Comin' Back To Me, by Jefferson Airplane.
It was hovering on the edge between spring and summer, and sunshine peeked intermittently through the rain showers. Dean was drying the dishes from breakfast, focused on slicking water away with the fluffy plaid towel. The monotonous task gave him a chance to think, and the thoughts which rose to the surface unbidden were mostly concerned with how the Winchesters, demon-hunters extraordinaire, had both become romantic saps. He set a cup on the drying rack and picked up a plate. He wouldn't go back to how it was before, that he knew. A squirt of soap. Working it up into a lather. Maybe now, they were actually –
"Dean, why have we never ingested chemical substances to alter our mental state?" Cas asked suddenly.
When Dean caught the plate, it was inches away from smashing against the bottom of the sink. He stared at it for a moment, and then set it aside, slowly, deliberately. "You're asking me why we've never taken drugs?"
"That's something humans do, isn't it? It seems interesting." Cas was leaning against the door behind him. Dean could feel the angel's eyes flickering over him.
"Interesting," Dean repeated. He almost wanted to laugh. But he couldn't help remembering that other world, the one Zachariah had shown him. Cas downing pills with a twisted smile and a, 'That's how I roll.' He stared at the sink, trying to find focus in the droplet of water hanging off the end of the faucet, trembling against its inevitable descent. It didn't work, and he turned to Cas, burying his hands in the towel to dry them. He reminded himself firmly that this was his Cas, not that other Cas, in that other time. The thought grounded him somewhat. "I guess I never thought of it."
"You've never been high?" Cas asksed, rolling the phrase off his tongue as if to test it.
"No, it's not that." Dean laughed. "I have. I just…" He trailed off, and put the towel aside, immediately regretting it. Now he had nothing to occupy his hands with.
Truth be told, he had thought of it, once or twice. Early on, when he wondered what sort of things every person should do at least once, to explore the full spectrum of being human. After that, after they… well. Cas and he got so drunk off each other he hadn't stopped to think of adding anything else to it. And thinking of Cas rambling about amphetamines back in Camp Wachitaka would always have stopped him short.
"Dean?" Cas asked, and there was an edge to his voice, like he knew Dean wasn't telling him something.
Dean didn't have to think about it for too long. Cas knew the most intimate secrets of his soul, his vulnerabilities, his broken spots. This wasn't such a big thing, in the face of all that. "Remember when Zachariah zapped me to the future, the one where Sammy said yes and I didn't? The one we stopped?" Cas nodded once. "I never told you, did I? You were, ah, you were human. And you were a serious hippy," Dean tried to laugh, but it came out wrong. "I mean, orgies, drugs, the whole shebang." He looked away. That explanation could have gone about a hundred times better. "I guess I just didn't want that to happen to you here."
Cas thought it over for a while. "I'm stronger than that now, Dean."
"Right. Cause torture therapy fixed your head?" He regretted it the instant he said it, but he was still bitter that Cas had let the angels do that to him.
It was funny, though. Dean had never once thought of Cas as being 'weak' for doing all those drugs. Maybe broken, because he had stayed after all the other angels left. But weak? Maybe it was true. But he could never think of Cas, any version of Cas, that way.
"No," Cas ground out, and Dean didn't blame him. But he didn't say anything other than, "Because I have you."
"Pretty sure you had me at Camp Chitaqua too." Cas blinked for a moment in surprise at the innuendo in Dean's tone. "Didn't do you much good."
"Dean." Cas sighed. "Things are different. We're stronger now, together." When Dean didn't say anything, Cas prompted. "Tell me I'm wrong."
Dean set his jaw but remained silent. "Why do you wanna do this?"
"Well… it's my understanding that most of the music we listen to was composed under the influence of such stimulants, which fascinates me. I suppose I'm curious."
"So… you want to take drugs, what, because Jimmy Hendrix did it?" Dean pinched the bridge of his nose.
"No. I wish to understand the altered state of consciousness which many humans tapped into by using chemical substances. I want to explore the experience." Cas stared at him for a long moment.
