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1) Oh, worm?
It wasn’t the first time in his life that Dean had awoken interred in dirt.
This time, though, there wasn’t the cushion of a coffin. Nor did he struggle to breathe as he wriggled through the soil—and when he saw his face on the reflection of the glass pane, he understood why.
He was a fucking worm.
Rowena, he cursed. It had to be her. It explained why, despite the lack of proper organs, he could still ‘see’ and think like a human.
They’d just had to go down to Hell and see Rowena for tea, didn’t they? It had been on Cas’ “reverse bucket list” since Jack pulled him from the Empty—a list of things he wanted to do now that he wasn’t dead anymore.
“I feel bad the way we left things,” Cas had said, and so down they went.
The way there, they didn’t talk. Not about Cas’ confession, not about Dean’s stilted “Me too,” when he came back, not about how Dean was moving at a snail’s pace to actually settle into whatever the hell it meant they were together.
And they definitely, absolutely did not talk about the writhing ball of thoughts knotted in Dean’s head: Not good enough, I still don’t get it, you’re gonna leave someday, you’re gonna want something more, you deserve someone better. Would you still love me if I never said it back? Would you still love me if I kept hunting? Would you still love me if—
Dean was just waiting for the day when Cas would realize Dean wasn’t worth dying over.
And Rowena, having been through Hell (literally, several times) and fed up with them, had taken one look at them during their tea.
Her lips pressed together. “After all that, you still haven’t fixed it between you?”
“What?” Dean asked, confused. “No, we—”
“We’re taking our time,” Cas responded politely. He looked at Dean. “I love him, and he knows now. I love him no matter how long it takes for Dean to realize it.”
Dean buried his face into his tea. That knotted ball of thoughts in his head, writhing like worms. It spiked something ugly, defensive inside him.
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?” he grumbled sarcastically.
Rowena had turned to him sharply. “Why don’t you find out, dearie?” she’d said, and uttered some Gaelic or Latin, Dean couldn’t tell.
And then he woke up here. As a worm. In what looked like a tank, inside his own room, he guessed, based on the enlarged weapons on the walls. If worms could sigh, he’d sigh.
Great, how long was he stuck like this?
The earth quaked, and Dean ducked underneath the dirt, only rising to take a peek when the vibrations subsided.
For the first time since Dean first saw the shadow of Cas’ wings against the barn door, he understood why angels in the Bible allegedly introduced themselves with the words, “Be not afraid.” As a worm, Cas was a giant to him, his voice and being incomprehensible. Is this what it would be like to see his true form?
As scary as it was, there was a part of Dean that was just as awed as the first time he saw Cas.
And he pressed closer against the glass to let Cas know that he was here, he was right here.
***
2) Enrichment for the Enclosure
As a worm, defenseless and vulnerable, and without any hands, Dean had a lot of time to think.
Or, whatever freakish version of ‘thinking’ his human-worm body was capable of doing. All his thoughts were vaguely dirt-coated, covered in the essence of what minerals had been left in his enclosure.
An enclosure that Cas had spent a lot of time thoughtfully adding things to.
His first night in the glass tank, Cas talked quietly to him, explaining, “I don’t know if you can understand me, but Sam is looking for a reversal spell. We’ve tried bargaining with Rowena, and I’ve tried talking to Jack, but… it was her decision and he doesn’t wish to interfere. In the meantime, I’ve been doing some research on worms. I assume, based on your segments and appearance, that you’re a common earthworm… though,” he said thoughtfully, an ever-familiar cant to his head as Dean pressed against the glass, trying to get a better handle on his body, “I think you’re far from common,” he said with a small smile.
In the evenings, Cas moved his enclosure in front of the TV or laptop, continuing their movie nights as if nothing was wrong, and occasionally leaving popcorn kernels in his tank.
