Hello lovelies.
Sorry for the long radio silence, but life happens with glorious intensity from time to time.
Have a short chapter with some knoodling and know that chapter 21 is already almost done.
Thunder rolled, bracingly loud, like the death rattle of an enormous beast. Dean woke with a start, searching for a weapon before he even opened his eyes, his hand grasping roughly at the small of his back where his gun should have been. However, there hadn't been a gun there since his shower hours ago- and the .38 was probably still on the bathroom floor where he had left it along with his cell phone and shoes. He opened his eyes, and the room blurred before sharply coming into focus.
Outside Bobby's house a storm raged, but there was no danger to be seen aside from a blue white flash of lightning followed by a clamor that made the windows clatter in their frames. Other than the noise that promised to keep the hunter awake- it was all quite harmless.
Dean scrubbed the back of a wrist over his mouth, stifling a noise that was half groan and half yawn. The old recliner had not been kind to his battered body and he was stiff from sleeping upright, neck and back a knotted mass and he regretted the decision to sleep out here instead of in a bed. But there was no way in hell that he would have been able to drag Cas' drunk ass up the stairs- just as there was no way he would have been able to leave the Angel to sleep downstairs by himself.
He rubbed clumsily at his face and blinked sleep from his eyes. The clock on the wall showed half past three in the afternoon, so at least a few hours of sleep had been caught, and that was a good start- even if his limbs still felt sleep heavy and his shoulder was screaming a quiet reminder of the fact that he had actually paid someone to drive a needle into his soft tissue. It felt an awful lot like someone had taken a baseball bat to his shoulder. He tried not to let the fact that he had never actually been beaten with sports equipment get in the way of his analogy. There had been countless fights resulting in breaks and bruises from crowbars, tire irons, rebar, a few brick walls, traffic pylons, and a myriad of other impromptu weapons- and even if he hadn't actually been able to check 'baseball bat' off the list of things he had been cudgeled with, he let the comparison stand.
He took a slow breath and rolled his neck, trying to loosen the tight muscles. He shot a glance towards the couch, hoping to glimpse a peacefully sleeping Angel which just might help take his mind off the throbbing pain. But, Cas' blankets were gone from the couch, just as the Angel was gone, and the space where he should have been was left disturbingly unoccupied.
"Cas?" Dean was up out of the chair, but his legs cramped and he stumbled, crashing into the coffee table and bashing his shins hard enough to make his eyes tear up. "Son of a bitch- Cas, where are you?"
It wasn't like the Angel to just get up and go on a walk. More often than not, Dean tended to find Cas exactly where he had left him. The earthbound creature just didn't have the same sense of wanderlust as other people.
Dean was instantly on the brink of panic.
Uncomfortable scenarios played through his thoughts, violence and kidnapping and plots most sinister.
He limped as quickly as he could to the kitchen, then down the hall to the bath, all the while calling out in his sleep hoarse voice. He was just about to pull himself upstairs when he was stopped by a tugging at his ankles.
Now, in Dean's life he had been called paranoid by more than a few people, but in his line of work, no one could really blame him. It was just ample amounts of caution, plain and simple.
Was he actually paranoid?
Probably.
But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to rip your face off.
He would never, ever, call it fear- but it was something that felt amazingly similar which told him that he didn't want to look down at his ankles to see what was holding him in place.
His first almost rational thought was that it must be a cat, because, naturally, cats are the right sort of height for assaulting ankles.
But Bobby didn't own a cat.
And cats didn't grab at legs with long, cold hands anyways.
It was probably the familiarity of the old house that had lulled Dean into such a reckless feeling of security. Under any other circumstances he never would have been dumb enough to leave his gun in another room.
And why the hell hadn't he picked it back up when he checked for Cas?
A darkness rose up slowly before him.
Manifesting like Godzilla heaving up from the sea, unnatural as hell and made of old, forgotten nightmares. Only there was no thunderous cry from the deep. This monstrosity was silent, and somehow that made it all the more frightening.
A shadow stood facing him, not against a wall like a proper shadow should stand.
No.
It hung in the air exactly in the way that a shadow shouldn't.
A perverse mockery of nature and sanity.
It stood independent of Dean, and the diffused sunlight that couldn't quite break through the storm clouds, and not seeming to give a good god damn that there was sporadic lightening dancing beyond the windows- and that wasn't the sort of happening that shadows should stand still for.
