Castiel lay sleepless on his bunk at the station, despite the late hour and the long, busy first day of his shift. He and Gabriel had been on runs nearly non-stop since they clocked in, and he would be an idiot not to take advantage of whatever downtime they'd have before the next one.
He didn't generally consider himself to be an idiot, but sleep wouldn't come.
Waking up without Dean had been both unexpected and unexpectedly painful. The uneasy ache of it had stuck with him all day, leaving him off-balance, but that was unreasonable. No expectations, no attachment. That had been his own suggestion, and that was what they had—what they were doing, he corrected himself, and hated that he needed the correction.
Dean didn't owe him the night, nor an explanation for not spending it. Whether he got called to work or just wanted to sleep in his own bed, he had every right to do so without answering to Cas. If Cas got... emotional about it, it was his own problem and not Dean's. He was complicating things, like he always did, though he hadn't realized just how much he'd slipped until he felt a pang of loss at his empty bed and empty house.
Cas had thought he'd guarded himself against that sort of thing. He knew he was flawed. He tended to get too attached, too quickly, too deeply. His deeper emotions were too eager to surface, and it never ended well for him. Falling in love had only ever led him to heartbreak and abuse, and he'd decided long ago that he wasn't going to put himself through that again. The mess he'd let himself get pulled into with Crowley had been his last relationship, and he wanted to keep it that way. That was why he'd set boundaries with Dean from the start, and if he was starting to cross them, it was no one's fault but his own. Dean was clearly happy with the status quo.
It was still early enough, though. He'd caught himself in time, before he couldn't pull himself back. Before Dean noticed. He didn't think Dean was the sort of person who'd take advantage of him if he learned Cas's feelings ran deeper than they ought to, but he also had a history of being terribly wrong when it came to making judgement calls about people. Medical nuance he could handle with confidence, but he wasn't good at understanding human workings deeper than the physiological.
It was just another reason he needed to keep himself appropriately distant, emotionally. He enjoyed Dean's company, both sexual and otherwise, and losing his objectivity meant losing those. He'd prefer not to, so he'd get himself under control.
"So, Winchester."
Cas startled, looking across the room to find Gabriel leaning up on one arm and staring at him. He hadn't registered the lack of snoring.
"What?"
"You've got your Spock face on. You know," Gabriel expounded with an exasperated expression as Cas looked at him in blank incomprehension, "trying to be a Vulcan but your pesky human side won't let you logic your emotions away."
Cas took a moment to reflect on the tragedy of Gabriel being one of his closest friends.
"First of all, I don't think that's a 'face' I have."
"Totally is. You frown and your forehead gets all wrinkled, but your eyes do this sad, blank thing."
The best and worst part of Gabriel's friendship is how, without even trying, he can read Castiel's efforts to make himself unreadable. It couldn't be helped, given the long stretches of time they spent together on shift, and Gabriel usually didn't push when Cas didn't want to be pushed, but it still made him feel—damaged, inadequate. He couldn't read Gabriel the way the other man could read him.
He changed the subjected, asking, "What does that have to do with Dean?" It only occurred to him after that he probably hadn't changed it far enough.
"Well, Casafrass, I was hoping you could tell me that. As far as I know, not that you go out of your way to give me insights into your personal life," he added pointedly, "loverboy-boyfriend is the only thing you've got going on that might make you make that face. So what's up?"
Cas did make a face at that. "Dean is not my boyfriend."
"Is that the problem?"
"There is no problem." Cas sat up and swung his feet to the ground. He wasn't going to sleep, that much was clear, so he might as well stop wasting time. Trying to decide between working out and baking, he slid into his boots. They fit perfectly, but he untied and re-laced them anyway. When he looked up, Gabriel was still watching him expectantly. "Dean and I are engaging in casual sex, that's all. You of all people should understand that."
"Are you calling me a slut?" Gabriel shot out of bed, hand to his mouth in mock outrage.
"Yes," Cas answered in a deadpan.
