"Dean, what have you -"
"Shut up, Cas."
"My father will -"
"Cas."
Cas goes quiet. There's a patina of blood, fresh and violent red, striping the walls, dripping into congealing puddles that mat the taupe carpet. The crib, strangely, remains untouched and glaringly white in the far corner of the room, a mobile of yellow patchwork stars turning silent and slow overhead.
Cas can't remember seeing him do it, but Dean has thrown a green and yellow crocheted blanket over the infant's body, though it's soaking through quickly with blood. There's screaming downstairs, masculine and terrible, and Dean's jaw is clenched so tight Cas knows he'll have a migraine later.
"Clean it up," he says, words even and clipped, and Cas knows how tightly he's hanging on to his last shred of control.
"Dean," Cas says, and it's pleading, and maybe a little desperate, and it's a tone he's never heard in his own voice before. He says nothing else, and when Dean looks at him there's a spark, a flash of something dangerous in his green eyes, and Cas knows he'll do as Dean asks.
"I gotta check on Sam," Dean says, and he doesn't look back at the small body growing cold and stiff beneath the blanket that once belonged to the family's oldest son.
Cas feels wetness on his face, and for a moment he thinks he's crying, but when he wipes the droplet away he sees a smudge of red on his fingertips. He waves a hand, and the nursery returns to normal, spotless and pale, save for one difference.
It's empty.
***What have you done, my little spark?***
There's a thundering crash in the bathroom, followed by the splintering tinkle of shattered glass, and Sam doesn't blink.
He doesn't even blink, and for some reason that makes Cas angry, or at least it makes him feel what he imagines anger to be like. Dean is lost, Dean is floating away on a raft that he lashed together with ropes of despair and blame and doubt, and there's a storm raging all around them, and Sam doesn't care.
Cas cares, he's surprised to discover, and he wonders exactly what that means. He wants to go into the bathroom, wants to tell Dean to stop blaming himself, and the mere act of wanting is so new to him that he has to sit down on the hard mattress and suck in a breath. He's read that humans do that when they're upset, and it shakes him.
"Need a drink?" Sam's voice, rough but more casual than the faded jeans he wears every other day, jolts him, and he looks around wildly for a moment, a little at sea.
"I-I don't drink," he finally manages to say, and Sam smirks.
"Everyone drinks, Cas. Eventually."
"I don't," he says firmly, even though Jimmy's body remembers the feel of liquor, the sharp burn of it, the soft buzzing that fuzzes the edges of his thoughts and takes away the pain…
"Fine," he says, taking an open bottle of Jack from the bedside table. Sam's smirk grows wider, and Cas stares at a water stain on the ceiling, devoting all his energy to not choking on the bittersweet liquid flaming down his throat.
There's another crash from the bathroom, and Cas doesn't bother to look for Sam's reaction. Somehow, without realizing he's moving, he's on his feet, halfway to the bathroom door before he stops to think that it might not be a wise decision.
"He doesn't wanna see you," Sam says, stretching his long legs out on the bed and settling back against the headboard. He has a beer in one hand and there's not an ounce of tension in his broad shoulders, and suddenly Cas wants to hurt him, wants to grab him and shake him until his brains rattle around in his useless head.
Instead, Cas continues on to the bathroom, head down and shoulders hunched against the onslaught awaiting him once he opens the door.
Inside, Dean is huddled between the toilet and bathtub, arms wrapped around his knees, blood trickling between his fingers. Cas crosses the room in two strides and kneels before Dean, his charge, his responsibility… his friend.
Cautiously, Cas lays his hands over Dean's, letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding when the other doesn't pull away.
"I know you only did it because you felt there wasn't any other choice," Cas says, choosing his words carefully, proud of his diplomacy.
"There's always another choice," Dean says, voice like sandpaper worn too thin, and all Cas's pride disappears.
"I killed… I…" Dean starts, then peters out, eyes flickering aimlessly around the room. After a moment, he locks gazes with Cas, and the angel is overwhelmed. "Do you even get what I did?"
And Cas doesn't, not really, but he's afraid to tell Dean that, afraid to admit that he can't understand why there wasn't another choice, so he just keep his eyes on Dean's and prays the other man can't read his thoughts on his face.
