A/N: Because what we all need after 7x21 is more Destiel angst (/sarcasm). No spoilers here, set some time mid season 5 or 6, I guess, it doesn't really matter when. Warnings for character death - one day I will apologise to these poor people for killing them so much. For the wonderful DavidTennantIsMyGod, who requested angst based off of 'Hurricane Drunk' by Florence + the Machine and will one day be the death of me with her beautiful fanart, brilliant ideas and wonderful compliments. Reviews are love, guys!
I'm going out,
I'm gonna drink myself to death.
And in the crowd,
I see you with someone else.
I brace myself,
'Cause I know it's going to hurt.
"Hey, Cas. If you're not busy running off to try and find God or whatever, you could-" The angel's gone in a flutter of wings before he can finish, and Dean runs a hand through his hair. "-stay for a bit," he finishes quietly, voice breathing fog into the cold, empty air.
He spends the rest of his night drinking, drowning his sorrows in cheap alcohol and crap telly. Sam comes back later, returning with the laundry, and when he sees the empty bottles he opens his mouth as if to complain. One look at his brother's face makes him shut it again.
Castiel leaves before Dean can make more demands of him, can smile at him like that again and confuse him even more. He knows his actions will most likely be interpreted as rude, and hopes he can pass it off with faked angelic obliviousness. He reappears in Mexico, and starts his night walking Aztec trails in a press of tourists, half-listening to their chatter.
He does not see God amongst the ancient structures, beautiful and fierce and wild. Instead, he sees Dean Winchester, hugging Sam, clapping Bobby on the shoulder, shaking hands with twined on his bed in the arms of someone young and blonde and flexible. Something twists in his stomach, so he leaves the crowds and lights behind and spends the rest of the night wandering beneath dark, ancient trees and trying not to think.
The next day, when Castiel turns up with some advice on the hunting patterns of the latest monster they've been tracking, Dean expects the angel to say something, explain his sudden disappearance. At the very least, he expects him to ask what Dean was going to say.
He doesn't expect to be completely ignored, doesn't expect is the stab of angry, frustrated hurt in his chest, crushing and strangling. He makes his excuses to leave the peeling hotel room and stands outside in the alley, hands pressed flat against the rough brick wall, breathing hard and waiting for the fire in his heart to die down.
(But at least things can't get any worse.)
"Want to stay for a bit?" blurts out Dean, quicker this time, before Castiel can disappear. For a moment, the angel just stands there in the dark and the snow, head cocked to one side. For a second, Dean thinks he might actually say yes. And then wingbeats and rasping feathers fill the air, and Dean is alone in the snow.
When he returns to the motel room, Sam's already there, and he's hidden the bottles – or thrown them out. So he grabs a jacket, ignores his brother's attempts to find out where he's going, and heads out into the street again. It doesn't take him long to find a bar down a backstreet, full of cheap booze and cheaper women who're too drunk to notice if he slips up and calls them the wrong name.
Castiel tries to stay away. Really, he does. He knows Dean wants time alone, needs time alone, that the offer earlier was a simple gesture of courtesy – he's been around humans for long enough now to work that out. But he doesn't feel like losing himself in crowds of people today, and the bright glow of Dean's soul is a lure that draws him helplessly back in, to stand in the parking lot of the motel and gaze up at the dully glowing window where he knows Dean sleeps.
He wonders if Dean is up there alone, or whether Sam is in the room with him, or some girl that he has brought back from a bar. He has seen the way women look at Dean, half longing and half fear, because even if they don't understand how they know that he is dangerous. He moves like a hunter, a predator, moves like he expects each step to be his last. Human women seem to find this appealing, darkly fascinating and blackly beautiful. Castiel refuses to admit to himself that he feels the same.
"Oh, how low the Fallen have fallen indeed," murmurs a slow voice behind him. He flinches slightly, an almost imperceptible tensing of muscles in preparation for a fight, but does not turn around. "You know it's hopeless, of course?" continues Zachariah, apparently disappointed by this lack of reaction. "He's a hunter, a human, and you? You're a fallen angel in a male vessel. Pathetic, useless – and he goes for the young, pretty women, you know that."
He spins around, angel blade in hand, it's silver length flashing in the starlight and the streetlamps that flood the parking lot dirty yellow, but there is the flutter of wings and Zachariah is long gone. Castiel can still feel his smirk burning into the back of his neck, though, as he stumbles over to a corner of the parking lot and slides down the wall, curling his legs miserably up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them as he tries not to think about the fact that what Zachariah said was nothing less than the truth.
