Chapter Text
Dean is pissed off, and justifiably so in his opinion. This hunt wasn't supposed to be anything more than a milk run, but since when are things ever easy for them? That cursed Winchester luck hangs over their heads like a freshly sharpened guillotine waiting to strike. So of course, what was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill haunting turned into a full-blown shitshow. By now this was so routine, they could almost pull compasses out of thin air, and watch with faces set in grim resignation as things took a turn south.
It was Cas, as it was always seeming to be lately. Whether the semi-fallen angel was in trouble or was this week's big bad himself, Dean was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t put a good luck charm on him. Dean had called him family enough, but fuck if he hadn’t inherited their same penchant for near-constant peril.
They had driven their way from upper Texas to the sleepy town of West Fork, Arkansas. He and Sam were fresh off a werewolf hunt, which did nothing to improve their moods as they thought of their loyal, if overbearing, friend Garth. It was then that Cas had popped into the backseat, the gentle rustle of wings no longer startling enough to cause Dean to wrench the wheel. “What’s wrong?” Dean asked, face carefully blank as he caught Cas’ sea-glass blue eyes in baby’s rearview mirror. “Nothing, in fact, there’s been an unexpected lull of activity amongst the angels. I have come merely to ask if I may be of assistance on one of your hunts. I dislike, as you say, “sitting on my hands”.”
In true Cas fashion, Dean could almost see the air quotes suspended either side of the man in his rearview. And maybe if Cas hadn’t endeavored to cut Dean’s heart out of his chest with a single personal eccentricity, he coulda told Cas to beat it. Even Dean knew quiet was suspicious coming from the crafty angels, and he hadn’t spent the last Milena up their asses as Cas had. But Cas had hit him right where he was still sore, you don’t get over your best friend’s death that quick, even if god snaps him back. And it wasn’t as if Dean didn’t know what it was like to need a job, a purpose, to keep you going.
So instead of using his seasoned hunter’s instincts, he spoke with the last willfully naive part of himself he had. Small embers of hope he'd managed to keep from getting crushed under John’s steel-toed boot. “Yeah,” Dean said, “sure. Stick around for a while, and we’ll see where you can be “of assistance”.” Dean doggedly ignored Sam, who was shooting him increasingly apprehensive looks in his peripheral. He looked just about ready to argue the obvious, the angels were up to no good, When dean reared his head back up into view of the rearview mirror and gave a toothy smile to Cas.
Dean gave his smiles away about as freely as people drink on their twenty-first. That is to say, very and with about as false of bravado as he was able to muster. Cas, for his part, just seemed bewildered. His face was all scrunched up, head tilted at a slight angle before he apparently decided on a course of action. He looked into Dean’s glaringly shit-eating grin and grinned back. But, oh, that grin.
It was goofy, and awkward, and so Castiel it almost gave Dean deja vu. Like if he just closed his eyes he could remember Cas lifting his lips crookedly, revealing only one halfa his pearly whites. His eyes crinkling, as they so often had, but instead of cold rage or bewildered confusion, they scrunched up in joy. Like he was staring at something he loved, and being blinded by it. It tripped Dean up, and hard. He felt breathless and dazed, looking back at the road before he really did wrench the wheel into oncoming traffic, no angelic flight required.
Eyes facing safely ahead, he glimpsed Sam openly gaping at him in his peripheral. Sam set his lips into a thin line and mimicked Dean’s previous move, tearing his gaze away and looking blankly towards the highway. Maybe his face had lost some of its color, and sure his expression resembled that one he always got on hunts, lips quirked, right before he’d lean towards dean with a “get this.” The one that meant he was fitting pieces together, finally seeing the whole picture. But. There was always a but. At least he’d managed to get his little brother off his back about letting Cas stay for now. Sammy wasn’t stupid, Dean knew that. Little brothers saw everything.
Dean didn’t wanna think about what his face looked like when he saw Cas’s smile. Dodge one bullet, get nailed with another. Dean often made jokes about guys, jokes that no one took seriously. Just little immature comments, easily perceived as the only thing that had actually stuck with Dean after public school. Usually when Dean made one Sammy would pull out bitch face number three, and begin to ramble about how humor like that perpetuated homophobia, bla bla bla. Dean stopped listening after about the first couple’a words.
He somehow doubted he’d be getting that particular lecture anytime soon. Because, when he made those little crass remarks, he was almost always one-hundred percent serious. All these years keeping a closet company, and all it had taken to out himself was a single facial expression. All in all, it wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to him, and it certainly wasn’t the, heh, end of the world.
