Eighteen Months Ago

Castiel is floating in a haze of light and color. There are words being spoken, someone shouts his name, there is laughter and music…but his brain is slippery, he's moving too quickly from one moment to the next for any of these things to touch down and make an impact.

He bumps into someone and thin, pale arms go around his neck, pulling him close to a body that's hot and soft and presses against him in all kinds of intriguing ways. He looks down into a pair of wide dark eyes that glint and spark at him in the half light. She tugs at him, coaxing him away from the throng of bodies toward one of the empty corners. It doesn't feel like he's been anchored in the storm so much as strapped to it, and Castiel goes easily, hearing without really feeling his back hit the wall.

The kiss isn't felt either, but it's certainly sensed. He loses his hands in the tangle of her black hair and closes his eyes, lets the thump and strobe of his surroundings fade into the slide of her lips against his. Her nails rake his shoulders and he groans, thinking that it should have hurt but it doesn't. Nothing hurts in this moment. He doesn't feel a thing.

She's laughing when he pulls back for air, eyes glassy and cheeks flushed with a sort of dazed rapture that he doesn't feel, but oh, he wants to. He follows her without question after that moment, taking her hand and being led into all the warm, shadowy spaces she has to show him. It's easy, and it's painless, and he doesn't ask himself if he's using her or worry that she's using him. They're simply putting each other to good use, and as long as she keeps laughing, keeps looking at him with that shiny-eyed wonder that belies the casual, taunting cruelty that drips from her mouth like honey on the rare occasions that he tries to actually talk to her…well, it's better than gone. It's better than empty, than nothing. He'll take it.

Present Day

When Castiel wakes up, he's alone. He blinks and reaches his hand across the empty space, as if confirming to his half-conscious brain that Dean really isn't there. The sheets are still warm, but his chest seizes up anyway.

Sitting up, Castiel registers that Dean's clothes are gone from the chair. He can hear the shower running, though, and he relaxes a bit, telling himself to stop being an idiot. Dean isn't going to just leave him here in some motel in the middle of nowhere.

But he could, his traitorous brain whispers. He shakes his head and throws the covers back, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing, stretching and grimacing at how stiff he feels. Clearly even his transient lifestyle hasn't been enough to prepare him for the nightmare that is a motel bed. His back feels like it should be one big bruise.

Castiel doesn't have anything to do to keep himself occupied while he waits for Dean, so he opens the door and squints into the gray light of the early morning. The parking lot is dotted with cars of varying colors, makes, and levels of care. The Impala is parked a couple of spaces down from their door. Cas steps out in his bare feet, toes curling for a moment against the surprising coldness of the pavement, and pads over to the car.

It really is beautiful, and he marvels at how much time Dean must have spent on it. According to his letters, it had been a barely-recognizable pile of scrap metal. Now it gleams like onyx beneath the thin layer of road dust, reflecting his own distorted shadow back at him. Castiel isn't exactly a gear head, but even he can appreciate this machine. He thinks of the way Dean looks in the driver's seat, relaxed and at ease inside something of his own creation. Dean handles this car like it's second nature, even though Cas knows he's only been able to drive it for a few weeks now. He was there for the test drive, watching Sam and Dean from the back seat as something that should have been an occasion for proud smiles and astonished laughter—he understands the car was supposed to be a surprise for their father—was carried out in silence and with solemn faces.

They'd driven it the short distance from Bobby's to Ellen's and back. Dean had looked at his feet, unable to completely suppress a bashful grin, when Bobby had come out to marvel at it and told Dean it was "damn good work, kid. Didn't think she'd ever actually run again." Castiel liked Bobby Singer after that, despite the suspicious looks Bobby continued to give him right up to their last day in Lawrence, and much for the same reasons he first decided he liked Sam. It was obvious to Castiel that Dean was surrounded by people who loved him.

