Dean isn't the best example human emotion. Dean is a man who knows that he is living at the very end of times, is aware entirely of the loss of life their failure will bring, and yet all he can think about is the loss of one human.
In some ways, Castiel is glad. Dean would not agree with his assessment, but knowing that neither of them is doing it quite right makes him feel more comfortable. Then knowing he is feeling comfort makes him uncomfortable, and he realizes (again) that he's doing this humanity thing completely wrong.
They sit on opposite beds in the motel room, the television filling the space that their conversation doesn't. In the aftermath of Sam's betrayal (well-intentioned as it may have been) there hardly seems to be anything to say.
When Dean clears his throat, Castiel expects it will be emotional - experience tells him that Dean will have feelings to express about his brother. Castiel knows how to respond; the betrayal and loss of a brother is achingly familiar. But then Dean says, "I could go for a burger. May as well get it while it's still hot."
Castiel is left without anything to say.
Intellectually he understands that it's not about the weight of this one thing, but about how the human brain filters experience to keep sane - but his brain is not human, and he can't relate. But he agrees, because he knows his body likes meat and requires food.
They sit in the diner. People around them are talking - mostly quietly, mostly smiling or at least not scowling, not like Dean is scowling at his food between bites. Castiel clears his throat and tries. "The future is not set in stone."
And then Dean is scowling at him. There's a pitiful moment of despair, because he doesn't fit. He isn't human, and he isn't an angel. It passes, and Castiel eats. He does it right because he has practiced. Now that he owns this human body, alone with it's needs and wants, it seems like he is always doing something to maintain it. The effort is exhausting.
Dean swallows his food and clears his throat. "We're gonna go to Bobby's. I've got plans." Castiel nods and eats without speaking again.
As Castiel is falling asleep that night, listening to Dean not sleeping in the other bed, he realizes that they are utterly broken, and he finds some solace in that - he understands broken.
The first night at Bobby's Dean refuses to speak to either of them, leaving Castiel alone on the porch in the humid evening, beer bottle cold against his palms. Bobby staring out into the yard at nothing - Castiel almost jumps out of his skin (he wishes it were that easy) when Bobby speaks: "How is he doing?"
Castiel sips his beer, trying not to wince at the bitterness of the brew. "Not well," he finally says. Bobby is looking at him, like there's more to say, so he elaborates: "He's determined to change whatever future he has seen, instead of taking time to grieve."
"That's the Winchesters," Bobby says, sipping his own beer.
The first time Dean makes a joke Castiel misses it. He had thought that eventually (when Dean started to tell jokes again) he would understand, but he knows now that human jokes are about a lifetime of human experiences, and he has none. He explains this, watching the scenery zoom past, like it will make up for the fact that he didn't respond appropriately.
Dean frowns and mutters something to himself.
The first time Dean presses pain pills into his mouth - a jolt, Dean's palm slams fast against his lips and Dean snaps, "Swallow, damn it, Cas!" - Castiel feels human.
It's not about the pain, though all the blood on his clothes is certainly a convincing mark of his humanity. But as the pain recedes he begins to feel for the first time like he can fake this humanity thing almost as well as Dean does. The drugs run their course, fill his veins with a numbness not entirely unlike being drunk - but he feels lighter. Calmer. Castiel endures the stitching without complaint. When Dean makes some shaky half-joke afterwards, Castiel smiles involuntarily.
Dean almost smiles back and the moment feels so right that Castiel almost forgets that he's not really human.
Bobby frowns at the gates of the camp, looking at it from the passenger side of his truck. They had been driving for hours, and Castiel was cramped in the backseat. "It don't look like much."
"Yeah, well, neither do you." Dean actually grins, but Bobby shakes his head. "Trust me, man. Look at the defenses. There's a river nearby. It'll hardly need any work at all."
"Hardly my ass," Bobby mutters, but he doesn't argue with Dean any more after that.
Castiel works with Bobby to interpret signs of the Apocalypse in hopes of building a timeline. They forge a network with the other hunters - "If we know what's coming, we can save lives," Bobby says on to someone on the phone while Castiel contemplates a bottle of Bobby's pills on the kitchen counter.
Dean fills the Impala anything he can buy, trade, or steal - food, ammunition, hygiene supplies, medication, textiles - and makes regular trips down to the camp to store them. Bobby and Castiel look at the amount he hauls each time he leaves, and begin to understand the scope of what Dean knows.
At night (when he's there) Dean watches the news, waiting for something, though he refuses to speak to either Castiel or Bobby about what he thinks is coming.
The longer they spend on this fool mission, the more sure Castiel is that Dean needs a human. Tired of being human but not being human at all, he takes the pills even though he isn't hurting. Except that he is.