He turned, but didn't make it out of the room before Gabriel said, "I'm just saying, evaluate your motivations before they sneak up on you. 'Cause from where I'm standing, you passed 'casual' three months and three nights a week ago."
Cas baked two loaves of egg bread, wearing himself out on the treadmill as he waited for the dough to rise and punching it down perhaps a bit harder than was called for. He used one to make french toast as the rest of their shift started to wake up and the station came to life. The peace was brief, and though Gabriel groaned when both they and Engine Six—Virgil, Uriel, and Hannah—were dispatched to a cardiac arrest, Cas welcomed the distraction.
They spent the next few hours in motion, and Cas was too busy focusing on blood and bones to worry about anything else. When they finally got back to the station, he was exhausted enough to fall into bed with his boots on and sleep until their next call. And so went the rest of the day, and the next night, and he slept for several more hours upon getting home.
Dean didn't join Cas for dinner—which was fine and normal, not something he ought to have done—but he did text, just after nine. It was the first contact Cas had with him since Dean's midnight disappearance, which was also fine, and it read, Wanna fuck?
Sure, he replied, glad to have things back to normal.
Fifteen minutes later, Dean was at his house.
An hour after that, Dean was gone.
Normal.
"I'm gonna be busy next week," Dean told him mid-November. "My brother and sister-in-law are coming up for Thanksgiving."
Something twinged just above Castiel's diaphragm; he ignored it. "Of course. Although, if you find yourselves with a free evening, you're welcome to bring them for dinner here."
"Yeah, no, we're on a pretty tight schedule," the other man assured him too quickly, not quite hiding the agitation in his voice. "I'll call you when I've got time again, though."
The lie was obvious and unexpectedly painful. The particularly unsubtle instruction that Castiel wasn't to contact him, more so. Cas grunted some sort of affirmation, and Dean left shortly after with almost no further conversation.
Castiel didn't hear from Dean again until nearly a week into the next month; three weeks he spent at home or work or at the park, not calling Dean or going to the Roadhouse, getting increasingly irritated by Gabriel's increasingly prying questions—and, when those failed to get a response, increasingly childish pranks.
It surprised Cas how difficult the distance was to bear, but he took his lesson from it: getting too close to Dean Winchester wasn't just a mistake because of Cas's issues. Dean did not like it. That was what they had agreed upon, and Cas shouldn't have pushed at it. If Dean wished to resume their arrangement, Castiel would have to do better.
When Dean finally did call, it was to invite him to drinks with Jo and Benny. There were no explanations or apologies for the silence, and Benny's inclusion was both unusual and telling. As far as Cas was aware, Benny had never told Dean how they knew each other—and he was certain that he would've heard about it from Dean if Benny ever had. He didn't think Dean even knew that Andrea hadn't always lived in Greenwood, or that she'd had a drug problem all those years ago. Crowley had been her supplier, not Cas himself, but Benny had seen him in enough compromising (degrading, humiliating) situations that Cas wasn't surprised to have earned his blame and hatred.
For his own part, Cas found it hard to forgive the man when he could still taste blood and semen every time Benny's hard eyes locked on him. Benny had never been one of them, at least not as far as Cas's patchy memory recalled, but he'd dragged his wife out to safety and left Cas to face alone the lust and wrath of whomever was left.
Dean might not know that, but he knew they disliked each other. Cas heard the phrasing of the invitation, went to the Roadhouse and saw the three of them at a booth with the only open seat left for him beside Benny, and he knew his conclusion was correct. Dean was reminding him of his place.
They fell back into a routine without talking about anything, but it was a pattern more closely resembling how they started than how they had been before the intermission. There was sex and drinking and nothing, not even the friendly walks they used to share, that could be misunderstood for a deeper invitation into Dean's life.
Things had started to ease back to comfortability—dinner, Dean staying the night, teasing handjobs in the shower—when Castiel proved to himself yet again that he was incapable of learning from his lifetime of mistakes.
It was late December. Dean had blown him, then fucked him, then collapsed mostly on top of him and they dozed for a while. Cas, unthinking from sleep or sex or both, asked what he was doing for Christmas.
