Work Text:
The Impala still runs rough. Dean can hear it in the rattle of her engine, the way her door creaks when he opens it, the way her wheel’s askew from where he’d hit a curb and hadn’t stopped, hadn’t even thought about it, hadn’t cared. Back when he hadn’t cared about anything, anyone. He thinks sometimes it was easier then. He hadn’t had to pretend to care, not the way he’s been pretending for years now, putting a token effort in at living: He’ll do his job, feed himself, lay his body down on a bed for a few hours every night.
He opens up her hood and talks to her as he sticks his hands in her guts. An apology, he guesses. Because that’s always been something he’s done, trailing his fingers across her bumper when he walks behind her, keeping up that quiet soft talk like she’s a skittish animal shying out of his hands.
He remembers when he used to care about her more. More than most things. More than anything except Sam. More than Castiel, for a while. She was his baby.
He’s hurt everyone he loves. He’s hurt her too.
He still talks, still touches her like she’s something special, he doesn’t let up. He doesn’t want to give away the fact that she doesn’t mean as much anymore.
Sometimes it takes his breath away, how much he doesn’t care anymore. How she’s just not the sun and moon and stars anymore. Not to him, not anymore. Not like other things. He changes her oil and replaces her brakes like an apology for not loving her anymore. He polishes her paint and shines her chrome like it helps. Like it makes up for anything.
She looks like new; you can’t tell there’s anything wrong underneath the hood.
He runs his hands across her steering wheel. His hands say he’s sorry. He doesn’t know what else to say.
–
Castiel’s grace has cracks, it doesn’t fill him up all the way. Dean can see grace shining behind Castiel’s eyes, something ancient and solemn and blue that could crack across the sky like lightening, but there’s something else, too, growing up inside Castiel like dandelions springing up in the cracks along concrete.
Dean can see it in the odd crooked curve of Castiel’s smile, he can feel it in the warmth of Castiel’s hands when he reaches out to touch Dean’s shoulder. Something bright and warm, something that shines at all hours; Castiel turns it on Dean whenever Dean catches his eye.
Castiel keeps growing and Dean keeps watching it happen. Castiel keeps falling asleep and Dean keeps watching him, watching his eyes close, watching his shoulders relax and fall. Dean keep watching and he doesn’t know why he does it.
Sometimes he thinks Castiel knows that he knows.
He wants to ask. He ought to ask.
He doesn’t know how.
–
When he is home, Castiel leaves his car parked beside the Impala, and Dean can’t stop looking at it, that dirty, run-down old car. The suspension’s shot and he’s heard the brakes squeal. It’s not safe. It’s a junker. It’s falling apart.
He’s supposed to be working on the Impala today, but he’s tired at the very thought. He doesn’t even really want to. Fixing her up has just become something he does because it’s what he’s always done, the way he orders the same combo every time they stop at Denny’s or the way he flips through the radio stations even when there’s nothing but static for miles.
He looks at Castiel’s car and thinks about Castiel inside the bunker, packing his bags. Getting ready to go back out into the world in a car with untested brakes.
He can’t bring himself to care about the Impala. But he’s starting to think he cares about this: a piece of shit Lincoln Continental with scratches on the bumper and torn seats.
He walks over to her, runs his hand across her hood.
–
Dean rotates her tires and fills them with air, because he worries about Castiel, out there on his own, stranded, some mechanic taking advantage and charging him extra for repairs the Continental doesn’t need, services Castiel can’t afford even with the credit cards Dean gives him. He tests the brakes, fixes the tape deck, leaves a handful of cassettes in the passenger seat. He changes the air filter and changes the oil and writes down the mileage on a piece of tape that he sticks to the inside of the windshield so he’ll know when she’ll need it changed again, then he drives her around the block to the nearest gas station and fills up the tank.
He talks to her with his hands, whispering. He says things like Keep him safe. Bring him back. He tells her how much he worries. How much he cares. He asks her, Should I tell him? Should I just say…?
but she doesn’t have an answer for him.
