FIC: Faith (Castiel/Dean Winchester) [1/6]
Title: Faith [Part 1/6 of Bunker!Verse]
Author: todisturbtheuni
Rating: PG-13.
Genre and/or Pairing: Angst, Hurt/Comfort; Pre-Castiel/Dean Winchester
Spoilers: Up to 8x13.
Warnings: Cursing.
Word Count: 2067
Summary: Dean’s been worried about Castiel since Samandriel. Sam can hear him at night: sleepless, anxious...praying.
Also available at AO3.
It’s a while before Dean tries to call Cas.
He wants the angel to flutter back on his own--come back from Heaven and check in, let them know what’s going on. He knows in his gut it won’t happen, but in the silence of motel room after motel room, just when he thinks his lips will form the words, he tells himself that Cas will turn up tomorrow.
It’s not until they unlock that damn bunker that he finally gives in. It’s been weeks; Cas isn’t coming back. Not unless he says something. And even if his words don’t do a damn thing--because what if Cas can’t come back?--at least Cas will hear him. Like he did in Purgatory. At least Cas will know he hasn’t been forgotten.
He just can’t shake the image of the blood dripping down Cas’s cheek, the blank emptiness behind those blue eyes, the dark undercurrent of something bad, something wrong.
He’s got his own room in this big empty place, and it’s weird hearing Sam’s snores at a distance. It’s hard to sleep, actually, with his brother more than five feet away. He sits on the edge of his bed, boxers and t-shirt and socks--it’s cold down here, they didn’t get the heating quite right in the 1950s--and takes a deep breath, scrubs a hand over his hair, clears his throat.
“Cas,” he says finally, and imagines the sound of wings for a long, quiet moment that just goes on, echoing with its emptiness. “Can you...” He clears his throat again, because it’s hard to say. Always has been. “Look, it’s important. Please. Can you just...flap down here for a minute?”
Nothing.
“Cas.” And he gets up, because he can’t sit still, the words coming out of him in a flood. “Son of a bitch. You can’t do this, man. You can’t go flapping off to Heaven anymore and not check in with us. Not after...” He thinks back on that conversation and shudders. “I can’t get to you there, unless you want me to put a bullet in my brain and hope that you can clean up the mess afterwards. I can’t look for you. This isn’t Purgatory.” He runs a hand over his jaw because he wishes it was, still longs for the purity of that place in the moments when humanity overwhelms him. “This better not be Purgatory,” he threatens. “If you’ve got anything big and horrible on your ass, stop trying to protect me from it and bring it where I can fight it.”
The silence drips, big and oppressive, and the hopelessness closes in on his chest. He doesn’t say anything else--can’t, feels like--just sits back down with his head in his hands and the vague undercurrent of panic in his veins, trying to think of what to do, trying to know what to do, but there’s no protocol for this.
“Help me out, man,” he whispers, but Cas doesn’t come.
Next time he tries to call Cas, he goes outside. Maybe there’s some voodoo magic on the bunker that keeps it away from prying angel eyes and ears; if the idiots were keepin’ angel feathers in their labs then they had to know the armies of Heaven were out there.
So he’s outside, his breath misting in the chilly night air, and he opens on that.
“Still confused about the feathers, man.” He rubs his arms to warm them, even though the cold’s in a place he can’t reach. “I don’t...” He pauses, frowning. “You never told me. Why was there a bag of fucking angel feathers in the trunk of my car? Are they yours?” Even contemplating the idea is kind of appalling. “Because, dude, I’m okay with you being in the car, but if you’re just molting in the backseat, that’s kind of a problem. I have a very strict no-feathers-no-fur policy for my baby.”
He doesn’t expect anything other than the silence, but it’s still chilling.
“I should’ve told you,” he mutters. “You did a lot of crazy things, Cas, and some of ‘em still...but it was always for me. Dying, killing your own brothers, Falling. Because I asked. And I never said thanks, and...I should’ve told you. You’ve done everything for us. Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters.” He’d hated it when Cas said that; it still made him grit his teeth in something like regret. “Maybe it’s time you stop bleedin’,” he says gruffly, voice catching in his throat. “Just come home. We’ve kind of got a place now. I think. Won’t be tons of motel rooms anymore, I hope. I kind of like it here. Think you would, too. Quiet. Lots of books. Sam’s nerdgasming every five minutes.” He snorts, but really, he’s happy, happy that his little brother finally has something worth getting excited over.