The silence forced him to think about what Cas just said. They were stronger, now. Cas didn't seem sad, not like he did at Wachitaka. Things were different. There was still a spark of caution in his gut, one that prompts him to growl, "I don't want you to get hurt."
One of Cas' eyebrows rose, but he didn't object. "I understand."
Dean ran a hand through his hair. "OK," he said finally.
"OK?" Cas tilted his head to one side.
"You wanna do this, I can't stop you. I might as well be there." He scratched at the back of his neck. "And I did promise to teach you about humanity."
Cas nodded with a one-sided smile, and he said softly, "Yes. You did."
Cas appeared the next day with a not insignificant number of joints in his hand.
"Where the hell did you get those?" Dean asked, wondering if he would ever get used to Cas appearing before his eyes.
"Someone's backyard in Oregon," Cas said nonchalantly. "I think I upset a teenage boy."
Dean let out a light laugh. "All right. What say we get this show on the road?" Somewhere inside him, there was an oddly teenage desire to get loaded with his…Cas, springing maybe from how he'd never done anything like that before. It seemed like everyone, including Sam, had spent those years getting high with their fuck-buddies and friends. In his life, there hadn't been many times where it was safe to just let loose, when he didn't have responsibilities. He never would have taken drugs while taking care of Sammy, or when his Dad was in a hundred mile radius. He'd gotten stoned a few times when he was young, in between jobs and on his own, and once in high school. He'd never really gotten into it, though; he had to have his reflexes sharp. He had to know what was real and what wasn't, and smoking pot didn't exactly do wonders for that. But they were safe here, and they were together, and that provided for at least the possibility that letting go could be all right.
Cas nodded. "Come with me." Dean found himself dragged by the wrist outside, along the road, up the hill and into the woods, now green with the anticipation of summer.
They stood by an oak tree which it took Dean a moment to realize. "This is where I found you," he said.
Cas didn't say anything for a while, just looked the tree up and down, from the thick, burly roots to the canopy that threw dappled light on their faces. "I want to reclaim it," he said.
Dean let out a breath. While he thought that sounded like the recipe for a bad trip, he trusted Cas. "All right." And he was the first one to sit down, to lean against the solid trunk.
Cas looked down at him, and disappeared before his eyes. "Cas, what the hell?!"
Cas' voice floated to him from a few yards away, where the Impala was parked in the woods. Dean had been working on it outside, touching up the paint job. "It was my understanding that this required music." He could hear the engine rumbling to life, no doubt under the effect of Cas' angel mojo. A few moments later, gentle guitar filtered through the woods.
The summer had inhaled
And held its breath too long
The winter looked the same
As if it never had gone
Dean closed his eyes as he recognized the song. "Perfect," he told Cas, when the angel reappeared, fumbling around in the pocket of his trench coat before drawing out a joint. Dean still couldn't quite believe they were doing this. He reached for his lighter, and lit up the end of the joint barely, letting it smolder to a cherry red glow. Cas watched with intrigue as Dean brought it to his lips and inhaled, fighting the tickling urge to cough. Dean reached up and tilted Cas' chin up to him, marveling at how easily the angel surrendered to his touch. He leaned down, Cas parting his lips obligingly, and blew a sweet puff of smoke into Cas' mouth. Cas inhaled and held it for a moment before blowing it out.
"Interesting," he remarked.
And through an open window
Where no curtain hung
I saw you, I saw you
Comin' back to me
"Hey Cas," Dean asked some hours later. "How come you keep comparing me to flowers?"
Dean lay on the forest floor, his head resting in Cas' lap, staring up at the angel. It was late afternoon by now, golden light suffusing the forest. It was transformed from the bleak place it had been that first, fateful day, and Dean even thought it might be beautiful. To someone who hadn't heard Cas crying here. That sound, like it had wormed its way to the surface, like it had sharp edges that might have cut Cas' throat on the way up. He tightened his grip on Cas' hand.
Maybe ordinarily, this place was too clouded with memories for him to enjoy. But now, the memories seemed faded, overpowered by the lustrous colors and the feel of Cas' hand in his hair, sending sparks through his scalp. It would never be as beautiful as it could have been if he hadn't seen Cas in abject despair here, if he had only happened upon it, but then again, none of this would have happened either. It was a price worth paying.
