Instinct
Rating: P12
Summary: Dean reacted on pure instinct. Instinct he didn't know he even had.
Disclaimer: All belongs to Kripke Enterprises and Warner Bros. Television. Just borrowing their genius creation.
Author's Note: Small fix-it fic here for 15x18 "Despair". Well, an attempt at one at least. This is less fix-it than I had hoped, but maybe, for now… I still believe we'll get closure, so I take this as a first step. You know. To be on the safe side, sorta.
A string of No's.
That was all that was going around in his head right now.
No. No. No. No. No. No no no no no nonononononono...
More his brain wasn't able to process. It was too much. It was the past twelve years in one moment. It was everything they had ever done, ever said, ever achieved, ever endured, ever lost, ever won.
It was their life in one enormous memory, passing before him, fleeting, and gone.
Because he knew what was coming. He knew he was going to lose Cas within the next seconds. He knew they were going to end.
"Don't do this, Cas," he begged. He didn't ask, didn't suggest. He begged, and hell, he would have fallen to his knees doing so if he had thought it could have changed anything.
The sickening squelching sound of the portal into the Empty opening made him turn around. And if possible, his heart sunk even deeper than it already had. Then the door to the room slammed open and Dean would have given everything, soul included, to stop time.
"Cas..." His broken voice, filled with emotion, near-whispered when he turned back to his friend. But Cas just smiled, a smile composed of sadness and happiness, or maybe relief, and laid a hand on Dean's shoulder. The shoulder the angel had once grabbed to pull Dean out of hell.
In that moment between seconds, when he felt Cas' hand applying pressure to push him out of the way, Dean reacted on pure instinct. Instinct he didn't know he even had. Instinct he would never, in a million years, have expected from himself.
Because his instinct didn't just make him grab Cas' arm to hold him fast and stop him.
Dean's instinct also pulled and crushed the angel against his own body, and made him claim the lips of his best friend.
His best friend.
Instinct had no active, processing mind. Instinct didn't wonder why he would kiss that best friend. While he felt the sudden need to let go of something he had been holding in for so long. Instinct just acted. Made Dean act. Act on longings and desires, on fears and on despair. All of which were laid into the kiss, passionate as it was reverent, expressing what Cas had just confessed and Dean was not yet ready to say.
When they parted, breathing heavily, foreheads still touching, Dean's hands continued to cling to Cas' coat, fabric buried in his tightly closed fists.
"Cas, please don't-"
"Thank you, Dean," he interrupted him and leaned back a little to look into Dean's eyes, tears matching his now flowing from them. "Thank you."
A gentle hand brushed Dean's cheek in a fleeting gesture.
Then Castiel slipped away, slipped from Dean's weakening grasp as the hunter felt overwhelmed with defeat and loss and pain, and he stumbled backwards, into the wall, as Cas was engulfed in blackness.
The last thing Dean saw was Castiel's contently smiling face.
And in Dean, a whole different kind of darkness spread.
The End?