The back seat’s leather creaked, pulling dean out of his gay, or, he guessed, bi, crisis. And apparently not a moment too soon. It had already been sorta late when Cas decided to show up and make this drive a memorable one, maybe about sunset. It was definitely night now if the full moon hanging heavy in the sky was anything to go by. With his thoughts finally calming down he realized just how bone-tired he’d become. He was driving off the interstate exit into Arkansas now, an eight-hour drive not including pit stops. Normally Dean would be able to drive eight hours straight without breaking a sweat, Sammy’s light snores and the low crooning of the classic rock station his only company. But other than the initial plugging of weeping wounds, they’d gone from hunt to road trip with no shitty motels in between.
Dean himself is currently sporting minty-fresh stitches to the right calf, which he’d hardly felt the first half of the drive, thanks to fading adrenaline, and three expired Tylenol that are probably turning his stomach lining to swiss cheese right about now. Point in case, he’d hardly felt it the first half of the drive, right about now it was achin’ like a sonuva bitch.
The sign welcoming them, or at least him and Cas, as Sam had dropped off a while ago, into Searcy, Arkansas was a beautiful sight. Dean drove past a few cemeteries, farms, and lone gas stations hovering on the outskirts of town until finally, blessedly, he followed the main road out to its center. He passed up the fancier tourist-catered hotels, not that this looked like a town that saw many, until he came upon a Super-8. The seedy-looking parking lot exuded familiarity and temporary rest.
As he parks baby and gets out to buy a room Cas shifts in his seat, making the leather creak. And well, Dean hadn’t forgotten Cas was with them, couldn’t forget, he just hadn’t thought, before now, of what the sleeping situation would look like. Dean’s hand comes up to cup the back of his neck uncomfortably, clearing his throat “So uh, Cas.” Cas looks up from where he’d been idly picking a fleck of dried blood off of his trench coat. “Yes, Dean?” he questions. Dean looks into Cas’s eyes silently admiring the way the neon vacancy sign cuts through the dark. It’s placed just right to shine a stip of light across his face, making his eyes appear even more ethereal than usual.
“D’you want your own room, or?” Dean asks quietly. Frowning, Cas responds, “Dean, you know I do not require sleep.” Dean can feel the heat building high in his cheeks, “Yeah, well, are you planning to just fuck off for a while then? Cause we need it.” He pointedly eyes Sam’s drooped form in the passenger seat. Cas raises an eyebrow at him, chiding. “Of course not, I asked to come along because I wished to help. I will watch over you and Sam while you sleep, as I used to.” Dean’s embarrassment increases tenfold, blushing cherry red. Dean Winchester does not blush, ever. He's smooth and suave, a real man’s man. Okay, a man’s man who likes himself some men, but in the end that just adds to the culmination of testosterone, so.
Anyways, Castiel, having been up his ass for some years now, at first at heaven's request, and now of his own free will must of course know that too. Thank god he still seems to know fuck all about human reactions. “Dean, are you getting sick? Your face is red. You should have told me, you know my grace can-” “I’m not sick Cas, jeez, it’s just a little hot out here s’all.” “Are you sure? My grace keeps me at a constant temperature, but the leaves falling and the migration of birds lead me to believe that it is fall. Is fall not known to be a cold season?” Great, one misdirect and he’s turned his angel buddy’s perception of the seasons on its head. “Yeah, must be global warming and all that,” Dean mutters, backing away from Cas’s open door, and therefore that whole awkward encounter.
He strides up to the lobby, desperately trying to ignore the prickle of a steady gaze on his back. It's only kind of a relief to be free of it when the sliding doors close. The carpeting is a frankly hideous red with little green polka dots forming a grid across the floor. The wallpaper is beige and peeling, clearly a bit water-damaged, and overall having seen better days. The woman at the desk is nice enough though, for a gal working the night shift in a shithole. If that even counts for anything towards a hotel like this. Dean pays for the single room with doubles and a pull-out couch for Cas to sit on. It’s more than he’d usually go for, but if the guy insists on being a creep, (Dean tries hard to squash the safety he feels remembering those nights when Cas showed up to wait on them, watching over them throughout the night.) then he might as well do it comfortably.
