The words they never say...
Title: The words they never say...
Author: fate_incomplete
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Vague season 6
Characters: pre Dean/Castiel, Sam
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: It's strange the observations you make in some dingy motel room while suffering from a concussion. As Sam watches Dean and Castiel, he wonders if they know just what it is that they have in each other...
The dingy motel room had a strange fuzzy glow, and the furniture was doing some sort of disorientating, shimmering thing that was making him feel queasy. He looked up into his brothers worried eyes, trying to figure out which one of him was real as his face blurred. He closed his eyes trying to stop the buzzing in his ears.
"Sam?" Dean asked placing his hands on Sam's shoulders.
Sam leant against his brother's hold and the room seemed to stabilise.
"I'm fine Dean, it's just a concussion," Sam said, scrunching his forehead at the slurred sound of his voice.
"Hey, stay awake you hear me," Dean said as he handed him a towel full of ice.
Sam placed the ice to the growing lump on the back of his head, wincing in pain when he pressed too hard against it. He looked up as Castiel teleported into the room. The angel didn't look to be in much better shape than he was Sam thought, as Castiel leaned against the wall for support.
Dean hesitated, looking torn between helping Sam with the ice and supporting Castiel before he fell over. Sam batted Dean's hand away and waved vaguely in Castiel's direction, making the decision for him. He leant back on the bed, sinking gratefully into the comfort of the old lumpy mattress.
He watched as Dean rushed over to Castiel, grabbing him by the shoulder as he swayed alarmingly. Castiel managed to glare at Dean as if the help was unwanted, yet half rested against him at the same time.
"I'm fine Dean," Castiel said, mirroring Sam's statement.
"Yeah right," Dean replied gruffly, taking his hands off Castiel's shoulders.
Castiel swayed again, staying on his feet by some act of angelic stubbornness. The two stared at each other, Sam wondered if they even knew they were doing it. Even wounded, the angel emanated a dangerous quality that would have most people backing away, not so his brother.
"If you're fine, then you won't mind fixing Sam's head?" Dean said, gesturing wildly in Sam's direction without breaking eye contact with Castiel.
Castiel didn't say anything, just stubbornly crossed the room to Sam. Sam was in the process of trying to find the words to say it wasn't necessary and Castiel was in no shape to waste his efforts on healing him, but the words got lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth and nothing came out.
Castiel raised his fingers to Sam's temple. Sam felt an unusual warmth flow from the angel's fingers, and the pain in his skull started to fade to a dull throb. The sudden relief of pressure caused his ears to pop and a sense of calm to settle over him. He managed to reach up and grab Castiel's wrist and pull his hand away just as the angel's knees buckled.
Dean was there to grab him before he fell to the floor in an undignified heap. He grabbed him roughly him by the shoulders and guided him to one of the old wooden chairs in the room.
"Yeah, you're just peachy aren't you?" Dean said sarcastically, as he dumped the angel unceremoniously onto the chair.
Castiel scrunched his brow as he looked at Dean, clearly not getting the relevance of fruit to the situation.
Sam tried to sit up and offer to help, but the wound to his head was still bad enough to make the room spin. Castiel hadn't the strength to heal him fully, but at least Sam thought he was out of danger, and falling asleep wouldn't be an issue anymore. He sunk back into place on the mattress and watched as Dean fussed over Castiel. Well not so much fussed, as glared and muttered under his breath about the stupidity of angels, while Castiel stared back at him, grumbling occasionally that Dean was not really being helpful and all he needed was to rest for a moment.
Sam struggled to open his eyes sometime later, his eyelids sluggish and not wanting to cooperate. He had drifted off to sleep sometime after Dean handed him some pain killers and watching Dean gruffly order the angel around, like he wasn't some millennia old creature that could smite him as easily as breathing.
It was getting dark; he must have been asleep for a couple of hours. His head still throbbed, but thanks to Castiel the wound was well on the way to mending. He was still drowsy from the pain killers Dean had insisted he take, all but ordering him to rest. Sam thought his brother sometimes forgot that his little brother wasn't so little anymore. Not that he'd argued, his head was killing him and it had been nearly two days since he last slept.