How the ever living fuck had Sam managed to stay calm enough to pull a gun and chase the thing?
Before Dean's stricken mind could catch up to his body and give him some sort of direction- the shadow flickered. Not like a ghost might but more like the flame of a candle, wavering and guttering in a wind that was not there.
Dean swore using words he didn't know that he knew and as if startled into action, the shadow slithered away from him. Oddly still tethered to his ankles like it should be, but stretching out long and thin down the hall as if Dean were suddenly faced with a lowly setting sun. And there it waited for him against the basement door.
Dean backed away, his legs getting the idea before his mind could catch up, and he put some distance between the two of them, keeping against the far wall as much as possible. He wasn't running away exactly… he was just giving himself some room to maneuver.
Yeah right.
Not even Dean was buying that one.
He was running away as far as the hall would allow him to, and he made a conscious decision not to be ashamed of that.
His extra shadow had gone from being an insubstantial weight around his ankles that he had grown strangely accustomed too over a short period of time, to a very tangible problem with all the comforting reassurance of a dental drill.
The most unnerving part of this whole thing was that Dean didn't know what the shadow was.
Why hadn't he done any research? He had had days since he first noticed the creepy thing, and for some asinine reason he had made up his mind that other things were more important than the god damned apparition that was clinging to him.
What Dean had now was an immediate and very real… well, threat didn't feel like the right name for it on account of it wasn't doing a single thing other than being where it shouldn't be, but that didn't matter, because the whatever-it-was, was existing and that seemed to be more than enough to set Dean on red alert.
The shadow, or creature or whatever it was waited silently.
And as it was an impossible shadow, not bound to the laws and ordinances of sensible things, it could probably wait an eternity for Dean if it felt so inclined. But it seemed impatient, and whether that was a good thing or not was too early to be determined. It flickered again, twisting and then pacing, back and forth, forth and back, to either side of the basement door before throwing its insubstantial arms into the air in an excellent pantomime of frustration.
Dean, being a somewhat rational creature, didn't move an inch closer. He was sort of really enjoying the small buffer that they were sharing right now and he was not particularly interested in giving up on it just yet. He was quickly running through a mental map of where the closest weapons would be stashed- the end table beside the front door had a browning 9mm as well as a canister of salt and a flask of holy water, the cabinet under the stairs had at least one shot gun, there should have been another hand gun and salt in the kitchen atop the fridge- and all of those were a bit too far from his end of the hall to do a lick of good.
"What the hell are you?" Maybe if Dean could get it to talk (sure would save him a lot of research if he could get it to answer him) he could stall long enough to come up with an idea slightly better than standing in the corner fully prepared to punch the shit out of it if it got closer. At the same time, he really didn't think he wanted the shadow to try and talk. He had a feeling that if it could, its voice would be nothing that his ears were meant to hear.
But luck or something similar smiled on Dean and the impossible shadow didn't open its mouth (or whatever it might have had) to speak- instead it silently fluttered its arms once more at the hunter and then again towards the basement door.
"I'm not coming over there." Dean said through clenched teeth. If he was sure of anything it was that he wasn't going to willingly move any closer to the dark thing tethered to his ankles.
The shadow flared up in apparent agitation, like a flame caught in a gust of wind. And if all events up until that point were not enough, the thing gripped the silver door knob and flung the basement door wide before gesturing to the dark portal like one of those prize models on old game shows. However, a shadowy basement was not exactly the sort of consolation prize that Dean had been hoping to win at the end of this mess.
"Look, I don't know what you are, or what you want- but there is no way in hell I'm going down there." Dean wasn't exactly a man of many principals, but he felt that following monsters into the darkness really should be higher on his short list, because if there was ever a bad idea this was it.
The thing's hands flexed into an expressively crude gesture before the bulk of the shadow slid down the dark stairs- down, down, into the lowest level of the house where not even the flashes of lightning could reach.
They were still tethered, the two of them, the heavy shadow stretching out from Dean's feet like a spill of ink staining the hallway. His own real, rightful, proper shadow was a filmy, simpering thing that cowered around his bare feet, jumping about in an erratic juke against the walls and floor while blue-white light flashed again somewhere outside, close enough that he could smell ozone. The drumming rain did it's best to drown out the clap of thunder that followed close on the lightning's heels.
It was a wonder Sam was still sleeping.
It was a wonder that Dean was able to hear Cas' voice over the sounds of such a temperamental weather system.
