He managed to get on, still.
Talking with Benny had smoothed things. A few other nights he got himself on a train up to the other man's apartment. They'd each go through the papers or a book, sitting by one another in the armchairs. Sometimes the radio would be on when he was in, playing music or news reports, usually tragic stuff in Europe or at home, and sometimes Benny would indulge him by letting him talk about Sam. His brother and Benny had only met flippantly and never really had gotten along, but someone besides him needed to know about how Sam's classes were going, the firms he was looking through now that he got closer and closer to getting a viable degree and the odd jobs he and Jess were pulling in the meantime, working anything from libraries to restaurants to repair lots, one of which had maintained use of his brother intermittently for over a year now.
James could hold his head up, smile, and would be crawling soon. He liked watching his mobile or fan blades spinning in lazy circles, he cooed along to the music that drifted up from the apartments below, and Dean was convinced that if he couldn't tell anyone else about such things that there was a chance he was imagining the letters, the family formed separate of him across the country, so Benny took the unexciting reports and accepted them, thought and commented on them like a dear friend would.
Dean only stayed a little while each time, trying not to impose so much even if Benny's face never stopped brightening, a smile never stopped from forming, every time he walked up to the frosted glass of the apartment entrance and greeted him. And anyway it did help: He had gotten tempered, experienced a quiet withdraw from conversation as if a great calm had descended, and he thought, rather prudently one afternoon on a walk home from such a visit, that he may just wait out the time until Crowley called on him again in such a reserved, painless state, and make it to California unscathed.
His own apartment continued to be a dreaded destination; still messy from the books on the floor. He kept the windows open, too, if only a small crack in the January, February, March air, all frigid and miserable for slightly different sources, just to get a whisper of street noise and a frosty scent instead of whatever remained in the curtains, rug, chairs, sheets.
He was hungry, vaguely, and he locked the door behind him and shed his outer layers wondering if he could possibly do with not going outside for the rest of the evening.
No more than half an hour later there was a knock at the door.
That startled him; he had no visitors, or business with the neighbors that would require them to drop by his room – unless it was Haskel Crane, dreaded landlord with a new mandate that Dean required at least one roommate to remain here, he fisted his hands at the idea, ridiculous as it was. Whoever had come, it wasn't for good news.
The knock sounded again, and he became anxious, reaching on the dresser for a pistol. He wished then for a type of door that possessed an eyeglass, so that he would have been able to see who was on the opposing side.
Instead he went to the side of the door; close enough to the bathroom that he could dodge himself inside there in case those waiting in the hall saw it appropriate to spear his door with bullets.
It could be Meg, wanting to strike appropriate revenge against someone after finding out it was his fault her car had been rendered unusable ages ago. Or some other thing he did that needed evening out now.
"Who's there?" he asked, trying to sound more impatient than anything he might have been feeling.
There was a short pause. Dean strained his ears to hear the rattle of metal being readied.
Then: "It's me."
Castiel. Dean felt himself bristling at the other man's deep voice. His suspicions were not soothed away in the wake of the man appearing at his door. After all, he could have been with another person. A whole group, ready and waiting for him to come out in the wake of his luring beau he was heartbroken over, or some other melodramatic plot.
He heard a small thump. It wasn't so much a hint that something terrible was about to happen. Instead it sounded as though Castiel had leaned himself up against the door; his hand or his cheek, perhaps. "You forget perhaps that I still have a good third of my things here."
"Maybe I tossed 'em," Dean snapped back.
"Dean," Castiel used a tone that didn't sound exasperated or angry. Pleading, perhaps, was a better description. He heard something that might have been a long sigh. "I'm tired. Please. Let me in."
How horrible would it be if Dean just told him no? He ached for that simplicity, but for all the mental reserves he had rebuilt in the five months they were separated, a few subliminal thoughts raced through; let him in, they seemed to say, though they did not possess words.
Pistol still drawn, he reached for the door; unbolted it, unlocked it, and swung it open.
Only Castiel there; nothing more.
"Ain't you a sore sight," Dean said, slipping the gun into his trousers after a moment. He made just enough room for Castiel to squeeze through without brushing up against him, and quickly shut the door back up once the other man made it over the threshold.
It hadn't just been for malice's sake that he insulted Castiel's appearance – he looked as he said; tired. The embodiment of it, in fact. Exhaustion at every possible turn and option available. He was sullen, sunken, and in the not half year he'd been in his own part of the world doing god knows it was as if he had aged a decade. Castiel's typical wintertime paleness was overshadowed by the recent ashen complex on his face. His jaw was dusted with thick patches of scruff that showed more of a deliberate choice to not shave than a simple forgetfulness. His hair, too, was halfway between presentable and ruined, like the man had started to go about his daily routine and abandoned it to run over to this part of the city.
However, it was the eyes, like always, that got Dean. They didn't seem so potent anymore. None of that fiery defiance from when they first met; or the tenderness when they were together – Dean's mind clenched at the thought, trying to block it out – it was not even that cold and ruthless mask he would put on in front of the less savory types. It was nothing at all. They looked washed out. The wrinkled edges of his eyes were flushed, but Dean didn't think it was from crying – more from lack of sleep.
