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Baby, I didn't mean the things I said
I don't honestly wish you were dead
I'm a fool; I'm just a man
If I only could hold you again
— Wait by the River, Lord Huron
.
The night is dark and surely full of terrors.
Dean knows this better than most. He’s tousled with werewolves and wendigos, dumped salted buckshot into long dead things, and squared up with the devil himself. Monsters don’t scare him, have never scared him. There wasn’t much that couldn’t be ganked by a squirrely hunter strapped with a demon blade and unbridled determination.
Domestic spats with his once-angel lover, however… Well, that was enough to set any decent man’s teeth on edge.
Dean slams the driver’s side door with extra vigor, regretting his harsh treatment almost immediately as Baby’s frame shakes and groans. Cas ignores his dramatics as he exits the vehicle, his own door shutting with a passive aggressive click. He silently shuffles towards their motel room, not sparing Dean a backwards glance as he goes. Dean props his elbow atop the car, mumbling his apologies to her as Cas disappears inside. He worries his lower lip as Miracle skips around the front of the car and comes to a stop at his feet. She leans against his leg, her speckled tongue lolling. The rain is vicious, his shoulders and hair already drenched, but he doesn’t move, his eyes trained on the closed motel room door. All he’s ever desired is just on the other side.
Stubborn to the point of almost no return, Dean turns away. Miracle lifts her wet nose, dog brow quirking.
“Don’t start,” he mutters to her, feeling judged. He nudges her with the tip of his boot, prodding her towards the walkway, intending to venture as far from his grumpy spouse as possible. He’d probably only make it to the edge of the lot, but still. The dog seems to sigh, her exhale heavy, but she follows him anyway. He’s grateful for her loyalty, even if she does think he’s a dick.
Miracle does her business, snout pressed dutifully to the ground as she sniffs her way down the damp sidewalk, tail twitching happily as she trots. Dean lopes along behind her and stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets. The bitter and late December air bites at his knuckles and the tip of his nose. He ducks his head against the heavy mists of rain, hunching his shoulders, the unbearable chill sinking into his bones. His chest clenches tightly as he fights to draw in a full breath of frosted and rain-soaked air.
These days, Dean feels old as fuck. His joints creak all over the place and gray is sprouting at his temples and threading through his thickening beard. He supposes he is old, but hunter’s standards, but his age had never hurt quite like this before. The cold seeps into every nook, his frozen feet curling painfully in his steel-toes.
Miracle, however, is completely unconcerned with the weather. She bounds through a patch of muddy and yellowing grass before she disappears under a row of dead and spindly bushes. He quickens his gait to catch up, eyes finding her again on the other side. She’s, mercifully, tucked under an overhang, pawing curiously at a wet clump of moss growing from a crack in the concrete. He smiles slightly as he approaches, turning to lean back against the side of the shabby check-in building, his shoulders stiff against the icy brick. Mystified, the dog digs at the green lump, her paws caked with mud from the earlier hunt and her romp through the foliage.
After a stretch, Dean sighs in exasperation. “Don’t eat that,” he says, giving her an I-mean-business look. It was already bad enough he’d have to bathe her in the dinky motel room’s mildewy tub. He’d been in there once to wash his face and had practically felt the mold oozing from every crevice. He wasn’t too keen on adding a trip to the vet for a stomach pumping to his already long list of shit to do.
Looking chastised and harrumphing as well as a dog can, Miracle sits and sulks at his feet, her head tilting cutely, nose sparkling under the moonlight. A flop of blonde fur falls into her dark eyes as she looks up at him. Fond, he drops a hand to lazily scratch at her ears, and then together, they watch as the downpour shifts into a calming drizzle, the empty parking lot glittering as the heavy storm clouds part, the sky opening to reveal an endless sea of stars.
Beyond the hedges, at the edge of the lot, Cas’s familiar shape stretches across the curtain drawn window of room six as he opens the fridge, the hazy glow framing him in fluorescent gold as he rummages around for something to drink. He’s the only light for miles, a fire sparking valiantly against the bleak vastness of winter’s night, the creeping darkness that waits to swallow them whole.
It's always been this: Cas, the beacon, the lighthouse, and Dean, the sailor, the wounded soldier in desperate need.
