Summary: Cas comes back, and nothing's okay. But Dean's grown up, Sam has too, and it's making him realise that some things are impossible to ignore for a reason. He and Cas were friends. Always have been really. And Dean's decided the universe can go molest itself because he wants to keep this one thing. Maybe Cas will help him see he deserves it too.
Warning: Spoilers up to 802. Some swearing. Angst?
A/N: I wrote this because the end of 802 actually broke me. I spent the day with that image of Cas' face in my mind and I couldn't. This is so I can sleep till next week.
This Time? Hell no.
Rufus' cabin was pretty grim for a safe house. True, they'd spent a lot of time there, and in Dean's year of absence Sam had even tried to moderately improve the place whilst working on the Impala. There was now a TV, well-working fridge. Not too mouldy beds and a decent sofa and running water supply. Still, it was far from standard digs.
Not that Dean had ever been particularly inclined to care, and even less so now. A safe house was designed to be just that: safe. Whether or not it would survive a healthy living test was not the issue.
Besides, he'd stayed in a fair few motels that wouldn't pass either.
So, 'home' was 'home'. What with this whole Pluto mess, Kevin disappearing, and Crowley being as big a dick as ever, Dean was just glad to be getting some actual rest.
So, of course, that's when things got even worse.
"Man, I'm beat." Sam trudged past to push open the door, looking decidedly underwhelmed.
"Yeah, welcome back to 'home'." Dean just shrugged and shouldered past into the gloom.
"Hey, if its got two beds and a beer, that's all I need." Sam scoffed, one of those 'Oh My Life' moments tinged with amusement at the simple truth Dean spoke. But then next to him froze.
Like, froze. Eyes wide, mouth gaping and looking like he had seen a ghost.
"Cas?" Dean's blood ran cold. He was brushed by when Sam rebooted and lunged towards the living room. Spinning around quickly, the elder brother's pulse raced with impossibility and 'yes/no' conflicting fright.
Sam was dashing to stand in front of the one and only creature that wore a trench coat quite like that. Standing still, just a few feet from the corner of their run down cabin's 'living room'.
Cas was back.
"Hey, man! Are you okay? Is it really you? What happened?" Slow blue eyes rose to Sam's face from the blank stare his stomach had been receiving. The angel looked only just there. Filthy, still, and haggard beyond understanding.
Still lost.
Still alive.
And…fuck. Dean was so completely screwed.
"I, I thought you were dead man." Sam murmured, voice low and chocked, Castiel simply regarded him, eyes stunted and distant, reality-less.
"Hello Sam." Sammy breathed out a relieved laugh and went to hug the angel. Castiel stepped back a single slow step, head turning away. To the wrong side. His eyes lit on Dean's shins and froze.
Dean stopped breathing, but his heart thumped and pounded. Slowly those eyes slid up him in a seamless movement, reached his own, locked. There was enough of a charged moment for the angel to see it was really him. For an impossible moment, he thought the gaze would stay, like normal. But Cas' eyes just turned, retreated. He looked away and fixed a gaze somewhere around Sam's left shoulder.
The older hunter could feel his brother's eyes flicking between them, relief and joy sinking like a punctured balloon. Tension coiled through the air, emanating from the set shoulders of Castiel, his clenching fists.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
"I'm ah…gonna go get the bags out the trunk." Sam announced, awkward and unsure, his eyes tried to catch Dean's own, but no way was he letting that happen.
Once the calmest presence had left the room, the silence swiftly became needle sharp and unbearable, twisting in his gut like anxious snakes. With a gulp, Dean braced himself to move…maybe it wouldn't be that bad-
"You, left, me." Accusation. Growling though low, quiet, almost soft. Condemnation pressed down through the already suffocating air, constricting his chest.
And it was true. Too true. Dean had left Cas. Abandoned him in a way so final it seemed to rip apart the foundations of their convoluted existence.
Why? Because it had been 'necessary', because Cas had no longer been helpful or needed...because it had been easy. And if Cas' helpless pleading, vulnerable and not really believing he wasn't going to come back, wasn't going to help, desperation in those soul-crushing blue eyes still haunted his memories and dreams… It wasn't enough, hardly enough. Not until now.
Purgatory had not been okay. He couldn't lie when it wasn't buried. What he had become in there was pure necessity; morals and pride favoured him little in that land.
But now… Now it was there, in front of him, and it was hurt. Blue eyes swung to him, burning in their numb betrayal and fury, stabbed. Dean started forwards on automatic, nearly an explanation on his tongue, or plea, or greeting.
"Cas-" His eyes shuttered, glazed over and looked down and away, stepping back. Pain locked back inside, too much. Dean stepped forwards on automatic, hands reaching to calm on stuttering, nearly-repressed instinct. But Cas pulled away from him again, leaving them several feet apart.
"It doesn't matter, really…just…" Dean's heart was racing, thumping in his throat. And he felt scared, though of what he wasn't sure. Cas' voice was a monotone, too nearly emotionless. "…It was cruel. To let me feel friendship, only to have it ripped out." Stabs and twists from his stomach to heart, Dean's eyes frowned, desperate for something. Drowning in blemishes.
"…No, I…" But what did he say? That had never been his intention? It didn't make it okay. That he'd do it again in the same situation? There was no excuse for salvation in that, no justified pride. That he was sorry? By his own words that wasn't good enough. That figuring it was over, he hadn't thought about it as much as he should?
He wasn't the same anymore, neither of them were. Doesn't change the fact that Dean left Cas there. That he'd broken a vow. That he'd then come home and lied.
