One Flew Over… (d/c; pg-13)
Spoilers Up to 7.17/The Born-Again Identity
Wordcount ~2,700
Castiel doesn’t talk much, but he listens. Or at least he tries to, above the endless, distracting and pointless wittering of his brother, who seems bent on trailing around after him wherever he goes.
“Are you never quiet, brother?” he remarks, nine days after Dean shuffled guiltily away from him, and Sam patted his knee nervously and told him they’d find a way, they always did. Except when they don’t, he thought at the time, but he didn’t voice it.
Lucifer gives him a beady eye, and seems taken aback. And unexpectedly silent, so Castiel takes advantage of the lull in their previously one-sided conversation.
“It’s nice to get a word in,” he offers with a shrug. “I realize you’ve become attached to the sound of your own voice, but if you don’t have anything interesting to say, it’s generally considered polite not to bother.”
After a flare of his nostrils, Lucifer folds his arms across his chest. “How do you know I don’t have anything interesting to say?” he asks, in a way that seems affronted.
“Your subject matter, it’s…” Castiel throws up a dismissive hand. “Tedious. Lurid descriptions of things you can’t actually do to me, since you’re a hallucination. You no longer frighten me.”
“I’m the devil,” Lucifer tells him flatly. “Are you telling me you don’t find the devil frightening?”
Castiel turns to keep walking to therapy. “Initially, perhaps. But I’ve fought my way through Hell twice, brother. I’ve spent time as a pulsing hotbed of all the evil Purgatory had to offer.” He glances back over his shoulder with a smirk as he delivers the coup de grace. “I was even God, albeit only briefly. And compared to all that, your efforts are prosaic and juvenile. Fairy tales, firecrackers and favorite tunes from your vessel’s music collection…”
His brother is right there in his path when he faces front again, his tone acidic.
“So tell me, Castiel, what do I have to do to engage your attention?”
This is more productive, and Castiel has been attending therapy after all. Moreover, Castiel is a tactician who is well versed in the application of both diplomacy and battle strategy. “Brother, are you aware that approximately one-third of adult siblings have a rivalrous relationship with each other?” he asks.
It turns out that Lucifer isn’t. “No,” he admits, a little reluctantly.
“They don’t get along with their brother or sister, and claim to have little in common with them,” Castiel continues smoothly. He starts walking again, decides he will forego therapy this time. “They spend little time in each other’s company and frequently use words like humiliating, and competitive when describing their childhood together.” He takes a left instead of a right, makes for the games room. “These old conflicts can linger on into adulthood and effectively reduce us to children again.” He nudges his brother, even though his elbow passes through thin air. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”
After a guarded moment, Lucifer side-eyes him. “Possibly.”
“It prevents us from moving on in the relationship, from seeing one another in a new light,” Castiel plows on. “It ties us to childhood roles that never worked for us and ultimately it means we persist in pushing each other’s emotional buttons without knowing why or how.”
Lucifer goldfishes his mouth at Castiel in a way that is comfortingly similar to Dean’s reaction at times. “But I’m the devil,” he says faintly. “I’m supposed to push people’s buttons.”
Castiel leads his brother in through the open doorway. “Restrict yourself to that role if you will, Lucifer,” he responds, with some degree of scorn. “I prefer to acknowledge that the familial bond is complicated by many factors, and also fluid. Which means that if we approach it in a more sophisticated way, we can eventually adapt and reach reconciliation with a sibling whose goals and interests may be different from our own.”
He’s making his way over to a table by the window where he has been sitting these past few days and painstakingly working on a jigsaw puzzle presented to him in a Ziploc bag by one of the orderlies with the instruction, it’ll help your impulse control, at which Castiel had first supposed that yes, being bored to death might well exert a degree of impulse control, only to then conclude that intense boredom might eventually cause him to smite with no compunction if it turned out that any pieces were missing.
He seats himself and examines his progress so far. He thinks it might be the Rocky Mountains, and it is absorbing to see the sky and snow-capped peaks gradually take shape as he slots the pieces together. “You know,” he muses, after a reflective moment when his thoughts turn to Dean again. “Our siblinghood means that we know each other in a unique way. We share a history that can provide us with perspective, and understanding.”
