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It’d been four days of listening to Sam bang on that iron door. Four days of waiting for Sam to ‘get it out of his system’ – Castiel’s words, and not the least bit comforting. Four days of slinking off to get drunk enough that his tears would actually fall, instead of just clogging his vision, tensing the muscles around his eyes, burning and boiling and never giving him the catharsis that crying is meant to bring.
So on the fifth day, when he saw a story on the early morning news about a rash of murders up in Marquette, Michigan, Dean jumped on the excuse to clear out for a few days. All signs pointed to a werewolf, nothing Dean couldn’t handle on his own. He was already packing a bag by the time Bobby was up and around for the day.
Part of him kind of wanted Bobby to give him shit for it, tell him he should stick around and help look after Sam.
Part of him was glad Bobby just minded his own, sipping his morning coffee while Dean buzzed around the house, one last sweep to make sure he hadn’t missed anything in his packing flurry.
He was almost out the door, just bent over tugging his boots on, when Bobby sidled his wheelchair up next to him and clapped a hand on his shoulder. Dean looked up, embarrassingly a bit startled by the contact.
“Yeah?” Dean asked. Bobby held something out towards him, which his brain at first only registered as a wadded up piece of fabric. He took it, and it unfolded in his grip. A simple winter cap, knit wool and black.
“You boys don’t seem big on winter gear,” Bobby explained, blush high in his cheeks. “But, uh, s’colder than a yeti fart up in the yoop this time ‘a year. Twenty degrees on a good day.”
“Thanks,” Dean replied, past the brand new lump in his throat. Dean had always been the one patching together the family wardrobe, hawking sharp-eyed down the aisles of secondhand stores and charity thrifts, shrewd as a pensioner, ever since Sammy was old enough to trundle alongside him, snot-nosed and baby-cheeked. He’s pretty sure the last time anyone accoutered him in outerwear, it was his mother.
There probably should have been a proper goodbye between them, but neither of them had much stomach for that sort of thing since Ellen and Jo died. It was a tight-wristed wave from Dean, a curt nod from Bobby, and a closed door between them.
Snow was just starting to fall when he finally merged onto I-90 East towards Wisconsin, settling in for what would be at the very least, a ten hour drive.
+++
It was two werewolves, actually.
He ferreted out what he thought was the only one on his very first night in town. Four victims, so far, and the first had been this guy’s daughter’s boyfriend. Something about having to kill the girl’s dad didn’t sit right with him, not when she was already grieving her boyfriend, but there wasn’t another option available to him. It was a quick kill, at least. Clean.
He figured that was that, and was fixing to head back to Sioux Falls the next morning, but there was another werewolf kill that same night, another victim, chest cavity ripped wide, heart absent. This one was discovered in the parking lot of the local hospital, well after Dean already ganked the original wolf.
The temperature dropped that first night, and the bargain motel’s barely insulated walls and rickety radiator just weren’t cutting it up against negative numbers. Dean powered through, went to sleep that night wearing all the clothes he’d brought, all at once, just to seal in his body heat, Bobby’s hat pulled down so low that it covered his eyes like a sleep mask. Even then, he shivered.
Money was already beyond tight, seeing as he hadn’t had a lot of down time to file for bogus credit cards. The issue compounded when he ended up having to bribe the medical examiner to get a look at the newest stiff, since they’d figured out he wasn’t really a Fed. It meant burnt black coffee from the motel office percolator for breakfast, skipped lunches, and gas station hot dog dinners, considering he didn’t know how long he’d actually be in town, how far he’d have to stretch his cash.
And even with all of that stacked against him, Dean might not have gotten sick if it hadn’t been for that second werewolf. She was a CNA, working second shift at MGH in the ER. Dean, of course, could not have known that she’d spent the last two weeks up close and personal with all the flu and pneumonia patients filtering in and out of the department, cleaning up their fluids and encouraging them to eat their ham sandwiches and drink their tepid ginger ale. That she was, besides being a werewolf, more or less a walking disease vector before she changed out of her scrubs and showered.
The original wolf hadn’t even meant to turn her, had just been fleeing the scene of his first kill and ran into her on her late night walk back to her apartment. It explained the body count, which would have been up to six, if Dean hadn’t taken down the first wolf already. Just like the monster whose mess he was cleaning up, he caught her on her walk home from work.
It felt profoundly villainous, killing her just past midnight in the halo of a streetlamp on a snowy Michigan street, even if she was already all wolfed out and slavering at him. She reminded him of Madison. Of all the people he hadn’t arrived quickly enough to save, whether from victimhood or monstrousness, it made little difference. Their blood was on his hands, all of it.
Even though by that point he’d been awake for nearly eighteen hours, he didn’t bother staying in his motel that last night, with its lukewarm shower and its clattering ineffectual heat. He was on the road at three in the morning, headed back to Bobby’s.
+++
The sun wasn’t even up yet, and he’d been on the road almost three hours. A piece of cake for him, usually, especially at a time like this, when there’s nobody on the road besides Baby and a few truckers plodding along in the right lane.
