FIC: At The End Of The World, R, Dean/Castiel
*is still amazed the fic she wrote isn't for the SGA fandom*
Title: At the end of the world
Author: moodymuse19
Characters (Pairings): Dean/Cas, Sam, Bobby
Ratings/Warnings: R. No warnings I can think of.
Spoilers: For 4.22.
Summary: They are waiting for the world to end.
A/N: I am completely psyched that my writing has expanded to other fandoms. I mean, this is probably complete crap, and I can't care, because I ventured out of the SGA fandom! \o/ Yes, getting stuck in the SGA fandom and never writing again was one of my fears. What clued you in? XD
Also, please, please, if you spot any mistakes (grammar, canon info, etc.), point them out and I'll correct them.
****
They are waiting for the world to end.
Really, it's not the way Dean wants to go down - he wants to go down fighting, lashing out, causing pain to all the sonsofbitches that will be circling them once... once what? Lucifer gathers his army? Once he decides to take out the Winchesters?
It's disturbing, Dean thinks, that life goes on. No one in the world is the wiser that Lucifer is roaming the world free, but the worst of all is that Lucifer is nowhere to be found. Every single hunter Dean knows is out to get him; Angels and Demons are at war and the world worries about the economy.
But seriously, what could they do? They tried finding Lucifer through spells, chasing, taunting, through every way that they could think of, and Lucifer was a no-show.
Exhausted and frankly scared, Sam and Dean drag themselves back to Bobby's house, the ride back as quiet as no other car ride between them had ever been. Sam is quiet and closed off and Dean doesn't need to ask: he saw the body of the nurse when they were leaving. Ruby hadn't really attempted to hide it and Dean saw the bloodstains and the pale skin on the beautiful girl.
Dean screams up at the heavens for Cas, and the heavens give out the same answer as always: none. Dean's head is a mess of worries, for both Sam and Cas, and the ride back to Bobby's is one he wants to forget as soon as he possibly can.
It's a whirlwind when they walk through Bobby's door. Bobby slaps Sam and then hugs him and then almost showers him in holy water. Sam splutters the water, and sprinkles some on Bobby for good measure and a few grins from the old man, but he doesn't hiss or burn, so Bobby moves to hug him again.
Dean grins for the first time in a full day or more.
Behind Bobby, Dean sees Cas. He's standing in the middle of the room, watching the whole scene as if he felt like an intruder upon it. Bobby tells him he arrived hours ago, and Dean is barely listening.
Dean, of all things, goes to Cas and hugs him like he's only hugged Sammy before, arms around the guy, squeezing him tight. He just drove across half the country thinking the Archangels had killed Cas and now he finds him in Bobby's house.
It's a second before Cas returns the hug, hands awkwardly going to Dean's back, as if he had never hugged anyone before - which is probably the truth. But then Cas sighs, and breathes, and one of his hands is grabbing a fistful of Dean's coat tighter than humanly possible.
***
Dean notices a few hours later.
"You're not leaving," he says to Cas, who had been riffling through some of Bobby's books with a vaguely amused expression. Dean would've bet anything he was reading up on Bobby's angel lore.
Cas closes the book he had in his hands and turns to him. "Where would I go?"
Dean frowns: yesterday, an angel who is as old as the world itself defied Heaven to help Dean. Right. Where could the guy go? Back to Heaven, to get punished and brainwashed again? Or even worse, to die at the hands of one of Uriel's followers?
"Where would I go?" asks Cas, as if genuinely puzzled that the answer hasn't come to him yet.
"You know, I've no idea," says Dean, and he tries not to show it how pleased he is that Cas can't do his disappearing act anymore.
Cas grins back at him, so he's not sure how much he succeeded.
***
Cas' wings are gone.
It's not like any of the three humans in the house even notice, the wings not being physical, of course, but as the humans are eating something for the first time in hours, Dean turns to Cas and asks what happened to Chuck.
"He is safe," says Cas. "The archangel took him to keep him safe. It's not safe for him to be on Earth with Lucifer roaming free."
Dean snorts. "Dude, it's not safe for anyone," says Dean. But then he frowns. "Hold on - you said it was the Archangels. At Chuck's, coming. Archangels, plural."
Sam frowns at that, intrigued. "So, one took Chuck up wherever to be safe..."
"What'd the other archangels stay around for?" finishes Bobby.
"They cut my wings," says Cas simply.
Forks and spoons stop mid-air. Sam, Dean and Bobby look at each other in confusion. "Say that again," says Dean.
Cas looks up at him. "They cut off my wings," he says, voice showing no emotion.