Castiel spared him a glance, looking shaky and uncomfortable. Like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. Dean reminded himself that this was the person who betrayed his trust; the man who killed his own friend without remorse and thought he could walk away scot-free. Everything else – the lost look on his face, the way his woolen, black overcoat bunched thickly around his shoulders and shrank him down impossibly small, and the knowledge that somewhere, in a branched off world, if Castiel were caught looking like that as an innocent Dean would have wasted no time soothing away his hurt, meant nothing to him anymore.
"I haven't been able to sleep well." Castiel supplied. His jaw clenched in an angry way, and for a moment Dean thought he was about to raise a fist to punch him, but instead he saw Castiel's hand come up just as he had stopped fighting a yawn, letting it slip through and sound out beneath his fingers. Dean saw that he held a bag in his other hand, large and sturdy looking.
"I can tell."
"I… They're night terrors. Anna and Gabriel say I've been screaming some nights, in my dreams." Dean huffed.
"What do you dream about that keeps you from sleeping?" he said it in an accusatory way. He had been led to believe that Castiel's bouts of sleeplessness were more performance anxieties, like his own source of insomnia.
The other man had his head bent studiously at the floor; he was staring at his precious books, now scattered and jumbled by the chairs and tables. Dean winced at the picture, then decided Castiel would deduce nothing shameful from the scene, really. He had no secrets, not like Castiel did.
"Balthazar," he murmured, eyes avoidant. "They say I call out his name in my sleep."
His response was reflexive: "Good to know you can feel something." Castiel openly flinched at the acrimonious reproach Dean gave. But all Dean saw was that he could grind Castiel down into dust using just mean words. It was certainly something to rejoice in; if it was anyone else, Dean might have indulged in a smug smile, another low shot.
He sensed an ache instead.
If it was anyone else…
Dean swallowed, throat working. He turned away, looking longingly at the windows, at a day not nearly so stifling as this room and situation. "Your things are where you last had them," he offered dismissively. He reached for a cigarette so his hands wouldn't wring themselves together. "Just so you know, I've got somewhere to be in a few minutes." He ignored the fact that his shoes were off and his tie unknotted.
Instead he watched Castiel move slowly around the apartment. He was stiff like an automaton. It wasn't even professional aloofness and Dean, who was suddenly feeling everything acutely, was envious of it. He opened drawers, took out this shirt or that – a few he opened, shoved to his chest and found too big or too broad or too fine and were obviously not his. Dean was opening his mouth to say something in protest to Castiel just being around, but he quickly refolded the items so they wouldn't be wrinkled, and set them back where they belonged. He glanced up, uneasily, at Dean, who his cigarette into his mouth to keep quiet.
"It was always rather hard," Castiel said. He sounded half deaf, his accent was more pronounced.
"What?" Dean turned partway from the window, so he was looking at the man from more than just the corner of his eye or the reflection of the glass pane.
"It was always hard to – tell the difference between our clothes," he said, picking out two pairs of cufflinks and a tie pin. He might have smiled, Dean turned away before he could determine the case.
"We're only off a little in height," Dean replied evenly. He glanced down at the street. It was almost spring, though you could never tell in the City. Cold air swept along the hem of his shirt and dirty, gray slush was mounted on the edges of the sidewalks, the roads in a state of slippery wetness and dirtiness; huge puddles forming causing the cars to act conserved and streetwalkers more so, lest they get splashed with rotten, freezing water.
He heard steps and guessed that Castiel was looking down at those books again. Dean turned partway and saw him pick up this or that – he lifted one of the volumes, the one with the hawk's feather in it. He stooped low and Dean couldn't see his face, or much of his body, still being bundled up. Castiel was hidden to him again; Dean coughed, not from the smoke or the cold. He put a hand to his chest and felt a sharp pain there; if he was more health-minded he'd be concerned about an attack or some odd ailment, but instead he rubbed his thumb over the spot and watched the oblivious, bent over figure.
It hurt – what did? His wakened thoughts wondered at his subconscious. Meanwhile Castiel shut the book and placed it on top of the table, searching through others to clear or take. Watching him in movement made Dean grimace uneasily, and he put out his cigarette, unable to continue.
Loss, ironically, was one of the most palpable things a human being could experience. The concept struck him and made him angry. He'd been doing so well, too!
Dean remembered that once, ages ago, he considered that Castiel was the one that woke him up; propelled him into some realm of feelings or experience that had so far been beyond his grasp, and he supposed that still held true. After months of aimless anger, anxiety, edgings of pain, despair if he was feeling dramatic, he had managed to curb it into a helpful lack of extremes. He had fallen half asleep again, but now, just by simply knocking and calling for him, Castiel had managed to startle him fully with ease, as if his own body had wanted to feel the full extent of loss at the other's presence all along. It made him hate the other, and soon Castiel had taken a small stack of his books and shoved them into his bag – about half were now just on the table.
He looked around, as if taking in the apartment for the first time. It certainly appeared emptier with some of Castiel's things left out of it, but when had Dean needed so many things, anyway? He tried not to grow embarrassed when their eyes met, or almost did; Castiel looked through him like he was a mistake he didn't want to see.
"Well?" Dean went, impatiently.
"That's all I can fit in my bag," Most of his clothes, a few accessories, books. "I can come back in a few days."
"Friday?"