He'd almost forgotten that he asked the question when Cas answered. "You're a fire-flower."
"How many of those have you had?" Dean asked, turning the words over and over again in his mind. Fire-flower. Fire-flower.
One begins to read between
The pages of a look
The shape of sleepy music
And suddenly you're hooked
"It is not of import." Cas paused. "You think of flowers as being weak. Fragile. Effeminate. That's a human construct, a way of perceiving reality which is different to mine. I could snap your spine as easily as picking a flower, watch you die as quickly as a rose out of water wilts." Dean stared up into Cas' blue eyes, and he was spinning, spinning into them. Cas was right. Cas was eternal, unyielding, and yet, so – he squeezed Cas' hand, to make sure that blood still pumped there, that the skin was still soft. That Cas was not entirely a warrior, removed from Dean's mortal existence. "So?" Cas asked wonderingly, eyes flitting away from Dean's to scan the sky as if for an answer. "If I was the storm, you sprung up in my path, brave and defiant, brilliant and blazing. I could have plucked you up and tossed you aside. As could any of my brethren. You are something more than impermanence, fleeting beauty and frailty, though." Cas mused.
"Thanks," Dean said sardonically. His head spun with Cas' monologue; beautiful, confusing, increasingly strange and poetic.
"Tulips close at night and open in the morning. I suppose you're like a tulip, too, then; hiding sometimes, but other times opening yourself to me." Dean shivered at the wording. But still, he didn't understand why Cas felt the need to compare him to flowers. "You're not just a flower, though. You have the capacity for death, destruction, and great endurance." Dean opened his mouth, but no words came. "Some flowers will hold on in very adverse conditions," Cas informed him. "Amazing, really. You're on fire, Dean. Beautiful. Bright. Fragile and I…" Cas stroked a thumb over Dean's cheek, and Dean felt the touch like it cut through to the bare bone, soothed the parts of him inside that wanted to protest at Cas' descriptions. "Imagine it, Dean. A human loving a flower. Loving it to the obliteration, the abandonment of all else, because the human saw something worthwhile, something valuable, some one-in-a million spark in that flower. Saw something that went beyond the mere nature of a flower, something about that flower that made it more than breakable or beautiful. And loved it, for that and everything else. Loved it despite all logic. Imagine that, and you will have imagined how I love you."
Dean couldn't speak.
Through the rain upon the trees
The kisses on the run
I saw you, I saw you
Comin' back to me
He stared up at Cas' eyes, which were glassy and red at the edges, but still so very blue. He lost himself in them, tracing gold labyrinths through them until he rather forgot that Cas was staring back at him through them. When he remembered, his breath caught in his chest and he said, mouth dry, "Fuck you're beautiful."
Cas laughed, a low, rumbling sound that vibrated through his chest. Dean put a hand to Cas' chest, fancying that he could still feel the vibrations travelling through his skin.
"Are you sure?" Dean asked then. He licked his lips. They were cold and tingling at the same time. "That you love me, I mean."
Cas stared down at him intently. "Dean."
"You're so, y'know," Dean waved a hand, "Eternal and all. And I'm so… whatever I am, and Cas, I can't imagine it! I can't imagine loving a flower at all, so how can you possibly-"
Cas laid a finger to his lips. "Dean," he growled. He paused, possibly regretting the use of so many metaphors. "You realize that everything you just asks also applies to how you could possibly love me. Something you didn't even believe in until a few years ago. Something completely outside of your conception and so very alien and strange. If you can't see that loving me is the same as-" he gestured into the air wildly. "Loving an avalanche whose path you are in, then see this. I will never lie to you. And when I told you I loved you, I was not lying." Cas' eyes blazed. "Dean, we are bonded in every possible way, and I…" Cas trailed off, the fire in his eyes fading slightly.
"I… I know." Dean said. Goddamnit. This stuff had been all dealt with. All this crap, these feelings, they'd been blown away when the fuck-Cas-loves-you bomb had been dropped. But being here now, being reminded of the time before all of that had happened, and with his faculties rather compromised by how he was convinced the leaves under his back might be alive… he said, "But this… feels so…"
"Good?" Cas asked, with one eyebrow arched.
