Sam's in the library working on (or more accurately struggling with) one of the texts. It's in Aramaic, and Sam is guessing that his ancestors were fluent in it (as well as every other foreign and/or dead and/or otherworldly language) because, like all the other tomes and pamphlets and volumes and codices that exist in this gorgeous, glorious, holy Mecca of a library, there's no translation. So Sam is running his hands through his hair and squinting in consternation and rapidly developing what feels like a focus headache behind his eyes, and, to be totally honest, he's loving every minute of it. Although, he's having trouble making heads or tails of the passage he's currently attempting to decipher. He's trying to decide between three possible definitions for one word when he hears the crash.
"Cas," Sam whispers, looking up. He hears another resounding shatter and that's when he yells, "Cas," getting to his feet and running down the hall. Cas isn't in his room or the bathroom, so Sam books it down the stairs, leaps over the last three, flies through the sitting room, and skids to a stop in the doorway to the kitchen.
"Cas, are you—? Shit."
Cas is sitting on the floor amid the shattered remains of what appears to be every drinking glass they own. His hands are palm up on his knees and there is blood dripping steadily from between his fingers onto the floor.
If the sight of Cas bloody in the midst of wreckage wasn't terrifying enough, he's laughing—harsh, biting, almost demented laughter that shakes his entire body. Sam has never heard Cas laugh before, but he's not sure that he wants to count this as the first time. This is not a laugh born of joy, or good humor, or one of Dean's corny jokes. This is laughter born of breaking, and Cas has tears pouring down his cheeks; Sam can definitely count this as the first time that he's seen Castiel cry…
Sam takes in the scene in a matter of seconds, and he moves quickly, almost instantaneously. He crouches beside Castiel, mindful of both the glass and Cas' utter abhorrence of touch. His inclination is to reach out and make certain that he is okay, but he restrains himself. He doesn't want to trigger him any more than he already is.
"Cas?" He tries to keep his voice calm, but urgency creeps in at the edges, "Cas, what happened?"
Castiel just extends his hands, sticky with blood, showing Sam the glass imbedded in his flesh—shards, slices, and splinters—still laughing and crying, bordering on the edge of hyperventilation. Some of the cuts look pretty deep, and Sam hisses and winces in sympathy.
"My hands are bleeding," Castiel states in between gales of laughter, catching on sobs.
"Yeah," Sam extends his own hands, hovering just inches away from Cas' shaking shoulders, "I can see that."
Cas drops his chin to his heaving chest.
"What d'you say we get you cleaned up, huh?" Sam attempts, but Castiel is still lost to hysterics.
"All right, I'm gonna help you up, okay? Here we go." Cas braces his shoulders, while Sam steers him to his feet and leads him to the upstairs bathroom. Sam sits Castiel down on the edge of the bathtub and kneels on the cold tile in front of the angel.
"I hurt my hands," Cas says like it's the funniest thing in the history of all time and he's not quite sure why Sam isn't joining in on the joke.
"Yeah," Sam affirms, because, yes, indeed, Castiel has seriously hurt his hands. Sam can see that even better from his new proximity to the injuries, "You did. I'm gonna have to patch them up."
He looks at Cas' face and he's not sure how much concern is seeping through his expression because he feels for Castiel right now, feels a deep abiding ache in his chest.
"I hurt my hands," Cas repeats, but his tone is less infused with humor now; his eyes widen as he looks down at his palms, coated in red and riddled with fragments. "I hurt my hands, Sam," he says again, there is a slight twinge of terror creeping into his voice, his laughter is subsiding. Castiel tries to flex his fingers, as he so often does (it's something of tic), but winces. Sam reaches out on autopilot to stop him from replicating the gesture.
"Hey, don't do that."
Castiel stills, but there are tears dripping from his cheeks onto where Sam has gripped Cas' wrists. "I hurt my hands." His eyes are wide, bewildered, lost. He keeps repeating the mantra, but the tone changes each time. Sam is reminded strangely and suddenly of Lady Macbeth, "Out, out damn spot" and that is seriously disquieting.
"Cas, you've got to try to breathe, okay?" Sam is being, what Dean would call an 'overly supportive yoga guru,' but that's all he's got right now, and he refuses to dwell on his absent brother, he needs to focus on Cas.
