Chapter Text
Let the record never state that Dean Winchester never made a mistake. He’s made tons, thousands, maybe. They were definitely more common when he was a child, but he wasn’t one for long anyways, which was probably for the best.
And then, for the longest time, he wasn’t allowed to make mistakes. John Winchester, for all his faults, was the perfect father for a mistake-prone child.
Sometimes Dean wanted him back. Just for a moment. Just to shove him and call him a fucking idiot and maybe give Dean a reason other than his own well being to do the right thing.
Because his own well being has never been his best motivator.
This is shown by his most recent mistake, of course, starting with the way his eyes flicker away from the tan lump on the ground.
“Dad!” Jack yells, jumping up from his cross legged position, taking two long strides and landing on top of his surrogate-but-not-really-surrogate father, wrapping his arms around him.
And Dean? Dean lets out a shaky breath and says, “Is he awake?” Because that’s all he can really say.
He’s sort of relieved when Sam, who’s gone from standing next to Dean to kneeling beside Cas, shakes his head. “We’ll take him to his room. Here, Dean, help.”
“No.” And there it is. “No. Jack can help. He needs it, after losing the super strength,” Dean makes a vague gesture at Jack, before turning around. “Every man for himself for dinner tonight, I don’t feel like cooking.”
Dean knows Sam and Jack have caught on, knows they’re looking at each other behind his back. Dean always insists on family dinners, even when he doesn’t feel like it. They need it. He needs it. Jack needs some kind of parental figure. Sam needs to be surrounded by his family, and Dean, well, Dean needs something to do other than curl up on top of his sheets with a bottle of whiskey.
But Dean’s not cooking tonight, so that’s exactly what he does.
He strips, runs his fingers through his hair, and he squeezes his eyes shut.
Every muscle in his body goes tense, and they ache. They ache like they never have before, and he drops into a squat, arms tensed and shaking as he rests his forehead in his palms.
“God,” he chokes out, breath held. His throat feels like sandpaper, his legs are shaking and he hurts . Everything, everything hurts .
Dean doesn’t remember much after that.
Dean used to wake up at 5am every day. When the sun came anywhere close to the sky, he was up, car-jet-lag be damned.
Without the sun, though, Dean wakes up naturally. He stopped setting alarms most days when they moved into the bunker, so he lets his body tell him what he needs.
Not today. He stumbles out of bed, almost falls on the ground, when his alarm goes off at 3am.
His body continues to ache as he shines ancient weapons and cleans his guns. He cleans Sam’s guns too, the ones he has access to anyways. When he’s done with that, he cleans the bunker’s kitchen, and the showers. He gets on his knees and doesn’t mind the way they crackle and pop for the next couple hours.
He avoids the infirmary, because Jack is sleeping inside.
It’s only when Dean looks up from the books he’d been cataloging (Cas’ job), that he smells it.
Bacon.
It doesn’t evoke the same emotion it would have a week ago, when things had just started getting back to normal.
Still, bacon is bacon.
Dean falls into an easy guise, his strides long and his smile wide. His shoulders are square and his arms swing at his sides all the way to the kitchen, where he stops short.
Jack is cooking (with Sam at his side, of course. Nobody needs a three year old cooking alone.), dancing around the kitchen with ease and joy. Cas laughs from his seat at the kitchen table, wrapped in soft clothes and the off-white sheets from the infirmary. The sharp lines of his body are drowning in clothes too large for him, and his feet are bare.
Dean feels it deep in his chest.
“Morning Dean!” Jack says, bouncing on his toes. Since he gave up his power, the kid’s been more like his actual age. Dean thinks it’s good for him.
Dean can’t do anything but swallow around his dry throat as he makes eye contact with Jack.
He figures it out.
He grins, chuckles, and inclines his head in greeting. It’s his suspect smile, his cop smile, his ‘you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you but you’re gonna let me get away with this’ smile.
He gets away with it.
“Look at you, Jack. Cooking for us. Oh how the tables have… turned,” Dean got through most of it without making visual contact with Cas, but the last word comes out slow as he meets Cas’ eyes for the first time in…
God, has it really been months?
( Ah yes, really appropriate turn of phrase, Dean. Keep it up.)
“It’s better than the last time,” comes Cas’ deep, soft timbre, “I’d never eaten a sugar-bacon-peanut-butter-jelly pancake sandwich before, but I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to taste like that.” Cas meets Dean’s eyes steadily, and he smiles, taking a bite of bacon.
The unspoken words are enough for Dean to smile back, his spirit sort of leaning on Cas’.
Okay, okay, Dean can do this. Dean can forget what happened, like Cas wants him too. He can just forget about it.
