The first week after Kevin died and Castiel came back to Dean, the two lived in the bunker in some semblance of domestic bliss. Dean, being plagued with nightmares began to ask Cas to share a bed with him. The angel's always seemed to soothe the hunter's mind. Castiel began to make it a habit of sleeping next to Dean because after all, even though he had a form of his grace back, it wasn't his, and so Castiel was still essentially, human and the warm body next to him comforted the angel when he missed Heaven just a little too much. It never progressed to anything more than the two of them pressed up against each other, cuddling in the small bed, and both men were fine with that.
Castiel almost always woke to an empty bed and the smell of fresh coffee or some sort of breakfast food wafting down the hallway and into Dean's room from the kitchen. He hadn't known there were so many types of breakfast foods until Dean started to cook for him. Oatmeal, english muffins, pancakes, waffles, and even fruit salad had all made their way from a plate made up by a human, into the stomach of the angel in that first week.
The two men had slunk around the house, doing chores and research, trying to keep each others minds off of the angel war and the related events. And it worked for awhile. Dean and Cas would shuffle around the bunker, enjoying each others company, laughing and joking, sleeping together and sharing meal times. At least until Malachai all but blew up Manhattan.
Dean had been curled up on the couch, Castiel beside him, flicking through the channels on the flat screen in the living room of the bunker when he came across a news channel shoing footage of a disaster in Manhattan. At first he thought he was watching some kind of alien horror movie or something until a female reporter came on voiceover saying "It seems this large chain of explosions were set off from a single point. A team of twelve young people set off a bomb in an old hotel in lower Manhattan. They were seen coming out of the ruined building with supposedly not a scratch on them, and then are said to have simply dissapeared." The footage on the television looked as if someone had caught it on a cellphone, but Castiel could clearly see that it was Malachai and a group of his cronies that were emerging from a smoking and crumbling hotel.
"That- That's him." He said, sitting straight up and turning to face the hunter next to him. "That's Malachai. Malachai blew up half of New York."
"Malachai?" Dean asked, curious at the look of shock and terror that mingled on the angel's face.
"He's the angel who tortured me. Bartholomew's newest enemy. He's not exactly a nice guy. Just as bad as Bartholomew, maybe worse."
"We gotta stop this dickface. Right now." Dean jumped up off of the couch and went into the library, pulling book after book on angels off of the shelves. "We don't have the angel tablet anymore, but we still have most of kevin's research. We might be able to slow him down a little even if we can't stop him."
Castiel followed quietly behind Dean as he ran about the room, tossing books haphazardly across the table in the middle of the room, on top of Kevin's research that neither of them had had the heart to clean up in the last week. "Are you sure this is a good idea Dean? Neither of us is prepared to fight an angel at nearly full power right now. We haven't been hunting in more than a week, and we don't even know where he is. We could both be killed, Dean."
Dean stilled at Castiel's words. "I know we haven't been out in a while, Cas. This is a chance to get back at it. Maybe we can even find Sammy while we're at it. I need to do this Cas. It's what I do best, if you hadn't noticed. And lucky for us, Charlie rigged the map table to track angels before she left with Dorothy. I just have to turn it on. So we can find out where Malachai is."
"Alright Dean. That's one problem solved. But how do we stop Malachai even if we do find him?" Castiel asked hesitantly.
"I don't know, Cas. That's what the books are for. Go look through them why don't you? I'll see if I can get the map table working." And with that Dean turned his back on the angel and walked out of the room.
Castiel sat down at the table in the middle of the library, pulling a book from the top of the pile in the middle of it, and began to read while his hunter fiddled with the controls along the wall in the next room.
Hours later, Dean gave a shout from the control room. A loud, resounding "YES!" This is what woke Castiel in the library. He had dozed off some time ago while in the middle of a book that told of how to trap angels, something they already knew how to do. He thought that maybe this book could tell him of some new way to do it, or how to trap them permanently, but had no such luck.
But when Dean shouted in triumph from the control room, Castiel jumped from his seat. The table in the middle of the control room was lit up like a Christmas tree with yellow lights, most of them concentrated in two areas of the US. It looked like there was a cluster of about 800 angels somewhere in the south eastern part of Nevada, and another bunch of approximately 1000 in the northwest corner of Ohio. "There, and there" Dean said pointing to the two clusters of light when Cas joined him to lean over the blinking table "are our best bets at finding and taking out either Bartholomew or Malachai."
"Dean, I hope you know that if we take out one of them and the other finds out, they will take Heaven for themselves. If and when they find out how to get back to Heaven anyways." Castiel reasoned.
