#dean.cas

I saw that you had seven but I was only able to see or make out six of them. So I hope it isn’t too much of a disappointment!

Deanstood across the street of his apartment in his pajamas, coat,  snowboots and his bag that held what he assumed would be all his worldlypossessions now. His laptop was a reassuring weight against his thighas he pulled the blanket further around his shoulders as the windblew.

Itwas already below freezing and the forecast called for snow later inthe day, looking at the sky Dean knew it would be sooner than theymeteorologists predicted. He clutched his phone tight against hischest as he watched the fire truck come to a halt in front of hisapartment.

Itwas barely noon but Dean had only been asleep since about ten. He wasso tired. He was sure that he should be freaking out about now but hewas sure that his past moving so often, and not having the luxury ofhaving too many physical possessions, helped him to let go ofeverything that was currently going up in smoke in his apartment.

Surprisinglyhe was the only one in the unit that was at home. He was sure thatthere were others that worked at night. Yet here he was, alone on theside of the street as complete strangers tried to see what washappening while also keeping their distance from the man whosupposedly just lost everything.

Hewatched the firefighters file out of the truck and get to work. Hewatched the dark smoke plume up into the sky, joining the white grayclouds threatening to open up and unleash the snow at any moment. Itwasn’t long before the orange flames were licking at the building,engulfing it in a way fire could only do to really old buildings.  

Deanwasn’t sure how long he stood there, he knew that he had begunshivering slightly before one of the uniformed men walked over to himand handed him an umbrella to keep snow from his body. Dean took itwithout hesitation in one hand, still holding his phone to his chestwith the other one.

“Doyou have anyone to call?” The concered voice drew him out of histrance.  

Deanblinked and then looked down at the phone he clutched tightly, thecharger still hanging from it, the base sitting at his feet on thesidewalk where it must have fallen. He looked up as the firefighternot really knowing what he was going to say.

“Youwant to step over to the ambulance with me? We can make sure that youaren’t injured in anyway.” The man raised his eyebrows at him andDean realized that he had been standing there without any responsefor who knew how long.

Henodded, picked up his charging base and allowed himself to be ledover to the ambulance to be checked out. As soon as the EMT took overthe firefighter was gone. Dean was sure that it wasn’t long beforehe had beautiful blue eyes swimming in his vision.

“Dean.Focus on my eyes. Dean. Baby. I need you to look at me.” Cas’voice washed over him. It was like a balm on a hot summer sunburn.Dean blinked.

Deanlooked at Cas, he didn’t remember calling him, and a side of hislips raised up, “Hey, Cas.” He saw a bright color from the sideof his vision and looked at the umbrella sitting upended on thestreet next to the ambulance.

“Dean.”Cas’ voice flooded with relief.

“Ithink I willmovein with you, babe.” Dean’s voice was full of seriousness and Casjust gave him a nervous laugh.

“Yeah.I figured.” Cas wrapped Dean in his arms as the snow continued tofall slowly.  Dean knew it would be okay as long as he had Cas.

“He was wrong about us,” says Castiel, firm, into Dean’s shoulder.

Dean doesn’t even sit up, just mumbles, “Who, Cas?” because there’s dozens of people who’ve passed judgment on their relationship all over the years and they’re all wrong, the two of them get that now. Dicks with wings, dick demons (and that’s still sore, that spot, but who knows if Cas knows), friends of both of theirs, even the mutuals (don’t get him started on Sam, frankly, though Sam usually places the closest bets).

“Jimmy, my—former vessel.” Eyes still closed, Dean just stares at the backs of his eyelids and wonders what in the world brought that up. According to Cas’s angel logic, Jimmy’s been history since Raphael redecorated Chuck’s place with his insides that first time. Who cares what he thinks?

“Yeah? What’d ol’ Jimmy say? Back off that dumb righteous dude, angel, he’s not worth it?” Dean jokes, fighting a yawn, finally opening his eyes in time to see Castiel’s stern expression. Cas isn’t real fond of Dean’s sense of humor when it involves bagging on himself; Dean maybe might do it sometimes just for that look.

Castiel looks only too happy to squash Dean’s expectations when he says, “Actually, he encouraged me to pursue you, as long as he was—removed. Unable to, feel it, that is. But that’s why he was wrong.”

Dean’s sleepiness slips away, because Cas is being even less understandable than usual, unless Dean’s usual he doesn’t want me certainty is about to be rewarded. Pretty damn unlikely, considering what they just got finished doing. Dean might not know what Cas’s original face looked like or exactly how many times he stuck his wings out for the hopeless fucks on Earth, but he knows Cas, and Cas isn’t the wham bam type.