Except for some reason, he couldn’t get comfortable. He’d crank the heat, scattering of long lost Legos rattling within, usually a pleasantly familiar sound, now only grating. No more than ten minutes after he’d turn up the heat, he’d get clammy, skin tacky and too tight, too hot, so he’d taper it off, only to sink into goose-pimpled discomfort. He wasn’t cold, exactly, but tremulous in the way that being cold would have explained. His clothes felt too heavy on his skin, abrasive as sandpaper.
Perhaps foolishly, he assumed that when the sun rose, he’d feel a bit better. That his brain would be tricked into thinking he’d slept the night through, that the dawn would herald a kind of refreshment that he hadn’t exactly earned.
He was no stranger to staying up all night, and he’d long ago perfected the art of pretending to have slept, lying to yourself so well that you start to believe it, down to the marrow of your bones. You drink coffee, you quirk an intentional smile at the sun as it crests the horizon, you stretch in the fresh air, turn off the radio for a little while and tune into the birds carrying on outside, or at least the steady hum of morning traffic. And somehow, you trick your nervous system into believing it’s slept, that you’ve gone to bed and awoken anew, instead of having sat crunched in a driver’s seat through the wee hours.
Except, the coffee he picked up from the Marathon station in Rhinelander didn’t do anything to ease the malignant pulse behind his eyes. The incessant thrum of cars whizzing by on the highway only added to the throbbing of his brain, the sunlight curling around the cinder block gas station stinging his retinas, pushing needle sharp into his skull.
Somewhere behind him and to his right, a semi blared its horn at a Volvo cutting it off as it merged onto the highway, catastrophic in its volume. His eyes pinched shut on reflex, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought he was being torn in half down the center by that awful sound, like someone had driven an iron spike down into the center of his skull, peeling him apart bilaterally. As soon as the road was wide enough, he pulled over on the shoulder of the highway, amid the shredded remains of blown tires and glittering shards of busted tail lights.
He killed the ignition, closed his eyes, feeling his heartbeat pound against the seam of his eyelids. He pressed his sweat-slick brow against the wheel, let the comparatively cool surface press into his forehead. Dean tried to focus on the pressure, to ground himself to it and keep the world from spinning in his periphery, but the harder he tried to reorient himself, the more dizzy he became.
Without the engine running, without the heat whuffing at him from the vents, his sweat cooled, the frigid late February air seeping in through the curves and crevices of the car. It took him a few minutes, to realize it wasn’t the car or the earth beneath it that was quaking, but his own body, his own bones trembling under the meat of his muscles.
“Hello, Dean.” It was Cas’s voice, casual and cursory, just a few feet to his right, in the passenger seat.
Dean rolled his face towards him, steering wheel digging into his left temple now, still letting the full weight of his skull rest on that single point of contact, his neck too tired to take up the slack.
“Dean?” Cas asked, and Dean forced his eyes open. Everything was too bright, morning sun winter-white, a fluorescent aura radiating in from all the windows, no angle of escape to be had. He squinted at him, took a raspy inhale that stung the back of his throat.
“Heya Cas,” Dean croaked. Cas’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t comment on the state of his voice.
“I looked for you at Bobby’s, but he said you were in Michigan.”
“Werewolf case,” Dean grunted, mostly to keep the coughing at bay. If he ground out his words, scraped them across his larynx, he could tamp down that prickling twitch.
“I looked for your vehicle on the primary arterial highways between his house and Marquette,” Cas explained. “I didn’t expect to find it stationary.”
“Takin’ a breather,” Dean answered the implicit question, and Cas seemed to accept this, though he squinted at him first, skeptical. “What do you need?”
“I’ve been considering some options for getting in touch with God, for figuring out how to secure his aid.” Now that he’d gotten started, Cas was on a roll, launching into some complicated explanation of the metaphysical realities of God’s possible location, but Dean had to close his eyes again, heat flaring through his core and up to his neck, unbearable and sudden. His muscles clenched, all the way from the base of his spine to the breadth of his shoulders, curling him forward against the fever flash.
He weathered it, and when he came back to his senses a little, unfolding from his protective stance, he noticed Cas had stopped speaking, was just staring at him, eyes squinting even harder, blue barely visible in the tight slits.
“Dean,” Cas asked, firm and almost scolding. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah,” Dean replied, embarrassed. “Yeah, I, you know. God stuff,” he hedged, intending his tone to be more forceful than the scratchy whisper he ended up with.
Cas didn’t dignify that obvious deflection with a response. Instead, he reached out one large hand and pressed two long fingers to Dean’s right temple. They were so cold that Dean flinched, though he was too weak to pull away properly.
“Your internal temperature is elevated,” Cas announced, like it was a revelation. He dropped his hand again, though Dean still felt the phantom icy sting of his touch.
“Yeah,” Dean gritted, tipping his face down again, staring at his knees. “Just comin’ down with a little cold or somethin’.”
“You shouldn’t be driving in this condition,” Cas pointed out, like Dean hadn’t already had that useless thought himself. It didn’t matter whether he should or shouldn’t – he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He had about enough cash to roll back into Sioux Falls, maybe snag a cheap sandwich or something on the way, if he coasts in on fumes in the tank.
“Yeah, well,” Dean tried for a cheeky grin as he turned back towards him, but it was more of a pained pull of the lips, “I do lotsa shit I shouldn’t do.”
Cas didn’t say anything to that, just glowered. He reached his hand out again, the same two fingers coming up to Dean’s forehead, to the edge of his hairline. Dean could see them coming this time but he still hissed at the cold sting of them.
