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Cas is actually in the bunker when Dean rushes in, eyes wild, bag over his shoulder. He looks at Dean and for a split second, all Dean can think about is a deer caught in headlights, clear shock running across Cas’ face before he gets ahold of it, schools it back into something… neutral. Wrong.
“Hey--” he starts, but Cas cuts him off.
“Dean.”
“I got your message. Sam, is he--”
And it must be the wrong thing to say, somehow, because he can practically see the shutters come down in Cas’ eyes, and he looks away from Dean. Down at the floor instead. The map table’s between them and Dean is struck by the sudden image of a ship dashing itself to pieces, trying to get closer to shore.
“He’s fine.”
Relief runs through Dean like an electrical current, hardwired into him since childhood, Sam’s fine Sam’s fine Sam’s fine, only to be replaced by a strange numb panic, because Cas’ eyes are back on his and he takes a deep breath, tension wrapping around his throat and squeezing, because this is his chance, he can do something here, say something right for once. No one’s hurt, no one’s dying. Dean can deal with killing an old friend later--not like he hasn’t done it before, after all. He has to make the most of this sudden opportunity.
“Good. That’s good,” he says, immediately wants to kick himself, so fucking stupid, and the tension snaps so fast it feels like it hits him in the eye, and Cas is breaking their staring to look down and away again.
“Yeah,” he nods. And leaves.
Dean stares after him, tries to think of something to say. Just like the last time Cas walked away from him, but nothing comes except for another, “Good.” Exasperated. At himself? At Cas? Dean doesn’t know. He follows after him, though.
Progress, at least.
There’s a pillar between them as Sam explains that he’s the Harry to Chuck’s Voldemort, somehow, that Dean, Chuck is weak. I think we can beat God, and Dean’s head hurts, the grief he’s been ignoring for the past several hours since he heard Cas’ voicemail beating against the base of his skull.
His whole body hurts, actually, more than happy to remind Dean that he’s on the wrong side of forty to be getting into bar fights (bar killings, his mind says, and he shuts that shit down fast) and then driving six hours home in one stretch, running on adrenaline the whole time. It didn’t help that Lee’d probably given him a concussion when he’d knocked him out back in the salvage lot. There was a tender spot on the back of his head still, throbbing with the beat of Dean’s pulse, and it drowns out whatever else Sam is saying until Dean can hear nothing but blood, a bassline that won’t go away--
“Dean?”
Sam’s voice breaks through, and he looks around. They’re all looking at him: Sam and Eileen, sitting so close their thighs are touching on the bed, and Castiel, his arms crossed, his face showing nothing. He looks like a replica of the first time Dean had ever met Cas: emotionless, righteous. Stick up his ass angel. When’d you go and Kohlinahr yourself? Dean wants to quip, suddenly, nonsensically.
“Dean?” Eileen says, her voice gentle, and Dean blinks. Right. They were talking to him. Talking about… about taking down God. Chuck. Whatever.
“Great,” he says, rough, because that seems to be the full extent of his vocabulary today. “Can we talk about this later? My head’s killing me.”
He leaves before any of them say anything. Can feel Sam and Eileen’s eyes burning a hole in the back of his neck. Cas hasn’t moved a muscle. Arms still crossed. Still keeping a pillar between himself and Dean.
That’s fine. Dean’s not sure what he was expecting. For Cas to reach out and, and what, exactly? Heal Dean, like he has so many times before? Let the icy-hot sweep of his grace spread through Dean’s body so he can get up tomorrow morning? No. Cas had said something about his powers having issues, hadn’t he? Which meant healing was probably off the table, especially not for something as minor as a concussion.
Not like Dean deserves it, anyway.
He curls his hands into fists as he walks toward his room, lets the sting of his raw knuckles wash over him. Feels his nails bite into his scraped up palms. He’s pretty sure there’s a few pieces of wood still embedded in his skin, splinters from the pool cue buried deep under the surface. From the firewood that he’d chopped and carried and stacked and set Lee’s body on top of, behind Swayze’s before he’d left. Given him a hunter’s funeral, despite it all. That’s how he wanted to remember Lee. Then he’d checked his phone and hightailed it out of there with smoke in his eyes, Cas’ voice ringing in his head.
