Chapter Text
There was a timid knock on the bunker door. So timid Dean almost didn’t hear it, but he sprinted up the stairs, flinging the door open to reveal the weariest looking Cas he had ever laid eyes on. They just gaped at each other for a moment, breath’s held before Dean pulled him into a tight embrace and Cas melted against him. After a moment Cas wrapped his arms around Dean’s shoulders. Dean could feel how tense Cas was, like he was holding everything back, tucked behind a thin wall that was badly damaged.
Dean realized they had probably held onto each other for longer than it was socially acceptable for two friends to hug, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. There was no Benny to emerge from the woods, no Sam in the doorway, and Cas didn’t seem to mind so Dean was just going to hang on for as long as he let him.
“Dean,” Cas croaked out. “I’m human.” Cas’s voice cracked as he buried his face against the side of Dean’s neck, he was shaking.
Dean tightened his arms around Cas, willing him to just let go, just this once. Cas choked out a sob, his cracked wall finally breaking. “Shhh…” Dean cooed, rubbing his back and swaying them both side to side like he used to do for Sammy when they were little. “It’s gonna be alright Cas, I promise. It’s gonna be alright.” He smoothed down the back of his hair, holding him closer to his chest like you would a child. Cas nuzzled in closer, but Cas had never cried before and he was breathing too shallowly, he was gonna have a panic attack if he didn’t breathe. “Cas, buddy, you gotta breathe. Breathe with me, take deep breaths.”
He took in a big breath to show Cas and Cas matched his breathing, calming down. Cas sniffled and took one last deep breath before unwinding his arms from around Dean and taking a step back. Dean let his arms drop from around Cas’s waist reluctantly. “I’m sorry for my outburst,” Cas couldn’t even look him in the eye.
“Cas,” Dean said, but Cas still wouldn’t look at him. “Castiel,” he said sternly, settling a hand on his shoulder. Cas finally looked up at him. “Don’t apologize for having fucking feelings, alright? You’re allowed to be upset once every thousand years.”
Castiel looked at him so gratefully he thought he might be hugged again. “Thank you,” Cas told him quietly.
“Don’t worry about it. Now come on, you look filthy, and you probably haven’t eaten in 3 years so, let’s get inside.” Cas followed him indoors and to the showers near the back of the bunker. “Do you know how to, uh, work the shower?” Dean asked, feeling a little awkward. Cas looked like he wanted to huff and roll his eyes but just shook his head. “Alright well it’s not that hard. Here, you just grab the knob and turn. If it’s too hot, turn it back this way, and vice versa.” Castiel nodded and began to stiffly shrug off his clothes. “Ok then, I’m gonna make you a sandwich or something. Just come find me when you’re done.” Dean grabbed a towel from down the hall and doubled back to leave it next to the shower stall.
Dean wouldn’t have been able to even begin to articulate the amount of relief he felt knowing that Cas was alive. He was safe and he was home in the bunker with Dean. Dean grabbed a few slices of bread and some ham and cheese as he began to make Cas a sandwich. Even if he was completely human for the first time, he was alive and everything else they could work through. They would have to. Because Dean couldn’t lose Cas, not again.
Dean finished Cas’s sandwich and laid it on the table before pulling out a chair for himself and sitting down heavily. He was tired, he had been so tense waiting for a phone call from Cas these past few days he had barely slept. Barely done anything besides sit around biting his nails and wishing he didn’t feel so completely useless. Sam couldn’t take the sitting around anymore. He had left yesterday to go gank a ghost a few towns over. He had tried to get Dean to come with him but he wanted to stay here in case Cas came. Well, at least Dean had been right.
Dean drummed his fingers on the table, glancing at the clock on the wall. Cas had been in there for a while now. He wondered if he should go check on him. The guy had barely been human a week, maybe he slipped. Dean’s fretting eventually got the better of him and he made his way back to the showers.
“Cas?” He called, knocking on the wall beside the open door and ducking his head to avoid seeing anything. No answer. Dean looked up to find Cas crouching beneath the shower, blood pooling around his feet and down the drain. He bolted forward. “Cas! What the hell happened?”
Cas didn’t move but his arms were wrapped around his shoulders and when he got closer he could see bloody scratches scouring his back and blood under his fingernails. Dean dropped to his knees in front of him, grabbing his hands and prying them off of his shoulders. Cas still refused to look at him, trembling under the steaming water.
“Cas?” Dean asked him softly. He had a faraway look in his eyes like he wasn’t completely there with Dean.
“I could feel them…” Cas muttered. “I feel it like an open wound but there’s nothing there. It wasn’t right.”
Dean could feel tears sting the back of his own eyes. He also felt anger boiling deep in him. It was his own shitty instincts to get mad at the people he loved instead giving them what they really needed. He took a breath and pushed his own anger aside so he could be there for Cas. “Did you wash your hair?” Dean asked.
