Dedicated to Dean Winchester, who turned 32 on the 24th Jan 2011, and who goes through so much un-real shit just to make us real-life people care about him! (And Cas, cause I 3 him)
"Home"
Disclaimer: I make no money from this, just so you know. Supernatural is not mine; I make no money from series and am certainly not the creators/writers/directors. It is my theory that Kripke is season5's missing God, but as that is simply speculation, please don't sue?
Summary: [Dean/Cas] Set between 5 and 6. Dean had finally found a home. And all of those hallmark cards and cheesy films that Dean had scoffed at over the years had actually turned out to be correct: home really was where the heart is.
Warnings: Slash. Dean/Cas. Language. Character Death (past references). Song Lyrics. Mentions of Dean/Lisa.
Rating: R.
A/N: So this would be my first Supernatural fiction. I tried my hand at Xovers with SPN/HP, and they turned out ok so I thought, ah sure why not! It's short though… First times never last very long after all :P
XXX
Words: 5,041
Chapter 1
There's a life inside of me
That I can feel again
It's the only thing that takes me
Where I've never been
I don't care if I lost everything that i have known
It don't matter where I lay my head tonight
Your arms feel like home. – 3 Doors Down, "Your Arms Feel Like Home".
It was his birthday, and apparently that meant it was supposed to be important to him, special. Lisa and Ben were hovering behind the couch, Ben carrying a dufflebag and Lisa wringing a dishcloth between her hands. They both looked at him with worried expressions, Ben nervous and Lisa anxious, and Dean sort of felt bad that they might have been scared of him. But they needn't be; he'd never hurt them. He just didn't feel like celebrating one more year alive and alone, and they should have just respected his decision when he had said that last night at dinner and let the subject of his 32nd birthday drop.
"Dean?" She asked again. She stopped fidgeting long enough to tuck a lock of black hair behind her ear, and then she moved slowly towards the couch. When her hand touched his shoulder, Dean gave a soft grunt, and flipped the channel on the television. "What do you want to do for your birthday? We can go out, or order take-in, or I can cook you a meal?"
Dean turned his head around and nodded towards Ben, "weren't we taking him to a soccer match?"
"Yeah! But Dean!" Ben exclaimed, jumping forward with a grin on his face, his nervousness at Dean's mood forgotten. "It's your birthday so you get to pick what we do afterwards. It's a birthday tradition!"
Birthday traditions in Dean's family usually meant that Sammy would attempt to carve a trinket of some sort, or make him a macaroni cheese photo frame that Dean would never put a photo in, while his Dad offered him an 'extra special' lesson on how to hunt and kill the things that went bump in the night. They usually spent the day inside of a dingy motel room, or stretched out on the back seat of the Impala, Dean and Sam curled around each other when they were kids, with their Dad leaning back in the front seat, and later when they were adults and Sam went off to college and abandoned them, they sort of abandoned the notion of family birthdays or Christmases too.
Dean hadn't been with Lisa long. Just a few months, and at first everything had been hard and strange and different. They actually ate together in the dining room, and Lisa cooked in a real kitchen. Dean was so used to diner food and hungry-man frozen dinners on the occasions where they ate at Bobby's house that he had stared at his plate for a good twelve minutes the first time Lisa had cooked him dinner. Ben had thought he was messing around, and had laughed and teased good naturedly, and been a general child about it, the way Sam used to do when Dean skipped out on his veggies way back when, when Dad used to make them Thanksgiving dinner. Lisa had understood though, and the look of pity on her face had been like a knife to the heart. So Dean had picked up his knife and fork and started shovelling the food in, not really tasting it, but needing to get it off of his plate because Lisa had still been staring at him. As he swallowed, tasteless bite after tasteless bite, he had wondered for the first time whether that way why Castiel didn't bother to eat anything when he didn't need to?
Everything tasted like ashes.
"We can get pizza!" Ben said excitedly. He dropped his duffle onto the ground and bounded over to Dean like an overgrown colt. Flopping down beside the only father-figure he had ever known, Ben reached out for Dean's arm, accidentally laying his hand over the print, the claim, that Castiel had left there.