Eventually Dean and Castiel leave to live out at the campground. Dean had spent an entire week trying to convince Bobby to join them, but the man won't budge - "You think I can wheel my ass up and down that terrain? I'm better off here, where I can keep track of things and warn the others about what's coming."
Castiel watches Bobby's house shrink in the distance, and wonders what Dean is feeling.
They share the sturdiest of the cabins while they work on getting the abandoned buildings habitable. When the evening light makes it impossible to work any further, Castiel takes a couple pills while Dean starts cooking. It's a good system - Castiel learns a little bit about living off the land, but most days Dean handles dinner on his own.
Dean is dressing a rabbit to cook, and Castiel is riding the high of whatever he had taken an hour ago. Out of habit he says a silent prayer for the animal's sacrifice. It doesn't feel right. "Why are we here? Shouldn't we be fighting?"
Dean grunts, but doesn't pause in his work. The animal is a mess of blood and gore, and Castiel wonders if it bothers Dean to flay the creature. "I don't know how to change it."
"How to change what?"
"This - this future. I don't know how we get there, and I - " Dean swears, slamming the knife into the dirt beside him. "I only saw the end. I don't know if I can change it now, but this place is going to be important. This place is going to save lives." He looks at Castiel with his hard features and haunted eyes, and Castiel awkwardly pats him on the shoulder. Dean raises an eyebrow.
"This is just a place," he says. "You will save lives."
It's four months at the campground before Castiel happens to see Dean topless, the imprint of Castiel's hand raised and faded on Dean's arm. It rocks him to his core to see it - a tangible, painful reminder of what he used to be. They look at each other, utterly still, and Dean finally says in a raw voice, "Dude, learn to knock."
Not really high but not really sober, Castiel finds himself in Dean's personal space like he hasn't since he was human, and he touches the mark - his hand still fits, but he feels nothing other than the quickening of his pulse. He exhales. Dean's eyes close.
"We'll get your own space set up soon, Cas." It's the first time that Dean has used the name in quite some time and Castiel feels both warm and cold.
They spend six months getting the campground functioning, the buildings cleaned and repaired. Dean goes out often to add to their stockpile, which fills entire buildings. Castiel learns rudimentary carpentry, his human hands clumsy and slow in the work. He learns not to take the pills before he works after nearly slicing one of his fingers off - Dean swears and rants for an hour about how Castiel can't afford to be so careless, and Castiel wonders how bad it's become outside their isolation.
"Come with me today," Dean says one morning after they'd lugged water up from the nearby river. "The town closest to us is a ghost town. I don't want to explore alone."
They spend two hours traveling north before they reach Kansas City, the edges of the city abandoned and deteriorating. Dean stops the car in an empty neighborhood, so stricken that Castiel puts an arm around his shoulders on instinct - his instinct, not augmented by any chemicals. Dean doesn't protest for a full minute, before he shrugs Castiel away and continues his drive into the city.
They had spent a year cleaning up the camp when Bobby starts sending people out their way - Chuck is in the first wave, looking more worn-down than ever. The first refugees are mostly hunters, people to help get the place in working order for when shit really hits the fan - and Castiel has no doubt anymore that it definitely will.
Dean doesn't turn anyone away, so long as they submit to a physical examination. The bunks start filling, people start taking on jobs within the camp. Dean selects a team of hunters to start exploring outlying areas, to scout for supplies and find survivors. Despite his time spent hunting with Dean in the past, Castiel is not on this team.
They start to hear tales of the virus -small towns, a couple hospitals overrun in attempts to stop it. Dean seems more hardened with each new account.
Soon it's more than hunters at the camp - not many families make it, but they get nurses, seamstresses, farmers, mechanics, and so many more. Their supplies hold, but each time Dean's team returns they seem to have just a little bit less to add, except more stories of the decline outside.
It's Chuck who discovers the pills, late one evening while Dean is away. Castiel is so surprised to be found out after so long that he just stands there, pills tumbling into his palm, and says the first thing that comes to mind: "Are you in some physical pain?"
"No. Are you in physical pain?" Chuck knows, of course, that Castiel's nature has changed. Castiel could lie - he finally understands the nature of social lies - but he tips the pills back, swallows them, and shakes his head. Chuck nods. "You shouldn't be doing that - come on."
It's Chuck that shows him the potted plants, explains to him their purpose. "The pills are going to be valuable," he explains as he stuffs a small metal pipe. "Gotta save them for special occasions. This stuff is gonna keep on growing. Can't grow Percocet." Chuck laughs bitterly as he brings the pipe to his lips, and shows Castiel how it all works.