Dean looks at Bobby, who shrugs. What the - ?
Cas sighs. "It's not how you think - it's not like cutting one of your arms."
Cas stands up and does the unimaginable: he takes his trenchcoat off. He slips the suit coat off, then the tie, and the shirt and the undershirt, and suddenly there's a shirtless angel in Bobby's kitchen.
Dean can't help it: he stands up and goes to him when Cas shows them his back. There are two angry red marks on Cas' otherwise perfect skin, somewhere between his shoulder blades. Like old stabbing scars badly healed, the kind that still hurt on a humid day.
Cas shudders when Dean touches the angry marks, turning ever so slightly towards him. Dean remembers his brother and Bobby are still in the room before he embarrasses himself.
"So, you're not bleeding to death?" he asks. "You're not fallen?"
Cas thinks for a moment. "Let's just say I'm somewhere in between," he says, taking his undershirt as Dean hands it to him.
"But not dying?" asks Sam with a frown.
"No, not dying," he says, sloppily placing his undershirt under the waist of his pants, putting his shirt back on. "Without my wings, I can't return to Heaven - even if I was still welcomed there - and I'm..." Cas frowns, searching for the words. "I'm tuned out of angel radio," he says, trying Dean's expression as if they were words in a foreign language.
Dean sighs. He all but chewed Cas a new one at the Angel Green Room, and now the guy's wings have been cut off and seriously, Dean's guilt cannot take more weight.
"Cas," he says.
"I stick by my decision, Dean," he says.
"Does it hurt?" asks Sam delicately.
"Yes," says Cas matter-of-factly as he slips his suit coat on, with no more intonation than the one he uses to say hello. Dean remembers Anna's words about falling: Try cutting out your kidney with a butter knife, that kind of hurt.
Cas extends a hand towards Dean, who frowns before realizing he's holding Cas' tie. "Cas, I'm - "
"I am not blaming you. And I stick by my decision," he repeats stubbornly, and there really is nothing anyone can say. They've all lost body parts and people to this life and they are still standing and not regretting (most of) their decisions. Castiel made the decision to help Dean, and now he's living with the consequences. What could they say?
Except, maybe, welcome to the club.
***
Lucifer's progression shows.
The worst thing of it all is that it's slow. Nobody but the hunters of the world realize what's going on. There're more posessions than ever before in history, ghosts and spirits of long ago back on the surface again. The Bermuda triangle is going haywire. Fishermen spot the Loch Ness monster, and a couple swear they visited Atlantis while they were sailing the Mediterranean Sea.
Most people can't relate one story to the other. The four people in Bobby's house can, and they stop watching the news two days after Lucifer rises. They stick to the radio, which they turn on only on schedule times. It makes Dean feel like he's reliving World War II days, waiting for news from the European theatre.
New sicknesses arise. More people dissappear from their homes as demons take possession of their bodies. Whatever Dean had been expecting when he was told Lucifer would rise, it surely wasn't this.
He expected Hell on Earth immediately. Instant pain, instant death. As if Castiel had never even existed, as if he had never left Hell in the first place.
Instead, the world is being scared to death in a slow motion.
Dean knows that, by the time everyone realizes that maybe they should fight back, it'll be too late to even say goodbye.
***
Sam doesn't go into withdrawal from demon blood.
Sure, the blood was a placebo, but Sam's subconscious, Sam's metabolism hasn't quite caught up with that fact. Sam's mind rejects the idea of drinking blood, but his body still asks for it like air.
Or it should, anyway.
Dean catches Sam and Cas one afternoon, one of Cas' hands in Sam's forehead. Sam has his eyes closed, his right index finger on his mouth.
One of Cas' fingers is bleeding, a small droplet of blood on the tip that's almost non existent. Cas turns his head towards where Dean is, and holds his gaze, unwavering.
*
Dean asks Cas later if the blood therapy simply changed providers.
"No," says Cas, his hoarse voice sounding, if that was possible, hoarser than usual. "Call it a one time deal."
Dean says nothing. He randomly wonders why Cas' voice is so hoarse when Jimmy's voice hadn't been.
"Don't worry about Sam," says Cas, and they both know that is just not possible - Dean Winchester not worrying about his baby brother. Cas still says it, though, and Dean suddenly knows Sam will never drink blood ever again.
How he knows it, he has no idea. But he does.
Dean vaguely wonders how Cas' blood tastes like. He's not going to ask Sam, though. There are things you just can't ask your baby brother.
***
A week after Lucifer rises, Cas starts needing food to sustain his energy.