“Michael never understood me,” Lucifer blurts out bitterly from above him. “And all this psychoanalysis isn’t taking into account the fact that personality differences can make one’s litter mates grate on one’s nerves and provoke one into doing regrettable things.”
Castiel sighs at that. “Yes. I concur… I had a very similar experience and similar results when dealing with Raphael.” He uses his socked foot to push out the chair opposite him. “Sit down. Tell me about your problems.” He slides a modest handful of the small cardboard pieces over at his brother. “But make yourself useful at the same time.”
***
Meg is an issue.
“She’s a pain in the ass, Castiel,” Lucifer corrects him as they play Battleship together. “A pain in your ass, to be exact.” He shakes his head. “I still can’t grasp the wisdom of leaving you here when Crowley’s demons are on the hunt.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Crowley is a pain in the ass too. As was Michael.”
Castiel bristles a little. “I got along fairly well with Michael, actually.”
“Go you,” the devil mocks. “The little angel that could.” He leers. “Maybe that’s why you’re in love with his vessel. It’s transference.”
A moment passes when Castiel gives that serious consideration. “No,” he decides. “It’s Dean I’m in love with.”
“And yet he left you here,” Lucifer pokes with a sly smile.
“He thinks me riding around in the back seat of the Impala might be problematic in some quarters,” Castiel defends. “He mentioned something about just the brothers.” He smiles himself. “It’s not of import. I’ve seen how he looks at me. Everyone has. He constantly enters my…” He searches for the term. “My personal space bubble. And he kept my trenchcoat. Before they left, Sam told me he switched it from car to car, and that he even slept with it a few times.”
Lucifer rolls his vessel’s pale blue eyes. “Seriously? I think I may throw up in my mouth,” he jeers, and he contorts his jaw into a vague and clumsy version of the gagging motion Castiel learned from Dean.
“Less tongue next time,” Castiel reminds him. “It’s a delicate maneuver.”
Ignoring him, Lucifer backtracks. “Anyway, Meg. She and I were close but it all fell apart when she found out I was planning to burn her kind once I won the Apocalypse.”
Nodding, Castiel says, “Yes, I can see how your plans for demon carnage wouldn’t benefit that working relationship.”
Lucifer leans in confidentially. “And honestly, I’ve never quite forgiven her for being such an easy touch back in Carthage. That was damned stealthy of you, Cas.”
Castiel allows himself to preen modestly. “Warrior of God,” he supplies. “And a badass, according to Dean. And, D-4.”
Lucifer gazes at his paper grid, glowers up at Castiel. “That was my last aircraft carrier.” He snorts, stabs a finger at Castiel. “And be badass. Look at her… she’s Nurse Ratched.”
“I don’t understand that reference,” Castiel says.
Lucifer whistles in an annoyed way at that, leans back in his chair, and stares belligerently at the demon as she makes her way over towards them.
She’s carrying a package that she drops on the table in front of Castiel, and she runs a deadly looking curved scarlet talon over it, caressing the paper. “It’s another one from your boyfriend.”
Lucifer is entranced by her fingernail, catches Castiel’s eyes and winces. “How can she get anything done with those? How can she type? Pick her nose? I hope she doesn’t wear contacts.”
Castiel disregards his brother’s rambling, eases the package out from under her hand carefully, tears the paper neatly. It’s fabric, smooth, gray, and it smells of Dean, Dean, Dean. He shakes it out, one of Dean’s tees, faded and worn, the legend on the front - the name of what he thinks might be a rock band - peeling and scarred.
“What a shame Led Zep tees aren’t hospital issue,” Meg snipes, and she’s already closing her fingers around the material and starting to yank it away. “It’s vintage. It’ll fit me fine.”
In a split-second of thought, Castiel is wearing the tee, feeling it softer on his skin than the stiff brand-new white cotton shirt he was given when he was admitted.
“Take that off,” Meg orders viciously.
The air goes thick, and Castiel glances to where his brother sits, expectant and wide-eyed. When Castiel doesn’t speak, Lucifer kicks him under the table.
“Your nails don’t look very hygienic,” Castiel observes.
It’s the first time he has said more than a single word to the demon, and her lips pull thin in a way that Castiel finds quite satisfying.
