A/N: My anxious anchovies! I know you have been eagerly awaiting this update since I left you on a TERRIBLY cruel cliffhanger last chapter. Let me tell you, the universe tried to keep this chapter from happening. My computer charger cord broke, work was insane, and then today I accidentally roped myself into seeing a 2 and half hour holiday concert (I ended up leaving at intermission. It was a good concert, but my GOD I have things to do, people!) But I struggled through it all for YOU, my dear readers, ALL FOR YOU.
And lo, after the struggle, I had accomplished the improbable and finished the dang chapter. Thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews on the last chapter, I really appreciated them. Your reward for reviewing this chapter is... *looks around apartment* A pile of unmatched socks! Hooray! All for you! Every sock is a magical opportunity to reunite it with its long-lost mate! ALL FOR YOU!
Enjoy the chapter!
Sam waits expectantly, cargo shorts and yellow polo shirt, sitting calmly in the late summer sun.
Dean stands there, frozen.
Finally he says, "Yeah, yeah – of course, just let me go – check – something…" And he darts back inside.
He finds Cas walking briskly down the hall towards the patio. He grabs him by the arm and hisses, "It's Sam. Can you clear the study in 30 seconds?"
Cas nods and strides off to the study.
Dean returns to Sam and smiles at him, a hospitable smile from a concierge to a guest – polite, expected, routine. "Why don't we talk inside? I got sunburnt the other day and I'm still feeling it."
Sam shrugs and stands up.
By the time they arrive at their destination, Castiel is nowhere to be seen. The study is an ornate old-fashioned office accented in brown leather and oak, and it's a little pretentious for an afternoon chat: a great upholstered chair behind a behemoth block of a desk, a brass cocktail table with a scotch decanter and tumblers, a massive empty fireplace, oil paintings of 18th century ships and walls papered in oppressive maroon. There's a reason Dean hasn't been in here in ages, but it'll have to do. He pulls out two smaller chairs in front of the enormous desk and sits down on one. "What did you want to talk about?" he asks.
Sam glances around the study, and glances at the chair across from Dean. He stays standing. He gives Dean a strange look, one eye narrowed suspiciously and his lower lip tightened inward, as though he's trying to decide whether this is all some big joke.
Dean smiles again and then kicks himself mentally. Too much smiling and he'll freak Sam out.
"Well, for starters," Sam begins, "you showed up at my house this morning and said some really weird crap to my wife."
"What did she – what did she tell you?" Dean asks anxiously. "I'm sorry if I pissed her off, it was rude of me to say that shit –"
"She said you accused her of being jealous," Sam replies, eyeing Dean. "Which – I can't even begin to explain how bizarre that is. But then she said something to me…" He looks away to the window, reaches up and pushes his hand through his hair. "She said you were sober. And she said if you're going to continue acting this erratically, even when you're not drinking, I need to cut ties with you permanently, because if I don't, it's going to destroy my career."
No.
Sam's adam's apple bobs. "And when she said that, I realized…"
No no no.
Dean stares at him, and his heart drops into the pit of his stomach. His head goes dizzy and his mouth is cottony dry and his breath is caught tight in his chest.
Sam looks back to Dean, and his voice goes hoarse. "I realized Ruby has never understood the way I feel about you."
Tears spring to Dean's eyes. "Sam – "
"All she sees is all the hurt you've caused me," Sam goes on, chin trembling. "All she's ever seen you do is push me away and tear me down and do whatever you can to spite me. She doesn't understand how I could still love you after all that. And honestly, I don't either." He shrugs, red-eyed. "But I do. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do here."
Dean stands up, and eyes and nose stinging. "Sam, I'm so sorry I – I've been a dick, I know, but it's not just that. I'm trying to change – I'm getting sober – I'm turning things around –"
"That's great for you, Dean, but why now?" Sam asks, the hurt breaking across his face. "Why is Castiel, a complete stranger, suddenly able to get through to you when I've been begging you for years to stop drinking?"
"Because I always thought that – that you didn't really care why I was drinking," Dean stammers. "You just seemed like you were embarrassed by me –"
"Of course I was embarrassed!" Sam shouts. "I was humiliated! My own brother didn't give enough of a shit about me to show up to my major life events without drugging himself into a stupor! Why would you think that meant I didn't care?"
"Not once!" Dean shouts back, pointing at him accusingly. "Not once after Dad died did you ever even ask me why I left –"
Sam stares agape at him. "I didn't have to ask, Dean! I already knew!"