There was a fizzing aching something between the pads of Cas’s fingers and the flushed skin of Dean’s face, Cas’s irises illuminating briefly before fading back to baffled blue.
“I can’t – “ Cas cut himself off, somewhere between mortification and horror. He dropped his hand as if burnt, cradled it in his lap like a wounded sparrow. “I can’t heal you,” he said, after he’d gotten ahold of himself.
“S’okay, man,” Dean chuckled, though it collapsed into a stuttering cough. “Been sick plenty of times before I had an angel hangin’ around, kissin’ all my skinned knees for me.”
Cas tilted his head, the joke obviously lost on him, even if he hadn’t said as much.
When Cas didn’t say anything in response, Dean figured he couldn’t put it off any longer. He sat back against the seat, lifted his leaden arms to grip the wheel, and fired up the engine. There wasn’t much in the way of traffic, but even so, merging was a feat, considering how his vision wobbled whenever he swiveled his head over his shoulder and back to center, checking to make sure the lane was clear.
“You can’t drive like this,” Cas argued, after Dean had been on the road for just shy of ten minutes. “You’re too sick.”
“Don’t like my drivin’?” Dean huffed, hunching closer to the wheel as he cranked the heat up high again. “Walk. Fly. I don’t know what to tell you, man.”
“I can’t fly with a passenger at the moment,” Cas explained, quiet, ashamed. Dean’s gaze flicked toward him, though he immediately regretted the sudden eye movement, which sent a bolt of pain through his brain, headache still in full effect.
“Lucky thing you don’t have a passenger, then,” Dean snarked weakly. He knew what Cas was getting at. Even if Cas could fly him out of here, he wouldn’t leave Baby like that. It would only be a bit longer on the road, maybe seven hours, if he really kept the hammer down, didn’t pull over to lick his wounds again.
Cas scowled at him, or as close to that as Castiel’s placid expression ever veered, but Dean ignored him. It was about five minutes of peace before Dean’s eyes slipped closed, lids too heavy to lift, and nearly rear-ended a U-Haul box truck going seventy.
“Dean!” Cas half-yelled, half-grunted, grabbing the wheel just in time to veer towards the shoulder, narrowly avoiding what otherwise would have been a nasty crash.
“Shit, sorry,” Dean grumbled, slowing to a stop beside the guardrail. “Dunno what my deal is today, man.”
“You’re sick,” Cas insisted, a layer of exasperation weighing down his words. “You’re too sick to drive.”
And Dean agreed, on some level. But he was so tired, and so hungry. His sweat made his clothes stick to his body in weird places, made them chafe against his joints. He was too hot again, would have to turn the heat off for awhile, until he needed it blasting again. The front of his brain felt too big for his skull, his heartbeat pounding against the center of his forehead like it was trying to escape. He just wanted to get back to Bobby’s house, so he could huddle up on the couch and sleep for a few days. So he could check in on Sam, who was hopefully all dried out again, ready to put the demon blood stuff behind him.
“You think I don’t know that?” Dean coughed, as if his body was trying to illustrate the point. “I gotta get back, Cas. I gotta get back to Sam. I can’t just fuck around until I feel better.”
“You won’t make it back at all if you crash the car.”
“I’ve driven farther than this in worse shape,” Dean hissed, too mired in his stubbornness to gauge how that statement would land. He waited for a sharp retort that didn’t come, some counterpoint to mount a defense against, but none came. He looked over at Cas, who was already staring, expression closed, unreadable, jaw stiff.
“You aren’t driving back to Bobby’s until you’re well.” Cas didn’t say it so much as he decreed it, clipped and sure as a verdict.
Dean opened his mouth to argue, but at that precise moment, a wave of dizziness sent his eyes rolling up and back, his shoulder crashing sidelong into the driver’s side door. Cas’s huge hand came down on the wing of his shoulder blade, dragged him easily back to center, leaning him against the seat again.
“Yeah,” Dean agreed, breathless, feeling like a vial at the core of a centrifuge. “Maybe just, just a pit stop.”
+++
Dean puttered down the road a little ways, keeping just under the speed limit at Cas’s insistence, eyes peeled for gas stations and fast food joints, maybe a hardware store or something else with a big parking lot, where he could park in the farthest corner and take a nap.
“Turn here.”
“What, the motel?” Dean groused, and Cas gave him a flat look. “Man, I can’t,” Dean argued, frustration shot through with something genuinely apologetic, bordering on embarrassed. Cas’s brow lifted, his eyes rounding out of their near permanent squint.
“Turn here,” Cas repeated, softer this time. Dean hesitated, slowing down and putting his signal on but failing to actually follow through. “Trust me,” Cas urged, and Dean let out a thready sigh, his sore throat protesting the heat of that exhale.
He turned into the motel lot and parked in one of the many empty spots – furthest from the office, because old habits never really die, not if you don’t work exceptionally hard to kill them.
“Wait here,” Cas instructed, and before Dean could ask a single question, he was gone.
In the sudden lonely silence of his hastily cooling car, Dean had time to take stock of exactly how badly his body was faring. His head was no longer merely aching, but felt too heavy on his neck, too hot – as though churning with a magmic core, the fragile case of bone and flesh not enough to contain its burning.