Dean jerked out of the child's reach, mouth turned down, and Lisa tensed. The last time she had accidentally touched his hand-print, the raised skin had been warm to the touch and had tingled against her own hand, but Dean had cried hysterically for over an hour, his face pressed against her stomach as he moaned about missing 'his Cas', and then he had acted like nothing happened. He had pulled back up his trousers, tugged the blanket over them and rolled onto his back and pretended to sleep. Lisa had watched him, worried and confused and a little bit jealous, because why was he sleeping with her if he missed this other girl? The only reason Lisa never asked about Cas was because of the niggling fear that he was dead and that Dean would react violently to the mention of his name.
Dean had never been violent to them before. He had nightmares and breakdowns and days where he did nothing but sit and stare at the turned-off television, but when he jumped up off of the couch and stormed passed them to the door, grabbing Ben's dufflebag on the way, Lisa knew why demons feared the last living Winchester. There was so much anger, and fear, and power inside of that one man, and it all swirled behind his green eyes as he turned back to look at her.
"Come on then, kid," he called to Ben. "You have a game to win."
Lisa followed them to the car. She stayed a few paces behind her son, and Ben forgot his fear and anxiety again, the way Sam had used to do moments after watching their Dad argue with one of his hunter 'friends'. The dark haired child was jogging along at Dean's side, struggling to keep up, and Dean threw the bag into the back seat of the car and held the door open for the boy.
"Thanks!" He called with a grin, hoping into his mom's car. The Impala was covered in tarp in the garage, and Dean's truck was only a two-seater, so family outings were usually done in Lisa's car unless no one minded getting dirty and squashed.
"You driving?" Dean asked, handing the keys over to his girlfriend-slash-caretaker. She took the keys with a soft smile, not asking if he was ok, because he wasn't and she knew that, just as she knew there was nothing more she could do to help other than be there. Dean nodded gratefully when she got into the car in silence, and he walked around to the other side and pulled open the door.
There was a rustle behind him, like leaves blowing in the wind, or wings being shaken down. But Dean didn't turn around to check, because he hadn't quite grown used to the disappointment of not seeing Castiel invading his personal space yet, and every time he heard the noise but didn't see the Angel was one more time than he thought he could have survived. So, now he knew better than to look. Curiosity killed the hunter, after all. It tore out his heart and stamped all over it.
Dean lowered himself into the car, momentarily staring off at the garage before shaking his head and pulling on his belt.
"We can bring the Impala if you want?" Lisa offered, but she had already turned the key in the ignition because she knew what Dean was going to say.
"No. That life's over. This is what's real, and it's good and safe and I'm happy." Lisa smiled over at him, because Dean was so sincere and he actually sounded like he meant it. But when he said, "I'm home now", she knew he was lying.
XXX
Dean had held out for a few more months, pretending Sam had never jumped in the cage with Michael and Lucifer, purposely forgetting to clean the Impala which was growing dust bunnies the size of Texas at this point, and ignoring the sounds of rustling wings and soft sighing that drifted to his ears over his shoulder whenever he spent 'family' time with Lisa and Ben. When he was alone, he was alone. And when he was with either Lisa or Ben, it was just the two of them. But when the family were all together, the way Dean and Sam and John had been family and together, Dean always felt like he was being watched, like there was someone in the wings waiting to swoop in and ruin everything like Demons and Angels and the Devil had ruined his first life.
Not many people were lucky enough to get a second chance, and Dean knew that he hadn't deserved one. It should have been Sam living the apple pie life, Sam who was smart and who had been going somewhere before Brady had killed Jess and before Azazel had killed their Mom. Sam, who was good and pure and still his sweet baby brother beneath everything, underneath all of the falls and the spills and the world ending fuck ups, Sam was still the hero, the better son, the one that needed to have been protected. He should have been the one here now, and Dean should have said yes to Michael and taken Lucifer with him into the cage.