"Man," Dean complained, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling, "I don't know. My brother and his fiancée were supposed to fly up, they're down in California, but he had some stuff come up at work. It's way too late for me to get down there now, so that's a bust. Jo and her mom and stepdad are going on a cruise, Benny's off to Louisiana to see Krissy's grandma... Think it's just gonna be me and Johnnie Walker this year."
"If you have no other plans," Cas began, hesitant. "That is, if it's something you're interested in. There's an annual gathering at my mother's—at Michael's house. Balthazar and I will be attending, of course, and you're welcome to join us."
"Would I be, though?"
He knew Dean wasn't really trying to be cruel, but it still hurt to have that thrown in his face so casually. He was trying to be kind. Dean was going to be alone for the holiday, so Cas was offering him company as a matter of friendship. They were friends in addition to being sexual partners, or had been before Cas's Thanksgiving faux pas. Things had eased a great deal since Dean's initial chill after that, but Cas wanted to feel like he could call Dean his friend again without doubting it in his own mind, as he sometimes did when Dean left his house with barely a grunt of goodbye after spending the night.
He didn't have a large social circle; aside from Balthazar, his only other friends were Gabriel, who he'd met through work, and Meg, who he'd known since high school and reconnected with after getting his life together. One or all three of him would drag him out sometimes, but he didn't tend to seek out new interactions with people on his own. The only reason he'd been at Panthers alone then night he'd met Dean was that Meg had decided it was time for his "bi-monthly dicking."
"Get laid or lose my number," she'd instructed. "You're getting to the insufferable bitch stage of horniness." Then she'd abandoned him for the night.
Cas never had trouble picking up men; between Panthers and a few other nightlife options in Seattle, there was no shortage of guys looking for a fun and easy time. More than that was never on the table for him. Even with Dean, when they'd met again at work, Cas had considered carefully whether to pursue anything further or let it go as an awkward but ultimately forgettable moment. Well, the second meeting had been forgettable; the sex had been spectacular, and that had been the the deciding factor when Cas insisted on handing his report—and his number—directly to Dean.
Sex really had been the only thing he'd expected from it, but Dean's companionship had been as welcome as it was surprising. Now that Cas had experience with being both Dean's friend and sexual partner, he found himself stubbornly unwilling to do without either, even though Dean seemed to think it was impossible to have both. He'd also demonstrated which half he preferred.
Cas would rather have Dean's emotional intimacy than physical, and that realization had been a hard one to swallow. As he was fairly certain both that Dean wouldn't be amenable to that change and that he himself couldn't be trusted to keep his own best interests in mind in any kind of romantic scenario, he couldn't—wouldn't—push the issue.
"Gabriel's come in the past," he told Dean. "Michael considers it a blessing to open his home to the less fortunate during the holidays. And enjoys telling his parishioners about his selflessness," he added, not without bitterness. There were a lot of things Michael lorded hypocritically over his flock, but at least Cas only had to be subjected to it once a year.
The meaning behind Dean's raised eyebrows wasn't apparent to Cas until Dean said, "Well huh. Gabe, really?"
Cas rolled his eyes. "As a friend and colleague, not a sexual partner."
"Oh thank god. Crowley's bad enough, dude, I really don't think my ego could handle what it meant to be on the list of your taste in men when that list also included Gabe."
He looked thoughtful, and Cas let him consider. He didn't want to appear overeager and scare Dean off, though he did greedily desire Dean's company, both for its own sake and so that the more conservative and cruel members of his family might be better behaved towards him. Gabriel had acted as a buffer to prevent the worst of their snide comments, at least until he'd gotten drunk and rambunctious enough that they were directed at him instead of Cas. Balthazar's acerbic wit only fueled the semi-dysfunctional fire.
Dean clarified, "So just as a friend thing? Not, you know, meeting the family."
"Well, you will be meeting my family." His deadpan response served the double purpose of hiding the mild sting of hurt and making Dean snort a laugh. He counted that as a success.
"You know what I mean, smartass. All right. Sure. I've got nothing else going on. So, just how much family are we talking here?"