Dean is reminded of the earlier days, the expanse of Cas’s wings reaching across the barn wall behind him, a great and thunderous wind prying the rickety and rotting boards from the thatched roof. He was ethereal, beautiful in a way that hurt, that made Dean want to shield his eyes from the sun. He was so bright sometimes, but that heavenly light cast no shadow, it only burned, and Dean—well, he was just a dim-witted moth drawn to the open flame.
Dean had been intrigued from the jump; with Cas, with the sheer angels-and-demons of it all. He’d thought: what the fuck is a God, anyway? Then, more importantly: where the fuck is God, anyway? If he was so loving, so merciful, so forgiving, how was it that every which way Dean spun himself, he was met with suffering, with loss? He’d never begrudge anyone their beliefs, their comforts, but he’d hated the very thought of it: some great Observer on high, wielding the power to end world hunger, to end war, to pluck the cancer from a sickly child’s chest, doing fuck all but lording it over a crumbling kingdom with a theater-sized bucket of extra buttered popcorn in hand as his beloved creation set itself on fire.
Then again, it was never God Dean believed in, it was Cas.
In the beginning, Dean had spent sleepless night after sleepless night with his weary and bloodshot eyes trained on the ceiling, on the heavens, wondering at Cas’s purity, his innocence and his unwavering faith. In the darkness of Bobby’s cramped kitchen, Cas had come, and amused, as if Dean were a petulant child, said, “Angels are warriors of God. I’m a soldier.” He’d tilted his head, something coy in the set of his mouth. He was drenched in black shadow, his hair a windswept mess, and Dean had thought: then why are your hands so clean?
He'd stepped closer, unsure, yet curious, the bright crystal blue of Cas’s eyes drawing him in. Dean had felt sized up, looked into, as his own eyes flitted over the angel, cataloging, categorizing. He’d wanted his look to be sparing, but couldn’t help when it was whole, covering the entirety of him. Cas was a complete contradiction; warriors weren’t meant to be polished, weren’t meant to bring the scent of earth and fresh rain with them. Dean had desperately wanted to hate him, hate him as much as he hated the God that had abandoned them all, this little angel winging around in a stupid and ill-fitting trench coat as he preached God’s will, fighting a celestial war in the name of a father that no longer gave a damn, and maybe never had, but by then it was too late. Cas had crept up on him.
Had it been so from that first soul touch in hell, or was it later, when Dean had begun to feel this itch? It was a gnawing and unbearable craving that scratched at his insides, begging for release, begging for purchase as Cas, his jaw set, the arch-angel’s heavenly light swathing him, proclaimed to the very father he’d been searching for (though they hadn’t known that yet), “We’re making it up as we go.” The world as Dean knew it had imploded with the collapse of the final seal and everything was thoroughly fucked, but that damn itch… it could never be sated.
Dean had looked at Cas with such surprise, the angel unflinching, his line drawn in the sand. Just before, he’d been so angry with him. Furious, even. Later, he would understand it was this: I need you on my side. He’d felt betrayed, trapped in that golden room, Cas’s brief appearances taunting him. But then, he’d been freed. Was it Dean that had disillusioned the angel, his words that had pried heaven’s brain rot from his feathered head? He’d turned his back on his own father, his own brothers and sisters, in the name of a man he’d known for mere weeks. Could it have really been for Dean? He’d never been chosen before, trusted before, saved before. ‘We’, Cas had said, and so effortlessly. They were no longer separate entities.
To this day, Dean still isn’t sure the guy understands how much those words had meant to him in that dark moment.
After, Dean had felt so guilty, so dirty, begging Cas for his help, his loyalty, in one moment, then practically shoving him onto the sacrificial alter in the next. The angel had exploded into oblivion, and Chuck was busy picking perfectly white molars from his hair, and Dean felt strangely hollow, even as Sammy stood beside him. Cas had given everything for Dean, and it hadn’t mattered to him. He’d gone willingly, knowing his fate, and he’d done so in the Winchester name. In Dean’s name. He’d felt robbed, but of what, he didn’t know. At the time, he couldn’t, maybe wouldn’t, put a name to the itch. Not when all that was left of Cas was a scorch mark on the floor.
Cas was so hopeful, so kind, perfect in a way that made Dean’s skin crawl with the desire to pull him close, the desire to push him far away. His hands have always hated pure things, how they stained so easily, how his touch seemed to spread rot wherever it lay.
