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“Dean. He’s awake.”
He opens his eyes to white light. Hands press against his face as his eyes focus on the man above him.
“Cas?”
“Dean?”
Dean Winchester’s eyes brim with tears as he kisses Cas’ forehead. “Never do that again,” Dean growls, rough and undone.
“I’m sorry,” Cas says. His voice is broken, his throat is raw.
Dean presses their foreheads together, hands trembling on either side of Cas’ face. “Get the nurse, Sammy. I wanna know when we can take him home.”
Cas closes his eyes, fingers latching onto the collar of Dean’s shirt.
He’s on his hands and knees, scrubbing a bloodstain out of the cement while two men bellow at each other.
“It was just a ghost, Dean! I was in the area, and—”
“That’s not the point, Sam! You’re still recovering from the trials, you can’t be hunting by yourself!”
“God, if you would just stop treating me like I’m five years old, maybe—”
Whatever Cas is doing, it’s clearly wrong. The stain is simply spreading. He sits back on his heels and stares at the rag in his hand.
Hopefully there is something useful in the supply closet.
“Excuse me,” he says softly, trying to slip behind the men blocking the hallway.
Dean grabs him by the shoulder. “Cas, back me up here. Sam shouldn’t be trying to hunt by himself yet, he’s still burned out from—what…what are you doing?”
Cas looks down at the rag in his hands, at which both the brothers are staring. “I was just…cleaning up where Sam dripped.”
Dean looks up at him. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.”
They stare at each other for a second.
“You can’t clean up blood with water, Cas. You have to use bleach. I’ll show you,” Sam says, sounding sad. He puts a hand on Cas’ back and leads him to the closet.
It was difficult for Cas to learn to count time in human terms.
It passes so slowly.
Seconds, minutes, hours.
His breath is slow, in and out. Curled in the fetal position on his new bed, he stares at the wall, counting.
The clock Dean gave him only makes noise if he listens for it. Now, in this devastatingly quiet room, it whirs and clicks and ticks.
There’s a knock at the door.
“You okay in here?”
Cas doesn’t move to look up at Dean. “Fine.”
The bed dips next to his head and a warm hand rests on his shoulder. “You’ve just…you’ve been in here for hours.”
“I’m fine.”
Dean sighs and urges Cas up into a sitting position.
They sit cross-legged on the bed. Cas stares at the blankets, plucking gently at the fibers with his fingers.
“Talk to me.”
Cas shakes his head slowly.
“You’re not sleeping well, are you?”
Cas shakes his head again. “No.”
“We can work on that,” Dean says.
He breaks everything he touches.
He doesn’t dare reach out to touch Dean, fearing he may break him, too.
They look at each other: green studying blue, blue praying to green. Maybe Dean will sense Cas can’t talk about it yet. Maybe he’ll hear his pleas.
Dean puts a hand on his shoulder. “One step at a time, then.” Cas nods. “It’s dinnertime. Come on, I’ll make you a sandwich.”
Cas shifts his feet on the cold floor.
Dean whistles as he fries bacon. “Never had a BLT? You are missing out.”
“My feet are cold.”
Dean leans to look at Cas’ feet under the table. “Jesus, you can’t go without socks in the bunker. It’s freezing, man.”
“But…I like feeling the ground with my feet.”
Dean laughs a little. “Yeah, I was like that as a kid. Mom could never keep shoes on me.”
Cas smiles, picturing a tiny Dean running around barefoot.
“She was good about it, though. She’d just sort of laugh when I’d come in with muddy feet. Once, I insisted on splashing out in the puddles after it rained.” He laughs a little as he slices the tomato. “Mom had to rinse the mud off with the garden hose. We couldn’t stop giggling.”
He drops a plate on the table and clears his throat.
“A bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.”
“Thank you, Dean.” Cas says. Dean nods.
He sings quietly as he cleans up the mess. “Remember to let her under your skin, then you begin to make it better.”The faucet rings a little when Dean runs water, and eventually the song is drowned out.
Cas stares at the wall of his new bedroom until noon the next day.
“Cas?” Sam asks, poking his head in the room. “How are you doing?”
