Supernatural fic - "Leap That Makes the Fall" (Part Fifteen)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
When he woke a second time, Dean had no idea what time it was. That, in itself, wasn’t so unusual. The Winchesters could work some crazy hours, and it did a number on their sleep patterns. What Dean was unaccustomed to was waking up feeling content and pleasantly warm. Even when he’d shared a bed with Lisa, he didn’t wake up feeling like a cat that had fallen asleep in the windowsill. The whole time he’d been living with Lisa, he lived in anxious anticipation of it all coming crashing down. Normal was allergic to Winchesters, and Dean kept waiting for the anaphylactic shock to set in. Every day he’d woken up holding his breath, wondering if he’d open his eyes to blood and screams. He feared that every morning would be the morning he’d have to fight to save Ben and Lisa’s lives… protect them for making the fatal mistake of harboring a Winchester.
This time, Dean woke feeling cozy and lazy. He sensed someone in bed with him at the same time he noted a touch on his back. A hand was resting on his back while Dean lay on his stomach. Its weight was a comfortable anchor to consciousness that Dean followed. He opened his eyes and was greeted by the sight of Cas asleep next to him. Castiel was sleeping on his side (close enough to Dean that he could feel the aura of his body heat) with one arm thrown out across Dean.
Dean marveled at the fact that he’d gotten so used to Castiel reaching out for him in his sleep. It was even more surprising how good it made Dean feel to know that just being able to touch him calmed Castiel’s troubled sleep. There was an infinitely peaceful look to Castiel’s rest, his breathing steady, even, and whisper-soft, and it all hung from that light touch Castiel maintained on Dean’s back. Not since Sam was little had Dean’s effect on another been so profound from so little of Dean as a simple touch. Lately, it seemed like to even make a dent in those he loved, Dean had to carve out huge chunks of his soul.
Dean blinked suddenly at the train of his own thoughts. Those he loved? He wondered… did that include Cas now? Castiel had made it clear how he felt, and he hadn’t been shy about tossing around the dreaded ‘L’ word.
Dean didn’t have it in him to be quite so reckless… not in that department, anyway. Love was all thorns and no rose… or so it seemed to Dean Winchester. Even he admitted he had a pretty screwy relationship with the concept.
When it came to family, Dean could take his love for them as a foregone conclusion because it was the natural expectation. People loved their families, and even if there were exceptions to that rule, it was established enough that Dean went with it. He wasn’t weak or girly because he loved his family. But when it was a matter of anyone outside his blood, Dean got twitchy. He had to make a choice (because with Sam, John, and Mary, it had never even been a question). He had to choose to open that iron door to an outsider. He had to take a chance on being in a position to be hurt by a person of his choosing. He had to decide if this was a person for whom he would be weak. And all his life, Dean had kept that gate firmly shut. It was safe behind his barricade; his family might hurt him because he couldn’t prevent that, but no one else would have the power.
And then there was Cas, who stubbornly refused to fit into any of the neat categories Dean lived by.
Dean wasn’t sure how he felt. He did know that today, as opposed to yesterday, he felt no impulse to fly out of bed and run out the door. Of course, he hadn’t woken up dry-humping Cas this time, either. But what if he had? He honestly didn’t know what his reaction would be.
Castiel slept on, oblivious, and Dean indulged in staring. He figured he was due some payback for all the times Cas had watched him sleep. Castiel looked disarmingly vulnerable. Painfully, breakably human in the faint flutter of his dark lashes and the utterly rumpled disarray of his nearly-black hair. But he was still the one who’d forsaken his very existence to help the Winchesters when he believed their cause was just. He’d turned his back on his heavenly family to stand alongside two pitiful humans to face down the end of the world. Now he was curled in sleep in Dean’s bed, for the moment asking nothing more than touch.
For a fleeting moment, Dean wanted to reach out and collect Cas up in another hug.
His cell phone began ringing instead.
Dean rolled out of bed immediately, hoping to stop the phone before it woke Cas, but Castiel was already grumbling grouchily at the classic rock ringtone. Without opening his eyes, he snagged Dean’s pillow and mashed it down over his head to drown out the noise. Dean chuckled as he grabbed up his phone and answered it. He knew who it was without looking.