"Yeah," Dean breathed.
You came to stay and live my way
Scatter my love like leaves in the wind
You always say you won't go away
But I know what it always has been
It always has been a transparent dream
Beneath an occasional sigh
"If there's one thing I've learned in my time here, Dean… when I stayed, against every instinct telling me that I shouldn't stay, just because I wanted to… it's that we deserve this. We have been bruised, bloodied, killed and broken more times than I can count. And we've fought for this," Cas said in a low voice, leaning down so Dean could feel his breath on his cheeks. "We deserve to feel good, Dean."
"I…" Dean stared up. When had the sky turned red? When had the sun set? It was jaw-dropping, sending red tints all throughout Cas' hair.
Cas pressed his lips against Dean's, and god, Dean could feel them so much more vividly than normal, full and velvety, juxtaposed by the scrape of stubble against his chin. Cas' tongue swept along his lower lip, and Dean melted for him, letting him in. When Cas pulled away, Dean was panting slightly, eyes blown wide with lust. But Cas was considering him with something more like a question in his eyes, and Dean gasped, "Believe you. I believe you."
Most of the time I just let it go by
Now I wish it hadn't begun
I saw you, yes I saw you
Comin' back to me
And the funniest thing was, he did. He believed Cas. Something expanded inside him and he felt weightless, giddy, finally free and he wrapped his hand around the back of Cas' neck, pulling him in for another breathless kiss. Cas laughed against his lips and pulled away again. "I believe me too," he said, too seriously. When Dean arched up off the ground and tried to kiss him again, Cas wrapped his arms firmly around Dean and before Dean could fully process what was happening, he was off the ground in Cas' arms. He stared up, face slack with surprise for a moment. And then he laughed, laughed as Cas walked to the car, staring steadily down at him, love and trust practically shining out of his eyes. "Stop it," he poked at Cas' chest. Cas didn't stop the staring, and the song fell into a slow guitar instrumental. "Don't stop," he murmured then.
Strolling the hills overlooking the shore
I realize I've been here before
The shadow in the mist could have been anyone
I saw you, I saw you
Comin' back to me
Cas smiled, and with a relative amount of grace carried Dean to the Impala and set him on the edge of the back seat. Dean scooted backwards, grabbing at Cas' hands and pulling the angel with him. The music was louder in here, thrumming through his bones, and Dean glanced around the car fondly. "Made some pretty good memories in here, huh?" Dean said.
Cas stroked the side of his jaw. "I would greatly like to make more."
Dean grinned. "I think that can be arranged." And he pulled Cas on top of him, relishing the solid weight on top of him. They kissed hotly, grinding against each other, every heightened sensation sending thrills through them. Dean came with his jeans around his knees and boxers not much behind, still mostly clothed, sent over the edge by the rough strokes of Cas' hand. Cas wasn't far behind, rocking into the hollow between Dean's hip and his stomach, shooting come over their chests.
"I will always come back to you," Cas murmured, breaking through Dean's reverie about how on earth he'd never noticed just how good the leather smelled all the other times he'd had sex back here.
Dean ran a hand through Cas' hair, and didn't answer. He didn't think he needed to. "I feel like a goddamn teenager," he said, staring down at their come spattered shirts.
Cas laughed. "We did just do marijuana and have sex in the back seat of your car."
"Smoke," Dean corrected him. "You smoke weed. Not 'do' it."
Cas hummed at the correction. He ran his fingers over Dean's collarbone, pushing the edges of his shirt away. "Dean," he whispered into Dean's skin, the feeling sending butterflies fluttering through his skin. "This has been a most enlightening experience."
Small things like reasons are put in a jar
Whatever happened to wishes wished on a star?
Was it just something that I made up for fun?
I saw you, I saw you
Comin' back to me
Dean considered him briefly. "Enlightening?"
"I feel like I understand more about human society now. And like there are unfound mysteries to be discovered on your skin," he said matter-of-factly, unbuttoning Dean's shirt and beginning his exploration.