“Hello, Sam.”
Sam sits down. “You okay?”
Cas’ throat is closing, tight and raw and broken. “I destroyed heaven.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“What about before that? When I spent weeks slaughtering my own kind?”
Sam rests a hand on Cas’ shoulder. “That wasn’t you. You had all this… evil inside you. It wasn’t you making the decisions. That wasn’t Castiel.”
“I’m not Castiel.”
Sam starts to protest.
“He was different…he was much more than I will…but I will be good. I will be better. I have to be.” He looks up at his friend. “I will be better this time around.”
Sam is left speechless. He wraps his arms around Cas’ shoulders and quietly shushes the fallen angel’s tears.
“Where are you guys going?” Kevin asks. Dean’s head snaps up from the notebook he was poring over.
“I’m going to take Cas to buy a few things—he needs his own clothes,” Sam says, patting Cas on the back.
Cas smiles a little at Dean, who grins back. “Don’t be long,” Dean says.
“We won’t. Come on, Cas.”
Cas rolls out of bed at seven the next morning—he had been awake and staring at the ceiling for two hours anyway.
The morning air is a shock on Cas’ exposed skin; like coming up for air after nearly drowning.
Sam’s footsteps are surprisingly soft for such a tall man. He matches Cas’ pace as they run in silence.
“Morning, sunshines!” Dean says when they come into the kitchen, panting and sweating and grinning.
“Breakfast?” Sam asks, pulling his damp shirt away from his chest.
“Pancakes! Dude, shower! You fuckin’ reek.”
“Do I?” Sam asks, shoving his armpit in Dean’s face. “Do I stink?”
“Fuck, Sam!”
They tussle for a moment; Dean whacking Sam repeatedly with a spatula as Sam forces him into a headlock.
Kevin pokes his head in the kitchen. “Breakfast?”
Sam lets go of Dean, who takes the opportunity to smack him one more time with the spatula. “Breakfast!”
They sit down to eat.
Cas can’t stop smiling.
“You’re cheerful,” Dean says. He stammers quickly after Sam glares at him. “Not that you shouldn’t be, Cas. It’s just nice to see.”
The water pounds over Cas’ body. His muscles buzz from the exertion of the running, and the tingling reminds him of his grace.
The shampoo smells like Dean.
He remembers the way Dean held him the night they found him.
Never do that again.
When, at the motel, he fell asleep in his arms.
Cas slowly touches himself, discovering pleasure and thinking of Dean. He comes silently, leaning against the slick tile of the shower.
While he gets dressed, he wonders why his chest hurts so badly.
He sits down at the library table across from Dean.
“Nice shower?” Dean asks, smiling up at him.
“Yeah,” he says. “What can I do to help?”
Sam beams.
Dean’s eyebrows shoot up.
Kevin shushes them.
“Well, Kevin is still translating the tablet, so we can’t really do anything until then. So we’re looking for hunts.”
The pain in his chest twinges, but he nods. “What do I do?”
“Cas…”
“Tell me what to do, Dean.”
Dean scrubs a hand over his mouth, looking unsure.
“Dean…” Sam says, giving him a pointed look. Cas watches their silent exchange, chest aching.
Dean finally nods and stands up. “Let’s go down to the range. I wanna see what kind of a shot you are.”
Cas needs no training with blades of any kind.
“Okay, okay, uncle! I yield! Lemme up!”
Cas chuckles and gets up.
Dean stands up and rubs his chest where Cas sat on it.
“I thought you were going to fight back,” Cas says seriously, “I thought you weren’t going to just let me win.”
“I was fighting back, you sonofabitch!” Dean says, looking pissed and amused.
Cas is a fairly good shot already, but Dean insists on further training.
“Someone’s life could depend on whether you’re a good shot or a great shot.”
Cas raises the shotgun again.
“Now just tap that exposed wire to the others you stripped.”
Dean teaches Cas how to break into and hotwire cars.
“Okay, now that it’s running, put your foot on the brake. The one on the left—push that down to the floor.”
Cas knots his eyebrows and pushes the pedal down, heart racing. Dean puts an arm around Cas’ shoulder and leans in close.