"Michael, of course; we'll be at his house. Us, Balthazar. Anna. Our uncle Zachariah and his wife, Hester. Their children, Rachel and Bartholomew, and Bartholomew's wife and twin sons."
Letting out a low whistle the whole way, Dean sat up. "Is that all? Don't get me wrong, that's an impressive number of Novaks, but I kind of expected more from a guy with four siblings. Do they all live over in Eastern Washington?"
"Mostly. Anna's down in L.A. She's flying up in two days and staying here until we all drive over, on the afternoon of the twenty-third."
Cas really ought to have expected the way that information made Dean frown and ease himself off the bed, searching out the jeans he'd discarded long ago. But he hadn't, considering the statement a harmless one until Dean reacted to it.
Giving Cas a nicely distracting eyeful as he bent to retrieve his boxers and pants, Dean said, "I'll stay out of your hair for a few days, then. What time do you want me here for the trip?"
"You don't have to make yourself scarce. In fact, since you have the days off, maybe you could keep her company."
It was a terrible idea. He knew it was a terrible thing to say as soon as the words escaped him. All it could do was make things worse between him and Dean. But he felt compelled to finish, once he'd started; trying to take it back would just alert Dean that there was something wrong.
So he explained, "I'll be working, and it's best if Anna and Balthazar aren't left alone for too long."
"You want me to hang out with your family without you?"
He understood Dean's incredulity, given that the man hadn't wanted Cas to spend time with his family even with him there. But he swallowed down the bitterness he had no right to and shrugged.
"You'd be good at showing her around the city. She's never been."
That seemed to surprise Dean. "Haven't you lived here for a while?"
"Yes, and Balthazar for longer. But she has a busy schedule, so she usually flies directly to Spokane. Since she has a longer break this year she wants to finally visit, but I couldn't get the time off."
Dean had paused in his efforts to get clothed, coming to stand at the corner of the bed with his jeans on but unbuttoned. Cas, having already given over to his worst impulses of the day, figured he might as well write off sense entirely. He reached out and snagged Dean's belt loops smirking up at him.
"And she'll be able to tell you all kinds of embarrassing stories about Balthazar that I was too young to remember."
That point was almost enough to convince Dean. The rest of what it took turned out to be incredibly enjoyable, and left Dean's pants abandoned again.
Dean even accompanied him to the airport to pick up Anna when her flight got in. She looked as Hollywood as ever, greeting him with a visibly fake smile and a hug that barely made contact. She turned to Dean immediately, looking him over and nodding her approval. Cas had told her Dean would be joining them, offered a few details about him. He hadn't mentioned their sexual relationship, but Anna was likely to pick up on it regardless; she had a sense for things like that.
"Castiel, won't you introduce me to your friend?" Her slight smirk, too mild for Dean to recognize without knowing her better, indicated that she had indeed picked up on it.
Obedient and resigned, he gestured between them. "Anna, Dean Winchester. Dean, Anna Milton."
"Milton, huh?" Dean asked, shaking her pale, perfectly manicured hand. "Will I get to meet Mr. Milton?"
"Oh, no," Anna laughed. "Inias and I have been divorced for years, I just kept the name. Turns out, he was gay the whole time!" She laughed again, and as Dean joined her, he missed the flash of her eyes that cut through Cas.
After a short, reasonably pleasant dinner of fairly mediocre Italian food on the way back to town, they parted ways—Dean to his apartment and Cas and Anna to Cas's house. In preparation for her arrival, he'd set up the couch with pillows and blankets and swapped out the sheets on his own bed for fresh ones. Since he'd be gone for two of the three nights, it only made sense to give her the proper bed. He'd take the couch that night, then be sleeping at the station the next couple anyway.
The shift went by quickly, particularly since he kept getting texts during the days from Dean and Balthazar, each complaining about the other. Anna didn't contact him, but he was assured by both men that they were keeping her entertained.