The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in hell, he was lost.
And yet, in that moment, Dean was found, and they were both doomed.
For so long, Dean had felt he could never bridge the gap between them. Cas was so certain, so loving, beautiful and clean in a way that lingered, goodness practically spilling from his ears, and then Dean… Dean was hateful and wretched, Dean was an alcoholic drop-out with pennies to his name, suicidal tendencies, and an army surplus of mommy-and-daddy issues. He’d tried so hard to earn it, that unwavering faith, that unconditional love Cas so freely gave. He’d slunk through the apocalyptic trenches with Sam, knee deep in angel-and-demon shit, eyes stinging under the mud and sweat as he searched for an absolution he was sure would never come. There were times he’d scrubbed at his bloodstained and calloused hands until they were raw, blistering under the hot tap-water, wondering how something so righteous could ever look at him like he was worth a damn.
Even now, Dean wonders, still waiting for the cosmic punchline.
Since when do we get what we deserve?
Sometimes, Cas’s consuming love for Dean makes him feel sick to his stomach, the weight of it pressing him flat under its heel. He’ll get this urge, this awful ugly urge to throw it all away, leave it all behind, pedal to the floor, Baby kicking up a tornado of dust, Cas in the fragments of the broken rearview mirror. The worst part, Dean thinks, is that Cas would let him go. He would understand, and even if he didn’t, he would forgive. He would say: faith, forgiveness, what’s the difference? He was so sacrificial, so fucking eager to fall on double-edged swords, giving his life away for coins, for Winchesters.
It was maddening, the simple ease with which he decided his life was forfeitable if it meant Dean would survive. Dean, still emotionally inept even if he could now kiss a once-angel square on the mouth in any Southern backroad diner without shirking from judgement, hasn’t quite found the right words to express how absolutely terrifying it was to finally have something to lose, to finally have something that would surely kill him to be without.
How many things has Dean taken for granted in this long and drawn-out life? That peaceful and unfulfilling time with Lisa and Ben, his mother rising from the grave, his childhood trauma smothering the second chance they’d been given, and Sammy, always Sammy. Sammy, who forgave like Cas, wholly, a goofy smile stretching like he’d been expecting Dean’s emotionally crippling breakdown for years now.
He'd apologized for being rough with him, for being too hard on the hopeful little kid he’d once been. You shoulda been a lawyer, you coulda been. You coulda been anything, he’d drunkenly lamented one night, not long after Cas had departed for the last time. Sam had swiped what was left of the whisky, tucking it away in a cupboard.
I’m your brother, he’d said in return, as if it were enough. He’d pushed a frosted water bottle across the dinner table, and Dean found that it somehow was.
It had been so simple, but so true that Dean had felt something in his heart meld back together, the guilt giving way to relief. Sammy was still here, Sammy would always be here, and their dad was a shit-and-a-half, but they’d had a father, who’d loved them in his own harsh way, and all that pain, that struggle to prove himself, the emptiness when he couldn’t, had given him the strength to face angels and demons and God himself. He couldn’t rewrite what had been written, but he could change what was yet to come. Cas had made sure of that, his sacrifice and final message the most ardent gift Dean could have ever hoped to receive.
Everything you have done, the good and the bad, you have done for love.
The very words had frightened him to the core, the finality of them bringing tears to his eyes.
Why does this sound like a goodbye? He’d asked, though he already knew the answer.
It was strange, how many stints in purgatory he’d needed to understand what he’d been yearning for. The first time, he’d wanted to escape, and he’d wanted revenge, but Cas’s hopelessness had foiled his plans, Benny rolling his eyes at Dean’s obsessive ways with the angel. He would never leave behind. End of story. Fuck what Cas wanted; Dean wanted him topside. Cas choosing punishment over freedom had broken him in ways he still couldn’t speak of. His brain had seemed to rewire itself, replacing Cas’s choice with Dean’s failure. The second time… that prayer. He’d felt that terrifying loneliness again, Cas nowhere to be seen. Their months long spat that Sam had deemed ‘The Divorce’ had finally come to a head, and yet instead of stubbornly continuing the fight, running for the gold, all Dean could think, or pray, was: come back to me. I hope you can hear me. I hope you can hear me.