Cas finally looked up at him, utterly confused as to why Dean would ask him such a mundane question. “What?”
“Did you at least wash your hair before you scratched all the skin off your back?” Dean asked, a little sharper.
Cas shook his head and Dean sighed, pulling him up into a standing position and repositioning him under the spray.
“You need to wash you hair and we need to clean out the wounds on your back so we can bandage it.”
He grabbed the shampoo and squirted a generous amount into Cas’s dirty hair while Cas just watched him like he was insane. He tried his best to not get his own clothes soaked as he worked the shampoo through Cas’s hair. “What are you doing?”
“I’m washing your hair since you don’t know how to apparently,” Dean grumbled. Dean grabbed a bunch of the soapy bubbles from the top of Cas’s head and wiped it on his chest. “There, spread that around and try to scrub some of the dirt off yourself.”
Cas did what he was told as Dean washed the shampoo out of his hair and turned the heat on the shower down before pushing Cas further under the spray to rinse the blood off his back. He was still bleeding but not as badly as when Dean first found him. He shut off the water and handed Cas the towel.
“Okay, umm towel yourself off and I’m gonna go get the first aid kid.”
When Dean came back in with the first aid kit (a roll of ace bandages, an old half empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, a needle, and some dental floss), Cas had the towel wrapped around his waist, not looking like head really bothered to towel off any other part of himself. Dean grabbed a small hand towel, Cas had to be dry for the most part or the bandages were just gonna slide right off. Dean approached and turned him around slowly to inspect his back. Luckily he wouldn’t have to stitch anything up, but it was hard to look at what his friend had done to himself.
There were two big bloody gashes where Dean assumed Cas’s wings once were. He poured some rubbing alcohol onto the towel in his hand. “This is gonna sting a little.” Cas didn’t reply. Dean swiped delicately at the wounds in his back, Cas flinched slightly each time he did but didn’t make a sound. Dean finally finished cleaning out his wounds and used the other end of the towel to dry off his chest so he could wrap the bandages around him. “Here, lift up your arms so I can wrap the bandage around you.”
Cas did as he was told and Dean stood in front of him to wrap the bandages around, fingers brushing his chest each time he did. Dean studied Cas’s face as he bandaged him. Cas looked utterly lost, he looked shell shocked and he looked broken. Dean finished wrapping the bandages around him and smoothed a hand down his chest for no reason in particular. He stopped over Cas’s heart.
Cas dragged his eyes from the floor to look at him. His brows were furrowed and Dean was hit with how stark the contrast between this Castiel was versus the one he had first met in that barn all those years ago. Things had changed so much since then. They stared at each other for another few moments before Dean let his hand fall.
“Come on, Cas.” He nodded towards the door and began to make his way towards his room. “You can borrow some of my clothes and then you need to eat.” He dug around in his drawer before handing Cas some boxers and sweatpants and his grey AC/DC t-shirt, it was soft. “You can just change in here and come meet me in the kitchen, okay?”
Cas nodded and Dean went to wait for him in the kitchen. He poured a large glass of water while he waited, remembering how thirsty he had been when he climbed out of hell. He realized falling from heaven and climbing up from hell weren’t exactly the same things but he figured they might have some of the same side effects. He looked up when he heard shuffling to find Cas standing in the doorway, looking bashful and more unsure of himself than Dean had ever seen the man.
He seemed to be having some sort of internal debate before just pulling out the seat across from Dean and sitting down. He let Cas eat in silence, just basking in the glow of being near his friend. Cas finished gulping down his water and yawned so long that Dean began to think he might be able hold his breath longer than Phelps.
“Alright, come on, Cas. Time for bed.”
Cas shuffled after him sleepily. There was a spare bedroom around here beside the one Kevin was using. He led them there and swung the door open to show Cas his new room, right across the hall from Dean’s. Dean told Cas this as he flopped down on top of the bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. Cas was watching Dean expectantly and Dean realized he had just been staring at Cas.
Dean sighed. “Cas you gotta get under the covers.”
“Oh,” Cas wormed his way under the covers and turned to lay on his side after trying his back and wincing at the pain. “Thank you, Dean.” Cas told him quietly, voice brimming with sincerity. “For everything.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?” He left, leaving the door open a crack so some of the light would spill in from the down the hallway. He didn’t know if fallen angels were scared of the dark or not. He kicked off his slightly damp jeans and crawled into bed, exhaustion pulling him into sleep immediately.
Dean was startled awake by a shout coming from across the hall. He looked at his alarm clock and saw that it was still the middle of the night. He climbed quickly out of bed, flinging the door to Cas’s room open to find him trapped in a bundle of his sheets. He was sweating and shaking. He kept shouting and mumbling, “No! I can’t… Please Naomi… please don’t make me hurt him.” He whimpered and Dean just watched, shocked and unsure of what to do. “No! I won’t hurt him! I won’t!”
“Cas!” Dean grabbed his shoulder and shook him a bit. “Cas wake up, you’re having a bad dream.”
