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The bunker still looks like a crime scene.
Dean is right in the middle of trying to gloss over it with a joke when they find Cas. His first, absurd thought is If you needed help, why on earth did you come here?
He looks over at Sam, shares a silent conversation with him in the space of a glance:
Is this really happening?
Yeah.
That’s when he realizes. This doesn’t mean Cas trusts him. It just means he has nowhere else to go.
“Shit,” Dean says, holstering his gun and moving to Cas’ side. “Sam, help me get him up.” The first touch of his hand to Cas’ shoulder has him wincing in pain, and suddenly Dean is back with the Mark on his arm, a blade in his hand, Cas’ blood on his knuckles. “Sorry,” he mutters, shamed by the inadequacy of the apology.
Cas doesn’t respond one way or another. He’s too busy gritting his teeth and trying to breathe through the pain.
Sam slides up on Cas’ other side, hooking a hand under his arm and helping Dean lift him as gently as possible. “Don’t worry, Cas, we got you,” he says, when Cas makes a feeble attempt at supporting his own weight.
Dean bites back a hysterical laugh. Cas absolutely has something to worry about. Dean is probably going to hurt Cas no matter where he touches him.
They carefully drag Cas to the bunker’s bathroom, depositing him on a low stool by the sink. Sam starts digging through the cabinets for first aid supplies while Dean works at peeling away Cas’ ruined clothes.
“Jesus,” Dean says, as he unbuttons Cas’ shirt to find his chest covered in wounds, still slowly oozing. “What the hell happened?”
Cas tries to laugh bitterly and doesn’t quite manage it. He sways in Dean’s grasp. He says, “I prayed for help.”
Dean maneuvers Cas to pull off his shirt, half because it needs to be done and half because he doesn’t want to see the expression on Cas’ face. “And?”
“And this is what I got instead.”
Dean could be angry about it, if he tried -- about Cas looking for help from someone else before he came to him and Sam. He doesn’t want to try, though. He knows all too well what it’s like to pray and not get the answer you were hoping for.
At any rate, he’s really not in any position to judge, if what he did when Cas was trying to help him was any indication. He tries not to think about it.
Sam steps in to save Dean from having to parse his thoughts any further, exert the effort necessary to whip them up into a reasonable response. Sam sets the supplies on the counter and kneels next to Cas. He says, “God, Cas, I’m sorry.”
Cas swallows hard and manages to lift his head enough to meet Sam’s eyes. “Thank you, Sam.”
“I’m just glad you--” Sam starts, then frowns. “What happened to your eyes?”
“Rowena,” Cas says. “It’s a spell. Every time it perceives a threat, it activates, and I start attacking and I can’t stop-- I can’t--”
“Hey,” Sam says, laying a comforting hand on Cas’ arm, away from his injuries. “It’s okay. we’re gonna do our best to be gentle, all right? We’re not gonna do anything to trigger it.”
Speak for yourself, Dean thinks, and tries to forget the feel of Cas’ bones crunching beneath his fists.
By some unspoken agreement, Dean holds Cas up as Sam stitches his wounds. Sam was right; even though Cas must be in massive amounts of pain, based on the way he’s fisted his hand into Dean’s shirt with as much strength as he can muster, he breathes through it and the spell remains dormant.
Dean wants to think it means he was wrong, that Cas does trust them, after all. If anything, though, it only means he trusts Sam. After all, he’s the one holding the needle.
Dean would test the theory himself, but he doesn’t think he could stomach it. Instead, he punishes himself by forcing himself to watch every slow stitch that Sam makes.
When Sam finally finishes, he sets his tools aside and hands Dean a damp rag. “I’m gonna grab him a change of clothes,” Sam says, then leaves Dean to mop up the blood.
Dean can feel Cas’ eyes on him as soon as Sam steps out of the room, can feel Cas watching his face as he presses the washcloth against the stitches. He works as quickly as he can, praying Sam returns soon enough that he doesn’t have to make conversation.
“I’m sorry,” Cas says, breaking the silence.