Cas does breathe, deeply and through his mouth, the sound is jagged and wet, but he's trying. "I'm gonna go get some stuff to patch you up…I'll be back in a minute."
Castiel doesn't stop his refrain, but he inclines his head just slightly in acknowledgement, which makes Sam feel marginally more comfortable leaving him alone for the few seconds it will take to get what he needs.
He rummages through the hall closet, gathering all the necessary materials. He's kicking himself for letting this happen. Cas got hurt on his watch. He's also cursing his brother for being a dick. Focus, Sam, he reminds himself, and he hurries back to the bathroom, arms full.
By the time Sam returns, Cas has quieted. He's hiccupping slightly as he stares at his mangled palms, tear tracks drying slowly against his skin.
His eyes rise to meet Sam through lashes darkened with moisture. The contrast between the black and the blue is starker than usual, but their contents are as indecipherable as ever.
Sam talks Cas through the cleanup process—warning him when things will hurt. Cas remains stoically silent while Sam rinses off the blood beneath the sink faucet; rivulets of pinkish fluid running across Cas skin and down the drain. He tells Cas to brace himself against the astringent sting of the antiseptic. Cas hisses through his teeth at the sharp bite of it, but he holds perfectly still while Sam uses tweezers to remove the glass from his palms. There's a pretty deep cut at the base of his left thumb, but it doesn't look like it need stitches—thank god for small miracles. As it is, digging the tiny splinters of glass out of Cas' flesh is a painstakingly slow process, punctuated by water rinses and the burn of alcohol and peroxide. Castiel bites his lip and clearly struggles not to move away from Sam's large but gentle hands.
Sam starts to talk while he works. When Dean does the patching up after a hunt, he makes bad jokes, curses, and loudly promises death unto the perpetrator of injury. Sam is often a quiet worker, focusing on the task, chiding Dean for being unable to sit still, and quietly plotting vengeance. When Dean bandages Cas' back, he often works in silence, only hushed murmurs and soft humming accompanying the process.
Castiel could probably go a thousand years or more without speaking, he probably has, but Sam feel like he needs something to distract him (or, maybe it's Sam who needs the distraction from his own frustration, guilt, and the fact that he feels like he's kicking a puppy right now). So Sam tells Cas a story. A happy story (yes, strangely enough, he does know a few of those). He starts off slowly, but becomes more animated. He tells Cas about the time that he joined a soccer team in college. It was just a club sport, a bunch of friends hanging out in the California sunshine on the weekends and in the evenings. He tells him about how free he felt then, how liberated, sprinting around in the bright afternoon. Physical exertion for fun; playing, goofing off with no serious consequences. Running, not because he had to; not toward the next hunt, not away from death, just running to run, for the hell of it, for the joy of it. Breeze across his sweaty face, calves burning with exertion, laughing in sheer exuberance, smiling till his cheeks hurt. He's not sure why it's this story out of all the ones he could tell, except that he had felt happy then, and he wants Cas to know that being human doesn't always have to suck. He wants Cas to feel that too. The good parts.
He tells Cas about the time that they won the championship game, and the day they lost to their rivals, but everyone went out for drinks and pizza after, and Jess was the one plotting revenge and rallying the troops. It only hurts a little bit to mention her—a familiar tightening in his heart. He recalls the time that his friend, Matt, broke his arm pretty badly, and, without thinking about it, Sam had jumped right in, set the bone himself before taking him to the hospital. His friends were astonished, and Sam had had to lie and explain that he was an EMT in high school to cover for his advanced first aid skills. Then he had to endure being called MacGyver for a month.
He is almost finished with the tale and with Cas' hands—wrapping gauze around the injuries after applying a soothing coat of healing ointment.
"I don't think that I've ever told anyone that story," he admits almost fondly as he seals off the last bit with some tape. He and Dean don't talk about Stanford, ever. Too many resentments, old wounds, and grief. Sam tries to bury it and Dean doesn't want to touch it, so they leave it lie. He's not sure why it was so easy to suddenly tell Cas about it.
"What is MacGyver?" Cas asks, and Sam hides a small relieved smile at Cas' engagement.
"He's a character from an 80s tv show. He would get out of these impossible situations using random things that he had with him, like he could diffuse a bomb with a stick of gum and some nailpolish. He was pretty resourceful."
Cas nods as Sam tests the security of his wrap job, "It seems an apt nickname for you," Cas agrees, "…and your brother."
