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Cas falls, and it’s unpleasant for everyone involved.
He lands just outside the bunker: no warning at all, just a battered angel slumped over the welcome mat when Dean steps outside to fetch the local morning paper they've started to receive in what just might be a supernatural case of its own.
There’s blood, and it gets everywhere, over everyone, crusting over and darkening the faded burgundy velvet upholstery of the couch he and Sam place Cas on, staining the cuffs of Dean’s unwashed flannel shirt and drying under the bed of his nails, but throughout the ordeal Cas is simply Cas: Dean tugs off a layer of plaid to press against the wound in his chest, first thing, and Cas glares at him, eyes half-lidded, unimpressed.
“You slept in that,” he objects, panting, and swats at Dean’s hands when he pushes hard at Cas’s chest, and Dean's forced to growl back, “You’d rather die than handle a couple armpit stains and drool?” as he waits for Sam to return with gauze and antiseptics, needles and catgut.
He holds down the shirt with one hand and feels around the cavity in Cas's chest with the other. Cas looks at him, eyes glazing over, and it sends Dean into a panic. He reaches up briefly and taps Cas on the cheek, rough. “Tell me more about how gross I am,” he says, and Cas blinks at him slowly.
“I never said that,” he rasps. “I only meant your shirt.”
"Jesus, Cas," Dean says. He wants to rub at his eyes and make the sheen of sweat over Cas's face disappear. He shouldn't look like that. But both his hands are occupied. "You sound like crap."
Cas blinks, again. "I'm thirsty," he's saying when Sam returns. Dean's hands are exchanged for Sam's, and the sweat-and-blood stained shirt makes way for a row of Sam's neatest stitches.
Cas'is eyes follow Dean as he moves across the room, as Sam makes the last knot and cheerfully explains to Cas that because of him, Sam's pancakes have gone cold and his favorite couch is now ruined.
"What am I supposed to do about pancakes?" Cas is asking Sam with grave concern, raw-voiced, when Dean comes back with a glass of water, and because he doesn't think Cas can manage the glass by himself, he does it for him.
He tips Cas's head back and holds the edge of the glass to his mouth, and Cas drinks the water down, gasping at air along with every swallow, grabbing at Dean's wrist and squeezing tight, painfully so.
Dean pries Cas's fingers off his wrist and takes the glass away, leaves it on the side table next to bag of medical supplies. He shakes his head, looks away. "What are you doing here, man?" he asks Cas, gruff.
Cas stares hard at the empty glass. "You said- " he says, panting. "You said if I ever needed..."
He passes out.
Sam tries to be tactful. Or at least that's what Dean assumes.
"So he's human now," Sam says, funereally, leaning over the table. He steeples his hands in front of him. "He's going to need things, Dean."
"Things, what things?" Dean snaps back, irritated. Cas has a bed, a room just down the hall from Dean's, and he's got a blanket and a layer of memory foam and a heavy wad of bandages taped around the hole in his chest. From Dean's perspective Cas has everything he needs to make it through the night. "Why don't we focus on the here and now, 'kay, Sam? Cas has never been a long-term kind of guy."
Because anything else is kind of beside the point right now: Dean can't think of getting Cas new shirts and shoes and jeans, new identity cards or a email account, not when he's not sure how long Cas will be around. No use getting his hopes up: this is Cas, after all.
"Besides - Cas doesn't need anything," he mutters. He remembers saying I need you, that last awful time he'd seen Cas. He supposes, when he lets himself think about it at all, that the fact that Cas hadn't responded to that declaration meant that he hadn't been listening to Dean in the slightest. That, or it doesn't mean a damn thing; Dean's not sure which is worse. He wonders if the concept of needing someone is entirely foreign to Cas.
Sam looks at him pointedly. "I mean he'll need help, Dean."
Dean just looks back at him, weary, completely spent. "Of course he'll need help. That's why he's here, I guess."
But what Cas needs and what he'll ask for don't seem to match up exactly. Dean wakes up in the middle of that first night and catches Cas dragging himself down the bunker’s corridor.
Cas is sagging against the wall in the corridor just past Dean's bedroom door. It's obvious he means to go somewhere, but he doesn't seem to have made it very far and Dean's not sure just where it is he's headed.
“Dean,” Cas says, still sounding hoarse, clutching the wall like he’s just now received revelation on the endurance of a human body and it’s brought him to his knees, “I need-”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Dean snaps at him, reaching out to grab his arm, and Cas staggers slightly, away from the wall. “What do you need? Let me get it for you.”
Cas just stares at him for a moment. “Water,” he says eventually.
