(AN: Hello everyone! Thank you all so much for the reviews and the follows! This idea came out of nowhere, because I love future!Cas, and I thought to myself "What would happen if he was just tossed randomly back in time and dumped in the Winchesters' laps?" I'm a sucker for awkward situations, and it doesn't get much more awkward than this. I'm basically saying "to hell with canon" past Castiel taking a dunk in the reservoir, and I'm not sure yet if I plan to thread the canon storyline into this at all beyond what's already been established, timeline-wise. Add in some Destiel, a heaping helping of angst and... well, you pretty much get the idea where this is going. I might as well throw this out there now; the rating may change in the future, depending on how dirty my muse is feeling, but I'll be sure to let ya'll know ahead of time if I decide to bump it up to M for... obviously implied reasons.)
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Three hunters stood shoulder to shoulder, staring down at the fallen angel as he sat at the kitchen table, stuffing his face with ham and cheese sandwiches and washing it down with whiskey. To say that the general atmosphere of the room was uncomfortable would be an understatement; the only occupant that didn't appear to be tense was the one that wasn't even supposed to be there.
Dean shifted anxiously, arms folded over his chest. There weren't many times he found himself at such a total loss as to what to do, but if there ever was, this was one of them. He knew explanations were warranted at some point, but he was still trying to wrap his head around it, himself.
"So," Bobby said, clearing his throat to test the resistance of the heavy silence. "When are we gonna talk about the elephant in the room?"
Three sets of eyes turned to the elder hunter. Dean huffed, turning away and grabbing a beer from the fridge. He couldn't handle this right now, this gaping wound that had been ripped open again. He half entertained the hope that if he ignored it, it would just disappear.
"I'm flattered," Cas quipped, setting down the empty glass in his hand. "Pachyderms are noble creatures. There isn't much of me that remains noble, though, I'm afraid."
Dean chortled, earning him a glare from the younger Winchester.
"So this is what," the angel continued "oh-nine? No, judging by Sam's luxurious mane... twenty-ten?"
Sam flushed, shifting under Castiel's unsettling gaze. "Two-thousand eleven, actually," he supplied. "Uh, October twenty-sixth."
"Two-thousand eleven," Cas raised his eyebrows, impressed. "I'd assumed if I was going to be 'tripping the rift' I'd have ended up following you back, Dean."
Dean tightened his grip on the bottle in his hand, taking a long drink as the eyes of the two other hunters settled squarely on him.
"Yeah, well," Dean huffed. "I didn't write the time-travel handbook."
"Time travel," Bobby razed. "What the hell're you talkin' about."
"Cas... this Cas," Dean gestured with the hand holding the bottle, settling back against the counter with his ankles crossed in front of him. "He's from twenty-fourteen. Back in oh-nine, Zachariah sent me on a little sight-seeing trip to the future. His future. But we changed that, stopped the Apocalypse, stopped the Croatoan. He shouldn't even exist."
Castiel grinned. "You never told them? Well," he chuckled, refilling his glass nonchalantly. "I have to admit, Dean, I kind of like being your dirty little secret."
Dean felt himself flush. "Yeah, well," he stammered. "I didn't exactly feel the need to explain what a complete dick I'd become in the future, thanks. It's depressing."
"Wait," Bobby interjected. "So he's not Castiel?"
"I was, once," the angel smiled ruefully.
"He's the result of a bad decision," Dean muttered, his tone not entirely kind.
"I didn't, ah, choose to be here, Dean," Cas narrowed his eyes at the elder Winchester, slightly ruffled by the choice of phrase. His usually cool demeanor was beginning to break, even with the alcohol. He dug in his pockets, fingers wrapping around the smooth, round plastic of the prescription bottle therein.
All three men watched as he unscrewed the top, shook a few pills into his cupped palm and tossed them back, chasing the amphetamines with the remainder of the whiskey.
Dean felt sick watching this. It had been enough the first time. It wasn't that he was disgusted, just... sad. Castiel had been loyal, despite a few bad choices recently. The angel was the embodiment of virginal innocence, one of the few people that Dean had felt he could trust and confide in.
Castiel's betrayal, the lies and subterfuge had been bad enough. He couldn't save his Cas, any more than he had saved this Cas. He'd failed both of them, completely, allowed them to ruin themselves in different ways. He was disgusted with himself.
Not this time.