“Must you wear that shade of red?” he continues placidly. “It looks like you just tore a small animal apart with your bare hands. I’m sure the other inmates don’t appreciate it.”
As her eyes flare black and her fingernail heads straight for his eye, Castiel whips up a hand and snaps his fingers closed around her wrist.
“I wouldn’t,” he advises. “In fact, I’d go as far as strongly recommending that you don’t.” And then he engages the sprinkler system, blocks all of the toilets simultaneously, and pops every light bulb in the entire building.
***
Outside in the melee of evacuated patients, Castiel drifts away and around the side of the building. It’s the first time he has been outside, and he has been admiring the potential of the scrubland underneath his window since day two. It’s a barren patch of mud and a few lonely hummocks of grass, with some shabby looking benches placed haphazardly about its perimeter when he arrives; but a hand wave later, it’s green and blooming with brightly colored life, a fountain bubbling merrily at its center.
“Is this what counts for badass nowadays?” Lucifer snorts as he pads up behind Castiel. “I meant incinerate her.”
“She may come in useful,” Castiel counters mildly. “I’m being pragmatic.”
“You’re being the yard boy.”
Castiel thinks about his Heaven, of the long hours spent daydreaming, meditating, pondering his sins, as he gazed at the kite fluttering endlessly overhead. “I miss the simple things,” he murmurs.
“So do I,” Lucifer agrees gloomily. “But at least you stand a chance of going out and finding them again. I’m not even real. And soon you’ll leave me behind for good.”
Castiel supposes that’s a possibility and maybe even a definite likelihood. Although, “You’re my hallucination now,” he consoles. “I control you, and I’ve grown accustomed to your face. So. Perhaps you might come back some time.”
When he looks over again, his brother is gone.
***
The Winchesters are staying at a motel outside of Lebanon, New Hampshire.
“Hello, Dean,” Castiel announces himself, as yelped-out curses and papers fly everywhere. He nods gravely at Sam. “You look well, Sam. That pleases me more than I can say.”
If there is a slight frisson of reticence in the way Sam responds, Castiel knows he has only himself to blame. “I’m good,” Sam tells him. “I’ve been catching up on my sleep.”
Castiel casts his eyes over to Dean, fists a handful of the tee. “Thank you for this.” He looks down at the rest of himself, scrub pants and socks. “I don’t suppose…”
Dean leans across to where the contents of his duffel are spilling out across the bed, snags a pair of jeans. “Here. I got a pair of old Converse sneakers in the trunk.” He eyes Castiel critically. “You look sane.”
Castiel tilts his head. “I’m an angel of the Lord, Dean. Still, for some reason I can’t quite fathom. My grace fought back, and Lucifer…” He shudders a little as he recalls other, earlier torture. “He could learn much from Zachariah and Raphael.” He stoops to pick up a scattered pile of computer printouts and diagrams, and offers them over, feeling a little foolish now he’s here. “My apologies. I fumbled that landing. It’s been some time.”
A strained silence stretches out between them all for a moment before Castiel clears his throat. “What are you doing?”
Dean replies shortly, “Researching dick.”
After rolling his eyes, Sam elaborates. “Dick Roman. Head Levi.” He chews his lip. “You got any intel?”
Uncomfortable at how the vacant spots in his memory gape unproductively, Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t remember much of their scheming. But…” He puts his hands out palm up. “I’m still here. My grace survived. So perhaps I can be a weapon.”
Dean rubs his hand across his jaw, slumps, and he suddenly seems tired. “You’re not just a weapon,” he mutters. “Don’t say that.”
Almost immediately, Sam shoots bolt upright and grabs his jacket. “There’s a bar on the next block,” he says to the room. “There’s a game on.” He jerks his head at Dean, mute and pale-faced on the bed. “He never got over you dying, Cas, so stick with it. I’ll be-” He looks at Castiel meaningfully. “Gone for several hours.”
Sam’s long body almost races for the door and then it’s just Castiel and Dean, staring at each other across a few feet that Castiel thinks might be the widest distance he has ever set out to traverse.
“Where is…?” Dean is looking beyond Castiel, a muscle twitching in his cheek.