He looked around the room. He could see the silhouettes of Dean and Castiel in the kitchenette, Dean leaning nonchalantly against the counter, while Castiel paced in front of him. Sam briefly thought of getting up and getting something to drink, but the bed was comfortable, and the blankets warm. Besides, he really hated interrupting Dean and Castiel's conversations. It always felt awkward, like he was intruding on something infinitely private, or something unfathomable by outsiders. Not that they seemed to care who else was in the room most of the time. It was as if time stood still and the rest of existence ceased to be when the two started to stare at each other. It was weird, not to mention strange and just downright unnerving.
Sam dropped his head back on the pillow. He watched his brother and the angel idly, to drowsy to get up, and too oddly tranquil from the drugs to fall back to sleep just yet.
"Will you quit pacing!" Dean snapped.
"My brothers are out there dying Dean."
"And?"
"I should be out there fighting, not stuck here" he said, coming to a stop in front of Dean, and looking around the tiny kitchen as if the walls were an affront to his angelic sensibilities.
Which maybe they were, Sam thought to himself. He had never seen Castiel's wings, and could only wonder about what his true form looked like. He had a sudden thought that the angel should be out stretching his wings as he drifted on wind currents somewhere exotic, like Neptune, not huddled in the cramped space of the motel, looking as though if he stretched, or stood up too straight, he would burst the room apart.
"When you tried to teleport an hour ago, all you did was flicker like some bad special effect from a crap 80's TV show and blow out the lights. Don't think you'll be smiting too many rebellious angels just at the moment," Dean said as he opened a bottle of beer.
Castiel just glared at Dean for a full 10 seconds, his eyes following the movement of the bottle as Dean lifted it to his lips, before he turned away and started pacing again.
Dean's eyes followed the angel as he passed back and forth across the room for several minutes while he finished his beer. He gave an overly exaggerated sigh as he tossed his empty in the trash, and grabbed two more out of the fridge. He shoved one in Castiel's direction.
"Here, if you quit your pacing, tomorrow I'll come with you to Missouri, see if we can find this weapon that dick Balthazar lost."
Castiel stopped pacing and looked up at Dean. The bottle Dean was holding out was almost touching Castiel's chest.
"He didn't lose it, it was stolen," Castiel clarified.
Dean shrugged. "He's still a dick."
Looking down to where Dean's fingers were almost brushing his chest, Castiel finally reached up to take hold of the beer. He looked at it as if he wasn't quite sure what to do with it, like he hadn't once downed the contents of a liquor store in an effort to get plastered and forget everything for a moment.
He'd never really stopped to think where Castiel had gotten that idea from, to try and drink himself into oblivion. Maybe from watching Dean do his best to drown out the memories and nightmares from hell, not to mention every other crap thing that had happened that Dean blamed himself for.
He thought it was a trait they had in common, they both carried guilt for things that were out of their control.
Castiel eventually stopped staring at the bottle and opened it. He slowly lifted it to his lips, taking a measured mouthful, before lowering the bottle and staring at it again. He looked almost sad, Sam thought, like the beer wasn't what he was expecting. Sam wondered if it had something to do with being a fully fledged angel again.
Last time he had taken the time to imbibe alcohol, he hadn't exactly been overflowing with angelic mojo. He hadn't been human, but was closer to it than most angels ever got, well except those that had taken the cheat's way out and fallen. For a moment Sam wondered if Castiel missed that. Well not the hopeless, faithless loss of everything he had ever known, but the flood of emotion and the ability to feel so much.
Sam didn't much see the appeal in pain, hunger or the need for sleep, but maybe he took it for granted.
Castiel took another mouthful. He gave up on his pacing and leant against the cupboard next to Dean. He didn't exactly relax, but it was about as close as the angel came to it. His shoulders slumped; the tension in his back ebbed away. Maybe relaxed wasn't the right word, it was more like resigned exhaustion. Like he let his guard down for a moment, as if the only place he could do that was by Dean's side.