Castiel nodded, slowly, hauling the bag from where it rested on the floor into his grasp. "I'll stop here that evening, clear the rest of my things out." He glanced over to the coat rack. "Wasn't one of my overcoats there?"
"I have it," Dean stared at the back of Castiel's head again. "Anything else? Or can you leave me to it," Castiel sucked in a breath, clutched at the suitcase.
"I'll go, then." He walked to the door. "Dean?" he said, staring into the hall. He didn't answer, and a moment later Castiel had gone.
Dean bumped his foot against his wall, making the glass shake slightly. His chest and head were pounding; he wiped at his face and found he was sweating; his fingers trembled.
He slowly made his way to the door; locked it up again. He leaned against the wood in case he could hear Castiel's breathing, his steps, but all was silent.
The flat felt not just uncomfortable but treacherous now; being here would surely cause his heart to heave out of his chest. He felt the knives twist into him as he slowly peeled off the rest of his clothing. For all the awfulness of his abode, he daren't venture outside.
xxxx
Days passed. Dean found himself waking up on Friday feeling sick and pretending it was from a change in air pressure as cold winds blew forth, carrying last minute snowstorms and freezing rain. All day he felt a fever had descended over him, and walks without a coat in the chill air and a soothing bath and warming stew from a restaurant down the street did nothing for him. He had put Castiel's razor and soap back in the washroom, his shoes by the coat door, but for the life of him he couldn't take the trench coat out. He had hung it up, but every time he glanced in that corner he cursed and whirled around because Castiel was there waiting for him. He wasn't, and if Dean wasn't so shaken from his visit some days before maybe he could have stood such things, but instead he folded it up and stuck it back in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe.
He sat down in his armchair at three in the afternoon, eyeing the clock and waiting for a knock on the door. He had the post by his feet, hadn't looked at it yet. It was too early for Sam's letters and bills anyway.
It was five, then six; around eight he fixed toast and coffee because he wasn't sure if anything else would make him ill. He was harshly reminded of the day he spent up, waiting for Castiel to come home while he was out murdering his friend.
He went through the mail to find a note from Crowley requesting an afternoon appearance. He had been waiting for that sort of thing. Surely it meant that Lucifer would be getting offed soon, and more than that he'd be able to leave New York for good. It registered worry, but the message's implication seemed above him. He tucked it into his coat pocket and resumed waiting for something that seemed much more dangerous than a mere future death.
By nine he had gone into something of a frenzy: Castiel had given his word that he'd be here – he would get his things and leave so that Dean could go back to being half-feeling and unbothered and the other was keeping him from that out of spite or perhaps he was dead now; had done something stupid and deserved it and – he was flinging on his hat and coat and scarf not a minute later; if Castiel was dead then fine, but he probably wasn't – was too good at surviving harsh things for that. He just hated Dean, was all, and if he wouldn't come by to make Dean nervous and fearful he'd drag the bastard out of his little hole himself.
The trek to the tailor shop was a journey retained by muscle memory, he was irritated to discover. Not much had changed here; cold and unkempt, some stores and buildings had an abandoned look to them, but that didn't necessarily mean that no one lived there anymore. The tailor shop had the same red banner, Dean realized he still didn't know what the Russian words said, the brick walls and white front façade were indistinguishable as well as the blinds drawn entirely down, now. It was closed, after all. He knocked hard on the glass door, feeling it shudder under his fist. Skin pulled tight over his fingers, he felt the cold brutally there and his muscles had begun to grow sore.
He heard something above him and looked up.
One of the two windows from the second floor – the left one, meaning it was the small spot above the kitchen sink – creaked open, and Anna, whom he hadn't seen in half a year, stuck her head out and glared down at him. Her hair was still on the short side, only just past her shoulders. They both stared, mildly surprised at the other's appearance. Dean slowly stuffed his hand back into his pocket.
"What are you doing here?" She certainly made coming feel like a mistake. The cold night seeped into him.
"I'm looking for Castiel," That sounded odd, didn't it? "He said he would come by tonight, and get his things – but he never did. Can you tell him? Please,"
Anna continued to stare at him, and certainly didn't call for someone. Dean felt the fumbling manner of their conversation and didn't take to it well. Now, if he had been with Anna, and it was Castiel he had to answer to, the problem would have been simpler: He could have come downstairs and beat Dean to a pulp, or try to, for ruining his sister's virtue or her sleep or whatever had come from such a break. But what to do when they were both just men? The two of them had been in such a way that had never been documented or acknowledged in the same manner the usual couple was; there was no normal way to go about it, not if their own existence was marred as outside the range of normalcy itself. And anyway he could pick Anna up easy enough; they couldn't just knock each other into the snow without someone calling the police for some sort of abuse going on. So instead they were stuck staring at one another, wondering how best to overstep particular parameters.
In the end Anna had adopted a haughty look. She raised her nose, gesturing to other streets. "He's not home anyway. Hasn't been since dinner. He never mentioned seeing you to begin with."
"He just disappeared?"
"Just," she sighed. Dean should have known better, she seemed to think. "No, he's been doing this for months. Takes walks. Says it clears his head." She stuck out her arms so she could look at them instead of Dean's stupored form down below.
"All of the sudden?"