No such luck, Dean thinks, and says, “What the hell for?”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Cas says.
Dean looks up sharply, something catching in his throat when he sees the look on Cas’ face, pained and pleading all at once. “Christ, Cas, you didn’t--” Dean starts, but Cas doesn’t let him finish.
“I was trying--” Cas closes his eyes, inhales deliberately. “I meant to have cleaned myself up by the time you returned. I didn’t-- didn’t want to worry you and Sam. But I couldn’t manage it. I-- the curse gave me the energy to kill my siblings, but it won’t give me enough for anything else. It took all I had just to-- just to get home.” His voice breaks on the last word.
Dean is so stunned by this admission that he doesn’t move as Cas leans forward, dropping his head onto Dean’s shoulder. He holds himself perfectly still as Cas sits there like that, arms hanging limp at his sides, crying silently into Dean’s shirt save for the occasional shuddering breath.
He’s seized by the sudden urge to comfort Cas, but he can’t bring himself to move, to do anything at all. He’s shaken by the current situation in a way he isn’t shaken by much anymore. Before he can puzzle over it much, he finds himself thinking, Suppose it’s because it’s Cas. When he tries to break it down, he decides it’s because Cas used to only ever have two facial expressions: serious and seriously confused. The addition of the concerned face was bad enough. The caring face was even worse. This is on a whole new level, though. Cas doesn’t cry. It’s just not something he does. Except he’s doing it now, and Dean’ll be damned if it isn’t like watching someone yawn. He’s watching Cas cry and starting to feel this familiar tightness in his chest now, too. He wills the sensation away, forcing himself to keep his breathing even, to fight against the inertia and do something.
Dean has just managed to move his hands up to rest on Cas’ back in a way he hopes is more consoling than painful when Sam steps back into the room. He looks up at Sam helplessly, but Sam simply sets down the clothes he was carrying and retreats back down the hallway.
Dean sighs.
Cas must misread it, because the next thing out of his mouth is another “I’m sorry,” breathed against Dean’s collarbone in a hoarse whisper.
Dean squeezes his eyes shut. “Stop,” he says. “Stop apologizing. I’m just glad you made it here, all right?”
Cas takes a few deep breaths. “Okay,” he says, finally. He keeps his eyes closed as Dean pushes him back up into a sitting position, finishes dabbing at the blood on his chest and placing bandages over the stitches.
Once Cas is all patched up, Dean helps him up and into the change of clothes Sam left. He’s trying his best to handle Cas gently. He’s glad that’s all he has the urge to do, because it feels like it’s been so long since he felt the urge to do anything other than hurt the people around him. He was gentle with Jenna and Amara, and now he can do the same for Cas.
Still, he finds himself thinking: Don’t you go disappearing on me, too.
For his part, Cas is obviously still in pain, but he brushes off Dean’s apologies, too, the sorrys he mutters every time Cas inhales sharply. Cas brushes the spot where the Mark used to be with trembling fingers. He says, “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Dean’s scoffs incredulously, whether at Cas’ concern or his assumption, he doesn’t know. “Yeah, well, ‘all right’ might be a bit of an overstatement,” he says, “but I’ve definitely been worse.” He finishes helping Cas into the fresh t-shirt, giving him a quick once-over now that he’s cleaned up. “C’mon, let’s get you to bed. You can bunk with me for tonight. We don't have any spare rooms set up.”
Speaking the words is its own kind of spell: he can feel sudden tingling heat starting at his lips and spreading through the rest of him.
Cas doesn’t seem to notice. He gives Dean that same sad look from before. He says, “Dean, I can’t, I--”
“Dude,” Dean interrupts. “I know you. You’re not gonna murder me in my sleep.” He isn’t actually sure he knows Cas, though, isn’t sure he knows what to make of the soft looks Cas keeps giving him, even after-- after everything.
“You don’t know that,” Cas says, because of course he would call Dean on his bullshit. “I’m trying as hard as I can to fight it, but I don’t know--”
“Well,” Dean says, “You have the urge to strangle me right now?”