He starts going to the bathroom, he starts showering, and he's grinning more now than he has in the past year.
At the end of the world, an angel starts turning human.
Dean doesn't ask if it's because of him or because his wings have been cut off, because he's not sure what answer he wants to hear. Bobby does ask the question and Cas, the ever vague bastard, simply says it's a sum of things.
Sam asks about Jimmy, and Dean braces himself for an answer he doesn't want to hear.
But Cas says, "He's in heaven. The archangels took him when they cut my wings."
They left Cas alone, Dean's head provides. Cas had to walk all the way from Chuck's house to Bobby's in South Dakota. Dean dislikes Heaven a little bit more now.
Cas offers no gratuitous explanation on his condition. Dean only asks what worries him: is he dying?
Cas assures him he's not, and then grins at Dean's expression when he steals a bite of Dean's cherry pie.
***
A month after Lucifer rises, there is a meteor shower.
Even Cas can't tell if it's a sign of the end of times or God waving goodbye at them, or just something pretty to watch when you look at the night sky.
Bobby, Sam, Dean and Cas have dinner outside, looking at the meteor shower in silence, talking little. It's a warm summer night, mosquitoes and fireflies buzzing about. Sometimes, someone curses in the distance: demons trying to break the devil's traps, unable to.
But inside Bobby's salvage yard, all is quiet and the light is dim, four faces looking up at the shower as if it was the most interesting thing in the world, eating pizza, beer at their feet.
Cas is still looking at the shower when it's three in the morning, when the shooting stars have dwindled but you can still see them dancing about the sky.
Dean goes out to fetch him when he sees him through a window after he makes a little trip to the bathroom. Cas is less angel and more human by the hour lately: he needs actual sleep now.
"Cas, man, it's almost four in the morning," he says, shivering at the cool summer breeze. He doesn't have on much more than sweatpants and a ratty old t-shirt. His feet feel weirdly small in his shoes, and looking down he finds out he accidentally put on Sam's boots.
Cas doesn't turn to him at first, making Dean walk to where he is, just standing there in the middle of the yard with the clothes he was wearing today at dinner - he never even went to bed.
Then Cas looks at him. Or, specifically, looks at Dean's arms. He turns his head sideways in that way of his when something human puzzles him more than he thought possible. Cas grabs Dean's left arm just above his elbow and lifts his t-shirt sleeve up. The touch makes Dean shiver, and the cold of the night has nothing to do with it.
Dean dearly hopes Cas didn't notice the shiver, but he's starting to think Cas notices just about everything under that visage of angelic calm and nonchalance. Cas lifts his t-shirt sleeve up to reveal the hand marks on Dean's skin, Cas' own hand marks.
He's looking at Dean's arm with a frown, as if in deep thought or in deep confusion - or both. He lifts his hand and places it above the red mark on Dean's arm. It fits perfectly, of course.
"These were done when I grabbed you in hell," he says with the same tone of voice a human uses to talk about inconsequential news they just saw on TV. He's still looking at his own hand print on Dean's skin, as if in fascination. Dean never knew angels could be fascinated about anything. Cas goes on, "When I grabbed you in my true form, without a vessel."
And Dean's head starts buzzing with the idea that he once saw Cas in his true form because he's been not-so-secretly wondering how Cas really looks. Of course. Jimmy's body doesn't hurt Dean, he's grabbed, grazed and punched that body and nothing. Castiel is the one who leaves a mark.
Then Cas says, "Do you want me to heal them?"
It throws Dean because, of all he was expecting, that wasn't in the list. "Heal these?" he asks, as if slow in understanding. "I thought you were getting de-angelfied."
Cas gives him a smile so small that it's barely even there; it's still one of the brightest smiles Dean has ever seen on him. "Yes. But I can still do this."
Dean suddenly wonders what else Cas can still do, but of course he's not going to tell them, the same way no one has inquired too hard about the process of being 'de-angelfied'. It's like venturing into TMI territory, the sort of thing two men simply don't talk about.
"No," says Dean, absentmindedly fingering one of the ridges in his skin that shape out one of Cas's fingers. "No, leave them there."
It throws Cas off balance, if such a thing is actually possible. "Why?" he frowns. It's no mystery Dean is no fan of angels, certainly he would want to see a permanent reminder of them on his own skin gone faster than possible. Right?
Wrong. Dean lowers his t-shirt sleeve down, as if protecting the marks from Cas' healing powers. Dean shrugs, and tries not to say anything cheesy. "A souvenir from the apocalypse."