“Heya, Sammy.”
“Hey,” Sam greeted. “Did Cas come home?”
At the question, Dean slid a glance toward the bed. “Yeah, he’s right here.”
“And did you two kiss and make up?” Sam asked teasingly.
They’d kissed and they’d made up, but not close enough together for it to count as kissing and making up (so Dean figured). “Bitch, I will hang up on you,” Dean threatened.
There was a damnable chuckling on the other end. “Okay, okay, sorry… listen,” Sam’s tone turned serious, “I need to talk to you about something. Have you eaten lunch yet?”
“Lunch… what time is it?” Dean looked around for a clock.
“Nearly one. You didn’t…” Sam’s tone grew cheeky, “did I wake you up when I called?”
No good way to admit that. “Yeah, well, you woke up Cas, too, and he’s looking kind of smitey about that.” From under his head-pillow sandwich, Castiel mumbled something unintelligible and pulled the covers up tighter around his shoulders. Dean smirked and wandered toward the bathroom, taking the conversation with him. “So what’s up?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“And where exactly is here?”
“Hildegard’s.” Sam gave Dean the address of a restaurant, about twenty minutes out from the motel. Dean told Sam they’d meet him there in forty and hung up.
Then he went to the bed to wake Cas. He ended up perching on the edge to where Castiel’s back was to him, a flipped mirror image of earlier that morning when it had been Dean sleeping and Cas sitting. “Rise and shine, Cas,” Dean sing-songed. For good measure, he plucked off the pillow on top of Castiel’s head.
Cas immediately rolled over on to his back to squint up at Dean petulantly. Then he scowled. “I no longer shine, Dean… remember?”
“Depends on how you define shine,” Dean argued lowly as he tossed the pillow in his hand aside. When he looked back at the ex-angel, he was watching Dean with that reverent stare like Dean was the most glorious of God’s creations. If it was any other person, Dean would feel uncomfortable being the target of such an unrelenting stare, but he was used to Castiel’s way of watching him like Dean was about to let slip the secret of the universe (which was absurd, because if either of them was in danger of letting slip cosmic secrets, it certainly wasn’t Dean). On an angel, it had been disconcerting. On a human, it was captivating.
Dean didn’t realize he was staring back until Cas dropped a hand to Dean’s thigh. It felt like a test, Cas watching to see what Dean did with unsolicited touch after their conversation that morning. Dean startled but he didn’t flee. It wasn’t really panic racing through him this time, though it felt like a kissing-cousin. The feelings were new and uncharted. This could be good, his instincts screamed, but it could also be dangerous. It was that exhilarating sense of playing with fire that Dean knew all too well.
“Yes,” Castiel said softly, “I can see how humans are capable of shining.”
“Cas, man, we gotta teach you… you just don’t say shit like that.” A flush crept up Dean’s neck. To mask it, he rolled his eyes and stood. “Get your shiny ass out of bed, ‘cause we’re meeting Sam in about half an hour.”
Castiel merely nodded and got out of bed to get dressed.
They got ready in silence, quietly efficient and task-oriented. Castiel was adept enough at the morning rituals to not need Dean’s help, and the silence that descended over the room was surprisingly comfortable.
Dean was ready before Cas, but not by much (mostly owing to his vast amount of practice at brushing his teeth and hair that shaved minutes off his time). He stood by ready with car keys in hand while Castiel was shrugging into his white jacket with the wings on the back.
Without really thinking about what he was doing, Dean stepped up behind Cas, brought up a hand, and smoothed his palm over the black design emblazoned across Castiel’s shoulders. Castiel stood perfectly still for Dean’s touch, turning his head to bring Dean into his peripheral vision. It gave Dean a perfect profile view of Castiel smiling faintly.
He danced his fingers over the black lines thoughtfully. “What did the real ones feel like?”
Castiel’s smile disappeared. Dean stopped his hand guiltily for reminding Cas of what he’d lost. He almost removed his hand in the next second until he caught himself. Cas thrived on physical contact. Or rather, he thrived on physical contact from Dean. So instead of pulling away, Dean curled his hand up to Castiel’s shoulder and let it hang there. Cas looked up into Dean’s eyes, gauged him a moment, then sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it to you. How would you explain what your skin feels like to one who’d never had any?”