"-no- won't follow – get-" The Angel's voice was carried oddly on the old house's acoustics. Pieces were missing and threaded though with more thunder, coming distant but firm and almost angry, defiant without hesitation.
And despite his better intentions, Dean found his legs had carried him halfway down the stairs before he even knew what he was doing.
"I have chosen, and you cannot change my mind anymore than he could." Cas' voice came clearer once Dean's feet hit the concrete of the floor. And there was the dark haired Angel, wearing a yellow afghan like a cape around his shoulders, swaying and shaking in the doorway of Bobby's panic room, sheltered in the almost cave like structure.
Dean looked about wildly, half expecting to see someone else down there- because Cas had to have been talking to someone- but there was no one in sight. Not even Dean's extra shadow. Though it was probably lurking somewhere, there just wasn't even half enough light in the basement to see it if it was.
"What're you doing down here, Cas?"
Those crystalline blue eyes caught Dean's, and even in the near darkness they were stunning.
"It's very loud upstairs." The Angel answered simply.
"You scared the hell out of me." Dean confessed while clumsily searching for the hanging chain that would turn on the light.
"I didn't mean to." Which wasn't so much an apology, but Dean took it as one none the less.
The light came on, harsh and glaringly bright. It left both men half blind, blinking at each other in something akin to startled pain.
"Jesus, Cas." Dean's eyes adjusted enough that he could see without squinting. "Are you alright?"
If the Angel tried to say he was fine, Dean would have called him on the lie in an instant. He was paler than normal, which was to say his looked half drowned at this point. His lips were chapped and tinged almost blue beneath a dark smear of dried blood that spread messily from his nose down to his chin- like someone had made an almost effort to clean it off, but had given up before they got started.
And his eyes, those beautiful eyes that had been the first thing Dean had noticed about the Angel, weren't adjusting to the light any better than they had when they first arrived at Bobby's. His pupils were constricted to pinpoints, leaving only wide, deep blue that was sunken deep. Cas had two black eyes, the kind normally only seen on someone who had been in a car accident or been hit really hard on the back of the head.
But the Angel made no attempt to defend or excuse his current condition. "Don't blaspheme, Dean." It wasn't just a casual request, and Dean almost apologized because Cas honestly sounded like he meant it.
The floor was cold on Dean's feet as he covered the distance between them in five quick steps and his hands fell heavy on Cas' shoulders. "What the hell happened to you?"
Cas glanced down at himself, mostly shrouded in that oh so yellow blanket, and where he was holding it tight to his chest, his hands were shaking. "My brother," he spoke so slowly, each word carefully selected and sounded out like he was afraid of them, "decided that the time had come to visit me in person because I had stopped answering him when he spoke to me."
"Michael?"
A look passed through Cas' eyes, just a flicker and then it was gone, something haunted and strangely angry.
"Shouldn't he be off somewhere having a slap fight with Gabriel?"
Cas' jaw clenched and he pulled away from Dean's hands, retreating further into the panic room. And it took Dean all of two stupid seconds to realize what he had just said. If Michael was fee to come down and knock Cas around it meant that he was no longer occupied with Gabriel. Whatever angelic brawl that had been going on between the two brothers was finished and Gabriel hadn't been the one to return.
Oh, god.
How was he going to tell Sam?
Dean followed after Cas, stepping through the heavy door that looked like it had been salvaged from a submarine, and he faltered, coming to a halt. The smell of blood struck him, sticking in the back of his throat and churning in his gut. He looked around wildly and saw where the smell was coming from. A sigil, hastily painted in dark red smears, had been scrawled over a portion of wall in clumsy strokes, all rough curves and smeared in odd places.
"What the fuck happened?"
"I did not wish to speak to my brother, and when he would not leave I was forced to take measures to remove him." Cas let himself sit on the edge of the military cot that had been placed on the far side of the room. He slumped, still staying stubbornly upright despite his obvious exhaustion.
"You banished him?"
There was blood, and far too much of it to have been any part of the smears on Cas' face.
He was about to ask, not because he wanted to know, but because he needed to know- but the yellow blanket had slipped out of Cas' grip, baring a bit of neck and shoulder, and as the Angel awkwardly struggled to pull it back into place, Dean saw it.
Dean saw the blood and the raw skin of Cas' left hand and forearm.
"And what the fuck happened there?" He asked again, this time with more bite to his words and a sharp gesture at Cas' once more hidden arm.