Cas's frown turns upside down as he smiles at Dean.
***
The next day, a hunter sends news that Lucifer has taken possession of a man: an Italian cardinal. The end of the world is slightly closer now.
Two days later, a demon breaks one of the devil's traps and gets into the house. Cas' powers are all but gone now, almost fully human, and it almost kills him to stop the demon where he is and shout for someone to come help him.
Bobby wastes the demon; Sam takes the poor bastard he was possessing to a hospital. Dean stays behind with Cas, making sure Cas is okay, because it's Cas, and he's human, and Cas can die now.
Cas' nose is bleeding, and he has a slash on his cheek from when the demon almost got loose. He withdraws into himself a bit, his face private like in his best days of being an angel
*
That very same night, when Dean is working on the Impala, Cas appears behind him. He pushes Dean out of the way and lowers the hood of the car.
Dean is about to protest when Cas backs him up against the Impala, grabbing the back of his neck and planting a kiss on Dean in a way that throws Dean completely off because, fuck, where did angels learn to kiss like that?
Dean kisses back, grabbing fistsfuls of Cas' shirt, retaining him in place before Cas can think better of it. Cas pushes Dean's coat and t-shirt out of the way, kissing Dean's neck and biting his earlobe even as he's sneaking a hand down Dean's jeans.
In a moment of clarity, Dean realizes they're on the hood of the Impala, out in public for Bobby or Sammy to interrupt. He pushes Cas away and grabs one of his arms, moving him toward the back seat of the Impala even as he talks.
"I'm not going to be able to stop," Dean warns. "Cas, if we start this now -"
"Dean," says Cas, his voice is as hoarse as it was when Cas was full on angel, and it shuts Dean's mind completely because, fuck, seriously. That voice. "I didn't come here to make you stop, Dean."
And Dean loses it completely because, really, it's been months he's been jacking off to Cas, even as he tries to picture random girls, as he tries to picture Anna even, and none of them ever work as good as picturing Cas does.
And then, inside the car, Cas crouches above him and slips Dean's pants off, Dean kicking his shoes off as he all but rips Cas' shirt off his shoulders and kicks his pants and underwear and then there's hurry and there's skin, skin and skin and Dean doesn't have time to stop and wonder how, at the end of the world, an angel and a human are making love in the backseat of a car.
*
Dean almost goes into a panic the next morning, when he and Cas wake up on the same mattress in Bobby's living room. Bobby is listening to the radio, Sam is half-hidden behind a pile of books as he reads.
But they are both completely (and rather expertly) ignoring the previous night's sleeping arrangements, opting for talking about the friggin' weather and how they're starting to run low on ammo.
Cas says good morning to Dean by kissing him in the mouth before getting up to go to the bathroom, ignoring Dean's morning breath and Sam's smirk as if it were the norm, and Dean finds himself grinning stupidly for the rest of the day.
***
A few days later, they find out that the meteor shower wasn't God saying goodbye.
He was saying 'I'm coming.'
***
Even later still, after everything has passed, after Zachariah and Lucifer are only painful memories in angels and humans, after Paradise is still only a beautiful ideal, Cas disappears in a flash of lightning. Dean shouts up to the heavens, and curses God with a string of litanies that would've made Alastair proud.
When he returns, hours and hours later, Cas has seen God. And the first thing he says is, "God gave me the chance to go back."
And he tells Dean, Sam and Bobby how he was offered a ticket back home - all expenses paid, as Dean would say. Full angel, no debts, no punishments, no short leash.
Dean looks at him with a deep frown, fearing Cas is here to say goodbye. But Cas says he just here: that he said no, thank you.
Dean's eyebrows shoot up. "Are you saying... God said you could back to being an angel, as if nothing had ever happened, and you said no?"
Cas nods, Dean just answered his own question: as if nothing had ever happened. "That is the reason he asked, because he knew what my answer would be."
Dean is still frowning at him and doesn't quite get it, but Bobby scoffs and Dean sees he's almost grinning under that beard of his, probably the first time he doesn't frown in distrust at the guy.
Sam claps Dean on the back and whispers in his ear not to look at a gift horse in the mouth.
Dean nods. Sammy is totally right.
***
Dean asks only once if Cas regrets staying behind on Earth, with the mud monkeys - as another mud monkey. But by the time Dean manages up the courage to ask the full question, Cas is already full human, and knows several methods for shutting Dean up.
Some of them he learned from Sam who, as younger brother, is an expert on the matter. Other ways, though, he learned on his own, in long nights spent with Dean where there was little talking and lots of sweating.
Dean never asks the question again.
*
Finis
Title: At the end of the world
Author: moodymuse19
Characters (Pairings): Dean/Cas, Sam, Bobby
Ratings/Warnings: R. No warnings I can think of.
Spoilers: For 4.22.
Summary: They are waiting for the world to end.
A/N: I am completely psyched that my writing has expanded to other fandoms. I mean, this is probably complete crap, and I can't care, because I ventured out of the SGA fandom! \o/ Yes, getting stuck in the SGA fandom and never writing again was one of my fears. What clued you in? XD
Also, please, please, if you spot any mistakes (grammar, canon info, etc.), point them out and I'll correct them.
****
They are waiting for the world to end.
Really, it's not the way Dean wants to go down - he wants to go down fighting, lashing out, causing pain to all the sonsofbitches that will be circling them once... once what? Lucifer gathers his army? Once he decides to take out the Winchesters?
It's disturbing, Dean thinks, that life goes on. No one in the world is the wiser that Lucifer is roaming the world free, but the worst of all is that Lucifer is nowhere to be found. Every single hunter Dean knows is out to get him; Angels and Demons are at war and the world worries about the economy.
But seriously, what could they do? They tried finding Lucifer through spells, chasing, taunting, through every way that they could think of, and Lucifer was a no-show.
Exhausted and frankly scared, Sam and Dean drag themselves back to Bobby's house, the ride back as quiet as no other car ride between them had ever been. Sam is quiet and closed off and Dean doesn't need to ask: he saw the body of the nurse when they were leaving. Ruby hadn't really attempted to hide it and Dean saw the bloodstains and the pale skin on the beautiful girl.
Dean screams up at the heavens for Cas, and the heavens give out the same answer as always: none. Dean's head is a mess of worries, for both Sam and Cas, and the ride back to Bobby's is one he wants to forget as soon as he possibly can.
It's a whirlwind when they walk through Bobby's door. Bobby slaps Sam and then hugs him and then almost showers him in holy water. Sam splutters the water, and sprinkles some on Bobby for good measure and a few grins from the old man, but he doesn't hiss or burn, so Bobby moves to hug him again.
Dean grins for the first time in a full day or more.
Behind Bobby, Dean sees Cas. He's standing in the middle of the room, watching the whole scene as if he felt like an intruder upon it. Bobby tells him he arrived hours ago, and Dean is barely listening.
Dean, of all things, goes to Cas and hugs him like he's only hugged Sammy before, arms around the guy, squeezing him tight. He just drove across half the country thinking the Archangels had killed Cas and now he finds him in Bobby's house.
It's a second before Cas returns the hug, hands awkwardly going to Dean's back, as if he had never hugged anyone before - which is probably the truth. But then Cas sighs, and breathes, and one of his hands is grabbing a fistful of Dean's coat tighter than humanly possible.
***
Dean notices a few hours later.
"You're not leaving," he says to Cas, who had been riffling through some of Bobby's books with a vaguely amused expression. Dean would've bet anything he was reading up on Bobby's angel lore.
Cas closes the book he had in his hands and turns to him. "Where would I go?"
Dean frowns: yesterday, an angel who is as old as the world itself defied Heaven to help Dean. Right. Where could the guy go? Back to Heaven, to get punished and brainwashed again? Or even worse, to die at the hands of one of Uriel's followers?
"Where would I go?" asks Cas, as if genuinely puzzled that the answer hasn't come to him yet.
"You know, I've no idea," says Dean, and he tries not to show it how pleased he is that Cas can't do his disappearing act anymore.
Cas grins back at him, so he's not sure how much he succeeded.
***
Cas' wings are gone.
It's not like any of the three humans in the house even notice, the wings not being physical, of course, but as the humans are eating something for the first time in hours, Dean turns to Cas and asks what happened to Chuck.
"He is safe," says Cas. "The archangel took him to keep him safe. It's not safe for him to be on Earth with Lucifer roaming free."
Dean snorts. "Dude, it's not safe for anyone," says Dean. But then he frowns. "Hold on - you said it was the Archangels. At Chuck's, coming. Archangels, plural."
Sam frowns at that, intrigued. "So, one took Chuck up wherever to be safe..."
"What'd the other archangels stay around for?" finishes Bobby.
"They cut my wings," says Cas simply.
Forks and spoons stop mid-air. Sam, Dean and Bobby look at each other in confusion. "Say that again," says Dean.
Cas looks up at him. "They cut off my wings," he says, voice showing no emotion.
Dean looks at Bobby, who shrugs. What the - ?
Cas sighs. "It's not how you think - it's not like cutting one of your arms."
Cas stands up and does the unimaginable: he takes his trenchcoat off. He slips the suit coat off, then the tie, and the shirt and the undershirt, and suddenly there's a shirtless angel in Bobby's kitchen.
Dean can't help it: he stands up and goes to him when Cas shows them his back. There are two angry red marks on Cas' otherwise perfect skin, somewhere between his shoulder blades. Like old stabbing scars badly healed, the kind that still hurt on a humid day.
Cas shudders when Dean touches the angry marks, turning ever so slightly towards him. Dean remembers his brother and Bobby are still in the room before he embarrasses himself.
"So, you're not bleeding to death?" he asks. "You're not fallen?"
Cas thinks for a moment. "Let's just say I'm somewhere in between," he says, taking his undershirt as Dean hands it to him.
"But not dying?" asks Sam with a frown.
"No, not dying," he says, sloppily placing his undershirt under the waist of his pants, putting his shirt back on. "Without my wings, I can't return to Heaven - even if I was still welcomed there - and I'm..." Cas frowns, searching for the words. "I'm tuned out of angel radio," he says, trying Dean's expression as if they were words in a foreign language.
Dean sighs. He all but chewed Cas a new one at the Angel Green Room, and now the guy's wings have been cut off and seriously, Dean's guilt cannot take more weight.
"Cas," he says.
"I stick by my decision, Dean," he says.
"Does it hurt?" asks Sam delicately.
"Yes," says Cas matter-of-factly as he slips his suit coat on, with no more intonation than the one he uses to say hello. Dean remembers Anna's words about falling: Try cutting out your kidney with a butter knife, that kind of hurt.
Cas extends a hand towards Dean, who frowns before realizing he's holding Cas' tie. "Cas, I'm - "
"I am not blaming you. And I stick by my decision," he repeats stubbornly, and there really is nothing anyone can say. They've all lost body parts and people to this life and they are still standing and not regretting (most of) their decisions. Castiel made the decision to help Dean, and now he's living with the consequences. What could they say?
Except, maybe, welcome to the club.
***
Lucifer's progression shows.
The worst thing of it all is that it's slow. Nobody but the hunters of the world realize what's going on. There're more posessions than ever before in history, ghosts and spirits of long ago back on the surface again. The Bermuda triangle is going haywire. Fishermen spot the Loch Ness monster, and a couple swear they visited Atlantis while they were sailing the Mediterranean Sea.
Most people can't relate one story to the other. The four people in Bobby's house can, and they stop watching the news two days after Lucifer rises. They stick to the radio, which they turn on only on schedule times. It makes Dean feel like he's reliving World War II days, waiting for news from the European theatre.
New sicknesses arise. More people dissappear from their homes as demons take possession of their bodies. Whatever Dean had been expecting when he was told Lucifer would rise, it surely wasn't this.
He expected Hell on Earth immediately. Instant pain, instant death. As if Castiel had never even existed, as if he had never left Hell in the first place.
Instead, the world is being scared to death in a slow motion.
Dean knows that, by the time everyone realizes that maybe they should fight back, it'll be too late to even say goodbye.
***
Sam doesn't go into withdrawal from demon blood.
Sure, the blood was a placebo, but Sam's subconscious, Sam's metabolism hasn't quite caught up with that fact. Sam's mind rejects the idea of drinking blood, but his body still asks for it like air.
Or it should, anyway.
Dean catches Sam and Cas one afternoon, one of Cas' hands in Sam's forehead. Sam has his eyes closed, his right index finger on his mouth.
One of Cas' fingers is bleeding, a small droplet of blood on the tip that's almost non existent. Cas turns his head towards where Dean is, and holds his gaze, unwavering.
*
Dean asks Cas later if the blood therapy simply changed providers.
"No," says Cas, his hoarse voice sounding, if that was possible, hoarser than usual. "Call it a one time deal."
Dean says nothing. He randomly wonders why Cas' voice is so hoarse when Jimmy's voice hadn't been.
"Don't worry about Sam," says Cas, and they both know that is just not possible - Dean Winchester not worrying about his baby brother. Cas still says it, though, and Dean suddenly knows Sam will never drink blood ever again.
How he knows it, he has no idea. But he does.
Dean vaguely wonders how Cas' blood tastes like. He's not going to ask Sam, though. There are things you just can't ask your baby brother.
***
A week after Lucifer rises, Cas starts needing food to sustain his energy.
He starts going to the bathroom, he starts showering, and he's grinning more now than he has in the past year.
At the end of the world, an angel starts turning human.
Dean doesn't ask if it's because of him or because his wings have been cut off, because he's not sure what answer he wants to hear. Bobby does ask the question and Cas, the ever vague bastard, simply says it's a sum of things.
Sam asks about Jimmy, and Dean braces himself for an answer he doesn't want to hear.
But Cas says, "He's in heaven. The archangels took him when they cut my wings."
They left Cas alone, Dean's head provides. Cas had to walk all the way from Chuck's house to Bobby's in South Dakota. Dean dislikes Heaven a little bit more now.
Cas offers no gratuitous explanation on his condition. Dean only asks what worries him: is he dying?
Cas assures him he's not, and then grins at Dean's expression when he steals a bite of Dean's cherry pie.
***
A month after Lucifer rises, there is a meteor shower.
Even Cas can't tell if it's a sign of the end of times or God waving goodbye at them, or just something pretty to watch when you look at the night sky.
Bobby, Sam, Dean and Cas have dinner outside, looking at the meteor shower in silence, talking little. It's a warm summer night, mosquitoes and fireflies buzzing about. Sometimes, someone curses in the distance: demons trying to break the devil's traps, unable to.
But inside Bobby's salvage yard, all is quiet and the light is dim, four faces looking up at the shower as if it was the most interesting thing in the world, eating pizza, beer at their feet.
Cas is still looking at the shower when it's three in the morning, when the shooting stars have dwindled but you can still see them dancing about the sky.
Dean goes out to fetch him when he sees him through a window after he makes a little trip to the bathroom. Cas is less angel and more human by the hour lately: he needs actual sleep now.
"Cas, man, it's almost four in the morning," he says, shivering at the cool summer breeze. He doesn't have on much more than sweatpants and a ratty old t-shirt. His feet feel weirdly small in his shoes, and looking down he finds out he accidentally put on Sam's boots.
Cas doesn't turn to him at first, making Dean walk to where he is, just standing there in the middle of the yard with the clothes he was wearing today at dinner - he never even went to bed.
Then Cas looks at him. Or, specifically, looks at Dean's arms. He turns his head sideways in that way of his when something human puzzles him more than he thought possible. Cas grabs Dean's left arm just above his elbow and lifts his t-shirt sleeve up. The touch makes Dean shiver, and the cold of the night has nothing to do with it.
Dean dearly hopes Cas didn't notice the shiver, but he's starting to think Cas notices just about everything under that visage of angelic calm and nonchalance. Cas lifts his t-shirt sleeve up to reveal the hand marks on Dean's skin, Cas' own hand marks.
He's looking at Dean's arm with a frown, as if in deep thought or in deep confusion - or both. He lifts his hand and places it above the red mark on Dean's arm. It fits perfectly, of course.
"These were done when I grabbed you in hell," he says with the same tone of voice a human uses to talk about inconsequential news they just saw on TV. He's still looking at his own hand print on Dean's skin, as if in fascination. Dean never knew angels could be fascinated about anything. Cas goes on, "When I grabbed you in my true form, without a vessel."
And Dean's head starts buzzing with the idea that he once saw Cas in his true form because he's been not-so-secretly wondering how Cas really looks. Of course. Jimmy's body doesn't hurt Dean, he's grabbed, grazed and punched that body and nothing. Castiel is the one who leaves a mark.
Then Cas says, "Do you want me to heal them?"
It throws Dean because, of all he was expecting, that wasn't in the list. "Heal these?" he asks, as if slow in understanding. "I thought you were getting de-angelfied."
Cas gives him a smile so small that it's barely even there; it's still one of the brightest smiles Dean has ever seen on him. "Yes. But I can still do this."
Dean suddenly wonders what else Cas can still do, but of course he's not going to tell them, the same way no one has inquired too hard about the process of being 'de-angelfied'. It's like venturing into TMI territory, the sort of thing two men simply don't talk about.
"No," says Dean, absentmindedly fingering one of the ridges in his skin that shape out one of Cas's fingers. "No, leave them there."
It throws Cas off balance, if such a thing is actually possible. "Why?" he frowns. It's no mystery Dean is no fan of angels, certainly he would want to see a permanent reminder of them on his own skin gone faster than possible. Right?
Wrong. Dean lowers his t-shirt sleeve down, as if protecting the marks from Cas' healing powers. Dean shrugs, and tries not to say anything cheesy. "A souvenir from the apocalypse."
Cas's frown turns upside down as he smiles at Dean.
***
The next day, a hunter sends news that Lucifer has taken possession of a man: an Italian cardinal. The end of the world is slightly closer now.
Two days later, a demon breaks one of the devil's traps and gets into the house. Cas' powers are all but gone now, almost fully human, and it almost kills him to stop the demon where he is and shout for someone to come help him.
Bobby wastes the demon; Sam takes the poor bastard he was possessing to a hospital. Dean stays behind with Cas, making sure Cas is okay, because it's Cas, and he's human, and Cas can die now.
Cas' nose is bleeding, and he has a slash on his cheek from when the demon almost got loose. He withdraws into himself a bit, his face private like in his best days of being an angel
*
That very same night, when Dean is working on the Impala, Cas appears behind him. He pushes Dean out of the way and lowers the hood of the car.
Dean is about to protest when Cas backs him up against the Impala, grabbing the back of his neck and planting a kiss on Dean in a way that throws Dean completely off because, fuck, where did angels learn to kiss like that?
Dean kisses back, grabbing fistsfuls of Cas' shirt, retaining him in place before Cas can think better of it. Cas pushes Dean's coat and t-shirt out of the way, kissing Dean's neck and biting his earlobe even as he's sneaking a hand down Dean's jeans.
In a moment of clarity, Dean realizes they're on the hood of the Impala, out in public for Bobby or Sammy to interrupt. He pushes Cas away and grabs one of his arms, moving him toward the back seat of the Impala even as he talks.
"I'm not going to be able to stop," Dean warns. "Cas, if we start this now -"
"Dean," says Cas, his voice is as hoarse as it was when Cas was full on angel, and it shuts Dean's mind completely because, fuck, seriously. That voice. "I didn't come here to make you stop, Dean."
And Dean loses it completely because, really, it's been months he's been jacking off to Cas, even as he tries to picture random girls, as he tries to picture Anna even, and none of them ever work as good as picturing Cas does.
And then, inside the car, Cas crouches above him and slips Dean's pants off, Dean kicking his shoes off as he all but rips Cas' shirt off his shoulders and kicks his pants and underwear and then there's hurry and there's skin, skin and skin and Dean doesn't have time to stop and wonder how, at the end of the world, an angel and a human are making love in the backseat of a car.
*
Dean almost goes into a panic the next morning, when he and Cas wake up on the same mattress in Bobby's living room. Bobby is listening to the radio, Sam is half-hidden behind a pile of books as he reads.
But they are both completely (and rather expertly) ignoring the previous night's sleeping arrangements, opting for talking about the friggin' weather and how they're starting to run low on ammo.
Cas says good morning to Dean by kissing him in the mouth before getting up to go to the bathroom, ignoring Dean's morning breath and Sam's smirk as if it were the norm, and Dean finds himself grinning stupidly for the rest of the day.
***
A few days later, they find out that the meteor shower wasn't God saying goodbye.
He was saying 'I'm coming.'
***
Even later still, after everything has passed, after Zachariah and Lucifer are only painful memories in angels and humans, after Paradise is still only a beautiful ideal, Cas disappears in a flash of lightning. Dean shouts up to the heavens, and curses God with a string of litanies that would've made Alastair proud.
When he returns, hours and hours later, Cas has seen God. And the first thing he says is, "God gave me the chance to go back."
And he tells Dean, Sam and Bobby how he was offered a ticket back home - all expenses paid, as Dean would say. Full angel, no debts, no punishments, no short leash.
Dean looks at him with a deep frown, fearing Cas is here to say goodbye. But Cas says he just here: that he said no, thank you.
Dean's eyebrows shoot up. "Are you saying... God said you could back to being an angel, as if nothing had ever happened, and you said no?"
Cas nods, Dean just answered his own question: as if nothing had ever happened. "That is the reason he asked, because he knew what my answer would be."
Dean is still frowning at him and doesn't quite get it, but Bobby scoffs and Dean sees he's almost grinning under that beard of his, probably the first time he doesn't frown in distrust at the guy.
Sam claps Dean on the back and whispers in his ear not to look at a gift horse in the mouth.
Dean nods. Sammy is totally right.
***
Dean asks only once if Cas regrets staying behind on Earth, with the mud monkeys - as another mud monkey. But by the time Dean manages up the courage to ask the full question, Cas is already full human, and knows several methods for shutting Dean up.
Some of them he learned from Sam who, as younger brother, is an expert on the matter. Other ways, though, he learned on his own, in long nights spent with Dean where there was little talking and lots of sweating.
Dean never asks the question again.
*
Finis