“I’d like to know what kind of conversation I could be having with something that never had skin.”
That earned Dean a huff-chuckle, and Castiel cocked his head slightly. “Close your eyes.”
Dean quirked an eyebrow but obeyed. He felt Castiel take the hand off his shoulder, then he felt a warm rush of air through his fingers as Castiel blew on them. A gust of air so different in pressure and temperature from the air around it that it was almost a tangible object in itself. Dean opened his eyes without permission, looking quickly at Cas. Cas was still holding Dean’s hand up in front of his mouth, and he turned his eyes to look at Dean implacably. “They felt like that. Or that’s as close as I can explain it to one of your limited capacity.”
To cover up the weird tingle that had rushed through him, Dean snorted and drew back his hand. “There it is… been a while since you said anything about tiny humans and their pesky limits. I almost forgot you were an angel.” Not even close to forgetting, actually.
Cas looked stricken by the statement, try to hide it though he did… he just wasn’t that good at mastering his facial expressions yet. He looked sucker-punched, and that hadn’t been Dean’s intention. “Hey… it’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t, but it’s not your fault,” Castiel muttered.
“Well, we don’t know that. You should reserve the right to blame me until we know more. You may be cursing me once we find out what happened.” Dean hadn’t dwelled on the possibility he was somehow responsible for what had happened to Cas, but the niggling doubt was there from the get go. Seemed like everything shitty that happened to Cas could be traced to the Winchesters… it wasn’t a huge leap to suspect his falling might be, too.
But Castiel was already shaking his head. “Whatever the reason for my fall, I place no blame with you. You always strive to do the right thing. It’s the nature of your soul. You were and are the righteous man, Dean.”
Righteous his ass… and if his grandmother had a handle, she’d be a teakettle. “Yeah, well, we all know where the road paved with good intentions leads,” Dean muttered. When Cas looked like he didn’t know, Dean just shook his head and ferried Castiel out of the room and into the car.
It felt good to slide behind the wheel of his baby, even for a little trip across town.
Part Sixteen
When he woke a second time, Dean had no idea what time it was. That, in itself, wasn’t so unusual. The Winchesters could work some crazy hours, and it did a number on their sleep patterns. What Dean was unaccustomed to was waking up feeling content and pleasantly warm. Even when he’d shared a bed with Lisa, he didn’t wake up feeling like a cat that had fallen asleep in the windowsill. The whole time he’d been living with Lisa, he lived in anxious anticipation of it all coming crashing down. Normal was allergic to Winchesters, and Dean kept waiting for the anaphylactic shock to set in. Every day he’d woken up holding his breath, wondering if he’d open his eyes to blood and screams. He feared that every morning would be the morning he’d have to fight to save Ben and Lisa’s lives… protect them for making the fatal mistake of harboring a Winchester.
This time, Dean woke feeling cozy and lazy. He sensed someone in bed with him at the same time he noted a touch on his back. A hand was resting on his back while Dean lay on his stomach. Its weight was a comfortable anchor to consciousness that Dean followed. He opened his eyes and was greeted by the sight of Cas asleep next to him. Castiel was sleeping on his side (close enough to Dean that he could feel the aura of his body heat) with one arm thrown out across Dean.
Dean marveled at the fact that he’d gotten so used to Castiel reaching out for him in his sleep. It was even more surprising how good it made Dean feel to know that just being able to touch him calmed Castiel’s troubled sleep. There was an infinitely peaceful look to Castiel’s rest, his breathing steady, even, and whisper-soft, and it all hung from that light touch Castiel maintained on Dean’s back. Not since Sam was little had Dean’s effect on another been so profound from so little of Dean as a simple touch. Lately, it seemed like to even make a dent in those he loved, Dean had to carve out huge chunks of his soul.
Dean blinked suddenly at the train of his own thoughts. Those he loved? He wondered… did that include Cas now? Castiel had made it clear how he felt, and he hadn’t been shy about tossing around the dreaded ‘L’ word.
Dean didn’t have it in him to be quite so reckless… not in that department, anyway. Love was all thorns and no rose… or so it seemed to Dean Winchester. Even he admitted he had a pretty screwy relationship with the concept.