"Well he's done this before. Back when we first came here. It was Balthazar who'd take him this way and that in exploration." She kept her voice carefully monotone, but Dean knew he had overstayed hospitality.
"Do you know where he went?"
She glanced down at him again. "I don't ask. I trust that he'll come back when he's ready."
"But it's cold out – all by himself and you just let him…?" He was trying to make Anna uneasy, but all it seemed to him was he was still worrying about whatever that man did with himself. He was over that, surely he'd learnt his lesson by now.
"He knows how to put on a jacket," He thought she might spit down on him or say a foreign word they both knew the unflattering meaning of. "You can look around Coney Island and beyond if you want, but don't expect me to thank you for it. I can trust him – if he says he'll be back he will." She pulled her head back, and Dean thought she had left him. He glanced back the way he had come, dumbly, wondering where in the hell Castiel would venture off to for hours on end.
The light cut itself strange and he looked back up to see Anna again. "You're still here?"
"I was –"
"Well go do it somewhere where Gabriel won't look out the window and see you!"
"What's it to you where I stand?"
"Not much; Gabriel's the one who wants your legs broken." She glanced behind her, into the house. "And I won't lie about who I'm talking to. So go."
"Uh, thanks,"
"Goodnight," she said with some bitterness. The window squeaked shut and Dean turned around, getting out of the shop's sight.
He shivered after a while: The cold beat around him and all the fur coats and radiators could not, would not, not even in his mind, do damage. March was really the worst for everything; no holidays, no reprieve of Spring, a chance for snow but never enough to cancel plans, only ruin them and your shoes along the way. Speak of the goddamn devil some flurries sank from the sky, just enough to get onto his lashes and chill his face and make him curse quietly to himself while he continued his trek. It was so close in time to warmth that the body seemed to lose its hardened adaption it had been building since October and the first browning of lawn grass.
Moreover, Castiel was gone, Dean had no clue where to find him, and he couldn't rest easy until then.
He still had so much power over him.
Coney Island was desolate, windy. There were no stars and the lamplights on the corners offered no help, no secret of where that stooping, sad man had gone off to. Maybe he had killed himself, Dean thought, eyes drifting south where the pier would eventually form in a mile. Castiel had the disposition where, if broken enough, he'd be more likely to hurt his body than another's. But if he couldn't manage it back in October, with Balthazar hardly buried and Dean's contempt not reined in with time, then he didn't have the guts to do it now. He was somewhere, half dead, but somewhere.
He marched resolutely North, found himself on the right side of that park Castiel had taken him to – Grady Playground. It was heaped in a thin layer of snow, no footsteps disturbed it. It was too dark to see the park benches they had sat on, wordlessly, for hours. Dean recalled thinking of nothing for most of it; now his mind never shut up and he missed that simplicity, where a kiss on the cheek was the end of the world to him, where that was what he ran away from.
Castiel had always possessed some power over him, even then, where he had laughed at Castiel's invitation to intimacy of any sort. He placed his hands on the iron bars separating the park from the street. He always had such influence, and he never even realized it.
He shouldn't have looked so awful, then, if Dean was the only one who had suffered loss by Castiel's betrayal. Five months. Wasn't that enough to hide the grief you felt over a friend?
His hands tightened, metal feeding ice into his palms until they turned pink and wet.
He knew where to look now.
xxxx
Graveyards at night seemed to be asking for trouble, and Dean took a calming breath before he hopped over the low wooden posts and into Washington Cemetery. His fault for preferring Lovecraft to Lawrence, he figured.
Unlike the park he saw some pathways made in the white, branching off from column to column. He peered down one of the rows and thought he saw some flowers laying by a stone, though he couldn't tell if they were fresh or not.
The lights from the street didn't stretch far enough, and he could only tell which graves were which by getting up close and reading them. He had no confirmation that Castiel would be here; maybe he was walking aimlessly, as Dean tended to. And anyway he was still partly convinced that Castiel didn't care that Balthazar had died – was merely doing a resonating job acting out grief while Dean was near. But after he exposed him for lying months ago, there was no reason for Castiel to look unrested and miserable; it would have made just as much sense to say he was having night terrors about Dean as it was his dead friend. Regret didn't negate his crime, but it left an uncomfortable stir in his stomach; one that couldn't just be delegated to the mercies of past affections.
The yard was not ending, but the lines of graves were. Dean looked down every row to the right side of him, pausing at any odd shadow or sound. Balthazar's site hadn't been so deep inward that he wouldn't be able to see something, he thought. Where had he been placed?
He ventured into one of the rows whose first entry had died in December, 1929. He must have been close. Months changed, names, ages. The new city cemeteries were too regulated to place people just anywhere. Bodies had no more of a chance of being out of place than a library book on a shelf, and that was just what he needed.
He went through the stones at the end of the row, doubling back and hitting the right year, two months later, and he paced back towards the main walking path in the dark, ears attentive and eyes watching the script on the rocks. Impatience bubbled forth, offering anger but none of the heat that accompanied such emotions. It was too cold for that; he was just thankful the wind was only the barest breeze, cooling his face but not freezing it.
He thought he smelt alcohol. Something strong, not cheap or rotten or secondhand from a drunkard's sweat. It died with the wind and Dean stilled, feet no longer crunching on the coated ground.