Sam recalls the proud look on Dean's face when he had showed off his homemade EMF detector.
"Dean's more of a MacGyver than I am," Sam settles beside Cas.
"Your brother is more mechanically inclined—" which is certainly one way to put the fact that Dean is an engineering genius, "But you both think 'on your feet' very well and effectively in crises situations. You have an impressive amount of knowledge at your disposal, Sam, and you deploy it wisely."
Which is Cas' way of kindly telling Sam that he's a walking encyclopedia of weirdness. Cas values knowledge, values wisdom and strategy and he finds those qualities in Sam admirable. It's weirdly touching and way more direct than any compliment that he's ever gotten, "Thanks."
They sit quietly. Sam staring at Cas, who is staring at his mummified hands.
"You wanna tell me what happened?" Sam prompts, voice soft and receptive, inviting confidences.
Cas looks like he'd rather not, but he proceeds anyway, "I tripped," he admits after a moment. "I was getting a glass of water and my shoes—" Sam takes a moment to appreciate the boots that Cas is wearing because they saved Cas' feet even if it looks like Cas wants to hurl them into the Pit with vehemence, "—I am unaccustomed to them—" Sam immediately recalls the initial annoyance that he feels at any new pair of boots—unbroken, unaccustomed weight and stiffness—and multiples it by a thousand and recognizes that that is likely only an infinitesimal fraction of what Cas feels "—and lost my footing, the glass broke."
Which does not explain the additional breakage. Sam just waits.
"I fell and I cut my hand. It was bleeding and I tried to fix it," Cas whispers, "but I—I couldn't—"
Sam listens, feeling overwhelmed for Cas—who used to be indestructible—defeated by a pair of shoes and a shard of glass—no wonder the poor guy had had an existential crisis.
"Cas," he offers, "it happens…" He places a consoling hand on Cas' shoulder and Cas, for once, doesn't pull away.
"It's never happened to me."
Sam's mouth tightens in sympathy.
Cas continues, "I thought—" he pauses, smiles dejectedly, and looks at Sam for the first time since they began this conversation—eyes bright with sorrow, pain, and the barest glimmer of dark humor, "I thought, 'I broke the vessel and I can't repair it,'" his face tenses and his words are laced with bitterness, "and I didn't know if I was thinking of the glass or my body."
Fuck, Sam thinks, just fuck. Cas has been through enough. He squeezes his shoulder gently.
"Do you know what it's like to have a vessel?" Cas narrows his eyes.
Sam figures the question is rhetorical, but he responds anyway, "No, I don't."
"When you take a vessel, you're the water in the glass—you make yourself into the appropriate shape to fill the space, but you experience things through a—a kind of lens; there is separation from the rest of the world, and what you are is not changed. The vessel may break, but you are untouched, unbroken; you may change form, return, if you will, in time, but you are unaltered. This is obviously more complex in practice," Cas notes, as if making allowance for the vagariaties and variances and quantum physics involved, "but I'm not occupying a vessel any longer, I am a vessel. There are no shields, there's no separation, when my body breaks, I break, and I cannot put it back together though I try…and I am broken and I just…" He trails off voice catching, and Sam's heart twinges.
Castiel laughs, dry and humorless, "It seemed so absurd. I believe I was angry? I just kept breaking things and I injured my hands and I couldn't breathe…I'm sorry."
Sam shakes his head, "You've got nothing to be sorry for…If it had been me, I probably would have done worse. Dean would have definitely burned down the house by now," he tries for levity, but there's no denying the validity of his statements.
Cas doesn't laugh or argue the point.
"You're handling an impossible situation really well, Cas, I mean it, I'm impressed," he pauses, "But you're not in this alone…we can talk about this. Anytime you want to. Might be a better alternative to breaking all the good china…and you've got to take care of yourself, we need you."
Cas gazes fixedly at Sam, a familiar stare that makes him feel like his soul is being x-rayed, and he nods, "You're a good person, Sam Winchester." Which is a very high compliment, and Sam's eyes widen at the praise.
"Thanks, Cas," he clears his throat, "What're friends for? We're family, you know, and family looks out for each other."
Sam can almost hear Dean's admonition of 'no chick flick moments' but he ignores it because they're allowed to have a moment, and damn it, Dean's not the boss of him.