His hair had matted to his skull with stale sweat, even as fresh perspiration sprung stickily to the surface of his skin. His joints were heavy and hot, elbows and knees tight as though rusted into position. His throat was sore, but not spasmic and reflexive, tensed at all times to cough instead of speaking. Instead, it was an inward facing pain, a rawness that tasted like iron and scraped on every mouth-drawn breath, sharp and inescapable. His nose was clogged with mucus, immovable and thick, applying pressure on his cheekbones and the crest of his brow from within.
He was shaken from his aching inventory by Cas’s return, as silent and immediate as his departure.
“I’ve secured the key for the room on the end.”
“Didn’t know you had a friggin’ expense account,” Dean joked, turning a lazy grin on Cas. Cas’s gaze flicked away, perhaps ashamed, before returning.
“I don’t,” Cas said simply. Dean had half a second to wonder how Cas got a motel room without paying for it, before deciding it would probably be best if he didn’t know. Cas had already exited the car, had come around and opened the driver’s side door for him, big hand extended for Dean to hold onto as he stood.
Dean wanted to balk at that, to reject the insinuation that he needed that kind of babying, but as he swung his legs around to rise from the car, he was overcome by an inertial slam of lightheadedness, feeling suddenly ice cold from the tips of his shoulders to the crown of his head, everything below his collarbones dunked in flame. He swayed, and Cas quickly caught him as he pitched forward, one hand on either shoulder.
“Sorry,” Dean groaned, pinching his eyes shut to try to ground himself. Cas used his grip on Dean to pull him bodily from the vehicle, folding him up against his chest so he could hold him upright one armed, palm flat and warm between Dean’s shoulder blades, as he used the other to shut the Impala’s door.
They stayed that way for a moment, Dean sealed against Cas, knees buckled enough that he was almost a full head shorter than the angel. He looked up at him, bleary through the pounding in his head, and raised an expectant brow. This seemed to startle Cas back into action, and he adjusted his grip, sliding an arm under Dean’s armpit to hoist him up beside him as they walked.
The motion of Cas’s body against his was strange, and though there were times before this when they’d been close by necessity, it had never lasted quite this long, never been both so cursory and so complete. Dean had to remind himself a few times on that walk toward the motel room door, that Cas was only doing this to be helpful. That he wouldn’t want this closeness, in any other context. If it wasn’t necessary.
By the time Cas was fumbling the key into the lock, Dean was sagging for two reasons – the sickness ravaging his muscles, and the revelation that he was all but forcing Cas into this position. Forcing him to be close, forcing him to be gentle and slow, forcing him to eschew his important work to make sure Dean didn’t die delirious in a ditch somewhere between Michigan and South Dakota. Dean was an endearing inconvenience at best, an ungrateful imposition at worst.
Inside, the motel room was just as shitty as every other place he’d stayed in the last two decades, the wallpaper peeling and bubbled, the single queen bed in the center of the room clothed in a scratchy duvet that had been in place so long that dust had settled over it. There was a wobbly table and one mismatched wooden chair, a mini-fridge that wasn’t even plugged in. He couldn’t see into the bathroom from this angle, but he’d be willing to bet it was much the same, a scummy tiled single stall shower and a cracked porcelain pedestal sink, probably in a creamy mint color that had soured to a sort of herbal beige, or a pastel rose that had crusted into an irritated scabby brown.
Just a few steps past the threshold, Cas closed and locked the door behind them before shuffling Dean towards the bed.
“C’mon,” Dean whined, “least lemme shake out the blanket first.”
“Shake out – ?” Cas asked an aborted version of his clarifying question, and Dean rolled his eyes. He immediately regretted it, the strain sending a burst of pain back into his brain.
“The dust,” Dean explained, gesturing an unsteady hand at the ill-kempt bed cover. “M’gonna sneeze my friggin’ face off if I get into it without clearing the dust.”
“The dust,” Cas repeated, flat, skeptical.
He let go of Dean – who was still probably a bit too unsteady on his own feet to be left standing under his own power, but he was eager to seem in better condition than he actually was, so he strained his hamstrings and lower back to stay standing, to stay still, while Cas walked over to the bed and snapped the bedding, billowing it from the top of the sheets so the dust would scatter in glittery gray clouds away from the bed itself.
“Is that satisfactory?” Cas asked, turning to regard Dean with impenetrable placidity.
“Good ‘nough,” Dean grunted, stumbling the final few feet to the bed and climbing in, boots and all. He burrowed under the stiff blankets, fished the hat Bobby had given him out of his jacket pocket and yanked it on. He caught, just out of the corner of his eye, that Cas was standing stock-still at his bedside, watching him with open curiosity as he wriggled down into the bedding.
“Dean – “ Cas started, but Dean’s body, which had for so many hours now been cramped and bent and begging for limp limbed rest, was already hurtling towards unconsciousness.
“Just gonna take a nap,” Dean grumbled. “An hour – maybe two. Gotta get back on the road.”
If Cas replied, Dean didn’t hear it. Sleep had claimed him, and it wouldn’t ease up for quite some time.
+++
Dean’s body was burning, from the inside out.