"I know, Cas. But neither of them have any more of an idea as how to how to reverse Metatron's spell than we do, so we'll deal with whichever one comes first, and then we'll deal with the second one. Okay?" Dean looked desperately to Castiel for confirmation.
Cas nodded. "Both sides want me Dean. If we go in together, I put you at great risk. are you sure you want to do this?"
"Of course, Cas." Dean said. "I need you with me on this one man. I can't do it without you."
"I am with you, Dean. Always." Castiel responded. The blush that rose to Dean's face was a perfect reward. "But we need another way to kill them than an angel blade. There's no way to guarantee that either one of us will be able to get close enough to Malachai or Bartholomew to use one."
"Well then, let's do some research."
Cas and Dean walked back into the library together and sat back down at the table, Dean reaching for Kevin's remaining translations of the angel tablet, Cas picking up the book he had fallen asleep reading. They sat there together, reading in silence late into the night, and both fell asleep at the table.
The next morning Dean woke up with a headache and left Cas in the bunker to go for a drive. Cas woke up to find the bunker entirely empty of life except for him, and freaked out. He called Dean incessantly, leaving messages on all of his phones. Dean refused to pick up while he was on the highway. He needed to think and being around Cas really didn't help. After the fifth call from the angel, Dean pulled over and put all three of his phones in the trunk of the Impala, where he couldn't hear them.
There was no way he was going to live through this hunt. He or Castiel.
And maybe that's the whole point of doing this. Dean thought as he drove down a dirt road.
It's not like there's anything left here for me. And there wasn't. Not really. He knew getting Sam back was nearly impossible, Charlie was in Oz and who knew when or even if she was going to come back, Kevin is dead, Bobby is dead.
The only thing left for me on earth in Cas. And he was probably going to die in the fight too. Castiel has another angel's grace in him, he definately is not at full power, and he's wanted by both sides of the angel war.
We both die, I go to Heaven, Cas goes wherever angels go when they die.
But there was just one little problem with that thought. Dean didn't want Castiel to die. He didn't want to never be able to see his angel ever again.
Jesus when did I start thinking of him as "my angel?" He didn't know. But it made sense. They had a "profound bond" as Cas called it. They were inexplicably linked.
If I die, then I want to be with Cas when it happens. If I have to die, I want to die with him there. Well that was an odd thought. Dean had just gone from basically suicidal to genuinely sentimantal.
I should call him. Dean pulledd over to the side of the road, and opened the trunk to find his ringing cell phone. It was Cas. Of course it was. The poor angel was out of his mind with worry.
"Hey, Cas. Look man, I-"
"DON'T YOU 'LOOK MAN' ME DEAN WINCHESTER! I HAVE BEEN WORRIED SICK ABOUT YOU. YOU BEEN GONE FOR HOURS! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?" Cas yelled into the phone when Dean picked up.
Dean moved the phone away from his ear a little. Damn, the angel could yell. I wonder what he would shout like that in- Oh no. There was no way Dean was thinking about that. No way in Hell. Goddamnit, I'm fucking straight!
"Cas, just hold a minute okay? I'm out on some dirt road in the middle off the main highway away from the bunker. Just calm down a little. I needed some time to think, so I went for a drive."
"Damn it, Dean. Are you okay?" Cas sounded a little shell shocked. Like he thought Dean had been abducted or something. The bunker was prety much non-existant to the rest of the world. The only other person besides the two of them who knew about it was Gadreel, and he was long gone.
"Yeah, Cas. I'm fine. I'll be back soon. I'll bring lunch. Just stay put."
"I was worried about you, Dean. At least leave a note next time if you're not going to pick up your phone." And with that Cas hung up.
Christ, that guy is confusing as Hell. At least Dean had a little time on his own left before he had to face his angels wrath. Maybe bringing him a burger will make him less likely to smite me. Dean chuckled to himself at the thought.
The second Cas heard the front door close, he ran to the front room and tackled Dean to the floor in a hug, knocking the take-out bag from Biggerson's across the room and Dean's breath from his body.
"Dude, I wasn't gone that long!" Dean laughed after regaining his breath and trying to disentangle himself from Cas. But Cas was having none of it. He wrapped his arms tighter around Dean's torso.
"I was worried, Dean." he grumbled into the other man's shoulder.
The hunter chuckled lightly. "Well if you won't let me go, I guess I can't get you that burger."
Castiel lifted his head from Dean's shoulder and smiled down at the man on the floor beneath him. He crawled slowly off of the hunter and stood, offering his hand help the othe man up. Dean took it, and walked across the room to retrieve the take-out bag that had somehow been tossed across the room when Cas attacked him. "Come on, Cas. Let's go eat." Dean said, throwing his arm across his angel's shoulders and pulling him into the kitchen.