"Yes," Cas agrees, solemnly "we do."
If he weren't afraid of hurting Cas' back or causing him to have another breakdown, he would hug the guy. Instead, he contents himself with patting his shoulder supportively, hoping the gesture can convey just how much he cares about Cas, how much Cas is his friend and his brother and important.
They sit quietly.
"Dean will be upset," Cas remarks a few minutes later, nodding at his hands. Sam forcibly contains his eye roll because these two are morons. If the two of them would just talk about this shit instead of stumbling around and then worrying about the other instead of themselves…He loves them, but they are idiots. Dean more so than Cas, certainly. Oh, Dean…
"He'll deal, don't worry about him," Sam says firmly, "You know, I was having some trouble with a translation earlier. Would you mind helping me out with it? You can go check it out and I'll clean up the kitchen."
Cas frowns, "I should help clean," I made the mess.
Sam shakes his head, "You had a rough morning,—" understatement "—and I don't mind. This would actually really help."
Cas looks dubious and squints to prove it, but eventually agrees in the face of Sam's persistence.
The kitchen is a mess, but it doesn't take that long to clean it up. All the while he sweeps the floor, Sam thinks.
His most frequent thought is that he is going to kill Dean, because his brother is a fucking idiot and the second he gets back from proving just how big of an emotionally stunted moron he is, Sam swears he is going to tie him to a damn chair until he stops acting like a fucking prick. It's actually a very satisfying train of thought, and Sam continues to follow it for the majority of the time that he works.
He'll need to try and school his features into a semblance of calm composure before he faces Cas again because it's really not his fault that Sam is just about ready to strangle Dean. In fact, if anyone should want to strangle Sam's brother, it's Cas. However, that is currently not an option and they've both had a really long day. Sam is quite impressed that he managed not to express or think about his frustration with his brother for the majority of the time that he was patching Cas up.
Castiel had legitimately had his own existential crisis; Sam is not negating that at all. He's impressed, as he said, that it took this long to happen. The problem is that he might not have been pushed to such a breaking point in the first place if not for the fact that Dean has been a dick lately. Sam maintains that this whole episode begins with the fact that Dean's ability to handle emotional situations could best be measured in negative numbers. He sighs. There are a lot of reasons that Dean is the way he is, and Sam has enough self-awareness (and a couple Stanford Psych classes) to recognize that their upbringing, their dad, and several decades in hell would have destroyed most people. Dean's strong, he made it through, but his principle coping mechanisms are sarcasm, alcoholism, violence, and vicious repression. It's not exactly what anyone would consider 'healthy.'
Since Cas had fallen, Sam had been waiting for some sort of implosion from Dean. He knows his brother, and a self-loathing inspired lash out was bound to happen sooner or later. He could see it, building up, getting ready to boil over. He really wishes that Dean could just let himself be happy, but, if he did, Sam would likely suspect demonic possession or shape-shifter.
It all came to a head two days ago. Cas had had an incident in Target—a full blown anxiety attack, and Dean had finally snapped. Thankfully, he had held it together till they got home. Sam would have expected nothing else. Dean was good about taking care of others, helping them, saving them, protecting them. He was like that with random strangers, and, with people he cared about, people like Cas and Sam, he would put all his own shit aside to help them in a heartbeat, and that's what he did. But when they had gotten back, when Cas had locked himself up in his room, Dean had looked so damn defeated and then he had just flipped. Sam had braced himself for it. Could see the feeling of inadequacy, the rejection, the blatant hurt on his brother's face in that moment, and he hoped against all hope that Dean would just get it all out of his system. No such luck.
His brother got into a vicious altercation with an old oak on the property, and he came out of the fight significantly worse for the wear. Since then, he's basically been a silent, surly mess of humanity—avoiding Sam and straight up hiding from Cas—which is also extremely mature.