Alastair had done it once before, when Dean had been in Hell just long enough that the usual slicing and crushing and bleeding and bruising had lost its efficacy against him. That’s when he’d started peppering in other forms of torture – peeling, skinning, pulling out his organs, filling him with other things, filling him in other ways. And burning, something Dean had always feared, since the day his mother died.
Alastair had forced a greasy ball of black pitch down Dean’s throat, cooing at him all the while to open up for him, to cooperate like a good little boy. Half the horror with Alastair was his words, his susurrations of approximated sweetness, warped reflections of parental affection. He didn’t know if it made it more ore less bearable, that in life he had little frame of reference for such words, that his primary experience with praise was under the taunting blade of his torturer.
With the fuel swallowed, Alastair commenced to ignition, holding Dean’s jaw apart while he rammed a hot iron poker down into his stomach, lighting him up from within.
All day, it burned, and every time the flame waned and sputtered, Alastair fed him more slimy pitch, or poured thick waxy gouts of kerosene between his lips until he’d choke, soaking his chin and neck in the accelerant. By the time their session came to an end, there was a smoldering black hole at the center of Dean’s body, his organs consumed by the blaze, flesh crisp and fragrant and stinking like the most horrible day of Dean’s childhood.
Alastair had run reverent fingers over the still-burning edges of the wound, had smiled beatifically down at Dean where he lay stretched on the rack, had said – “for all that they compare you to John, you really take more after your mother.’
And now, apparently, he was being burnt again, his whole body rigid and restrained, flames creeping through his veins, like this time Alastair had injected him with gasoline instead of having him swallow the fuel. The fire wasn’t a slow savoring hearth, an ever expanding agony, but a full body flash of heat, a prickle against every nerve ending, flaring matchstrikes that fizzed and popped all along his limbs, that danced like spiked thorns across his brow.
“Dean,” someone was saying, someone who didn’t sound a thing like Alastair. “Dean, wake up.”
He blinked, or tried to, but his eyes felt sealed shut, and he panicked, brought his flaming hands up to grind away whatever paste had been used to glue them shut, but icy fingers clamped over his wrists, pulled his hands away from his own face. He whined in miserable defeat.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” the voice chided, and it was a nonsensical idea, that anything Dean could do in this place, to this body, could do more damage than the torture itself. “Let me – “ the voice started, but the sentence stopped, and the presence was gone, leaving him utterly alone.
He writhed, and his stomach rolled, and he wondered if maybe Alastair hadn’t forced some pitch down his gullet after all, because there was that strange queasiness, the gas pressing against the walls of his intestines, building up until the fire would relieve the pressure in so burning it, one pain taking the place of the other, a sick sort of relief.
Except, then, the cold hands were back, this time on his face, something even colder, something wet, stroking soft over his cheeks, his brow, his crustily lidded eyes. He scrabbled against the soothing touch, shoving at the cool hands, though they didn’t budge under his feeble protests.
“Dean,” the voice scolded, though not unkindly. “Let me help you.”
No one had ever said that to him, while he was in Hell. His heart kicked in his chest, pitiful and hopeful to the last.
“Get me outta here,” Dean begged, words slurred with exhaustion and pain. “Please, please, get me out.”
“Out?” The hands stilled, cold water dripping over his forehead, one icy rivulet settling in the crease between his nostril and his cheek.
“Get me out,” Dean urged again, because this person hadn’t refused immediately, only seemed somewhat surprised. “Please – if you know how, get me outta here.”
“Out of where?” The hands began moving again, and for a second it felt like they were pulling his scalp free of his skull with baffling tenderness, but – no, they hadn’t, they’d removed some covering from his head and hair, something hot and sodden with sweat. He curled into their touch, sighed his appreciation and thanks against their wrist.
“Hell,” he murmured, almost an afterthought. “Out of Hell.”
The hand stopped its stroking reassurance, paused tense on the arc of his cheek, and he whined in open displeasure at the loss. Perhaps realizing the extent of his distress, the hands increased their ministrations tenfold, one carding through his hair, the other dragging some cold wet fabric over his brow, his lidded eyes, his dry lips. Desperate for even a drop of water, he opened his mouth, bit down on the fabric, sucked greedily until he’d wrung moisture from it onto his tongue.
“Dean,” the voice gruffed, low and melancholy – almost grief-stricken, by the sound of it. “You aren’t in Hell.”
Dean shook his head, barely rocking it side to side, too weak for emphatic anything. Something prodded at his lips, and he cautiously parted them. It was water, somehow. Flowing from the neck of a plastic bottle, still and lukewarm. He gulped and gulped until there was none left, groaning in satisfaction even as he wished for more, wondered when he’d ever have another drink in this awful place.
“You gotta get me out,” Dean begged, and the two cold hands clasped either side of his face, cradling his cheeks, thumbs resting on either cheekbone like huge flakes of snow.
“Look at me,” the voice demanded, lower, rougher. His lashes fluttered, but his eyes stayed shut. He hated the look of hell, the vast smoggy abyss of it, every surface rusty, blood-caked. Most of all, he didn’t want to see his own body, how it must be charred beyond black, gray ash flaking off of him like dust on a moth’s wing.
“Don’t make me look,” Dean whispered, every syllable a knife in the bloody ruin of his throat.
“Dean, look at me,” the voice urged, one hand breaking the symmetry of their grasp, sweeping up to brush his sweat-soaked hair from his brow. “Please,” they added, a depth charge skating across the hull of a submarine.