When it came to family, Dean could take his love for them as a foregone conclusion because it was the natural expectation. People loved their families, and even if there were exceptions to that rule, it was established enough that Dean went with it. He wasn’t weak or girly because he loved his family. But when it was a matter of anyone outside his blood, Dean got twitchy. He had to make a choice (because with Sam, John, and Mary, it had never even been a question). He had to choose to open that iron door to an outsider. He had to take a chance on being in a position to be hurt by a person of his choosing. He had to decide if this was a person for whom he would be weak. And all his life, Dean had kept that gate firmly shut. It was safe behind his barricade; his family might hurt him because he couldn’t prevent that, but no one else would have the power.
And then there was Cas, who stubbornly refused to fit into any of the neat categories Dean lived by.
Dean wasn’t sure how he felt. He did know that today, as opposed to yesterday, he felt no impulse to fly out of bed and run out the door. Of course, he hadn’t woken up dry-humping Cas this time, either. But what if he had? He honestly didn’t know what his reaction would be.
Castiel slept on, oblivious, and Dean indulged in staring. He figured he was due some payback for all the times Cas had watched him sleep. Castiel looked disarmingly vulnerable. Painfully, breakably human in the faint flutter of his dark lashes and the utterly rumpled disarray of his nearly-black hair. But he was still the one who’d forsaken his very existence to help the Winchesters when he believed their cause was just. He’d turned his back on his heavenly family to stand alongside two pitiful humans to face down the end of the world. Now he was curled in sleep in Dean’s bed, for the moment asking nothing more than touch.
For a fleeting moment, Dean wanted to reach out and collect Cas up in another hug.
His cell phone began ringing instead.
Dean rolled out of bed immediately, hoping to stop the phone before it woke Cas, but Castiel was already grumbling grouchily at the classic rock ringtone. Without opening his eyes, he snagged Dean’s pillow and mashed it down over his head to drown out the noise. Dean chuckled as he grabbed up his phone and answered it. He knew who it was without looking.
“Heya, Sammy.”
“Hey,” Sam greeted. “Did Cas come home?”
At the question, Dean slid a glance toward the bed. “Yeah, he’s right here.”
“And did you two kiss and make up?” Sam asked teasingly.
They’d kissed and they’d made up, but not close enough together for it to count as kissing and making up (so Dean figured). “Bitch, I will hang up on you,” Dean threatened.
There was a damnable chuckling on the other end. “Okay, okay, sorry… listen,” Sam’s tone turned serious, “I need to talk to you about something. Have you eaten lunch yet?”
“Lunch… what time is it?” Dean looked around for a clock.
“Nearly one. You didn’t…” Sam’s tone grew cheeky, “did I wake you up when I called?”
No good way to admit that. “Yeah, well, you woke up Cas, too, and he’s looking kind of smitey about that.” From under his head-pillow sandwich, Castiel mumbled something unintelligible and pulled the covers up tighter around his shoulders. Dean smirked and wandered toward the bathroom, taking the conversation with him. “So what’s up?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“And where exactly is here?”
“Hildegard’s.” Sam gave Dean the address of a restaurant, about twenty minutes out from the motel. Dean told Sam they’d meet him there in forty and hung up.
Then he went to the bed to wake Cas. He ended up perching on the edge to where Castiel’s back was to him, a flipped mirror image of earlier that morning when it had been Dean sleeping and Cas sitting. “Rise and shine, Cas,” Dean sing-songed. For good measure, he plucked off the pillow on top of Castiel’s head.
Cas immediately rolled over on to his back to squint up at Dean petulantly. Then he scowled. “I no longer shine, Dean… remember?”
“Depends on how you define shine,” Dean argued lowly as he tossed the pillow in his hand aside. When he looked back at the ex-angel, he was watching Dean with that reverent stare like Dean was the most glorious of God’s creations. If it was any other person, Dean would feel uncomfortable being the target of such an unrelenting stare, but he was used to Castiel’s way of watching him like Dean was about to let slip the secret of the universe (which was absurd, because if either of them was in danger of letting slip cosmic secrets, it certainly wasn’t Dean). On an angel, it had been disconcerting. On a human, it was captivating.