“No, of course not.”
Dean wouldn’t blame him if he did, but he doesn’t say that. Instead, he rolls his eyes. “See?” he says. “It’s fine.”
Cas looks doubtful, but he nods and doesn’t protest as Dean hauls him up off the stool and down the hallway and onto Dean’s bed. He lets himself be helped under the covers and lies there quietly as Dean strips down to his t-shirt and boxers.
Dean hesitates by the bed before he gets in, asks Cas, “Is there anything you need? Besides a tailor.” He can’t seem to stop himself from going the usual route, from making one of his sad little attempts at humor to stop himself saying anything meaningful to Cas.
Cas lies there awkwardly, stiff and formal, straight as a board under the covers, and frowns up at Dean like he’s seriously considering the question, whether or not he gets the reference. Dean fidgets uncomfortably under the scrutiny, shifting from foot to foot until Cas sighs and closes his eyes and says, "I suppose not.”
“Great,” Dean says, even though neither of them is, and gets into bed and switches off the lamp.
He lies there in silence, flat on his back in accidental imitation of Cas’ awkward pose. He can hear Cas’ breathing, and he isn’t sure if that’s a good sign or a bad one.
“You asleep?” he asks, after a while, because Cas’ breathing hasn’t evened out, so he knows Cas is still awake. Then again, he isn’t sure whether or not Cas actually needs to sleep, or if he’s going to even if he does. Maybe he should have let it slide.
“No,” Cas says, unsurprisingly.
Dean hesitates. The fact that he can’t see Cas gives him just enough courage to ask, “You okay?”
There’s a long pause before Cas says, “No.” Also unsurprising. Still not what Dean was hoping for, though.
It’s weird, lying there on his back, trying to keep his distance in his own damn bed, so Dean sighs and rolls over onto his stomach. He shoves one arm under his pillow, and with the other he searches out Cas’ hand under the covers, twines their fingers together and rubs soothing circles against Cas’ palm with his thumb.
He swallows hard, drawing in a steadying breath. “This okay?” he asks, quietly.
“Yes,” Cas says, in the same way he had said “home” earlier, and that. That is surprising.
It’s what Dean’s still thinking about when he finally drops off to sleep.
When Dean wakes the next morning, his right hand is empty, and his left has fallen asleep where it’s still crushed under his pillow. Dean tries to tell himself Cas’ probably just couldn’t sleep. That this doesn’t mean anything. He holds onto the echo of Cas’ “yes” as reassurance, but his own arguments fail to persuade, as always. He sighs as he drags himself out of bed, tosses on some sweats and a robe, and braces himself for Cas’ absence.
He gets another surprise when he walks into the kitchen. Cas is sitting at the table, changed out of the clothes Sam had given him and back into his usual getup. He wonders if they should be insulted by this, by Cas’ conscious choice to reject their offering, or if it’s just Cas’ own particular brand of self-soothing: maybe he thinks that if holes in his clothes are gone, he can convince himself the holes in himself are gone, too.
As a concession to the actual truth of the matter, though, Sam has wrapped Cas in a blanket. Or he assumes it’s something Sam has talked Cas into, at least. This is something he and Cas have in common: they only ask for help when they’re desperate. They take these additional comforts only when someone else puts forth the effort to give more of a shit about them than they do about themselves.
Sam is in his exercise clothes, covered in sweat from the morning runs that not even this new apocalypse can deter him from. He’s kneeling in front of Cas, hand on his shoulder, and they’re talking in low voices.
Dean stands at a respectable distance until they’re done, pretending he isn’t trying to listen in, even though he knows he’s too far away to hear.
Dean forgets this, sometimes, that Sam and Cas are friends. That they talk about things when Dean isn’t around. That they probably talk about things in a way Dean and Cas never seem able to, a way Dean and Sam never seem able to. He sees the common denominator; he’s not an idiot.
He feels something it takes him a few seconds to identify as jealously. Over the casual way they’re talking, they’re touching. Dean can manage it in the dark, but only Sam can manage it in the light of day.