He had planned to pick up groceries on the way home, but instead he drove straight to the house. He'd gotten a text from Dean just before the end of his shift—Sucks about the OT, see you in a few hours—so he knew what to expect. He was quiet as he turned the key and went down the hall to his bedroom. He was not surprised when he opened the door. He was not surprised, nor was he angry or sad; he was only empty. Dean lay naked on Castiel's bed and Anna knelt astride him, going still as they both turned at the sound.
He ignored Anna's falsely surprised, "Castiel!"—she was a consummate actress, but she could never lie to him—and Dean's hissed, "You said he was holding over,"—directed at her, not at him. He ignored the sight of his lover still inside his sister, hands quickly falling away from her breasts. He ignored the single suitcase lying open at the foot of the bed: his clothes and Dean's, neatly separated but packed together in preparation for the afternoon's trip. He ignored the portrait of three young, blue-eyed faces smiling above them—there should have been five, but Anna's head blocked her own image as well as his.
He ignored all these things, and only said, "Pardon the interruption," his voice as blank and emotionless as he was, and then closed the door and left the house.
He heard a series of crashes and someone running after him, Dean's voice calling, "Cas! Castiel!" The front door rattled open behind him, and he didn't have to look to know that Dean was there, shouting for him, naked for all the neighbors to see, but daring to step no further. Anna had made no move to follow, likely tidying herself up in his bathroom.
Getting into the car brought Dean into his peripheral vision, and he was hit by a sudden need to look at the man one last time, to complete the scene in his mind. As it was the only thing to cut through the dull vacancy where he once held hopes and desires, he gave in to it. Framed in the doorway, his dignity protected only by a ridiculously bright yellow condom, he stared after Cas with a frown that more resembled frustration than remorse. Cas felt the place between his lungs where that should hurt as a small but paradoxically dense void.
He drove to Balthazar's house, because there were things he must do, matters to arrange, before he could be alone to consider everything. Once there, the brief recitation of facts went as well as could be expected.
"I'm going to kill them. Both of them. Jesus, Cassie!" Balthazar broke off his frantic pacing to envelop his brother in a crushing hug. "I swear to you, no one will ever find the bodies, or any pieces of the bodies—"
"Stop." Cas was stiff in his brother's arms, not returning the embrace but not fighting it. He only bowed his head, resting a cheek against Balthazar's neck, and his voice was rough as he repeated, "Just stop. I know you're trying to help, but. I don't need you to get involved. I just wanted you to know why I'm not coming home. Please, don't tell Michael."
"You shouldn't be the one exiled," Balthazar snapped, but he didn't continue the familiar and worn argument, instead ending with, "I'm sorry, kiddo. I wish we had all done better by you."
Then Cas did pull away, but gently, resting a hand on his brother's shoulder. "I know you did the best you could."
"That's exactly the problem," Balthazar sighed.
"Will you drive her to Michael's? Just pick her up from my house and go."
There were many things Balthazar must have been straining not to say, mostly related to his own desire to skip the three-hour drive accompanied by a sister he was furious with to a gathering of extended family he wasn't overly fond of on a good day. Cas saw his struggle, saw the moment he gave up the fight against the selfishness that even Cas could admit was a part of his nature. "Fine. Fine, yes, I'll bloody go and take the bint with me. You'll stay here?"
"Just to rest, then I'll go to Meg's for tonight and tomorrow," Cas countered. If Balthazar thought he was lying, he once again overrode instinct and allowed it to stand. "Thank you, Balthazar."
"Don't thank me," his brother grumbled back. "If I'd any sense at all, I'd be off to commit felony assault right now. Go to sleep before I change my mind."
Obeying was easy, and Castiel thought of nothing as he lay in the guest room, staring at the wall until his eyes closed. When he woke, Balthazar had gone, leaving a note urging Cas to call if he needed anything; Cas left it in place and departed.
After parking his car down a cul-de-sac just far enough that Balthazar wouldn't see it, he walked through the quiet neighborhood. Smith-Franklin park was much further from his brother's house than his own, but the distance appealed to him, as did the chill sinking under his skin; he'd left his coat behind somewhere, he couldn't remember where, and his pace was too slow to warm him through exertion.