Dean moved forward, much to the alarm of his brother, who tried to intervene before it came to a repeat of the violence he and Bobby had walked in on half an hour ago.
Sam reached to cut him off, but Dean ducked around him, rounding the table and grabbing the angel's arm, wrestling the pills away from him and tossing them across the room- shattering the plastic bottle and spilling white capsules across the floor. He watched in horror as Dean pulled Cas out of the chair, toppling it over and shoving the fallen angel against the wall. He rifled through the pockets of the angel's coat, extracting three more bottles, a bag of hash, some tar-like chunk wrapped in cellophane and a glass pipe, tossing all of these onto the table unceremoniously as the fallen angel stared helpless at the hunter.
"Is this an intervention by the Spanish Inquisition, Dean?" Cas was smiling, but there was an edge of fear in his eyes as they flitted toward the growing pile on the table, underscored by a note of longing.
"Shut up," Dean growled, patting the angel down to make sure he hadn't missed anything. "Bobby, Sam" he said, not turning his attention away from Castiel. "Get rid of this garbage, would you? I need to have a word with future-boy here."
Sam looked to Bobby, sighing as he moved forward to gather the angel's stash. It boggled his mind, this Castiel from a future that never happened, never would happen- but it could have. And Dean, Dean had never told him. The Apocalypse had been a hard time for them both, and it stung that his brother had held onto this.
Bobby shook his head, muttering as he turned his back on the kitchen and disappeared into the study. Sam looked over the labels of the bottles in his hand as he juggled the objects; Phenobarbital, Valium, Methadone... the angel had quite the pharmacy of opiates and barbiturates, it seemed. He picked up the bottle that had smashed against the wall, scooping up the white pills and retreating from the room, shaking his head in utter bewilderment. Had that alternate future been that bad? So bad that an angel of the Lord, fallen and broken, had turned to drugs and alcohol to escape the horrors of the Apocalypse?
For the first time since the almost-Apocalypse, Sam felt proud of himself for dragging Lucifer into the pit, if it meant that the train wreck now squaring off with his brother in the kitchen had been avoided.
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Dean finally let Cas go as Bobby and Sam left the vicinity, taking a step back and watching as the broken angel righted the chair, settling back into it gracefully with his right ankle crossed over his left knee, pouring himself another glass of whiskey. Dean reached out and snatched the upended bottle out of Castiel's hand, setting it down with a heavy thunk on the counter beside the stove.
Cas merely raised his eyebrows, leaning on his elbow against the table and taking what he had managed to pour like a shot, watching Dean with open curiosity.
"If you're here on an extended stay, no more of this shit," Dean dictated, pulling out a chair opposite the angel and sitting down, leaning forward against the tabletop. He didn't want to be near this. His first instinct was to grab the scruffy, gaunt hippie in front of him by the hair and drag him out the front door, effectively expelling him from his already fucked up enough thank you very much world.
But he wouldn't. He couldn't do that, because this was, technically, still his mess. And Dean Winchester wasn't about to just sweep it under the rug, even if the version of himself that had created this walking disaster had never come to exist.
He could have existed, given the right circumstances, and that made Cas his responsibility, still.
"Of course, oh Fearless Leader," Cas jibed. "Whatever you say."
Dean closed his eyes, flexing his jaw as he breathed deeply, suppressing the urge to reach over and cuff the snarky bastard across his smug face. He remembered the way this Cas had interacted with his future self, all open and direct verbal attacks and bitter resentment. The angel's every word toward his righteous John Conner self of 2014 had been a not so thinly veiled attempt to get a rise out of him.
"Next time you call me that," Dean ground out "I'm locking your ass in the panic room until I figure out what hole to toss you in. I am not that asshole, got it? The Apocalypse came and went, for better or for worse. It's over."
Castiel regarded the hunter across from him for a long moment, wondering not for the first time this morning what the whole fucking point of this little jaunt through time and space was supposed to mean.
"So," he said, tracing the set of Dean's lips with his eyes before meeting the hunter's gaze. "Where's my counterpart? Did I flutter off back to band camp after the big event?"
Well, that struck a chord. Dean turned away from the angel's scrutiny at the question, wringing his hands as he sighed. The hurt and sorrow in the man's eyes confirmed more than a few things that Castiel had wondered about.
"Didn't make it, huh?" Cas shrugged, though his tone was sincerely sympathetic despite his aloof posture. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Dean shot his eyes back at the other man, flashing with anger.