Then, when Cas emerged from the wood, bloody and worse for the wear, Dean hadn’t been able to resist the urge to scoop him up and hold him so tightly they could have become one. He’d had one more thing to say, the biggest thing to say. And he’d wanted to say it, so badly, but the words had jammed in his throat, and Cas said he’d heard, he’d forgiven, but that hadn’t been it, there had been so much more. If he’d said it then, I love you, Dean wonders if it would have changed anything. Would Cas have still been so determined to give himself up to the empty if he knew he could have had what he’d wanted all along? Dean doesn’t know, but still, he wishes he’d folded. Purgatory was their place; the place he’d first held Cas, the place he’d realized Cas was so much more than a friend. It would have fit—if he’d said it.
Dean wasn’t stupid enough to think a love confession would have turned the dark grounds and creatures into rolling hills and fluffy unicorns, but it would have meant something. It would have meant something, and he’d spent the entire time Cas was asleep regretting it until he’d exhausted every scenario, playing it out in his head over and over until even dream Cas was over it, his arms folding across his chest. Let it go, Dean, dream Cas had insisted, worry creasing his brow, but no, Dean couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
He'd weighed approaching Jack for days, pacing the length of his room again and again. What was the worst the new, kinder God could say? No? Would he say no anyway? Would he ask why? Could Dean tell him why? I love him, I love him, I love him. I deserve him. After everything, I deserve him. In the end, he’d fretted for nothing. Jack had appeared in Baby’s passenger seat as Dean chewed his nails, on his way to the gas station for a shit cup of coffee and something to look at other than the bunker walls and the bottom of a bottle.
“Do you mean it?” He’d asked by way of greeting, Dean jumping so high he’d hit the roof. Jack was baby-faced as ever, and glowing, goodness spilling from his ears like his father before him. And he was smiling, a knowing smile, an annoying smile.
Rubbing his head, averting his eyes, Dean grunted out, “Do I mean what?”
“The time for coyness is long past. Castiel sleeps and fades,” Jack answered, his smile folding into seriousness. He’d grown into a man, a God, right before Dean’s eyes. “I can return him to you. You need only ask.” Ask, his eyes pressed, ask, ask, ask.
Dean gripped the steering wheel tight, drives past the gas station. “I want him back,” he said, eyes firmly on the road.
Jack seemed to accept this, a peaceful feeling settling over the car. “When I open the door, you pull him through,” he said, and was gone.
Dean had forgotten the coffee, the black hole inside his chest pausing in its consumption as he spun the steering wheel, tires screeching as he righted, home the only thing on his mind. He’d realized a bit too late; it had never been a place.
The fridge light crests the top of Cas’s untamed hair as he bends, crowning him with a halo swathed in shadow, and Dean swallows thickly as he suddenly vanishes, the light snuffed as Cas closes the door. The darkened window is still. Empty. At his side, Miracle shifts, whining. Dean releases a crippling sigh, unclenching.
“C’mon, girl,” he mutters, pushing off the wall and stepping onto the asphalt. As they cross the lot, Miracle practically skipping her way towards their room, a feeling of dread settles over Dean, hunching his shoulders. A fight is waiting just over the threshold. Dean pauses with his hand on the doorknob, exhaling, frost spilling from his mouth and clouding in the air around him. He glances down at the dog as she looks up at him expectantly. ‘He’s in there. Let’s go’, her eyes seem to say, her tail twitching, nose wiggling adorably.
They’ve become an unstoppable force, Cas and the little blonde dog. She’d taken to him immediately, yipping at his feet and chasing her tail in circles until he paid attention to her. Dean had felt scorned until Cas’s contagious laughter had perked him right up, an indulgent smile pulling at his mouth. Miracle chose Cas’s lap on long car rides, curls around his feet at night. Dean can’t say he blames her, really. He’s always trying to weasel his way over onto Cas’s side of the bed, shoving the dog to the ground with a gentle but pointed foot, hands wandering generously as Cas’s complaints turn breathless, sheets shifting as they slot together, his deep sigh of contentment hitting Dean square in the chest. He’s sure his teeth are starting to rot out of his head, all this romantic mush finally turning his brain into pudding.