Dean opened his eyes, and above him was a beautiful man, broad smooth face, wide blue eyes, tousled dark hair haloed gold by the warm light of a desk lamp.
A desk lamp?
Dean’s eyes flitted about as he took in his surroundings, which were unlike any corner of Hell he’d ever been dragged through. It was, for all intents and purposes, a shitty motel room. The world outside the window was dark, impenetrably so, and he couldn’t say for certain whether it was just some new trick of this realm of torture, or a sign that his caretaker was right, that he really wasn’t in Hell at all.
He met the man’s eyes again, and there was a tension there, an impatient question unvoiced.
“Dean,” the man murmured. “See?”
Something sparked, in the back of his mind. Recognition, or memory, or some haphazard relative of the two. A werewolf – two, even. A fever. Driving south through falling snow. Cas.
“Cas?” Dean croaked, and even as that one question left his lips, that single syllable both furtively precious and disastrously familiar, he knew the answer, was ashamed of even asking. “Cas,” he amended, a statement, a confirmation.
Above him, Cas visibly relaxed, even as he pinched his lips together, pensive and overwhelmed, though by what Dean could not say.
“Your internal temperature is too high.”
“S’called a fever,” Dean grumbled, rolling over and away from Cas’s concerned gaze.
“Yes – I understand that, I – “ Cas stopped mid-argument and rerouted his thought. “I need to lower your core temperature.”
“S’okay,” Dean mumbled, already drifting back towards sleep, towards the open arms of his nightmares. “It’ll burn off,” he assured him, before the world went dark.
+++
When Dean woke again, he was alone.
The room was dark, the lamp previously illuminating the space now dull and dim. Cas wasn’t on the bed, or in the chair across from him. Something tightened behind his sternum, a fist clenched between his lungs. He thought that Cas might stay with him, had hoped he would, even if he didn’t say it in so many words. Dean tried to force himself to take a deep breath, his overtaxed lungs protesting.
It felt supremely childish, to be upset about Cas leaving him here when he’d been so uncooperative, so ungrateful. Even so, he couldn’t logic his way out of the tears that were clouding his vision, the loneliness that coiled around his spine.
Normally, Dean would cry in silence, if he absolutely had to cry, but knowing he was alone here, knowing nothing would come of it, no matter how fully he indulged in his self-pity, he let loose. He sobbed, great honking howls of guilt and grief and anguish. He lay there, eyes shut and covered by his shaking hands, and he wept, for once certain that he’d go uninterrupted.
Except, then there was a weight, on the edge of the mattress, and hands pulling his own away from his face, and then there was Cas. He looked like he had in the brothel, when Chastity led him away to a private room, so panicked that he might go cross-eyed with it, his entire face a blank loose wreck of regret and fear.
“Dean?” Cas asked, tone so steeped in horror that it shocked Dean into silence, choking on his own sob before it could escape.
Dean didn’t know how to explain the depths of his own pathetic selfishness, so he stayed silent, only hiccuping a leftover wet clicking cough as he tried to breathe normally. Cas seemed to misunderstand this as disorientation, and his fearful expression collapsed into something unbearably gentle.
“It was only a dream, perhaps intensified by your febrile state. You’re safe. You’re – “ Cas’s sentence scuddered to a halt, but he started it again, deliberate. He locked eyes with Dean, held him down with the weight of his gaze. His hands curled over the caps of his shoulders, grounding him. “You’re out.”
“Right,” Dean agreed, voice cracking like he was back in his adolescence. “Yeah.”
“I drew you a bath,” Cas responded, after they’d been staring at each other for what was almost certainly too long. “I think it will help bring the fever down.”
“There’s a tub in this shithole?” Dean asked, laugh rasping dry, stinging his vocal cords.
“Yes,” Cas replied distractedly. “Can you stand?”
“What?” Dean grunted, abdomen clenching as he tried and failed to sit up. “A’course I can.”
“Alright.” Cas stood up, giving him room. “Then, do so.”
Dean straightened his arms, elbows wobbling, and forced himself into an awkward seat against the headboard, panting with exertion. His entire body flashed between boiling heat and an icy chill, so rapidly that it made his stomach churn. He remembered his earlier dream, remembered the oily slide of pitch in his throat, and his stomach muscles contracted painfully, an aborted attempt to vomit.
“Dean,” Cas said, quieter, taking a step towards the bed again. “Let me help you,” Cas begged, not for the first time. He sounded like he needed to do this as much for himself as for Dean, and that’s what snuffed out the last flicker of stubbornness in Dean’s heart.
“Yeah,” Dean sniffled, still wretchedly embarrassed. “Yeah, okay.”
Cas stepped up to the side of the bed and hooked his hands under Dean’s armpits, hauled him to his feet. He kept a steadying hand on the small of his back, but otherwise released him – only for Dean to nearly crumple to the floor, his knees less than useless.
Cas caught him, then without so much as a passing inquiry to Dean, he reached an arm down behind Dean’s thighs and scooped him up into a bridal carry, marching him easily into the bathroom, as if he weighed nothing.