Castiel as usual stood way too close to Dean, not that Dean seemed to care. The sleeve of his trench coat, which was bunched slightly around his elbow, brushed against Dean's forearm. Dean didn't step away or make some glib comment, he merely relaxed a little more, placed both hands back on the cupboard as he leaned more of his weight against it.
Castiel's hand seemed to gravitate towards Dean's, as he mirrored Dean's stance. Their hands weren't quite touching, but close enough that Sam knew they would feel the heat from each other's skin.
They continued to drink in silence that somehow wasn't silence. Sam could all but feel some unspoken conversation between them. Somewhere in the gentle brush of material against skin, in the infinitesimal space between their almost but not quite touching hands, lurked whispered understanding.
Sam didn't bother to try and understand what was being said without words, it seemed like an invasion of something intimately private to try. He was just glad his brother wasn't drinking alone. He did that too often.
The moment didn't last long. Castiel finished his beer. He placed the bottle on the counter and seemed to still for a moment, as if his thoughts were distracted by something distant. Dean caught the change, understanding Castiel's intent before Sam did. Dean reached out to grab Castiel's arm.
"Hey, Cas you need to rest," he half-shouted into empty air.
Dean slammed his empty bottle down onto the counter, somehow managing not to break it.
"You stupid, stubborn son of a..." Dean murmured to himself.
He reached for another drink, but slumped against the counter without opening it. The room seemed somehow smaller around him, yet was filled with a gaping emptiness at the same time. Sam was suddenly struck by how alone, how incomplete his brother was without the angel. He wondered when exactly he had begun to think of them as Dean and Cas, a single entity, like one wasn't whole without the other.
Sam closed his eyes, feeling the tug of sleep take hold of him again. As he drifted off he wondered if Dean and Castiel knew how much they had grown to depend on each other. They were both so downright stubborn he wondered if they would admit it. Maybe one day they would find the time to sit side by side, to just be, without the weight of the world between them. He hoped so anyway, they both deserved something just for themselves.
Maybe one day, the silent conversations they share will become something more.
...................
comments are love<3
Author: fate_incomplete
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Vague season 6
Characters: pre Dean/Castiel, Sam
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: It's strange the observations you make in some dingy motel room while suffering from a concussion. As Sam watches Dean and Castiel, he wonders if they know just what it is that they have in each other...
The dingy motel room had a strange fuzzy glow, and the furniture was doing some sort of disorientating, shimmering thing that was making him feel queasy. He looked up into his brothers worried eyes, trying to figure out which one of him was real as his face blurred. He closed his eyes trying to stop the buzzing in his ears.
"Sam?" Dean asked placing his hands on Sam's shoulders.
Sam leant against his brother's hold and the room seemed to stabilise.
"I'm fine Dean, it's just a concussion," Sam said, scrunching his forehead at the slurred sound of his voice.
"Hey, stay awake you hear me," Dean said as he handed him a towel full of ice.
Sam placed the ice to the growing lump on the back of his head, wincing in pain when he pressed too hard against it. He looked up as Castiel teleported into the room. The angel didn't look to be in much better shape than he was Sam thought, as Castiel leaned against the wall for support.
Dean hesitated, looking torn between helping Sam with the ice and supporting Castiel before he fell over. Sam batted Dean's hand away and waved vaguely in Castiel's direction, making the decision for him. He leant back on the bed, sinking gratefully into the comfort of the old lumpy mattress.
He watched as Dean rushed over to Castiel, grabbing him by the shoulder as he swayed alarmingly. Castiel managed to glare at Dean as if the help was unwanted, yet half rested against him at the same time.
"I'm fine Dean," Castiel said, mirroring Sam's statement.
"Yeah right," Dean replied gruffly, taking his hands off Castiel's shoulders.
Castiel swayed again, staying on his feet by some act of angelic stubbornness. The two stared at each other, Sam wondered if they even knew they were doing it. Even wounded, the angel emanated a dangerous quality that would have most people backing away, not so his brother.
"If you're fine, then you won't mind fixing Sam's head?" Dean said, gesturing wildly in Sam's direction without breaking eye contact with Castiel.