He navigated without conscious effort, but despite not occupying himself with the journey, he found upon arrival that he could not recall any other thoughts. This suited him just as well as the cold, but realization robbed him of the ability to continue. Instead, he sat overlooking a stand of evergreens and his mind filled with memories and images:
Dean, that first night at the bar, smiling an offer as he bought Cas a drink.
Dean, at the scene of the overdose, unexpectedly awkward but no less enticing.
Dean, in Cas's bed, months into their arrangement, sleeping with an arm draped over his stomach and lips pressed against his shoulder.
Somewhere between those times, it had gone wrong; he had gone wrong, the way he always did. Even now, he recalled the warmth that filled him in those soft, stolen moments, entirely separate from the heat of lust that began their relationship. He felt that same glow trying to rise up his chest as he remembered the mornings he lay there to watch Dean sleeping, and the effort of suppressing it stirred nausea. Then:
Dean in Cas's bed, fucking his sister.
The warring affection and sickness were gone in an instant, replaced by welcome numbness. He reminded himself that he was broken, and it did not disturb the tranquil nothing inside him. He was defective, and he made his greatest mistakes when he forgot that, when he attempted to reach for something more than he was capable of. More than he deserved.
This, now, was how he should be. Detached and calm and impersonal; he ruined everything around him when he tried to emote as though he were a functional human. He'd let himself forget that—no, it was worse than that. He'd run up against his limitations, seen himself pushing the boundaries of what he could have and Dean responding poorly to his attempts, then he'd kept pushing.
It started to rain.
Cas wasn't sure how much time passed as he stared at the trees, but it was enough for his clothes to be soaked through and his skin clammy with shivers when something placed itself in his line of sight: Gabriel, bearing a large, colorful umbrella and an exceedingly unhappy expression. He should have been sleeping after their two-day shift, and Cas would have felt guilty that he was in a rain-drenched park looking for Cas instead except that he didn't seem to be capable of feeling anything.
When Cas continued to stare at him silently, Gabriel sighed. "Big bro called me. Well, he called the she-demon, who you're allegedly supposed to be with, but it turns out she hasn't seen you. She's busy getting paid to deal with lunatics, so it fell to me to do it for free."
The weight of Gabriel's expectant stare settled easily over Cas and failed to spur him into action. In the mindlessly processing part of his brain that never shut off, he knew what Gabriel expected from him: a laugh, a sob, a response of any sort. For him to get up off the bench and out of the rain, to talk about his feelings, to yell and curse and wail.
It all just sounded exhausting, and he was already so drained.
Gabriel watched him a bit longer, then held out a sweatshirt, thick and dry under his umbrella. Cas stared at it blankly.
"Put it on, or I'm calling up every person remotely responsible for your medical training—including the dead ones, so help me, there are ways—and telling them that you intentionally gave yourself hypothermia to be melodramatic.
"I'm sorry things are shitty," he added, more gently, "but if you can't take care of yourself right now, please let me do it." Sincerity was an unusual affect on Gabriel, and that more than anything pulled Cas out of his apathy enough to react. He took the offered garment and pulled it on, even managed to drag out a grateful mumble that might have been words. His throat was unreasonably dry for how wet the rest of him was.
Refusing to allow Cas to wallow or refuse, Gabriel dragged him to his feet. "Come on, Tin Man, I'm taking you home. We're gonna drink until you feel feelings, then we're gonna drink your feelings away."
"That seems counterproductive," Cas pointed out. Words came more easily after the first few he had to force out. He failed at many aspects of humanity, but basic communication he could manage. He needed to manage it, to carry on with his life; emotions he didn't need, so he made no effort to bring those back.
"Yeah, well, real boys with functional coping methods get to skip the first step."
"You're mixing metaphors again."
"I'm calling you hopelessly naive and empty inside via Disney characters, asshat. What part of that makes it seem like a good idea to use big fucking words?"
"The most popular Wizard of Oz movie wasn't actually associated with—"
"Jesus, Cas, fucking shut up and get in the car."