And when Sam says hiding, he really means hiding, locking himself in his room, volunteering to go on any errand to get out of the house, and avoiding Cas like the guy has the plague. Considering that Cas had just had a complete meltdown and was trying to make sense of the world in the wake of it, Dean's avoidance was nothing short of traumatic and baffling. To Sam, who watched their exchanges with frustration and increasing anxiety, it was becoming more and more difficult to figure out a way to intervene peaceably. Dean was giving Sam the cold shoulder, and all Sam had to do was open his mouth for Dean to perform a surly disappearing act. Cas looked abandoned, lost, and exhausted, and Sam tried to communicate that this was not in any way shape or form his fault—Dean's behavior was not on him in the slightest, this was about Dean's issues. Sam rolls his eyes at the kitchen floor. He'd hoped—optimistic to the point of insanity—that Dean would just get over it. He should have known better, Dean never just gets over anything. Sam had tried to broach the subject with Dean this morning, but Dean had outright bolted.
He'd turned his back on Sam, aggressively pushed past Cas, and drove away. Sam's sure that he's fine, hopes that he hasn't done anything preternaturally stupid—he's most likely just using Baby as a therapist, instead of, an infinitely more useful actual therapist—but he's been gone since this morning, and Sam is pissed. He's not screwing around anymore. He's tried to be patient, he's tried to be understanding and supportive, but apparently it's time for some tough love. They are going to talk about this, so help him god. It's one thing to treat Sam this way—Sam is used to Dean being a surly dick every now and then, and Sam is not particularly fragile at the moment—it's a totally different thing to treat Cas this way, because he is presently vulnerable and uncertain, and, really, really unfortunately, taking most of his emotional cues from Dean. It's like he's a barometer for Dean's moods, and Dean is currently an impending hurricane. Poor bastard. Sam takes responsibility for this morning's crisis in that it happened on his watch and he should have been more vigilant, but the severity of Cas' reaction would likely not have been as extreme if Dean hadn't spent the past few days ignoring him.
Sam is finally pleased with the state of the kitchen, confident that no one will get gouged by glass splinters when they walk around barefoot (that would be a spectacularly shitty way to start the day). So he lopes back up the stairs to find Cas studiously at work in the library. Cas is fluent in all languages. His only trouble spots are modern colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions; but he's got a gift for understanding them in ancient dialects, so he's made quick work of the passage that Sam had been having trouble with. Sam is dead grateful, and Cas looks like he's in a much better mood for having been useful, having a purpose, a skill set he can use. They end up working together in the library for the rest of the afternoon. Fun fact: turns out Castiel is ambidextrous and has clean, sharp, easily, legible handwriting.
They eat sandwiches for dinner, and Cas takes a book to his room afterwards because he still tires easily, the air between the two of them is comfortable and warm when they say goodnight.
Dean comes in around ten, and Sam is waiting for him in the living room like a parent with a child out past curfew, torn between worry, anger, and disappointment. Ironically, Dean sort of slinks in like a teenage who knows he broke the rules, shoulders hunched and treading lightly. Sam hears him hang his coat on the rack in the foyer, toe off his boots, and walk down the hall to the sitting room. He marks his place in his book and sets it on the end table, waiting for Dean to round the corner, which he does. He sees Sam and looks, for one instant, like a deer caught in the headlights, before his expression transforms to something hardened and untouchable. So it's gonna be the hard way…
"Where've you been?" Sam asks.
"Out."
"Yeah, I got that. Out where?"
"For a drive, okay?" Dean replies testily as he maneuvers towards the kitchen; Sam follows quickly in his wake.
"All day?" he hisses
Dean roots through the fridge, and Sam leans on the doorframe, blocking the exit and glaring, just as crossly if not more so.
"What are you my prison guard?" Dean japes, a challenging lilt to his voice as he comes out of the fridge with a beer in hand.
"No, I'm your brother," Sam retorts, "the one you ditched to go off god knows where for entire fucking day."
Dean breaks their staring contest first, glancing down and away, muscle in his jaw jumping.
Sam prays for patience, "Talk to me, man," he implores.
Dean drops into one of the kitchen chairs, and Sam walks over and joins him, waiting in silence.
Dean glares at the table top, fiddles absently with his bottle cap.
"Dean—" he prompts.
"There's nothing to talk about."
"The hell there's not."
Silence.
"Dude, level with me. I'm not an idiot, something has been going on with you for weeks. We can't keep this up. If this is going to work, we're going to have to be honest. So be honest with me…what's going on?"
Dean goes totally still and then takes a deep breath like it might be his last and collapses a little. Here we go, Sam thinks.
"I'm not right for this, Sammy," Dean admits.
"For what?"
"This," he gestures expansively at the counters and the living room, "this apple pie shit."
