Work Text:
It is good to feel lost because it proves you have a navigational sense of where "home" is.
You know that a place that feels like being found exists.
-- Erika Harris
The desecration of Heaven had been because of him. The famous spanner in the works. The soldier with the cracked chassis. The faults that made him broken, imperfect, had been the very cause of their fall.
He tried not to imagine their screams or their pain.
Morning buried the evidence beneath overcast skies and the song of birds. The light of day hadn’t washed away their muffled cries. Every time he blinked, starfall seared the backs of his eyelids, their wings burning over and over again. His guilt caved in on his body as sure as gravity, as true as his looming humanity. It was the weight that hung around his neck; the boulder shackled to his ankles. It was the drag in his every step, the creak in his bones and the ache in his feet. It was the brokenness that ran deep.
He could feel it in the shallow catch of his breath and the rapid up-tempo of his heartbeat as he climbed a small hill. A soft breeze licked at his skin and it felt like an invasion, the potency of smells and the harshness of sounds an insult. Breathing took effort, each one ripping open the bars of his ribcage. He was the useless, expired weapon that had crumbled under the weight of choice and decision. A once-angel imprisoned in a cage of skin and bone.
He didn’t know how long he’d been walking, where or in what direction. The forest stared at him with accusatory eyes as the unwanted invader among the shadows. Even his vessel, skin and muscle he’d inhabited for years, didn’t feel wholly his. Like he didn’t belong. An untreatable cancer imbedded in the organs.
And like a cancer, the forest rejected him.
The arms and fingers of trees grabbed at his trench coat, clawing, pulling, mud sucking him into the ground. He stumbled and the jarring impact rattled his bones. A prickled brush found his open defenses and bit him, the scratch itching and burning, corroding his skin. The pain reminded him how utterly human he had become, how each strained breath brought him closer to death.
He struggled against the temperament of the forest until it bled him out into acres of farmland, barns and small houses dotting the horizon. He found a rural gas with a faded sign that read ‘Tys Pit Stop’ and a single car in the parking lot. The cashier smiled at him as he walked in, her face bright and kind. He approached her with a meekness he didn’t know and cleared his throat.
“Abigail,” he said aloud, reading her nametag. “I have to borrow your phone.”
“I’m sorry?”
He heaved a breath and his shoulders slumped. Exhaustion hit him like the fall of Lucifer, robbing him of the strength in his knees. He stumbled forward and grabbed the edge of the counter, bracing himself against sudden dizziness.
“You all right, mister?”
“Please,” he said breathlessly. “Your phone.”
She stared at him and then nodded, handing it to him. A pink cell phone with rhinestones and a dangling charm hooked to it. He gripped the phone with tight fingers and stumbled outside, sliding against one of the walls down to the pavement. He knew his number like the history of Heaven—recorded and branded into his brain.
It dialed, but he didn’t pick up.
“Leave your name, number and nightmare after the tone.”
“Dean,” he breathed into the receiver. Words failed him, the ease of language lost to him. He fumbled over his thoughts, his mouth open in futile effort to push something, anything, out of his throat. Strangled noises came out instead. He swallowed, closed his eyes and—
“I—I need you.” The hands around his neck loosened. “I need you, Dean. Please.”
I need you.
He looked around, leaning forward to peer into the plastic window of the newspaper stand. “Lingle, Wyoming,” he read out loud. “Tys Pit Stop.”
He hung up the phone.
Dean didn’t call back. The hours stretched into night. Abigail closed up the small gas station and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “My shift’s ended,” she explained. “You got somewhere to be? A home, maybe?”
His blank face told her everything she needed to know. She left him a bag of chips and a bottle of water. Neither of them warmed his bones as the night grew colder, as his aches and pains—and suffocating guilt—grew stronger. But none of it mattered when the Impala’s roar broke the eerie silence, drawing near. She chased away the shadows with her headlights as she bolted down the rural road. With a flash of blinding light, the Impala turned into the small parking lot and went silent, her bright lights dying to leave him in cold darkness.
The voice of an angel set him free.
“Cas?”
“Dean.”
He stood on shaky legs. Dean was there by his side, holding him upright without question.
“Cas,” Dean rasped out. “You okay?”
He looked up. Dean studied his face and then his expression fell. He couldn’t decipher the emotion before Dean gathered him in his arms and held him close. Whiskey and leather, the scent of the road. The finite ticking of his heart responded to the warmth and closeness. It was pleasant the way Dean held him—tight and affectionate. It didn’t suffocate him like he was afraid it would. It wasn’t a prison, but a place of solitude. Safety. Love.
Slowly, he raised his arms and wrapped them around his waist. Tentatively. Exploring the rules of human affection, wanting so badly to break them.
Dean didn’t let go. He didn’t either. Here, in Dean’s arms, he felt like he belonged. It was Heaven.
Home.
And he wasn’t broken.