"Cas, these kids… Yellow Eyes' kids, they're -"
"They're better off dead," Cas says softly, and he's not a hundred percent sure he believes it, but Dean's shoulders relax a fraction, and so his conviction grows.
"Cas," Dean whispers, dropping his head down so that his forehead is resting on their joined hands, "am I gonna go back to hell for this?"
For thousands of years, maybe even hundreds of thousands, Cas has wondered what it means to break a heart, to have one's heart broken. His logic tells him it's impossible, that it isn't the way God has created a human body, to leave the heart vulnerable to injury like that. But just now, in this moment, he knows. He knows, and it's awful, and he wishes he didn't, but with Dean's skin pressed warm and soft against the back of his hand, he can't deny that heartbreak is real.
"I don't," he begins, voice cracking enough to bring color into his cheeks, "I don't know."
He feels Dean nod against his hand, and then the other man raises his head, eyes luminous but dry.
"I want to die," he says, matter-of-fact, and Cas wants to argue, but he can't. "Can you… can you leave now?"
"Dean -"
There's a bare hint of a smile on Dean's lips, fake, Cas knows, but he's willing to accept it for what it is.
"I'm not gonna do anything stupid, okay?"
"Okay," Cas says quietly, but he doesn't move. Dean shifts against the faded yellow tile, yellow like the walls of the nursery, and Cas pulls himself to his feet, wanting nothing more than to book it out of there, and nothing more than to stay there forever.
He's making a move toward the door when Dean stops him with a word.
"Cas?"
"Yes, Dean?" he says without turning back.
"Do you hate me?"
He wants to say, "No," wants to say, "Never, no matter what you do," but he can't. He shakes his head, or thinks he does, and then he walks out the door.
***Falling apart, you tell yourself you are dreaming only of the ones who never dream of you***
"Leaving again, Cas?" Dean says, but it isn't really a question. Cas hunches his shoulders, bracing himself against Dean's ridicule, and moves toward the door.
Dean has murdered four babies in the last three months.
Cas can't reconcile what Dean is doing with his beliefs, with the teachings of his father, but he can't convince himself it's wrong, either. They are tainted, these infants, doomed by the blood that Yellow Eyes drips into their questing mouths. They will be used, against their wills, for evil, and by taking away that choice, Dean may be saving their souls.
But in the process, he's losing his own.
Sam doesn't care, is so lost to his own addiction that he can't be bothered to worry about his brother's eternal fate. And Cas… Cas is slowly losing his mind, torn between right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and which of those precisely he feels for Dean.
They're conflicting, these human emotions, and Cas does not like them. He is disgusted with Dean, and yet he admires the other man's strength. He can barely meet his eyes, and yet there are moments he cannot tear his eyes away.
Most nights, he doesn't return to the motel room with the brothers. He cannot bear to see Sam's apathy, or hear Dean's muffled sobs, and so he returns to Heaven, and he avoids the questions of his brethren.
Dean resents this, he knows, but he cannot see an alternative. Deserting Dean is the only thing that keeps him from killing him, or from kissing him - from sending him back to hell, or taking him in his arms and never letting go.
It isn't right, this feeling. Cas knows that, or thinks he does, but suddenly he's in a world where black and white no longer exists, where everything is shades of gray, and he can't up from down, right from wrong.
So he leaves. He makes sure Dean is sleeping or drinking or crying his way toward unconsciousness, and he leaves. Sam, nearly always still awake, tips his imaginary hat and grins, and Cas hates him for it.
Dean is going to break, Cas knows, and he can't stop it, so it becomes almost an obsession, to make sure he isn't there when it happens. He isn't even sure Dean notices anymore, and he comforts himself with that.
Until the illusion ends.
***I'm your disappearing one, vanish when the curtain's drawn***
Babies don't often fight, but this one did. It flailed and screamed and kicked its legs and Dean was sobbing, sobbing, and Cas couldn't look, but he did. He did and then he prayed, and he wasn't sure whose soul he was praying for but if he stopped he knew he'd lose his mind.
Even Sam keeps a hand on Dean's shoulder on the way back to the motel, and though Cas resents it bitterly, he can't begin to tell him to remove it. They get back to the room, moments or years later, and Dean heads straight for the bathroom. Sam lays out bandages and Neosporin, and Cas gets ready to leave.
But he can't.