Dean balks.
That's impossible. He can't know. Dean never told anyone except Cas, and no one heard except Dean and Dad.
"Oh yeah?" Dean demands. "Then what was it, Madame Cleo, why did I leave?"
Sam's eyes redden again, and he looks at Dean in disbelief. "You're going to make me actually say it?"
"You're the one who's supposedly psychic!" Dean retorts angrily. "Tell me, why was I so upset, Sammy? Why couldn't I talk to you? Why did I pack my bags and run away from this goddamn place as fast as I could possibly g–"
"Because I killed Dad!" Sam shouts.
Dean stares at him in horror.
"There," Sam chokes, and tears start to spill down his face. "There, I admit it. It's my fault Dad's dead and the world was robbed of his genius, and you have never forgiven me for it."
"Sammy," Dean says in a low voice, "it was an embolism –"
"That he never would have had if I just taken the job like you wanted me to," Sam finishes for him. "He would have stopped working and taken it easy –"
"Dad was responsible for Dad," Dean interrupts sharply. "You were just a kid when he shoved that job on you. He was a grown man, and it was his own damn fault he didn't listen to his doctors."
Sam is staring at him, stunned, and Dean's words are starting to sink in.
"I have never blamed you for Dad's death," Dean tells him. "Not ever."
"But –" Sam is struggling. "At the funeral – you wouldn't even look at me –"
Dean takes a deep breath. "Sam, the day Dad died, he said some stuff to me, and… I couldn't talk to you, it was eating me alive, so I ran away… But that was wrong, I should have told you." He clenches his hands and unclenches them. "Shit, Sammy, if I'd known you'd been carrying this around… I didn't know. I should have told you."
"Told me what?"
Dean walks behind his chair. He braces his hands on the back of the chair, flexes them, looks down at the seat of the chair and shakes his head.
It should be easier now, right? He said it out loud to Cas. He can say it out loud now.
Except, his throat is seized tight and there is a sharp jabbing nausea in his stomach, and every inch of his skin is burning hot and his heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his teeth.
"Sam…" He clears his throat. "Can you sit down, please?"
Sam sits down in the chair across from Dean.
He takes a deep breath and starts again. "Sam, there's two things. And so, uh, the first thing I didn't tell you. Is. That, uh. The day Dad died, he told me that if you weren't going to run the company, he wanted Zach to be CEO."
Sam's eyebrows are knotted in confusion. "Zach? But…"
"He didn't want me," Dean admits painfully. He chuckles, and it's so out of place, but he can't help it, it's involuntary. "He didn't want me to run the company. If he couldn't have you, he wanted Zach."
Sam's eyes widen as he processes the implications of Dean's words. "So that's why you didn't –"
"I couldn't," Dean barrels on. "Not knowing he'd rather have Zach. That's the reason I left, but that's not the reason I avoided you. That was – that was the second thing."
Sam watches him intently.
"When Dad… died…"
Dad, seizing in his arms, face going white.
"It was right after you left the room, the blood clot hit him, and he just – went down," Dean explains.
Dragging Dean in tight, struggling for breath.
"And in his last seconds, he whispered to me…" Dean can feel the tears welling hot in his eyes, shame rolling through him in thick warm waves. "Tell Sammy I love him."
Sam puts a hand to his mouth.
Tears again, spilling from Sam's eyes, shock and disbelief burning in his face.
"I'm sorry," Dean rasps. "I should have told you, I didn't –"
"How – could you?" Sam chokes out. "How could you not tell me –"
"Because it broke me!" Dean bursts out, trembling with the adrenaline of his confession. "His last words, his dying words were that he loved you and not me, and it broke me, Sammy, it broke something inside me I didn't even know I had, and it's no excuse I know but I couldn't – I just couldn't say it out loud – I couldn't talk to you at the funeral 'cause I thought I was gonna die, gonna die if I had to say it –"
Sam puts his face in his hands. "You fucking idiot," he sobs into his hands. "Of course Dad loved you. He wanted to tell me because we were fighting, you fucking selfish son of a bitch…"
Well, shit.
It had never occurred to Dean to look at it that way.
"The last thing I said to Dad was that he didn't give a shit about me," Sam continues shakily through his tears. "And I've spent the last six years thinking that that's how things ended between us. Do you have any idea what it's like to live with that?"
"No," Dean admits. "No, I'm sorry, Sammy, I didn't –"
"Stop." Sam holds up a hand. "Stop. Just – shut up."