"It is not of import." The Angel avoided eye contact like he was being paid to, his whole body turning slightly away, a defensive hunch to his narrow shoulders.
"Bull shit, Cas. Don't try lying; you're really fucking bad at it."
And Cas continued his childish avoidance, which was stupidly unfair, because Dean was the only one allowed to act like a stubborn little kid and the two of them weren't going to get anywhere like this.
"You're hurt." Dean said softly, in what he hoped was a gentle and convincing manner, like trying to talk a scared kitten out from beneath the sofa.
And those shoulders shrugged easily and without guile. "You worry too much, Dean. It doesn't hurt anymore." His gaze flicked over to the hunter for just a heartbeat, and it held a look of quiet acceptance. "It's only cold."
Dean's anger was back just like that, sudden and visceral and dangerous to anyone other than the Angel sitting across from him- because with as much blood as was smeared over the wall and floor, it should hurt. It should hurt unspeakably bad.
Hands were one of those weirdly sensitive body parts, the kind that if you got hurt almost anywhere else it wouldn't seem even half as bad. It had something to do with nerve endings and blood flow- or something equally stupid sounding which Sam had tried once to explain. But the science behind it was irrelevant, because Dean had torn his own arms up fairly bad a few times and it was a hot, insistent pain that left you agonizingly aware of your own heartbeat pounding through raw veins and torn flesh, and left you gasping and half immobilized with the pain.
It wasn't a pain that came in the cold variety. Cold was reserved for the tail end of a gut shot, when all the choked screaming is done, the heat from the blood starts to fade and all that's left is that quiet, cold feeling you get before you close your eyes and everything inside you gives up.
Dean had done that one once before too, and was he was damn lucky to wake up in a hospital four days later to the beeping and whirring noises of life support machines.
But he had been fortunate enough to get himself shot by a low caliber bullet within a handful of miles of an emergency room staffed with immensely capable paramedics and surgeons.
Cas didn't seem to live by the same strain of tentative luck that had kept Dean alive for so long past his obvious expiration date- because all the Angel had been given was an indignant hunter and a panic room stocked with base medical supplies.
This wasn't luck, or anything close to it.
This was some kind of unspeakably unfair punishment for crimes that Cas could never have committed.
The first aid kit that Dean found and the Angel's apparent ability to clot like a champ were the only things that kept him from bleeding out over the course of the next few tense minutes.
Cas watched him silently, breathing shallow through parted lips. His skin was so much colder than the night before and his plummeting temperature ranked a close and concerning second to the blood which was not restricted to the sigil on the wall alone. Dark puddles had formed near the small desk, another in the doorway and more near the head of the cot where a grey wool blanket was sticky with the dark blood.
By the time Dean had the Angel stitched and bandaged up, he had run through every bad word and insult he knew at least twice.
"What the ever-living-fuck were you thinking?" Dean demanded as colorfully as he could while he sat back on his heels, still holding firmly to Cas' injured arm, the white bandages rough beneath his fingertips.
"Banishments have to be writ in blood, Dean. I did not see any other place to get it from other than myself." He swayed where he still sat, perched dangerously on the edge of the narrow cot. "Now, if you are finished playing doctor may I lay down? The room has started to spin in the opposite direction and it's making my head hurt." The Angel looked tired- not that he hadn't before, just much more so now.
The muscles along Dean's jaw ached from all the clenching and teeth grinding. He helped Cas to lay down and dimly he noticed that his own hands were shaking fairly bad.
Somewhere outside the storm still blew, muffled by layers of concrete and wood, or maybe the hush was because it had finally started to pass them by, moving south, far, far from here… a grumble of thunder shook the house to its foundations, the lights diming for a haphazard moment before shuttering back to their full potential- and maybe there was still a bit more of the storm to wait out.
Or maybe it would never end.
Either felt possible at this point.
"Cas,"
"Yes, Dean?"
"If you die from being fucking stupid enough to cut an artery, I'm going to be really pissed off at you."
"I don't think I could live with myself if you were angry with me." He closed his glossy eyes and huffed softly before curling onto his side, protective around his injured arm. "I suppose I will simply have to hold on a while longer."
Dean didn't know if Cas was mocking him or not, so he lightly kissed corner of the Angel's chapped lips and got to his feet. There were more blankets outside the panic room, piled up in a linen cabinet that smelled strongly of cedar and laundry detergent.