"And I am?" Sam spits back incredulous and annoyed.
Dean shrugs, as if to say, "duh," and Sam's patience, already tenuous, snaps.
"Dean, I am the vessel of Lucifer on earth," he enunciates precisely, "That is kind of the opposite of normal."
"Yeah, well—"
"And, Cas, if you'll recall, spent the past infinity years as a celestial beam of light, for god's sake, that's not exactly normal." By human standards, anyway.
"That's my fucking point!" Dean retorts sharply, levee finally breaking, "The dude is an angel, now he's stuck with the mud monkeys, and I just keep making it worse. Meanwhile, you've been running the hell away from the life since you learned to walk. Dude, I can't—," he runs a hand agitatedly through his hair, "—what the hell am I supposed to do? I'm damn near useless. I don't know how to be normal, and I'm supposed to help Cas adjust? Help you get sorted? Like what the hell, man?"
Sam sighs, "Dean, you are my brother, and I love you, but you need to get over yourself."
That startles him out of his sulking, "What?"
"You think you're the only one who's having a hard adjustment period? The only one freaking out? Dean, none of us know what the hell we're doing."
"That's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?"
"I'm useless," Dean spits.
"Dean—"
"I'm a killer, Sam," his brother continues, and Sam feels bile rise in the back of his throat, "I'm fucked up, and I know that, all right? I accept it. But, now," he shakes his head, looking frustrated and lost, "there's no damn monsters, so unless I decide to take up serial killing, I don't see what the hell I'm supposed do, just sit here?" until you all realize what a fuck up I am and leave me, Sam hears though Dean doesn't say those words aloud, "I'm not built for this. I break every damn thing I fucking touch, Sam. How long before I fuck this up?"
Sam's heart breaks in the face of Dean's desperation.
"You're scared."
"I'm not scared."
"You're scared because you've wanted this," he looks at Dean, earnestly, replicates Dean's expansive gesture: they both know that 'this' is a family, a home, "since you were a kid; and you're terrified it's gonna disappear. I get that, Dean, believe me, I do." Dean regards him warily, shifty, not wanting to admit what they both know is true, and Sam preservers.
"But this isn't the same as when Mom ditched hunting to marry dad," Dean's eyes flash dangerously, painfully, just as they do whenever either of them mentions Mary, "this isn't the same as when I went to Stanford," Jessica on the ceiling burning; it's an image that Sam will never be rid of, but he tries to push it away. Dean's gaze softens. Jessica being referenced, even in passing, their mother's name, even in the slightest way, those names are talismans, and they are not invoked unless the situation is dire and real, unless they mean what they are saying. The memory and the consequences of running away from the life, the fallout that comes from trying to walk away, the death toll, the loss, the inevitable craters, and ruined lives, they understand it on a deep and personal level. Sam more than anyone in the world knows what Dean is afraid off.
He continues, leaning forward, "But this isn't like that Dean. We're not running away, we're not putting our heads in the sand. We've got the okay from god to leave the life and try to be happy. There's not going to be a demon this time."
Dean looks up at Sam, eyes wide and mouth a thin line—simultaneously old and haunted and young and vulnerable—as if to say, 'How can you be sure?'
"You know what I know? We've got a chance here, a chance to be happy, all three of us," he pauses, leans back, crosses his arms and refuses to avert his gaze, "the only thing that's stopping us is us. You can do this; but you've gotta stop shooting yourself in the foot, man. There's literally nothing stopping you from doing this besides you sabotaging yourself because you think you 'don't deserve to be happy'…and, Dean, this might come as a shock to you, but you do deserve to be happy."
Dean snorts derisively.
"You do," Sam persists, "we all do. So get your head out of your ass and try to stop being a dick to yourself and the rest of us."
Dean sighs, but he's not protesting, and he's not running for the door either. Sam takes that as a sign of progress.
"You're pushy, anyone ever tell you that?" Dean takes a drink, and Sam smirks.
"Once or twice," Sam returns. God help him, his brother might actually be listening to him, "So where'd you go?"
"Made it to the coast, then turned around," Dean admits, and Sam shakes his head exasperatedly, "It was very Forrest Gump."
"I can tell. You get it out of your system?"
Dean shrugs, takes another sip, "I realized I had somewhere to be."
Sam smiles a little at that.