Cas jolted awake, sitting up and looking around the room in a panic before his eyes landed on Dean. Dean realized his cheeks were wet and sat down gently on the bed beside him. “Dean?”
“Yeah, Cas, it’s me. You were having a bad dream.”
“I… that was a dream? But… it felt so real.” Cas still looked terrified and his sweaty bangs were sticking to his forehead.
Dean pushed his hair back off his forehead, running his fingers through it and hoping it was soothing and not creepy. Cas leaned into the touch so he guessed it was the former. Dean made to put his hand back in his lap but Cas grabbed it and held on.
“How do I know that this isn’t a dream?”
“Does it feel like a dream?”
“No. But… neither did the other one.”
“This isn’t a dream Cas.”
Cas looked at him for a minute, like he was trying to see through him, past him. “Okay,” he finally conceded. Dean stood up to leave but Cas held on tighter to his hand. Dean lifted an eyebrow, looking pointedly at their hands. Cas swallowed nervously, looking back at their hands instead of at Dean as he blurted out, “Can- can you stay? Please?”
“I don’t know Cas… I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“I just… I don’t want to be alone.” He looked back up at Dean with pleading eyes. “Please.”
Dean knew he couldn’t say no to Cas when he looked at him like that. And what’s more he didn’t want to say no. “Alright,” Dean conceded. “Scooch over.”
Cas released his hand and wiggled his way to other side of the bed. They lay on their sides, facing each other and just breathing softly into the darkness. It was a little uncomfortable, mostly because even though Dean couldn’t really see him- since he had shut the door before climbing into the bed- he knew that Cas was just staring at him in the dark. “Cas?” Dean whispered, feeling like he was ten years old again, whispering to Sam in the dark of their motel room.
“Yes?”
“What were you dreaming about?” He hesitated to say the next part when he felt Cas stiffen across from him. “You kept saying… that you wouldn’t hurt someone. Did… did they make you torture people in heaven?”
“No.”
Dean fought the urge to sigh, if you gave him yes or no questions he would only give you yes or no answers. “So what were you dreaming about?” Dean prodded. He could sense Cas hesitating to tell him. “I won’t judge you or anything, sometimes it just helps to talk about it. At least that’s what Sam always says.”
“I didn’t torture people in heaven. Naomi made me kill someone. One person, more than a thousand times.”
“How did you kill one person a thousand times?”
“They were… a replica of the real person. She was training me, so I wouldn’t hesitate when it came time to kill the real person.”
Dean started to get a sick feeling in his stomach, thinking he already knew the answer when he asked quietly, “Who was it?”
“You,” Cas responded, so quietly that Dean might not have heard him if he wasn’t two feet away.
“The crypt?” He asked.
“Yes,” there was a slight delay in Cas’s answer and Dean wondered if Cas had nodded before realizing he couldn’t see him. Dean wasn’t really sure what to do with this information. “I’m so sorry Dean,” Cas choked out.
That took Dean aback. “Why?”
“I killed you, hundreds of times Dean. A thousand times. You begged me to stop and I killed you.” Cas’s voice broke on the last few words and Dean reached out, trying to find him in the dark. He found his hands outstretched between them and entwined their fingers.
“Cas you didn’t kill the real me. When it really counted you couldn’t do it.”
Cas wiggled closer, clutching at Dean’s fingers like they were a lifeline, hell maybe they were. It reminded Dean of purgatory, just clinging to each other in the dark like this.
“Cas, in the crypt…” Dean took in a shaky breath. He needed Cas to know. “Even when I was being beaten to within an inch of my life I couldn’t find the courage to say what I really meant. I said I need you, and I do, but what I wanted to say was that I love you, Cas.”
“I knew what you meant,” Cas told him, he was close enough now that Dean could feel the heat coming off his body. Cas placed a hand on Dean’s chest, moving his palm around until he found Dean’s steady heart beat.
“Oh,” was all Dean could think to say.
“I love you too, Dean. Did you not know that?”
Dean couldn’t speak for a moment and he was sure Cas had felt his heart rate spike at those three damn words. “No,” Dean finally managed to squeak out.
Cas sighed and moved his hand from Dean’s chest to the back of his neck, pulling him until their foreheads rested together. Dean let his eyes shut. “Dean I fell for you, before I even really knew you. I rebelled against heaven for you. I almost broke the world, for you. I went mad trying to redeem myself to you. Then I went to purgatory with you. And even under heaven’s most powerful mind control, I couldn’t kill you, because I love you.”
Dean cupped Cas’s face in his rough hand and realized there were tears staining his cheeks once again. He wiped them away with his finger tips and felt tears track down his own cheeks. And for maybe the first time in his life he wasn’t crying because he was holding in unimaginable pain. Cas loved him, and nothing about that could ever hurt. He kissed Cas’s temple and wrapped him in his arms again, holding him close. “Go to sleep, angel.”