Was. Because now they're on a road trip to Alabama, where the only person who loves Dean is…

Castiel turns and walks back to the room, stepping inside and closing the door behind him just as Dean opens the door to the bathroom. Castiel has to blink him into focus; between the steam coming from the bathroom door and the sudden change in light, all he can see for a moment is a dark blur. When he does come into focus, Dean is all bright eyes and still-damp hair sticking straight up from being rubbed vigorously with a towel. He's already dressed, in the same clothes he wore the day before, and he looks so good and clean and Cas wants to reach out and touch him, wrap him in his arms and refuse to let go even when they have to leave. He doesn't understand where this obsession with touching Dean has come from, all of a sudden. It just feels like if he blinks or turns his eyes away, Dean will be gone. And the thought of Dean being gone sets up a tight, panicky ache that starts in his chest but radiates outward until his whole body feels locked up with the dread of it.

"Hey, Cas…if you need the shower you might wanna wait a few minutes. It got kinda cold there at the end of mine."

Castiel nods jerkily and moves toward his bag, feeling ill-equipped to make conversation just now. Dean looks at him a little oddly, but he doesn't see it. He focuses on changing his clothes, opting to forego the shower in favor of getting out of this stifling, dark little room just a little sooner. It's been feeling smaller by the minute ever since he woke up in bed alone.

One Year Ago

Deep down, buried under disappointment and a talent for avoidance that's been honed to a fine art by now, Castiel is a hopeless romantic. A part of him still believes in unlikely beginnings, glowing middles, and happy endings. Sometimes he looks at Meg and thinks there couldn't be an unlikelier beginning, if only the middle would deign to glow. He never tells her he imagines the two of them riding off into the sunset; best-case scenario, she'd laugh. Worst-case, he wouldn't see her for at least a week.

It's how they punish each other, and Castiel knows it's sick: two people who are terrified of being left and who can't sit still, cutting each other off indefinitely with no warning just to show that they can. Just so Meg can look him dead in the eye and say "I don't need you," and feel like she means it. Just so he can shrug when she says it, as if it doesn't cut him. "Good," he says. "The day you need me is the day I run for the hills and never come back."

But he always does, and so does she, and that's what he holds onto, during the long stretches of time he goes without seeing her—sometimes her choice, sometimes his. And when they meet again after days or weeks apart, it's an incomparable high. They glue themselves together from foreheads to toes and sink into each other like blood on white cotton, marking and owning and begging and giving, giving, giving whatever the other asks. Meg tells him with her eyes all the things she won't admit out loud. Castiel answers with his hands, and maybe this is why they work. Neither of them expect anything and they both deliver.

Even so, sometimes when they're hidden away in a quiet room on cool sheets Castiel thinks of blue sky, of wind through trees and warm, green grass. He looks down at her pale, round face, brown eyes made into pools of shining black by the dark, and he can't help but recall sun-drenched skin and that feeling of being in the midst of a fairy tale. Sometimes he despairs of their unlikely beginning ever amounting to anything like a happy ending.

The gray doesn't lift as the morning ages. By afternoon the sky is a dark, heavy blanket looming low over the tops of the sparse trees and evenly-spaced telephone poles on the sides of the highway. They opt for the drive-through at a Burger King for lunch rather than braving the chilly wind, and Castiel takes extra care not to drop anything on the seats in the Impala. They haven't spoken much all day. Dean's kept the radio on low, as if waiting for Castiel to talk to him. Cas doesn't feel like talking. He can sense Dean glancing over at him every five minutes, but Dean doesn't say anything either. It feels like they've reached it, that crucial point where they actually have to talk about all the things between them that have gone thus far unaddressed and unexplained. He had hoped they wouldn't reach it so fast. Maybe, if he's honest with himself, he'd hoped they wouldn't get here at all.

Castiel isn't sure how to give an account of himself. It isn't as though he decided all at once not to answer any of Dean's letters. It was more gradual than that, a long series of procrastinations and perfectly good excuses, followed by bouts of chemically-induced forgetfulness and then even longer periods of indecision and shame, until one day he realized he was never going to write anything back because, well…what could he possibly say? I'm sorry I put off writing you because I was angry and then because I was busy and then because I was sad and then because I was too proud and then because I was too out of it to remember? Somehow, he doubts even Dean, forgiving as he is, will understand something like that.