"Look, Sammy, I—I'm sorry I freaked out, I shouldn'ta done that—it's just hard, man."
"I know." Sam concedes, because he does. Sam at least has let himself get used to the idea of a life outside of hunting, Dean never has, and it's that much harder to come to grips with it for him.
"How about you?" Dean says to break up the bonding moment, "What did you and Cas get up to today? Besides planning to murder me on sight," he half laughs at the last bit, or he starts to until he sees Sam's face.
Sam takes a deep breath and feels his mouth twitch; Dean, ever vigilant, notices, "Everything okay?"
"Look, just, don't get upset, all right?"
Dean's eyes flash dangerously, body coiling instantaneously in an active fighting posture, "That's really reassuring, Sam. You know conversations that start off with 'don't get upset' usually mean that I should be pretty fucking upset. What the hell happened?"
Sam makes a placating motion with his hands, "Cas had a little bit of an incident."
Dean's eyes flash with a feral glow; he looks ready to bolt up the stairs, "What kind of incident?"
Sam explains in detail the exact nature of the incident, and Dean seems to be on the verge of either shooting something or throwing up.
"—he's fine," Sam finishes, "or as fine as can be expected. He's asleep."
"I need to talk to him," Dean says, firmly, almost desperately.
"Yeah," Sam agrees, calmly, "You do. But you're gonna wait until tomorrow when you've gotten some sleep and look less like a mental hospital escapee."
Dean glowers mutinously, but he knows Sam's right. Sam can tell because of how intense Dean is glaring at him.
"Right now," he continues, "you're going to promise me, that you're not gonna disappear on us again, and then you're gonna go to bed."
"Jesus, Sam," Dean half-protests, "I promise, okay?"
"And if you ever treat Cas like that again, I'm gonna punch you in the face," Sam promises, voice steady.
Dean looks at his brother with something like respect and pride that he's threating someone with physical violence on Cas' behalf as well as sorrow and regret he's currently the threat to Cas' wellbeing, "That's fair."
"All right."
"All right…Are we done?"
"That depends. Are you done being a self-sabotaging jackass?"
"Yeah," Dean rolls his eyes exasperatedly.
"Are you going to stop avoiding Cas?"
"Sam," Dean growls warningly.
Sam glowers at Dean, raises his brows, and crosses his arms, implacable.
"Yes, okay, yes."
"Are you going to communicate your issues using your words, instead of beating up foliage, bolting out of the house, and avoiding people?"
"Bite me, Sam," Dean snaps, before confirming with a sullen but resolute: "Yeah."
Sam smiles beatifically in the face of Dean's infuriation, "Then, yes, we're done here."
"Good," Dean grumbles, but he looks damn exhausted. As much as this day, the past few days really, have cost Sam and Cas, they've been just as hard on Dean, and it's easy to see the weight he carries in the shadows of worry and exhaustion hovering in the dark circles around his eyes, and the creases around his mouth, the stoop of his shoulders like he's carrying the world.
"Dean," Sam stands and he grips Dean's shoulder, "I can't do this without you, man, neither of us can," he half whispers. Dean reaches up and briefly grips Sam's hand—Sam can feel the hardened callouses on his palms; these are the same hands that put band aids on his scrapped knees, and wiped away his tears, and built the Impala from the ground up; they're hands that put Cas back together every day, and make dinner for the three of them every night, and are slowly, carefully, turning this house into a home. For all that they've been hardened by years of destruction, these hands are made for tenderness, too, for comfort, and for healing. Sam wishes Dean could see that, as his brother gently squeezes and releases his hand. The touch is eloquent—I can't do this without you either, little brother. I love you. Thanks. I'm sorry. All those messages are conveyed in a single touch between the brothers. Sam clasps Dean's shoulder once more and then leaves Dean mulling things over in the kitchen. Sam doesn't even bother changing into his pjs before he flops face-first into his bed. It's been a long day, and he's exhausted. He's asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, comfortable in the knowledge that his family is safe at home and maybe a little closer to being whole than it was before.
AN:
Welcome to Chapter Ten. Holy hell, how did we even get this far? I'll tell you how: YOU GUYS ARE FUCKING AWESOME. Seriously, thanks you for reading this story and encouraging me to keep working on it.
Next chapter is angsty and the chapter after that is hella angsty, BUT people will be talking about their feelings, so there is that.
Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading.