel starts flapping his yap again, anyway.

"You misunderstand."

Damn angels. If they're going to go, why can't they just stay gone? Not that he cares one way or the other.

"I do, do I? Well then, enlighten me."

The doorjamb against his shoulder grounds him, and he leans against it harder, watches Castiel's jaw work the words over in his mouth before he says them, and it's so him that Dean wants to hit something or fuck something or maybe just disappear altogether - come back when there's no long-lost angel of the Lord settled against obnoxious plaid upholstery, intent on shredding him up the rest of the way with those eyes.

What Dean still can't figure out is why he's here at all.

"Angelic justice in times of peace bears no resemblance to the decisive strikes meted out in times of war."

That could only mean -

"They put you on trial?"

"In a manner of speaking," Castiel sighs, winds himself deeper into the cushions. Dean can only stare at the line of his profile and try to imagine what it was like, what they'd done to him. He has ideas, memories to guide him. Hell held trials of its own, and while he'd never stood witness, Alistair had forced him to watch the careful unraveling of any demon deemed guilty. That he wasn't compelled to participate is one of the few things about Hell Dean finds he's grateful for. Jesus, angels are dicks. He'd almost forgotten. His focus snaps back with a sharp intake of breath and a nameless ache between his ribs, and he realizes he's probably missed about half of what Castiel has said. "For all that I willfully defied orders, murdered my brothers, and secreted away the one weapon that lay within their grasp."

"Well yeah, but you were just hel...oh. I never - "

"Asked?" The word drips with all the bitterness of a creature who's lived thousands of years only to have the world inevitably disappoint him. Dean pinches the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes against it, and when he opens them again Castiel is just there, standing in his space like the old days, refusing to let him run. His breath is warm and sweet and soft against Dean's cheek, and the wild look in Castiel' eyes should inspire him to something besides immobility, but he's always felt a bit defenseless in the face of Castiel's righteous indignation. Always.

"Of course you did," Castiel continues, "A thousand times over, never realizing what it was you asked of me. Not truly caring, so long as it served your interests."

Of course it's his fault. Dean Winchester, reigning lord and master of the monumental fuck-up.
"So that's what this is. Finally came to your senses?"

Nausea presses at the back of his throat, hot and acidic, and he can't breathe with Castiel so close. His gut twists again and Dean presses the heel of his hand against the hard center of Castiel's chest, hoping he'll get the hint and back the fuck off. He does - two graceful, all too familiar, paces. Dean pulls a hand through his hair and slides away fast enough he nearly stumbles, head spinning like a top with thoughts that have jack and shit to do with alcohol.

Fuck.

If he keeps himself from thinking about it directly, maybe he can hang on to his lunch.
"I'm here, am I not?" Castiel says and Dean's not sure if his voice has actually gone tinny and soft around the edges or if it's just his ears. He's too focused on breathing. Breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

Never let them see you sweat.

"Fuck it. Fine, get it over with so you can get back to your heavenly hoedown."

"Hoedown?"

"It's...forget it. Tell me what a selfish bastard I am like a good little angel then drag me back to Hell so they quit kicking you to the kiddie table."

If that was it, he might have been able to deal. Hell, he pretty much figured his days were numbered as soon as he coughed up that first lungful of dirt. Usually when things raised for a purpose served that purpose, they got put back down. So yeah, it's been twelve years of waiting for the other shoe to drop. No such thing as coincidence after all, seeing as he'd just decided to chill the fuck out and live some kind of halfway normal life, heaven must have decided their tool had outlived its usefulness.

He's a tool alright - for believing Castiel was any different, for believing that he believed.

It's never hurt so much to be wrong.

"Dean."

Of course they would send Castiel. Bastards.

"Wait, let me settle in," Dean says and eats up the distance between him and the couch with three long strides. He grits his teeth and revels in the way the muscles in his jaw twitch, the lump latched to the back of his tongue threatening all sorts of shit he intends to ignore until it fades. The last swallow of his six-pack has gone tepid by the time it slides past his lips, but that seems to be the kind of night he's having."Okay. Go."

This time the, "Dean," comes out almost wholly human and completely exasperated, and when Castiel rejoins him on the couch, he forgoes the pointless use of mojo, opting instead to walk - like maybe he's trying to convince them both that he remembers.

Dean sure as hell remembers, because how could he forget? How could he want to?

His own harsh words met by Castiel's firm, patient ones, the panic crawling up his throat only making him wilder and more abrasive to the last person he should have been. Then later, grass-stained denim and cotton threaded through branches, bark crumbling under his hands, his defenses crumbling under Castiel's. God, he remembers everything - the tremor that skittered from Castiel' skin onto his with each button undone, the flush of uncertainty that turned them both a little shy for all his supposed bravado, the wanton noises Castiel made because he didn't know not to, the desperation when he came because he truly thought it was for the last time. Most of all, he remembers showing Castiel the reverence in flesh that he'd always shown Dean in name, words pressed into his ear that he still can't allow himself to have because they're too bright, too much. Especially when he'd finally believed Castiel would never lie to him.

So much for that.

The only purpose those memories serve now is to make him hyperaware of Castiel' warmth next to him, the heat radiating from where he's settled too close and their knees knock together. When Dean looks at him, Castiel's lips are moving and fuck if he hasn't let himself get distracted again by things that never should have happened, and it sucks because if he'd been listening at least he can go back to Hell knowing for sure Heaven isn't any better - just a different kind of torture.

"...thought I would allow you to choose for yourself. You deserve that and more for all you've done."

Dean blinks and really looks, tries to shake off his own shit in the process. Castiel's eyes have gone liquid and glittering in the weak light cast by a combination of the ancient lamp on the end table and the guttered fire on the hearth, and even though he's out of practice he can still read the hope, feel the crushing solitude crouched beyond it.

Now that doesn't make a lick of sense.

"Wait. What?" he asks, because he's obviously missed something the size of a billboard in his wallowing.

Castiel stares at his hands where they're clasped together in his lap for a long moment before he swings his focus back, and if Dean didn't know any better, he'd swear there's hurt swimming with the hope this time.

"I have been encouraged to take an indefinite sabbatical," Castiel says slowly, his lips sliding around the words like he's not sure whether he really understands or believes them himself. "I thought - I'd like to spend it here. I have one last favor owed me and I could ask for the gift given to Anael, but I thought I would allow you - "

"Jesus, Cas. Why didn't you just say so?"

Dean breathes, really breathes for the first time in what feels like an hour and the room miraculously stops trying to close in around him.

"You've jumped to so many conclusions in the short time I've been here, it was difficult to keep up much less make my intentions known."

The small smile that creeps back into the corners of Castiel's mouth is apology enough for him.

"Yeah, well, sometimes I'm a blowhard."

"Yes, Dean," Castiel says and his smile spreads wider, his eyes going soft and crinkly and Dean feels like a big fucking girl for even noticing. But he -

"Damn. I think I missed you."

"I believe I missed you too."

Dean has to duck away from that kind of honesty, so he clears his throat and leans forward to collect Castiel's discarded beer from the coffee table. Tips it up and it may slide down warm, but it tastes like salvation - like a beginning. That same jolt runs up his arm when he hands the bottle over to Castiel, when their fingertips brush against each other, and he thinks maybe karma finally got it right for fucking once.

"Merry Christmas, Cas."

Castiel stares at him in that disconcerting way of his for a long moment, then at the beer before taking a sip, and then responds, "Merry Christmas, Dean."