Castiel was hunched in the snow. He was turned away from him and Dean couldn't help but wonder if that was a corpse he was staring at, but the man adjusted himself forward again, not staring at Dean. The wind blew up once more; riding along with it was the scent of liquor; the smell of Castiel's clothes and the brand of tobacco he smoked.
He had found Castiel. He'd been looking for a reason and that was certainly not to sit down in the snow with the crazy idiot. Hell knew whatever his original purpose had been, though.
Dean walked forward some, judging Castiel like a wild creature bound to run off once it knew it wasn't alone. Should he touch him – tap him on the shoulder or head, or would he stand further away and call him out?
Still at a distance Dean settled to cough quietly into his fist; it seemed the least disruptive, even if Castiel's shoulders jerked slightly.
Castiel's head turned towards him. Dean wondered if the other man couldn't see enough to identify who he was, but after a moment Castiel's voice murmured, "…Dean," It was a little underwhelming, honestly.
"Castiel," The name sat bloated and formal on his tongue: Castiel was a good name – singular and important sounding; it looked divine on paper, but when spoken it seemed to come out mangled, questioning; Cas had quickly formed and used for the majority in Dean's case, but that seemed overtly friendly now.
"I'd like to ask you why you're here, but," Castiel looked at the grave. "Well, I can't imagine it's a benign one, or at least one I'd like to hear very much." He brushed his fingers over a small trace of powder on the top ridge.
"Do you know what day it is?"
"No," Castiel continued smoothing his hand across the rock. "But you're here…" He seemed to think, flexing his fingers as they came back wetted. "Friday, I suppose. I missed the time I said I'd come, didn't I?"
"Damn right you missed it," Dean's words were grumbled, but lacked venom. He couldn't see Castiel one bit and was getting sick of just hearing his voice and not how he looked, so he stepped closer and closer, until he could reach his leg out and nudge the other should he want to. It was still dreadfully lightless since he was looking down. He was tempted to sit, actually sit next to the other for even as Castiel's head turned upwards he saw nothing but black impressions.
"I'm sorry. I can come tomorrow, if you're not busy. Or Sunday, in the afternoon after service, maybe," He turned back to the stone, figuring that would pacify Dean enough to get him to leave.
"Oh no you don't,"
"I don't what?" Castiel was trailing his words, letting them go wispy and disappear. He was too coherent to be drunk or drugged but something significant had a hold on him. Dean eyed Balthazar's name and sighed, resolutely.
He stepped past Castiel and sat down on his left, in the snow, like a half crazy idiot. By his knees he spotted a bottle; sizable, brown and labeled in a font too small to read in the dark, though he knew it was liquor and he knew it was empty.
"What's this?" he asked, picking up the bottle.
"It's Balthazar's," He shifted uncomfortably.
"You stole it from –"
"No! No," His eyes tracked the bottle and he didn't speak again until Dean slowly put it back down in the snow. "He had neighbors that ran a brewery in their house half a block down. Some other building's landlord and his wife owned a few apartments on the street. He'd be the doorman for them at their parties and warn them about any officers patrolling the neighborhood, and they always gave him a free bottle, every Friday, on his window ledge on the fire escape." He picked up the bottle himself, ran his fingers along the rim, then held it closer to him, resting it on his thigh and cradling the neck with his fingers, looking down at it. "Every Friday afternoon like clockwork. It was always high-quality, he told me. Sometimes too much yeast or malt but – it was always worth drinking the entire thing over the weekend."
"Thought you didn't like to drink." Castiel shrugged, stared off at something behind them. "You know they're going to find out you – or someone's been taking their liquor. That Balthazar's not… around to get it himself."
Castiel tipped his head up slightly. "They haven't had a party in ages, though. They assume he's on vacation or out somewhere. But I'm always there on Friday. No one's bought the place yet. I guess we haven't been trying too hard." His fingernails made small dings as he hit them against the glass. "Haven't spread the news that well, either. All they know is that the bottles get taken like every week for the past three years, so he must be the one taking them."
Dean opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. Speechless. The snow had turned into water that was seeping past his coat and into the calves of his pants. Castiel had been there much longer and he had hardly moved. Maybe had gotten used to the cold, growing up in Russia and staying here every Friday to drink a homemade malt liquor in an effort to keep the smallest piece of the world moving like Balthazar had never left it.
Castiel stopped tapping, eyes still on the stars. He didn't seem so much sad as vacant. Like part of him had been poured out. The last time Dean had seen him at Balthazar's grave he was stooped and cracked open, but not now. It seemed that Castiel was done crying, possibly forever. Tears were for emotions too big to understand without a sort of sign, or for people who still held onto some confusion, and in that bewilderment of loss and death there was always the hope that things would get better. Castiel no longer possessed such a delusion, not after coming to Balthazar's grave night after night. It wasn't like Dean's convoluted thoughts and theories of his Father, or the shady memories of his Mother. Castiel had exposed himself to the raw nerve until – not until it didn't hurt or didn't affect him, but so much that he had no choice but to see the natural end to it: No shortcuts, no cheating, no vacation and no other explanation except for the obvious one.
He had no more tears to shed for the occasion, just some bottle to drain and snow to brush off his friend's grave.
