Work Text:
Castiel isn’t sure what’s going to happen next. Not that he’s ever been precisely sure of these sorts of things, but it seems like he’d had more of a sense of what to expect before. He looks ahead now, and instead of seeing a long horizon of patterns knitting into each other, branching out here into thousands of splitting threads or cutting off suddenly there, weaving around back to to the beginning and starting over anew, he only sees a narrow tunnel of weak light.
Dean sits down beside him and rests his arms on the edge of the table. “So, you gonna tell me what happened?” he asks.
Castiel tries to glance over the threads of this conversation, tries to determine which one will lead to Dean, calm, nodding and listening intently, reining back the fury and hurt he knows is still there under the surface of Dean’s skin. But there's no pattern to find, no way of predicting Dean's reaction.
Castiel is unsure of many things. He wishes Dean would stay a fixed point, even if only for a while. But Dean is known for veering abruptly off one thread, chasing a notion down the seams of time and somehow ending up in a completely different pattern altogether. Dean is never predictable.
“I don’t know where to start,” he says.
Dean huffs. “You could try starting with Heaven’s wish-upon-a-star routine.”
He doesn’t like to remember his descent. The fall itself was a rather complex equation, the series of numbers that had once defined him stripping away as he plunged to the earth, leaving him with only an aching remembrance of the blindingly bright light that he’d once been and all this uncertainty, only barely illuminated by a faint glow of light that seemed to cut across the darkness.
Could he calculate this uncertainty?, he wonders, dazed. He might be able to, if he was given enough time. But Dean’s waiting for his answer.
“You were right,” he says finally. “She was right.” He meets Dean’s eyes, though he isn’t at all sure he wants to. “What I did – destroying the nephilim, seizing the cupid’s bow – they weren’t trials. Only a spell.”
Dean doesn't seem surprised. He doesn’t even blink. Of course. He has, of course, some idea of what must’ve happened.
“Bad luck runs in threes,” Dean says. “So the third ingredient was you. Right? You didn’t fall the same as the other angels. Kevin says the other angels might have been cast out of Heaven, Milton-style, mojo intact. Just locked out of the house. But you—” he hesitates. “You’re human.”
“I don’t know what has happened to the others,” Castiel tells him, monotone. He stares at the surface of the table, at the way Dean’s knuckles go white when he clenches the arm of his chair. “What you say could be possible. In which case, every angel will be searching for a vessel, in order to influence events on earth. But yes. My grace was the third ingredient necessary for the spell.”
This is not at all pleasant to talk about. It's easiest to think of this conversation like an academic debate. A case. What passes as small talk for hunters.
Dean leans back in his chair. “So what’s the other possibility?”
Castiel tries to consider the question, but he’s finding it rather difficult. His head aches. He thinks he would like it very much if Dean allowed him to rest his head on the table and fall asleep. But this is important. “I think the spell took every angel’s grace. I think every angel is now mortal. I believe that’s what the spell, what Metatron intended.”
Dean looks like he has other questions to ask. Castiel hopes the next one isn't So what can we do? He doesn't have an answer to provide. But Dean only opens his mouth, then closes it. He repeats what he’d said before, only hours ago, “Well, at least you’re here.”
His voice is very soft. He could be talking to himself. “I didn’t know what had happened. To you. Thought you were probably dead. I mean, you’ve died before...but I didn’t know if you’d ever find your way back this time.”
Castiel isn’t sure what he means. He doesn’t feel inclined to try to puzzle out the sentiment behind Dean’s words. He’s become aware, without really noticing when it had happened, of the light in the room. There’s a light to the bunker that he’s never noticed before. It’s not the stark brilliance of Heaven. Instead it’s a warm glow that holds the shadows at bay, and this light tilts toward him like a beacon; it paints Dean in with rings of dust and haloes the golden-brown hairs on his arms.
He’s seen this light before, he thinks. It reminds him vaguely of the light he’d seen during his fall.
He must be staring, because Dean says, “What’s up, Cas?”
Castiel shakes his head, and the haloes blur around Dean’s features. He blinks. “You’re glowing,” he murmurs.