He says Don’t let him know. This is just between us.
–
He takes Castiel on a test drive before he leaves.
He drives slow. He takes the long route, lets himself get stopped at every traffic light and stop sign. Dean does his best talking while driving in cars. That’s where he feels the safest, behind the steering wheel, eyes on the road. This is where he wants to be when he says the hard things that don’t want to come out. This is where he wants to be when it’s just him and Castiel. This is where he thinks he might be brave enough to say some of the things he is wanting to say.
Castiel tells him about his dreams, about falling asleep and seeing colors, shapes, waking up breathless with feelings of terror and worry and fear, and other things, ones Castiel can’t even identify. It feels like being buried alive, Castiel explains, it feels like a tight band around your chest. It’s awful. It’s wonderful. It makes him feel like his chest will splinter apart. Dean thinks he knows what it is. He feels it whenever Castiel leans in close.
“Sounds like love,” Dean says. Castiel is silent. Dean keeps his eyes on the road.
“Could I fall in love?” Castiel asks. “Like this? The way I am?”
Dean wonders, too. He has seen Castiel cry, now, over the smallest things. He has heard Castiel sing along to a song and watched him smile and eat a burrito with a fork and fall asleep. Maybe it’s possible. Maybe Castiel could fall in love, with whatever’s growing up and tangled around that grace of his.
“I think maybe. You in love, Cas?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel says slowly. “I think so. How do you know you love someone?”
“I think you just know,” Dean says. “I think you’ll know when it happens.”
“Have you ever been in love?” Castiel asks, and Dean goes quiet. Keeps his eyes on the road.
“I think I have been,” he says, though he’s not sure. He’s reevaluating his life, looking back on years through new eyes. He’s thought that what he’s felt before was love, but that was before he’d watched Castiel close his eyes and fall asleep in the passenger’s seat beside him, that was before he’d dreamed about leaning in and kissing the corner of his mouth.
He’s always held himself back from taking that last step off the cliff, always kept a small part of himself back, tucked away in a private corner of his heart no one could reach. But Dean is changing, he’s not who he used to be. He’s something different, something new, and it makes him feel wild and unsettled. He looks at Castiel and sees something wild and new in him, too, and it stirs him up, Castiel with his wild new soul still growing, Dean with all this new growth on his blistered old soul, burnt like layers of scar tissue, and Dean is falling in love.
“Are you in love, Dean?” Castiel asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think so.”
–
Castiel falls asleep in the car with his head thrown back against the backseat and his hands sliding out of his lap to settle on the seat by Dean’s thigh and Dean watches it all, lets it happen, keeps driving and watches Castiel. It’s a habit, it’s his new normal, it’s what he’ll be thinking about when his head hits the pillow that night. Castiel sleeps for eight miles and for the ten minutes Dean leaves the Continental running outside the bunker, until Dean places his hand on Castiel’s thigh, just above his knee, and squeezes.
Castiel stirs, and opens his eyes.
Dean shuts off the engine. He hands the keys over to Castiel.
“She’ll run like new,” he says. The Continental knows that’s not what he means. She knows all his secrets now. He has sagged against her side and whispered, Don’t let him go. She can tell his bullshit for what it is.
Castiel asks, “Was there something that you wanted to tell me?”
Here is Castiel, growing this new, wild soul, and here is Dean, with his healing up like the scab over a wound. He finds himself wondering if it is better to refuse to say the kind of words he’s been wanting to say after all.
“No,” Dean says. “Not a thing.”
Castiel smiles, and Dean looks at him, and looks at him. He can’t turn his eyes away.
“Drive safe,” Dean says. He thinks what he means is I love you, but Castiel can’t hear that yet. So he loads the trunk with Castiel’s bags, closes the door after Castiel climbs inside the driver’s seat. Watches her shine like the sun as she pulls away.