Work Text:
Dean sits in his car, contemplating. Really that’s too fancy a word for it. Contemplating is something more profound, greater truths and artistic flourishes.
This is scratching at an itch, wearing at it until your nails break the skin and suddenly it’s not just a reflex, it’s a bloody problem that other people start to notice.
Cas killed Billie to save mom.
Cas killed Billie to save all three of them.
And yeah, he’s family. But, but it was the fucking look in his eyes. Desperate, wild, almost unhinged. Not a calculated move, one on reflex, because you couldn’t help yourself.
And what he said, after. He tried to couch it with the whole saving the world spiel. But, but the whole you mean too much to me.
That cut at something, deep and vicious.
After Lucifer, after everything. Cas still needs them, wants them.
He looked a fucking state when they met him in the forest – you’d think he was the one with a reaper salivating over the thought of his corpse. And Dean’s not stupid. It took three calls for Cas to answer him. You don’t skip away from your phone if you think the people you’re waiting for are still alive.
Sam doing stupid shit for him, Dean gets that. They’re family, that’s what they do.
But Cas.
This wasn’t the end of the word. This wasn’t apocalyptic.
This was just a Winchester, dying on an ordinary fucking evening.
It means something, it means something huge.
And Dean can’t wrap his mind around it, can’t process the anger and the fear and the despair and the terror pouring off Cas as he stood there, blade in hand, chest heaving and eyes wild. ‘Cause he’s felt it going the other way, and he knows what it is on his end.
He can’t. He doesn’t. He, fuck.
*
Cas gets it a minute before they explain, he’s always been sharp. A part of him stays tense though, waiting for the confirmation, the bullshit explanation of the godawful deal Sam and Dean have made to keep one of them alive at the expense of the other. He’s not sure he’s going to be able to believe it until he hears them say it. Wilful denial, eat your heart out.
Well, he gets his explanation, and then he gets to watch them minutely posturing, trying to get the edge, to be the one to die so their brother might live – and suddenly all he can hear is white noise. Hissing, crackling static jumps along his bones and between his ears and he can’t bear it.
He can’t, he won’t.
They might have thought that their confinement was bad, but at least they had each other. He had no one, nothing else on this goddamn planet – just Mary Winchester’s scorn and blame, an empty bunker, and the pointed silence of a heavenly host he’s put second to these bastards every single time.
They cannot do this, he won’t let them.
No one’s paying attention to him, too caught up in their family drama as he slips around behind Billie and puts his blade through her chest.
What’s one more heavenly agent to add to his bloody, horrific list.
He almost wants to laugh as she falls, bitter, despairing, callous laughter. This is what it comes down to. He’ll choose the Winchesters every damn time – even when he’s not being asked to make a choice.
He says something, he’s not sure what, can’t hear it over the static buzzing around his head. Too much, probably, he says too much.
Maybe this time too much is what they need. Maybe too much will get it into their godawful skulls that they are needed here. That they have so much more value to this world alive than they do dead.
That they have more value to Cas.
*
Sam slides into shotgun position, throwing Dean a look over his shoulder, part concern and part something else. Dean can’t place the reason for it, until he realises what’s funny about this picture. Sam in the front seat, looking back at Dean. For the second time that day.
Dean didn’t even fully process he’d sat in the back seat until he was already there. The instinct to follow Cas, stick close to Cas. He’s just on autopilot while he runs this whole big mess through his head.
Huh.
He flexes his fingers, makes a quick study of them. A little grubby, but ordinary, human dirt. No blood, or fluids, or gore.
Funny, he always thought this, if it ever came, would be momentous. A hard fought struggle against his own better instincts or a moment snatched from the bloody maw of a looming apocalypse, dripping with bitterness and a sense of now or never.
He didn’t expect a sudden burst of courage to make it oh so easy to just reach his hand over and stroke his thumb over Cas’s knuckles.
Cas jolts, looks at Dean – still flighty, still almost feral. He looks like he’s been through the mental wringer, and Dean’s in two minds about whether he’ll ever ask him about that. He can make a decent enough pass at putting it together himself – experience speaks, a folded trench coat dredged from the water and passed from car to car, never touched too long ‘cause it reeked of oil and damp no matter how many times it got washed – whatever Cas’s equivalent version is probably better dead and buried, or at least repressed.
And if not, well. Cas can bring it up himself. That’s what it’s gonna be like from now on, if Dean can help it. They’re gonna talk. They’re gonna share. It’s not gonna be lies and omissions and fucking up.
Dean smiles, entwines their hands in a heady rush that sends goose bumps prickling down his arms and a shiver throughout his entire body.
“S’gonna be okay.” He says, and he means this, and he means whatever hell comes after them next.
They’re gonna be okay.