Dean shuts up.
Sam stands up, and he wipes his eyes. "I need to go," he says.
"Can I –" Dean reaches toward him.
Sam recoils and puts up his hand again. "Don't. No." He walks away from Dean to the door.
Dean watches him leave.
The study is silent. The air feels still and dead.
Dean walks over to the cocktail table next to the desk and picks up the glass decanter of scotch. He uncorks it, takes a long swig, and then sits down heavily at the desk.
….
After Sam leaves, Castiel waits for Dean to emerge from the study. He waits half an hour, and then he tries the handle and finds it locked. So, he goes into the servant corridors and opens the secret panel into the study.
As he suspected, Dean ingested a large quantity of alcohol and is currently slumped forward on the desk, tracing the edge of a glass tumbler with his pointer finger.
"How did it go?" Castiel asks.
"You're fired," Dean mutters into the desk.
Castiel blinks.
"Did you hear me?" Dean raises his head from the desk. "I said you're fired. You can go now. Get out. Don't make me start throwing shit at you."
Castiel gazes at Dean, and then pulls up a chair to the desk. "I'm not here as your employee. I'm here as your friend."
Dean sits up straighter and scowls at Cas. "Don't you get tired of this bullshit?" he demands. "Look at me. I'm drinking. It's like… one in the afternoon. I'm halfway to fucking hammered. We've been down this road. I'm fucking up. I'm fucking up again. Aren't you sick of watching me make the same goddamn mistakes over and over and over?"
"How is this the same mistake?" Castiel asks.
"How is this –" Dean pounds his fist on the desk in irritation. "How do you fucking think, Einstein?! You had me all convinced that alcohol was making me a shitbag. Well guess what? Turns out, I was a shitbag deep down all along! I just drink to forget! Only you don't want me to forget, I guess, you want me to fucking wallow in my own disgusting filthy mudhole of a life and grow as a person or some bullshit. Well, I choose not to grow! Okay? I choose to forget! Just let me drink and forget!"
Cas leans forward and gives Dean a sharp look. "You think this isn't wallowing?"
"Not in twenty minutes, it won't be," Dean challenges.
"You're not a shitbag," Cas says.
Dean looks at him deprecatingly. "Cas. Castiel. I made my brother blame himself for our dad's death for six years. My name is Dean Winchester, and I am a bag of shit. So, go on your merry way and find someone else to Professor Higgins at." He takes another swig straight from the nearly-empty decanter, then appraises the bottle. "Damn. I'm gonna need more."
Castiel stands up.
"Hey, on your way out, could you tell Louise or Miguel or somebody to bring me in a couple bottles of rum?" Dean requests. "This desk chair is reaaallly comfortable."
"I'm going to the TV room," Cas says. "I'm going to go watch The Two Towers. Join me if you want to." And with that, he walks out of the study.
….
Cas goes to the TV room and finds the DVD, and makes a cursory sweep for bugs. He pops a bag of popcorn and fluffs the pillows on the couch. He straightens the coffee table until it is perfectly, exactly parallel with the sofa. He gives the room a more thorough sweep. He puts the DVD into the player, and turns out the lights, and sits on the left side of the sofa with the remote ready in his hand.
No Dean.
He sighs and pushes the play button.
The movie opens with a long panning shot across a range of sharp-peaked mountains, the snowy white ridges crisp against dark rock, serrated blades knifing into the pale blue sky.
"Peter Jackson has a real hard-on for landscapes."
Dean stands in the doorway, shoulders slouched, hands tucked into his pockets.
Castiel ignores him, pointedly giving the appearance of being too engrossed in the movie to notice.
Dean walks over and drops onto the sofa, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. Meanwhile, Gandalf's voice begins to echo through the mountains as the movie transitions into a flashback from the previous film: Gandalf sacrificing himself for his companions. The Balrog's fiery whip drags him to the edge of the stony precipice, and Dean whispers in unison with the wizard, "Fly, you fools!"
Castiel does not look over, but moves the popcorn bowl to sit between them.
Dean takes an overly large handful of popcorn and stuffs it in his mouth.
Gandalf and the Balrog plunge through the black abyss, battling as they freefall.
"You're not making the same mistakes," Castiel says. "You keep making the right choices. And I don't know who Professor Higgins is."
"Dude, no talking, focus on the movie!" Dean scolds. "And he's from My Fair Lady."
"Ah. Pygmalion."