Castiel isn't the same sweet, naïve, slightly wild boy he was when he and Dean last knew each other. He's mostly just wild now. His habitual vices are a precious few, but he can't think of one he hasn't at least dipped his toes into. He's surprised Dean can't smell it on him, the sheer number of things—of people—he's tried to lose his sorrows in. And worst of all is the one he came back to over and over again, worse because she's more than just a single indiscretion. Hell, she accounts for about half of them on her own, and probably talked him into a few he would otherwise never have dared. Castiel has no idea how he's going to explain Dean Winchester and Meg Masters to each other.

They pass the rest of the day in that same uneasy silence, and the tension seems to grow with every mile. Castiel's neck aches with the effort of not glancing at Dean, and he's sure Dean's one covert glance away from cumulative whiplash. The radio mercifully stays clear for most of the drive, only cutting out for one intensely uncomfortable hour somewhere in Arkansas. By the time they stop for dinner—a little place called Jake's in a town with the unlikely name of Okolona, Mississippi—Castiel's nerves are ready to snap. He knows they only have one more day of driving, and he can't imagine spending it like he spent today. As Dean pulls into an empty parking spot, Castiel finally turns to look at him for the first time in hours and opens his mouth to speak.

The words die as he takes in Dean's expression. He looks…well, Castiel's never actually seen Dean get angry, but he's pretty sure he's looking at it now. Dean's eyes are fixed straight ahead, jaw tight and lips pressed into a thin line. His grip on the steering wheel is unnecessarily tight, especially given the fact that the car is in park. Castiel's heart sinks.

"Dean—"

"Let's grab some food," Dean interrupts him gruffly. "We still gotta find a place to sleep for the night." And he's out of the car and walking away before Castiel can muster the will to say anything else.

Castiel pulls himself out of his seat, feeling heavy. He's done it again, left it too long. This is the final reason he didn't write back, or call. After a while, it would have been adding insult to injury, wouldn't it? It didn't matter how many times Dean told him he missed him, told him he wanted him to write…Castiel couldn't. He couldn't explain why he hadn't before and he couldn't just pretend that long silence never happened. He just wasn't ready to break himself open and explain to someone who was so far away and unreachable all the many ways in which he was broken. He stands by the Impala and watches Dean's retreating back, and he still isn't ready.

Except that now, Dean is here. He's angry, but he isn't a memory or a hypothetical "someday." He's right here, and Castiel takes a deep breath because he knows that ready or not, he's going to have to push his way through all that anger and try to explain himself.

Knowing this does nothing to loosen the pit of dread in his stomach as he jogs across the dark parking lot to catch up.

They don't talk at dinner. They don't talk after, in the car on the way to their next motel. Dean seems to sink deeper into his anger, and Castiel just keeps trying to gather his courage…only to lose it in a nauseating lurch of his stomach every time he glimpses Dean's face.

It isn't until they're in their motel room that he finally pulls himself together enough to speak. They're lying in the dark, in separate beds this time. That distance of only a few feet seems vast and insurmountable as Castiel lays there staring at what he's fairly certain is Dean's back. It's pitch black in the room, the kind of darkness only found in the country, devoid of street lights and only interrupted occasionally by the headlights of a passing car on the road outside. Castiel can hear Dean's breathing, imagines he can make out a thicker darkness that marks the curve of shoulder, the dip of his lower back. Castiel half-whispers across the space between them, hoping he's not too far to reach.

"Dean?"

No answer.

"Dean." He says it again, a little louder.

"Go to sleep, Cas," Dean mumbles, but it doesn't sound sleepy. It sounds defeated, and it hurts.

"I can't," Castiel says, rolling over and sitting up to peer in Dean's general direction. "I need to talk to you." Dean makes a noise at that, a low, dry shadow of something that might have been a laugh.

"Coulda talked to me all day today," he says, and it's bitter.