“I psychoanalyzed him using some of what I learned in group therapy,” Castiel explains. “It seemed to work, and it helped me rationalize some of my own issues.” He isn’t sure if this is working, he concedes inwardly, as the undercurrent of whatever it is that Dean is exuding seems to spike a notch higher even as Castiel’s feelings surge and he feels dizzy from the nearness and the possibilities if he can make this right, really right. “We know each other, Dean…” he tries again hesitantly. “In a unique way… and we share a history that can give us perspective, and understanding.” He stops, swallows. “And it seemed like you understood. You said you knew I did the best I could.”
Dean’s eyes are colder than Castiel ever wanted to see them. “I’ve been sitting here imagining all sorts of torture,” he says finally, with some effort. “Imagining what Lucifer might be doing to you. And it turns out you’re fine.” He has a bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and he hooks it and takes a gulp. “Doesn’t seem like much of a big deal as far as penance goes.”
Castiel stands rooted to the spot, the chasm between them still splitting the room in half. “I remember how I hurt your brother,” he says softly. “He didn’t deserve it. I feel regret that this can’t ever be what it was. Perhaps the loss of that is my penance, and it might not seem like much to you on balance, but it is to me. It’s - everything.” He half-smiles before he turns away, adds, “So you see, I lost everything, Dean.”
He could just beat his wings and leave, but he heads for the door instead.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re only walking out of here to give me time to stop you,” Dean challenges.
Castiel pulls up. “And is it working?” he asks without looking back.
“So it seems,” is the baleful response.
Castiel hears the bedsprings creak behind him, feels Dean’s warmth loom up at his back, feels Dean’s hand on him, swinging him around and into his arms. He falls into them, astonished and bewildered, and Dean’s heart is a jackhammer in his chest as he pulls Castiel in against him, close, so that Castiel’s face is pressed tight to his shoulder.
“You fuckin’ idiot,” Dean mutters into Castiel’s neck, his mouth soft and warm and wet, so that it feels like the kisses Castiel dreams of are being pressed there, while Dean’s body shakes in Castiel’s embrace. “You fuckin’ idiot, if you ever. Ever… Jesus, don’t ever. Cas.”
Castiel hugs back.
***
Hope you enjoyed it! I thought it might be interesting to do a different and
slightly more Motherfucking Angel of the Lord coda than the norm… ;-)
Wordcount ~2,700
Castiel doesn’t talk much, but he listens. Or at least he tries to, above the endless, distracting and pointless wittering of his brother, who seems bent on trailing around after him wherever he goes.
“Are you never quiet, brother?” he remarks, nine days after Dean shuffled guiltily away from him, and Sam patted his knee nervously and told him they’d find a way, they always did. Except when they don’t, he thought at the time, but he didn’t voice it.
Lucifer gives him a beady eye, and seems taken aback. And unexpectedly silent, so Castiel takes advantage of the lull in their previously one-sided conversation.
“It’s nice to get a word in,” he offers with a shrug. “I realize you’ve become attached to the sound of your own voice, but if you don’t have anything interesting to say, it’s generally considered polite not to bother.”
After a flare of his nostrils, Lucifer folds his arms across his chest. “How do you know I don’t have anything interesting to say?” he asks, in a way that seems affronted.
“Your subject matter, it’s…” Castiel throws up a dismissive hand. “Tedious. Lurid descriptions of things you can’t actually do to me, since you’re a hallucination. You no longer frighten me.”
“I’m the devil,” Lucifer tells him flatly. “Are you telling me you don’t find the devil frightening?”
Castiel turns to keep walking to therapy. “Initially, perhaps. But I’ve fought my way through Hell twice, brother. I’ve spent time as a pulsing hotbed of all the evil Purgatory had to offer.” He glances back over his shoulder with a smirk as he delivers the coup de grace. “I was even God, albeit only briefly. And compared to all that, your efforts are prosaic and juvenile. Fairy tales, firecrackers and favorite tunes from your vessel’s music collection…”
His brother is right there in his path when he faces front again, his tone acidic.
“So tell me, Castiel, what do I have to do to engage your attention?”
This is more productive, and Castiel has been attending therapy after all. Moreover, Castiel is a tactician who is well versed in the application of both diplomacy and battle strategy. “Brother, are you aware that approximately one-third of adult siblings have a rivalrous relationship with each other?” he asks.
It turns out that Lucifer isn’t. “No,” he admits, a little reluctantly.