"What the hell is Pygmalion?"
"The play My Fair Lady is based on," Cas explains. "The name comes from a Greek myth about a sculptor who makes a statue of a beautiful woman and falls in love with his creation."
"Creepy," Dean mutters.
Cas frowns. "It's the same plot as My Fair Lady, essentially. A man falls in love with his own creation."
"But she's not a statue," Dean argues. "He didn't actually create her, he just taught her shit."
"He sculpted her," Cas argues. "He transformed her into a different person, a woman of his own fantasy –"
"Oh my God," Dean interrupts, "fine, Professor Higgins is creepy, now can you please shut up so I can hear the hobbits?!"
Cas rolls his eyes and returns his attention to the screen.
….
They burn through all three hours of Two Towers and plunge straight into Return of the King without stopping. Somewhere during the protracted battle to defend Minas Tirith, Dean turns to Cas and remarks, "So, I can't actually fire you, can I?"
"You can try," Cas answers. "But you won't be successful."
"Can you fire me?" Dean asks seriously. "Are you allowed to walk away?"
Cas picks up the remote and pauses the movie.
Dean is attempting to sound unconcerned, but his body language betrays him. He's leaned forward in his seat slightly, and he's watching Cas intently, trying to read his reaction.
"I could," Cas says. "But it would be a professional setback. It's not something I would do lightly."
This is understating the situation greatly.
Dean nods, but he seems troubled by the answer. In the darkness of the TV room, illuminated only by the uneven gray glow of the still frame on the television, it's difficult to read his expression.
"Are you worried about whether I'm choosing to be here?" Cas asks him. "I'm choosing to be here."
"I know that, I just…" Dean moves closer on the couch and rubs the back of his neck.
It's a natural move, but in the dark, there is something intimate about it: something in the way the sofa springs quietly creak, the way he turns his body toward Cas, the way he lowers his voice, the way his face is hidden in shadow.
"I don't want you to be trapped, you know?" he continues. "If you need to get out."
"I'm not trapped," Castiel says. His pulse is oddly quickening and there is a strange tightness in his stomach. "I don't think you realize how long I've wanted this. Working with you."
Dean chuckles quietly. "Is it everything you dreamed it would be?"
"More," Cas admits softly. "So much more."
Dean gazes at him, still so difficult to read in the darkness. He inhales, and moves a hand to the space on the couch between them – not quite touching Cas's leg, but close enough that Cas can sense it. He sighs. "Cas, I like you. A lot."
"And I like you," Cas answers.
"No, I don't think you get it," Dean counters. "You're not my Professor Higgins. He can't even touch you. You're my freaking Anne Sullivan, okay? You're the miracle worker, and you're already changing my life."
A warm flush rises in Cas's cheeks, and he is grateful for the darkness.
"But it seems like… there have to be other people you could be working with," Dean continues. "People who have their shit together. Who won't fight you every step of the way. Who can really make a difference in the world. And it seems pretty selfish of me to ask you to spend all of this time just getting me back to basic human functionality when you could be working with one of them."
"But I don't want to work with them," Cas says honestly. "I want to work with you."
"Yeah, I still don't get that."
And perhaps it's the intimacy of the moment – the dark and the proximity and the honesty – but for some reason Castiel replies without censoring himself and tells Dean something that he didn't plan on ever telling him.
"I don't usually… get this close with clients," he says. "I've told you before that you have all the qualities the Trust is looking for, but that's not the only reason I wanted to work with you. There was always something else about you. Something unique. I – I don't know what it is, but you have this quality, a charisma, a magnetism –" He tries to find the right words. "Haven't you ever noticed the way that people are pulled into orbit around you? You attract satellites."
Dean snorts. "That'll happen when you're a billionaire."
"I've met billionaires," Cas counters. "This isn't what they have. It's not the money, Dean, it's you, something about you that is irresistible to everyone around you. Even your staff is pulled in – their lives revolve around you, and it's not just because of their jobs, they're genuinely drawn to you. And I, myself–" Cas swallows against the dryness in his throat, and his heartbeat speeds up again, and he stammers, "I – I am – drawn to you…"
Dean takes a deep breath, and reaches his hand further forward, his fingers lightly touching Cas's leg, and Cas is excruciatingly aware of each fingertip's exact placement. "Cas, I –"
A knock at the door.
Both men swivel abruptly, and Dean yanks his hand away.
"Dean, your – your brother is back," Miguel announces timidly. "He wants to speak with you?"
