Dean downs another mouthful of whiskey, and fuck all does he need it. It's been a long fucking day, at the end of a long fucking year, to top off a long fucking decade of shit. He's perched on the edge of the bed, watching over Cas. The angel is down for the count courtesy of the good stuff. Sam had brought back all the necessary supplies—as if there was any doubt that he would; he is solid gold in a hospital, he has that whole compassionate bedside manner thing down to a damn science. He could wheedle anything he needed from anyone in that damn place, easy—Dean won't admit it, but there are certain things that Sam can get done with the sweet earnest puppy routine that Dean's devil-may care grins just can't. Unfortunately, neither brother's approach is doing jack for rousing the comatose Cas, hence the third round of whiskey for Dean. He's still got the smell of Cas' burnt flesh in his nose and Cas' hushed screams echoing in his ears—not sure any amount of alcohol is actually gonna chase them away—most likely, they'll give his subconscious some nice new fodder for his nightmares. Good times, Dean thinks, and takes another swig.
When Sam had returned, they'd gotten down to business; by then, of course, Dean had done as much as he could—he'd stitched up Cas' shoulder, exchanged his wet clothes for a pair of dry boxers and sweat pants, tried to make him as comfortable as possible, and was basically going crazy just waiting. He'd called Bobby to let him know the situation. Bobby promised to look into angel injuries and lore—searching for precedents or solutions—and Dean had gone back into caged tiger mode, watching Cas like it was his goddamn job. Then Sam had come in with the necessary supplies in hand, and Dean had wasted no time, slathering Cas' back in anti-biotic cream; his calloused hands gentle as he carefully applied the gunk into the ridges, valleys, and divots of the raw, newly re-sculpted terrain of Cas' back and arms. The look on Dean's face was nothing short of tender, though Sam was wise enough not to comment on it. Nevertheless, Cas kept twitching and flinching, moaning in pain. Sam set up an IV and gave him a dose of morphine and a saline drip. Dean had raised his brows at that last one, but Sam just shoke his head.
"Dude, it's standard treatment for burn victims," he remarked. Dean had shrugged, better to be safe than sorry (Dean Winchester, erring on the side of caution, who'd have thought?). They had laid gauze loosely on Cas' back, wrapped bandages more firmly around his arms, and then covered his shivering form in all the blankets they could find.
Sam went out to get them some food, given that, as he said, "We might be here awhile."
So Dean has been left here, with Johnnie Walker for company, just gazing at Cas' pale form, occasionally wiping sweat off of his face and brow, remembering the times that he had done that for Sammy when he had been laid up as a kid. The primary difference being that Sam had leaned into the touch, had liked the physical comfort his big brother had to offer. Cas just looks pained, and it makes something twist in Dean's gut. He's not really sure what else he can do to help Cas…he's can't even pin-point the exact source of his pain or it's cause, which is why he's drinking...
"Cas," he whispers, low and gruff; he's not totally sure that Cas can hear him, but that might be why he feels like he can say it, "we're gonna figure this out…but, you gotta hang in there, man, 'cause, uh, me and Sammy, we need you...so, for me—us, you gotta pull through, all right? " Cas doesn't stir, but he doesn't get worse either, and Dean just keeps watching over the angel—'bout time he returned the creepy favor anyway. Cas doesn't look peaceful, he looks damn troubled, but, at least, he's resting—that's gotta be good for healing or something, right?
The door opens in a burst of Sam infused energy, and Dean instinctively moves back, putting a few more inches between himself and Cas, suddenly weirdly self-conscious about their proximity on the bed.
Sam jerks his head at Cas' body, as he lays dinner out on the small motel room table, "How's he doing?"
Dean shrugs, "'Bout the same."
"How are you?" He eyes the bottle in Dean's hand pointedly.
Dean scowls and gets up to grab the cheeseburger that Sam brought for him. It's not an easy feat, killing Dean's appetite (he's been compared to a disgusting bottomless pit and a garbage disposal on numerous occasions), but he only takes one bite of his food before remembering the scent of Cas' charred skin, and, suddenly, he's not hungry anymore. He drops the patty back into its wrapper with disgust before taking another pull from his handy bottle of whisky.
Sam is observing him warily, but he continues eating his salad with gusto.
They're going to have talk about the elephant in the room sooner or later, and, with Sam back, it's likely to be sooner…doesn't mean that Dean's ready for it, but, then, when has Dean ever been willing to face anything having to do with Cas head on, especially now that he's, well, for better or worse, kind of invested in Cas. Yeah, invested, that's one word for it, he snarks to himself, you're such a damned idiot.
"So," Sam begins. Dean's gonna need another bottle or two for this shit.
"So?"
"Are we gonna talk about this?" Sam's got his intense, compassionate Oprah face on.
Dean deliberately avoids it, "About what?"
However, Sam is not going to stand for Dean's evasion, and Dean can tell because Sam gives him good old bitch face #6 don't play dumb with me, Dean, I'm not stupid, and it's beneath you, or, it would be, if you were an actual mature individual. Dean is annoyed by the look but also absurdly pleased because it's the first bitch face he's gotten since they found Cas on the side of I-95, and, if Sammy is throwing around bitch faces, they're out of the immediate crisis. At the very least, it's enough of a customary, familiar, Sammy response to Dean's shit, that it makes him feel a little more steady, a little less freaked out, and a little more normal—or, as normal as things get for them.
"About Cas, Dean," Sam says, and, though, he's clearly trying to be sympathetic and supportive, in spite of his own worry for his friend, he can't suppress his exasperated eye-roll.
"What about him?" Dean swallows another mouthful of alcohol. The whiskey is starting to lose its kick; it doesn't burn as much, but Dean is, unfortunately, still too sober for this conversation.