When whatever conversation they were having comes to an end, Sam stands, pulling back his hand. As he turns and starts walking toward the hallway, he finally sees Dean, nods at him from across the room. He claps Dean on the shoulder as he mounts the stairs, saying quietly, “Gonna take a shower. He’s all yours.” Dean tries not to read into the words.
Dean remains in the doorway, leaning against the frame, as he watches Cas sit hunched over the table. “Uh,” he says, once he’s sure Sam is out of earshot. “Hey, Cas. How you feeling?”
Cas repeats Dean’s typical response, the one that isn’t technically dishonest but isn’t all of the truth: “I’ve been better.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Dean says, instead of calling him on it. The thought of sitting at the table with Cas and making conversation freaks him out, so he says, “Lemme make you something to eat. It’ll make you feel better.”
He can’t see Cas as he heads to rummage through the cabinets, but he can hear his frown in his voice as he says, “Dean, I don’t need to--”
“I know,” Dean says, shutting the cabinet harder than he needs to. “But I do, and Sam does, and you can...you can choose not to, if you really don’t wanna. Just let me do this, all right?”
There are a few moments of silence before Cas says, “Okay.”
Dean’s pretty sure that at this point, they’ve shared more weighted silences than actual sentences. It’s probably unhealthy, but hey. Old habits.
Dean distracts himself with his continued search through the cabinets. The problem with this sudden urge to cook, he quickly realizes, is that it’s been awhile since he gave a shit about eating actual homemade meals instead of shitty diner or drive-through food, and consequently it’s been awhile since he bothered to buy groceries. There’s no way he can make a decent meal from the stale, leftover scraps they currently have in the kitchen, and now he has no more excuse to avoid talking to Cas.
He steels himself and goes to sit at the table, making the conscious decision to sit across from Cas rather than next to him. He sits there, watching Cas shaking and sweating and grimacing against the pain or the curse or both, and debates saying I’m glad you’re here until he decides it reminds him too much of wasted opportunities, sounds too needy and desperate. He tries to figure out what the hell else he can say instead while he waits for Sam to get out of the shower. He feels ridiculous when he realizes that’s what he’s doing. As if Cas is some burden that needs to be shuffled between them.
But no, that’s not right. It’s not that Cas is a burden. It’s that he’s a flight risk, even like this.
Because he’s a masochist, he asks, “So, couldn’t sleep?”
Cas shakes his head. “That’s not a mercy I’ve been granted, no,” he says, and Dean already regrets asking, regrets the assumptions he had been making. "I was-- I didn’t want to disturb you,” Cas adds, which makes it even worse, because it gets Dean wondering how long Cas had stayed there, asleep with Dean’s hand in his own, before he forced himself up and away.
“I--” Dean starts. “You weren’t--”
Sam chooses that moment to wander back into the kitchen, hair still dripping, sparing Dean the trouble of trying to articulate the rest of his response. It’s great, actually, because Sam’s reappearance means Dean can go to the store, try and work out what it is he’s feeling while he wanders the aisles.
“Finally,” Dean says, as Sam makes his way back over to the table. He stands. “I’m gonna do a grocery run, I’m starving.”
Sam frowns in response. Cas is giving him a vaguely hurt look. Dean bristles. “What?”
“Okay,” Sam says, as he takes Dean’s spot sitting across from Cas.
Dean shrugs in acceptance of the fact that he did something wrong and doesn’t know what it is and heads to the garage.
He blasts his music the whole way to the store, turns the volume up until he can feel it vibrating in his chest, and focuses on that. It’s only when he actually gets there, pulls into a parking spot in the crowded lot, that he turns it down and tries to come up with plan for what he’s going to make so he doesn’t end up wandering the aisles aimlessly. He turns the music down enough so he can think and tries to come up with a dish that sounds good. Except, he realizes, a few minutes in, he’s not trying to think of something that would be satisfying. He’s trying to come up with the perfect dish that will convince Cas to stay. And if that isn’t an exercise in futility, he sure doesn’t know what is.
