As soon as Lexi was gone, Dean stripped the bed.
Mostly because everything felt dirty and tainted now by his betrayal of Cas, but also because he didn't want the reminders of exactly how he had betrayed his boyfriend to stain the sheets that the other boy had picked out just for him, for them. Dean knew it was ridiculous, he had had enough sex with enough people to know that everything would wash out, but his whole room smelled wrong and felt wrong and unclean and not the safe haven that Cas had meant for it to be for them anymore and he just needed everything to stop being fucked up so his heart could start beating again because right now he felt pretty fucking dead inside. He felt like maybe the sheets could be washed, that they could be salvaged, but he wasn't sure about himself.
He kept reminding himself that it was all worth it, everything he did to prove himself to his certifiably insane father that he was 'fixed' or whatever so that he could just get away and get back to Cas. Surely, he would forgive him; Cas had to forgive him because if he didn't then Dean would never be able to forgive himself. This already felt like the biggest mistake of his life and he had said as much to Lexi after he came, which had taken a while because even though his nerve endings kept saying that having sex with the call girl was nice and warm and tight like it was supposed to be when you had sex, biology couldn't override the memories of Cas and how his face had looked after just seeing him talking to Cassie that one fucking time or imagining how much worse the expression would be when he told the other boy about this.
Lexi had just given him a sympathetic look as she had gotten dressed and Dean had decided then and there that he would never blame her for this. She was just as much a victim as he was and by letting John force her to do something that she didn't want to do either even though technically it was her job and she had known what she was coming over for, there was no way that Lexi could have prepared herself for the emotional rollercoaster that she had just been through. Dean just added that guilt on top of all of the rest that he was already feeling and resolved to make this up to her somehow if he ever got the chance.
Once the sheets were off he reached for the pillows because some of Lexi's makeup was on the pillowcases on his side of the bed and nope, the tear stains and the mascara smears were probably even worse to look at than any of the other body fluids that had gotten on the sheets. But when he picked up Cas's pillows on the side of the bed that was furthest away from the door he was hit full force with the smell of his boyfriend; the clean minty smell that made his skin tingle and his heart pound only now it brought how completely and utterly he had failed the other boy into sharp relief as he hugged the pillow to his chest and his knees gave out underneath him.
Dean liked to sleep on the side near the door because even though he and Cas had started to feel like this apartment belonged to just them more than it had ever belonged to him and Sam and their dad when it had been just the three Winchesters living there, Dean had never been able to shake the feeling that something would happen. That John would walk in on them sleeping in the same bed together and just know that they were more than friends even if he had never caught them doing anything else. He had thought that maybe by sleeping near the door he could stop John before he hurt Cas, but he hadn't even been able to do that and the memory of how his boyfriend's head had cracked against the bathroom door after his dad had punched Cas just made Dean sob harder as he dropped to his side on the floor and curled up in the fetal position around Cas's pillow.
He tried to compose himself when he heard his dad coming back into the apartment, not even realizing that the older man had left until his opportunity to run to the next apartment over and beg for help had already slipped out of his grasp. Dean just felt so drained and tired and empty that when John showed up at his bedroom door and looked down on him with his lip curled up in disgust, he couldn't even find it in himself to care that he was getting that look from the one person he used to dread disappointing.
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get up," John ordered, letting out a heavy sigh as he looked around Dean's repainted bedroom with obvious disdain on his face. "I want you get all of that boy's shit gathered together. Anything he gave you and then pack a bag."
"What do you mean pack a bag?" Dean asked, levering himself up into a sitting position so that he could prop his back against the cushion of his bare mattress. "I have school on Monday, I've already missed a week. I can't miss any more or they aren't going to let me graduate."
"You don't think I don't know that?" John snapped, slapping his hand hard against the doorframe and causing his shirt to rise up enough at his hip that Dean could see that he still had the gun he had been using to threaten Cas tucked into his waistband. "You don't think that the first thing I did when I saw you fucking masquerading with that faggot on the news was call the school and ask why the hell you were in Chicago and not where you were supposed to fucking be? No, if you don't give a damn about your education then neither do I. You're not going back, so pack a bag now."