“Water,” Dean repeats, and Cas hesitates, then nods. “I’ll bring you a glass of water, okay? Just -” he half-carries, half-drags Cas into his bedroom - never mind getting Cas back to his own bed now.
He sits Cas down on his bed. Cas blinks at the weapons displayed on one wall, the empty space on the other. “Just stay put.”
But when he returns, holding out a glass of water, Cas just stares speculatively at the glass in his hand. “Thank you,” he says slowly, and carefully sets it down on Dean's bedside table.
“Aren’t you gonna drink it?” Dean demands, and Cas blinks up at him, his face caught in the shadows created by the glow of the lamp.
“Not right now,” Cas says. He picks slowly at the corner of Dean’s sheets. “I’ll save it. For later.”
“Whatever you want, man,” Dean says wearily, slumping down on the chair beside him, and doesn’t object when Cas decides that what he wants is to stay right where he is, here on Dean’s bed, and falls asleep seemingly determined to prevent Dean from taking any of the pillows or allowing him access to any corner of the blanket.
So Dean pulls the chair up to the side of the bed and spends the night dozing fitfully, head folded in his arms on the edge of the mattress, and reaching out every so often to catch Cas's hand and pull it away from his chest, preventing him from picking at the bandages in his sleep.
Dean finds, in the days that follow, that of all his years spent dealing with the unusual and strange, living with Cas just might take the cake.
He's not sure what he expected out of a half-dead, newly-fallen angel. Maybe some gratitude, or a stubborn desire to get better and do something: anything, even if it's hunting monsters, even if it's tracking down tablets. Even if it's leaving.
Cas is mostly just mildly resentful, and demanding, and maybe Dean might've predicted the resentment but the demanding part takes him by surprise. Cas rejects the unoccupied bedroom they've provided for him altogether in favor of Dean's room, Dean's bed, and when Dean tries to reclaim his rightful property, Cas just looks up at him, reproachful, and he doesn't have to say a single word: he's already won.
The next night, Dean tries to relocate to Cas's unoccupied room, but it seems that that won't do, either; he's barely made it past the door before Cas is calling him back in that raw-edged voice that hasn't been soothed by any amounts of water.
"Dean," he grates, and Dean's forced to turn back.
"There something you need?" he asks, exasperated; he's already beginning to learn that Cas's response to this sort of question will ultimately result in another request.
And sure enough, the glass tumbler on the bedside table is mostly empty.
"It's almost half full," Dean protests. "That's plenty. And you've got to let me go to sleep, Cas, I'm gonna go crazy if I don't get my four hours."
"No, it isn't. It's half empty," Cas counters. "And I might need more, later."
"You are such a friggin' pessimist, " Dean retorts, but there's no winning: Cas objects to anything other than Dean in a constant state of vigilance at his side, and because the chair in his room is stiff and hard Dean doesn't end up feeling uncomfortable at all about crashing down on his bed next to Cas and taking back his favorite pillow.
He stays on the outside of the covers, and Cas remains underneath, still wearing that same pair of blood-stained suit slacks but minus the belt, and though Cas doesn't seem to have any further demands for the rest of the night Dean finds he can't sleep for long without startling awake and reaching out to touch the thick layer of bandages on Cas's chest.
Dealing with Cas doesn't get any easier.
"Don't do that," Cas says irritably whenever Dean tries to change his bandages.
"They need changing," Dean argues back. He's got one hand on Cas's bare chest, holding him down, and he's got the other tangled in a knot of loosened gauze on Cas's back. When Cas tries to sit up he pushes harder on Cas's chest.
Cas shudders underneath Dean's hand. "Stop," he says when Dean's hand slides down his back.
Cas, it turns out, doesn't like to be touched: not his ears or his back or the skin behind his neck. He also doesn't like the feel of jeans on his legs, Sam's hoodie, or flannel shirts.
"You are not gonna walk around naked," Dean tells him firmly, and Cas glares back. Not that Cas is walking any great distance at the moment, though Cas eventually elects to get out of Dean's bed during the day, but only when it's possible for him to steal Dean's bathrobe.
Dean's pleasantly surprised at first, thinking hopefully of all the chores that need doing, the things he hasn't been able to do as long as he's at Cas's beck and call, but that's not quite what happens.
Cas doesn’t seem bored, exactly, but he acquires a number of peculiar habits, like following Dean from room to room and looming heavily in the doorframe whenever Dean tries to pass him by.
“You’re not making this easy,” Dean informs him, trying to get into the kitchen with a bag of groceries without tipping Cas over. Cas just looks at him silently. “You need something?”