“You’re gonna have to be specific, Cas, ‘cause I’m not really getting the message here, unless you’re about to pull a God-level plot twist on me and get up and leave.” (Again, Dean thinks privately, but that’s not really fair, cos Cas has never fucked him before, so it’d be different.)

Cas looks thoughtful, staring down at Dean with a furrowed brow where he’s propped up on a pillow, sweaty and messy and gloriously human, apart from his expressions—which sometimes still cross back over into alien and awe-inspiring every now and then. (Not dying, not being drained of damn destructive angel mojo, not being dragged into wars or chased by “family”, safe in the Bunker and securely in Dean’s bed. Sexily in Dean’s bed, if it has to be said.) He doesn’t know what the guy’s thinking, but he sure looks like a big dork doing it.

“He thought I was…interested, then, when we’d only met. I couldn’t argue with him, feelings were difficult for me. I couldn’t always identify why I was connected to you.” Castiel’s thoughtful look turns troubled, his eyes moving away from Dean’s face. Dean shakes the wrist that’s carelessly draped over his chest, trying to grab his attention back, but he remains diverted. “I thought it was my grace, or some form of—” and finally he faces Dean again, pressing his hand flat where it lay. “Ownership, forgive me, Dean. I thought it was because I’d returned you to yourself, that it was pride in creation, and it was unclean, blasphemous, because the only true creator is God.”

Castiel’s mouth tightened, and Dean felt his stomach jump at another reminder of the severity the guy seemed to be trying to express. “I knew you well, Dean, after Hell. I will always know you, the way you were then. Humans are wild and artless, hard to predict, confusing for one as foreign as I was. Jimmy was helpful, but nothing was more relieving—and, and frustrating,” he glares, a little, at Dean, and Dean offers a half-sheepish smile, remembering his gleeful asshattery after dodging the bullet of demonhood (yeah, that lasted long) and coming up against the cold, callous dicks who’d arranged it, “than to be so exposed to your myriad emotions and so unclear about any of the why.”

“You were interesting to me, because I had been told so much of you, and yet, you defied the telling. I found… something in you, and I didn’t know what, but it was—as I said, relieving. You were unkind, uncooperative...uncowed by humility we—they, I, typically inspire, and yet. Dean, you were still so good, and I was unprepared and dangerously affected. But it wasn’t what Jimmy Novak thought.”

Dean might be shaking now, and if Cas’s little glance at him mid-monologue is any indication, it’s not unnoticed, but what is he supposed to say to that? He struggles for composure, his lips half-lifting, smirking, trying to. “So you liked me but you didn’t like like me? Is that what you—the point we’re getting to? Did Uriel know this, cos he kinda seemed—”

Castiel’s eyelashes fall and his eyes sadden, and Dean cuts himself off. “Uriel was a friend, I thought. He warned me away from any feeling for a human, any at all, because you were our mission and nothing else. I know now, of course, that this was betrayal, of myself and our Father, but then. Then I believed him.” He gives Dean a dry look, sadness falling away. “I never know when people are lying, remember? You’ve been most invaluable to me in that.”Among other things, his slow, soft smile seems to add, and Dean can’t remember ever being this sure of that kind of sentiment before, so, ditto, Cas, ditto.

Shaking his head, Castiel does something unprecedented (Dean kids, he kids) and returns to the point. “But yes, that is the appropriate translation. I was fond of you, as I am of Sam now, as I’ve been of Anna, of Balthazar, even of M—” Dean makes a little disgusted noise and Castiel’s mouth twitches as he closes it with a snap. That affection is one thing Dean will never get, and Cas has tried but he can’t seem to even explain it himself, so it’s better left unsaid.

“Fond, but now I know, I can distinguish emotions, Dean. I know what this feels like now, and I did not feel it then. I did not…” Castiel pauses, his eyes boring into Dean’s, and yeah, no longer creepy, hasn’t been for years, especially when they go all dark and his lips part like it’s instinct, “did not hunger like this,” his voice has gone somewhat faint, and Dean’s belly’s full of warmth, though his body’s spent, “or experience the same pain from separation.” Ouch. Boner killer. But the guilt isn’t the same anymore, even if the remembered gut-stabbing pains linger for them both sometimes.

Dean leans up and does his best to suck the hurt out of Cas’s voice with open-mouthed, affectionate kisses, making his mark, saying I’m right here asshole stop missing me. Castiel kisses back, putting actions to the word hunger, clutching him close, hands desperate, but gently, as though he’s forgotten his strength is diminished. Dean pushes him harder, as is his usual technique, dragging him even tighter against him and rubbing a foot down his calf, and Cas leans over him, holding his face with quiet, unshakable intent, panting on his lips when they have to stop to breathe.