Dean looks at him oddly, and then turns his head away. Castiel can’t tell what he’s thinking. Well, that’s not entirely unexpected. He never can. “Come on. Let’s find you a place to crash before you fall asleep at the table,” Dean says.
The last time Castiel was in the bunker, he’d spent the night reclining stiffly on Dean's bed. Dean had brought him a blanket, spreading it over him wordlessly before sinking into the chair by his bedside. Castiel gathered that there were other rooms in the bunker, but none of them were ready for visitors. We’re not exactly prepared for company, Sam had said.
He wonders where he'll sleep this time, now that he's uninjured. There are couches in the library where he could lie down. He wouldn't mind. He knows, now, just how it feels to wake up after sleeping while sitting up, with one’s head tilted at all manner of odd angles. It would be nice to sleep lying down, instead of on a bus or in the backseat of a car.
Dean goes up to one of the several control boxes scattered around the room, and pulls up a lever. A light turns on, somewhere far down a long narrow hallway. “This way, Cas.”
Castiel follows the light and Dean through the bunker, curving around around corners and winding down hallways. Sam’s room, Kevin’s room. Dean's room. Castiel notes them as they pass by.
“Is there room at the inn?” he asks. He’s feeling whimsical.
Dean doesn’t seem to catch the joke. “Don’t be a smartass,” he says, gruff, “of course there’s room for you. I just didn’t want to—” But Castiel finally understands what he’s not saying now, what he’d almost said before. Dean hadn’t wanted to get his hopes up.
Dean stops in front of a door, and swings it open. He doesn’t have to flip on a switch. There’s a lamp on the nightstand, already lit. There’s a desk, a dresser. A stripped-down mattress. “This all right?”
“Perfectly adequate,” Castiel says, weary. He understands, from having watched Dean and Sam take possession of a motel room, that the first thing to do when one gets a room is to unload one’s luggage. Maybe brush one’s teeth. But he doesn’t have anything to put in the dresser drawers, or to set on top of the desk. He doesn’t have a toothbrush, either. He sits without ceremony on the bare mattress and waits for Dean to leave.
But Dean scrubs his hand across his face, as though something has made him exhausted, all at once. “Hang on a minute there, Cas,” he says tiredly. “You can’t go to sleep like that.”
Castiel doesn’t see why he shouldn’t. The mattress feels rather wonderful underneath him. It's more than he'd imagined, far better than a couch. Comfortable. Soft. He could lie down, and the world would go black around him for several hours at a time. The idea is pleasant. He would like very much to see how it feels to lie down on top of the mattress and let this happen. “Oh,” he says. “Why not?”
“Just hold on,” Dean tells him. “I’ll be right back.”
Castiel lets his shoulders slump as he sits on the edge of the mattress. There’s a window, up high by the ceiling, long and narrow and covered in iron bars. He can see the moon, if he cranes his neck just so, but there aren’t any stars in the sky tonight.
Dean returns with an armful of linens. “You need sheets,” he explains. He drops them on the foot of the mattress. Castiel looks at them without interest. “Egyptian cotton, can you believe it? 500 thread count. We’re really moving up in the world. The last motel I stayed at had sheets with pineapples and coconuts on ‘em.”
Castiel supposes he’s pleased that Dean approves of the sheets. Dean, he's noticed, has an appreciation for small luxuries. “They’re blue,” he observes pointlessly.
Dean looks almost embarrassed. “Saved them for you,” he says. He smoothes a hand across the sheets. “I figured if you ever came back—”
Castiel thinks suddenly about the plate of leftovers, the lamp by the desk, already turned on. These things seem important somehow. But he can’t seem to focus long enough to fit the pieces together.
“Get up,” says Dean. “Just for a second, okay? I’ll make up the bed.”
So he stands, and watches the way Dean moves in the lamplight, tugging a fitted sheet over the corners of the mattress. It seems unfair to let Dean do all the work. “I can help,” he offers.