He waits for Dean, on the bed closest to the door, and his body, Jimmy's body, is so worn down he passes out before Dean emerges. He doesn't dream, and in the morning he thanks Jimmy for that, whether or not the man can hear him.
Dean is laid out on the bed next to him, breathing heavily through his mouth, and Cas has to bite his cheek to stop the tears from coming. He wants to leave, needs to leave, but his body won't obey, and so he stays there, still and tense, the edge of his pinky brushing against Dean's side.
Dean rolls to his side, mumbling softly in that quiet space between dreaming and waking, and his eyes blink blearily as Cas wonders whether he should move away.
He doesn't, and Dean doesn't seem surprised to see him there. There's something in that moment they share, something like truth, something naked and raw that's painful and sweet at the same time, and Cas thinks they might both be damned, but he also thinks that as long as they're damned together, maybe it's okay.
It lasts for maybe twenty seconds, and then the wall comes down, and Dean's eyes go shuttered and dark, green like pine needles and dried moss. Cas wants to fight, wants to tell Dean, show him, why he ought to stay.
He doesn't. Instead, he gets up and makes a show of straightening his trench coat, and then he disappears.
***But I will come again, and you will let me in***
Dean hasn't called for him in six weeks. He keeps an eye on the brothers, and he knows Sam's dependence is growing, knows Dean becomes more despondent by the day, but he can't bring himself to go back.
Until Yellow Eyes marks his next victim.
Sam has a vision, and they're on their way to Salt Lake City by dawn, Dean's hands jittering on the steering wheel and Led Zepplin's Fool in the Rain blaring from the tape deck. Dean hates the song, but he doesn't mention it, and neither does Sam.
"You swore that you never would leave me, baby," Dean sings softly over the vocals, "What ever happened to you?"
Cas appears in the backseat, wings fluttering invisible and downy-soft around him. Dean doesn't even swerve.
"What do you want?" he asks gruffly, and there's some emotion in it, so Cas thinks maybe it isn't too late.
"I want to help," he says, straightforward and honest, because it's all he knows, and Dean must also know that because he doesn't argue.
The song ends and another begins, and the road stretches out in front of them, and for a little while, Cas feels content. Sam doesn't drink anything except for the dregs of a melted blue raspberry Slushee, and Dean puts in a Metallica tape, and Cas almost has himself fooled that things will be fine.
And then they arrive. And then they find the twins.
***And there you lie, like a painting of Christ, bleeding on the heads of the ones who nailed you down***
There's blood on Dean's hands, and streaked down his t-shirt and jeans in an artistic sort of swirling pattern. Cas knocks at the door, for the first time ever, and though he doesn't expect a response, he can't help but feel a little disappointed when he doesn't receive one.
Dean is stretched out in the bed, fully clothed and staring at the ceiling as if it holds the meaning of life… or death. His shoes are still on, and for some reason that strikes Cas as completely wrong, and so he moves closer, sitting down softly at the edge of the bed and moving his hands swiftly to work on the knotted laces.
He loves Dean, he thinks, as much as an angel is able to love, and worships him even more than that. It breaks a commandment, it's true, violates a covenant he made with God millennia ago, and he's willing to accept the consequences of that. So willing it scares him, in fact, but this isn't about him, its about Dean, and so he sets his hands to work and forces any doubt from his mind.
Sam is out, and Cas noted that the Impala was gone from the motel's parking lot, so he knows they have some time. He removes Dean's shirt and jeans methodically, never meeting the other man's eyes, trying not to stare too hard at all the miles of faintly tanned skin he's uncovering.
Dean doesn't turn his head when Cas slips off his boxers, looking straight ahead at the blank TV, but that's okay by Cas, who can feel his cheeks going painfully pink. Dean shivers a little in the refrigerated air, and Cas quickly stands up and strips himself down. He crawls onto the bed without a sound, dragging the covers out from under Dean and pulling them over the both of them.
Dean says nothing, but he turns into Cas's embrace without a single protest, lips pressing against Cas's chest and arms winding tightly around him. They stay like that for countless moments, and Cas begins to believe this isn't the end of the world, that they aren't condemned.
And then he decides that even if it is, even if they are, there's still nowhere else he'd rather be, no one else he'd rather be loving at the end of the world than this man, in this place, at this very moment.
When Sam returns, hours later, the two of them are sound asleep. And in the morning, when Dean awakes, Cas is still there.