The last few months, with his free will and Cas’s return from the abyss, his paranoia had dwindled in favor of long road trips with no destination in mind, no Big Bad waiting at the end, just Cas, Baby, and the yappy little dog. With no sword poised to lop off his head at any given moment, he’d become too comfortable. There were hunts here and there; he still craves the thrill. But he’s also found time for other things, normal things. They sleep late on Sundays, catch old movies in crumbling small-town cinemas, let the dog loose on a rocky beach, laughing as she fearlessly barrels right into the ocean. Dean has never felt present before, never thought he could choose to do something like this. For the first time in his life, he can just be.
Tonight, Dean had been reminded of how fragile this new life truly was. How fragile Cas truly was. He was powerless now, human now. One wrong step into traffic and he’d be flattened, no takebacks.
Cas’s loss had proved harder and harder to recover from each time, and when he’d been taken by the empty, Dean had pillowed his head on beer bottles and filled Cas’s voicemail with the drunken nonsensical ramblings of a man madly in love with a dorky, trench-coated angel. He would trace the name he’d painstakingly carved into the table, remembered how he’d willed his hands to stop shaking, lest he fuck it all up. He’d lost all hope, hanging on by a thread, avoiding Sam’s constantly worried gaze, throwing himself into his new life, pretending any of it mattered when Cas was gone. Then, by the grace of Jack, he’d been given the chance to right a wrong that had been a decade in the making. Pulling Cas from the empty as he’d pulled Dean from hell had filled him with this stupidly poetic sense of completion, and he’d been able to breathe again, no hitches in his chest. Cas was right where he was supposed to be, sans the halo and wings.
Dean had never felt more relieved as he’d smoothed the rumpled lapels of Cas’s faithful tan coat, straightening his tie with shaking fingers. “How was your nap?” He’d asked, cheeky, unable to stop the beaming smile from splitting his face. He’d nervously hedged around Cas’s assumed last words, the ‘I love you’ he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since it had been revealed, an undercurrent running between them as Cas blinked up at him, doe-eyed at their closeness.
His head had tilted as Dean’s hands wrapped in the familiar fabric of his coat, and he’d said, his voice filled with wonder, “Dean.” He’d said it as if he could hardly believe it, as if he could finally breathe again too. The weight of Dean’s name, short and to the point as it always was, had hit him like a ton of bricks. For weeks, he’d feared he would never hear it from Cas again. He’d replayed every ‘hello, Dean’ on a loop as he chased Cas’s memory to the bottom of a bottle.
Dean had folded then, yanking Cas forward so he could press the sloppiest, tear-stained kiss to his mouth. He’d hoped it would say all the things he was still too tongue-tied to manage (he’d managed it later, though, lips at Cas’s throat, hand caught in his hair. I love you; I love you, man, he’d said over and over into he night, Cas’s sharp intake of breath worth it each time). Since he’s been riding this impossible high. He’d gotten his big win; free will, Sammy safe and sound, the fucking dog, and Cas. They were all rolled up into one package, his name written on it in bold letters. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be afraid, what it felt like to lose.
Until one of the vamps he and Cas had been hunting had gotten his arm around Cas’s neck, his mouth splitting open to reveal rows of sharpened teeth that were poised to rip into Cas’s flesh.
They’d followed the duo of bloodsuckers from a bar to a dingy house deep in the backwoods that was shrouded in dead ivy and shadowed arms of looming trees. It stank of rot and sinew, Miracle whimpering as they’d edged closer and taken cover behind a broken-down pickup. Maybe Dean had been cocky, or maybe he’d just been lazy, more concerned with the shapes the trees cast over Cas than the hunt, but the fight had gone south. Cas was thrown clean through a mildewed wall, Miracle’s furious bark ringing through the forest, Dean gritting his teeth as the vamps grouped and advanced, cornering him.
