Chapter Text
one last note: all my love and gratitude to buttheyrebrothers, who is a wonderful beta and amazing person. I couldn't have done this without you, my darling.
Chapter 1
Cas closed the door of his motel room and dropped his duffel on the floor. He was exhausted, he longed for a shower, and it felt like his stomach was trying to eat itself; but before he moved to solve each of his problems in a not yet decided order, he took out his cellphone.
TO: The Dean
Arrived safely. Interviews 2morrow. C.
His thumb hovered over ‘send’, just like it always did, then he closed the message. It would be saved as a draft, just like all the others had been. He undressed and took a shower.
It was his third week on the road after a short stay at the Roadhouse, to rest a bit and catch up on some news. But Cas never managed to stay very long these days, always moving and researching cases. Jo blamed his fear of confrontation for it; the shorter he stayed somewhere and the faster he moved, the lesser were the chances on accidentally meeting any of the Winchesters. And with “any”, Jo meant Dean.
Cas sighed and let the water beat on his back. When he exited the shower, he stopped to look at the mirror in the bathroom. The man that stared back at him hadn’t much in common with the boy Cas had used to be; the boy he remembered from photographs Jo had given him in a little box for Christmas last year. The boy had been bright-eyed and smooth-faced, his body had had hardly any scars, and no tattoos at all, and he’d had the body of a runner. The man in the mirror had bulked up a bit, and scars littered his body; mementos from his early hunts, when he’d been not careful enough and had been injured almost every time.
Cas rubbed across his face, feeling stubble under his fingers. He needed to shave before he went into town tomorrow to interview some of the citizens; he had learned the hard way that some people refused to take FBI agents seriously that didn’t shave regularly. Or that showed tattoos. His eyes trailed those tattoos visible in the mirror, and he smiled slightly.
The first ones had been trophies: for every monster that he had killed, he’d gotten one tattoo; often stylized images of the lore surrounding the monsters. After the fourth or fifth, it had become also about control. There wasn’t much these days that Cas could control, but one thing was trusting another person enough to let them stab him with a needle repeatedly for hours. Jo had called him insane when he’d tried to explain it to her, but she had also managed to make him promise to take her to a tattoo parlor as soon as she was old enough to get a tattoo herself.
Cas shook himself out of his thoughts and dried off, then walked into the bedroom. He contemplated sleeping naked – it was too fucking hot to put on clothes – but in the end decided at least for boxer briefs before he fell into bed, Bobby’s education getting the better of him. He grabbed his phone and shot a short message to Jo to let her know he was okay, then set his alarm clock for 8 am.
Before he put the phone away again, he hesitated. He wanted to write another message for Dean – not that he would ever send it – but didn’t do it. He tried to limit himself to a certain amount of messages, and he was way over the limit already. Writing the messages without sending them was something that had started shortly after Cas had run away from Dean (again). Initially, he’d only wanted to send a message to apologize (again), but had only saved the message without sending it. It didn’t feel like a text message would be enough to fix things; so Cas had resigned to not even trying.
He now kept three journals: his hunter journal that actually contained useful information; a journal in which he wrote basically everything that happened to him, and in which he also kept receipts and postcards and other small things he came across, and the memory card of his phone where every message Cas had ever wrote for Dean was saved. The second journal, he’d intended to give Jo every time when he came home, so she could read up on what he’d done; but after the first time she’d given it back to him saying that he should keep it for Dean. And soon, Cas realized why: Dean was between every word and line of the pages he’d written; things he’d remarked “I saw an Impala today, a bit younger than Baby, but it looked really terrible”) much more interesting for Dean than they were for Jo. So he started to write these things especially for Dean, talking to him more than he did in the text messages he never sent, even though essentially they still meant the same one thing over and over again: I’m sorry. I miss you. Can I come back?
Before he drifted away to sleep, Cas realized that he hadn’t eaten; and that meant he’d probably wake up in the middle of the night, too hungry to sleep. But he couldn’t find it in him to really care about it, so he gave up and fell asleep.