Dean grunts. “Fine, okay. Grab that corner, would you?” Fitted sheets, a thin flat sheet. The same type of faded green blanket Dean had given him last time. He takes the blanket from the foot of the bed and together they fold it over the mattress, turning back the corners.
“You good?" Dean moves as if to leave, but he remains by the door. "I’ll be down the hall, if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Castiel replies.
Dean shuts the door behind him quietly, and Castiel is alone with his thoughts, with only the lamp and the moon for company. He pats the faded green blanket with his fingertips. He hadn’t quite understood the Egyptian’s fascination with plant-based fibers, at the time, nor the subsequent obsession with bed linens. Now he thinks he might understand. Sliding his legs under the sheets and feeling the weight of the covers on his shoulders, chest, legs: it feels like it might be someone’s Heaven.
But his neck aches uncomfortably.
Something’s missing. Oh. Dean hadn’t left him a pillow. Well, Castiel can probably sleep without one. Except he can’t. No matter how he turns, it’s impossible to rediscover that feeling of comfort. Only moments before, he hadn’t been able to imagine anything else but the promise of sleep. Now sleep is the furthest thing from his mind. The human body seems to be rather capricious. How amazing.
He lies there for what feels like an eternity, or how he remembers eternity anyway, and tries his best to fall asleep. But it’s not working. Dean is surely asleep by now. But he had said that if Castiel needed anything...Castiel could simply get a pillow himself, if he knew where to find one. But he doesn’t. Dean would know.
Finally he crawls out of the bed. The lights in the hallway have been turned off, but there’s a film of light on one wall, emerging from underneath Dean’s door.
Dean’s lamp is still on, but Dean is asleep, sprawling over the left side of the bed, cheek resting against a pillow, an arm dangling off the side of the bed. There’s an extra pillow, Castiel can see, neatly placed on the right side of the bed, untouched. This might be the pillow Dean meant to give him. Then again, it might be Dean’s. He doesn’t seem to be using it, though. And he’d left his light on. Almost as though...Castiel shakes his head. He’s too tired for this.
He supposes he should ask first. He stands over the bed. “Dean. Dean.”
But Dean doesn’t stir, and Castiel doesn’t know what to do. He could take the second pillow and go back to his room. Or he could stay here, with Dean. Like before.
He’s not ready for this. Dean isn’t, either. It’s too soon, too fast. It’s too much. This isn't something he should ask for; it’s not his for the taking. But he takes the pillow anyway, out of bone-deep weariness, because Dean left the light on for him. Dean had wanted to hope that he’d come back.
He carefully lies down beside Dean, lets his head fall back on the extra pillow that might have been left for him. Dean shifts in his sleep, but doesn’t wake up. Castiel slides his legs under the covers, and his calf brushes again Dean’s. Familiar. Strange. He thinks he could fall asleep like this.
There’s the familiar guilt, the sadness, all hovering at the edge of his mind. His actions seem so far away right now, though he knows all too well that it won't be long before the weight of his troubles fall back on him, weighing his heart and pulling his shoulders down to a slump, but now – peace. Yes. It feels like this might be peace. It’s not the comforting blank void he used to feel in Heaven, but maybe it’s better this way.
Peace. Castiel turns the word over in his thoughts, counts it on the shadows on the wall, measures it against the faint line of Dean in the darkness, the curve of his shoulders, and he settles against Dean’s side. Not quite touching, but almost.
Dean hadn’t furnished a room, hadn’t prepared proper clothing, hadn’t really even thought Castiel would be alive. But he’d left a light on, not expecting him to reappear, but – well, hoping – maybe that Castiel would anyway.
Tomorrow, Dean might insist Castiel take the extra pillow and retreat back to the other room. But then again, Dean might steal his pillow back every night for weeks in hopes that Castiel will pad down the hall to find him again. Maybe one evening Castiel will steal Dean’s pillow instead, leave it on his own bed, in his own room, and then it might be Dean who’ll come in search of him, to rest his head beside Castiel’s and fall asleep by his side.
It might happen this way. It might not. Castiel isn’t sure. He doesn’t really expect Dean to do these things. But he thinks as he falls into sleep, that he’ll leave the light on. Just in case.