Dean knew he didn't deserve this new life. He knew something was going to come along soon and try and ruin everything for him, and so he ignored the rustling of wings, and he washed his new truck with vigour because it wasn't like he had any other car lying around to lavish attention on or anything, and he made love to Lisa at night if she asked him to and tried to forget that she wasn't his Angel.
He had held out, hiding behind wilful ignorance and stubbornness and stupidity to protect himself from the realities of life and death and the hell he was trying to survive through. It was nothing compared to actually Hell, because Dean had spent forty years there, and honestly it was no picnic. But life was so much harder. In Hell, he had rules; torture and kill over and over again, or be tortured and killed over and over. On Earth, there were no rules like that, it was all about will power and choice and decisions. There were so many decisions to make, and every second of every day Dean convinced himself that somewhere along the line he had made a string of bad decisions and that's why everyone he loved left him.
But there was only so much lying he could do to himself.
When Lisa woke one morning, ten months after Dean had arrived crying and bloody on her doorstep, she woke alone. Dean was usually sitting beside the bed with a tray of breakfast he had pieced together with Ben's help, or he was spooned behind her lying in silence, or he was still asleep with one arm hiding his face because he had been kept up all night by nightmares and there were tears on his cheeks still. But she hadn't woken alone since the first month Dean had lived there, throwing himself from the bed to rush and vomit all over the en suit bathroom, gasping desperate breaths through the memories in his dreams and clutching at the hole in his chest until Lisa could calm him enough to listen that, no, there was no hole in his chest, yes, his heart was still there, Cas hadn't taken it with him, and no, hellhounds were not chewing on his insides and he certainly wasn't in Hell. She had never answered the questions about Sam, simply brushing Dean's hair out of his face with a sad smile on her mouth. Dean had stopped asking about Sam, eventually, before the nightmares had stopped being so frequent, but he still dreamed of Castiel. Lisa wasn't stupid, she knew not all of Dean's dreams about Cas were bad ones, but if the girl was dead then there was nothing to be jealous or angry or petty over. Dean was with her, and Dean needed her, and that was enough even if he didn't love her the way she loved him.
Lisa checked the bathroom first. Her boyfriend wasn't there. He was in the kitchen, or with Ben, or in the small office Lisa had installed in the guest bedroom after deciding that Dean would never sleep through the night if left alone to scream the whole house awake. She couldn't find him in the house at all, and when she looked out through the front window she gasped.
The Impala was parked on the lawn, the tarp off, and the garage door wide open. Dean was wearing nothing but a pair of ragged jeans, and he was humming along to Metallica as it was blasted from the car's speakers. He was scrubbing at the roof of the black car by the time Lisa made it outside; pulling closed the dressing gown around her body.
"Dean?" She asked in shock. For the first time in ten months, he was smiling the way he had when she had first met him, back before Ben was born, carefree and content and simple Dean. There was a sparkle in his eyes as he dropped the sponge and scooped her into a bubbly, wet hug. "What brought this on?"
"Went out last night with some of the fellas. Ran in to an old friend, he was just passing through but we got talking. All of what happened to me, it happened, Lis, I can't change that. No one can. But it's what made me who I am, what defined me, and my friend was right. I've been dwelling in the past too much. It's about time I stopped giving my past the power to hurt me and start learning from its mistakes instead, hmm? So first things first, gotta give my baby a bath. I deserve prison for this, you know," Dean said with a frown, staring at his car despairingly. "I've been so neglectful of you, baby, and daddy is so very sorry! Please say you'll forgive me?"
Lisa let a laugh escape her, smiling at the old familiar way in which Dean spoke to his car and she used to think he was crazy to do. "Who did you go out with?"
"Oh you know, some of the neighbours," Dean said dismissively, picking up his sponge again. "You were asleep when I got back, and I didn't want to wake you." He gave her a smile, not telling her that he had never come back into the house last night, had never come home to her, but she saw his shirt on the ground the one that Dean had been wearing last night before Lisa went to bed and she frowned.
