TEN YEARS GONE - 4
Ten Years Gone
spn fic
part 4
Pairing:Dean/Cas
Rating:t
Summary: Dean just wants to pretend that everything is normal - that Cas' compulsive need to be near him is due to your average teen crush and not a neurotic fixation that has already garnered him a juvenile record...
Warnings: Dean is ableist as all hell
Prev: [part 3]
Then
- - -
The social workers didn’t just take Cas from school. They took him from his house, too. In fact, the mansion and its yards were all locked up so no one could get in, not even Cas.
Well. No one knew about the secret way in that Cas and Dean knew about. Still, Dean did not visit Cas' house anymore. There was no point, without Cas in it. Without anything in it.
Dean didn't understand why, though.
"It's part of the estate for now, honey," his mother answered him.
Dean had to ask, "What's an estate?"
Since Cas got suspended, he had learned a lot of new terms. 'Social worker' was the first, they were people who acted for the government when a child had no guardian. A 'guardian' in this case was not like the kind in Dean's comic books. A parental guardian was a mom or a dad or someone like that.
They said Cas' guardian was a man named Michael Celestine. At first they had thought he was Cas’ father, but the investigation revealed that he was actually Cas’ older brother. Michael Celestine had disappeared, though, and everyone seemed to have thought that Dean would have some idea as to why or how - or, most importantly, when. But no matter how many times Dean tested the name, it sounded as strange and new as the word 'estate' did.
He felt bad about that in particular. One of the social workers, Miss Missouri, had asked him questions about the house and about Cas’ brothers - there was supposedly fourteen of them - until Dean cried like a big baby. Mom stopped them and insisted that he wouldn’t answer any more questions after that. It made Dean feel like he'd royally failed Cas as a best friend.
Mom always explained more clearly than Dad did when Dean had questions. She looked him in the eye while she spoke, so serious that Dean stopped tying his laces and just looked back at her. "When someone passes away, everything they own becomes part of their estate."
"You mean when they die? Did Cas' brother die?"
"Well," Mom shrugged her shoulders. "No one really knows what's happened to him just yet. Miss Missouri thinks that maybe Cas' brother spends a lot of time out of town, and he still might come back home any time."
That sounded perfect to Dean. "And then Cas can go home, too?!"
Her face said no before her words did. "I'm sorry, Dean, but that can't happen. Leaving Cas alone like this was not a good thing for his brother to do. He won't be allowed to have Cas back, if he does return."
He still didn't understand - the whole reason Cas couldn't go home was because there was no guardian at his house. If this Michael came home, that should fix the problem. But he was 'not allowed'.
Dean knew that there were some rules that didn't make sense no matter how grown ups tried to explain them. This was one of those, so he pretended to accept it.
"Do you think Cas is scared?"
"Why do you think that?"
"I would be scared if I wasn't allowed to come home."
Mom touched his cheek and sighed. "You are right. This is all very hard for Cas. But we're going to do our best - you, Sammy, me and Dad. We can help Cas feel at home here. Right?"
Dean grinned. "You bet!"
Except Mom was wrong that day.
Cas did come to their house, with two social workers. They were supposed to leave, to leave Cas and just go. But by the time Dad made it home from work, they'd already gone, and they'd taken Cas with them. He was sick, they said, and he had to go stay in a hospital.
- - -
Now
- - -
Benny found Dean in the mezzanine just as the gymnasium below opened up free play for the rest of their lunch period. He could hear students filing in, creating a din that echoed up the walls and right over the railing where Dean was huddled against it.
All the lights were off up here. At the end there was dark room with an amazing ventilation setup, where Dean meant to go, but it was locked. So he was just sitting here amongst random sets of bench tables, desks, chairs that weren't being used. At least it wasn't all under big white sheets.
“Are you smoking up here?” was the first thing Benny asked.
“Of course not.” Dean wasn’t that stupid. He had opened the old fire escape door that was shut off when the mezzanine closed. It was cold, and he had to brush the snow off the steps before he could sit, but it served. It was like a little balcony.