Cas opens his mouth, then closes it. “Water,” he says, and Dean sits the bag on the counter. “Fine,” he says, impatient, and flaps his hands at Cas. “Go sit down or something.”
He finds Cas sitting stiffly on a couch in the library, sets the glass of water in front of him. ‘Drink up,” he says, and when Cas sighs, he seems to go boneless, all at once. “Thank you,” he says, and Dean watches him narrowly, makes sure he drinks it dry.
“More?” he asks, and Cas nods, but when Dean comes back Cas is sleeping, chin on his chest and shoulders hunched in, so Dean takes the blanket from his bedroom and settles it over him, leaves the glass of water on the table beside him.
Cas refuses to ask anything of Sam, which delights Sam immensely and annoys Dean to no end. In the end he tries to escape from Cas by hiding in the war room.
But it doesn't take long for Cas to find him.
"I'm hungry," he says yearningly to Dean, and Dean stops shuffling through the box of artifacts he's rummaging through long enough to glare at him.
"Sam can make you something," he says testily.
"Sam's busy right now," Cas informs him. "Couldn't you?"
Dean looks down at the Ella Fitzgerald record in his hand longingly. There's a box filled with more treasures just like this one. "Can't you wait a few minutes?" he asks hopefully, but Cas looks at him like he's just had his heart broken.
Cas takes a breath and draws himself up stiffly. "I need a sandwich. You said-"
But Dean doesn't wait to hear what he'd said to Cas. He tosses the record down huffily. "Fine. Fine. I'll make you a damn sandwich."
He knows Cas can get food for himself. He knows Cas could make himself a sandwich if he really wanted one, and he doesn't have any real idea why he's letting Cas bully him into doing it for him.
But when Dean unceremoniously dumps a plate in front of him, Cas takes one bite and sets the sandwich back down gently. "Thank you," he says politely.
"Aren't you going to eat it?" Dean asks dangerously.
"I'm fine," Cas says, mournful, and gazes sadly at the sandwich until Dean takes it away huffily.
"You're a real pain in the ass, you know that?" Dean tells him, exasperated.
Cas just follows him back into the war room and watches him sort through curse boxes and vintage magazines for the rest of the afternoon.
"What's wrong?" Sam asks when he walks into the kitchen and comes face-to-face with Dean resentfully wrapping up the sandwich's discarded remains and shoving it into the refrigerator.
"I had to make the fucking angel a fucking sandwich and he won't even fucking eat it," Dean snarls.
Sam stares at him and rubs the back of his neck. "I made him a sandwich only an hour ago," he offers. "He didn't eat too much of it, either."
This information doesn't improve Dean's mood. "So why the hell did he need me to make him another one?" he grouses.
Dean’s not sure if Cas is actually picky about what kind of food he’ll eat, or if it’s just a reaction to the stress of suddenly going full-on human. Some things he’ll eat, cautiously, picking at his plate; other things he’ll refuse outright. Some things he'll pretend to not like, but then Dean will look back at his plate and see that Cas has eaten it all.
And, most mystifyingly, some things he’ll eat while looking like he’s trying to enjoy the taste, but failing entirely, and after Dean leaves the room he’ll sometimes find Cas secretly emptying his plate into the trash can without eating another bite.
“So he’s a little weird,” Sam says soothingly. “I dunno, Dean, what did you expect? I mean-’” he hesitates at Dean’s steady glower. “-I mean, it’s Cas. He was weird even before he went mortal.”
“He’s not weird,” Dean objects, “I mean, he’s not normal, but no one here really qualifies as normal, you know? He just doesn’t make sense,” he says, frustrated; there’s no rhyme or reason to Cas’s behavior that he can discern.
But Sam just looks at him, pityingly, and Dean can’t stand it, Sam acting like he knows something Dean doesn’t, and that night Dean picks through every trash can in the bunker.
He doesn’t know what he’s looking for: bloody napkins or another sort of evidence; all he knows is that Cas doesn’t make sense, and it’s worrying.
But all he finds are the remains of the sandwich Sam must've made for Cas, earlier, turkey and lettuce and mayo. It’s the most boring sandwich Dean can think of. He wouldn’t have eaten it, either. Well. Depends on how hungry he was.
But Cas doesn’t seem hungry, mostly just agitated for no apparent reason, and Dean has no idea what to do with him.
"I think he's regressing," Dean says wildly to Sam, later, hiding in the recesses of the kitchen pantry. It's a storage unit almost as large as the one where he's been finding those boxes of records. "He won't let me out of his sight."
"Regressing to what?" Sam asks. "Angels aren't ever kids, Dean."