Dean would’ve protested, if he hadn’t been too shocked to form a coherent thought. By the time he’d conjured the sentence ‘hey, put me down’ and gotten it to the tip of his tongue, they were already in the bathroom – a small tiled room, not green or pink as Dean had originally guessed, but an underwhelming white, matte and bleak. It might’ve been bright in there, if the overhead light hadn’t been almost entirely burnt out. As it was, there was just a mild fluorescent glow to the place, an aimless moonlike haze.
Cas sat him down on the closed lid of the toilet and wordlessly set about undressing him, pulling his jacket off first and folding it before setting it on the tile behind where he’d crouched. Dean noticed, as Cas lifted Dean’s shirt over his head, that Cas wasn’t wearing his ubiquitous coat, was only wearing his white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to the join of his elbows. His tie, too, was absent, and the top button of his shirt loosed.
Dean shivered, his bare chest tacky with accumulated layers of sweat, catching the chill of the room.
“Can you remove your own pants?” Cas asked, without a hint of judgement. Dean considered the question.
“Maybe – if you help me stand while I do?”
He hadn’t thought through what that would entail, how Cas would press his blessedly cool hands against the blade of Dean’s shoulder, the mound of his pec, while Dean strained to unzip his jeans, to wiggle out of their sweat sodden cling. How he’d have to tuck his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers and let them fall to the floor. How at the end of all of this, he’d be naked.
“I got it from here,” Dean insisted, even though he could feel the tremble in his tendons, the sluggish path of his blood through his body. Cas gave him an appropriately skeptical look, but released him from his grasp. For a few seconds, Dean kept himself upright – long enough to turn towards the tub, to lift one leg and step into the cold water Cas had filled it with. But before his heel even made contact with the bottom of the tub, the leg he’d been balancing on gave out, and if Cas hadn’t been there to wrap two strong arms around his chest from behind, Dean would’ve cracked his jaw on the unforgiving tile.
Cas used this embrace to lower Dean into the water, only releasing him once his ass had hit the floor of the tub. He wanted to thank him, or tell him to go away and leave Dean with at least the illusion of privacy, but the cold water wrenched a gasp from him instead. It felt terrible and wonderful in equal measure, and for the first time since his headache had started, his mind went pleasantly blurry, muffled. He leaned back against the clammy cool tile and close his eyes, his chin drooping to meet his chest.
It was so quiet, so still, that Dean half wondered if Cas had actually left him alone here after all, had intuited that he might not want Cas ogling him in the nude. But after a few minutes, there was a frictional sound, a fabric swish, and then a splash, the water rippling against his skin.
And then, suede soft, there was a touch on his forearm, mediated by a washcloth. His eyes fluttered open, sight confirming what his soul already knew. Cas was on his knees beside the tub, shirtless, washcloth in hand. Bathing him.
“Do I look like I need a spongebath?” Dean complained, even as a flush unrelated to his fever rose in his cheeks.
“Yes,” Cas replied, deliciously earnest, guileless eyes wide and curious.
“Just, you know,” Dean cleared his throat, ignoring the gravel sting that spurred. “Could do that myself.”
“Dean,” Cas sighed, as exasperated as he’d ever heard him. “Just – let me help you.”
He didn’t wait for Dean to reply, just went back to scrubbing the sweat from his skin, so methodical, so tender, that it made Dean’s eyes water, to watch him do it. He closed his eyes, hissed a tremulous exhale. Swallowed and swallowed and swallowed, trying and failing to clear the lump in his throat.
It didn’t make much difference, having his eyes closed, because he could feel the care in the movement of his hands. Even if he couldn’t see the focused expression on Cas’s face, the thoughtful turn of his frown, he knew it was still there, all the same. All for Dean, and even God probably couldn’t have told him why Cas, of all people, would do this for him.
After the initial pass with just water, Cas went back over his body with soap suds. He didn’t seem to mind how limp and passive Dean had allowed himself to be, how heavily he’d sagged against the wall at his back. He just lifted Dean’s limbs and moved them as need be – arm extended to soap up his armpit, torso angled forward to lather his back, leg held aloft to scrub the back of his knee.
He made a final pass after the soap, rinsing Dean with near comical precision. When he’d finished, Dean made to sit up without even opening his eyes, but a palm against his sternum was all the instruction he needed to lie back again, though to what end he could not say. The hand retreated, coming up to his forehead, pinkie and edge of Cas’s palm level with his hairline, hand tipped over his face, shading him like a visor.
And then, Cas scooped up some water with his other hand and released it in a cascade over Dean’s hair, shielding his face from the spray. The lump in his throat was back, had never left, and he felt his tears spill hot over his freshly washed cheeks. Cas, either oblivious or too polite to mention it, continued wetting his hair, then switched to shampoo, massaging the foam into his scalp with strong fingers. A stray streak of shampoo dripped onto his forehead, headed for his lightly lidded eye, but before Dean could even muster the energy to command his arm to lift, to bring his hand up to divert its path, Cas was swiping it away with an attentive thumb, lingering just a shade longer on his skin than he would have if he was interested in efficiency only.
It was intimate – all of this, but that especially. A caress, really. Dean felt so stupid, suddenly, for pushing Cas away, for convincing himself that Cas would benefit from being pushed away. For reasons Dean couldn’t begin to understand, Cas seemed to want to be here, to want to do this for him. Cas wanted to hold him up when his legs were weak, to make sure he drank enough water, to guard him as he slept. Cas wanted to wash his hair, make sure he didn’t get suds in his eyes.
