Written for comment_fic on livejournal

Prompt was for Post-series fic, SPN, Dean/Castiel, building a life

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Dean knows how most people deal with tough situations. They tell themselves, 'If I can just do this, can just make it through this one horrible tough thing, it'll be okay.' And if they survive to meet the next crisis, then they just keep telling themselves the same thing.

Dean knows better than this. He knows not to expect more than a brief reprieve before the shit hits the fan again. He knows that building a life with someone is mostly about rebuilding the things that just got broken.

It had never been easy -- but then, Dean had never gotten anything good easy. Cas, though fallen, was still Cas. There was considerable difficulty adjusting.

Dean had expected him to be a little lost, a little overwhelmed by his human-ness, his newfound vulnerability, his new sensations.

Though it was actually a lot of fun helping Cas understand all his new sensations.

But Cas... was still Cas. He felt no fear for evil, only disdain. So when Cas hunted with them, it was with his typical eerie calmness, but with the recklessness of one unaccustomed to being bound by physical law.

It led to some very near misses.

So eventually Dean convinced Cas that there were a lot of ways to fight evil, not just hunting. When Dean told him, Sam had raised an eyebrow, momentarily looking up from his work stitching up a deep gash on Cas' torso, and sarcastically muttered "Wait, I know the category - things Dean Winchester would never in a million years say." But he shut up when Dean gave him a look. Even Sam agreed that it was best for Cas to try new things.

So Cas looked around at the world, and felt wonder. At all the individuals. But he also felt compassion, and he wanted to help them, and when possible to save them.

But he was still Cas. He never took into account his own safety. And he took a long time to figure out that he couldn't talk to people the way he used to.

For example, it turns out that drug kingpins don't like it when some dude walks into their home, stares at them intently, and tells them that they, as a wondrous human creature, have a beautiful soul inside but that they must turn away from evil or suffer the consequences.

Seriously. They really don't like that.

But Dean knows that dealing with that kind of thing is just part of what it means to be with Cas.

And of course falling had pretty much rid Cas of his respect for authority, so you can bet he didn't put much store in the mere earthly kind. Like when a cop tells him to kneel on the ground, and Cas remains standing and gives him an impromptu explanation of gestures of submission and why they had no place in human social relationships.

Yeah, they don't like that. They don't even think it's a little but funny.

And you know what cops also don't like? Particularly in the kidnapping division? Guys in trenchcoats who act weird and stare creepily and talk like a religious nut when they ask why he "adopted" a dozen abused children without telling anyone, including their parents.

Yeah, they don't like that either. So basically it was a series of clusterfucks, one after another, sometimes with Cas surprisingly getting out of it himself, using his wits and his persuasion to good ends. But a lot of the time, it was Dean and Sam with shotguns and Tasers. They had never had to rely on Tasers before, but with all these new human enemies, it was turning out to be a necessity pretty often.

And there were countless others, people Cas helped, some of them with dangerous enemies, some who themselves were dangerous and claimed that they didn't want to be saved, that they didn't deserve it.

And Dean tried to convince Cas to be a little more savvy. But Dean knew he was in no position to complain about the fact that Cas got a little overattached to his charges. Or that his loyalty to his charges tended to outweigh the rules, or the law, or his own well-being.

After all, Cas was still Cas.

Cas eventually got used to enough social norms - and his limitations as a human - that he knew to choose his battles more carefully, that he stopped making the worst mistakes, that he improved his social skills enough to avoid the more absurd situations. But it didn't stop the near misses or the need for a shotgun rescue. Because Cas never learned to keep those he was protecting at arm's length, and no matter what happened, he never learned to give up on a lost cause.

And so a good portion of their life together was Dean getting Cas out of trouble.

And a good portion was holding an inconsolable Cas, deastated about someone he just wasn't able to save.

And then there were the fights. Often with Cas being stubborn, telling Dean that they shouldn't be together, that Dean had spent his whole life taking care of others and he shouldn't have to do it with Cas too. Then with Cas running away, sometimes to help a "charge" without fear of putting Dean in danger, and sometimes just because he thought Dean would be better off. But then Dean finding Cas. Because no matter how well he thought he hid, it always ended it with Dean finding Cas and some combination of fighting and makeup sex, and then the process starting all over again.

And Cas never knew how to apologize for being himself, but he knew there was something off, that he wasn't acting the way humans are supposed to. And Dean knew that in most aspects of human existence, Cas had been able to learn astoundingly well. But Cas never really learned - never really understood - that mere mortals sometimes have to accept things as they are. That humans don't always get to change the story. Cas could never quite wrap his mind around this, and he spent all his life getting burned by the shock of his own insignificance. Every single time, it was as bad as the first.

And Dean knew it was useless to try to turn Cas into anything other than this. And, against all his better judgment, Dean couldn't help but admire this about him. So Dean kept hunting with Sam, and hung out with Bobby and Ellen and Jo, and took ridiculously good care of his car. But most of his life was dedicated to taking care of Cas, to building a life out of the rubble and ruins that tended to pile up around Cas' need to fight the good fight.

Sometimes Dean thinks back on this life, these many years he has shared with Cas, taking care of a man who doesn't know how much he deserves to be taken care of. A man who has given up too much, and wants still to give up more. A man who can't change who he is, who ensures that the life they build will always be filled to the brim with hurt and loss, failures and dangers, injuries and arguments, and the relentless drive to save people who may not be possible to save.

And Dean is shocked to realize how happy it has made him.