There are four of them in the room. Three men, an angel, and a ring of flame. But always (always and always) it comes down to just two.
"It sounds so simple when you say it. Where were you when I needed to hear it?"
"I was there, Cas!"
Dean's voice was rough with recrimination. How fucking dare Cas try to turn this around on him… make it somehow his fault. He had been there, not exactly hard to find, stuck in one spot, one picket-fence-come-right-on-up-and-ring-the-doorbell address, for an entire year. Its not like nobody knew where to find him…. hell everyone and his own brother seemed to know where to find him, but not one of them (not one of the people he had once considered family) had seen fit to run that gauntlet of fresh-mowed green grass and flowerpots guarding his front door. Not even Castiel, the creature that a barn tattooed and inscribed with a thousand of the strongest protection symbols known to man could not keep out, the creature who walked through hell and back, this unstoppable force of lightning and divine fire… even he had turned back from that door, cowed in the face of— what?
"Your happiness," an insidious voice in the back of Dean's mind suggested.
"In the face of you, finally having everything you've ever wanted. That's the excuse isn't it, the justification Sam used?"
It was the justification they had all used, while he lived the shadow of a happy life and fell asleep wrapped in warm arms and vanilla-scented sheets and dreamed of things even his time in hell had not prepared him for. All those nights when he dreamed of his baby brother caught in a black pit of no escape, and woke in absolute silence, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, wishing for the rough voice and smooth long-fingered hands of an angel whose name he did not allow himself to think. A year while he learned the art of waking from screaming nightmares with a smile and a kiss and maybe the sly flirtatious slide of hands while he murmured "Good morning" into warm skin… before he slid out and into the bathroom, turned on the shower to cover the sounds of him emptying his stomach and biting back a name that was really a prayer. A year spent feeling like his fabric-softener-fresh white t-shirts were the only thing keeping his guts from falling out—of pressing a hand to the center of his chest to hold himself together, while wearing an easy grin. And how could anyone have been fooled by his smile? How is it they couldn't see the way he was bleeding to death just under the surface of his skin? But the worst was that hole inside, that howling black abyss of desperate loneliness no amount of gentle, domesticated affection could touch. A year he had spent cloistered and safe and coddled and smiling and utterly, utterly alone.
A new flare of resentful anger invaded his chest at the thought. "Where the hell were you?"
Blue eyes, dark as summer-evening sky, slid away. Downcast now in an expression…. Was that shame? And suddenly Dean was in another place, another dark night surrounded by the scent of power and lighting, this time wearing that same expression on his own face.
'What is it?" A rough voice, depthless summer-sky eyes catching at his own, head cocked in perplexed inquiry, "You don't believe you deserve to be saved."
Only now it was Cas standing there, everything about him betraying just how little he expected. You don't believe you deserve to be saved. And suddenly the sight of that look on Castiel's face was something that Dean simply could not stand –he wanted to erase it- and it was his own head cocking, ducking lower as green eyes tried to catch the blue.
"Cas."
"Cas, dammit look at me!"
The angel's chin snapped up (that stubborn chin, jaw set, shoulders squaring into the stance of a soldier bracing for a blow… the face of a man waiting for a storm of archangels straight-backed and unflinching and resolute) and the full force of that true-blue gaze made the words catch in Dean's throat, made his fingers twitch and his mouth dry as he took an involuntary step closer.
"I was there, Cas."
Dean could feel the heat of the holy fire pressing at his front, but his hands were like ice. The black night beyond the windows, the night he would soon escape into, leaving Cas here ringed in flame… the night beyond the light of this fire, beyond the sight of those summer-colored eyes, felt like the frozen desert on the shadowed side of the moon. Dean pressed closer, unwilling or unable to look away.
"I'm still here."
A twitch of expression, a twinge of that five-o-clock shadow jaw, a fleeting trace of reaction almost indiscernible before it was gone.
"Cas."
His eyes once more tried to slide away, and something in Dean could not allow it. Before the conscious thought had formed in his mind, he was stepping closer once again, in a rush of urgency. He felt the burn of the holy fire lick at his legs, twining around his boots, and somewhere far off and irrelevant, his ears registered Sam and Bobby's presence, their voices raised in alarm, but the only remaining impulse in his mind was the steel determination to make Cas, Goddamn it, force Cas to look at him.
Dean was within the circle of flame, right up in Cas' personal space like the angel had been so many times before, and Dean's hands were acting of their own volition, fisting themselves on the angel's shoulders, pulling and pressing close, demanding and insistent, leaving Castiel's eyes no where to go.
"Cas. I'm here! I'm Still. Right. Here!"
Dean stared into Castiel's eyes, willing him to see, to understand. The angel's face remained impassive, but his eyes were wide and alive with something flickering in their depths that Dean could not name. But he hung onto it. That tiny spark of light.
"We can still fix this, Cas. Together.' Each word was emphasized with a flex of his fingers, knotted tight in the fabric of that stupid ever-present coat. "We just need to stick together."
"This is me, remember? This is us! Team free will? The guys who put off the apocalypse with nothing but a couple sawed-offs and that old give-em-hell-attitide? Cas, you're better than this! You don't need this bullshit! I know you. You're still that same guy, the one who stuck by me through everything."
Castiel stood rigid, the only sign of life in him the intensity of his eyes, captured and ensnared by Dean's own. Dean reached down, caught the angel by the wrist, and dragged his hand up to slide it under his own shirtsleeve, pressing it to the mark seared into his skin like a brand, a mark of ownership, a warning and a promise.