Dean's heart had started pounding in his chest again which was good because that meant that he wasn't dead, but that also meant that this whole nightmare with his dad didn't look like it was going to be ending anytime soon. He had thought that if he did what John wanted him to do with Lexi then the older man would let him go, consider him absolved of all of his deviant desires for Cas and maybe if he was lucky go back to ignoring him like John usually did. But was he willing to risk Cas's life by refusing to do something that the obviously unstable man with the firearm wanted him to do?
Not in a million years.
He just had to keep up the charade, the perfect son charade that he hadn't realized that he had been resenting and faking for years while John just did whatever the fuck he wanted and neglected him and Sam in the process until just now. Dean could do this and just like with Lexi he didn't really have a choice, not if he wanted to keep Cas safe from John. But he sure as fuck would take the first opportunity to run away from his dad and back to his real family as soon as he fucking could.
"Fine, I'll pack a bag," Dean agreed, climbing stiffly to his feet and going back to stripping the bed and gathering up Cas's things that he had left at the apartment while trying to act like it wasn't breaking his heart by even pretending to be okay with erasing the love of his life from his room because it was. "What am I doing with Cas's stuff?"
"I don't ever want to hear you say his name again," his father ordered, reaching into his back pocket and tossing a small roll of trash bags in Dean's direction. "Just pack up his shit and let's get the hell out of here. I have a job to finish in Eudora and you're coming with me. At least until I'm sure you've learned your lesson."
"And what fucking lesson is that, dad?" Dean asked, making sure the sarcastic emphasis that he put on John's title was obvious because after this he wasn't sure if would ever be able to think of the older man as his father anymore. Dads didn't do this, they were supposed to support you and love you and take care of you; he shook his head as he snatched up Castiel's duffle bag that he had left off of the floor and shoved a couple of books that he had borrowed from the other boy into it with stiff, jerky movements.
"You think that this is easy for me?" John retaliated, narrowing his eyes as he watched Dean go around his room and gather books and clothes and CDs that he should've noticed before now as not belonging to his son. "Do you think I like doing this to you? Because I don't, Dean."
"Well you could have fucking fooled me!" Dean shouted, swallowing hard when he saw his father's fist clench at his side and felt the bruising that covered one side of his face throb almost as if in response. He was pushing, being reckless and argumentative wasn't going to get him back to Cas, but he couldn't help himself from being frustrated by John's lack of remorse.
"Despite what you may think," John replied lowly, his voice dangerous and hard sounding as he spoke to Dean through gritted teeth. "I have your best interests at heart."
Dean scoffed in disbelief and went back to carefully packing up Castiel's stuff, arranging everything in the empty spaces of his boyfriend's duffle bag so that maybe Cas would be able to read the message he was trying to project between the t-shits ad the books that were making the bag bulge at the seams. This felt so much worse than when he had packed up Cas's stuff after Thanksgiving, when he had mistakenly thought that the other boy had broken up with him when really Cas just needed space to sort himself out after Dean had seen the scars on his back for the first time.
Back then he had just tossed everything into a box because he wanted to get the reminders of what he had lost so fucking fast as far away as he could before he had started crying and begging Cas to stay with him. But now, now he wanted to hold onto everything that Cas had trusted him with; all of the secrets about his past and the possessions that he had left at the apartment because he thought they would be safe there and the tentative plans they had started to make for their future together felt like it was slipping away from him. It could all disappear for good if he pissed off John enough and that was the only thing keeping him from telling his father exactly where he could shove his sudden interest in Dean's life.
"You have—" John started his voice faltering and causing Dean to look up from where he had gone to find a bag of his own that he could take with him wherever he father was planning on spiriting him off to. The older man cleared his throat and crossed his arms tightly over his chest, the pained expression he had been wearing changing into steely, haunted resolve almost as soon as he saw Dean's movements slow. "I'm doing you a favor, Dean. I know you're pissed off right now and you think that I'm punishing you, but you're just confused. Once you're away from that boy and whatever nonsense he's been filling your head with then you'll understand that."