"I didn't know what to say," Castiel tries. He hears Dean roll over, and when he speaks he sounds closer. Castiel almost thinks he can see Dean's eyes glinting at him through the dark.

"How about telling me why the hell you didn't write to me for two goddamn years? That's a good place to start." Castiel flinches. He's never heard Dean sound like this.

"Dean, I'm—"

"Don't you dare tell me you're sorry," Dean snaps. "Sorry's not gonna cut it."

Castiel's mouth clicks shut. He feels like something is cutting off his air supply. The silence expands around them, grows thick and hard…and then it breaks when Dean sighs. When he speaks, his voice is soft. All the fight is gone, as suddenly as it came, and all that's left is that small, sad question that Castiel still doesn't have a good answer to.

"I just wanna know why, man. All that time, I thought…well, at first I thought you were just…dealing with…you know." Castiel does know. He swallows, hard. Even now, the thought of Michael leaves a bad taste in his mouth and causes a dry, scratchy feeling to come creeping into the corners of his eyes.

"But then…I started to think maybe you just forgot about me, or maybe it all didn't mean as much to you, like I was just there and gone and that was it. Fuck," he bites out shakily, "sometimes I thought I'd made it all up in my head."

"Dean—"

"But then you showed up again, and I know. I know it's not any of that. So what was it?" Dean's voice rises on the last part, and cracks painfully. "What did I do to you that was so goddamn terrible?"

"You…you left." Castiel practically gags on the words. He didn't mean to say it. He was never going to breathe a word of this to Dean, but he feels like he's choking and this is the thing that's choking him.

"You left me," he says again. "You said it was the worst thing anybody could do, and then…then you—"

He can't finish. It's clawing at the back of his throat, but he can't say it. He can't admit this, because if he does he'll have to admit everything else: how lonely he was, how lost. He'll have to explain so many other things that he just isn't ready to deal with yet.

"Cas," Dean's voice breaks through, sounding angry and shocked. "I did not leave you."

And that's when Cas feels whatever control he had over this situation start to crumble away into nothing. He lets out a shrill laugh that sounds manic to his own ears, and the tears are there, blurring the edges of the darkness into each other and making his voice sound thick and far away.

"Yes. Yes you did. You left. Sure, I knew you had to go home soon anyway, but you left early. Just as soon as things got hard and we couldn't be those quirky Miltons with their eccentric ways, helping you escape from your own dreary life—"

"Cas, that's not—"

"If you say fair, so help me God," Castiel grinds out. "Admit it, Dean. I want to hear you say it. You came to us to get away, but then it got difficult and you ran."

"Cas—"

"No! Hester gave you an out and you took it. I needed you, and you were on the first bus back to Kansas!"

He doesn't know when he went from barely being able to whisper these things to almost shouting them.

"You stupid sonofabitch," Dean shouts back. He's in Castiel's face now, just two pinpricks like light reflected off obsidian in the dark and hot breath in his face, but he's there. He's close, and they're shouting at each other. It feels terrible and wonderful at the same time, after a day of mutual avoidance.

"You think I wanted to leave?" Dean snaps. "I didn't want to be anywhere but there with you! But I wasn't gonna start a goddamn fightwith your sister. I wasn't gonna give her somethin' else to worry about, on that day of all days. And even when I was gone, I never leftyou! I wrote you every damn day, at first. When I still thought you were just busy and hurting. I kept writing even when I finally figured out you were never gonna answer. So don't tell me I left, Cas. You're the one who left, not me. You forgot about me. Hell, for all I knew, you hated me."

"Oh, I hated you alright," Castiel spits, and he is so far beyond regret at this point. He feels like a gaping wound already, so he might as well let Dean see just how deep the rot goes. "I hated you whenever I couldn't get drunk enough or high enough, or…or fucked out enough to forget about you."

"Cas." Dean's voice sounds dead, and Castiel ignores it. He can't stop now, if he stops he'll never get it all out and he needs to. He needs Dean to know just how fucked up he is so he can get the disgust and the rejection over with. He needs to know it's over before he allows himself to hope for even a second that it might not have to be.