“Get the fuck outta here, Cas!” He’d managed to yell before they were upon him, scratching at his face, clawing at his jacket, dragging him to the dust laden ground. Miracle bounded back through the hole Cas’s body had made, tearing into a vamp’s leg, distracting him long enough for Dean to gain the upper hand. He’d brought his knee up, kicking the sucker closest to him square in the chest. He’d grappled for his discarded weapon as clawed hands closed around his ankles, pulling him backwards. He’d twisted onto his back just in time to deflect a well-aimed blow, slicing the right hand off of the she-vamp. She’d howled as she reared back, arm clutched to her chest, her eyes darkening. She’d swooped, to carve his heart from his chest, to braid his intestines, Dean doesn’t know, but he’d been quicker, hacking at her neck until her head disconnected, rolling along the floor. Her partner had flown at him in a rage, catching him off guard and ripping his shirt open, reaching to plunge his hand between his ribs—
Then, from behind, Cas had tackled his legs, knocking him off balance. They’d twisted on the floor, Miracle yapping hysterically from her hiding spot under the rickety dining room table. Cas’s pained gasp had terrified him as he watched, trying to make sense of the tangled mass of limbs. Finally, Cas reemerged, nose bloodied, the vamp’s arm tight around his neck. His menacing look had seemed to say to Dean, you will watch him die. And well, there was no way that was happening. The world narrowed, his vision swimming with red, hot rage pulsing through him, he reacted quicker than any old man had the right to, beheading the ugly thing before it could take everything from him.
As the body dropped, he’d huffed, clutching at his side as he rounded on Cas. “I told you to go,” he’d snapped, scowling as Cas wiped blood from his face, kicking the corpse away as Miracle scrambled from beneath table, sniffing Cas worriedly as he sat up, tie askew, his mouth and nose busted open.
“They were going to kill you,” Cas had responded, voice like gravel, looking at him as if he’d grown two extra heads, as if what Dean said was a moot point. He was human now, but still so willing to lie down and die in the Winchester name. It was fucking grating.
Dean, grumbling obscenities in frustration, had thrown his hands up, and they’d spent the entire car ride back to the motel in silence, rain pattering down something fierce on the windshield. He’d snuck glances at Cas every few minutes, sure he’d disappear if he didn’t repeatedly check, knuckles white on the steering wheel. But he’d stayed, there were no wings to fly him away now, turned away from Dean, his head lolling against the window as his eyes fluttered shut, a hand wrapped in Miracle’s fur. Even the dog had looked at Dean like he was an asshole, her sweet brown eyes full of disappointment.
Suddenly needing eyes on the little guy, Dean twists the knob, Miracle shooting through the open door, barking excitedly as Dean flips on the light and shrugs out of his jacket, draping it over the tattered pink armchair. The tension is so thick he could cut it with a knife and take a bite out of it. He tiredly rubs a hand over his face, leaning back against the kitchenette counter. He examines the threadbare laces of his boots, but as always, he’s unable to keep his eyes away from his lover for too long.
Cas sits with his elbows resting atop his knees at the edge of the double bed, bruised and bloody against the cheerful beach themed backdrop. The TV plays in the background, some mindless soap opera. He’s only half paying attention, colors jumping across his face. He seems to be looking beyond the screen, his eyes far away. His tie is crooked, the collar of his dress shirt turned up. He presses the green beer bottle in his hand to his temple, eyes shuttering against the cold frost. Idly, with a sniffle, he wipes at the dried blood crusted under his nose, mouth twisting into a pained grimace. Miracle, still posted at his feet, whines worriedly, nosing at his leg. His empty hand drapes down, gently patting her head. Satisfied, she curls into a ball, tail tucked over her snout, cheek pressed to the side of Cas’s shoe.
Dean, for all of his aloof posturing, deflates at the sight of the once-angel hunched over in defeat, the sweet little dog comforting him the only way she can. Sighing heavily, Dean pushes off the yellowing counter, crossing to the edge of the bed, stepping into the lazy circle of Cas’s spread legs.
Cas looks up at him, unblinking, eyes dim. He’s waiting to be scolded, his mouth pressed into a flat and weary line as the tension between them tightens, coiling as Dean clenches his fists to fight off the urge to wipe the blood and grime from his face and cradle him close, grateful to even have this moment at all, this opportunity to berate him for being so careless with his newly human life, at all. Cas looks so pathetic, so inexplicably tender that it’s almost impossible for Dean to keep up the stern pretense. The argument waits with bated breath in the shadows, watches as Dean takes the beer bottle from Cas’s hand, finishing it off before it turns stale and thunking it into the trashcan beside the door. Cas winces at the heavy sound, exhausted to the bone. A shove from Garth and he’d topple over.
