Dean has a plan! And now all he has to do is get Cas on board. But where is Cas?

Chapter 2

Sam could have been all smug and gloaty when Dean said he'd been to see the house and was intending to fix it up and live in it for a while. He could have taken credit for finding the right kind of therapy for his brother and been a total annoying bitch about it. But he just said, "Oh. Okay, then." And left it at that.

Then he proceeded to annoy the shit out of Dean, fidgeting on his stool, messing about with his meal, pushing scraps of lettuce around his plate and spearing tiny bits of red and orange pepper one at a time until the tines of his fork were full.

Dean ignored him, hungrily shovelling in huge quantities of stale breakfast cereal (and why was it always down to him to finish off the ends of the boxes, when Sammy just went ahead and opened new ones whenever he felt like a change?)

Sam cleared his throat and tried to spear another piece of pepper. It pinged off the plate and landed in the middle of Dean's bowl.

Dean wiped the splash of milk off his chin. "You got something to say, Sammy?"

"No. Yes. Look- actually, why are you eating cereal for dinner, Dean?"

Dean looked at him. "Because there ain't no pizza left," he said. His spoon hovered over his bowl, where a speck of red pepper lazily do-si-do'd a piece of cookie crunch. "Come on, Sammy. What's got your salad in a spin? 'Cos I know it ain't my dietary habits."

"No. Okay. Uh, well." He cleared his throat again. "I, uh, was wondering… what about Cas?"

Milk ran out of the corners of Dean's mouth as he chewed another massive mouthful. He swallowed. "I'm takin' him with."

"Oh. He wants to go, then?"

Dean shrugged. "Dunno. Haven't asked."

"So…"

Dean's spoon rattled in his almost empty bowl. "Look, Sammy. I don't know what he needs. I don't know if hauling him outta here's gonna do any good. But I'm gonna try." He slurped the rest of the milk and cereal directly from the bowl, then got up and carried it over to the sink to wash up, and stared down at the bits of crap that always gathered in the plughole that no one else ever cleared out apart from him. "I'm not leaving him here. Cas is… Cas is my responsibility."

"Dean…"

"Can it, Sammy. I'm taking him if I have to rope him like a steer."

Sam huffed a humourless laugh. "Maybe you will have to," he said.

Dean began politely. He knocked on Cas's door and waited. There was no answer. He tried the handle, and if it had been locked he would have got in anyway. But it swung open easily.

The room was empty - empty, but far from tidy. The bedding was a rumpled heap, trailing down one side of the bed and onto the floor. Plates and cups covered every surface, some of them with things growing on them, looking even worse than that time a half-eaten omelette had somehow gotten left under Dean's bed and it'd stunk so much he thought a demon had found its way into the bunker.

There was a heap of dirty clothes in one corner and a mess of paper in another, covered in Enochian script, crossed through again and again in angry slashes of black ink. There were also a good few empty bottles and Dean had a sneaking suspicion that if he checked out the places where he hid his emergency whiskey stashes, he'd find the various cupboards bare.

"Jesus Christ, Cas," he muttered. He'd been hoping to just march in, pack up Cas's stuff and dump it in Baby. And then pack up the ex-angel himself and dump him likewise. But instead he'd first have to decontaminate the whole room. And then find Cas, in whatever dark corner of the bunker he'd hidden himself.

Dean left and came back with a laundry basket, the biggest teatray from the kitchen and a couple of black trash sacks. He stacked the tray with crockery and cutlery and stuffed anything which looked like it was about to bring forth life into the trash sacks. The tray went to the kitchen and was left there with a curt, "Help me out here, Sammy," to his brother and a probably vain hope that the stuff would get washed up and put away.

The trash sacks he dropped just outside the front door of the bunker where there was already a pile ready to be taken to the nearest dumpster and yeah, he should've taken them when he went to look at the house, but why was it always down to Dean to dump the trash?

Then he returned to Cas's room, scooped up the pile of dirty clothes, deposited them in the laundry basket and began hauling on the mess of bedding, rolling it up into a big ball to fit it into the basket. It was stuck on something, though. He pulled harder and from beneath the bed came an angry squeak.

Dean's hand immediately flew to the small of his back, where there was no weapon because why would he need a gun to clean a room?

He dropped to the floor at the foot of the bed and prepared to expel whatever kind of creepy, sabre-toothed vermin had gotten past the bunker's defences.

Two pale eyes glared back at him.

"Cas?"

The eyes blinked. Dean couldn't see much else - just a darker shape within the dusty, underbed darkness.

"Cas, what the hell are you doing? Get out from under there."

The two pale points became smaller as Cas shuffled further away.

"Cas, come on." Dean reached under the bed and wiggled his fingers. "Come on out."

A whispered croak just about made it to Dean's ears. "No."

"Why not? Did you lose something under there? Are you practising being the boogeyman - gonna go out and scare little kids?" He tried to laugh. But there was nothing funny about the ex-angel's fearful stare.

Cas cleared his throat and there was a rustle as he forced his body back as far as it would go beneath the bed. "Out there… it's… it's too much."

"What?"

"Too… too much, too many, too bright, too loud, too-"

"Okay, okay, I get the picture."

"Go. Away."

"No."

Dean sat up and rested his head against the foot of the bed, closing his eyes. Then he dropped down again to lie on the floor, worming his head and shoulders into the dark, low space. Dust tickled his nose. He sneezed and then sneezed again.