"Dad, I kissed Ca—" Dean began only to be silenced abruptly by John hitting the doorframe in frustration again, letting out an angry growl this time that was just like the sound he had made right before knocking Dean unconscious with the lamp off the end table in the living room.
"I fucking care how it happened, Dean!" John screamed, face going red with anger before the older man took a deep breath and ran and agitated hand through his hair. "I don't care, alright? You didn't know what you were getting yourself into with him and he took advantage of you being a good person by being friends with him and he twisted into something else. That's what those kind of people do, they drag you down into the filth with them and then run away when shit gets real."
Dean was frozen to the spot, thanking god that it was him who was having to deal with John having very obviously lost his mind and not Sammy because his younger brother would've already popped off about the 'those kind of people' comment and gotten himself killed. But Dean knew how stubborn his dad could be and usually once he had made him mind up it was pointless arguing with him. So if John was crazy and crazy was saying that he was going to shoot Cas if Dean didn't do what he was told and kept arguing with him then Dean was going to not poke crazy with a stick and be surprised when he got the exact response he knew he had been threatened with.
So he just nodded meekly and swallowed down all of the things he wanted to say in his boyfriend's defense because words weren't going to be what kept John from hunting down Cas and planting a round in his chest, his dad was way beyond being reasoned with like a normal person. Rational was just going to end up getting both Dean and Cas killed. John harrumphed in approval as Dean moved to his dresser and started shoving clothes into his backpack before moving out of Dean's line of sight and back down the hallway towards his bedroom that was between Dean and the front door of the apartment.
Dean didn't look at the spiral notebook that was there that he and Cas used to write notes to each other in class with or at the college admission applications that were stuck between its dog-eared pages. He didn't want to think about them, but he also needed some part of Cas to stay with him; a part that was real and tangible and didn't reside inside his chest nestled close to his heart and wrapped around his lungs because right now it felt like that part was trying to claw its way out of his chest taking all of his vital organs with it in revulsion from what Dean had done with Lisa.
But he couldn't think about that or he would start crying and maybe hyperventilating and maybe Dean would finally know how Cas felt during his panic attacks and he could sympathize a little better like he had stupidly always wanted to and then John would know that Dean wasn't 'fixed'; would never be fixed until he saw that his boyfriend was safe and spent the rest of his life making amends to the man he loved for putting them in this situation to begin with. He knew that it would take the rest of his life for him to forgive himself, he just hoped that Cas would be more understanding.
He lingered as long as he could in his bedroom, running his fingers over the blue painted walls and looking forlornly at his guitar in the corner of the room on its stand. Dean doubted he would be back in enough time to play 'Love Me Tender' for Cas on Valentine's Day, but the endgame was being alive long enough to get to play it for the other boy at all; the day didn't matter in retrospect. Dean grabbed up his backpack along with Cas's duffle bag that didn't contain nearly everything that belonged to the other boy that had migrated over to the apartment, but he was counting on John not knowing what was his and what belonged to his boyfriend. He also had a trash bag filled with some random clothes, much of which was really a mish-mash of stuff that belonged to him and stuff that he liked to wear of Cas's; the soiled bedsheets and blankets of his bed he had just left on the floor.
Carrying it all down the hallway and into the living room, Dean stopped short when he saw his dad frowning down at the phone that he had taken from him; making a face at the background picture which was one of him and Cas bundled up against the cold with noses gone red from playing in the snow pressed together in an Eskimo kiss because that's all that Dean had been able to coax out of his boyfriend with Gabe and Sam right there watching them. He didn't realize he was shaking until his dad looked up at him and the older man's frown deepened; John made a move to flip the outdated phone shut but then hesitated, looking down at the device again and then at the bags in Dean's hands.
"That everything?" John asked gruffly, narrowing his eyes at his eldest son's nod suspiciously. "Is he the one who painted that room?"
"Yes," Dean said softly, unable to take his eyes off the phone in John's hand as he calculated the possibility of being able to snatch the device away from the other man before he got knocked out again or worse. "For my birthday."