“But you’ve gotta turn up first, man,” he said finally. “Please, just. If you’re okay, you’ve gotta at least tell me.”
He sits outside all night, but Cas never shows.
When Dean leaves to check in with Garth and Kevin, Sam prays.
He’s heard it, Dean shifting around at night, from room to room, his voice a long, slow roll until he can’t be understanding anymore, and that’s when he shouts and throws things, and Sam hears a lot of thumps and a lot of things breaking. In the morning it’s always hard to tell what’s missing--Dean cleans up carefully; maybe he thinks Sam can’t hear him.
And Sam thinks--if Cas can hear Dean and he’s not coming, then Sam’s not going to be any more convincing, but he still has to try. He can’t do anything else.
“Hey, Cas,” he says, and he fiddles with the tumbler of whiskey that he’s not really drinking. “We miss you. And we’re worried. You probably already know that,” and he chuckles, sadly, “the way Dean’s been. And if you’re not showing up after...after all that, it’s gotta be pretty bad, right?” He pauses and takes a swallow of the stuff anyway. In solidarity, he thinks, ironically, because his brother’s an alcoholic and it’s been getting worse, lately. “Yeah. I know. Something big must be coming, but I know it’s not your friend.” He pauses, fiddles again, stands up from the books he’s been hunched over for hours. His chest aches. He misses Amelia, and he misses Dean, and he misses Cas, Dean having Cas, wishes they could all catch a fucking break.
“If I can help,” he says finally. “Just fill me in.”
It’s weeks later and no news, and Dean finally breaks. Sam hears the sudden sob, the choke in his voice, the sound of his knees hitting the floor. “Maybe you can hear me better like this,” and Sam can’t take it anymore, can’t turn a blind eye, crawls out of bed and finds Dean slumped on the floor with broken glass just out of reach.
“Dean,” he says, trying to be gentle, neutral, trying not to startle him or shut him down, but Dean doesn’t even twitch.
“Tried so damn hard to get us out of there,” Dean says, broken and exhausted, and Sam takes a cautious step forward, skirting the broken glass to get to Dean. His shoulders are still, his head bowed, limbs loose, and Dean’s had bad nights but nothing like this. “Should’ve stayed in,” he says, quiet. “Least I could find him, there. Least I could protect him, there.”
Sam pushes the glass aside with a socked foot and kneels down in front of his brother, sees the tears dripping to his chin, and it rips a new, painful wound inside him to see Dean like this. Because he’s been half-angry at Dean ever since Purgatory and Amelia and Dean’s been the same with him, but this is why: because they’re suffering and they’re losing, always seems like they’re losing, and Dean’s not like he used to be, anymore. He can’t shake it all off and keep going, he gets bogged down with the pain, and Sam hates to watch but he can’t walk away.
“Something’s wrong, Sammy,” Dean says, not a question. “He wouldn’t just--he said he couldn’t go back to Heaven, that if he did, saw the damage he’d done, he would--”
Sam doesn’t need the explanation. He’s done his fair share of destruction, knows what Cas might do.
“If he can’t even hear me--if he’s--”
Sam reaches forward and wraps his arms around Dean’s shoulders, hopeless, powerless, and Dean doesn’t push away or stiffen up but clings to Sam, crumpled, his face pressed right into the years-old tattoo and Sam wonders if Dean still has that handprint, if he has to live with the memory of Castiel burned into his flesh every hour of every day, all that history a livid burn on his shoulder that he can’t get rid of.
“I don’t know what to do, Sammy,” Dean chokes out.
“We could summon him,” Sam says, even though it’s desperate and touched with dread, “and if he doesn’t come--then we’ll know something is keeping him away.”
“Or that he’s dead,” Dean says, harsh and resistant, but Sam squeezes tighter.
“Cas is a fighter. He wouldn’t just...” But Sam can’t say it. “Not without telling you.”
Dean pulls back, eyes red, and says, “I don’t know how it got so messed up. I don’t know why--I can’t shake it when it’s him.”
“Maybe there’s something to that,” Sam says, because before Cas it was only ever him that got Dean like that.
“Don’t,” Dean grates, his eyes wild with pain.
“You know I don’t care,” Sam says, because he has to get it out sometime even if he feels like Dean should just know by now. “You know I don’t--”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, it is, it’s just not easy. Look, Dean--we’ve got next to nothing left. This place,” and Sam looks up at the library, the ancient bunker rearing up around them, “it’s great, but it’s not people. You might just--look, I’m just saying, next time he turns up, maybe you should hold on.”