(But I like to think at least things can't get any worse.)
Dean doesn't bother to say anything this time, just stands there, watching. Castiel watches him back, warily, as if Dean is an animal on a hunt that could be provoked into attack with the tiniest motion. They stand there in silence, eyes locked, for more than a minute before Castiel step-twists to one side, too fast, as if he's running away. Dean still doesn't move. He's got nowhere to run to.
After time has passed – a minute, an hour, what does it matter? – he returns to the motel room. Sam's sitting there, bottle in one hand, the other twisted around his ankle, nails digging into the skin. Dean'd forgotten he was grieving too, grieving for the little girl they killed because of the demon inside her, for the parents who wouldn't, couldn't understand and who will never forgive them. Wordlessly, he holds out a hand, and isn't at all surprised when Sam fills it with a bottle.
There are people all around him, everywhere, crowding and pressing and jostling under the flickering, too-bright strip lights of the busy mall. So why on Earth does he feel so alone? Castiel sits down on a plastic bench in the middle of one of the halls, between a man with a young child and an old woman rooting through shopping bags, but finds no answers in the child's screams or the woman's muttering.
For a second, there is dark hair and strong shoulders and a dark jacket out the corner of his eye, the shape of a man he knows entirely too well, and he spins around so fast that, were he human, his neck would have cricked. But it is not Dean, just another man like him, walking through the shopping mall on his way to who knows where. Castiel feels disappointed, and then ridiculous – after all, why would Dean come to a place like this? Certainly not to look for him.
Dean wakes up the next morning with a blunt, throbbing headache and a dry mouth, hears Sam throwing up somewhere – hopefully the toilet – and spends a few precious seconds wondering why the hell he keeps doing this. Why they keep doing this.
He stops that train of thought pretty quickly; no matter how bad his hangover is, it still beats the twisted, tangled, poisonous ball of emotion that analysing the situation will drag up.
I'm going out. (But at least things can't get that much worse.)
"Get the fuck out of here," snarls Dean, alcohol on his breath and bottle in his hand. "Go on! Go!" Castiel just stands there, watching him, eyes wide and sad and confused, and then reaches out a hand. His fingers are pale in the dark, and they hang less than an inch from Dean's face, and for a moment the hunter thinks – hopes – Castiel might actually touch him, cup his cheek and step closer and seal their mouths together. He takes a deep breath in, closes his eyes. When he opens them, the fingers are gone. So is the angel.
There's no Sam to stop him this time, no brother to give him disapproving looks and guilt him into laying off the booze after the first few bottles. He's already drunk, was drunk when Cas left – again, again – but he still doesn't feel that wonderful, forgetful numbness he needs, and no matter how much more he drinks, how much he screams at the walls of his motel room and slams bruised knuckles into the walls, it won't come.
Castiel doesn't surround himself with people this time, can't bring himself to be around anyone, not after Dean flinched away from him. Not after he was the look of disgust on the hunter's face when he was about to touch him. Instead, he finds a quiet bench in a park a long, long way away and sits there in the dark, face turned to the sky, and watches the stars in their sparkling dances across it.
"Well, well, well. Castiel. How nice to see you again. Fancy meeting you out here on a night like this." He doesn't have to look around to know it's Zachariah standing in front of him, arms crossed, a smug, falsely sympathetic smirk on his face.
"What do you want?" It's blunt and rude and entirely too human, especially considering Zachariah greeted him in Enochian and he has replied in English, out of sheer force of habit, but he honestly can't bring himself to care. Surprisingly, Zachariah doesn't seem offended by his rudeness, but Cas can't bring himself to care about that either.
"Come home, Castiel," murmurs Zachariah soothingly, holding out a hand to him. "Come back to your family, the ones who care." His voice is soft and persuasive, face genuinely anxious, and the hand is still there between them. After a moment's hesitation, Castiel reaches out and takes it.
I'm going out.
It's not long before his knuckles are bloody and torn, throat raw, head spinning, but he can still think, still remember, and god damn it why won't the numbness come?
I'm going out.
Zachariah's hand moves from behind his back faster than the human eye can follow, fast enough that even angelic reflexes would be hard pressed to avoid the streak of skin and silver that flies through the air.
I'm going out.
"Cas," he mumbles into the empty room, sprawled out on the floor with one hand pressed to his head, digging into his temple as if he can push the ability to think right out of his head, "please. Please." He doesn't even know what he's begging for.
I'm going out.
The look on Castiel's face as the angel blade pierces his throat is not one of surprise or betrayal, but rather of blessed relief.
I'm going out. (Things can always get worse.)