John gave a derisive snort and looked back down at the phone when it trilled in his hands, causing the screen to flash with an incoming text message and Dean just hoped it was from someone who Cas had asked for help from. Surely the cops would be busting down the door any minute to save him; Sheriff Mills with her no nonsense attitude made the empty spot where his mom used to be twinge in his chest every time she got all soft eyed and sympathetic when Dean had tagged along with Bobby the few times that John had gotten picked up by the cops before either of them could get there. He hadn't really ever talked to her much outside of "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am", but Bobby said she was good people and he trusted his uncle more than any other person on the face of the planet; if Cas had gone to Bobby then everything was going to be alright again soon.
"Who is it?" Dean asked desperately, stupidly knowing that his dad wasn't going to give him a straight answer and regretting the words as soon as they were out of his mouth because John snapped the phone shut with such force that he wouldn't be surprised if the screen had cracked.
"Did he buy you those sheets too or did you pick them out together while you were playing house in the apartment that I was paying for?" John sneered; thumbing the off-button on Dean's phone and shoving it back deeply into the pocket of his jeans.
Dean could only watch and mouth soundlessly at his dad, resisting the urge to point out exactly who it was that had paid for all the shit in this apartment because it sure as hell hadn't been John, but that would be stupid so he just nodded again and dropped the bags he was holding next to the couch. John jutted his chin back into the direction of the bedroom and failed to hide the disgust that was on his face as he looked at Dean.
"Get those too," John explained. "I don't want any of his shit here when we come back. With any luck by then you won't want it here either."
"How long are we going to be gone? " Dean asked softly, hesitating as he turned back towards his bedroom because he really did not want to go. If they left then how would Cas or Bobby or Sam ever know where to find him, especially if John wouldn't let him touch a phone?
"Until you stop wanting to come back," the older man answered drily and Dean nodded like he understood but really he didn't. Was that how it was for John, did he just never come home unless he had to because he didn't want to? Was it that painful for him to be a father to him and Sam when he was doing it all on his own? "Put all his stuff in the hallway and then we're leaving."
Dean turned away from his dad so that he wouldn't see how his eyes were shining and started back towards his room, ignoring the hole in the wall and the broken bathroom door because he was pretty sure he would collapse onto the floor and not be able to get back up if he did. John would probably just hit him some more or call him weak before shooting him and then Cas would never know what happened to him and he couldn't stand the thought of the other boy not getting a chance to say goodbye. That sounded like the worst form of torture imaginable.
It wasn't until he and John were settling into the older man's truck, John's duffle bag and Dean's backpack tossed into the bed of the pickup that John spoke up and said something that gave his son just the faintest glimmer of hope. But that glimmer was extinguished once he registered the full meaning behind the words, like oxygen being sucked out a fireplace and leaving his heart a barely recognizable cavern full of wispy embers and barely there heat. Heat that felt like it was dissipating the more hopeless his situation got, along with the smell of Cas that lingered on his clothes and the taste of the other boy that had long since faded from his lips.
"You're gonna make a call," John told him simply, cranking the ignition and glancing over his shoulder before he started to back out. Dean watched as the older man grimaced and pulled the gun out of his waistband, settling it instead under his thigh that was the furthest away from his son. "And you're going to say exactly what I tell you to say and nothing more. You understand?"
Dean nodded beside his father and bit his lip to keep from screaming, hands twitching on his lap as they pulled out of the parking lot of the apartment complex and headed east out of town. It felt like the entire universe was conspiring against him and Cas to keep them apart, how much more abuse could his boyfriend take before something finally broke? How many more secrets and lies would it take for Dean to be able to get back to Cas and would the other boy still want the person that he had to become in order to stay alive? Dean very highly doubted it.