"Leaving didn't help me, Dean, and it didn't save Hester any pain. It just made me alone. While you were being noble and polite, I was slogging through all that pain by myself. And I did it, maybe because I'm too stupid or stubborn to just lay down and die when I should, but it wasn't pretty. And I'm sorry if a hundred and fifty-four letters from someone who was never there were cold comfort."

"Yeah," Dean challenges, finding his voice again. "And what if you'd bothered to answer one? Huh? Hell, Cas…I was just waiting for a sign that you even wanted me anymore, how was I supposed to know how much you needed me? And if you were alone…where d'you think that left me?"

He sounds sad again, defeated and tired…and for the moment, Castiel forgets that he's supposed to be waiting for his words to sink in so Dean can write him off as damaged goods. All he can think about is how much he hates the sound of that exhaustion in Dean's voice, and he's leaning forward in the dark, reaching out without knowing what he's doing, only knowing he's got to make that stop.

His lips connect with Dean's cheek first, chaste and accidental, but he doesn't stop there. Castiel presses kisses to every inch of Dean's face, on his cheeks and forehead and nose and eyelids and chin. He reaches up to hold Dean's face in his hands as he presses their lips together, a little hungry and a little despairing, and it isn't supposed to feel like this. It isn't supposed to taste like salt water and smell like cold sweat but God help him, he doesn't care. There's a connection here that doesn't depend on words and therefore doesn't falter for lack of the right ones. It's in the way Dean leans into his touch without hesitation, the way he crawls onto the bed and winds his arms around Castiel, returns the kiss and then some. It's such a Dean thing to do, too, always giving more than he gets in return, but not this time. Castiel kisses him harder, carding fingers over his short hair and groaning when Dean responds with a bite to his lower lip.

Castiel keeps his eyes shut tight even in the perfect darkness, and for the millionth time that night he feels like he can't breathe. Kissing Dean feels like a sledgehammer and it's breaking him, grinding him into dust beneath it without mercy.

Then Dean is pulling away and no, that's even worse. Castiel can feel his brain disintegrating. He's cigarette ash on a windy day, he's water droplets in the sun, he's—

Dean's arms are wrapping around him, hands cradling his head and lips at his ear, just breathing. Castiel feels like broken glass being held together, and he melts into it. He curls his fingers into the hair at the nape of Dean's neck and presses his nose to Dean's cheek, whispering an endless stream of apologies. To his relief, Dean doesn't try to quiet him, doesn't tell him the words are unnecessary. Maybe he needs to hear them as badly as Castiel needs to say them.

They lay like that for what seems like hours, just wrapped up in each other's arms. Castiel breathes easily for the first time in days, maybe weeks. Maybe longer. The knot is gone from his stomach, replaced by a sleepy sort of awe at the man before him. A man who has some inkling, now, of how messed up he is, and isn't running. A man who holds him like he's precious without making him feel as if he's about to shatter.

He buries his face in Dean's shirt and breathes in deep, trying to memorize the smell of peace and quiet and whole. It's so different from the Dean he knew before, the boy who was all sunshine and grass stains. The man in his arms is more like a thunderstorm in August, lulling him to sleep while it cleans away all the heaviness in the air.

"Cas," Dean murmurs eventually. "What you said before. All those ways you tried to forget me. What happened?"

So Castiel tells him. Gradually, and often unable to meet his eyes, but he tells him almost everything. He doesn't have the energy left to sugarcoat it, so Dean gets the X-rated edition and Castiel waits, tensed every second for the gruesome little detail that will tip the scales and break this fragile thing between them to pieces. Dean listens without interrupting, asks a question here and there, and he never stops holding Castiel.

He doesn't mention Meg, and tries to tell himself it isn't because he's sure she will be the thing that makes it all too much.

Author's Note: Phew! I didn't think I was going to get this one on time, but I did! Thanks to ohamandalynn for helping me solidify some plot points here, and a million thanks to D, my pinch hitter beta for this chapter. And thank you all for your wonderful reviews and favorites and follows, they really do make my day.