"How early was it when you came back, Dean?" She asked softly. "An hour ago, two?"
"I wasn't with anyone else if that's what you're wondering, not like that. I got back really late, I told you I got talking to an old friend, and then I wanted to start fixing up my baby straight away. Didn't see the point of going inside just for a change of clothes!" There was a cup of coffee on the floor beside the Impala, and Dean reached down for it, taking a slow sip and grinning because it tasted good and was still warm. "Oh, my friend made it for me."
"He was here?" Lisa said, looking around warily. "He was in my house, and you were outside?"
"What? No, no! I don't know where he got it, he just showed up with it. You think I'd let someone near you and Ben if I wasn't there to protect you?" Dean pulled Lisa against him, holding her to his chest, and dropping the empty mug down onto the hood of the Impala. They both ignored the rustle of wings, and when they pulled apart Lisa pretended she couldn't see the refilled mug that waited on the floor beside the bucket of still hot water. Dean picked it up, took a sip, and nodded in thanks. "Wanna help me clean the inside?"
"No thanks, Dean. But I'll send Ben outside if he's up for it, ok?"
She had already turned back towards the house, and so she missed the frown that crossed Dean's face. Yeah, it was Ben and the kid was as good as his, but Dean wasn't sure that he liked the thought of Lisa inviting someone into his home without asking first. It just seemed rude, and Dean had had enough respect for Lisa's home not to invite Castiel inside last night. But all Dean could say was, "yeah awesome!" to his girlfriend's retreating back, and ignore the soft chuckles of his Angel.
Ben never actually came outside. So Dean and Cas cleaned the Impala together, Cas on the inside where Lisa would be less likely to see him, and Dean buffing the outside until it shone.
"Like your grace," Dean whispered.
"Like your soul," was Castiel's reply, hands moving so that fingers could entwine. Dean thought his soul was rather tarnished and frayed, not shinning like the hood of the Impala was, like the sun, but if Castiel thought so then so be it. Dean wasn't going to argue with the man he hadn't seen in ten months.
"I love you," he said softly, leaning in through the open window to press his lips lightly to the angel's. Castiel stopped polishing, dropped the cloth and tangled that hand into Dean's hair. It was furious and passionate, and so much more than anything he had shared with Lisa and it had only been a kiss, one of many Dean and Castiel had shared over the two years they had known each other, since Castiel had accidentally claimed Dean for himself, raising him from perdition and marking his soul in such a way that despite the fact that Castiel had gone back to Heaven, and was fighting a civil war with the angelic host, and Dean was keeping his promise to dead Sammy to live a 'normal life', all they wanted, all they needed was each other. They couldn't be happy otherwise.
"Tal gon," Castiel whispered in Enochian, "Mals-na ah gon gisa na-hath." 1
XXX
Dean hadn't actually gone to a bar with any of his neighbours. He had fallen asleep on the sofa, and had been woken by the rustling of wings and then the revving of an engine. He had taken a gun from his secret-just-in-case stash of weapons hidden beneath the stairs and gone to investigate. Castiel was sitting shotgun in the Impala when Dean opened the door to the garage, and he had honest to God dropped his gun in shock.
"Castiel!"
"You wouldn't look at me, when I came to see you, Dean. So I felt the need to resort to drastic measures." The angel left the car running, engine sputtering unwillingly but it determinedly kept turning over. "I hope I did not wake your family?"
Dean wanted to snort, and laugh, nudge Castiel's shoulder the way he used to and insist that they were family, him, Cas, Bobby and Sam, and that Dean didn't need any more family. But he did. Sammy was dead. Castiel was gone, had been gone for ten months, and Bobby… Bobby was making full use out of his newly working legs and didn't need Dean dropping in unexpectedly to an empty house.