“If he turns up,” Dean says, and it’s clear he doesn’t think that’s ever going to happen again.
“Let’s summon him,” Sam says, trying to sound convincing. “At least we’ll know.”
Dean goes along with it: preparing the ingredients, striking the match. And then they wait, breath baited, shoulder-to-shoulder.
It’s less of a landing, and more of a crash: Castiel, bloody and bruised, hits the ground right in front of them, shatters the floorboards. His eyes open, dazed, and the first thing he looks at is Dean. He cringes, and there’s blood on his lips.
“I’m sorry,” he coughs. “I don’t...I heard you, but I couldn’t...I tried.” His eyes roll up, slide shut, and the stunned silence is broken as Dean staggers forward and falls back to his knees, grabbing Cas’s shoulder.
“Cas,” he says, and the blue eyes flicker open again, staring into Dean’s face with an expression so open, so miserable and hopeful at once, that Sam feels strongly as if he’s intruding, but he can’t slink away, because what if this is really it? “Hey, buddy,” Dean says gently, a voice Sam’s hardly ever heard before. “Tell me what I can do.”
Surprise, confusion; Cas coughs again. “I believe I’ll heal,” he says, and his gaze flickers for the first time over Dean’s shoulder to Sam, struggling to focus. “I heard you as well, Sam. Thank you for your concern.”
Dean glances up, gives Sam a real you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me look, and Sam just shrugs tightly back. “No problem, man,” Sam says, starting to slowly back up. He could do without the staring contest they’re having now that Cas is done addressing him. It could go on for a while, and they have no qualms about making others uncomfortable.
“Thought you were dead,” Dean says, his voice almost too low to hear.
Cas smiles as Dean’s free hand curls around his other shoulder, gently pulling him upright. “This is your problem, Dean,” he says, and he sounds exhausted but genuine, like he’ll be okay. “You have no faith.”
Before Sam finally turns away he sees Cas getting wrapped up in a bear hug, the kind he won’t get out of for a while, and he melts into it, getting blood all over Dean, lifting trembling arms to hang on tight.
Go on... Part II: We're Okay.
Author: todisturbtheuni
Rating: PG-13.
Genre and/or Pairing: Angst, Hurt/Comfort; Pre-Castiel/Dean Winchester
Spoilers: Up to 8x13.
Warnings: Cursing.
Word Count: 2067
Summary: Dean’s been worried about Castiel since Samandriel. Sam can hear him at night: sleepless, anxious...praying.
Also available at AO3.
It’s a while before Dean tries to call Cas.
He wants the angel to flutter back on his own--come back from Heaven and check in, let them know what’s going on. He knows in his gut it won’t happen, but in the silence of motel room after motel room, just when he thinks his lips will form the words, he tells himself that Cas will turn up tomorrow.
It’s not until they unlock that damn bunker that he finally gives in. It’s been weeks; Cas isn’t coming back. Not unless he says something. And even if his words don’t do a damn thing--because what if Cas can’t come back?--at least Cas will hear him. Like he did in Purgatory. At least Cas will know he hasn’t been forgotten.
He just can’t shake the image of the blood dripping down Cas’s cheek, the blank emptiness behind those blue eyes, the dark undercurrent of something bad, something wrong.
He’s got his own room in this big empty place, and it’s weird hearing Sam’s snores at a distance. It’s hard to sleep, actually, with his brother more than five feet away. He sits on the edge of his bed, boxers and t-shirt and socks--it’s cold down here, they didn’t get the heating quite right in the 1950s--and takes a deep breath, scrubs a hand over his hair, clears his throat.
“Cas,” he says finally, and imagines the sound of wings for a long, quiet moment that just goes on, echoing with its emptiness. “Can you...” He clears his throat again, because it’s hard to say. Always has been. “Look, it’s important. Please. Can you just...flap down here for a minute?”
Nothing.
“Cas.” And he gets up, because he can’t sit still, the words coming out of him in a flood. “Son of a bitch. You can’t do this, man. You can’t go flapping off to Heaven anymore and not check in with us. Not after...” He thinks back on that conversation and shudders. “I can’t get to you there, unless you want me to put a bullet in my brain and hope that you can clean up the mess afterwards. I can’t look for you. This isn’t Purgatory.” He runs a hand over his jaw because he wishes it was, still longs for the purity of that place in the moments when humanity overwhelms him. “This better not be Purgatory,” he threatens. “If you’ve got anything big and horrible on your ass, stop trying to protect me from it and bring it where I can fight it.”