Cas didn't know what he was expecting when he anxiously slid out of the elevator and talked down the hallways of the apartment complex, feeling absolutely none of the self-consciousness that he would usually feel if he were dressed in pajama pants and a blood stained Justin Beiber t-shirt in any other situation. No, he didn't know what he was expecting because his stupid phone was dead and he had slept through someone, probably Dean calling him and begging him for help. He had spent the entire drive over from his house imagining horrible scenarios where John was torturing his boyfriend like his own father had tortured him only Dean's father derived a decidedly different sort of perverse satisfaction from the whole thing than the Revered Novak had.
But he really wasn't expecting to find two trash bags and his duffle bag sitting outside in the hallway in front of Dean's apartment and he wasn't expecting no answer when he knocked until his knuckles started bleeding and cracking against the door that the key on Dean's keychain no longer opened. The locks had been changed and there was no way he could get in unless someone let him in; he hadn't seen John's truck in the parking lot when he had pulled the Impala into the space that Dean liked that was shaded more by the building and less by the trees that housed the annoying pigeons his boyfriend hated.
His imagination ran rampant as he slid down to the floor to rest against the door, his palm laid flat on the fiberboard surface so that he could give his knuckles a rest before he did permanent damage to his trigger hand. Virgil was already pissed enough that he had missed two ROTC meetings to go to the trial no matter how unavoidable the absences had been and with the shooting competition coming up after spring break Cas could risk not being able to hold his gun. ROTC was the only thing that centered him in all the chaos and he was going to need the stress-relief outlet in order to be strong enough to help Dean get over what his father had done to them.
Dean had been strong for him, it only seemed natural to return the favor and support his boyfriend in return for once.
Only Dean wasn't answering the door, why wasn't he answering the door? Oh god, what if he was hurt? What if John had hurt him badly enough that he was unconscious and couldn't even hear his knocking? What if he were lying in a pool of his own blood slowly bleeding to death while Cas just sat outside in the hallway feeling sorry for himself?
That made Cas's heart shoot up to his throat and he started banging on the door to the apartment again, crying and calling Dean's name over and over as frantic broken sobs wracked through him until what he was saying was almost unrecognizable as being a name in the first place. He couldn't stop thinking that if Dean were dead he would just die, there would be nothing left for him to live for and Gabe and Anna would be sad yes, but they had Sam and Kevin. They would go on, but how could they expect Cas to do the same if the other half of his heart, of his soul was missing? If Dean were dead, he was dead; there was no future for him that involved Dean Winchester no longer being in the world.
"Clarence?"
Castiel looked up from where he sat crouched on his knees facing the door, both hands balled into fists against it as well as his forehead as he cried and begged for someone to let him in. He knew his face was a mess of snot and tears and pain and he absently felt that his knuckles had actually started bleeding in earnest down his hands and over his wrists, but Meg was only looking at him with a mixture of shocked concern and confusion on her face and she wasn't Dean so why the fuck did it matter?
"Oh my god," She muttered, moving quickly to stoop down next to him and cradle his face in her hands. "Castiel, what happened?"
"I-it's Dean," he forced out, his voice cracking on his boyfriend's name as a fresh wave of grief and worry and guilt overtook him and made him sob as the smaller woman gently cleared away his tears with one of the sleeves of the hoodie that she was wearing.
"What about Dean? Cas, what happened with you and Dean?" Meg shook him slightly, glancing over his shoulder to take in the bags that were sitting against the wall and arching a shocked eyebrow. "Did you two break up?"
He wanted to tell her, he wanted to tell her everything because he needed to tell someone before he exploded, but he hadn't heard from Dean yet and he didn't want to put any more people in danger. John was pig-headed and rash and angry, a treacherous mix that couldn't be controlled or predicted and involving more people in this just meant that there were more people who would probably get hurt. In his head the equation went something like this: crazy person with a gun + people who disagreed with him = casualties.
John was going the definition of postal right now and Cas just couldn't bear the thought of Sam or Meg or Bobby or anyone else he had come to care about getting hurt because of this, because of him and he knew that Dean would feel the same way. So he nodded his head at Meg's question, knowing that it was just another lie that he was going to have to pay for later, but recognizing that if it kept her from getting shot in the long run that she would probably forgive him eventually.