Castiel didn't say anything, just stubbornly crossed the room to Sam. Sam was in the process of trying to find the words to say it wasn't necessary and Castiel was in no shape to waste his efforts on healing him, but the words got lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth and nothing came out.
Castiel raised his fingers to Sam's temple. Sam felt an unusual warmth flow from the angel's fingers, and the pain in his skull started to fade to a dull throb. The sudden relief of pressure caused his ears to pop and a sense of calm to settle over him. He managed to reach up and grab Castiel's wrist and pull his hand away just as the angel's knees buckled.
Dean was there to grab him before he fell to the floor in an undignified heap. He grabbed him roughly him by the shoulders and guided him to one of the old wooden chairs in the room.
"Yeah, you're just peachy aren't you?" Dean said sarcastically, as he dumped the angel unceremoniously onto the chair.
Castiel scrunched his brow as he looked at Dean, clearly not getting the relevance of fruit to the situation.
Sam tried to sit up and offer to help, but the wound to his head was still bad enough to make the room spin. Castiel hadn't the strength to heal him fully, but at least Sam thought he was out of danger, and falling asleep wouldn't be an issue anymore. He sunk back into place on the mattress and watched as Dean fussed over Castiel. Well not so much fussed, as glared and muttered under his breath about the stupidity of angels, while Castiel stared back at him, grumbling occasionally that Dean was not really being helpful and all he needed was to rest for a moment.
Sam struggled to open his eyes sometime later, his eyelids sluggish and not wanting to cooperate. He had drifted off to sleep sometime after Dean handed him some pain killers and watching Dean gruffly order the angel around, like he wasn't some millennia old creature that could smite him as easily as breathing.
It was getting dark; he must have been asleep for a couple of hours. His head still throbbed, but thanks to Castiel the wound was well on the way to mending. He was still drowsy from the pain killers Dean had insisted he take, all but ordering him to rest. Sam thought his brother sometimes forgot that his little brother wasn't so little anymore. Not that he'd argued, his head was killing him and it had been nearly two days since he last slept.
He looked around the room. He could see the silhouettes of Dean and Castiel in the kitchenette, Dean leaning nonchalantly against the counter, while Castiel paced in front of him. Sam briefly thought of getting up and getting something to drink, but the bed was comfortable, and the blankets warm. Besides, he really hated interrupting Dean and Castiel's conversations. It always felt awkward, like he was intruding on something infinitely private, or something unfathomable by outsiders. Not that they seemed to care who else was in the room most of the time. It was as if time stood still and the rest of existence ceased to be when the two started to stare at each other. It was weird, not to mention strange and just downright unnerving.
Sam dropped his head back on the pillow. He watched his brother and the angel idly, to drowsy to get up, and too oddly tranquil from the drugs to fall back to sleep just yet.
"Will you quit pacing!" Dean snapped.
"My brothers are out there dying Dean."
"And?"
"I should be out there fighting, not stuck here" he said, coming to a stop in front of Dean, and looking around the tiny kitchen as if the walls were an affront to his angelic sensibilities.
Which maybe they were, Sam thought to himself. He had never seen Castiel's wings, and could only wonder about what his true form looked like. He had a sudden thought that the angel should be out stretching his wings as he drifted on wind currents somewhere exotic, like Neptune, not huddled in the cramped space of the motel, looking as though if he stretched, or stood up too straight, he would burst the room apart.
"When you tried to teleport an hour ago, all you did was flicker like some bad special effect from a crap 80's TV show and blow out the lights. Don't think you'll be smiting too many rebellious angels just at the moment," Dean said as he opened a bottle of beer.
Castiel just glared at Dean for a full 10 seconds, his eyes following the movement of the bottle as Dean lifted it to his lips, before he turned away and started pacing again.
Dean's eyes followed the angel as he passed back and forth across the room for several minutes while he finished his beer. He gave an overly exaggerated sigh as he tossed his empty in the trash, and grabbed two more out of the fridge. He shoved one in Castiel's direction.