The silence drips, big and oppressive, and the hopelessness closes in on his chest. He doesn’t say anything else--can’t, feels like--just sits back down with his head in his hands and the vague undercurrent of panic in his veins, trying to think of what to do, trying to know what to do, but there’s no protocol for this.
“Help me out, man,” he whispers, but Cas doesn’t come.
Next time he tries to call Cas, he goes outside. Maybe there’s some voodoo magic on the bunker that keeps it away from prying angel eyes and ears; if the idiots were keepin’ angel feathers in their labs then they had to know the armies of Heaven were out there.
So he’s outside, his breath misting in the chilly night air, and he opens on that.
“Still confused about the feathers, man.” He rubs his arms to warm them, even though the cold’s in a place he can’t reach. “I don’t...” He pauses, frowning. “You never told me. Why was there a bag of fucking angel feathers in the trunk of my car? Are they yours?” Even contemplating the idea is kind of appalling. “Because, dude, I’m okay with you being in the car, but if you’re just molting in the backseat, that’s kind of a problem. I have a very strict no-feathers-no-fur policy for my baby.”
He doesn’t expect anything other than the silence, but it’s still chilling.
“I should’ve told you,” he mutters. “You did a lot of crazy things, Cas, and some of ‘em still...but it was always for me. Dying, killing your own brothers, Falling. Because I asked. And I never said thanks, and...I should’ve told you. You’ve done everything for us. Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters.” He’d hated it when Cas said that; it still made him grit his teeth in something like regret. “Maybe it’s time you stop bleedin’,” he says gruffly, voice catching in his throat. “Just come home. We’ve kind of got a place now. I think. Won’t be tons of motel rooms anymore, I hope. I kind of like it here. Think you would, too. Quiet. Lots of books. Sam’s nerdgasming every five minutes.” He snorts, but really, he’s happy, happy that his little brother finally has something worth getting excited over.
“But you’ve gotta turn up first, man,” he said finally. “Please, just. If you’re okay, you’ve gotta at least tell me.”
He sits outside all night, but Cas never shows.
When Dean leaves to check in with Garth and Kevin, Sam prays.
He’s heard it, Dean shifting around at night, from room to room, his voice a long, slow roll until he can’t be understanding anymore, and that’s when he shouts and throws things, and Sam hears a lot of thumps and a lot of things breaking. In the morning it’s always hard to tell what’s missing--Dean cleans up carefully; maybe he thinks Sam can’t hear him.
And Sam thinks--if Cas can hear Dean and he’s not coming, then Sam’s not going to be any more convincing, but he still has to try. He can’t do anything else.
“Hey, Cas,” he says, and he fiddles with the tumbler of whiskey that he’s not really drinking. “We miss you. And we’re worried. You probably already know that,” and he chuckles, sadly, “the way Dean’s been. And if you’re not showing up after...after all that, it’s gotta be pretty bad, right?” He pauses and takes a swallow of the stuff anyway. In solidarity, he thinks, ironically, because his brother’s an alcoholic and it’s been getting worse, lately. “Yeah. I know. Something big must be coming, but I know it’s not your friend.” He pauses, fiddles again, stands up from the books he’s been hunched over for hours. His chest aches. He misses Amelia, and he misses Dean, and he misses Cas, Dean having Cas, wishes they could all catch a fucking break.
“If I can help,” he says finally. “Just fill me in.”
It’s weeks later and no news, and Dean finally breaks. Sam hears the sudden sob, the choke in his voice, the sound of his knees hitting the floor. “Maybe you can hear me better like this,” and Sam can’t take it anymore, can’t turn a blind eye, crawls out of bed and finds Dean slumped on the floor with broken glass just out of reach.
“Dean,” he says, trying to be gentle, neutral, trying not to startle him or shut him down, but Dean doesn’t even twitch.
“Tried so damn hard to get us out of there,” Dean says, broken and exhausted, and Sam takes a cautious step forward, skirting the broken glass to get to Dean. His shoulders are still, his head bowed, limbs loose, and Dean’s had bad nights but nothing like this. “Should’ve stayed in,” he says, quiet. “Least I could find him, there. Least I could protect him, there.”