"You better 'hold on'. I promised Sam that you and me would visit him this summer."Dean laid out two more blankets over Cas' curled body, tucking him in until no more than his head showed. "If we don't go, we'll break his big, girly heart."
Cas' eyes slitted and he peered up at the hunter for a oddly punctuated breath before burrowing further beneath his growing nest of blankets. "I would never dare force you to break a promise, especially not one made to your dear Samuel." And he used that ambiguous tone again, the one that could mean he was teasing Dean, or that he was dead serious- there was just no way to tell. It was a bit maddening.
Watching the Angel lay beneath his mound of blankets, still visibly trembling, was a difficult job for Dean. It took him almost a whole minute before he realized he simply couldn't do it. He couldn't let himself idly just stand by.
He wasn't that strong.
More blankets were retrieved from the cabinet. Two more were draped unceremoniously over Cas, and the rest were used as building materials. It had been somewhere on the far side of twenty years since Dean had constructed a blanket fort, and never once had it been without Sammy scurrying around him, helping to lash down the corners. Dean had been much shorter back then, but so had his brother and their forts never needed to be much higher than Bobby's kitchen table. This one would require considerably more planning and technique to get a workable altitude.
Heavy books weighted the upper blanket corners to supply shelves and the chair and desk secured the lower ends, giving the whole thing a dangerous looking slant, but it allowed Dean to stand at almost full height on the higher side, which happened to be the side where the Angel was tucked away, watching him with a curious expression.
"It's a fort." Dean said, pride in his voice.
"It doesn't look very stable." The Angel informed him with a critical eye.
"Shut up. It's awesome." With that minor defense of the structure and his building skills voiced, Dean crawled onto the narrow bed, tucking himself beneath the blankets and pulling a protective arm around Cas. "And if I remember anything about making these when I was little, it's that it gets really fucking warm inside, really quick."He let his hand roam for a curious moment, fluttering over the Angel's hip and then up to rest at the small of his back, pressing calloused fingers against tense muscles beneath his t-shirt.
Cas looked Dean, arching his neck a bit to get a good angle while he peered upward with quiet gratitude echoing in his bright eyes. Cas watched him like he was some kind of savior, like someone far kinder and more wonderful than they both knew him to be. And Dean watched him back, but from about four inches away it wasn't like he had many other options.
If it wasn't for the press of Cas' corpsy-cold body pressed against his, it would be far too hot beneath the mountain of blankets. As it was he had quickly reached a happy medium between shivering and sweating that was just this side of comfortable.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
Cas' breath chuffed against his neck. "You're upset." It wasn't a question
"Damn right I'm upset." He lightly dug his fingers in, feeling flesh dimpling beneath his nails. "You may not know it, but there's this incredible jackass that I'm responsible for, who keeps getting himself hurt for really fucking stupid reasons and I can't seem to do a damn thing to help him."
Cas lowered his eyes with a guilty expression, lashes dark against his cheeks. "He sounds like a very troubling person to have around."
And Dean couldn't hold back the frustrated sound that escaped him. "Sometimes I get the feeling that he might be more trouble than he's worth."
Shaking hands tangled themselves in Dean's shirt collar, resting tenuously against his chest. "And what happens when you decide that he is too much trouble and you were better off before he found you?"
Suddenly they were treading dangerous waters- but Dean never hesitated.
"Not gunna' happen."
Cas' eyes opened and he looked up with far too intense of an expression. "No?"
"No way in hell. I'm a stubborn bastard and it doesn't matter to me how much trouble the clumsy son of a bitch causes. I found him- and I'm keeping him. End of story."
A brief smile flickered over Cas' face and even with the dried blood and the truly exquisite bruising, he was gorgeous. But the smile waivered and doubt crept in. "Dean, we are talking about me… right?"
"We are definitely talking about you." Dean chuckled and it caught painfully in the back of his throat.
Cas' smile came back, just for a heartbeat and breathtakingly tragic. "That makes me very happy."
Dean wanted to say something in return.
He needed to.
But the words wouldn't come any easier than they had last night and he damned the mental barricades that kept him silent.
'I love you and your stupid face' shouldn't be so impossible to get out, but if there had been a Winchester family coat-of-arms it would feature a knight refusing to talk about his feelings. Dean was simply not made for this kind of thing.
He tried t 'let me keep you for forever' and the words only churned and decayed in his mind- a request he could never bring himself to voice.