How long could he do that? Would his health deteriorate with the sleepless nights and the guilt and the exposure? Or would the landlords catch on when Balthazar doesn't speak to them come their next party? Either way Castiel would still be here, for as long as he could manage it. No one was going to stop him or distract him from it. If he didn't die he'd linger for decades, probably get an urban legend spawned with late night walkers assuming what they were seeing from the road was a ghost first instead of a man.
It was a second-hand ending and Dean felt the corner of his chest thump painfully, like the last time he saw Castiel. He tried to ignore it.
Castiel wasn't looking at him. Dean faced the gravestone – it didn't have a date of birth, since no one knew for sure.
"Why'd you even do it?"
"Do…" Castiel twisted the bottle down into the snow. "Still curious about that, are you? Keeps you up at night?" It was a tease without the matching tone.
Dean snorted. "Hardly. But if you're here and I'm here I don't see why I can't ask." He watched Castiel poke the neck of the bottle with his finger to straighten its stance. He huffed.
"Everyone was crammed in there. Some men were hiding in between machines, but I wasn't. He wasn't.
"We saw each other; he had this angry look on his face. You thought you were being hard on me when you found out what I was doing?" His voice raised not in a questioning tone but a humorous one; it chilled the air and Dean shivered in his coat. "You should have seen what Balthazar could do. I could already tell; if we didn't have to stay quiet he would have been saying something like, 'After this is over, we're going to have a talk.' He would say 'after this' – shoot outs? Hardly news for him. He treats it like breakfast." Castiel coughed lightly into his sleeve, sniffed. "Treated it.
"Someone on some side shot out a window and spooked the next person; I was aiming at somebody's hat and just as I pulled the trigger Balthazar stumbled and fell." He made a shrugging motion, lifting his hands and dropping them back into his lap to twist into themselves again; it was more directed at the stone than Dean.
"Balthazar was shot in the chest."
Castiel hummed. "That's right."
"You were aiming for people's heads?"
"I didn't want anyone to bleed out; if they had to die I thought… well they're dead anyway I'm sure it doesn't matter to you how they went."
Dean remembered how Castiel had shot into the bone white bark of that tree in the Catskill Mountains; so good he scared them both a bit. And Balthazar was on the shorter side; shorter than Castiel especially.
"So – so you couldn't have shot him," Dean said quietly.
Castiel made a noise. It sounded bemused, tolerant. "Any other crime you think I didn't commit now?" He didn't challenge Dean's idea; agreeing or not it was clear Castiel had no use for what Dean esteemed him to be; the damage was already done; the chips fallen, dust settled, they just so happened to have a conversation in the aftermath.
And Dean had permission to question.
Unburdened by Dean's opinion or time sensitive secrets, Castiel had no reason to lie, and Dean had no reason not to ask. About anything he wanted. He adjusted the knotted scarf at his throat and realized it was the soft material that the Novaks had given to him on his twenty-seventh birthday. It had been blindly reached for in his drawer, he hadn't realized… it was too cold to take it off, so he slowly put his hands back down, then into the pockets of his jacket.
"Alastair," he demanded, breath puffing out the name.
"I roughed him up, shot him." Castiel stirred on the ground beside him. "I feel a little bad about that. I wasn't alone, a few others insisted."
"You stuffed him in that house and left him."
"We heard sirens. Think it was just a fire car, but no one wanted to finish the formality once he had died."
"These were Crowley's guys." Castiel nodded once.
"Young. Boys, practically," he added.
"Oh, well." The young recruits were usually fresh out of high school – or freshly dropped out – and feeling invincible. They never learned how to clean up their messes until they were being carted to a trial. They either wasted away in prison or made something of themselves.
Dean chanced a look at Castiel, but his eyes were fixated at the text in front of him, still.
Castiel had lied and murdered and no amount of rationalizing would fix that, really. Even if he felt halfway relieved, soothed by the lack of emotions in Castiel's deep voice, he would never forgive him. If he woke up suddenly only to find the last half year had been a dream he figured he would still never trust Castiel fully again.
But he longed to know. Just one more answer to either solidify his hatred or cast it into a continuous denial; either way they were separated forever.
"And that rich business man. The one we played poker with the summer before last who was friends with Joseph Arturi."
"Toce," Castiel murmured. "You thought I killed him, too?"
"Did you?"
"In a manner of speaking.
"The papers reported he was shot to death – I suppose while that was the main cause it was more a diversion. I shot him in the shoulder so he'd bleed out, but, even if I wasn't there he would be dead.
"Crowley gave me a partner. Some crafty woman from England. Not in the news but if you knew her I wouldn't be surprised. Her name was Bela Talbot." He glanced down at the bottle, didn't see Dean's hands curl tight into fists, hard enough that his skin turned the color of the snow.
"Her?" he said, putting emphasis on the word to give part of his frustration somewhere to go. If Castiel noticed he said nothing.
"It was at a party. A political function; she was some absent man's date, wore a blonde wig and faked sounding like a Republican's wife from Georgia who had to fill in for her husband due to some business he had, it was all rather convincing, coming from her – she was admirably good. Could've been an actress, I bet."
"Yeah," His heart pounded savagely, wondering at the details.
"I was made a waiter, served things for an hour – think I might have seen the governor there," he added fancifully. "I gave Toce a glass of champagne right after she'd gotten one from the tray."
"It was poisoned, wasn't it?"
