Characters not mine.
(Originally written for a free-for-all challenge on comment_fic. Prompt was "Dancing in the rain.")
There was a storm coming in, and soon. The air was already so thick with the moisture and the crackle of a big one that Dean couldn't even breath without being reminded that he ought to get in the car before he got drenched. But just now, he didn't particularly care.
He was sprawled across the hood of the Impala with his eyes closed, just off a stretch of back road, and he'd been watching the storm build for the past hour and a half, just being alone. Really alone, for once. Lisa was great, really she was, and Ben was an awesome kid, but there was a disconnect he'd never be able to get around. Dean was just way too screwed up for a normal life, and way too screwed up to be alone, too. Which, in the end, meant he was more fucked than usual.
So sometimes he got to the point that all this pretending was going to kill him, because he didn't want Lisa to see how frustrated he was - to her this was just a long adjustment period; he'd lost important people but that didn't mean this whole apple-pie lifestyle was impossible - where the easy lies he told and the trying-too-hard to get a real smile out of him were like individual blades digging in. And when that happened, he got into the damn car and just drove, fifteen minutes or three hours, until he found some stretch of highway where he could pull over and watch the sky and listen to nothing but the occasional car flying past him. Where he could just be honestly alone to rail at the world for giving him the worst mercy it could possibly think of - for leaving just him alive and here this time.
When he got back after this one, Ben was going to ask him if he'd jumped in a lake or something.
Thunder rumbled. Dean didn't even bother opening his eyes.
He'd lost count of the number of times he and Sam had sat there and watched the storms build. He still half-expected to hear his brother quietly counting between the lightening strike and the peal to come with the sound of the rain, although it never did anymore. He still expected Sam to nudge him when the last number got too low and say that they ought to get into the car.
And even more recently - they'd never actually watched a storm build with Cas. They'd been too busy trying to make sure there was still a world to watch them in. But Dean had always meant to. Castiel had never seen a storm from that perspective, and Dean wanted to watch his face as the clouds came on, because there was a certain amount of wonder Cas found in everything.
Another warning growl from the cloud. Dean waited to get drenched.
But Sam wasn't there to nudge him, and he'd never get to watch Cas's face, and now it was just honestly him and the car. The Impala was the only thing he'd ever managed to hang on to anyway - he'd always come back for her and fixed her up and even rebuilt her on occasion, because there had to be something he could keep with him. Something to house the memories.
Sam, Cas, the car. He could at least hang on to one, right?
A few drops of rain fell. One hit him squarely in the eyelid.
"Dean?" The voice was almost disguised in the next crack of thunder. "This is not a good idea."
Great. Now he was hearing things in the storm.
"Dean?"
It was ridiculous. He was gone, and Dean had never asked him to come back or to stay, but he opened one eye just to confirm he had well and truly lost it.
And then scrambled to a sitting position so quickly he nearly fell off the hood. "Son of a bitch!"
Castiel, who had been leaning over Dean, only inches away, blinked. Dean had nearly cracked their foreheads together getting up.
Dean slid off the Impala and reached out, grabbing the trench coat and the warm, solid arm underneath it. He'd mostly expected his fingers to pass right through the angel. "Cas?"
"Yes."
It was no kind of explanation. Dean sort of wanted an explanation - any explanation, either for why he'd left or why he'd returned. But just now he didn't need one. Someone was back and here and now, and it wasn't just Dean talking to the car, who was never the best conversationalist anyway. He pulled the angel forward.
Cas didn't object, but he wasn't used to responding to human affection either, and stayed straight and nonresponsive through the hug. "You are more pleased to see me that usual."
"You left, you son of a bitch!" But Dean couldn't keep the grin out of his voice even as he yelled. The anger would come later, if it even worked its way out of the shock at all.
"I returned." Castiel started to make a move to grab Dean's shoulder, but his fingers paused halfway, lingering between them and dripping water in the rain. "Where's Sam?"
"What?" Something caught in Dean's chest. Cas knew, he knew how little Dean wanted to think about where Sam was. Of course he knew.
Castiel just tilted his head slightly. "I did not expect to find you alone."
Lightening flashed as he started, and thunder came on its heels before Dean could answer. The storm was coming closer. "Cas," he said quietly, because he didn't want to actually say hell out loud.
Castiel guessed. "I know. I returned him." He glanced around, as though he expected Sam to trot out from behind the car.
Dean bit his lip. Sam was here?
"We should find him."
"Sam's back?" Dean managed. His voice was barely above a whisper. If it weren't Cas, he wouldn't have expected to be heard over the sound of the rain.
Castiel nodded soberly.
Something with the approximate weight of the Impala settled back on Dean's chest. Sam was out there somewhere, and Cas had come back, and he wanted to go find Sam. Everything had just been handed back to him, as though there was nothing to it, when he'd spent the past four months trying to make himself accept that it was never coming back.
Four months out of the loop would hit him later. Right now, he was just trying to figure out whether or not it would all disappear in a puff of smoke. "'Course we're going to find him," Dean answered.
He reached out and pushed Cas's hand down from where it was still held between them, shoulder height. His fingers must have lingered on the wrist a moment too long, because Cas twisted it underneath him and grabbed Dean's wrist in turn, squeezing slightly. "Let's go then," he said.
Dean nodded. So Cas had not suddenly reappeared and suggested getting their limbs tangled together in the backseat, but this suggestion that there might be time for that later was more than he'd hoped for. It was a second before he let go and pushed the angel towards the passenger seat.
He'd have to go back to Lisa's, pick up his stuff and tell them where he was going. And he felt a little guilty doing that when they'd thought he was staying, but he knew he was stressing Lisa and Ben out, too. That they'd all felt this was too weird to stay stable.
And now the world was finally righting itself, and two out of three of the things he wanted to keep were with him as he went out to find the third, as lightening flashed and made the shadows of an angel, a human, and a car dance in the rain.