Where are you?
It sounds like an accusation in his head, Cas’ message looping, still, just like it did the whole six-hour drive from Texhoma to Lebanon. And no one in the bunker had picked up their goddamn phones to tell Dean that everything was fine. There’s a part of him that wants to laugh, bitter and mean, because Dean can’t even keep track of how many times he’s left the exact same message on Cas’ phone, how many times he’s prayed to Cas with the exact same question.
Where are you?
But if he laughs now, he thinks he might puke, and he’s not sure if it’s because of the concussion or because of the way he’s here, now, and how clear it is that Cas wants to leave.
There’s a space between them that Dean put there, he knows. Or, he didn’t do it exactly--Cas did it, by leaving, by letting the bunker door slam shut behind him--but it’s a space that Dean forced into existence, that he shoved between them because it was easier than acknowledging what was already there.
Easier to be alone in his grief than to allow Cas closer than he already was. Easier to blame Cas than to blame God, because that was at least agency, that was at least Dean knowing that even if their relation--their friendship--wasn’t real, then the ending of it was. Though he hadn’t really expected it to end. Hadn’t expected Cas to walk away, even though he should’ve known better. Most people leave when they’re kicked.
Except Dean. He always stayed.
Dean realizes he’s standing in the doorway to his room, staring blankly at his bed, blankets made with military precision to belie the rows of empty beer bottles ringed around it. He’d had a shot (or two, or three) before burning Lee’s body, but his fingers itch again to close around cool glass. Knows he shouldn’t, but there’s a bottle of Jim Beam under the mattress for situations like this, and he fishes it out, cracks the seal and takes a long swig, fire rushing down his throat to settle uneasily in his stomach. It burns. He wishes it hurt worse.
He sits down on the edge of the mattress and stares at the wall. Realizes he hasn’t turned on the light, but getting back up to flip the switch would take too much effort. Now that he’s sitting, now that the stress of the last, fuck, 18 hours has left his body, he’s not sure he can stand up again. There are bruises starting to make themselves known on his torso, on his arms. He pushes his right sleeve up, finds a nasty one on his shoulder from where Lee’d caught him with a hook. Presses his fingertips into it, harder and harder, until he hisses from pain. Presses some more. It’s nearly unbearable. He keeps pressing.
There are hushed voices in the hallway, Sam and Cas. Dean would try to listen, but there’s a buzzing in his ears that drowns them out. He’d rather focus on that instead, anyway. Rather not think for a while. He presses the bruise, takes a drink. Stares at the wall some more.
He could put on Scooby-Doo, maybe. But even that feels like too much effort, and he’s pretty sure it would be a bad idea to watch TV with his probable concussion.
Cas’ low voice comes through the door, but Dean can’t make out any words. Just listens to the cadence, the pitch. The gravelly tone that’s brought so much relief and so much pain in the past.
I’m just the you that woke up and saw the world was broken.
Then you fix it. You don’t walk away. You fight for it!
He meant the words in the moment, but now they sound empty to his ears. He brings the bottle to his lips again, coughs a little as it burns.
Dammit, Cas, we can fix this!
Dean, it’s not broken!
He puts the bottle down, stretches out on his bed. The darkness wobbles above him, dizzying, endless. He closes his eyes, but it doesn’t go away. Doesn’t stop.
Cas and Sam move down the hallway, away from Dean. Their voices fade back into the buzzing in his head. He imagines them moving farther, across the bunker, through the walls, into the dirt and stone of the earth, away from him. Imagines Cas getting into his car and driving away, putting space and space and space between them, and Dean can’t blame him, because Dean took that nameless thing they’d had and ripped it open, torn it wide and threw it as far away as he could, and Cas had looked at him and said I think it’s time for me to move on instead of It’s not broken.