Work Text:
Dean worries when Castiel isn’t around. It makes him feel ridiculous and codependent to worry, except then he thinks about all the things the angel being gone can mean; and then it doesn’t seem so ridiculous anymore, and he’s left with anxiety twisting his stomach.
That morning he wakes to an empty spot on the bed beside him, the covers pulled up across cold sheets. Castiel is out, then, though he didn’t leave in a hurry; Dean takes that as a good sign, and forces himself up out of bed to brush his teeth and make himself breakfast.
He doesn’t see Castiel for most of the morning. By eleven, Dean almost goes to call Sam (who’s been staying up in Who the Hell Knows Where, Virginia for the last six months), but tells himself he doesn’t need to, that worrying for the angel is ridiculous; Castiel could wipe a sizeable town off the map if he found himself in the mood, and he definitely doesn’t need Dean to protect him.
Except that Castiel can’t protect himself from the things in his head, and sometimes Dean can; and the thought of the angel sitting somewhere, thinking and hurting, alone, makes Dean’s heart wrench in his chest.
He makes himself watch television for upwards of an hour, sprawled on the couch, manages to get sufficiently distracted by Dr. Sexy; when the episode ends and a rerun he likes less comes on he gets up and paces, struggling not to think about Cas.
Which works about as well as he can expect, of course. Don’t think about pink elephants, Dean thinks, and shakes his head.
Eventually, he goes out for a walk, because if he’s going to pace, he may as well get somewhere.
It’s bleak and gray outside, and he throws on his winter coat before stepping outside, making his way through the dead leaves that have gathered up against the farmhouse’s porch. The ancient tree growing in front of the house is almost leafless, now, only a minority still clinging to the branches; it’s nearly winter, and here that means below-freezing and blizzards and being unable to get so much as a hundred feet down the road.
He reminds himself to get more firewood and nonperishable food from town before that happens, in case the power goes out. Eagleway is almost ten miles away, though he supposes in a way it’s all around them; the farmhouses dotting the countryside are all dependent on Eagleway’s tiny store and gas station, and the solitary bar perched on the edge of town the closest thing they’ve got to a social scene.
Dean stops at the end of the sandy drive that leads up to the farmhouse and back around to the scattered arrays of sheds and the unused silo and looks both ways up the road, trying to decide where to go. After a moment, he turns south, heading towards where a stream cuts through the fields, surrounded by large trees and untamed greenery.
He definitely does not choose that direction because it’s the likeliest place for Cas to have gone.
The fields give way to clustered trees when Dean’s walked what he judges to be just under a mile. The chill is pervasive, and he has his collar up, the walking helping but not assisting with his feet or the tips of his ears. If Cas is out here, he thinks, the poor bastard must be freezing; the angel still doesn’t own a single article of clothing aside from Jimmy Novak’s thin trench and ill-fitting suit, even though it’s been almost a year and a half since he escaped purgatory and joined Sam and Dean in the hunt.
He reaches the stream a few minutes later. It burbles softly over worn-smooth rocks, red and brown leaves carried bobbing along by the current; and there, just past the slight dip in the riverbed, Dean sees Cas, perched on the end of a fallen tree, sitting still as a statue.
The angel has his eyes closed, hands resting at his sides. He doesn’t move as Dean approaches, and Dean almost opens his mouth to ask if he’s all right—but then Castiel opens his eyes and meets his gaze, and Dean says instead, “Hey. How long you been out here?”
”Since dawn,” Castiel rumbles. Dean sits down on the log beside him, wool coat catching against the bark. The angel looks away, back to where dark water rushes under the bank; Dean is eerily reminded of the place he found him in purgatory, hollow and running and, as far as Dean is concerned, ten kinds of really, really not okay.
”Get tired of the house?” Dean looks up towards where gray clouds, heavy with coming rain, hang low over the landscape. “Not the best day to go wandering around, Cas.” He covers one of the angel’s hands with his own, finds it just as cold as he expected. “Remind me to give you some warmer clothes.”
Castiel just shakes his head, closes his eyes again. “This is good,” he assures Dean. “The cold is good. The change of seasons—the rising humidity—the drop in pressure. The world is moving.”
Dean isn’t sure how to respond to that. “Uh. Yeah, I guess. Every year, Cas,” he says, dumbly. Castiel has his moods, among them those which are strangely detatched and cerebral.
”You don’t understand,” Cas says, quietly. His free hand—the one Dean isn’t currently trying to bring some semblance of warmth back to, though Castiel hardly seems to have noticed—makes a slight gesture. “In Heaven, everything was static. The weather does not change in one’s paradise, Dean.” The angel breathes in, softly. “Staying here for this long, being able to feel time pass . . . it reassures one of one’s existence.”
Dean raises his eyebrows, huffs. “That’s an interesting way of looking at it. I gotta say, man, the more you tell me about Heaven, the more I’m glad I ain’t there yet.”
”It’s home,” Castiel says, without elaboration, and Dean understands. It doesn’t matter what Heaven is like; just who used to be there.
The angel shifts, then, moving for the first time since Dean’s arrival, presses closer to him. Wordlessly, Dean puts an arm around him, allows Castiel to rest his head against his shoulder, dark hair brushing Dean’s chin.
After a while, Dean takes a breath, asks, “Are you okay, Cas?” I’m turning into Sam, he thinks, but presses on. “Really okay?” No, Dean supplies; because no one that’s okay murmurs broken apologies into the night and seems so hollowed-out and tired during the day. No, because it’s been a long time since Castiel’s been okay, and Dean knows that too well.
”You’re here.” The angel is heavy against him, still too-cold from sitting outside for hours and hours and hours. “That is enough.”
Which isn’t an answer, exactly, but Dean just nods and rests his head atop Castiel’s.
They sit together for a long time, until Castiel isn’t so cold anymore and until Dean is really, really regretting not having bought winter boots; and then they get up and walk back to the farmhouse, because Dean still doesn’t much care for teleportation.
He’ll start up a fire when they get back, Dean decides, and bring out the beer, and he’ll introduce Cas to the wonders of the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which the angel always watches with baffled fascination. He'll push out the bleakness that's curled into his soul and Cas's Grace, one way or another.
Eventually, maybe, just maybe, they will both be okay.