"I missed you, you know," the angel continued. "It's nice to feel as though someone cares enough to put an end to my self destruction."
It was another blow to the chest. Dean winced, looking away. "I didn't care enough to save you, though."
Cas raised an eyebrow. Of course Dean would blame himself, even if his own timeline hadn't resulted in what he had become. It was in his nature to heap the burden of guilt on himself, even if it had been Castiel's own weakness and broken pride that had led to his downfall.
"You didn't do this, Dean," Cas consoled. "Neither did he."
Dean raised his eyes again, watching the angel. The smirk was gone from the fallen angel's face, brow a straight line over narrowed, too-serious eyes, and despite his general sickly appearance, Dean could see his Cas through the ruin.
He felt the anger rising in his chest to smother the sadness threatening to strangle his throat.
"The hell you say," Dean hissed. "I was the one who dragged you into all this, Cas! I made you question, rebel against your own kind and you sit there and say it's not my fault? I don't need your fuckin' self-martyring bullshit!"
Cas pulled himself up, settling back against the chair. "And I don't need yours, either. I was never quite as naïve as you think," he shrugged. "You didn't drag me, Dean. I followed."
"Yeah," Dean scoffed "because I kept calling you down like a God-damned flotation device every time Sammy and I got ourselves in hot water!"
"Is that really what you think?" Cas raised an eyebrow at the hunter, the smirk returning. It was a little amusing, Dean's line of reason. "Do you really think that I, an angel of the Lord, would have come running to your beck and call simply because you said so?"
Dean stumbled at that, not quite sure how to interpret the rhetorical question.
Castiel stood fluidly, swaying a bit from the effects of the liquor and the drugs running through his system, but he was a pro at this. Half a bottle of whiskey and a handful of uppers wouldn't topple him.
He rounded the table, leaning to rest against the edge, dangerously close to Dean as he leaned back on his uninjured hand, staring down into those puzzled green eyes.
"Did you ever tell him, Dean?"
Dean frowned, no idea what the angel was asking. "Tell who what," he asked.
"You didn't, did you," Cas smiled slowly. "He did. Two weeks after Sam said yes. In this room, in fact- only our places were reversed at the time."
"What the hell are you talking about," Dean quavered, his voice not coming out quite as strong as he would have liked.
Castiel chuckled in amusement. "He told me that Bobby and I were all he had left."
"And?" Dean scowled, trying to still the quiver in his chest that rose as the angel loomed in closer.
"And then he did this," Cas breathed, lifting Dean's chin and leaning down to press their lips together. It was chaste, almost reverent, saturated with longing and heartache. Dean's heart froze in his chest, eyes wide in surprise stunned by the gesture. From what he had seen of his future self and the broken angel, nothing had indicated anything to suggest what Cas was insinuating. The two seemed to all but despise each other's presence.
Castiel finally pulled back, a small surge of pride warming him at the stricken look on the younger man's face. Role reversal was entertaining. He imagined his own face must have looked much the same on that night five years before, the confusion and not quite comprehending urge to reciprocate.
"I didn't follow you because I felt obligated, Dean. Nor did I follow you because you asked me to." Dean stared at the fallen angel in utter disbelief. That had actually just fucking happened.
The hunter swallowed, trying to play it cool. Yes, he had thought about Castiel, his Castiel. He had never voiced or acted upon it, though... hadn't felt worthy of the possibility that Cas might have felt the same. Hadn't resolved the simple fact in his own mind that he was interested in the angel, because that wasn't Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester wasn't into dudes. Dean Winchester wasn't into stalker angels with piercing, fathomless blue eyes and messy sex-hair and awkward, naïve conversations and rare smiles that made his heart feel like it was going to burst through his chest.
Castiel leaned in close again, whispering huskily into the hunter's ear. "I felt the same way."
And it was too much to bear. Dean had never had the chance, had never even guessed that Cas might have felt that way, and here was this debaucherous druggie, drunk off his ass at noon, leaning into his ear and telling him that he had been wrong.
Dean growled, shoving himself out of the chair and away from the table, stalking through the house to the front door. He didn't look back at the broken, time-displaced angel, nor did he spare a glance to his brother as he heard his name was called out from across the study, or Bobby as he stormed through, snatching up his jacket from the back of the chair he had left it on that morning; singularly focused on escaping now because he couldn't.
He couldn't touch anything without fucking it up.