As Gabriel drove to his apartment faster and more recklessly than was necessary without emergency lights and siren, he didn't try to engage Cas in further conversation. Instead, he turned up the radio (and the heat) and sang along to the catchy pop tunes of the day. It was what he did when they rode together at work, and the familiarity of it eased tension Cas didn't know he'd been carrying from his shoulders.
Cas had warmed by the time they reached the house, but not dried. In fact, between his shirt and the rain on the way to and from the car, the sweatshirt had grown damp as well.
"Get naked," Gabriel ordered as he closed the door. "The hot water's off for a few hours, great timing there, so I can't stick you in the shower. But I'll get you something clean and dry, and comfortable for passing out in a drunken stupor. Just throw your shit anywhere except where you plan on sitting, I'll deal with it in the morning."
Gabriel's living environment existed as a perpetual state of disaster, so Cas took him at his word and discarded his soggy clothes near the entryway while Gabriel fetched him a new sweatshirt and some slightly too-short sweatpants. There hadn't been much call for modesty between the two of them for years, given that they lived in a five-foot radius of each other for 48-hour stretches at a time, and any remaining body shyness Cas might have had was eliminated by the fact that he flatly didn't care anymore.
Gabriel raised his eyebrows, but didn't complain. While Cas got dressed, he pulled two value-sized bottles of clear alcohol from a cabinet, both mostly full. "Pick your poison."
As the fifth or sixth shot burned its way into his blood, his control started to slip. The carefully held numbness that sheltered him melted into a familiar ache, his chest heavy and painfully hollow all at once. The first stage of Gabriel's plan may have worked, but he knew without a doubt that the second would not. No amount of cheap vodka would drown the throb that accompanied every heartbeat, he knew that from experience. Years of increasingly stronger drugs had failed to silence the soundless scream that echoed deep within his ribs.
But for tonight, he could throw himself into the alcohol and the pain until he forgot the cause of it.
"Gabriel," he said, but it didn't sound right. The later vowels got lost when he couldn't work up the energy to move his tongue away from his alveolar ridge after the R, since he'd only have to put it back for the L, so it came out slurred, "Gabrrrl."
Gabriel, unfairly sober for a man with less body mass and just as much alcohol in him as Cas, grinned and pushed a glass of water at him. Cas scowled, gulped a mouthful, and tried again. "Gabe, why're you doing this?" He flailed the unoccupied hand in a gesture that probably failed to clarify the subject of his question as much as he'd have liked.
Gabriel's mouth moved, but he didn't seem to be saying actual words. Cas tried to tell him the the noises he made had no meaning, but he couldn't get his own words out, either, and the world faded to fuzzy darkness before he could figure out why.
Castiel awoke with a pounding in his head and a tightness in his chest. He was fairly certain something had died in his mouth overnight, and not at all certain it hadn't been his dignity. Someone, Cas could only assume Gabriel because he definitely hadn't had the presence of mind to do it himself, had shoved a couch cushion under his head and covered him with a tattered and stained blanket.
When Cas could sit up without wanting to vomit, which took an embarrassing number of hours, though at least Gabriel kept snoring in his room through them instead of subjecting Cas to his presence, he knew he had to retrieve his car and go home. Balthazar and Anna would have left the day before. Dean—
Cas tried to let the pain that came with thinking of the man wash over him, a current over an unmoved river stone, but instead it broke against him in a wave of acute sorrow. He was still unstable from drinking his guard away; he would have to rebuild it.
Maybe Dean had gone with them. Most likely, he had not. Even if Anna had offered, Balthazar would have refused to take him. Even knowing Dean had probably been left behind, Cas wasn't surprised to find him gone from the house when he arrived. Nor that all trace of him—spare clothes, a toothbrush he'd taken to keeping in Cas's bathroom—had vanished as well. It seemed appropriate for his home to feel as gapingly empty as his chest.
Dean didn't call or text. He didn't stop by. Cas didn't expect him to, really, but he still noticed every hour, every day that passed with the knowledge that Dean was no longer any part of his life. He couldn't regain the numb acceptance that had settled into his bones that first day; it hurt, and he couldn't get it to stop.