Late that night they talk about Dean and his outpost of humanity, and Chuck agrees that Dean isn't quite so good at this humanity thing either.
Castiel isn't sure when he changes.
He feels human, and he begins to understand human jokes, to engage in human desires, to speak the language like a human. People who don't know his origin stop finding him odd, don't need his situation explained to him. He can't even remember what happened to his suit - lost at some point on the road, likely - but the trench coat, dirty and torn, has remained folded under his mattress since he moved into his own cabin.
He stops "leering," as Dean used to say. (Though sometimes he does leer at Dean, on purpose, because once it had made Dean actually smile, and Castiel had smiled back before the moment was gone.)
He can feel without having to understand why, or being worried about what it means. He can maintain his body without losing track of which impulse represents which need.
It doesn't bother him until he realizes that no one calls him "Castiel," and he feels like his last tie to his real life is lost forever. He drinks and gets high with a couple of young women and renounces the last of himself in their warmth.
Dean enters as the second of the girls is leaving; the door squeaks as he enters and doesn't quite close right. Castiel is lighting a makeshift bong, and he realizes as he's inhaling that Dean has never caught him in act. Dean takes one look at him, holds up a hand, and leaves again. In a rush Castiel drops his lighter and follows him, arriving at Dean's cabin just after the door closes. It's not locked.
"What the hell, man?" Dean is sitting on his cot, looking at his hands, dirty from whatever he had been doing. "What was that?"
Castiel shrugs. "They stayed the night." He can't imagine why Dean would be upset (except that he can, the same way he had been upset the times their roles had been reversed); in the camp at the end of the world, humans were all still finding time for sex. It made the whole thing seem less hopeless.
"It's not the - " Dean rubs his face with his palms, grunts, and breaths deep before he looks up at Castiel. "You're my right hand man here, Cas. I need you to hold it together. I need people to trust you, I need you to be alert." He stands, pacing to the other end of the cabin. "When I - " He pulls a bottle down from a rotting shelf, one of the bottles that the cook keeps the homemade booze in. He pulls a draught straight from the bottle and turns beet red.
"You can't drink it like that," Castiel says, feeling entirely useless. "You'll burn a hole in your gut."
"Yeah, well." Dean takes a smaller sip, and holds the bottle out. Castiel crosses the room to take it, because this is what they do, though they haven't had a chance to drink together since the refugees came. "Why, Castiel?"
The gut rot and the use of his name lights a fire in him, but it doesn't last. Castiel shrugs, looks out the window as he takes a second, longer sip. "It made me more human. You needed a human companion, after Sam." The name slips out in a thoughtless moment. He looks over to see Dean's whole body wound tighter. Dean snatches the bottle back and puts it on the shelf. "It makes me feel better."
"I get that." The words grind out, one at a time as though Dean wanted to say something else. "I get self-medicating, but you were - You were an angel. I can't see you like this, and not think of..."
Castiel crosses his arms over his chest, because he wants to move closer to Dean, wants to be in his space and absorb just a little of that concern; it feels like a long time since he's really cared. "I have no reason for my old self anymore. You're the only person at all who looks at me and sees him. Before long even you will forget."
Dean leans forward as though he's going to touch Castiel, but he stops short. "I can't. Not even when I try."
Castiel is sleeping the next time Dean comes into his cabin, weeks later; he rolls over to pull the blanket up further and nearly falls out of bed when he sees Dean standing by the dingy window, his face obscured by the dark. Castiel licks his dry lips and takes a moment to catch his breath. "I understand why you hated when I snuck up on you."
Dean makes a sound that's not a laugh, but maybe it was supposed to be. "I didn't hate it." He stands there, unmoving, and finally says, "I need you to look out for me."
Castiel sits up, and gestures awkwardly to the space on the bed. Dean doesn't move. "Are you in danger?"
"In the worst way." That sound again, and Dean does sit next to Castiel - doesn't keep space between them like he usually does, doesn't avoid looking at him. For the first time in a long time their eyes meet for more than a moment, and Dean looks wrecked beyond his years. "I shot a guy."
"You've shot many men."
With an abrupt shake of his head, Dean falls back onto the bed. "No, one of my guys. We were in this podunk town. Most of the people were dead, but the morgue - he got infected. I don't want - Fuck! This isn't where this is supposed to go, this isn't supposed to happen."
And Castiel asks out loud, for the first time in the nearly two years they danced around the topic: "Is this the future you were shown?"
Dean doesn't move for a long time. Castiel lays back down, thinking he's fallen asleep. It's unexpected when Dean says, "I think so. And I can't become that guy, I met myself and I'm a dick, Cas. And you're - and Sam's - " He waves his hand indistinctly. "So I need you to look out for me. I don't think I've got a - a moral compass anymore, and you used to be the most moral guy I knew."