Through all the ages of man, he’d towered above, heavenly, celestial, wings perked and voice thunderous. Here, in the dingy aquamarine and coral colored, shell and seahorse adorned motel room, he’s tucked into himself, unassuming, insignificant. Human now, and worse for the wear. His hair is graying at the edges, laugh lines cutting deep into his cheeks. Dean wonders if he truly understands the severity of his own fragility, his own mortality. The light above flickers, turning Cas just a shade away from sunken and ghostly. Softening still, reminded again of how close he’d come to carrying home a corpse, Dean absently licks his thumb, wiping the rest of the blood from under Cas’s nose. His palm curves familiarly around his jaw, the sharp line of it slotting perfectly into the waiting space. Upon closer inspection, Cas is packing a thick split lip, purple swollen cheeks, and bloodshot eyes. He’s silent as he’s examined, letting Dean turn his head this way and that.
“Got the shit kicked outta you, but you’ll be alright,” Dean decides, gruff, the pad of his thumb skating along the ridge of Cas’s bruised cheek before he lets it drop and teeters back onto his heels.
“Feels like I got hit by a bus,” Cas mutters, eyes shifting, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Three suckers, that’s close enough,” Dean agrees. Truthfully, he doesn’t have the heart to chastise him anymore. The hitch in his breath as he fights the pain in his ribs should be punishment enough. Still, he’d almost bit the bullet risking his life for Dean. Again. How many times is he expected to wrap him up and burn him at the pyre? He’d barely survived that the first time. Now, as close as they are, he’s not sure he can do it again.
Dean has slunk through and endless sea of shit the last two decades, boots caked with mud and salt, searching for purpose, for something to call his own. He’s spent a year and a half charting his own path, calling his own shots, pulling Cas from the empty his first act as a truly free man. It’s selfish, he knows, hinging his happiness on what they have, on the damn dog, on Sammy and his troupe of baby hunters in training back at the bunker. As dangerous as it was to finally have something to lose, it was just as dangerous to realize he would do anything, anything, to keep it, even if he had to drill it into Cas’s head. Stop trying to fucking save me.
The frustration slithers forward, the loaded comment spilling out before he can curb it. “That was a rookie move back there. You could have been killed.”
Cas’s gaze is steel blue. “I wasn’t,” he helpfully points out, leaning back, fingers splaying out across the comforter.
“You were lucky,” Dean amends, brow ticking up as he crosses his arms over his chest, donning his best you’re-in-trouble face. It works best on the dog, but to his credit, Cas does look chagrined, his foot beginning to tap anxiously. Miracle lifts her head as the silence following Dean’s words mounts, her sweet brown eyes shifting back and forth between the two of them. Sensing the onslaught, she wiggles under the bed and out of sight.
Cas tilts his head in annoyance. Look what you did.
Dean rolls his eyes, refusing to back down. The dog was fine. Dad and dad are fighting, baby, just cover your ears.
Finally, after a long measure, Cas sighs. “I did it for you, Dean. Excuse me for not wanting to watch as the vampires consumed your still beating heart.” His eyes are flat, a hairs breadth away from checking out. He’s decided he’s in the right. Dean hates that, irritation swelling like a storm.
“You wouldn’t have had to if you’d taken the dog and gotten the hell out like I told you to,” Dean insists, stepping clear as Cas stands, rubbing a tired hand through his mussed hair.
Cas laughs humorlessly in answer, wiping his palm down his face. He irritably loosens his tie before turning and facing Dean once more. “You are not my master,” he says, looking as he had that night in Bobby’s dark kitchen, his half smirk marred by the slit in his lower lip. I’m a soldier, he’d said. “My choices are my own.”
Dean’s lip curls. “And if that choice ends in blood? What then?”
Cas holds his gaze, silent as a church mouse.
Dean furiously shakes his head, remembering the sight of the vamp’s arm wrapped tight around Cas’s neck. “You don’t get to put that on me,” he growls, shoving at his chest, regretting it the moment Cas exhales a crippling sound, hand pressing to his right side, as if he were barely holding himself together.