Over the next few days, Cas cycled the soil in his tank, talking about minerals and moisture and ‘enrichment for his enclosure’. He left morsel-sized pieces of Dean’s favorite foods alongside random scraps of food and cardboard; capfuls of water alongside beer and coffee, even though worms probably shouldn’t have that. Dean tasted essence more than flavors—the salt of a fry, the potassium and magnesium of a piece of banana left on a smooth rock for him—but it was a gesture he appreciated nonetheless. The acknowledgment from Cas that he was still Dean beneath the slimy smooth body.
***
As a worm, Dean experienced all sorts of things in new ways. The osmosis of food particles through his skin, the slide of his skin against dirt and rock, the way sounds and images were magnified.
The way the field outside the bunker could be made to host more than just Baby’s wheels.
Cas liked to bring him outside in the palm of his hand and show him the garden that he’d started building in the ground outside the bunker. Cas hummed Led Zeppelin as he gardened—songs from the mixtape, Dean could recognize—and stopped to talk about each flower: dooryard violets, common in Illinois, living alongside butter-yellow buttercups and Black-Eyed Susans, which Cas explained were common for Kansas. Dean had never been one for gardening outside of harvesting ditch weed on occasion, or sourcing herbs for spells, but he was content to learn as he wriggled in the newly nutrient-rich dirt.
By far, Dean’s favorite place to be was in Cas’ hand. He explored the warmth and whorls and ridges slowly, in a way he never would have allowed himself if he were human.
The same hand that gripped him tight and healed him and sacrificed himself for him, now did the same, just in different ways.
When Dean thinks about it too hard, he fears his pathetic little worm body will explode.
The downside to being a worm is that whenever he feels what he thinks amounts to worm horniness, or worm love, he can’t do jack shit about it— not even jack off. He can writhe in the dirt all he wants, but it’s ineffective and feels about the same as everything else he does. It’s pointless. He can’t even talk back. He’s not even sure that prayer works.
So instead, he burrows underneath the ground and sulks.
***
3) You trick worm!Dean? You trick worm!Dean with a stick that sounds like the rain? Oh, jail for Cas and Sam! Jail for Sam for One Thousand Years (again)!
Cas, concerned that Dean wasn’t coming out of the dirt as often as he used to, got really into something called worm grunting.
Dean learns as much because he’d been nestled deep in the dirt of his enclosure when it began to pour rain.
Part of his resulting need to surface was instinctual—apparently, worms got most of their water from falling rain—but part of it was pure human curiosity.
How the hell was it raining indoors? Or had his tank been moved outside?
When he emerged, he was surprised to find that it wasn’t rain he heard, but a pair of knobby-looking sticks that Cas was rubbing together.
“There you are,” Cas said, relieved. “I was just making sure you were alright,” he said and explained the stick.
Dean didn’t think worms have faces. but he aimed what he hoped was the face-end of his worm body toward Cas and conveyed “pissed off” as best he could. He began his descent into the dirt when he heard the rain again. He turned, excited, and—
It was the stick. He was tricked by the damn stick again. Curse his worm brain!
Sam snickered, writing something down in his notebook while Dean scowled. Or hoped he scowled—or maybe that was poop. Did worms poop? Whatever. He was mad, and he was tired of being treated like a goddamn science experiment.
“I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas said, setting the stick down. “We just missed you,” he said, as Dean began to bury himself. “I missed you.”
***
4) “No that’s disgusting, I’m not going to eat it—I’m going to wear it as a wormstache!”
Cas figured out Dean likes the warmth of his hand the best, and one day after coaxing Dean out with the stupid rain stick again, he just… scooped him out and held him for a while. It was nice, and Dean decided to test his limits.
He wriggled up Cas’ body and wormed up to his face. It was no homo to explore a dude’s face if you’re a presumably thoughtless worm, right? He inched around and draped himself across the top of Cas’ lip, and relaxed. It was so much better than being stuck in the dirt all the time. Cas’ lips kinda made awesome pillows. Like, they should take Cas lips and stuff mattresses with them because this shit was better than memory foam.