"Do you think he's—you know, human?" Sam frowns.
"I don't know, man," Dean shakes his head, gazing at Cas because if Cas got kicked out of heaven and it's Dean's fault, he doesn't know how he could ever deal with, or apologize, for that— "but he's not healing himself and he's sleeping, so what do you think?"
"If he has fallen," Sam continues earnestly, like this is a case, a very personal case, but a case none-the-less, "this is—weird."
"You're telling me," Dean snorts, because calling a fallen Cas 'weird' is the understatement of the century.
Sam shakes his head like Dean is missing his point, "No, I mean…when Anna fell she was like reborn as a baby, when Lucifer fell, he was locked up in hell—" Sam pauses with a faraway look on his face, but thankfully doesn't expand upon either of those two particular angels or dredge up the memories they have associated with them, "—but Cas, I mean, he still looks like Jimmy, he doesn't seem like he has mojo—" he shrugs, "—but his wings were burnt to a crisp—"
Dean leans forward, catching Sam's drift, "You don't think that the lightening was lightening? You think that was Cas' grace?" Sam didn't get all the brains in this family, despite what anyone tells you to the contrary.
Sam shrugs, "I think that we might have a fallen angel on our hands, and I don't really have another explanation."
Dean frowns, his lips in a thin line; his eyes sparking dangerously, "So who did it? Raphael?" So help him, if Raphael is responsible for this shit, Dean will do things to that bastard that will make what he did in hell look like he was handing out damn party favors.
Sam brushes his hair off of his forehead in consternation, "I don't know if he's got the juice for that…you don't think that Cas did this to himself do you?"
Dean honestly can't imagine a situation where that would happen. Sure, he'd thought about a human Cas—there had been moments before and after visiting 2014, during the apocalypse, after he had lost Sam and Cas was all he had—when he had imagined what it would be like, having Cas around in a more permanent way, real and tangible, and it had been terrifying for so many reasons that Dean still refuses to touch. He would always shake the idea away before he could get too close to those hazy speculative day dreams because they weren't a possibility. And in none of those fleeting, hastily buried scenarios, had Cas become human of his own volition. The idea was just—it was disconcerting and confusing and made Dean feel a jumpy, panicky sensation in his chest. Because why the fuck would Cas choose this in any universe? It would be incredibly fucking stupid, and Cas was a lot of things, but he was not stupid. He didn't deserve being stuck down here with Dean and the other mud-monkey's, no way, yet here he was, in a restless sleep, back ripped to shreds, trapped with Dean anyway. Freaking awesome.
The hunter shakes his head sharply, in denial of his guilt and Sam's statement, "If he had, he would be fetus, dude."
Sam concedes the point. Dean refuses to even begin to envision Cas being lost to them that way. He shudders. He should probably wish that new lease on life for Cas over this torment with him, but he can't manage it. He's selfish enough not to want that, even though he hates himself for wanting…something else.
Dean looks away from Cas, long enough to catch sight of Sam's epic scowl, it looks like he's working through a complicated mathematical equation, and Dean really doesn't want to know, but he asks anyway: "What?"
Sam purses his lips before answering, "You don't think that this means that Cas, you know, lost the war in heaven?"
Dean takes a deep breathe, "If he did, we'd be screwed," and they would be, seriously, because heaven would be back on track for the apocalypse—but they'd go down fighting again, and they both know it when they share a look, "but let those bastards try us. We stopped them once, we can do it again." Sam raises his brows and Dean tilts his head, hoping he looks more sure of himself than he feels.
"So what's the plan?" Sam queries after he opens a beer and takes a much needed fortifying sip.
"Hell if I know, Sammy," Dean admits, "we've still got the rib invisibility cloaks, we've got protective shit from all over the place—so unless Cas has like a homing beacon on him, we lay low, wait for an update from Bobby, or wait until Cas can tell us what the fuck is going on."
Sam's brow furrows, "You think he's going to be able to?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Sam rolls his eyes, "Does he even know who he is, Dean? I mean, how do we know that it's not Jimmy?"
"It's Cas," Dean speaks with assurance and finality.
"How do you know?"
It's Dean's turn to roll his eyes, "What do you mean, how do I know? I know."
"Dean—" Sam begins in a please stop trying my patience here voice, "you can't just know that it's Cas—I mean, what, did he do your little best friends secret handshake?"
Dean smirks because Sam has accidently hit pretty close to the mark; Dean remembers Cas' hand on his shoulder, the recognition in his eyes when he had realized Dean was there, "Does he look like he's up for our secret handshake, Sam?" Dean retorts, "I ran the tests while you were gone," and finding a non-injured stretch of skin and then cutting it had been such an awesome fucking experience—it made him feel like the biggest asshole in the universe, "Trust me, it's him."
Sam gives Dean a piercing, contemplative look—Dean knows he wants to ask him about Cas, about the time when Sam was gone, about what the fuck is going on between his brother and the angel, but he doesn't, and Dean's not gonna say anything about it; it's between him and Cas, and, to be honest, he really doesn't fucking know what the deal is himself—
"Okay, let's say it is Cas, he's not exactly lucid; he's speaking in Enochian—"
"—he's in shock, dude, if I got my soul ripped out of my back, and my fucking arms chopped off and set on fire in front of my face, I don't think I'd be screaming in fucking Latin," Dean rebukes, because he wouldn't; he probably would be shouting in English, non-verbally, or one of the dialects of hell that he unfortunately is fluent in—he knows a lot of profanity in that one. Cas reverting to the oldest human languages he knows to give voice to his pain makes perfect sense to Dean.
"—fine, but this kind of trauma, do you think he's even going to remember what happened?"
Dean takes another pull of whiskey, "I guess we're gonna find out."