“They don’t get along with their brother or sister, and claim to have little in common with them,” Castiel continues smoothly. He starts walking again, decides he will forego therapy this time. “They spend little time in each other’s company and frequently use words like humiliating, and competitive when describing their childhood together.” He takes a left instead of a right, makes for the games room. “These old conflicts can linger on into adulthood and effectively reduce us to children again.” He nudges his brother, even though his elbow passes through thin air. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”
After a guarded moment, Lucifer side-eyes him. “Possibly.”
“It prevents us from moving on in the relationship, from seeing one another in a new light,” Castiel plows on. “It ties us to childhood roles that never worked for us and ultimately it means we persist in pushing each other’s emotional buttons without knowing why or how.”
Lucifer goldfishes his mouth at Castiel in a way that is comfortingly similar to Dean’s reaction at times. “But I’m the devil,” he says faintly. “I’m supposed to push people’s buttons.”
Castiel leads his brother in through the open doorway. “Restrict yourself to that role if you will, Lucifer,” he responds, with some degree of scorn. “I prefer to acknowledge that the familial bond is complicated by many factors, and also fluid. Which means that if we approach it in a more sophisticated way, we can eventually adapt and reach reconciliation with a sibling whose goals and interests may be different from our own.”
He’s making his way over to a table by the window where he has been sitting these past few days and painstakingly working on a jigsaw puzzle presented to him in a Ziploc bag by one of the orderlies with the instruction, it’ll help your impulse control, at which Castiel had first supposed that yes, being bored to death might well exert a degree of impulse control, only to then conclude that intense boredom might eventually cause him to smite with no compunction if it turned out that any pieces were missing.
He seats himself and examines his progress so far. He thinks it might be the Rocky Mountains, and it is absorbing to see the sky and snow-capped peaks gradually take shape as he slots the pieces together. “You know,” he muses, after a reflective moment when his thoughts turn to Dean again. “Our siblinghood means that we know each other in a unique way. We share a history that can provide us with perspective, and understanding.”
“Michael never understood me,” Lucifer blurts out bitterly from above him. “And all this psychoanalysis isn’t taking into account the fact that personality differences can make one’s litter mates grate on one’s nerves and provoke one into doing regrettable things.”
Castiel sighs at that. “Yes. I concur… I had a very similar experience and similar results when dealing with Raphael.” He uses his socked foot to push out the chair opposite him. “Sit down. Tell me about your problems.” He slides a modest handful of the small cardboard pieces over at his brother. “But make yourself useful at the same time.”
***
Meg is an issue.
“She’s a pain in the ass, Castiel,” Lucifer corrects him as they play Battleship together. “A pain in your ass, to be exact.” He shakes his head. “I still can’t grasp the wisdom of leaving you here when Crowley’s demons are on the hunt.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Crowley is a pain in the ass too. As was Michael.”
Castiel bristles a little. “I got along fairly well with Michael, actually.”
“Go you,” the devil mocks. “The little angel that could.” He leers. “Maybe that’s why you’re in love with his vessel. It’s transference.”
A moment passes when Castiel gives that serious consideration. “No,” he decides. “It’s Dean I’m in love with.”
“And yet he left you here,” Lucifer pokes with a sly smile.
“He thinks me riding around in the back seat of the Impala might be problematic in some quarters,” Castiel defends. “He mentioned something about just the brothers.” He smiles himself. “It’s not of import. I’ve seen how he looks at me. Everyone has. He constantly enters my…” He searches for the term. “My personal space bubble. And he kept my trenchcoat. Before they left, Sam told me he switched it from car to car, and that he even slept with it a few times.”
Lucifer rolls his vessel’s pale blue eyes. “Seriously? I think I may throw up in my mouth,” he jeers, and he contorts his jaw into a vague and clumsy version of the gagging motion Castiel learned from Dean.
“Less tongue next time,” Castiel reminds him. “It’s a delicate maneuver.”
Ignoring him, Lucifer backtracks. “Anyway, Meg. She and I were close but it all fell apart when she found out I was planning to burn her kind once I won the Apocalypse.”
Nodding, Castiel says, “Yes, I can see how your plans for demon carnage wouldn’t benefit that working relationship.”
Lucifer leans in confidentially. “And honestly, I’ve never quite forgiven her for being such an easy touch back in Carthage. That was damned stealthy of you, Cas.”
Castiel allows himself to preen modestly. “Warrior of God,” he supplies. “And a badass, according to Dean. And, D-4.”
Lucifer gazes at his paper grid, glowers up at Castiel. “That was my last aircraft carrier.” He snorts, stabs a finger at Castiel. “And be badass. Look at her… she’s Nurse Ratched.”
“I don’t understand that reference,” Castiel says.
Lucifer whistles in an annoyed way at that, leans back in his chair, and stares belligerently at the demon as she makes her way over towards them.
She’s carrying a package that she drops on the table in front of Castiel, and she runs a deadly looking curved scarlet talon over it, caressing the paper. “It’s another one from your boyfriend.”
Lucifer is entranced by her fingernail, catches Castiel’s eyes and winces. “How can she get anything done with those? How can she type? Pick her nose? I hope she doesn’t wear contacts.”
Castiel disregards his brother’s rambling, eases the package out from under her hand carefully, tears the paper neatly. It’s fabric, smooth, gray, and it smells of Dean, Dean, Dean. He shakes it out, one of Dean’s tees, faded and worn, the legend on the front - the name of what he thinks might be a rock band - peeling and scarred.
“What a shame Led Zep tees aren’t hospital issue,” Meg snipes, and she’s already closing her fingers around the material and starting to yank it away. “It’s vintage. It’ll fit me fine.”
In a split-second of thought, Castiel is wearing the tee, feeling it softer on his skin than the stiff brand-new white cotton shirt he was given when he was admitted.
“Take that off,” Meg orders viciously.
The air goes thick, and Castiel glances to where his brother sits, expectant and wide-eyed. When Castiel doesn’t speak, Lucifer kicks him under the table.
“Your nails don’t look very hygienic,” Castiel observes.
It’s the first time he has said more than a single word to the demon, and her lips pull thin in a way that Castiel finds quite satisfying.
“Must you wear that shade of red?” he continues placidly. “It looks like you just tore a small animal apart with your bare hands. I’m sure the other inmates don’t appreciate it.”
As her eyes flare black and her fingernail heads straight for his eye, Castiel whips up a hand and snaps his fingers closed around her wrist.
“I wouldn’t,” he advises. “In fact, I’d go as far as strongly recommending that you don’t.” And then he engages the sprinkler system, blocks all of the toilets simultaneously, and pops every light bulb in the entire building.
***
Outside in the melee of evacuated patients, Castiel drifts away and around the side of the building. It’s the first time he has been outside, and he has been admiring the potential of the scrubland underneath his window since day two. It’s a barren patch of mud and a few lonely hummocks of grass, with some shabby looking benches placed haphazardly about its perimeter when he arrives; but a hand wave later, it’s green and blooming with brightly colored life, a fountain bubbling merrily at its center.
“Is this what counts for badass nowadays?” Lucifer snorts as he pads up behind Castiel. “I meant incinerate her.”
“She may come in useful,” Castiel counters mildly. “I’m being pragmatic.”
“You’re being the yard boy.”
Castiel thinks about his Heaven, of the long hours spent daydreaming, meditating, pondering his sins, as he gazed at the kite fluttering endlessly overhead. “I miss the simple things,” he murmurs.
“So do I,” Lucifer agrees gloomily. “But at least you stand a chance of going out and finding them again. I’m not even real. And soon you’ll leave me behind for good.”
Castiel supposes that’s a possibility and maybe even a definite likelihood. Although, “You’re my hallucination now,” he consoles. “I control you, and I’ve grown accustomed to your face. So. Perhaps you might come back some time.”
When he looks over again, his brother is gone.
***
The Winchesters are staying at a motel outside of Lebanon, New Hampshire.
“Hello, Dean,” Castiel announces himself, as yelped-out curses and papers fly everywhere. He nods gravely at Sam. “You look well, Sam. That pleases me more than I can say.”
If there is a slight frisson of reticence in the way Sam responds, Castiel knows he has only himself to blame. “I’m good,” Sam tells him. “I’ve been catching up on my sleep.”