Castiel actually laughs. "How do you know that depending on my broken morality isn't what ruins us?"
"I don't. I don't know anything. I just gotta trust that you won't let me fuck this up. Again."
They lay in silence. There's a knot in Castiel's chest, and he finally says, "I've never apologized for being a burden to you. It couldn't have been easy to guide my humanity on top everything else."
Dean turns his head in the dark. "You think you're a burden."
"I know I am. I contribute little to the camp." His limited carpentry ceased in being useful once real craftsmen joined them, though Castiel still takes time to learn. "I cannot hunt as well as the other men. It's probably for the best that I've been... out of your hair." Except Castiel hates it, because he used to travel space and time without a second thought, used to be able to protect Dean (with maybe a moment's hesitation), and now he lives in a drab cabin wasting his limited time with indulgences and distractions, because anything else is still too raw.
"Oh." Dean reaches over and touches him, just for a second. "You never did get it."
Death is ever present at the camp; someone is always falling ill, or injured, or dies on recon. People move on; everyone mourns, but once the pyres are burnt out everyone is grateful for their own lives, so tenuous these days. Dean stands a little longer at the ashes than anyone else, and no one asks him why.
Life is different. It doesn't take long before the birth control supplies run low, and the first women start sporting the signs of being with child. (Castiel hadn't slept with any of them, but it did make him wonder about how functional this body still was.) When the first child is born healthy, Dean actually joins Castiel in his cabin - they drink and smoke, and eventually Dean admits that he can't stand to see children born into this life.
The next morning morning Castiel wakes up with Dean's hand on his shoulder, and he closes his eyes again. It's easier when Dean ignores him.
Castiel really does try to watch for signs of Dean slipping into something worse, something dangerous, but watching Dean is hard - Dean is gone more with each day, and Castiel finds that the longer he's human the more he grows to resent it. He still practices occasionally with his firearms, but attempts to leave the camp with Dean are shot down.
It's winter when he overdoses. The camp is freezing, but his darkened cabin is full of warm friends (everyone is Castiel's friend, and he finds that he loves them for it). There had been a good supply run; the team had brought back more medical supplies, water, cloth, matches, seemingly everything. One of the younger men from the recon team is there, and he brings with him an impressive haul from a pharmacy.
Castiel feels like he's flying again.
He's told that he very nearly died. Castiel believes this, but all he can remember is blackness.
"You stupid asshole."
Still feeling unpleasantly broken after his hollow near-death experience, Castiel scowls at shape of Dean in the dark. Always at night. Castiel begins to wonder why Dean feels the need to enter in the cover of dark. "It was an accident." He sounds pathetic in his own ears.
Dean slams a fist against the wall; the wood creaks. "You could have died! You're supposed to be keeping a clear head for me, remember?"
"I cannot watch you if you're never here, Dean." Castiel pushes himself up off the bed, crosses the room to find the bottle of gut rot somewhere on the floor, sips from it even though his stomach protests. "Either I am valuable enough to protect you from yourself, or I am so useless that I need to be kept here."
"This isn't about how useful you are!" Dean is in front of him in a moment, holding Casiel's hand back to keep him from taking another drink. "If you're here, you're supposed to be safe. You can't just die on me, Cas."
"I'm going to die someday." Dean drops his wrist, but stays close. His warmth is practically radiating in the freezing night. "This human shell is temporary."
Dean frames Castiel's face with his hands, staring hard. His voice is unsteady. "I know."
Understanding blossoms - Dean has already seen his death. A shudder of terrified mortality shakes through Castiel's core, his time suddenly more precious. He kisses Dean as though it could save his life. Dean kisses him back as though he would, if he could.
They tumble toward the bed without words, and Castiel holds on tight, tries to remember every sensation and every sound with his imperfect human brain, because he now knows. God may be missing, Heaven may be closed, but Dean will be there until the end.
[end]
Notes: Also posted to Ao3, and probably LJ when I work up the nerve. I don't love the lines in place of standard scene change characters, but apparently those don't stay anymore. WTF.
I was totally stumped for a title, so I did what I always used to do - cruise my playlist for lyrics that could be worked into an interesting title. This particular title ended up coming from Innerpartysystem's 'American Trash': First take this drink and this pill/Relax your mind and be still.
AU'd the AU: Wibbly wobbly timey wimey and all that, I figure the nature of Dean having seen the future in 5x04 is that it cannot be exactly the same - he's gonna try to make changes. The end result is something that is supposed to fit into the 5x04 canon AU (oh god I love canon AU) without being exactly in line with it. Uh, I hope it works.