"Here, if you quit your pacing, tomorrow I'll come with you to Missouri, see if we can find this weapon that dick Balthazar lost."
Castiel stopped pacing and looked up at Dean. The bottle Dean was holding out was almost touching Castiel's chest.
"He didn't lose it, it was stolen," Castiel clarified.
Dean shrugged. "He's still a dick."
Looking down to where Dean's fingers were almost brushing his chest, Castiel finally reached up to take hold of the beer. He looked at it as if he wasn't quite sure what to do with it, like he hadn't once downed the contents of a liquor store in an effort to get plastered and forget everything for a moment.
He'd never really stopped to think where Castiel had gotten that idea from, to try and drink himself into oblivion. Maybe from watching Dean do his best to drown out the memories and nightmares from hell, not to mention every other crap thing that had happened that Dean blamed himself for.
He thought it was a trait they had in common, they both carried guilt for things that were out of their control.
Castiel eventually stopped staring at the bottle and opened it. He slowly lifted it to his lips, taking a measured mouthful, before lowering the bottle and staring at it again. He looked almost sad, Sam thought, like the beer wasn't what he was expecting. Sam wondered if it had something to do with being a fully fledged angel again.
Last time he had taken the time to imbibe alcohol, he hadn't exactly been overflowing with angelic mojo. He hadn't been human, but was closer to it than most angels ever got, well except those that had taken the cheat's way out and fallen. For a moment Sam wondered if Castiel missed that. Well not the hopeless, faithless loss of everything he had ever known, but the flood of emotion and the ability to feel so much.
Sam didn't much see the appeal in pain, hunger or the need for sleep, but maybe he took it for granted.
Castiel took another mouthful. He gave up on his pacing and leant against the cupboard next to Dean. He didn't exactly relax, but it was about as close as the angel came to it. His shoulders slumped; the tension in his back ebbed away. Maybe relaxed wasn't the right word, it was more like resigned exhaustion. Like he let his guard down for a moment, as if the only place he could do that was by Dean's side.
Castiel as usual stood way too close to Dean, not that Dean seemed to care. The sleeve of his trench coat, which was bunched slightly around his elbow, brushed against Dean's forearm. Dean didn't step away or make some glib comment, he merely relaxed a little more, placed both hands back on the cupboard as he leaned more of his weight against it.
Castiel's hand seemed to gravitate towards Dean's, as he mirrored Dean's stance. Their hands weren't quite touching, but close enough that Sam knew they would feel the heat from each other's skin.
They continued to drink in silence that somehow wasn't silence. Sam could all but feel some unspoken conversation between them. Somewhere in the gentle brush of material against skin, in the infinitesimal space between their almost but not quite touching hands, lurked whispered understanding.
Sam didn't bother to try and understand what was being said without words, it seemed like an invasion of something intimately private to try. He was just glad his brother wasn't drinking alone. He did that too often.
The moment didn't last long. Castiel finished his beer. He placed the bottle on the counter and seemed to still for a moment, as if his thoughts were distracted by something distant. Dean caught the change, understanding Castiel's intent before Sam did. Dean reached out to grab Castiel's arm.
"Hey, Cas you need to rest," he half-shouted into empty air.
Dean slammed his empty bottle down onto the counter, somehow managing not to break it.
"You stupid, stubborn son of a..." Dean murmured to himself.
He reached for another drink, but slumped against the counter without opening it. The room seemed somehow smaller around him, yet was filled with a gaping emptiness at the same time. Sam was suddenly struck by how alone, how incomplete his brother was without the angel. He wondered when exactly he had begun to think of them as Dean and Cas, a single entity, like one wasn't whole without the other.
Sam closed his eyes, feeling the tug of sleep take hold of him again. As he drifted off he wondered if Dean and Castiel knew how much they had grown to depend on each other. They were both so downright stubborn he wondered if they would admit it. Maybe one day they would find the time to sit side by side, to just be, without the weight of the world between them. He hoped so anyway, they both deserved something just for themselves.
Maybe one day, the silent conversations they share will become something more.
...................
comments are love<3