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“Listen, buddy. You can’t stay.” Dean thinks these may actually be the five hardest words he’s ever had to say. After days of looking for Cas, finally finding him only to watch him die, and having him back for less than forty-eight hours (most of which was spent on the road with him driving and Cas passed out asleep in the back seat), he is not at all prepared when Zeke gives him the ultimatum: either Castiel goes or he goes, and if he goes, Sam will probably die. In circumstances any less dire, Dean would have told him to shove his ultimatum up his ass, but it’s Sam’s life on the line, and he doesn’t know how to live without his brother. For most of his years on this planet, Sam was his life. Take care of Sammy. Watch out for Sammy. Sam being at Stanford was hard, but he knew his little brother was doing well and was happy. (He may have snuck onto campus occasionally to check up on him.) The year he thought Sam was in Lucifer’s cage, however, hadn’t worked out very well.
Oh, on the surface things may have looked fine, but he put Lisa through a lot of pain at first, drowning himself in bottles of booze after dinner, and waking both her and Ben up periodically that whole year, screaming in his sleep from the repetitive nightmares that had actually happened. Not to mention that, even at the best of times, depression and guilt lingered around the edges of his consciousness like some kind of inescapable fog. Sometimes he thinks he’d settled into that apple pie life less because of his own desire for it and more because it was Sam’s dying wish. He cared about Lisa and Ben, counted them as family, but he felt like he could never be exactly what they needed him to be. Truth be told, he doesn’t think he was fit company for anybody then.
The wounded look on Cas’s face breaks his reverie and his heart. He hates this.
“But I thought you wanted me here,” Cas says, everything about him screaming confusion and hurt feelings.
“I do, man. Nobody wants you here more than me,” Dean says, barely managing to keep his voice from breaking. And he means it. Life without Cas is almost as bad as life without Sam, maybe just as bad, just different. He takes a deep breath. “But it’s not safe. April found you because of us. Apparently, Bartholomew got himself a network of rogue reapers to track you since you hid yourself from the angels, and one of them overheard us talking about where you were. Angels and reapers, even demons, everybody knows you’re going to come to me. The day Sam was in the hospital, when Ezekiel showed up, some other, less friendly angels came, too, and they thought they’d find you with me, or, at the very least, that I knew exactly where you were and that I would tell them. They threw me around a little and I banished their asses, but there were just two of them. I don’t know if I can protect you by myself and Sammy’s in no condition to fight. I’m sorry, but for all our sakes, you’ve gotta go hide somewhere less obvious.”
Dean thanks his lucky stars that he’s able to spin this story. He hopes it softens the blow, that Cas knows he doesn’t want him to leave. Of course, it’s also kind of true, as the most convincing lies are actually partial truths. Cas being with them is obvious, and tracking them is how April found him.
Castiel sighs and looks at the floor. “That does make sense. But I don’t know where to go, Dean.” He looks back up at Dean, and Dean swears he’s never seen his friend look so much like a lost child.
“I’ll make some calls, see if I can find a place, a safe house or something. Finish your burrito,” Dean says, and leaves the room in search of Ezekiel. He finds him in Sam’s room, and immediately knows his brother is not at the helm, so to speak.
“Is he gone?” Ezekiel asks.
“Not yet. He’s finishing his dinner. Look, we just got him back. Can he please stay the night, at least? I need some time to find a place for him…” he begins, but is soon cut off.
“Every moment he is here is dangerous for all of us,” the angel replies.
It really creeps Dean out, watching his brother’s face shift into very un-Samlike expressions. It reminds him too much of seeing Lucifer wear Sam. But he reminds himself that it’s either this or let Sam die.
“I take it that’s a no to the all-nighter?” Dean feels even worse, because he knows the answer.
Ezekiel cocks his head to the side, which feels like a knife twisted in Dean’s gut, because it reminds him so much of Cas. “As I said, every moment he remains here we are all in danger. If you do not send him away, I will have to leave.”
Dean swallows, anger building that he can’t let the angel keeping his brother alive see. He plasters on a fake smile, and says, “Fine.”
As soon as he thinks he’s out of Ezekiel’s and Sam’s earshot, he slams his palm against a wall. “God fucking damn it!” Then he leans his face against the wall beside his hand, feeling the pain fade, breathing heavily as a tear tracks down his face. “I fucking hate this,” he brokenly tells the wall.