"Arsenic she hid in a vial under her hat. He excused himself to a private bathroom down the hall from the party. Thought it was a coughing fit."
"And you dragged him outside to shoot him."
"No one had any reason to search for poison that way. She took off her wig and put on a sweater, loosened my tie and we stumbled back into the party, acting drunk. Some officer asked about us and she started to kiss me around the neck – obscene enough to get the pair of us out of the building for rude conduct; it was safer than trying to slip away."
Dean could practically smell some girlish scent on the air. "And then?"
Castiel hesitated. "I would assist in some gambling scams at times, and with all that I'd done enough for Crowley."
"No – Bela, I mean. What of her?"
"We walked to a street and parted ways," Castiel said simply. He spoke like none of the topics had actually occurred to him.
"That's all?" Castiel had no reason to lie of his innocence now, but Dean still couldn't believe it.
"Did you have any other suspicions?" Came the stiff reply. Nothing made him bat an eye except Balthazar. Dean put his hand to his gut to try and compress the sudden pain he felt there. First his heart had ached, but now it was a sort of guilt that was drilling into him.
"You're slightly better than I thought you were." Castiel either understood it or he didn't. He had some loyalty in him, then. Not enough, but Dean could no longer demonize him. That was the trouble with anyone he spent time with: They were all people, uneven and twisted like an aged tree; without the depth of awful characteristics the decent ones carried no weight. Castiel had done some of the worst things, but he wasn't in one dimension; Dean could freely loathe him but only on the account of admitting one or two things he liked. He had to now; even in the heap of his evil deeds they all weren't as sinister as he thought, wanted to think.
People were damn hard, and Dean's posture sank into the ground some more.
"Don't see why you're here," Dean muttered. "Didn't even put the bullet through your friend's head."
Castiel went rather still beside him. Dean felt tempted to say sorry, like Castiel had earned some politeness back for himself.
"If you were in the same room as Sam when he got shot," Castiel said slowly, "Would you feel as though it wasn't your fault?"
Dean's stomach clenched painfully again, as though he'd been punched.
"Sorry," Castiel continued, "I forgot you don't want me to talk about your family like that."
"S'Fine," Dean said, purposefully mumbled. He sat stubborn and quiet next to Castiel for some minutes more, if only to decide what to do next. A wind rustled through, making Dean's ears burn and his teeth crackle together aggressively.
Castiel had to leave the graveyard. He'd die of the exposure – if not today, then the next or the one after that. And how would Dean know if he did, anyway? Anna and Gabriel would never tell him; the obituaries might not cover their neighborhood considering that the paper he got could have whole articles and ads in Italian. Who on Dean's street would care about a Russian man dying? No one; even he shouldn't, but here he was, struggling to get to his frozen, wet feet so he'd feel a bit more domineering as he roughly prodded Castiel's shoulder. "Come on," he said harshly.
"What?" Castiel chanced to stare at him, saw something in his face he didn't like, then flicked over to the black dome over their heads.
"Your family's worried sick and this must be trespassing."
"It's a public space."
"Nothing's a public space at eleven o' clock at night and you know it. Stay and I'll get a policeman over. Tell him you're drunk – or dismantling the graves." He saw Castiel smile at the threat. He stared at the tombstone for another minute, long enough that Dean was seriously considering searching for a payphone to make his bargaining feel more real when Castiel finally rose to his feet, taking the bottle with him and swaying a little as the blood rushed back to his legs.
"Did you come all this way to order me to do something?"
"Came all this way to remind you about those books you like so much. Now I'm just trying to get you home only half frozen." He nudged at Castiel's shoulder and they slowly ambled down the whitened path, out of the yard. He had made a point to get Castiel home, and that made things seem more official to him. It was easy to focus on the task rather than the way Castiel's shoes sounded in echo of his own. They didn't exchange a word until they had crossed back into Coney Island. No one was around, and Dean felt prodded with the image of how the two of them would walk places together, just like this. He was cold and tired, he had no place to be cruel now and revel in its roundabout justice. The only bit of consolation was that Castiel had been truthful, that his explanations had assuaged Dean in a way that time couldn't. It made him want to ask for clarification of other things; personal things he had no use in caring for. He had a question he could not ask – the one thing that Dean wouldn't accept if the answer was no.
He thought up an imposter instead, and spoke out: "Would you do it again? All of this?" Castiel turned his neck, side-eyed him a moment.
"Does it matter?" Dean shrugged, face hot.
"No, I suppose not."
Castiel looked ahead of them. They had gone down Shell Road, and soon a street would break. Dean would go west into Coney Island, and Castiel would go east to Brighton Beach. "I don't know," he said.
"Safe answer,"
"I can't think of a truer one to give," It wasn't insulting, to think that Castiel didn't want to suffer through all this loss and dirty work if he had full knowledge that he'd end up here again; Dean couldn't get upset at that. Perhaps he wished he could, though. His stomach hurt and he blamed Castiel and himself for the pain.