He stayed there, losing track of time, until Cas sprayed him with water.
“I don’t want you to get dehydrated,” he explained when Dean nearly flung himself off.
Soon after that, it just became a regular thing that they did.
Sam walked in one day, catching them while Cas had Dr. Sexy on in the background of the Dean Cave. “Um. You’ve got…” he rubbed his upper lip. “A wormstache.”
“Dean likes it,” Cas mumbled, speaking lowly so as to not jostle him off. Dean wiggled, pleased.
“I’m sure he does,” Sam said, smiling, shaking his head.
Dean ignored him.
***
5) Would you still love me if I was a worm?
Dean emerged when he heard the familiar voices of Sam and Cas talking, and poked his head out to eavesdrop.
“Jack won’t interfere. And this is Rowena we’re talking about. The magic is uncrackable until whatever it is that she wanted to happen, happens.”
“I think… I think that part may be up to Dean.”
“But he’s a worm. What if it’s not possible? What if he’s stuck like this, Cas?”
Cas shrugged a shoulder, looking down at the packets of seeds in his hand, and the water mister in the other.
Dean twitched. He wanted to be in that hand. He wanted to hold that hand with his own, as himself. Not stuck in this tiny, slimy body.
“He’s still Dean. I’m not going to leave him to dry out in the ground just because it was dictated he does so, would you?”
“No,” Sam sighed. “I’ll… I’ll keep looking. Maybe Max Banes knows of something we could use.”
“I’m going to go clip some more flowers, it's time to brighten up his tank,” Cas said, as casually as he would have said he was going to get coffee with him.
Even if he were stuck like this, Cas would take care of him—and Cas would enjoy it. Not because Dean was controllable or potentially could perform a mutualistic relationship with bees in this form now, but because he was Dean, and Cas loved him.
Dean still doesn’t understand it, but a part of him begins to accept.
And he loves Cas. He loves Cas so much it hurts. He doesn’t want to squander what life he has left doing nothing about that, doing nothing but hold himself back—hold them both back—with his doubt and insecurity. Being stuck in this body because of it.
He doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it earlier—blame it on the whole ‘being a worm’ thing. Sue him, but half his thoughts were about water and basic needs. But he uses his whole body to trace against the glass, and in the dirt, and everywhere he can think of, ‘I L-O-V-E Y-O-U T-O-O.’ It takes forever, and it takes all his energy, but he falls asleep content.
When Dean wakes up from his umpteenth dirt nap, it’s to find that, just like the first time, Cas had lifted him out. He feels the brush of his bedsheets against human skin for the first time in days.
“Hey,” Dean greets, his voice hoarse.
“Dean,” Cas smiles, surprised. It’s the same smile, though maybe deeper, more relieved. “Are you alright?”
“Never better,” Dean says. And he leans forward to kiss him with his human lips.
***
+1) A different can of worms
For Halloween the subsequent year, Dean takes a page from Heidi Klum’s book and goes as a giant worm.
“Dude, your costume is kinda terrifying,” Sam said, watching Dean jump to get into his homemade suit, the tail fat and heavy as it drags behind him.
“Hey, I told you we’d do matching costumes one day. Now put your fish head on.”
Sam sighed, putting on the salmon head Dean had spent an entire week painting for creepy accuracy.
Cas joined them in the Crow’s Nest with a beaming Jack, who was dressed as his mini-me; the two of them, fishermen.
“Aww, aren’t you adorable,” Dean said to them, leaning in for a quick kiss from Cas.
Cas smiled, smoothing down his vest, before he helped Dean get the worm head on. Before he did, he stopped, very seriously reassuring Dean, “I want you to know that I would never want to use you as bait in real life, unlike your father.”
It was so unexpected, but Dean just laughed, patting Cas on the shoulder as best he could through his costume. “I love you, and I appreciate that. But that’s a can of worms for another day, okay? For now, let’s enjoy this.”
Cas agreed, and Dean never doubted their love again.