Not in a million years.
Instead, in way of glorious surrender, Dean roughly pulled the graceless Angel into a tight embrace, an unspoken adaptation of the words he did not have. He was, if nothing else, a man of action.
He pressed their foreheads together and closed his eyes.
And maybe he didn't need words after all.
"I'm sorry for the way I behaved last night." Despite how cold Cas was to the touch, his breath was warm as it curled over Dean's mouth. "Perhaps for you alcohol solves problems, but I do not think it works the same on me. I acted very… very unlike how an Angel should."
"Alcoholism's not for everyone- some go to therapy… or take up baking, or yoga," he opened an eye, "or they get into fights with strangers." Or some people, like the eldest Winchester, enjoyed a healthy mixture of drinking heavily alongside the fist fights.
When Cass did not reply Dean pushed his head more firmly against the Angel's until their noses butted and he made a small noise of complaint. Dean relaxed and attempted to lean back and give the other man a bit of space- but Cas followed him, closing his eyes tight and just pressing against Dean for all he was worth.
"Angels were not made to have vices." He sounded lost in his own words, confused by the half whispered proclamation. "Passion is a human invention."
Soft breaths, shallow and too fast, ghosted over Dean's lips, summoning memories of the night before. And they slammed through his mind, snapping like a guitar string- the visions lasting a second at most. But that was enough. Blood pooled in his stomach and he felt his skin prickling, his heart suddenly hammering at an offer that existed only as memory.
"It is one of your most beautiful weaknesses." The Angel confessed.
Thoughts like those would be Dean's undoing. He didn't want to think too much about last night, about his own behavior and weaknesses, about the very human passion that stirred in his blood even then. He took a sharp breath through his nose and tried to re-rail his train of thoughts.
"Sam calls it a coping mechanism… the alcohol, not the weakness," though really they were the same things when you looked at them the right way.
"There were parts of it that were very unpleasant, even after I woke." Cas' uninjured hand twisted against the fabric of Dean's shirt. Skin brushed against skin and the differences in their temperatures was like fire and ice.
The almost tender proximity between the two of them was playing havoc on Dean's self control. However, in the presence of the bone-numbing cold he found it strangely helpful in corralling his unfavorable bodily reactions and he clung to whatever help the universe felt like offering right now. "Maybe you can try meditation."
Cas huffed, a sharp, irritated sound. "I don't want to meditate."
Dean shook his head slowly, the tips of their noses brushing twice. "I won't make you."
Cas huffed again, the fingers of one hand tracing feeble patterns over Dean's unprotected neck. "I think I like this instead."
"This?"
Dean could see nothing of it, but he had the distinct inclination that Cas licked his own lips, a quick, almost nervous gesture before speaking again.
"Here with you- like this… in your fort. Everything else feels distant and unimportant. This is my coping mechanism, Dean. This makes it easy for me to lie to myself."
"I don't think I'm allowed to be a mechanism." He was only half joking.
"You always have to argue with me." The Angel made an aggravated noise. "Even if it's just for right now, Dean, let me have you."
If Dean was ever asked the most painful requests ever posed to him that one would be the winner.
"Why don't you try and get some sleep?" It sounded almost like someone else was speaking, his voice rough with a warm, violent emotion that clawed at him like a living thing.
The Angel made a complicated noise and fisted his hands in Dean's shirt. "I don't know how much more time either of us will have on this planet but I would prefer not to lose any more of it to sleep." His teeth grazed the edge of Dean's lips in a somewhat threatening and seemingly unconscious gesture.
That wild and raw feeling tightened in Dean's chest, turning each breath into some sort of horrible consequence of living. He wasn't sure if he should feel overwhelmed at the tragedy in the first part or completely lost in the open possibility at the end of Cas' words.
There had been a few times that Sam had accused Dean of getting porn and reality confused- and this must have been one of those instances, because it was very obvious what sort of movie Dean's life would be. There was far more of a promise that this would all end like some kind of awful Shakespearian tragedy with unattainable love and too many dead bodies on the stage.
Cas' voice was soft, his words felt more than heard. "If you knew you were about to die what is the last thing that you would want to do?"
There is nothing in the world that capable of making you more aware of your own mortality than a question like that. Dean felt his spine go rigid and blood rushed to his stomach and turned to rust. "Oh god, Cas. We are so not fucking going to have this talk."