He can sit down, and make fun of Jack and smile at Cas and greet Sam (when he joins them) and he can damn well enjoy it.
“You know, Cas, you’re not much better. I’ve never eaten bacon that fell apart that fast,” Dean says, and he leans against the kitchen counter, a challenging smirk spread across his face.
Yeah, he should have known he’d never really get away with it.
He’s been doing good recently, really! He spends most of his time in his room or reading, he’s kind-of-mostly-not drinking, he and Cas have been steadfastly avoiding each other, and he feels great.
He hasn’t even had a nightmare. (Whether that’s the result of him only getting three hours of sleep over the same amount of days, well. That’s nobody’s business but his own.)
He spends his evenings on his laptop, looking for a hunt, for something, anything. But there’s been nothing big for weeks, not since that vampire hunt a couple weeks back.
That was a good day, really. Dean had just decided to stop drinking (boy that really went well), and they went for pie. Dean knew at the time Sam was just indulging him, but nevertheless. It’d been some really good pie. That day’d gone over with no more than a small hitch (his back still aches at the thought. He’s just grateful Jack was there and that that disgusting bit of rebar never got a major organ) and it was the last hunt they did. Since then, the most exciting parts of Dean’s life (other than the obvious blue-eyed intrusion on his grief process) have been going to the grocery store and reading a new book in the library.
So Dean, of course, ends up thinking about Cas. It’s not like he can help it.
His hands still on the keyboard as he sucks in a breath. He doesn’t even have to close his eyes, doesn’t even have to try to resurface everything.
No matter how hard he tries to push it down, it always comes back.
“She’s gonna kill you, and then she’s gonna kill me.”
“When Jack was dying, I made a deal to save him. The price was my life.”
“Happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.”
Dean’s seeing it now, images behind his eyelids. That’s when he realizes he’s closed his eyes. He can’t stop it now.
He watches Cas take those slow steps toward him, he watches Cas’ smile grow, and he tracks that first tear down his cheek.
“Why does this sound like a goodbye?” Dean asks, before gasping, his eyes shooting open.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean whispers hoarsely, sweat coating his skin as he looks around, rubbing at his eye with the back of his hand.
He’d fallen asleep. For about 2 hours, guessing by the time.
He clenches his fists in the sheets, his knuckles white and aching. He sits like that for a moment, arms shaking and eyes squeezed shut, before he throws the sheets back and hops out of bed.
He makes sure to make his bed before he leaves his room; he’s not a heathen, after all.
He runs into Cas, because of course he does. Cas is sitting in the kitchen when Dean wanders his way inside, making to the fridge for a beer.
Dean stutters out the beginning of an “Oh,” when he sees Cas, but he never finishes it.
“Sam told me you quit. Jack too. They were so…” Cas trails off, eyes following Dean’s hand as he reaches for the handle on the fridge.
“What?” Dean asks, grabbing his beer and opening it with his teeth.
“Proud,” Cas says, firmly. He hasn’t looked at Dean like this, with such resolute determination, since…
Well.
Dean huffs out a breath through his nose and takes a sip of his beer.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” Dean makes eye contact, but he can’t hold it long. “I… It was never gonna last. You know me,” he gestures with his beer, raising his eyebrows momentarily, eyes set firmly on the condensation slipping through his fingers.
“I do,” Cas says, and it’s so solid, so final, that Dean can’t do this anymore. He really can't.
So he turns on his heel, and he walks out of the kitchen, throwing his beer in the trash on the way. The edges of his flannel threaten to rip with just his grip on it.
He needs to sleep. No more late-night meetings with Cas. He can’t do that again. Not if he wants to do what Cas needs.
And that’s the least Dean can do. That’s not debatable; it never will be.
He goes a week like this; sitting in his room awake at night, finding tasks around the bunker during the day, avoiding his family all the while.
Thinking of them that way, “his family,” just makes his chest ache, though. So he takes to calling them his “special roommates” in his head, and it makes him smile even when he’s dusting an old Men of Letters storage room.
(Yeah, dusting. Because Dean’s some kind of a housewife now. So what if it was his first choice of chores?)
He lasts a week, until his mere minutes of sleep catches up to him, like it always does.
And it’s like nothing ever happened. Cas never came back. Hell, he hasn’t even met Cas yet. Dean knows peace, yeah, but it’s not enough. He feels this aching pit in the middle of his chest, gnawing away at the rest of his being. He knows something is missing - he knows some one is missing - but he can’t place it.
In his dream, he tests a new word, a new name, on his tongue. Castiel , he asks, with fear and reverence that is only fitting for an Angel of the Lord. But he doesn’t believe that instinct, that little itch under his collar, until he hears it from the Angel himself. Until he sees those shadows splayed on the wall.
