Dean Winchester likes to believe he knows his roommate decently well,
despite knowing he knows very little about him.
They were a pair of disasters, colliding with everything around and between them until their predestined (and doesn't that word just make Dean's stomach churn) paths inevitably collided into a supernova of angst and baggage, drugs and alcohol; clutching onto one another in the dark depths of a shared apartment they rented not but a week after knowing each other as they rode out a bad trip, a whiskey-soaked depression that left them both scrambling to hold onto one another like a life raft in the shitstorm of life that crashed around him.
Sam disapproved, when he did talk to Dean. But he was so busy with his impending graduation from Stanford that Dean sometimes couldn't bring himself to drag Sam away from his studies—away from his future life of helping people in ways no one had helped them when Dad had crawled into a fifth and never left after mom had died.
Bobby… That one was still too fresh, too raw, to talk about.
Castiel never talks about his family on the rare occasions he's completely sober. Or even when he's mildly buzzed on the cocktail of various pain medication and weed. No, it isn't until he's so far gone on a bad trip, clutching to Dean wherever he happens to catch him (He hasn't come to any sort of grip with the fact that he hasn't caught Dean since they first met — rather, it's been the other way around for quite some time) like a crutch and fucking sobs into his neck. Castiel's voice quibbles and wavers as he goes on about a dysfunctional family, about brothers who never stop the stupid fighting and the dicks who cast him out of the family.
Dean does know Cas had been homeless when they first met.
So Dean gathers him up, rides out the bad trip with Castiel in his arms like a child and waits for him to come back down. If anything, the gratifying blow job helps him forget about the cheesy chick-flick moment that had passed between them. But deeper down he knows next time it might be him.
Dean doesn't know the extent to Cas' drug usage.
But to be fair, he's never quite asked. Only probing as far as inquiring about substances that could get them heavy jail time. Castiel had stared at him over the top of his hand as he lit his cigarette, grinned lazily at the taller, tanner man and breathed a ring of smoke at him. The smug bastard. Later on, as they listened to Roger Waters cry out for Vera, tangled up in Dean's forest green sheets and a shared breath of marijuana between them that Cas had assured Dean it wouldn't get bad.
Which was why, when Dean returned to their apartment after a hard day at the auto shop, his blood nearly stopped. The lights were all off, save for the TV that showered the room in scattered static. Cas was slumped back in the armchair, staring blankly ahead. His skin didn't take the light correctly, not reflecting like it should. With a flick he turned the lamp light on, studying Cas more intensely than he did in his eleven years of school. His pupils didn't react at all to the close light, instead staying expanded and swallowing up all light that was offered greedily. Dean slid a hand over his wrist, flinching in surprise at the feel. It was hot to the very touch, burning up and so, so dry. As if he's never experienced water in his life.
"Cas? C'mon, buddy, talk to me." He leaned in, slapping the angel-named man on the cheek gently. That got a reaction out of Cas, if just barely.
"Dean..?" His voice sounded off.
"Oh thank God." He muttered, hand resting on his knee. "What did you take?"
Castiel just stared at Dean for long, pregnant pauses. He blinked, head canting to the side slightly as his eyes tried to close. "I'm so tired, Dean.." Now Dean was beginning to realize why Cas sounded off; he spoke as if his tongue were too heavy, as if making these few syllables were too much for him to exert.
The warning bells turned into klaxons.
"Castiel," Dean paused, grabbing Cas' cheek and turning him towards his direction once more. "How much did you take?"
There was no verbal response, but the fingers of his right hand unfurled and a small, empty orange tube landed in front of Dean. A prescription of heavy pain killers. Signed into someone else's name. Filled that morning.
Son of a fucking bitch.
"Cas? Cas!" He slapped his cheek a bit harder, startling another response from him as he dug through his pocket, clutching his cell phone tight as he dialed emergency services. It was Cas' lifeline.
"911, what's the nature of your emergency?"
"Yes, help – My friend needs an ambulance."
"What's the state of his emergency?"
"I think—" Fuck, what did Cas teach him? "I think he overdosed."
After giving the teller their address with the explicit instruction to keep him breathing, Dean hung up the phone. He held his hand up to his friend's mouth and nose, hoping to feel something, anything –
A little wuft of air curled past his fingers, so gentle he almost thought he had imagined it.
Oh, thank God.
In the remaining minutes before the ambulance was set to arrive, Dean hid any and all paraphernalia that he could remember they had stashed—even the ones not being used. Cas would kill him, but it was better than his best friend being dead. He lightly slapped his cheek one more time, fear crawling into his chest and up his throat as Castiel failed to respond. But there was a crashing of footsteps in his hall, and suddenly paramedics were flooding their apartment, taking Dean away as they searched for a pulse, a breath, a sign of life before they moved him.
"Sir, do you know the user's name? Sir?"
A hand reached out, just touching Dean's shoulder. But it was enough to startle him to the present. "What?"
"Do you know the user?"
"Oh, yeah… Cas. Castiel. I think he," He licked his lips, his sitter training coming back now. "I think he hit somewhere else—I just came home and found him like this."
"Do you know Castiel's last name?"
The saddest part was that Dean didn't know.