"Oh sweetie," Meg said consolingly, gathering him into her arms and rocking him gently as he cried into the University of Kansas sweatshirt that Cas was fairly sure was actually Luc's judging from how it hung off the smaller woman's frame. "Do you want me to beat him up? Because I so totally will and I'm pretty sure Jo would help. I doubt I would even have to tell her why we're doing it."
He shook his head quickly, drawing back far enough to swipe his hand over his face in frustration. Cas glanced at the door that obviously wasn't going to open for him and flinched away from the small smears of blood that he had left on the off-white door from his broken knuckles that were already starting to throb and blacken with dark purple bruises that bloomed over his pale skin. He felt foolish, especially now that Meg was here. Dean probably wasn't even in there and if the locks had been changed it had probably been done by the landlord or something so he doubted that someone would've seen his boyfriend dying on the floor and just not done anything about it.
"I'll be okay. I just-"he started, reaching out to touch the door again before he stopped himself when pain shot through his hand and he let out an unintended gasp.
Meg noticed and shook her head briskly, rising to her feet and pulling her along with him; ignoring his protests and snatching up both of the trash bags along with his duffle as she herded him down the hallway and around the corner to her apartment where she had been before she had heard his crying. Apparently she had been the only one with enough of a heart at two o'clock on a Saturday afternoon to go and check on who exactly was making that horrible racket. Jeez, people these days.
He watched as she dropped the two trash bags by the front door and then continued onto the kitchen table with his duffle bag, stopping to unzip it there and unloading a large portion of the books and CDs that he had left in Dean's apartment onto her kitchen table with a sympathetic look towards him as he just watched. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but it wasn't this. This felt like it was going too far, like maybe he had lost Dean in some way because of John because why else would he be returning Castiel's stuff to him?
Every time he thought he was getting closer to a solution or an answer to any one of the myriad of questions that he had something else happened and he was left feeling the crack of his head against the bathroom door all over again. Castiel rubbed gingerly at his temple as he watched Meg, he could feel a headache forming that was probably from a lack of food and caffeine and fitful sleep that had been full of beautiful dreams that turned into nightmares in the end. But he couldn't relax, not while Dean was somewhere probably being hurt by John.
He couldn't think of a reason why Dean would have put all of his stuff out into the hallway, but maybe it hadn't been his boyfriend. Maybe it had been John just continuing on his downward spiral of hatred and vindictiveness and this was meant to break him so that he wouldn't want to keep looking for Dean, but Cas had made some important decisions back when he first started this. Back when Dean had first pushed him up against the wall outside of the very apartment he was standing in and kissed him in his wings and he had been so happy and stunned that he thought he would faint, he had decided then that the only thing that would make him leave Dean would be Dean telling him to go.
"You look like complete and utter shit, Cas." Meg told him, glancing up from his bag to give him an apologetic shrug as he looked down at his sleep rumpled and blood-stained attire with a grimacing nod of agreement. "You should go clean up, trust me the last thing you want is for Dean to see you walking around all torn up over him. What happened anyway?"
"I don't really want to talk about it," Castiel sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair which felt greasy and sweaty even though he and Dean had just showe—"Just…it was all my fault and he's….mad. At me, I haven't talked to him since yesterday afternoon and I'm worried. I'm worried that he's going to do something stupid."
Stupid and self-sacrificing and stupid, Castiel thought; not voicing that part out loud for Meg because that would just lead to more questions that he couldn't answer without putting her in danger. No, it was better if just kept thing vague, let everyone come up with their own versions of why he was acting like a broken-hearted Lifetime movie starlet. It couldn't possibly be because the love of his life was maybe dying in a ditch right now and Castiel had just up and left him with man who been filled with murderous rage over finding out his son was gay or at least gay for Cas which for John might be even worse since Sam was with Gabe.
"Well, tossing all your stuff out like a little bitchy drama queen is already pretty stupid," Meg mused, digging out a pair of jeans and one of Cas's band t-shirts that she tossed at his chest when she moved to plop back down on the couch. "Go on, go change and then you can help me with this. We'll give Deano sometime to cool off and then you two can get all kissy faced and make up again, kay?"