Dean didn’t realize he was staring back until Cas dropped a hand to Dean’s thigh. It felt like a test, Cas watching to see what Dean did with unsolicited touch after their conversation that morning. Dean startled but he didn’t flee. It wasn’t really panic racing through him this time, though it felt like a kissing-cousin. The feelings were new and uncharted. This could be good, his instincts screamed, but it could also be dangerous. It was that exhilarating sense of playing with fire that Dean knew all too well.
“Yes,” Castiel said softly, “I can see how humans are capable of shining.”
“Cas, man, we gotta teach you… you just don’t say shit like that.” A flush crept up Dean’s neck. To mask it, he rolled his eyes and stood. “Get your shiny ass out of bed, ‘cause we’re meeting Sam in about half an hour.”
Castiel merely nodded and got out of bed to get dressed.
They got ready in silence, quietly efficient and task-oriented. Castiel was adept enough at the morning rituals to not need Dean’s help, and the silence that descended over the room was surprisingly comfortable.
Dean was ready before Cas, but not by much (mostly owing to his vast amount of practice at brushing his teeth and hair that shaved minutes off his time). He stood by ready with car keys in hand while Castiel was shrugging into his white jacket with the wings on the back.
Without really thinking about what he was doing, Dean stepped up behind Cas, brought up a hand, and smoothed his palm over the black design emblazoned across Castiel’s shoulders. Castiel stood perfectly still for Dean’s touch, turning his head to bring Dean into his peripheral vision. It gave Dean a perfect profile view of Castiel smiling faintly.
He danced his fingers over the black lines thoughtfully. “What did the real ones feel like?”
Castiel’s smile disappeared. Dean stopped his hand guiltily for reminding Cas of what he’d lost. He almost removed his hand in the next second until he caught himself. Cas thrived on physical contact. Or rather, he thrived on physical contact from Dean. So instead of pulling away, Dean curled his hand up to Castiel’s shoulder and let it hang there. Cas looked up into Dean’s eyes, gauged him a moment, then sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it to you. How would you explain what your skin feels like to one who’d never had any?”
“I’d like to know what kind of conversation I could be having with something that never had skin.”
That earned Dean a huff-chuckle, and Castiel cocked his head slightly. “Close your eyes.”
Dean quirked an eyebrow but obeyed. He felt Castiel take the hand off his shoulder, then he felt a warm rush of air through his fingers as Castiel blew on them. A gust of air so different in pressure and temperature from the air around it that it was almost a tangible object in itself. Dean opened his eyes without permission, looking quickly at Cas. Cas was still holding Dean’s hand up in front of his mouth, and he turned his eyes to look at Dean implacably. “They felt like that. Or that’s as close as I can explain it to one of your limited capacity.”
To cover up the weird tingle that had rushed through him, Dean snorted and drew back his hand. “There it is… been a while since you said anything about tiny humans and their pesky limits. I almost forgot you were an angel.” Not even close to forgetting, actually.
Cas looked stricken by the statement, try to hide it though he did… he just wasn’t that good at mastering his facial expressions yet. He looked sucker-punched, and that hadn’t been Dean’s intention. “Hey… it’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t, but it’s not your fault,” Castiel muttered.
“Well, we don’t know that. You should reserve the right to blame me until we know more. You may be cursing me once we find out what happened.” Dean hadn’t dwelled on the possibility he was somehow responsible for what had happened to Cas, but the niggling doubt was there from the get go. Seemed like everything shitty that happened to Cas could be traced to the Winchesters… it wasn’t a huge leap to suspect his falling might be, too.
But Castiel was already shaking his head. “Whatever the reason for my fall, I place no blame with you. You always strive to do the right thing. It’s the nature of your soul. You were and are the righteous man, Dean.”
Righteous his ass… and if his grandmother had a handle, she’d be a teakettle. “Yeah, well, we all know where the road paved with good intentions leads,” Dean muttered. When Cas looked like he didn’t know, Dean just shook his head and ferried Castiel out of the room and into the car.
It felt good to slide behind the wheel of his baby, even for a little trip across town.
Part Sixteen