His back is against the far wall, the peeling ocean themed wallpaper shrouding him in saltwater. Coming close, their chests flush, Dean sourly says, “You feel that? You’re human now, Cas. A measly bag of fuckin’ bones. You only have one chance, and you keep throwing it away. And for what? Me? I ain’t worth it.” Dean roughly shakes his head, thinking of all the ways the night’s hunt had gone wrong, and how it could have been so much worse, Cas’s cold body laid on the bed.
Lucky, that’s all they’d been.
Gentler now, Dean reaches out, hand tangling around Cas’s tie. He loops it around his wrist once, twice, drawing him impossibly closer. “You’re the only real thing I got, man. You, Sammy, and the fuckin’ dog. Take that away and I’m… I’m lost. I’m not afraid to say that I need you anymore. So, can you just… can you just do what the fuck I say when the time comes? Live to fight another day?” His empty hand lifts to Cas’s neck, thumb on his pulse point. He feels the life there, and the anger washes away. He’d avoided Cas’s gaze for most of his hokey speech, but now he glances down, searching his eyes.
They darken a shade as Dean’s thumb passes once more over the sensitive spot on his neck. “Dean,” he breathes, back straightening, tongue darting out to gather the blood beading on his lower lip.
Dean’s hand moves—beyond his control, really—to close around the back of Cas’s head. He yanks him forward, their kiss maddening, desperate and clawing. It was as if they were trying to crawl inside of each other, sweet and sugary need dissolving the fear. They had this if they had nothing else. Cas clutches at the lapels of his flannel, securing him in place like a steel wench. Dean’s palm meets the wall above his head.
“I hate it when you die for me,” Dean whispers into his mouth, voice breaking. His eyes open to watch the blue glow of the television flash across Cas’s face, the hazy shadows clutching his sharp cheekbones, his lined jaw.
Cas’s hand melds to his shoulder, gripping tight onto the place he’d first touched him. “Do you at least admire the consistency?” He asks.
Caught off guard, Dean huffs a surprised laugh. Groaning, he brings Cas to the ground, pulling his tie from his neck and tossing it somewhere behind them. Slowly popping the buttons of his rust-stained shirt open, he draws his palm down the flat of his abdomen, feeling how Cas’s breath hitches. Mesmerized as he always is when they’re this close, he hooks a finger into the silver of Cas’s belt-buckle, and barely audible, says, “Of all the things I admire about you, your suicidal tendencies are not one of them.”
Cas’s mouth quirks up at the corner’s, and his eyes say ‘likewise’.
In the morning, Dean presses his cheek to Cas’s shoulder, watching as he swipes through his phone. He opens an unread message from Claire. Miss you, the text reads, followed by a photo of the plucky blonde smiling widely over a stack of syrupy chocolate chip pancakes resting on the dingy red diner table in front of her. She’s taking after them, her appetite insatiable, and her fight unbridled. He’ll have to pass on the mantle the next time he sees her, let her have her pick of the lot from Baby’s trunk armory. Miss you, love you, Cas types back before yawning and dropping his phone back onto the nightstand. He settles back into bed, Miracle fidgeting at his feet, ears twitching as she dreams of squirrels and bacon strips. It’s a peaceful dawn, the sunlight filtering in through the half-closed blinds, striping Cas’s face. His mouth is swollen, but not from the hunt.
Pleased with himself, Dean stretches his arm across Cas’s bare chest, sighing against his shoulder. Cas shoves him away, wrinkling his nose. “Your morning breath,” he complains.
Dean snorts, shifting onto his back. “Yours ain’t so angelic either,” he shoots back before pressing his cold toes to Cas’s calf.
Cas harrumphs, rolling onto his side. His eyes are heavenly in the morning, white-blue dew on a blade of grass. He studies Dean for a moment, and then says, “I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
Dean blinks, mouth twisting. “I’m—I wasn’t. I was afraid,” he answers, honest. There wasn’t much that could be hidden from those imploring eyes. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Neither do I,” Cas says, leaning over him, kissing him lightly. Miracle grumbles irritably at the disturbance as the comforter shifts, the pair entwining. Dean catches Cas’s jaw as he pulls back, keeping him close. Their foreheads rest against each other, their noses brushing, warmth spreading through Dean’s chest like a quickening forest fire.
“Will we have this fight again?” Cas wonders quietly, thumb feather light as it trails the curved line of Dean’s cheek.
Dean grins. “Most definitely,” he says, pulling his lover down for another round.