He slams his hands against the steering wheel in frustration, but he goes on thinking about it, anyway.
He’s still debating when he’s startled by a car honking, some generic-looking sedan lingering behind the Impala, waiting for him to pull out so they can take his spot. He’s not in the mood to feel bad about wasting their time, so he mutters a “Fuck you, buddy” under his breath as he turns off the car. When he gets out, he strolls into the store with his hands in his pockets, resolutely ignoring the way the driver shoots past him dangerously quickly in the tiny parking lot.
It’s only once he’s grabbed a cart and made his way into the store that he remembers he still hadn’t decided on what to cook. He moves slowly through the crowded aisles, not caring that he’s probably in the way, and tries to think. He’s standing in the produce section when it hits him: the memory of his mother’s smile, of feeling safe and warm, of being tricked into eating broccoli because he couldn’t manage to separate it from the rice and the cheese.
So now he’s having broccoli-induced flashbacks. Fantastic.
He shoves a few crowns into a bag before maneuvering his cart through the rest of the store, grabbing the rest of the ingredients and tossing them into his cart before he can talk himself out of this entire stupid plan. He grabs some cleaning supplies, too, because he may be stuck on the idea of feeding his family, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten what else waits for him back at the bunker.
He lets himself shift into autopilot, stares into space as he waits in line, smiles pleasantly at the cashier, hauls his bags out to the car and tries to stop imagining Cas petulantly trying to pick broccoli out of his hypothetical casserole.
When he gets back to the bunker, Sam and Cas are still sitting at the kitchen table, Cas looking just as exhausted as Dean left him. Sam has retrieved his laptop and is fiddling around with it as he pretends not to be keeping an eye on Cas over the top of his screen.
“You want us to clear out while you cook?” Sam asks, because he knows how much Dean hates feeling crowded in the kitchen.
“No,” he says. He doesn’t even have to think about it. He wants them here, wants to make them sit in the kitchen so that the entire time he’s cooking, their presence can serve as a reminder that he at least has this much family he can care for.
Crowley would probably call it motherhenning, but he likes to think of it more as his way of making up for almost murdering them both.
He knows Cas doesn’t need to eat, but this is something he needs to do, maybe the only way he knows how to say what he wants to say. So he makes broccoli, cheese, and rice casserole and shoves plates in front of Sam and Cas before sitting down at the table with his own.
“How does it taste?” he asks, because it tastes like home to him, and he wants it to taste like that to Sam and Cas, too.
“It’s awesome,” Sam says, mouth half full. Predictably, he picked out the broccoli so he could eat that part first. Dean’ll take it.
He looks at Cas, next, watches the fork shaking slightly in his hand. Cas takes another bite, chews thoughtfully, swallows. “It tastes less like molecules than usual,” he says.
Dean rolls his eyes to cover up his disappointment. “Gee, thanks.”
“No, it’s…” Cas starts. His shoulders sag a little. “It’s very good. Thank you, Dean.” He looks so damn earnest that Dean feels his annoyance dissipating against his will.
“Yeah, well,” he says, looking down at his plate. “It’s the least I could do.”
When he looks up, though, there’s the barest hint of a smile on Cas’ face, probably the most he can manage in his current state. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sam smiling around his next bite, too.
For a second, he gets exactly what he was hoping for: a few heartbeats in which he’s happy. In the space of those few moments, he manages to think, You know what? Fuck Crowley.
Dean tries to hold onto the feeling even once they’ve finished eating and cleaning up, once he’s faced with the reality that waits for him in the rest of the bunker. It’s easier said than done.
He brushes off Sam’s offer of help and stops Cas before he can even make an offer, and then he grabs his supplies and makes his way out into the library.
It’s a sobering sight, the books still piled there smelling of gasoline, traces of blood still on the floor. A reminder of everything he’s done, of everything he’s still trying to make up for.
He sighs and sets about turning this crime scene back into his home.