…
"I'm sorry I left like that," Sam says. "I just needed some air."
They're in the study again, standing awkwardly next to the wooden chairs.
"I'm surprised you came back," Dean replies. "I don't know if I would've."
Sam takes a deep, weary breath. "Look, I'm still pissed. I'm not letting you off the hook that easily. But I had some time to think about what you said, and what you told me – Dean. I legitimately…" He looks chagrined. "When you left, if I'd known – if I'd known about that stuff, I think things would have gone a lot differently. I'm sorry I didn't try to talk things out more."
Dean rubs his forehead. "That's on me, Sam. I didn't tell you any of it. And I can't believe that you, all these years, you thought I blamed you –" His voice thickens slightly, just saying it. He clears his throat. "It kills me that I let you go around thinking that."
"Honestly, just finding out that you…" Sam clears his throat as well, and then coughs slightly. "That you don't feel that way. Is. Just." He clears his throat again. "A huge weight lifted." He blinks quickly.
Dean nods, and studies the carpet.
"Why did you come to my house this morning?" Sam asks. "That's what I came back to ask you about."
What Dean came to talk to him about this morning was the Syndicate. But it no longer seems like a good time to broach that particular thorny conversation.
"You never returned my call," Dean says instead. "I left you a message."
Sam raises his eyebrows. "You came to follow up on a phone call at seven in the morning?"
Dean shrugs. "It was the only time I knew for sure you'd be home. And I happened to be sober, so it was as good a time as any."
Sam is about to retort back, and then all of the sudden he blinks, and stares at Dean, and he says, "You're still sober, aren't you?"
Dean makes a waggling iffy gesture with his hand. "I had a few after you left," he says. "But then we started watching Lord of the Rings and I had a chance to burn it off."
Sam sits down in a chair, and looks up at Dean in disbelief.
"You just… had a few?" he asks. "And then you stopped?"
"I'm trying to change," Dean says, as sincerely as he can. "I'm trying to fix things. I want to change."
Sam looks at him for a long moment.
"Why did you come back here?" Dean asks. "Did you really come just to ask me about this morning?"
"… No," Sam says slowly. "I came back because… when you told me what you'd kept from me, all this time, I wanted to walk away and shut you out again, like when we got in the fistfight. Maybe for a lot longer. I was… really angry."
Dean swallows against the lump in his throat.
"And I might still do that," Sam admits. "I haven't decided yet. But after the anger faded a little… I wanted to hear what you had to say. You seem different, Dean. Really different. I wanted to hear you out first."
"I appreciate that," Dean says. "Thank you."
Sam nods in acknowledgement.
"Sam, I know I've fucked up too many times to count," Dean admits, "and I don't really deserve any more chances. I know…" His stomach twists tight. "I know I've hurt you. But please, don't shut me out. Things are changing for me, I'm taking charge of my own life, and for the first time in a really long time I feel like I'm climbing out of the mess I've made instead of just digging myself in deeper. I want to be a part of your life, Sam, if you'll let me. I want a chance to show you things can be different. We can't ever go back to the way things were, I know, but I want to move forward. I want to start making it up to you. I want to figure out how to get back to being a family."
Sam nods and blinks quickly.
"I'm sorry," Dean says earnestly. "I'm sorry for everything. Can we try to work things out?"
"I can't – I can't make you any promises," Sam says. "I still don't know how I feel about everything you told me this afternoon. I'm going to need time, Dean. And I don't know if we can work things out, that's going to depend on a lot of things."
Dean puts his hands up. "Take all the time you need," he says. "I know this is something I'm gonna have to work at. I just want there to be a possibility."
Sam takes a deep breath and nods again. "Okay. Yeah. There's a possibility."
A possibility.
It's a small, tremulous, weak ray of light breaking through a crack in a slammed-shut door that Dean thought was closed forever, a ray of light that he doesn't deserve and can never repay, and for the first time in six years he truly, genuinely understands that Sam loves him.
"Thank you," is what he says out loud.
And then he crumples into tears like a big, dumb baby and chokes out, "Sorry, sorry," and he wipes his face frantically and tries to stop but he can't.
"Dean," Sam says hoarsely.
"Sorry," Dean repeats, wiping his face with shaking hands, "I appreciate it, Sammy, 'preciate it-"
Sam pulls Dean into a tight hug, and Dean squeezes tightly back, and although there is a long road ahead of them both, in this moment they are brothers again.