“Now grab that—yeah, now shift it into drive—that’s ‘D’ on the panel.”
“Dean?”
“You’ve got this, don’t worry. Okay, so just ease up on the brake.”
The car starts creeping forward.
“Nice, nice. Now slowly push down on the gas—pedal on the right—Whoa!”
The car lurches forward. Cas hollers and slams on the brake.
Dean starts chuckling. “That’s okay, you just tapped it a little too hard. Try it again.”
“No!”
“Come on, buddy, you can do it.”
Cas shakes his head. Dean laughs and scoots closer.
“It’s okay, just nice and easy.”
“Dean?”
“You got this. Come on, Cas.”
He nods and grips the steering wheel.
“How did driving go?”
Dean chuckles and claps Cas on the back. “He’s a maniac, but he’ll get the hang of it.”
Sam smiles.
Dean sits on his bed, singing along to the music and cleaning his handgun. Cas sits on the chair in Dean’s room, up to his elbows in colored chalk.
After Sam found the notebook filled with sketches, Cas’ room began producing paints, pencils, and pastels from every nook and cranny. Whenever Cas tried to thank Sam, the grinning Winchester pretended he knew nothing of it.
“Hold still.”
Dean sighs and stops bobbing his head. “Someone told me there’s a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.”
“This is a beautiful song,” Cas says quietly, focusing on the green hues of his drawing.
“Makes me think of Lisa and Ben,” Dean says quietly.
Cas pauses and looks up, his chest aching. Dean must have an ache in his chest too, he thinks, he must have a hole in his chest with ‘Lisa’ and ‘Ben’ written around it.
“I sure hope they’re happy.”
“Dean…”
“I’m good, I’m okay. It’s just…it was nice while it lasted, you know?” And the little squint of his left eye makes his smile seem horribly pained.
Cas nods. They’re quiet for a while, but he has to know, he has to ask. “Were you in love with her?” he asks abruptly.
Dean takes a moment to consider the question. “I…never told her. But…yes, I think I was. I didn’t think it was possible I could love two people at once, b-but I suppose I did.”
Cas can’t respond. He stares down at his drawing, hands trembling slightly.
At Cas’ request, Dean sneaks into his room that night.
“This doesn’t…it’s just because you aren’t sleeping well.”
They stare at each other in the semidarkness.
“Fuck, I can’t just leave you over there all pitiful looking. Get over here.”
Cas scoots across the bed and into Dean’s arms.
He sleeps more soundly than he did the night the Winchesters picked him up from the hospital.
At the grocery store, Kevin points to two clear plastic boxes filled with money. The first one is labeled ‘SAVE THE FORESTS’ and is paired with a green informational flyer. It had nearly three times as many bills as the second box, which is labeled ‘ELLIOT HOMELESS SHELTER’ and paired with a purple flyer.
“What is this?” Cas asks, touching the papers.
“You put your money in the box and someone uses it to help that cause. See, this one is going to fund a petition to stop deforestation, as well as print recycled paper. The other one sends money to fund a homeless shelter.” Kevin points to each box and scoffs. “Wow. I guess people care more about saving the fucking trees than helping the homeless.”
After paying for their groceries, Cas drops the remaining three hundred cash into the box with the purple flyers.
“You spent all your money where?”
“I donated it to the homeless. That’s where you put your money in a box and someone takes it to—”
Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and chuckles a little. “I know what donation boxes are, Cas. I just…why?”
“I know what it’s like to be homeless. And the box was almost empty.”
Dean suddenly bursts into laughter.
“What?”
“You…you…”
“What?” Cas snaps, rubbing his sternum and feeling irritable.
Dean takes a step closer, puts his hands on either side of Cas’ face, and kisses him hard on the mouth.
Cas’ heart could explode.
Dean pulls away slowly, looking down at his shoes. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Do that again,” Cas breathes.
Dean smiles and obliges.
“I’m not sorry I donated the money,” Cas says when they pull apart. Dean laughs at the sudden return to topic.
“Start wearing socks and we’ll call it even.”
Wrapped in Dean’s arms, everything feels all right. For the first time in his life, Cas feels at home.