Work Text:
The morning after that candy soft kiss at the fairgrounds, Sam wakes up cold and alone in his bed to the sound of something crashing in the kitchen. Castiel didn’t come home with him, so he’s not surprised to be alone, except he’s not really alone if the racket down the hall is any indication. He’s never really alone anyway, though sometimes he’s allowed to forget that.
Now not being one of those times.
With a tired groan and his body aching in that way it does when he sleeps too long in one position, Sam rolls over and sits on the side of the bed. He scrubs at his face with his hands and watches through his fingers as his breath washes through the air in foggy puffs like octopus ink.
“Dean,” he says, his voice a hoarse croak. “Dean, stop it. Whatever it is, cut it out.”
The only reply he gets is another crash from the kitchen. He sighs and gets up.
His fingers are so cold that they feel wrapped in hoarfrost and he walks down the hall, flexing them and blowing into his hands in a futile attempt to warm them. “You’re going to give me pneumonia and kill me if you don’t fucking quit this shit, man,” he mutters, pausing at the end of the hall to check the thermostat. It’s set on 85o, thanks in no small part to Dean’s tantrums, but the current temperature reads 25o.
Something heavy bangs against a wall and Sam curses, continuing through his living room to the kitchen, though he can think of a thousand other places he would much rather be. “Dude, I know you’re pissed, but breaking all of my shit is not-- Dean, put that down.”
The clear vase full of colored globs of glass falls from the air the second Sam crosses the threshold into the kitchen and shatters on the tile floor. Sam watches it like something falling and bursting open in slow-motion. Like a film of a water balloon bursting on the tip of a pin played frame-by-frame. The little melted glass pieces shoot across the floor like marbles and the vase is nothing but crystal dust.
Sam sighs and walks carefully around the mess so he won’t get glass in his feet through the soles of his slipper socks and starts making coffee. “You’re being such a dick,” Sam mutters.
No reply to that, though Sam’s not naïve enough to believe Dean’s finished.
He measures out scoops of coffee, fills the pot with water and sets it to percolate, then goes to the pantry to get the broom and dustpan. The crashing from earlier was the sound of some of his coffee mugs smashing against the wall and Sam scowls down at the pieces before he decides not to clean it up just yet because he knows Dean’s not done.
As if to prove this, another cup soars by Sam’s ear and crashes into the refrigerator, coffee stained pieces flying everywhere. “Damn it, Dean!” Sam snaps, turning in place with his arms out, looking for him though he knows he won’t see him. “That was my fucking Garfield mug, you jerk!”
Another cup flies by his head and Sam snarls out a curse and turns back to the coffee maker to pour himself some. Judging from all the glass on the floor and the number of cups that have almost brained him, he’s about out of mugs and glass dishes in general, but he finds a coffee cup still in the cupboard and pours himself a cup without waiting for the coffee to finish. It drips and hisses on the hotplate, but Sam’s too annoyed to care. He’ll clean it up later, assuming the coffee pot doesn’t go the way of his Garfield mug.
“Fuck this and fuck you,” Sam snaps, and starts to leave the kitchen. Something smacks into the side of his coffee cup, making it shake in his hand as hot coffee splashes down his arm. “Shit,” he hisses as the liquid scalds him.
He lifts the cup to look and finds tar-like ectoplasm hanging from the side of the cup, little gooey swirls of it in the coffee. Sam huffs out a breath and it’s almost a laugh, but not quite, and he is so not amused but it’s just so fucking ridiculous.
“Seriously?” he says, lowering the cup and scanning the empty kitchen with his eyes. “Fine,” he says, and hurls the coffee cup into the kitchen. It hits the wall beside the window over the round kitchen table and shatters, leaving behind wet coffee and a splat of diluted ectoplasm.
There’s a strange satisfaction in it and Sam bares his teeth in a grin that’s more like a snarl, then turns back to the living room. He starts with the front door and pulls the rolled parchment paper from the lock, shredding it and leaving the pieces where they fall. He’s stopped leaving messages on them and stopped looking for Dean to answer because he’s been getting the silent treatment like that since Castiel first curled up in his bed and fell asleep. And it’s taken a while because Sam knows Dean’s hurt and Sam doesn’t have the right to be mad at him for it, but now he’s a little pissed off and all without his coffee, so fuck it.
“What the hell do you want from me?” Sam demands, even as he makes his way through the rest of the apartment and tears the paper from every single lock. In the back of his mind, there’s a voice whispering at him about how dangerous that is, how stupid. Because the locks are like doors and without the spells and words, he’s leaving them open for anything that wants to just saunter right into his home. “I don’t fucking care anymore. Let them come,” Sam grumbles.
A rustle of paper follows in his wake as Dean gathers up the pieces and Sam wants to kick out at him, he’s so pissed, but he doesn’t because he’s sure all that would get him is falling on his ass when his foot connects with nothing but cold air. “You don’t own me!” Sam shouts at him, throwing paper in the general direction of Dean’s rustling. It catches the air and just flutters. “Anyway, you’re gone! What do you… I can’t keep doing this. I can’t! You’re making me crazy!”