After less than a minute, which still manages to feel like an eternity, he pulls away, goes to his room, and makes his first call, dialing Garth. Garth doesn’t answer, which doesn’t really surprise him since he’s been M.I.A. recently, so he leaves him a voicemail, just in case. He considers calling Charlie, but decides it’s probably better to leave her out of this. She’s not a full-fledged hunter, and he can’t send Cas to her, maybe bring the feathered dicks to her doorstep. He calls Tracy Bell, but she informs him that she has no place of her own, and certainly no safe house, and, furthermore, does not wish to get mixed up in Winchester business, because that seems to get people dead. (He finds he can’t blame her. It’s true.) For a second he thinks about Rufus’s cabin, which is still standing, but remembers that the angels found Cas there once before, and nixes that idea. Then he calls the last number in his phone that doesn’t belong to a dead hunter, but to one of the guys that helped him and Sam with the salt-and-burn at the Supernatural convention way back before the Apocalypse. It is out of service, of course. By the time he’s cycled through, he still hasn’t heard from Garth.
“Well, that’s just perfect,” he mutters.
Dean does the only thing he can think of. He starts packing a bag for Cas. He throws in a sleeping bag, some basic toiletries, a couple pairs of jeans that are now too tight to be comfortable which he thinks should fit Cas fine, a belt, a few pairs of underwear, a dingy white button-up unfit for impersonating an FBI officer, a purple and grey striped long-sleeved tee shirt Sam had sent him for laughs while he’d been at Stanford that Dean had never worn, a couple of worn-soft short-sleeved tees, a pair of unused sweats, and a few pairs of socks. He pulls out the fake ID he’d made for Cas before they found him, and tucks it into a wallet along with a fake credit card and fishes in his sock drawer for the tube sock he uses to keep a stash of emergency money and rolls off a couple hundreds, a couple fifties, four twenties, and an assortment of smaller bills he doesn’t even look at before he stuffs them in the wallet because his eyes are tearing up again (which he hates). He angrily swipes at his eyes and cheeks, and sifts through a box of burner phones for one to give Cas, programming the number into his own, then heads back to where he left him.
Castiel has finished his dinner, and sits at the table spinning the cap off a water bottle, his shoulders slumped, looking like a kicked puppy.
“No luck on the safe house front, Cas, so I’m taking you to the bus station,” Dean says gruffly. Cas isn’t looking at him, so he wonders if he knows that the tone comes from holding back an emotional flood instead of how it sounds, like he’s a heartless bastard who’s kicking his best friend out so soon after getting him back.
“Where am I going, then?” Cas asks, still wearing that wounded expression.
“I’ve got you some money,” Dean replies, tossing him the wallet, “And a few things in this duffel bag to help you out—some clothes, a sleeping bag, and soap and stuff—so you’re going wherever is farthest out of town and has a bus leaving tonight. You still remember Enochian wards and banishing sigils, right? And you still have your angel blade?”
“Yes, Dean,” he replies.
“Good. And that phone is for you to call me if you get in a tight spot. Okay, buddy? Just call, and I’ll come or send someone.” He sounds almost normal, and wonders how awful he really is.
“Yes, Dean.” It’s the same reply, and Cas refuses to look at him.
“Okay, well, let’s get going,” he says. The sooner this is done, the sooner he can drown himself in whatever hard liquor he can find in the bunker.
“Shouldn’t we say goodbye to Sam?” Castiel asks.
“He’s already in bed asleep. He’s been sleeping a lot. I don’t think Zeke healed him all the way, and, since the trials, when he’s out like this nothing wakes him up,” Dean answers, trying and failing to inject some humor at the end.
“Oh. Okay.”
Cas follows him to the Impala in silence, and Dean doesn’t talk, either. It is the heavy, oppressive variety, full of hurt and surprise and unexpressed emotions that neither of them knows how to address, assuming they even would under the circumstances. This heavy silence stays with them all the way to the truck stop that also serves as a bus station on the outskirts of Lebanon. They arrive just in time to buy a ticket for the last bus out that night, which is heading for Rexford, a relatively small college town in Idaho.
Dean presents Castiel with his ticket, and can’t resist pulling him into a hug. Of course, Cas doesn’t return the hug, just stands there frozen as he had on the river bank in Purgatory. Dean doesn’t mind. He needs this.
“Man, I really wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Dean says around the lump in his throat. “I’ll miss you. And I meant what I said about the phone. If you get in over your head, or any de-winged angel douchebags show up, call me.” He claps Cas on the back as he releases him. “Take care of yourself, Cas.”
Castiel stares at him sadly for a moment, picking up the bag which had been at his feet, and clutching his ticket in the other. “Goodbye, Dean.”
Dean waves, then abruptly turns and quickly strides out to the Impala before he can change his mind about this and try to find somewhere local to hide him. As he turns back onto the road, he feels something inside his chest shatter, and a small part of him whisper that Cas has always been more than a friend. He pulls over a short distance away, tries to breathe deeply and calm the panic rising in his chest, and reminds himself that the two of them always find each other again. Neither Castiel’s short-lived stint as a god, death nor Purgatory has kept them apart, and this won’t, either. Not for long.