"Nah, man, sleeping like babies," Dean said instead, a forced chuckle lodging itself in his suddenly dry throat. "I've missed you," he choked out before he could think better of it, ducking his head to hide his blush and the no doubt annoyed look that Castiel would be sporting. Dean waited for the speech about Heaven and Angels and war, about how it was over between them the moment the apocalypse stopped and Cas got his grace back, but the tirade didn't come. Instead, two soft hands cupped Dean's cheeks lightly, tilting the man's head up and soft lips met his own, tentative and shy as if it were their first kiss all over again.
"I have missed you also, my charge. But I feel the need to point out that you were the one who ignored my presence and I was the one who made the effort of visiting." There was a soft smile on his pink lips, and Dean reached up a hand to run his thumb over the bow of Castiel's mouth.
"I thought I was imagining you," Dean whispered, and he sounded so weak and pathetic and unsure that he hated himself for a moment, but Castiel was still looking at him with wide blue eyes, filled with love and wonder, believing the best in him once again, and if Castiel wouldn't hate him, then Dean shouldn't hate himself. It wouldn't be fair to saddle Cas with an angsty, emo ex-hunter for the rest of their time together; the angst and the emo had been Sam's thing anyway, not his. But there was something he needed to know, something he had to ask before he could convince himself that the past was the past, and that he actually had a future to look forward to. "Cas? Are you staying?"
The angel looked down at him, face softening and mouth turning down. "I am very busy, Dean. My brothers and sisters are…" He sighed loudly, one hand coming up to rub at his face wearily. "It shouldn't concern you. You have done your part for this world, and I must leave you out of this war. But I am very busy. Dean, I- I will make the time to visit you. It will not be as it was last year, when we were always together, or this year where we were always apart. I cannot be here all of the time."
"I can handle some of the time, Cas. Anything is better than nothing." Dean whispered, breath ghosting against Castiel's face as he leant up to steal another soft kiss.
"You deserve better than nothing. I should not have disturbed your life a second time." He glanced in the direction of the garage door, to the house that lay beyond and the family that waited inside for Dean to come home.
"Don't you dare come here and tell me you miss me and then leave again. Don't you dare, Cas, because I won't be able to live through losing you again." Hands fisted in the familiar tan trench coat, and Dean tugged the taller man closer, desperately clinging to him.
"I am always with you Dean, always," Castiel's hand was pressed to Dean's heart, fingers rubbing lightly in time to the thump thumping of his heart and the rising of his chest. "I'm always here."
"It isn't though." Castiel knew what Dean meant, because he looked at him strangely, head tilted to one side, and pressed hander against the heartbeat that vibrated through Dean's chest. "You took it with you when you left, so if you're going again, will you rip it out first please?"
"I love you," the angel said after a tense silence. "I do not wish to leave you, but eventually you will find someone normal, someone meant for you, and they will make you happy. You deserve better."
"I want you! I was meant for you." Dean rolled up the sleeve of his t-shirt, displaying the red, raised skin, like a burn mark, in the shape of a hand, and he thrust the arm out towards Castiel. The angel's hand came to lie over the mark, fingers curling into place and palm pressing down just right, as if sinking into a mould that had been made just to fit him. "We were meant for each other. It's the only thing I really believe in anymore, Cas. Not God, or Angels, or Demons, or people: just you, and me. Together."
"I love you," Castiel whispered again, hand still closed around Dean's upper arm. "I will be with you until you ask me to leave." Dean tugged them closer, lips meeting and hands pressing and petting and searching, until they pulled back panting and aroused but at peace with one another. "Never ask me to leave."
"Never, Cas. Never. I love you too," Dean said, almost too quietly to hear, but Castiel smiled because he understood Dean, and understood that Dean was more comfortable screaming those words while spread out on his back beneath his Angel. "So, chick flick moment over, yeah?" Dean asked, and without waiting for an answer, he jumped into the driver's seat of the still running Impala.
"What are you doing?"
Castiel watched as Dean drove the car from the garage, walking along slowly in the wake of the fresh tire tracks on the grass and he watched as Dean ran back towards him. "What?" Dean asked with a grin, rummaging around the garage for buckets and sponges, "that baby was my life! Ten months of self-pity over with, it's time to get my life back. Ok, so I promised Sammy no hunting, but don't mean I can't ride my baby once in a while, huh?"