Dean cried harder, at that, hard enough that Cas at least noticed the tracks of his tears. He rinsed his hair a bit more briskly, perhaps thinking Dean was fed up with the bath. In truth, Dean might’ve stayed there forever, pruny and languid and loved.
“I can rinse your eyes, if you want?” Cas asked, uncertain, as Dean cried silently in the tub.
“S’not soap,” Dean dismissed, lower lip trembling now that he’d spoken. “You kept all the gunk from gettin’ in, don’t worry.”
“Oh,” Cas huffed, and Dean couldn’t help opening his eyes, if only to get a glimpse of Castiel’s confusion, the angle of his chin, the pinch of his brows. They locked eyes, Dean's tears still flowing steadily, chin wobbling. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Dean assured him, breathy like a laugh. “Just – tired, I think.”
“Of course,” Cas acknowledged. He reached into the water, unplugged the stopper from the drain.
+++
Once Cas had him up and standing, leaning against the wall while Cas dried him off, Dean had time to reckon with how incredibly sick he really was.
He hadn’t been this useless since he was a kid, maybe eleven years old? He’d come down with something nasty, and a day before John was going off on a ghoul hunt, no less. John had left him with a bottle of Tylenol, a few lime Jell-o cups in the mini-fridge, a box of store brand Saltines and a few cans of chicken noodle soup, and headed out on schedule.
Sam, only seven or eight at the time, had been terrified, taking care of his older brother who was in and out of consciousness, begging for a mother Sam had never known, crying and confused and sweating through their paper thin motel sheets.
Needless to say, despite Sam’s best efforts, it was a less than pleasant memory.
Before he knew it, Cas’s hand was trailing featherlight down his spine, unmediated by the towel, to let Dean know he was done drying him off. He didn’t bother putting Dean back in his sweat-soaked clothes, and Dean didn’t ask him to, modesty be damned.
“Can you walk?”
Instead of insisting he could, or even attempting to do so, Dean just shook his head, exhaustion settling over him like a warm quilt. The bath had helped with his fever, had soothed him to a sort of comfortable heat, something simmering without boiling over. Cas nodded, gaze trailing unsure down Dean’s body, from his eyes to his ankles and back up again.
It should have made Dean uncomfortable, being so obviously looked at, so openly assessed by him, but it just made something tingle on the back of his neck, made his heart beat a little faster in his chest.
“You can – you know,” Dean offered, unable to really say it. “Like before.”
“Like before,” Cas affirmed, closing the distance between them to lift Dean up again, cradling him to his chest. Now he didn’t even have his dress shirt to buffer their skin. Dean sighed at the feeling, pressed close, curled against him, tucked his still damp hair under Cas’s chin.
It wasn’t a long walk, back to the bed, but it was long enough that Dean fell asleep in Cas’s arms, not even stirring when Cas set him on the bed again, pulling the sheets up from where they’d been lumped together at the foot of the bed to cover him.
+++
The sunlight is what wakes him, in the morning.
Dean blinked back to consciousness, no dream of Hell to chase him from his slumber. Beside him on the bed, Cas sat reading a brochure about Wisconsin’s state park system that he no doubt snagged from the drawer of the television stand. Even at a glance, Dean could tell the brochure was out of date by about thirty years. He smiled, rolled over onto his side to regard Cas more fully.
“Hey, um,” Dean began, startling Cas from his reading. “Thanks, for um. You know.”
Dean shrugged, and Cas lowered the brittle paper accordion to his lap.
“Of course,” Cas said, something that could be a smile unfolding on his face. “Are you feeling any better?”
“Yeah,” Dean grunted. It was true. The headache was still there, though a ghost of its former glory. His skin was still too hot, too tight, but bearably so. More of an itch than an emergency.
“I brought in some medication from the car.” Cas gestured at the nightstand, where a rather comical array of medicine bottles were lined up like soldiers, labels all facing Dean. Some were relevant, like Ibuprofen and Dextromethorphan, others not so much, like Pepto and Tums. Dean cracked a grin, aimed it at Cas.
“Thanks,” Dean said, more confidently this time. Cas smiled wider, then averted his gaze.
“I also,” Cas paused, looking back at Dean. Not at his eyes, but at his shoulders, his chest. The puddle of sheets around his hip bones. “I brought in some clean clothes, from your bag.”
“Oh,” Dean breathed, a simple sound that would’ve twisted itself into a cough, just the day before. “That’s, yeah. Probably can get back on the road soon.”
Cas looked down at his brochure again, not quite despondent.
“But um. Not just yet,” Dean hedged. “Could you bring me some water?” Dean asked, the request fighting him every step of the way to stay in. He wasn’t the kind of person who asked people to fetch glasses of water for him, no matter how sick. But he could see what it meant to Cas, to be needed. To be wanted.
“Of course,” Cas said again, rising from the bed.
Dean really was feeling better. If circumstances were different, he’d probably already be out of bed and dressed, downing more pills than recommended by their labels and on his way to get a giant paper cup of coffee from the gas station down the street. But as it was, he was content to linger, resting against the pillows Cas had arranged behind him to prop him up in the night, to wait for a cup of water.