Sam pushes the glass aside with a socked foot and kneels down in front of his brother, sees the tears dripping to his chin, and it rips a new, painful wound inside him to see Dean like this. Because he’s been half-angry at Dean ever since Purgatory and Amelia and Dean’s been the same with him, but this is why: because they’re suffering and they’re losing, always seems like they’re losing, and Dean’s not like he used to be, anymore. He can’t shake it all off and keep going, he gets bogged down with the pain, and Sam hates to watch but he can’t walk away.
“Something’s wrong, Sammy,” Dean says, not a question. “He wouldn’t just--he said he couldn’t go back to Heaven, that if he did, saw the damage he’d done, he would--”
Sam doesn’t need the explanation. He’s done his fair share of destruction, knows what Cas might do.
“If he can’t even hear me--if he’s--”
Sam reaches forward and wraps his arms around Dean’s shoulders, hopeless, powerless, and Dean doesn’t push away or stiffen up but clings to Sam, crumpled, his face pressed right into the years-old tattoo and Sam wonders if Dean still has that handprint, if he has to live with the memory of Castiel burned into his flesh every hour of every day, all that history a livid burn on his shoulder that he can’t get rid of.
“I don’t know what to do, Sammy,” Dean chokes out.
“We could summon him,” Sam says, even though it’s desperate and touched with dread, “and if he doesn’t come--then we’ll know something is keeping him away.”
“Or that he’s dead,” Dean says, harsh and resistant, but Sam squeezes tighter.
“Cas is a fighter. He wouldn’t just...” But Sam can’t say it. “Not without telling you.”
Dean pulls back, eyes red, and says, “I don’t know how it got so messed up. I don’t know why--I can’t shake it when it’s him.”
“Maybe there’s something to that,” Sam says, because before Cas it was only ever him that got Dean like that.
“Don’t,” Dean grates, his eyes wild with pain.
“You know I don’t care,” Sam says, because he has to get it out sometime even if he feels like Dean should just know by now. “You know I don’t--”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, it is, it’s just not easy. Look, Dean--we’ve got next to nothing left. This place,” and Sam looks up at the library, the ancient bunker rearing up around them, “it’s great, but it’s not people. You might just--look, I’m just saying, next time he turns up, maybe you should hold on.”
“If he turns up,” Dean says, and it’s clear he doesn’t think that’s ever going to happen again.
“Let’s summon him,” Sam says, trying to sound convincing. “At least we’ll know.”
Dean goes along with it: preparing the ingredients, striking the match. And then they wait, breath baited, shoulder-to-shoulder.
It’s less of a landing, and more of a crash: Castiel, bloody and bruised, hits the ground right in front of them, shatters the floorboards. His eyes open, dazed, and the first thing he looks at is Dean. He cringes, and there’s blood on his lips.
“I’m sorry,” he coughs. “I don’t...I heard you, but I couldn’t...I tried.” His eyes roll up, slide shut, and the stunned silence is broken as Dean staggers forward and falls back to his knees, grabbing Cas’s shoulder.
“Cas,” he says, and the blue eyes flicker open again, staring into Dean’s face with an expression so open, so miserable and hopeful at once, that Sam feels strongly as if he’s intruding, but he can’t slink away, because what if this is really it? “Hey, buddy,” Dean says gently, a voice Sam’s hardly ever heard before. “Tell me what I can do.”
Surprise, confusion; Cas coughs again. “I believe I’ll heal,” he says, and his gaze flickers for the first time over Dean’s shoulder to Sam, struggling to focus. “I heard you as well, Sam. Thank you for your concern.”
Dean glances up, gives Sam a real you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me look, and Sam just shrugs tightly back. “No problem, man,” Sam says, starting to slowly back up. He could do without the staring contest they’re having now that Cas is done addressing him. It could go on for a while, and they have no qualms about making others uncomfortable.
“Thought you were dead,” Dean says, his voice almost too low to hear.
Cas smiles as Dean’s free hand curls around his other shoulder, gently pulling him upright. “This is your problem, Dean,” he says, and he sounds exhausted but genuine, like he’ll be okay. “You have no faith.”
Before Sam finally turns away he sees Cas getting wrapped up in a bear hug, the kind he won’t get out of for a while, and he melts into it, getting blood all over Dean, lifting trembling arms to hang on tight.
Go on... Part II: We're Okay.