Oh...because you asked so nicely...here you go. As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.
I can still remember what his face looked like.
When I found him in an alley in the middle of the night.
Tell me what you know.
Tell me what you've done now.
Dean gets Cas back to his car and heaves him onto the back seat.
Then he drives to the hospital, hell to leather.
The ER is a familiar sight to Dean Winchester, he's taken his Dad here three times, once for a broken arm and twice because his Dad had passed out and needed his stomach pumped. The nurses took his arrival, even burdened with Cas as he was, in their stride. They took the teenager away to start the gruelling process of sucking out his stomach contents, and Dean waiting in the hall on the same battered faux leather chair he'd sat in last time.
This time thought, it's different, in that he's actually scared out of his mind for the kid. Before he could barely have cared less about John, but Cas...seeing him so out of it with those guys had been bad enough, but the moment the pale, clammy, boy had just dropped to the ground...Dean had honestly thought he was dead.
"Mr Winchester?" A nurse taps his shoulder some time later, rousing him from his thoughts. "He's out of the procedure room now, we've given him a bed while we call his folks."
"Thanks." He mutters sleepily.
"You could go see him." She assures him.
"I'll do that." Dean nods, easing his aching body from the bed.
Cas is in a bed on a ward with six other beds in it. These are all unoccupied, but the curtains around his bed are still partially drawn, the scrub-blue fabric hanging limply and smelling of disinfectant. Cas looks small and pale in the bed, a white hospital gown covering his bare chest. His eyes are surrounded by dark shadows and his mouth looks sore, probably from the tube they'd shoved down there, though Dean knows enough to doubt it.
He reaches out and takes the boy's pale hand lightly. The air around him smells of vomit and bleach – but then, he's so used to it by now that it hardly bothers him. Cas doesn't stir.
"How could you be so stupid?" He mutters. "If I hadn't heard them...if I hadn't just needed to get away for the night...you'd be dead now..." he raises a hand and strokes the boy's dark hair. "I don't want you dead."
An awful weight wriggles into place inside of him, emotion he's wanted to deny ever since he saw Cas alone and wet at the side of the road.
"I've already got my Dad doing his best to drink himself to death...Sam getting beaten up and hurt all the time...I can't have you hanging over that cliff as well." He rubs a thumb over Cas's lips.
"I'm sorry, ok? I'm sorry that I didn't say it...that I used you because my life has pretty much turned to crap these last few years...I'm sorry I didn't see how close you'd gotten to the edge...and I..." He bites down on the inside of his cheek.
"Cas...I..." He licks his dry lips, looking down at the insensible boy. "I should have said before...but I..." He sinks into the chair by the bed and lowers his head to kiss Cas's limp hand, his fingers twining with Cas's unresisting ones. "I think I love you." He whispers.
He sits up, sucking in a harsh breath.
"What the fuck am I going to do?"
"I really don't know." Michael Novak says tightly. "Would you mind me taking that seat?"
Dean scrambles to his feet and looks wide eyed at Cas's father, the preacher. He's older than he'd thought he would be, going grey, thought there's enough dark hair left to make him look a little like Cas, despite his green eyes.
"I'm sorry...I can go, if you want..." Dean says awkwardly.
Michael looks at him. "You love my son?"
Dean swallows.
"Yes, Sir." He mutters.
"You must be almost twice his age."
"I'm twenty six." Dean says, eyes meeting Michael's defiantly. "I'm sorry...I..."
"He's seventeen." Michael says harshly, looking down at Cas. "Seventeen and...he must have slept with so many men, so many women in the past year."
Dean swallows the bitter taste in his mouth.
"All those people...and you're the only one here." Michael strokes his son's hair softly. "This room should be full of people...it would be, if half those men, half those women, gave a damn about my boy. They don't. No, they just use him...and throw him away..." He touches Cas's cheek.
Dean looks at the floor.
"My Castiel was such a good boy." Michael purses his lips to keep his tears from falling. "Intelligent, good, kind...a kinder child you'd never meet...and now, he's here all alone, save for me, and you."
Michael turns his face towards Dean.
"He deserves more than this." His face crumples. "My son deserves better than to be used and cast aside to suffer in an empty hospital room. He deserves someone...telling him that they love him, even when he's sleeping."
Dean blinks, surprised.
"You can stay." Michael tells him.
Dean stays.
After an hour of watching the unconscious form of Cas lie in bed, his Father stands up and walks out of the room without a word. Dean assumes he's gone to get coffee. He gets the silence, he wouldn't want to talk to an almost thirty year old guy if he'd been screwing Sam.
Castiel chooses to wake up a few minutes later with a deep, rumbling groan.
"Cas?" Dean is at his side in an instant as the boy opens bright blue eyes and balls up on himself in confusion.
"How did I get here?" he rasps, throat raw.
"I drove you...you passed out, remember?"
Cas nods absently.
"Your Dad's here." Dean tells him.
Cas closes his eyes.
"He's pretty worried." Dean murmurs.
Tears run out of the corners of Castiel's eyes. Dean touches his hand, holding it gently.
"You should have left me." Castiel says dully.
Dean's back stiffens.
"No, I shouldn't have."
"He'd be better off if I was dead." Castiel says, half over him.
"Your father loves you." Dean says softly.
"My father, doesn't know I exist." Cas laughs to himself, a cracked, dirty sound like an old, flat tire being bowled down the street.
Dean takes his shoulders and shakes him. Cas blinks up at him, fragile hands rising to grasp Dean's biceps.
"You...are not going to end up some, sad...sick...old addict, only kept out of pity." Dean grinds out.
Cas glares bitterly up at him.
"I'm already there Dean."
Dean lets him go and steps back.
"I'm not going anywhere." He says stubbornly, sitting in the chair and folding his arms. Cas rolls onto his side, away from Dean and glares at the wall. They stay like that for about half an hour and Dean wonders what the hell is keeping Cas's dad, because he really needs to get home to Sam. If it weren't for the fact that he'd saved Cas's life, he'd regret his decision to go out drinking in the one place he knew John would never turn up. As it is he hadn't managed to consume a drop before he'd heard those assholes talking at the bar.
It looks like Cas has fallen asleep, so Dean gently touches his hand, just to feel the warmth and life in it. When Cas speaks it scares the crap out of him.
"I heard you." The voice is soft again, the same voice that had begged for love even as it had taken pleasure. "Thank you...for telling me."
"Cas..."
The fingers tighten around his own.
"Castiel." The boy tells him. "Everyone calls me Cas these days."
Dean sits, holding his hand as the trauma of the night sends the kid in the bed a little loopy. Castiel is under again by the time his father returns, snuffling softly in his sleep.
"I have to go take care of my brother." Dean tells him as he surrenders his seat. "...would it be ok if...he's not going to be coming back to school any time soon, so..."
"You can come see him. Yes." Michael tells him.
"Thank you."
"I'm not doing it for you." The preacher tells him plainly. "Between you and the drugs, the drinking...I'd say you were the least of the problems I have to contend with."
It's those words that follow Dean all the way outside and home to where the apartment reeks, Sam is sleeping on the couch, and there's vomit on the floor.