There was a streetlight that Castiel paused at, Dean realizing as he had gone several steps in front of him. It was just before the mouth of Neptune Avenue came upon them and they would be forced to part ways. He turned around and saw that Castiel had pulled out a cigarette; he had it almost to his lips when Dean spotted him, and he paused. The eerie light made him appear white and frail; the way he hesitated when Dean's eyes were upon him made him resemble a schoolboy caught smoking by a teacher. Dean had seen Castiel smoke a thousand times, and he never stopped unless to smile, or if a thought had occurred and he had to slip a comment in before lighting up. Castiel surely wouldn't feel trepidation just by having Dean around – it wasn't as if his chest felt like something had seized up and died inside it every time he looked at Dean.
He dreaded looking at such a hollow, faded creature. Now that Castiel had reaffirmed that some of his memories of the man could be decent, the one in front of him was like a frail imposter. He didn't loathe him entirely, but he wanted him gone.
"Yes?" Castiel asked, finally, taking the cigarette away. He cocked his head and Dean's mouth twitched, sour saliva collecting under his tongue that he couldn't seem to swallow. "What is it?" It was only from concentrating very hard he managed not to spit at him.
"What do you want?" Dean heaved out, and once he finished he put a hand to his chest, feeling his heart thud anxiously there, like a doomed man's fists against the bars of a prison cell. Castiel glazed over again and looked past Dean; arms dangling with the unlit smoke.
"The things that I want?" Castiel echoed, quiet enough that the winds around them nearly blotted the sound from existence, but Dean refused to go closer to something so different from what he'd known.
"That's what I said," Dean groused, but Castiel said nothing in response, only squinted at him in that cool detached way. Finally he worked out a matchbook, lit the end of the rolled cigarette like Dean's question didn't matter. "Come on, give me something. Aged whiskey, a bit of sunshine, the economics to pick themselves up," He frowned. "Balthazar," he said, in a smaller tone, before looking away. He sounded like he was begging for attention; with Castiel he hardly had to ask. "The last two goddamn years of your life back – I won't blame you if you said that, really, you don't need to tell me you don't know to spare my feelings or whatever you were trying to do."
Castiel walked towards him until they were both at the intersection of streets, fingers curled by his mouth. Dean wished to look away, hoped Castiel wouldn't touch him as he fought between feeling angry and hurt – feeling too much, really. He stopped some feet in front of him, looked behind Dean and blew out a cloud of smoke. "I want to go home, Dean." Castiel said, enunciating each word with careful, harsh meaning, so that Dean wouldn't miss it. He slid his eyes back to Dean's face. "That's what I want."
"I'm –," He swallowed, eyes flickering down the road and back. "I can't give you that, Cas. Castiel,"
Castiel's eyes were lethal now, but he pulled back. "I'll come by tomorrow afternoon, I promise," he said. He began to walk the other way, gaining distance from Dean, and was almost on the other side of the road when Dean spoke up.
"Saturday's no good for me," he announced. Castiel paused, looked over his shoulder. "I mean, I got a letter," He touched near his heart, where he had tucked his mail into the pocket sewn into the coat lining. "It's from Crowley."
Castiel slowly turned all the way around. "Is it about –"
"Yes. It is." He worried his lip sharply with his teeth. "And I think it's best if you come with me."
Castiel jolted slightly. "Me?"
"Well you were there in the beginning," Dean reasoned to them both. "If you're not there Crowley might not like it – he has no reason to believe we're not still, well, friendly," Dean said uncomfortably, "Just make an appearance with me, then we'll go to my apartment, and it will be done with."
"And you trust me to go there and see him?"
"You said you had done enough to go with your family out of state?" Castiel nodded, crushing his cigarette butt into the ground. "Then you're capable of saying no to him if he asks. You have nothing else to gain from killing someone else, right?"
Castiel grimaced, but slowly agreed to Dean's idea, then to his meeting place.
"Get home now," Dean said, starting to turn down the street. Castiel watched him carefully, then chuckled in an unamused way.
"If it were so simple," He turned back around and vanished around the next city block without saying a farewell. It was an awful habit, Dean thought, adjusting the gifted scarf around his neck.
Was he making a mistake? Well, yes. But a dreadful one? It wasn't a smart decision, no it certainly wasn't, and yet – he didn't feel sorry for Castiel. Not one bit. And not just because it was his own actions that landed him where he was now; he had too much respect for the other to feel pity on his behalf. If Castiel had no friend or honor to keep him sane these last few months, he had dignity still tied to him, and that kept him upright over love.
He could let Castiel go, have him come back Saturday and gather his things, had intended to, and still wanted to even, but then what would become of him? He'd just vanish forever, and no, no, that sort of ending had no dignity in it – it wasn't the sort of end that would allow Dean to sleep at night; there was no goodbye, no mirrored edge to call it quits on. He knew that Castiel already had enough information to put a hit out on him, and for all Crowley knew they were still perfectly fine, so yes. He hated Castiel in his company in the apartment they once shared, but one final meeting with Crowley, a long walk together and some parting words, yes, he could do that – he could leave on that sort of thing, and maybe find peace afterwards.
It was a sentimental thing – for all of Dean's viciousness he had as many weak spots – of course Castiel leaving forever was something that would give him pause.
xxxx
A/N: I think I accidentally made someone upset when I told them about the upcoming CVB chapters, and how odd it was to write Dean and Castiel as 'two people who aren't necessarily in love with each other anymore'. On another note there is an end to this story in sight! And it's hovering somewhere around 28 chapters and 200,000 words.