But Dean's not too sure about that. "I think he's trying to drive me crazy," he says. He feels anxious, on edge, constantly on alert for Cas's voice to rumble around the corner, demanding pillows or aspirin or milkshakes, and every time the sound of foot falls echoes across the bunker he's looking up expecting to see that Cas has come to find him.
"I think," Sam says slowly, "the point is that Cas never was a kid, Dean," but Dean doesn't pay him any attention because there's Cas, standing in the pantry and rubbing at his chest - he's stolen Dean's robe again - saying worriedly, "Dean. Dean. I need-"
"Jesus fucking Christ," Dean says, "what is it now?"
But being abrasive doesn't deter Cas; it never does. "I need you to-"
Dean's had enough, however. "I’m not going to pamper a damn angel," Dean snaps. "Whatever it is, you can get it yourself."
And then he stops. There’s no turning back, though he immediately wishes he could, because Cas doesn’t look surprised, only vaguely sad, and more than anything Dean hates Cas’s sudden vague sadnessess.
But it appears that while being abrasive never seemed to deter Cas, actually refusing to do his bidding does the trick.
“Oh. Never mind,” Cas says quietly, and that makes Dean see ten shades of red.
Cas is far from helpless, and he knows it, Dean knows it. Sam knows it too, which is why Dean wishes Sam would back him up instead of looking away ruefully.
"Dean-" Sam starts.
"Whatever you want, Sam can get it for you," Dean snaps, and leaves Cas standing silent and hunched and Sam running his hands through his hair in annoyance.
Well that's done it, he thinks later, discontented but unable to think of any real way to fix things. Cas will be leaving any moment now.
But all that happens is that that night he finds Cas occupying his bed again, just the same way he's be occupying it for the last several weeks, and though he hasn't left Dean much room to work with, Dean doesn't leave to go sleep in one of the other empty bedrooms.
Cas is sleeping - or he might be ignoring him -but he doesn't stir when Dean stares at him and sits down on the corner of the bed.
"What’s so important about me doing all this crap for you, anyway?" he mutters irritably, but Cas doesn’t answer.
But he doesn’t have to. That damned glass of water is still there on the nightstand, almost empty, and Dean knows, he just knows that whenever Cas wakes up he's going to ask Dean to fill it up for him.
So he gets up off the bed and grabs the glass and stomps impatiently to the kitchen, but while he's standing there by the sink watching it fill up with water he just gets it, finally.
"The things I do for you," he says to Cas when he pads back into the bedroom and places the glass of water beside him on the bedside table. Cas is lying flat on his back, head turned to the other side and away from Dean, and his even breaths are almost snores. He’s got one leg over the covers and one hand under Dean’s pillow and he won’t go to sleep without socks or while wearing anything else other than Dean’s oldest, softest pair of boxers. Dean shoves Cas off his side of the bed and climbs in beside him.
Cas is beautiful like this, with a three day beard scraping against the pillow, with that dark hair sticking up in back, with his eyelashes dark against his cheek, even though he won’t let Dean touch his neck, or his sides, or the insides of his wrist; even though he squints resentfully at Dean if he tries to run his fingers through his hair unprovoked. He steals the sheets - he's stealing them right fucking now - even though he won’t let the any of the fabric touch his body. He’s always needing Dean to bring him something, always needing Dean to do something for him.
He's always needing Dean.
So Cas had heard him, after all, back in the crypt, Dean thinks drowsily, hovering on the edge of sleep. Maybe Cas can't say it back, not aloud, not yet, maybe not ever, but he's trying, in every way he knows how, to tell Dean I need you in return.
He hadn't thought about how it must’ve made Cas feel, Dean bringing him things: like what Cas wanted mattered, like Dean bringing him things made him feel important somehow. Validated, valued. Cared for. Maybe what Cas really wants is just to make sure that Dean wants him there.
Cas shifts under the covers and pulls the last square of blanket away. "Give that back," Dean tells him, soft. "I was using it."
Cas turns his head to Dean and opens his eyes. "Oh," he says drowsily. His voice is gravely with sleep. "There you are. Where did you go? I needed you."
Dean wipes his hand across his face, shakes his head against his pillow. "For what?" he asks tiredly, but he's already preparing to strand back up and get Cas whatever he's about to ask for. But Cas doesn't seem to want him to get up: he rolls over and inserts himself into Dean's arms. Oh.
Cas reaches out and steals Dean's pillow, too, for good measure. His arms and legs have meandered back to Dean's side of the bed; he'll have taken over the bed completely by morning. Dean'll be sleeping on the floor by then. "Everything," Cas says grumpily, and goes back to sleep.