Maybe nothing could ever change that.
Even if the wracking of remorse and guilt now stirred his frame forwards.
"…Guys?" Cas stepped back again, now backed into the corner, eyes on the skirting board and not moving. Sam dropped the bags. "Everything okay…?"
Cas' face was broken. Numb.
"I should go." Dean's heart clenched, but he did nothing, Sam shifted. Cas lurched forwards, slumped in step and swaying to a stop with glazed eyes just fluttering.
"Woah! Woah woah. Hey, I think you should stay with us." Sam cut in, hurrying to move in front of the angel, hands raised to pause.
"No, I-" Sam grabbed Cas' shoulders, hands clenched at the slurring voice.
"Cas, seriously. Sit down okay?" Maybe because it was Sam, maybe because he was about to collapse, maybe because he had nothing else left to give; Cas relented with a lurching nod.
He staggered forwards to a rickety chair by a wooden table and sat; still staring at nothing, mouth slightly parted.
Sam glared at Dean. His next voice was meant for only his brother to hear, tight and tense with suspicion.
"Do we need to talk about this?" Dean blanched. He just couldn't. Instead he rubbed a hand over his face and couldn't fight a groan.
"Bastard." The hunter only just heard Sam's whisper. He turned to his brother, irked and already strung out.
"What you say?" The look he got for that tone was pure ice.
"If Kevin was my responsibility, Cas was yours."
A pointed silence filled the room before Sam turned away.
Because fuck, he was right. And Dean knew it. And until now, faced with the reality of his ruminating guilt, he just didn't want this mess any more. Sam moved to crouch in front of Cas, trying to sway those blank eyes.
"Cas, you okay? Do you need anything?" There was a long pause before a hoarse reply.
"…No."
"…Okay, well, just, sit tight then." There was no reply; Cas was still mono-tonal and staring. Sam hitched back to his feet and shot Dean one last disappointed gaze.
Not disgusted, not surprised. Just disappointment. And it rolled in his gut till it hurt.
Sam left the room for the kitchen, and after a while staring not at Cas, yet hyper aware of him, Dean followed with a long breath out.
Later, after a couple of drinks, Cas hadn't moved. Sam bent into the fridge to grab another beer and Dean braved the danger of the situation, of trying. He couldn't fight or stand the tension in the room, not to mention his own body and mind.
"What do you want me to do?" The words came out roughly strained, and he fiddled with the bottle label. Sam paused, looking over at him.
"Just…the right thing." Like it was obvious, simple. Sam shrugged a bit helplessly. "Look, I don't know what happened down there, hey, it's none of my business… But Cas is. He's my friend. He at least used to be our friend. He's got no way out, not like Kevin; he's as wrapped up in our lives as we are, with the scars to prove it. So… treat him like you should. I don't care what you think of yourself Dean; you can be a really good human being. And I think…if you let this go, you'll loose that… and, who wins from that anyway?"
There was a pause. Dean let the worse seep from the air into his brain, slowly.
"I think you owe it to yourself to try."
Sam's tone was calm, providing an opinion, another option with a shrug of 'no big deal'.
Because maybe it wasn't… He liked Cas. They'd both screwed up. They were both back here.
His brother offered one last frown before leaving, going to slump down by the TV on the sofa near Cas. Probably not just to sleep.
By the time Dean had finished another beer, and Sam was watching some random sports game, he figured he might have worked it out a bit. Teased apart some of the knotted strands in the fabric of his mind.
Simple thing was, he liked Cas being around, they had been friends. They had been friends for a long time. Despite the screw-ups, and by now they had become almost ridiculously fundamental... And Dean had had enough. He didn't like fighting with Cas, or being like this. He didn't want to give up this thing, or loose it, whatever.
…Fail.
He didn't want to say he hadn't tried either.
They kept colliding anyway whatever forced them apart. And always they sorted it out somehow, whether words were exchanged or not.
Dean had often wondered how they were able to manage it. Why they were friends, because Cas could never be anything else to him, no matter what had happened, that was mutual…although now, well…this was a pretty big limit. And this time he was the one who pushed it to there.
But, dammit, the angel was impossible to ignore. Cas made him laugh too damn much, and they got along too damn well. Dean didn't want to loose Cas as a friend. That was fair enough right? He had grown up, he and Sam both had. And at the very least to leave things on such bad terms with the angel made his gut twist. They were friends. That was normal; that was human. It should be okay. He may not be 'allowed normal' with this life, but he at least deserved that. The same way Sam deserved Jess, or the girl he'd spent the last year with and couldn't bear to mention.
Maybe this was one wrong too many thrust upon the two of them by each other, straining the tenuous but resilient camaraderie… Dean didn't know if he could 'fix it' like he'd told Cas to a year and a bit ago. But it was Cas; he'd always try, because there was no doubt the angel had. Dammit he couldn't excuse purgatory, but he couldn't change it either. Cas had always tried. They both had. Dean was sick of being pawned around by his fucked up life. Him, Sam, Cas…
Enough is enough. He wanted Sam, wanted him happy, and he wanted his damn friend, that one thing! That was not too much to ask.
No miracles were about to be performed, or tears cried… But decent, Dean reckoned, wasn't too much stretch after it all. It was barely a price, so small it seemed to pay.
He wasn't, didn't want to be that child any more. Whatever else he was tired of that. He had grown up… Maybe he could use it in the right way.
Would he roll over and take another personal beating? When Cas had offered him the smallest slip of a wake up by even coming back here, let alone escaping, the answer was just simple: Hell. No.