Dean Winchester, always taught to fear what he didn’t know. Dean Winchester, mistaking the thudding in his chest for that fear, and shoving it deep, deep down where fears belong.
The world shifts in the way dreams do, and Dean is fixing Cas’ tie, a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’s flipping Cas’ badge for him.
He’s taking Cas out to get laid, because he knows that if he doesn’t do this, he has no excuse for using his ‘signature line’ on Cas. He knows that if he doesn’t do this he’ll want to be that girl instead.
(And what kind of a thought is that? God, that belongs down in the pit of his stomach, filling in the space his fears used to lie.)
He’s yelling at Cas from outside of a ring of holy fire.
Dammit, Cas, we can fix this, he says, and that’s all he wants. He wants to fix this. He wants to hold Cas, he wants to be held by Cas, and he wants to leave all of this behind.
But no.
No, he leaves Cas behind instead, with nothing but a glance over his shoulder.
And now it’s just flashes. Cas walking into that lake. Dean finding Cas again. Cas asleep on a hospital bed and Cas holding up a board game.
SORRY!
Dean hugs Cas for the first time in purgatory. The way it makes his skin thrum feels normal, feels okay in this place. The brush of skin against skin as he huddles for warmth with his two best friends makes him wonder why he wants to leave at all.
But he does, and he leaves without Cas, and the ache remains in his chest until Cas eventually shows up, dirtied and unshaven.
Flashes again. Dean clutching onto Cas for his life. I need you. Cas’ concerned eyes, his rough voice gentle and fearful for Dean when he sees the mark. Cas’ arms, holding him still; holding him steady and purifying him, not for the first time. Cas, Cas, Cas, Cas, he sees him in flashes, in long sequences. He sees him as a steady figure in his life. He sees the past twelve years, and they feel like the longest, the most special of his life.
Because god, he’s always loved his family. He loves Sammy, and he… he even loved his father. He loves his whole family, but.
But.
Cas is different. He’s always been different.
And now, suddenly, everything’s clear. Too clear. It’s sharp, like a knife, and he feels it cut into his skin.
The one thing I want… it’s something I know I can’t have.
I know. I know how you see yourself.
You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.
You changed me.
“You can have it,” Dean screams, but nothing escapes his lips. “You can have me! I want you to have me, I want you to see me, please!”
Dean tried to say all of this, but he ends up with, in the end, “Why does this sound like a goodbye?”
Because it is, Cas says.
I love you.
Dean.
Dean.
“Dean!”
Dean jerks awake, and becomes aware of multiple sensations at once. The cold air becoming colder as it brushes against the sweat beading on his skin, his forehead, his neck. The warm hand between his shoulder blades. The tears running down his cheeks, catching on the corners of his lips and running down his jaw. Strong arms, now, cradling Dean and holding him against a firm chest.
Cas.
In the dark, Dean can forget the last couple weeks. Here, he can curl up into Cas, trembling and whispering his name.
Because here, he’s not Dean Winchester. He’s now really anything. His… his everything belongs to Cas, curled up in his arms. And Cas is his, just for this moment.
Dean clutches onto the collar of Cas’ shirt, and he just listens. Again, all he can do is listen.
“Shhh Dean, it’s okay.”
“It’s okay Dean, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I did this to you.”
“Breathe, just breathe.”
“Shhh, you’ll be alright. You’ll be okay. I’ve got you.”
More quiet words, nothing but meaningless vowels and consonants in Dean’s ears.
The last thing Dean hears before he falls asleep, curled in Cas’ arms and shaking, is a whispered, “Please, sleep. Shhh, now, sleep well.”
There’s more, but Dean doesn’t process it as his world falls into a warm, light sleep. The best he’s had in months.
Dean wakes up cold. He’s still sticky with sweat, and his eyes are blurry and open slow, fatigued with his tears (though he refuses to acknowledge he really cried that much).
He’s cold, and tucked into the blankets he fell asleep on. And it feels wrong . So, so wrong.
He wants Cas back.
Fuck.
Before Dean knows what he’s doing, he’s hopping out of bed and rushing out of his room. Luckily, he’s wearing sweatpants, at least.
He didn’t even make the bed.
Dean stands outside of Cas’ door for ten minutes, easily. He knows Cas knows he’s there, but fuck if he’s not still holding his breath, staring at the light shining through the bottom of the door. Ever present, ever steady.
Dean walks away, and his legs only shake a little as his heart sinks deep into his gut.
He looks back, for a second. Just a moment, before releasing that breath he’d held.
Before he thinks better of it, he calls out, “Cas?”