"Loud," whimpered the ex angel. Dean's eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Cas had curled himself into a ball, his hands over his ears.

"This is all kinds of fucked up," muttered Dean. He had to get Cas out of here. Out from under the bed for a start and then out of the goddamn bunker.

Maybe he should pray to Jack first. Not that he hadn't already tried that, but Jack just said Cas needed to heal from being in the Empty and to give him time. Well, he'd had time and he wasn't healing.

"Cas." Dean kept his voice low, but Cas's hands were still over his ears. "Cas! Hey!" He wriggled a bit further under the bed, reached out and tapped the curled-up ball on one knee.

Cas flinched. Dean frowned, both at the flinch and at the fact that he'd felt cold skin beneath his fingertips.

"Leave me alone"

"No. Look…"

Shit. How was he supposed to help a fucked-up ex angel that didn't want to be helped? Dean wasn't any good with words or knowing what went on in people's heads or even being nice most of the time. He did anger pretty well. He could shout and cuss and punch things just like his Daddy taught him. But feelings? What the hell did he know about that crap? Nothing.

"Uh… you like bees, right?"

Silence.

"You know, little buzzy guys?"

What the fuck, Dean? He took a dusty breath and kept on going, because, yes, he was crap at this, but he had to do something.

"Uh, well, I- No, actually Sammy found a place." Dean fingers curled into the line of dust bunnies churned up in his wake. The concrete floor was cold and hard, but those old wooden beehives had been summer-warm beneath his fingertips. And even though they were empty, if there'd been bees before there could be bees again, couldn't there?

He took another breath and coughed. Jesus - this couldn't be doing Cas any good, hiding out under here.

"Look, just come out. Come out and I'll take you someplace quiet. Where there's no one around 'cept you and me. And you can tell me to fuck off if you wanna."

There was no response.

Dean turned over onto his back and looked up at the curling bedsprings.

The old house had a classic shape - big, well-spaced windows and a steeply pitched roof which would have decorative gable ends, if they hadn't mostly crumbled away.

"It's a fine old place," he said. "It's got a verandah that runs all the way around. You could hang a swing or a coupla hammocks and sleep out there when it's hot. And there's room in the kitchen for one of those great big old tables that you have to scrub clean with a brush.

"And outside - you'd like it, Cas - there's loads of space before you get to the pine woods. Hey, I bet there's a stream somewhere. Maybe big enough to fish in. And Cas, there's an orchard with little trees all tangled up that need someone to thin them out and make them good again. That's where the beehives are, 'cept they're old and falling to bits. You'd have to get new - once you'd got the grass all cut down short. Or I could make 'em for you."

He scratched his nose, bumping his elbow on the underside of the metal bed frame.

"I'd be pretty busy fixing up the house, but I'd make 'em. If you wanted me to."

His footsteps had echoed in the empty house and the stairs had creaked when he climbed up to the second floor. It smelled of crumbling plaster and neglect, but when Dean had finished with it, it'd smell of new paint and cooking and home.

"Are there flowers?"

Cas hadn't moved. His voice was raspy from disuse. But there was a spark of interest there - a spark of hope.

"Well, there's only wild ones at the moment - weeds… you know. But you could plant some. And the apple trees'd have flowers. In the spring."

Dean remembered a hunt when he was maybe fifteen. A shifter - somewhere around Portland. They'd driven through Washington State in the springtime and the fields had been pink and white from apple blossom. He'd opened the window of the Impala to let the sweet scent in. But Sammy had bitched about the wind flicking the pages of his book so he'd wound it up again.

The darkness shifted. Dean's nose twitched again from the rising dust. And then there was warmth alongside him and blue, intent eyes in a pale, ghostly, shadowed face. He could hear the rise and fall of Cas's breath, rough and harsh. But he didn't speak.

"You gonna come with me, Cas?"

The ex-angel blinked. His mouth opened and shut.

He'd been lost forever. Lost in the vast, eternal nothingness of the Empty. Lost to Dean, lost to himself. And now he was back, but not back. Here but not here - hiding from light, hiding from life, hiding from himself - and from Dean.

Dean's chest ached. "Come with me. Please, Cas. Just try for me, yeah?"

He was grasping at smoke - or trying to touch the echo of a spirit that had left the world far behind. Even if he did get back to normal with Cas, get their friendship back how it had been, or even better… It felt to Dean that if he made that leap and grasped that happiness, he wouldn't ever get to keep it. Cas's fragile presence would pop like a soap bubble. He'd be gone again and, once more, Dean would have nothing.

But he'd try anyway, because what else could he do? Even if there was more pain and more loss ahead, Dean had to try, for his best friend's sake. And he had to hope that both of them could, in time, heal, and that maybe they would get to be happy and it wouldn't all be snatched away. Not this time..

"Cas? Buddy? Let me help you. Please."

Then suddenly bony fingers were digging into his shoulder, spreading wide around the curve of his muscle, gripping him tight in just that one place. And Dean didn't need any words to tell him what that meant. Cas had touched him there once before and taken him out of Hell. Now maybe they could raise each other up - take each other into the light.

"Okay," said Dean. He realised he was trembling, his heart racing, his breath fast and shallow. "Okay, that's… that's good." He placed his hand over Cas's and squeezed. "We'll do it together and it'll be good, Cas. You'll see."

Poor little Cas! And poor Dean, not trusting that he's going to get something good and be able to keep it. They'll heal each other, though, won't they? Thank you for reading!