###
“What the fuck, Cas?” the voice startled them both, and Cas managed to slid out between Sebastian and the truck.
“Dean. I… oh my god,” Cas stuttered, staring at Dean as much as Sam and Dean were staring at him. The shock on both of their faces sent Cas’ mind reeling.
Sebastian had been right. Dean would never want him like this, the expression on his face, anger and disgust, made that clear enough to Cas. And now, Dean knew. He didn’t know about Cas’ love for him, at least that was a tiny relief, but now Dean knew he was gay and he just couldn’t deal with that right now.
Throwing all sensible thoughts in the wind, Cas did the only thing that came to his mind:
He ran.
Running felt familiar to him; after all, it wasn’t the first time he’d run away from Dean. Only now, he desperately didn’t want to be found. Only now, he wouldn’t be able to come back from running.
He cut into the woods, using a dirt track that was barely visible, because as far as he knew, he was the only one that used it now and again; mostly when he felt like there was too much energy in his body and his brains, and he needed a track that challenged him both mentally and physically.
They would probably try and search for him, he reckoned. They wouldn’t find him; that he swore to himself. His advantage was clear: Bobby did own the woods (at least Cas thought he did) but it had been a long time since he’d been really in them; and he was a good hunter, but Cas had learned from him. And since he was here so often, big parts of the woods smelled like him, so Rumsfeld would have a hard time figuring out where exactly he went. Just to ensure some confusion, Cas dropped his sweatshirt in a bush and doubled back the way he’d come. He lost his t-shirt at the foot of an old tree. He climbed it and managed to reach another tree (this was his favorite part of woods, where the trees stood close and tall) and another, until he was sure that Rumsfeld couldn’t pick up his trail. He sat down on a big branch and rested his back at the trunk. Then he made a plan.
Night was already falling when he returned to Bobby’s house. He knew that they would give up when it was fully dark, but probably not before that, so returning now ensured that they were still away – if they had bothered to search for him. And if they did, Cas was sure that they had left one person behind, to alarm the others when he returned; and he bet it would be Sebastian, who was the least helpful person right now: still injured, and with practically no knowledge of the surrounding woods.
The scrapyard was silent when Cas walked through it, as most of the woods had been; he’d heard Bobby and Dean calling for him, and sometimes Sam, when he’d hid away in the trees, but they never had come near him. Now, it was almost creepy how still everything was, only a light at the porch illuminating the nearest area. Cas didn’t try for silence, and so Sebastian stepped out of the house not long after Cas had reached it.
“There you are! I was worried, man! I need to call the others and –“
“You need to shut your mouth and listen,” Cas cut Sebastian off and stepped closer.
“You ruined everything, Sebastian. And I try so hard not to be pissed with you, but if you say another word I won’t give a shit about your injuries. Just let me go, okay?”
Sebastian hesitated for a second, then he stepped aside. Guilt and anger painted his face in both parts, and Cas knew why. Only that didn’t help, nothing helped. He walked upstairs and threw his belongings in his duffel bag, got the tantos out from under the loose floorboard where he’d always stored them and walked downstairs again.
He was looking for his car keys – the Galaxie was pretty much finished, so he wouldn’t have to steal a car – when Sebastian reappeared behind him.
“Cas, I’m sorry, I-“, he touched Cas’ shoulder, and tried to turn him around.
Cas didn’t know what it was that made him do it, but he didn’t hesitate for a second before he punched Sebastian in the face. Without another word, he left the house, climbed inside the car and drove away.
###
When Cas woke up, he was disoriented; almost expecting to feel the seats of his car under his back, or the sounds of Ellen making breakfast waking him up. But the only sounds were that of another car arriving, doors opening and closing, and then, again, silence.
Cas sighed and went for his cellphone. 3:54 am, the clock read. It had been a long time since he’d dreamed of his disappearance, but the ache in his chest had not become less. Maybe he should’ve stayed to try and talk it out; but with every day that went by, it became harder to return.
No, he said to himself, he couldn’t come back now. Maybe he would meet Dean and Sam somewhere down the road, but for now, he was alone.