A floating piece of paper is snatched from the air and Sam stops. He’s out of paper and locks and unlike Dean, he has nothing to strike out at. “I could move, you know,” he whispers, leaning against his arms on the wall. He breathes deep, head down between his shoulders. “I could leave you here alone.”
Except he doesn’t think he could. He thinks that this time it probably doesn’t work that way because Dean’s not haunting a place, he’s haunting a person. He’s haunting Sam.
A gentle hand slides up his back and Sam flinches away from it. “Don’t you fucking touch me,” he snaps.
“I apologize,” Castiel says softly, and the hand is gone.
Sam jerks around and blinks at him. “How did you get in?”
“It would seem that in your discourse with your brother, you unlocked a few doors,” Castiel says calmly, his hands now in the pockets of his coat.
Out of nowhere, an ashtray flies at Castiel’s face. The angel lifts a hand and snatches it effortlessly from the air, then tosses it over the back of the couch, where it bounces on the cushion harmlessly. “That’s enough,” he says, and there is command in his voice.
The ashtray is instantly followed by a book. Castiel sighs and turns, letting it fly by him into the wall. “Dean,” he says, his tone flat and warning.
“Stop it!” Sam suddenly shouts.
Castiel’s eyes dart to him and his irritated expression softens. “As you wish,” he says.
“Oh Christ, just stop,” Sam says tiredly, leaning back against the wall. “Don’t do that, alright? I’m not some… this isn’t some fairy tale, man. I’m not your princess. And goddamn it! I just want to sleep without freezing to death and I want all this static in my head to go the fuck away! And I want Dean to--Whoa… What are you wearing?”
Castiel looks down at himself, then back up at Sam with a shrug. “Clothes.”
“Yeah, but your shirt’s black and those aren’t your pants,” Sam says.
“I paid for them,” Castiel says. “Stealing is, after all, a sin.”
Sam meets his eyes and his lips quirk. “So’s fornication.”
“Actually, it isn’t,” Castiel says, amused. “Not since Eden.”
“Uh huh,” Sam says, standing up straighter, away from the wall. It’s starting to feel a little warmer in the apartment, but maybe that’s wishful thinking on Sam’s part. “So what’s with the clothes?”
Castiel cocks his head to one side and smiles faintly, regarding Sam with an expression that is uncomfortably like affection. “Because you seem to have issues with my old attire,” he says.
“I do not,” Sam says, eyeing him as he shifts away from the wall and steps toward him. “Besides, this isn’t so different. Just… darker.”
Castiel frowns a little. “It is a different color,” he points out.
Sam chuffs out a soft laugh and moves closer to him. When he feels the heat of Castiel’s body, he sighs, wanting to lean into it. “What about your tie?” he asks, touching his hand to the buttons of Castiel’s shirt, where no tie rests.
“It’s surprisingly difficult to choose a tie,” Castiel says. He lifts his hand and lays it over Sam’s fingers against his chest. “It became confusing.”
“You want me to help you?” Sam asks, flexing his fingers a little in the front of Castiel’s shirt.
“I believe I prefer it this way,” Castiel says, lifting a hand to brush Sam‘s bed-disheveled hair back from his face. “They seem to be pointless devices and… constricting.”
“Yeah, they are,” Sam says, moving his hands down Castiel’s chest and around his waist to warm them against his back between his body and his coat. “I still need coffee,” he mumbles.
Castiel tilts his head to the side to look at Sam’s down turned face and frowns. “Then we should get some,” he says.
“Yeah,” Sam says, shaking his head with a laugh. “My kitchen’s a fucking mess, though. Let’s go out for it.”
“To the grocery?” Castiel says, his eyebrows lifting.
“To the… No,” Sam says, grinning at the idea of him and Castiel pushing a shopping cart through the supermarket. “I was thinking more like Denny’s or Ihop.”
“A restaurant,” Castiel says.
“Uh huh,” Sam says. Taking his arms from around Castiel. “Like a date.”
“A what?” Castiel says, following Sam down the hall as he heads back toward his bedroom.
“A date,” Sam says, entering his bedroom and pulling open the first two drawers of his dresser to get pants and a shirt. “It’s this human custom where you take a person that interests you out to dinner. Usually if you eventually want to… fornicate with said person. The level of success is usually contingent upon how expensive the food is.”
“I see,” Castiel says, his tone implying that he really doesn‘t. “And you would like to take me on one of these… dates. To Ihop?”
“Or Denny’s,” Sam says, stripping out of his sweats under Castiel’s keen eyes. He pulls his jeans up, fastens them, and pulls on a long-sleeved t-shirt, then looks at Castiel. “You don’t mind taking the bus, do you?”
XXX