IT'S A TERRIBLE LIFE
"I'm Dean Smith, okay?" Dean isn't sure whether he's reminding Sam or himself. "Director of Sales and Marketing. I went to Stanford. My father's name is Bob, my mother's name is Ellen, and my sister's name is Jo."
"And when's the last time you talked to them?" Sam's face is drawn, accusing. "To any of them?"
"Okay. You're upset." Dean suddenly feels like he really needs to calm this guy down and get him out of his apartment. "You're upset, you're confused-"
"Yeah, 'cause I only moved here 'cause I just broke up with my fiancee, Madison. But I called her number and I got a damn animal hospital." Sam spits the words.
"Okay, what are you saying? You trying to say that... that my family isn't real? That we've been injected with fake memories? Come on." Dean struggles to maintain his incredulity, tries to ignore that tug inside him, the same one he got when he saw the ghost, the one that tells him something is wrong. Like a dream, or something.
"All I know is, I got this feeling in my gut, and I know... I know that, deep down, You've gotta be feeling it too." It's as if Sam reads his mind. "We're supposed to be something else. You're not just some corporate douchebag, this isn't you. I know you."
He does feel something, and it is surprisingly difficult for Dean to convince himself that this guy is totally crazy, but he manages, barely. "Know me? You don't know me, pal. You should go."
Sam does.
Screw the master cleanse, Dean thinks. He pulls a bottle of scotch from under the kitchen cabinet where he'd hidden it behind Windex and Ammonia, as if to convince himself that it was in the same category, poison, do not drink.
He doesn't even pour it out into a glass, instead sinking deep into his sofa and swigging from the bottle with his eyes fixed on the fireplace until his lids become heavy.
The warehouse is dark, and dust hangs in the air, making Dean's throat seize into a cough. His arms and shirt are covered in splattered blood.
"Dude, you okay?" Sam asks. "When the scaffolding fell, I thought..." He chews his lip.
"Nah, I'm good, missed me." Dean smirks with more confidence than feels. "Wolfie here wasn't so lucky, though."
Neither of them can see much of the werewolf under the rubble. They have to pull pieces of metal from the pile of debris until they uncover the mostly-crushed and spluttering body of the creature that was human once. Sam swallows, and Dean knows there's a part of him that, even now, is a little raw about this particular thing. He spares his brother the trouble of dispatching the thing for good by pulling the trigger himself.
He claps Sam on the shoulder, meeting his eyes with a look that seems to ask, we cool? Dean leads the way out of the warehouse, but no foosteps sound behind him, and the ground-floor door somehow finds him stepping through the metal frame and into the front door of his own apartment.
Odd, He thinks, but not so odd that he spends much time questioning it. Dean Smith loosens his tie and turns the dial on the gas fireplace.
"Hello, Dean." Says a stranger in a trenchcoat.
Dean purses his lips. "Who are you?"
The man swallows hard and blinks several times in rapid succession, as if he had half-expected to be recognized.
"I said, who are you?" Dean reaches for his hip, but nothing is there, and he isn't sure why his hand went there in the first place. "How did you get in here?"
His eyes are wide, full of confusion, fear, and struggle, and something else Dean can't quite place. Dean feels something flip in his belly and a flush creeps up his neck and onto his face as the stranger crosses the room and, with the look of self-loathing consternation usually reserved for half-mad serial killers in films, he reaches for Dean's face.
Dean is stock still where he stands, feeling almost outside his own body as this dark haired someone anchors his palms on Dean's cheeks, so he can pull him in close enough to press dry lips against his. When their mouths meet, Dean remembers something - Cas, that's his name, making him a stranger with a name, at least, so Dean thinks absently that he must know him from somewhere, and that will have to be good enough.
A switch has been flipped and he is unfrozen, something in him unfurling, crying out finally. Just when Cas is about to pull away, defeated and embarrassed, Dean unexpectedly leans into his kiss, parting Cas' lips with his own.
Cas makes a little noise - half surprise and half relief - as he stumbles backward. His balance is lost and he is sure he'll fall until he feels the warm pressure on the small of his back, Dean's hand supporting him, holding him, safe, saving him again, even just from stumbling, even when he doesn't know who you are, Cas thinks to himself. Perhaps Zachariah was right. He explores, experiments, darts his tongue across the swollen curve of Dean's lip, provoking a low sound that gives Cas a pleasant shudder when he hears it.
Dean pulls his head back. "You're strange, you know that?" He says, corners of his mouth upticked. "I don't usually go for, you know..."
"I understand." Cas looks away, but does not close his eyes, because if he closes his eyes, he will see it again - Anna's kiss, her forehead on Dean's, a thing Cas had never even imagined he would ever want until he had stood before it. His heart sinks, he flips through a list of suitable angels in his mind, sure that if he explains the situation to Zachariah, he will be happy to put someone else in charge of...
"Hey, hey don't..." Dean is breathless and unable to suppress this little smile, wanting nothing more than to kiss the worry off Cas' face. "I was trying to say, I don't know, you're different. I think I can make an exception. Okay?"
He starts at Cas' temple, planting slow, tender kisses where his skin meets his hairline, giving Cas a chance to collect the anxiety in his lungs and sigh it out before the line of his attention curls inward - Dean kisses the corner of Cas' mouth in a way that makes Cas' whole face start to tingle.
Cas feels, awkward, out of place, he doesn't know what to do with his hands, and then Dean's lips press against his jaw and travel down his neck and his head swims. He presses himself against the edges of the vessel, relishing in the feelings that jump along his skin, letting out a small-voiced whine of disappointment when Dean draws back. All at once he understands what some of his brothers saw in this, why they pursued it seemingly so unnecessarily.
"Hey, uh..." Dean's lips are red from raking over Cas' stubble. Cas' breath is uneven, hitching, and something seems off. "Are you okay?"
Dean's face is in front of his, wide green eyes seeking contact, affirmation, and Cas is afraid of what will happen if he gives it. He doesn't want someone else being there, helping Dean, answering his prayers, healing him when he is wounded, the idea stings in a way it shouldn't.
He feels the fragility of the world Zachariah has built - Dean's memories have already filtered into his dreams, they could do so again, he could go lucid as he is so good at doing now, or Zachariah could decide to check in, there are too many possibilities, too many scenarios that end in the unacceptable.
He wrestles with the thick pulse of want and eventually is victorious. He can do without this, but to feel like he has taken advantage, or to be forced to abandon Dean's presence entirely?
It is a risk too big to take.
Suddenly, with the soft sound like a flag in the wind, Dean's arms are empty.
In the morning, when Dean Smith's alarm rouses him, he is unsettled. He thinks he has had a strange dream, but like every dream he has had for the past three weeks, he cannot seem to remember it.