Cas had once used it to paint his face on the wall outside.
Benny dropped beside him. “Then you fucking stink, Winchester.”
“Do not.” Richie had some really fresh dope today. The smell was so good, it could have been an incense.
There was quiet for a bit.
“Gordon asked Cas if he was trying to get into your pants.”
“Of course he did.”
“Cas said no. Christian said he didn’t have to try, that he already was.”
Dean waved at him to stop. “If I wanted a blow-by-blow I would have hung around.”
“You lost your shit,” Benny said, like he was commenting on the weather.
“Yeah,” Dean breathed. He knew Benny wanted to know why. He knew Benny wouldn’t actually ask. He thought about telling him anyway. I made Cas like this.
Benny would just tell him why he was wrong. He would argue that Cas would have been worse off if he hadn’t had Dean when they were little. No one knew how long he had lived alone, how long he’d been taking care of himself by himself. Whether it was days, weeks, years, Dean was the only one who was there for him.
But Benny also knew very well that Mom and Dad and Sam loved Cas, too. That Cas spent tons of time in the Winchester home before social workers ever got involved. He wasn’t ever alone.
It was Dean who had encouraged this codependent shit when he was little. He led Cas on, because it was fun. Because having someone so devoted to you felt pretty damn cool before he could understand the concept of obsession.
Dean had made himself the most important person in Cas’ life, on purpose.
“I think it’ll actually be fine,” Benny said. “They just think it’s funny.”
As if Gordon was going to let this slide any more than last time. But now it was nothing like last time. Dean couldn’t pretend anymore that Cas’ proclamations of gay love were completely off the reservation because Dean was capital S Straight and Cas was just his brother.
Now, Dean got all hot and bothered every time he pulled one of his stunts. Dean was the one taking things too far, the one having wet dreams of Cas.
He buried his face in his hands, groaning, “How am I supposed to deal with this? He follows me around like an imprinted baby duck.”
“Have you tried telling him to stop?”
Fucking smartass Benny. “You seriously think that’s going to work?”
“Have you tried?” he repeated.
So Dean tried. Man, did he try. But the next time he was face to face with Cas, it was so much harder than Benny could understand.
Cas was pleading for forgiveness with his whole damn face. Cas, the guy with zero emotional expression. “I’m so sorry, Dean, I forgot how weirdly these boys fixate on the idea of sex. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
"It's okay," Dean said, although he didn't mean it. It was just a reflex when Cas was upset to tell him that everything was going to be fine.
"No, you are avoiding me," Cas insisted. "And that is perfectly valid. I just want you to know you have nothing to fear. I would never try anything untoward on you."
Dean's face warmed, if not at Cas' implications then at his weird language. "I'm not scared of you, man, I'm just - busy. I'm not like you and Sammy, I've got to bust my ass if I ever want a wrestling scholarship."
"So you're not avoiding me?" He could see right through Dean’s half-assed attempt to let him down easy.
"No," he forced a scoff. "Of course not."
But avoiding Cas was all Dean knew to do. Cas didn’t make it easy. At least they didn't share any classes the rest of the afternoon, and Dean had wrestling practice in the evening as a solid excuse.
Predictably enough, the next morning Cas was waiting at Dean's locker at first break, with a face as hard to read as ever and a too-casual "Hello, Dean."
He didn't even touch his locker; he was carrying a pack which probably had everything he needed. He just stood there, staring at Dean. Waiting.
They both had class in the science wing this morning. “I have to talk to Coach Ackers before chem,” Dean explained in a hurry. He dashed towards the gym, making it all the way there before he felt stupid about it. It wasn’t like Cas was following him, and now he only had four minutes to make it up to his chemistry classroom.
He bought a powerade from the vending machine outside the gym and turned right back around. He was late, and he was given a pink slip for that, but at least Cas was already safe inside his own classroom.
Then it was lunch, and Dean couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Cas appeared impossibly at the door.
“Hello, Dean.”
He nearly jumped in surprise. “Cas! Where did you come from?”
“Physics,” he said, stony. He watched Dean expectantly. Of course he wanted to go to lunch together.
No way in hell was Dean doing lunch with the team after yesterday - hopefully Cas would just eat with them anyway. “Oh, I just remembered. I have a catch up quiz for Mr Fletcher. I’m going to eat up there, you go on without me.”
Cas stared. “Alright. I will see you in world history later.”
He left. Dean let out a breath of relief - and then realized that Cas had just given him a grace period. History was his last class of the day. Did this mean Cas wasn’t going to stalk him until then?
Dean spent another lunch period in the empty mezzanine with all the haphazard school furniture. He got a lot of homework done. He even found several balls that had gotten lost up here: volleyball, basketball, soccer. He made a mental note to make sure his teammates were coming up to look when they saw a ball go over the rail.
Cas did leave him alone until history class. Dean was so grateful by the time he arrived that he almost went to sit in the empty seat next to him.
“Hey, Dean.” Benny was behind him. “Do you know what this is?”
He was holding up his phone, with a blank screen. Dean stopped and looked back at him in confusion.
“Oh, thanks,” Benny said, too loudly to just be for Dean’s ears. He moved past Dean and took the seat beside Cas. “Hot Wings,” he acknowledged with a nod.
“Hello, Benny,” Cas responded, unfazed by the Hot Wings, or by Benny taking Dean’s place.
Dean understood, though. He dumped himself into a seat at the back of the room. Garth Fitzgerald the Fourth was across from him. He nodded at Dean, as if they had already established some secret exchange. Dean couldn’t remember ever talking to Garth about anything, ever, but he nodded back.
He was going to be Dean’s new history buddy, after all.
Then when final bell rang Cas tried to follow Dean to practice, and Dean had to come up with reasons why he couldn’t watch. Still, he showed up again after practice, to walk Dean back to the dorms, and Dean made up some big weight training commitment. He didn’t leave the gym that night until closing time, which was basically curfew, and when he finally dropped himself into bed, he was both exhausted and victorious.
He’d maintained a boundary with Cas.
The next day went similarly, and by Friday Cas stopped coming around entirely. Dean and Benny and Garth IV had partnered on a research project, leaving Cas to work with Richie and Jeremy, which essentially meant working alone. He spent his lunch breaks in the physics room for the Campbells’ robotics club, trying to rig a drone with the limited specs he was given. Dean spotted him in the hallways with Alfie and Inias, two kids in Sam’s grade that competed in national speed walking - and won. It was a weird point of pride for the school. Dean didn’t even know how Cas knew them, but he was glad Cas actually had friends independent of him.
On Saturday Sam tried to text him about the whole thing, and when Dean didn’t answer he came around to the gym to corner Dean on a rowing machine.
“Are you ostracizing Cas?”
“What? No,” Dean huffed, slowing to a stop and glaring at him. “Did you come all this way just because I didn’t answer you?”
“Uh no,” Sam pulled at his shirt collar, and Dean realized he was in workout gear too. “But it’s good to know you were ignoring my texts.”
“Whatever.” Dean went back to work, refusing to even look Sam’s way for the next hour.
That night, Sam was hanging out with Cas in the common room, and neither looked up when Dean entered on his way through. Good. Cas was almost a normal person around Sam. Some Sam time would be good for him.
As for the rest of the team, Dean was suddenly too busy to really worry what they thought. He drilled them in practice until they were too tired to talk, and made straight for weight training as soon as they were done, when everyone else went to shoot the shit at the local pizza place. If Dean’s absence from their table at lunch was conspicuous, no one seemed to want to ask him anything. That was okay. He wasn’t even sure if Cas was sitting with them. For all he knew, Cas was avoiding them too and the entire team thought that the two of them were off necking in the mezzanine.
But Dean was more productive than he’d ever been, at this rate he was going to be kicking ass and taking names at regionals come February. And Cas seemed to finally be respecting Dean’s personal space. So everything was working out anyway.
It was just over one week of peace before Cas made another advance. He showed up in the gym just before the rest of the guys would file in for practice.
"Hello, Dean."
Dean cringed in surprise, not realizing that someone had been behind him at all. Cas sure had a way of creeping up undetected. Dean didn't bother turning around, simply resumed his warm ups.
"Not now, Cas," he said as he gripped his right wrist and rotated it, counting silently. "I'm still busy, if you can't tell."
"Yes. Practice." Cas spoke curtly as ever. "Another period which constitutes- "
"Being busy," Dean finished, switching hands. One, two, three. . .
"I too am busy, Dean."
He felt his patience wearing thin, and stopped the wrist warm ups to turn and give Cas the best incredulous face he could muster.
But Cas was decked out in full wrestling gear, solid black spandex. Dean hadn't seen this much of Cas' body since primary school - and Cas certainly wasn't the pale, skinny six year old that Dean remembered. He didn't have an opportunity to pause and take in the sight, though. He started cackling so instantly that a pain sprung up in his rib cage, but he still could not stop laughing.
"What's with the face mask, Cas!?" he wheezed.
"Your laughter does not perturb me, Dean. I have done thorough research on the safety equipment involved in your sport. This device will protect me from breaking a nose."
"Does your nose break easy?"
Cas squinted at him. "I have never had the misfortune, so I am uncertain."
"Then you probably don't need it," Dean replied, unable to stop grinning.
He also noted that Cas did not have much in the way of leg hair. The singlet left no room for imagination, and just as Dean caught his eyes wandering, he managed to force them back onto Cas' face. He was glaring, but seemed to concede.
"Very well," Cas said as he removed his headgear.
"Another thing, Cas. You can't be here."
"Why not?"
"Our team reserved the gym. You are not on the team."
Dean felt like all he could ever say to the guy was what he could and could not do, and it left a nasty taste in his mouth. Policing people did not come naturally to Dean; he was usually the one encouraging others to misbehave.
Cas drew himself up straight. "Then I would like to try out for the team."
"Cas-" Dean rubbed his face in frustration. "Tryouts are at the beginning of the season. Have you even done this before?"
"No," Cas said slowly, still frowning. "I want to spend time with you, but you're always busy."
"Yeah, that happens. It's called high school."
"I see." Cas nodded but didn't move.
Dean sighed. "Look, I'll be done at seven. We can catch up after that, okay?"
Cas conceded. It wasn’t fast enough to avoid Gordon, Roy and Walt traipsing in. They were all about as amused as Dean was, with less kindness. And they had the good graces to inform Christian Campbell and his goons when they arrived.
Dean drilled them all extra hard, and no one even bothered to invite him for pizza afterwards. He was going straight to weight training anyway. He found that he really couldn’t care less what they imagined was going on with him and Cas.
He was even starting to forget why it was ever a big deal.
Cas hadn't actually done anything wrong - and he wouldn't have said anything creepy at all if it wasn't for Christian freaking Campbell teasing it out of him in the first place.
The guys could be douchewads, Dean knew that. If he couldn't weather some jeering from his teammates, then he didn't deserve to be team captain, did he?
Maybe he could have warned Cas about the Campbells, and about Gordon. He could have had a straight talk with him about what kind of things were not okay to say in front of them.
He could have helped Cas avoid this mess instead of walking right into it.
Yeah, Dean figured, as he steered down the hall toward the Edlund House dorm, he could cut Cas some slack. He'd proven himself more than respectful of Dean's request for space, and it had gone on long enough.
A truce was in order.
Dean wasn't too surprised when he opened his dorm door to find Cas inside. After all, he had told Cas he would meet up with him after practice, and that was two hours ago. What was weird was that Cas was sitting on Richie's bed - no, in Richie's bed, curled up with a big hardcover that looked like a textbook.
Dean ignored the pit in his stomach as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at. Sarcasm was always the first refuge when he felt uneasy. "Make yourself comfortable, why don't you?"
Cas just kept reading. "It's not too bad. Could use some more pillows."
"You could have taken mine."
He looked up. "Really?"
"I mean, at least you know me - what possessed you to take over Richie's bed?" Cas' answering look of confusion made Dean's head swim. No.
"This is my bed," he said simply.
And here I was just about to do an olive branch. God, Cas really did have Dean wrapped around his little finger. Just how gullible did he get?
"Did you buy it. Like with the lockers?"
Cas narrowed his eyes, no doubt picking up that Dean was pissed now, but clearly not following how that had happened. He nodded.
Dean just breathed, “You are psychotic.”
This time, he really believed it.
- - -
Then
- - -
Cas' hospital stay was six months, long enough for summer to bloom then turn yellow and red and fall to the ground. Dean was not allowed to see him this time, because the children's hospital was far away. Again, there wasn't much reason for what the social workers were doing to him, but Dean knew better than to ask, because the answers he got were the most nonsense he’d heard so far.
The fact was, if you couldn't see a sickness, then it wasn't there. Just like the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, none of them were real but everyone pretended they were around Sammy. Well, this time Dean was the one they were pretending for. Dean didn't know why, but he knew one thing.
Cas was not sick, and he did not belong in a hospital.
So, when Cas was finally allowed to leave to hospital and live in the Winchester home, when Dean saw him spitting out the pills his mother gave him, he didn't see anything wrong with that. Cas explained that the pills made his stomach upset. As far as Dean could tell, that was a pretty darned good reason not to swallow them.
But Mom made a big deal of it. She started sitting Cas down and watching him swallow the pills. She would make him stick his tongue out, and looked inside his mouth before she would let him go.
One night, Dean woke up after everyone had gone to sleep, because he had to go to the bathroom. He got into the hallway to find that someone was already in the bathroom. The door was closed, and a little yellow light was shining through under it.
Dean walked towards it, sleepy, and just when he lifted one hand to knock, the door opened. It was too bright for his eyes for a moment, and then he saw Cas. He was wiping his mouth with his sleeve and his eyes looked like he had been crying.
Dean was awake now. “Cas, what’s wrong?”
Cas just shook his head.
“Are you sick? Did the pills hurt your tummy again?”
“No, I made them come back up.”
“You mean you threw up? They did make you sick. I’m telling Mom, she shouldn’t make you take them anymore.”
He had the hem of Dean’s shirt, stopping him from turning and marching back down the hallway. “No, don’t tell, please. I did it. I made myself throw up.”
“You did?” But that wasn’t possible. Dean knew very well, because when he told Mom that he felt sick, she would only let him stay home from school if he was actually puking. If he could throw up on command, well… that was a whole new level of acting. “How?”
Cas taught him to stick two fingers into the back of his throat, which made him gag. Cas taught him to push until he wasn’t just gagging. Dean could see the pink of the strawberry ice cream he’d had for dessert tonight, floating in the toilet water with chunks of dinner.
“Amazing,” Dean praised. “We’re going to have so many sick days to stay home from school now!”
It made Cas smile one of his little smiles. “It doesn’t feel very good, though, does it?”
He was right. They brushed their teeth to help with the feeling of being sick, and Dean held Cas’ hand, leading them back to his own room.
“You can sleep with me tonight, if you want.”
Cas’ eyes were big. “You’re not supposed to share your bed.”
“Family is okay,” Dean insisted. “Sammy sometimes comes into my room when he is scared at night.”
He seemed to be thinking about it still.
“We’re family now,” Dean explained.
"Like Sam?" Cas asked, but his face was all scrunched up like he wouldn't believe Dean if he said yes.
And when Dean thought about it, it wasn't really the same. "No, not like Sam."
It was the right answer; Cas' face relaxed. "Me, too. My connection with you feels different from Sam, from anyone else."
"What connection?"
Cas' hand went to his chest. With the other, he put Dean's hand to his own. "This one."
Dean didn't know if it was the intensity in his friend's expression, or the feel of a soft, thudding heartbeat under his palm, but his own heart raced and he felt his face blush. He didn't know what to say, so he nodded.
"I think I was supposed to find you, Dean. I'm supposed to stay with you."
He nodded again. He didn't know what it was, but he felt it too. "Don't worry, you belong here now. This is your home, too."
Next: [part 5]