He walks out, two key cards in hand to see Sam awake again, and sitting in baby’s driver seat. “Where ya go’in Sammy?” “To get some grub, I’m starving and I know you’ve gotta be too.” Yeah, neither of them had eaten in what most normal people would probably consider an unhealthy amount of time “Cas too?” he asks questioningly while he slips one of the key cards into Sam’s awaiting hand. “Yeah,” Sam says, searching Dean’s face, no doubt thinking of earlier, “if that’s alright with you?” “course. We’re in room 140,” Dean responds, tone trying for light but not quite hitting the mark. He turns to walk away, “Man, the keys?” “yeah, yeah,” Dean replies, fishing the keys out of his jeans pocket. He tosses them to Sam, who catches them effortlessly.
This time when he turns his back to baby no one stops him. He walks to the room to get some much-needed sleep, the faint music of baby’s rumbling engine following him up to the door. The keycard takes three swipes before it finally grants him entry. The smell in the room ain’t great, but that's pretty much to be expected. At least it doesn’t smell like anyone’s been chainsmoking in here, as it had in their last room. It’s more of a lingering musty-type scent. Disregarding it, he makes his way to the bed, wishing that he’d remembered to grab his duffle before Sam sped off. He stinks like dog, and what shitty cleanup he’d been able to get done in truck stops along the way clearly wasn’t cutting it.
But, he guesses he’d have to catch a shower later, and might as well get some shut-eye before Sam and Cas get back with the grub. He shucks his boots off and tosses them down by the end of the bed closest to the door. He tries to always snag it before Sam has a chance to call first dibs. It’s clearly the one more in direct line of danger if something were to break in. Sammy is all he has, he thinks, and if it came down to that he’d much rather be in the line of fire saving Sam’s ass or die trying. The jeans and flannel are placed atop his boots, while his ring and necklace are placed more safely on the bedside table.
Now in proper sleep attire, a band tee, and boxers, he face plants none too gently upon the bed. His injured calf complains loudly, but he can’t find it in himself to care, distracted by an unexpected pain in his hip. It seems a small object under the covers is digging into it harshly, no doubt his own fault for jumping into the bed like that. He sits up and draws the covers back from the mattress. Hidden underneath them is a plain, pastel blue pacifier. Dean is struck at the sight of it.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, there’re some things you gotta understand. The things Dean’s been through, his non-existent childhood, compounded by the much fresher trauma of hell, all those feelings had to go somewhere.
So it goes like this, a while after he’d been raised from ‘perdition’, at the tail end of a particularly bad hunt, his mind goes pleasantly foggy. He giggles like he did the one time he’d tried getting stoned, at the stupidest shit. By the time it goes away he can’t even mention it to Sam, can’t crush his tentative hope at finally seeing dean so happy-go-lucky, even if the whole thing was a bit weird. At first, he simply thinks he’s finally gone cuckoo for coco puffs. Even after he steals Sam’s laptop later that night, and feverishly googles his “symptoms” until at least two am, what he ultimately finds doesn’t exactly sway him to believe his fears weren’t confirmed. Cause like, there’s nothing wrong with involuntary age regression as a coping mechanism for all the cute ladies Dean’s seen in these ‘littlespace’ blogs.
But he’s Dean-fucking-Winchester, and there’s no way he’s age-regressing, involuntary or otherwise.
Except when has life ever just given him a goddamn break? Apparently, where there's a will there's a fucking way because he’s given up on fighting this. Among other things, his research revealed that if he didn’t regress on his own after particularly stressful events, it was more than likely that his beaten-down mind would just unpredictably give way to that of a toddler. His duffle had gained a few Hotwheels in the following months, snatched from shelves when neither Sam nor the security cameras were looking. Hotwheels were a cool, even manly, toy. He hadn’t yet allowed himself to secret away things he was unwilling to admit he even wanted, like this blue binky, probably left behind by some hurried young mother.
His mood plummeted at the sight of it, like he needed any reminders of why he and Cas could never be together. Because while Dean liked men, and it was wholly possible Cas, the genderless being of celestial intent, did as well, there were obvious issues with the idea. He doubted Sam’d agree, but there were some closets that just couldn’t be exited with one poorly timed grin.
And of course, there was the fact that Dean wanted things from Castiel, with him, that seemed so twisted out of his hopeful little mind. Cas already treated him a bit like a kid at times, and who could blame him? The guy was millennia older than Dean, of course he’d treat him as a younger being, it was only natural. But saying he wanted Cas to act as his father, but do it right, unlike how John had, and take care of him?
It was far too much to ask of an angel who’d already thrown his reputation with heaven to the wayside for Dean’s unworthy ass. Not that he ever would ask it. Nevertheless, Dean, albeit reluctantly, shoved the pacifier deep into his boot, where no one but him would find it.
So deeply buried under the heap of defeated thoughts, dean barely noticed himself sinking into a deep, dreamless sleep.
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