Cas tilted his head to one side, thinking the statement through, and while logically he knew Dean meant the car, he couldn't help the blush that spread across his vessel's cheeks. "I am not adverse to riding, Dean."
The human gave him a lecherous grin, winking salaciously at him.
"Stay there," he said, a softer grin in place but his eyes were bright with lust and Castiel felt his grace writhe in anticipation as he watched Dean leave the garage. The human returned moments later, a pillow and a blanket in hand, and he handed them to Castiel as he grabbed the stack of buckets he had prepared earlier and the hose pipe. He set everything up the way he would need it in the morning, buckets and sponges beside the front right wheel of the car, the hose pipe stretched out just waiting to be turned on, the bottles of cleaning solution in a different bucket by the back wheel of the car.
"We'll have to share," Dean said at last, nodding at the blanket and pillow Castiel still held. Dean held open the back door of the car, allowing Castiel to climb inside first, arranging the pillow and the blanket in a way in which he hoped would please Dean, and then Dean climbed in on top of him.
They held each other, kissed and caressed and loved one another beneath the stars, panting and whispering words of love that they had been missing out on for ten months.
For all of Dean's life, ever since he could remember, since his mother died, home had been this car. Some nights they slept in dirty motels, or cheap hotels, or the occasional hostel where they slept curled around each other in the one bed, Dean and John armed to the teeth just in case. Bobby's had been the next best thing they had had to a home, but after Bobby and their Dad fell out, after Sam went to college, family events and houses became a thing of the past. It had just been Dean and his Dad, and their Impala. That was all of the family they had needed, all of the home they had desired. And even after their Dad died, and Sam came back, the car was still Dean's home. The one place where he felt safe and warm and secure. Except that wasn't the truth anymore either.
There was more than one place where Dean felt like that and that was lying in Castiel's arms.
"Do you not wish to go into your home to sleep?" Cas asked after they had made love, and Dean had rolled contentedly to press his face to Castiel's neck and wrap his arms around the angel's shoulders.
It didn't matter how many motels he had slept in along the way, or how many women had welcomed him into their beds, or how many times he and Sam had called Bobby's place 'home', they had all just been stepping stones on the journey to this moment.
"This is home." Dean whispered, breath warm on Castiel's sweaty neck, and Dean inhaled sharply, taking in the scent of the man he loved, of the man who kept him safe. Despite how sappy he sounded, how completely female he was being in that moment, Dean wouldn't have said anything different if he had the chance to go back and change things. It was the truth, after all.
"You are my home."
Across the lawn, in the nicely kept detached house that Dean had been a residence of for ten months, Lisa and Ben slept on peacefully, neither aware that Dean was not with them, that he had not come back to their home that night. But neither of them was worried, because what they didn't know couldn't hurt them.
Castiel watched Dean sleep, curled up with him in the backseat of the Impala, wings coal-black and curved around his mate's body, as his eyes darted around the dark, warily searching for any threat of danger. But there was no one out there, there was nothing to hurt them that night, and they were together. Castiel thought on Heaven, and his warring brothers and sisters, and he closed his eyes with a sigh. He didn't need to sleep, not since his grace had been restored, but he pulled Dean closer and rested his eyes regardless.
Heaven had once been his home, he thought.
If it were not for the threat of Raphael and what the archangel would do to Earth if he won the civil war, Castiel would have given it all up in a heartbeat. He would have given everything up a second time. Left Heaven, left his family and their war, and he'd have begged to spend all of his human life with Dean.
Because Heaven hadn't been his home in a long time. Not since he had met Dean Winchester.
The End
1 – Since I couldn't actually find a site that translated Iwords/I, I did it the Egyptian way and translated symbol to letter. Letter-by-letter, it means "my faith", the angelic version of "my love" apparently. ..txt
Comments? Suggestions? Burning pitchforks at dusk?