Cas noticed for the first time that the coffee table had a fairly large selection of bridal magazines spread out on its surface and immediately felt bad for pulling his friend away from her happiness over her recent engagement to her boyfriend Luc to deal with all of his bullshit that he couldn't even really tell her about. He mumbled out a affirmative even though honestly he couldn't see how giving Dean time was going to make anything better, if anything his boyfriend needed rescued as quickly as possible because the longer he was with John the longer the older man had to get tired of his son's stubbornness before just writing Dean off as a lost cause and planting a bullet between his eyes.
If only I could talk to him, Castiel thought turning towards the bathroom even though it made his pulse pound in his ears because Meg and Dean's apartments had the same sort of set up and the jolt of terror that had shot through him right after he had opened the bathroom door to see John standing there kept replaying on repeat in his head over and over in time with the dull throb at the back of his skull.
He bit back a sob that Meg heard anyway. "Cas, honey? Are you sure you're going to be okay? Do you want me to take me to take you home?"
"Can I just stay here?" he asked, hesitating at the end of the hallway that led back to Meg's bedrooms and bathrooms that eerily mirrored Dean's own sparsely decorated, torn up unwelcoming apartment that had only just started feeling like a home that maybe both he and the other boy could share together. "Just for a bit, I won't be in the way. I just…I want to be close if—when Dean comes home so I can talk to him."
"Of course you can sweetie," Meg said soothingly before she frowned in confusion. "Haven't you called him?"
Castiel rifled his phone out of his pocket and held it up so that the other girl could see the blank, black screen. He let out a rueful, self-deprecating chuckle in an effort to mask how desperately he wanted to cry and tell her the whole story of what had really had happened and how he was so worried that he felt like he was going to throw up but he couldn't. Because then it would just become a huge debacle and while Cas was pretty sure that Dean wasn't enjoying whatever punishment John was inflicting on him, he couldn't know for sure that his boyfriend wouldn't forgive the older man.
Cas had been close to forgiving his own father after all, more so that he could stop carrying around the anger that he had held on to for over a year for Reverend Novak and his oldest brother, Raphael, holding him hostage in the basement of their home in Pontiac, Illinois until he had been so desperate to escape that suicide had seemed like the greatest favor he could give to his worthless, tired, broken body. But he had never thought he was as good of a person as the other boy so he hadn't been able to, maybe Dean would still want John Winchester in his life after the older man got help. Part of him hoped not, but it wasn't really his decision to make.
"Give it," Meg sighed, making a grabby hands gesture towards up until he tossed his phone towards her and she plugged it lazily into one of the multiple charging cables that her and Luc kept scattered around the house. "Honestly, you two are the worst at communicating. Once this is charged you're calling him, don't let it stew until it becomes something you can't fix. Trust me on that, Cas."
"I won't," he promised, turning back towards the hallway and fighting back the panic that loomed up in him as he looked at the closed doors that ran along its length. John wasn't going to pop out at him, Dean wasn't dying behind one of those doors, and he could get through this. He had to be strong enough to get through this, for both him and Dean.
Author Note: Guys, I'm going to keep warning you that this fic is sad. Because it is sad, like seriously the next at least ten chapters (but you know how it gets away from me sometimes) are going to be sad and angsty and you're going to want to track me down and punch me in the arm like really hard for it all. I know that, but I've had this fic and this part of the fic mapped out since the beginning and I promise it has a happy ending. I don't know how long this part of the story is going to be or even if this part will be the last in the 'verse.
I promise I will pick up the pieces of your feels, but if you can't stand waiting on updates or the suspense then...I can't promise that it's not going to be a while before things get better. It sounds like I don't want you to read, but I really really do. I just feel like you deserve to know what you're getting yourselves into, y'know? So if you stick with me, I promise it will be worth your while or if you decide to wait until this fic is complete before indulging in a binge of sadness and angst that you know is going to end happy, I fully understand and respect that decision too.
Those of you who are tired of the warnings I promise this will be the last one. *hugs* We'll make it through this together, promise.