Castiel casts his eyes over to Dean, fists a handful of the tee. “Thank you for this.” He looks down at the rest of himself, scrub pants and socks. “I don’t suppose…”
Dean leans across to where the contents of his duffel are spilling out across the bed, snags a pair of jeans. “Here. I got a pair of old Converse sneakers in the trunk.” He eyes Castiel critically. “You look sane.”
Castiel tilts his head. “I’m an angel of the Lord, Dean. Still, for some reason I can’t quite fathom. My grace fought back, and Lucifer…” He shudders a little as he recalls other, earlier torture. “He could learn much from Zachariah and Raphael.” He stoops to pick up a scattered pile of computer printouts and diagrams, and offers them over, feeling a little foolish now he’s here. “My apologies. I fumbled that landing. It’s been some time.”
A strained silence stretches out between them all for a moment before Castiel clears his throat. “What are you doing?”
Dean replies shortly, “Researching dick.”
After rolling his eyes, Sam elaborates. “Dick Roman. Head Levi.” He chews his lip. “You got any intel?”
Uncomfortable at how the vacant spots in his memory gape unproductively, Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t remember much of their scheming. But…” He puts his hands out palm up. “I’m still here. My grace survived. So perhaps I can be a weapon.”
Dean rubs his hand across his jaw, slumps, and he suddenly seems tired. “You’re not just a weapon,” he mutters. “Don’t say that.”
Almost immediately, Sam shoots bolt upright and grabs his jacket. “There’s a bar on the next block,” he says to the room. “There’s a game on.” He jerks his head at Dean, mute and pale-faced on the bed. “He never got over you dying, Cas, so stick with it. I’ll be-” He looks at Castiel meaningfully. “Gone for several hours.”
Sam’s long body almost races for the door and then it’s just Castiel and Dean, staring at each other across a few feet that Castiel thinks might be the widest distance he has ever set out to traverse.
“Where is…?” Dean is looking beyond Castiel, a muscle twitching in his cheek.
“I psychoanalyzed him using some of what I learned in group therapy,” Castiel explains. “It seemed to work, and it helped me rationalize some of my own issues.” He isn’t sure if this is working, he concedes inwardly, as the undercurrent of whatever it is that Dean is exuding seems to spike a notch higher even as Castiel’s feelings surge and he feels dizzy from the nearness and the possibilities if he can make this right, really right. “We know each other, Dean…” he tries again hesitantly. “In a unique way… and we share a history that can give us perspective, and understanding.” He stops, swallows. “And it seemed like you understood. You said you knew I did the best I could.”
Dean’s eyes are colder than Castiel ever wanted to see them. “I’ve been sitting here imagining all sorts of torture,” he says finally, with some effort. “Imagining what Lucifer might be doing to you. And it turns out you’re fine.” He has a bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and he hooks it and takes a gulp. “Doesn’t seem like much of a big deal as far as penance goes.”
Castiel stands rooted to the spot, the chasm between them still splitting the room in half. “I remember how I hurt your brother,” he says softly. “He didn’t deserve it. I feel regret that this can’t ever be what it was. Perhaps the loss of that is my penance, and it might not seem like much to you on balance, but it is to me. It’s - everything.” He half-smiles before he turns away, adds, “So you see, I lost everything, Dean.”
He could just beat his wings and leave, but he heads for the door instead.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re only walking out of here to give me time to stop you,” Dean challenges.
Castiel pulls up. “And is it working?” he asks without looking back.
“So it seems,” is the baleful response.
Castiel hears the bedsprings creak behind him, feels Dean’s warmth loom up at his back, feels Dean’s hand on him, swinging him around and into his arms. He falls into them, astonished and bewildered, and Dean’s heart is a jackhammer in his chest as he pulls Castiel in against him, close, so that Castiel’s face is pressed tight to his shoulder.
“You fuckin’ idiot,” Dean mutters into Castiel’s neck, his mouth soft and warm and wet, so that it feels like the kisses Castiel dreams of are being pressed there, while Dean’s body shakes in Castiel’s embrace. “You fuckin’ idiot, if you ever. Ever… Jesus, don’t ever. Cas.”
Castiel hugs back.
***
Hope you enjoyed it! I thought it might be interesting to do a different and
slightly more Motherfucking Angel of the Lord coda than the norm… ;-)