Depthless eyes looked into Dean's from less than a few inches away, all cerulean blue, midnight skies and the endless depths of the seas- universes could be devoured by eyes like those- they probably had. Maybe the body Cas wore was at times painfully human, but those eyes of his were anything but. They were ageless, endless, they were eyes that had watched an eternity, eyes that must have seen nations rise and fall, eyes that had witnessed so much life and so much destruction.
An Angel had asked Dean what his last wish would be.
An Angel who had lived longer than Dean could even begin to wrap his mind around- wanted to know what a simple human wanted to do if he were faced with his last night on Earth.
Maybe if was just a bought of inquisitiveness on Castiel's part- but Dean had a sinking suspicion that it was more than just a morbid curiosity. He had a feeling that Cas was making his own plans and wanted to see how they measured up. Cas was like that. He seemed to take a strange comfort in knowing that he was following some unspoken protocol- a reassurance that he was living like he was supposed to… that he was dying like he was supposed to.
"Dean, what would you do?" There was a need in that question, a need just as deep as those damnable blue eyes.
He didn't feel like he had a right not to answer. He swallowed and felt for all the world like something in his chest had broken, a rough grating feeling against the inside of his ribs that made it hard to breathe. "This, Cas. This is what I would want." His eyes stung slightly and he didn't know why. "I'm in the only place that's ever felt close to home. Sammy's safe and sound," safe was really subjective at this point, "and I've… I've got you."
God, that sounded dumb to his ears.
But Cas didn't seem bothered by it.
"I would have thought you would want to leave with a bit more flash and excitement than tucked up in a fort made of blankets, trying to get some sleep." If it had come from anyone else it would have sounded mocking, but from Cas it was just a simple fact. Dean was a puzzle that he was trying to solve, and this was just one more piece.
A wry smile tugged at the corners of Dean's mouth. "They say you can leave with a whimper or a bang. If you had asked me a year ago I would have suggested something involving five busty co-eds, a few bottles of tequila, and a waterbed." He rolled his head back, stretching his neck and getting some space between the Angel and himself, needing some fresh air- which was incidentally hard to come by in the well crafted fort that he had made. The stupid thing was heating up just like he had predicted it would, and even Cas seemed caught up in the gentle heat wave, his body temperature resembling something closer to a healthy human, but no longer providing that corpsy cold counterbalance to the building warmth.
"These past few weeks have really got to me, Cas. I'm tired. I couldn't take on a single co-ed, much less five."
"What is a co-ed?" The Angel had gotten hung up on that single word, or maybe he was just trying to make his peace with this idea and was trying to balance it against his own end-of-the-world plans.
Dean felt himself smile a little wider, taking the edge off of the morbidity of the conversation. "An attractive college girl with low self esteem and a willingness to experiment." Not the text book definition, but a Dean definition- the kind that always mad Sam scowl.
"You would have wanted to drink and fornicate." Cas said slowly, like he was trying to make sure he was understanding the plan.
"If you wanna' break it down like that, yeah. But it's human nature. When faced with death we want to do our best to feel alive. There's nothing quite as life affirming as really vigorous sex." Yes, it was a little crude, but it was honest. Dean liked the moments that he could be honest.
"And in the last few weeks you have decided that you no longer want any affirmation to your life… you just want to know you are safe, and to sleep?"
Dean adjusted, mindful of Cas' injured arm, and looked the other man in the face, though he avoided the intense eye contact. It did funny things to him and his resolve. "Sometimes you just get tired, Cas. There's no shame in that." There was probably not a single living creature that Dean would ever make that confession to.
"I think I would have wanted to walk one last time in Heaven. There was one I used to be particularly fond of- it was an eternal Tuesday that belonged to autistic man who had drowned in the bath."
Dean stared blankly, and for the first time since they had met, Cas seemed able to read that look of confusion and offered his version of clarification.
"Each soul makes their own Heaven, Dean. His was a Tuesday, and it was the most tranquil, perfect Tuesday."
Dean had been worried about the dark place that this convocation could have headed, but instead it was just… weird, which was actually far more on par for everything in Dean's life since meeting the Angel.
So Dean smiled. It was uncomfortably fond and did nothing to help that broken feeling inside. "I don't get you sometimes."
"You've got me if you want me." There was no coy smile, no flirtatious eyes, just the simple fact. "That Heaven is far away and no longer an option. But I would be willing to settle for something… life affirming if you're not too tired."