He hated it. Hated that he'd let himself become vulnerable again, dared to hope for something meaningful with Dean when he'd known from the start that he couldn't have it. Hated that he hadn't been able to control his emotions enough to stop himself from falling for Dean, and hated that he couldn't control them enough to stop himself from missing Dean.
Alcohol didn't numb him, as he'd known it wouldn't, but that didn't stop him from trying. It was a terrible idea; he was prone to addiction. He knew that, but he spent his evenings drinking himself to sleep anyway, because he didn't want to spend them thinking about how broken he was. He didn't turn to pills again only because he couldn't, not with his job—and saving lives was the only worth he had left. For the same reason, he didn't show up to work drunk or hungover.
Naturally, it was the job that brought him back in contact with Dean, as it had done the first time. Medic Five responded to an overdose, because the universe had a sense of humor. This time they couldn't save the patient, because the universe's sense of humor was a cruel one.
Cas didn't notice who the other people on scene were until he'd already called time of death, because he'd been too focused on trying to restart his patient's failed heart. But when he rose from kneeling over the body, he finally took the time to scan the faces around him.
There was a sharp pain as he saw Dean, and though he knew that his sternum remained uncracked, someone had sliced in and peeled away the layers above and beneath to bare his ascending aorta to the elements. It burned with the exposure.
He would've liked to turn away and nurse his wounds in private, but Jo waved him over. Smiling like she was happy to see him, like he was an old friend she'd missed, she came towards him before he could find a way to stop it. Dean followed, looking deeply unhappy. Clearly he hadn't told her anything, or at least not anything truthful. Was he worried she'd take Cas's side? That was a novel idea; she was like a sister to him.
"Good to see you, though I coulda done without the circumstances," she said as she reached him. Cas looked back at the body; Gabe was stuck with it until the private ambulance arrived to take it to the hospital, which also meant he couldn't come to Cas's rescue. "We've missed you at the Roadhouse."
If Cas's laugh came out a little too bitter to pass for polite, well, he thought he ought to be allowed that. Dean's eyes widened at him, then darted over to Jo, a silent plea. Fuck that; he had no reason to make life easier for Dean. And even if he wanted to, even if he did have a reason, it wasn't a reason that mattered anymore. He wouldn't let it stop him from lashing out.
Dean had never seen fit to keep his fucking Cas a secret from Jo, Cas saw no reason she shouldn't know that they weren't fucking anymore.
"I thought it best I do my drinking elsewhere now. I'm sure Dean doesn't want to see me any more than I want to see him."
Caught off guard, Jo looked back at Dean and saw his grimace. "You guys aren't... Something happened?" she asked eventually.
"No," Dean said at the same time as Cas said, "I may have abominably low standards, but even I draw the line at men who have sex with my sister." Cas's voice was louder and angrier, so Dean's answer didn't really matter.
Dean winced as Jo spun on him. "You what?"
The posturing nonchalance of Dean's shrug was almost the sort of thing Cas used to find, God help him, endearing. "She was hot, we're both consenting adults. It's no one's goddamn business," he added with a glare at Cas.
Cas didn't even need to defend himself, not that he necessarily would have. Dean was right, by the terms of their agreement, but that hadn't made it any less gutting. He didn't know of any way to say that that didn't make him sound like a child learning for the first time that life wasn't fair, and he'd learned that lesson long ago.
But Jo spoke up before he could, regardless. "I'd say cheating on him is your boyfriend's fucking business, Winchester."
"He's not my goddamn boyfriend and he never was. It was a one night stand that went on a few nights too long."
"Six months is a lot of nights." Cas wasn't sure if he was arguing or agreeing, but apparently it didn't matter either way.
Dean turned away without responding, face creasing into the same pained look he got on the few occasions he spoke of his father. If nothing else, Castiel reflected, he'd made it into Dean Winchester's book of regrets. As he realized that was the closest he'd ever been—ever would be—to keeping company with the people Dean loved, it forced another broken chuckle from him. He had to leave before it turned into a sob.