"You're the same guy that left this on me. The one who picked me up, put me back together when I was broken beyond all repair. The one who saved me, when there was nothing left of me to save. Even when I knew I didn't deserve it, you saw something in me worth saving."
Cas' lips parted as a tiny crease appeared between his brows, an expression of almost incredulous uncertainty lighting his eyes.
"You're the same guy that went up against Lucifer and Michael with nothing, no angel juice, no back-up plan, nothing except a beer-bottle of holy fire and some really bad insults. Who went up against them for me. And we won!
Damn it Cas, we won! Don't you remember anything? We didn't need God, we didn't need the devil, or Crowley, or a million souls or even a fucking magic bullet. We just needed to stick together—and all the shit those fucking bastards threw at us couldn't break us apart.
Don't do this. I'm begging you, man. We'll find another way. We always find a way. Stick with me Cas. One more time, don't fucking break us. Stay with me. All this fucking bullshit, we can handle it. We can fix this. We've faced worse. But I need you to stick with me."
"Dean."
He could feel Castiel's fingers, curling tighter on his arm, over his mark. Dean pressed his palm over the back of Cas's hand. His voice when he spoke was a low, desperate rasp. The only thing he had left to say.
"I'm right here."
"Dean, I… I don't know what to say."
"Just say you're with me."
Castiel's throat contracted as he swallowed, and his eyes searched Dean's with something desperate and lost, something which stabbed Dean straight through the heart and left a surge of fierce protective longing, lancing with bright purity through all the layers of desperate frustration and fear clouding his mind. That tiny lonesome something in Cas' eyes that looked like hope or salvation. His chin dipped once in an almost imperceptible nod.
"Yes, Dean. I am with you. If you will still have me."
A breath left Dean in a shuddering sigh which closely resembled a sob. His eyes were stinging and his chest felt too small to contain the feelings swelling and bursting inside of it. His fingers spasmed where they lay on Cas' shoulder, and Dean had to fight the sudden urge to tug the angel into his chest and press his face into the side of his neck, pulling the scent of him into his lungs while he pushed his rushing heartbeat as close as it could get against the angel's own.
Instead he swallowed back the tightness in his throat, and answered Castiel's tiny nod with one of his own.
"Good."
The blue of the angel's eyes was threatening to swallow Dean whole, but he could not find the will to tear himself away from them.
"Lets get you out of here, then."
The loss of Castiel's warm touch on his mark was almost painful. Without conscious thought, Dean's hand slid down from Cas' shoulder to wrap firmly around his wrist, fingertips laid along tendons and veins where he could feel Cas' heart beat thrumming with life. That single vital point of contact was the only thing that gave him the strength to break away from Cas' bottomless eyes, turning his body within the circle of fire. He was met with the sight of his brother's wide shell-shocked eyes and Booby's wary expression, both frozen in place as though in fear of breaking whatever spell Dean and Cas were bound in.
Dean raised his eyebrows, free hand gesturing to the ring of scorching holy fire still surrounding them.
"A little help here, guys?"
Sam seemed to start awake, dragging wide eyes away from the place where Dean's fingers encircled the angel's wrist under the sleeve of his coat. "Right." Grabbing for a jug of water, he moved forward to extinguish the flames.
Dean stepped out of the ring first. He continued to move forwards, but was brought up short when he realized that his companion (whose wrist he could not seem to even contemplate releasing) had come to a halt.
"Sam. Bobby." With a glance upwards, "Dean." The angel paused, "I owe all of you an apology." He bowed his head before raising his chin and searching their eyes in turn. "I betrayed your friendship, your trust. I do not expect any of you to forgive me. But I will work to make right what I have done."
Dean's hand tightened involuntarily. "Cas—" but he was cut off by the sound of Bobby's gruff voice. "Son, if there's a person in this room who hasn't made a deal with a demon, well I'd like to see him please stand up."
Sam cleared his throat. "Cas… you're standing in the room with the guy who opened Lucifer's gate. You're not exactly the first one here who's made a mistake."
Bobby scoffed, "You can say that again. Made a mistake… try 'betraying your own brother and releasing the devil from hell."
"Look, the point is…" Sam moved closer, reached a tentative hand out to lay on the angel's free shoulder, "We're…. Well, we're all family here. Right?" He spared a glance to meet Dean's eyes, suspiciously wet and shining with something like gratitude. Dean's voice was rough. "Damn straight." The corner of Castiel's mouth twitched as if with the temptation of a smile, before he swallowed hard and lowered his head. "You humble me. I am… more honored to be counted as one of you than to stand a leader of heaven's host."
Once again Dean felt the need to clear his throat as something twisted in his guts. He raised his free hand and clapped his brother on the shoulder, before giving him a rough shove. "Yeah well, don't stand too close to Sammy for too long. The girl is gonna start rubbing off on you. And I have feeling we're gonna want you in bad-ass smiting mode for what's coming next."
He was rewarded with another quirk of the angel's mouth, as he closed his eyes for one moment and raised his head. Bobby chose that moment to speak. "Alright, sweethearts, lets role it up. We can continue this love-fest at my place… once I'm warm in my bed and don't have to watch." He began to herd them out of the building, laying a quick hand on the angel's arm as he passed by. "Idjits."
And at that simple word, Dean watched the curl at the edge of Castiel's lips expand into a real honest-to-God grin, gone in a moment but impossible to miss, a quick flash of white teeth as a huff of incredulous laughter escaped. Dean felt a sensation like a knot untying in his belly while a rush of warmth expanded through his chest and his thumb caressed over the back of the angel's hand without thought or consent. It took a minute for him to get his legs cooperating with him, and he tugged the angel with him toward the door.