"I-" that was all Dean had.
He had been given many more indecent proposals in his life.
Hell, he had given many, far more indecent proposals.
"Are Angels allowed to?" What kind of question was that? Was he stalling? For the love of god, he was stalling.
His mind stumbled over a question he had been asked what felt like a lifetime ago. Have you ever wanted something so bad, for so long, only to finally be told you can have it- but now you don't have a fucking clue what to do with it?
"Dean," Cas' voice was as rough as ever, but there was a strange gentleness to it. "I've already fallen as far as I can. If I am going to die, I would like to at least say that at some point that I lived."
Excuses.
Glaringly brilliant excuses roared through Dean's mind. It was a stampede of reasons why they could not just up and give into that long strung out 'will they won't they' vibe that had been eating away at him for what felt like weeks.
All valid, logical reasons.
Sam would be awake soon, and would probably come looking for them.
Cas had been on the near side of death less than an hour ago. And freakishly inhuman ability to heal aside, it really seemed like a good reason to take it easy for a bit.
This was Bobby's house and if he ever found out that Dean had had sex in it he would be barred for life.
The idea of sex with a man, Angel or not, still confused and sent some small part of him into a panic.
Most importantly, if he couldn't tell Cas that he loved him, what business did he have-
Cas was kissing him, and all those excuses sort of dissolved in a tide of want and need. Dean let his eyes close and he blocked out the world beyond those gentle lips that searched for an answer against his. The storm was gone, the panic room was gone, their little fort- none of it mattered for a moment. It was just him and the strangest creature to ever walk the Earth, who had (surly out of madness) decided to waste his time, possibly his last few hours, on a broken down hunter.
Cas tasted like innocence.
Dean probably tasted more like desperation.
The kiss fell apart, and Dean was left looking into those eyes again, those eyes that held a well of doubt, pleading to be reassured.
There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.
Dean did everything he could to give that reassurance.
He closed the distance between them again, and did his best to tell with his hands and his lips and any other able and willing part of his body the things that he could not put into words.
.:.
Maybe providence just demanded ill timed interruptions in the face of things going well for once.
Maybe Sam had been born with the specific job to rub his big brother the wrong way whenever he could- lord knew he had been doing it since he was about eight years old and figured out how to get under Dean's skin.
Or maybe Sam was just the biggest cock-block ever born.
Cas had taken a small nap after their second round of proving that they were both very much alive- they had just started in on a third go, Dean finally finding a rhythm he could keep, finally realizing that if he didn't want to come undone like a teenager in his first backseat fumble, that he couldn't look at the man beneath him, not when Cas was saying his name like that, all wrecked and half gone.
But someone else was saying his name, none too close, but painfully familiar and getting louder each time.
Sam knocked once on the heavy door to the panic room and Dean went as still as stone, quiet thanks under his breath that him and Cas were still well and truly hidden in the fort that he had built, thus giving Sammy no idea what he was interrupting.
"You in here, Dean?" His voice was hardly more than a whisper, obviously worried that he might be waking them up. Dean hardly heard his brother's voice over the pounding of his own blood or Cas' shallow, ragged breaths.
"Yeah."And was that his voice? It sure didn't sound like his voice.
"I was-"
"Go away, Samuel." Cas interrupted in a surprisingly forceful tone. His eyes were closed tight, his hips still making small, unconscious movements, trying to encourage Dean to keep going.
Dean was fairly certain this is how he would die.
There were certainly worst ways to go.
"I… the storm let up, I was thinking we should go grocery shopping." Sam suddenly sounded very uncertain and Dean knew his brother was only seconds from figuring out what he had walked in on.
But Cas beat him to the punch line.
Cas didn't seem to have much patience right now.
"We are trying to have vigorous sex, Samuel. Go away- I won't tell you again." It was a threat as much as a promise.
Sam made what could best be described as a disgruntled noise and the sound of the door swinging loudly on it hinges proceeded his retreating footsteps.
Dean almost laughed, but Cas smothered it out of him. And who had taught him to kiss like this? It was intoxicating; the drag of Cas' hands through is hair and the way he bit at Dean's mouth, drawing incredulous sounds between blasphemy and the Angel's name.
It was worse than the lulling hum of morphine.
Better than the amber fog of being perfectly drunk.
It was all adrenaline and hormones and promises made with lips instead of words.
Dean was well and truly lost.
And he didn't want to be found.