He can’t help but smile, gooey as it is to let himself. “So when’d it get to this then, o all-knowing one?” Dean’s emotions aren’t as weird, don’t really need the same kind of scientific observation or whatever. He felt like a sleaze for wanting to hit that even back in the barn with Bobby lying on the floor, as soon as he realized the guy was being possessed, but that’s truthfully where he’s been for years, until it got serious, and then he got scared; the sex part was always there, even if he ran from the rest, and he…really can’t remember where or when the other stuff started. Alternate dimension Detroit, maybe? Ill-spent night in Maine iniquity? Or fuck, the creepy angel Room, when Cas put a hand over his mouth and Dean realized they weren’t near as “done” as he’d guessed. Who even knows. It’s been forever, feels like.

Castiel’s answer is almost inaudible. “At first, thinking of your regard was odd, off-putting. The brothel, in Maine, was especially enlightening to me, but even then, I didn’t want—not Chastity, or you...I don't think. I felt differently, but it wasn’t like this.” His words get louder as he leans in to kiss Dean once more, their swollen lips almost unpleasant against each other’s, “I think it may have been a discovery I only understood once our end was imminent. But, I felt, when you had chosen otherwise.”

Dean could feel his face shaping into confusion again against Cas’s, and Cas hurried to clarify, kissing again and again, “I went to you, Dean, before—before Crowley’s deal. You were raking, as Lisa wanted, and there was peace for you. I could not ask you to let that go, and Crowley—he knew.” Castiel growls against Dean’s lips and squeezes him tighter, “He always knew. And the feeling was used against me.” Dean’s pulled away from the sharp arousal of that noise into the bloody memory of that manipulative bastard’s fitting end, and Cas’s dazed face says he’s not alone; he shakes Cas again, gets them back on track.

“So you were gonna, then, but you didn’t want to—what? Fuck up my failed try at apple pie?” Cas looks puzzled at first, but then he nods, carefully. Dean sighs, wishing this had been told to him then, but he can’t help but be…touched. He doesn’t want to be, and his anger from back then was still totally right, okay, but it’s kind of sweet, that Cas, the big dumbass, left him alone cos he thought he was happy. He might’ve hated it back then, and part of him does now, but he can see, now, why Cas would do that. Even if he didn’t like it.

Also, he’s more on Cas’s team than ever after getting his own taste of a deal with Crowley. And he owes Cas for a lifetime and more for helping him get that done, so he can—yeah, he can admit to this gratification here.

“…Thanks, Cas. Y’know, even if you were wrong. Even if you’re pretty much always wrong about that.”

Castiel rolls onto him and presses his forehead against the reinstated anti-possession tattoo with a sigh. “I’m aware, now, Dean. But I couldn’t even—I didn’t know. I just knew your safety, and this peace of yours, was important to me, a priority, if of course not the only. I tried, to keep you out of it, if I could, and now, now I realize that was love—the kind of love you taught, that aimed for protection above all else. You must know that, Dean. You must know it was love, then.”

Dean rubs a hand through the nest that is Cas’s hair and kisses where he brushed his fingers. “I do, Cas. We’ve all fucked up, but we all got back here because of—that, at least a little bit. Not the whole protection thing, not always, but man, I know you’re part of that, I got that loud and clear, and.” He’s quiet, eyes closed and face in Cas’s sweaty hair, his voice choked. “We both are.”

Sitting in the corner of his favorite compartment of Heaven, the breeze whirling past his Form as the autistic man flew his kite, Castiel sighed.

“God had faith in you, Castiel” said Rachel.

“O brilliant Castiel, you must lead us now,” said Jedadiah.

And others had spoken, a cacophony of voices begging him for guidance and assuring him of their belief.

“We have heard tell of your skill, but you have surpassed expectations.”

“Raphael will be no match for you, of course! You were chosen.”

How wrong they were. How very, very wrong. He could still feel the curdling cracks in his Form where Raphael had torn into him and beaten him thoroughly.

The end of Heaven, or Earth, or both, was upon him if he did not act, and he, Castiel, “God’s favorite”, had no idea what to do. At the end of this day, one day of Earth time, everything he and those he had fought with had fought for would meet the same end before denied it.

They would be disappointed. Everyone.

Well, they would be dead before too long, but before that, yes. They would think him a failure. Loathe him as he’d never before been loathed.

He’d been known for millennia as one of the best strategists the Host could offer. And here the world would end because he could not create a plan to prevent it.

A failure, indeed. A rebel with a cause, who would “go down swinging”, as Dean had said so many times, and forfeit Earth in the process of his defeat.

Dean. Dean would help. Dean would want to—

Castiel left Heaven hurriedly and went to where Dean had been last.

Something inside him recoiled from Dean’s idle peace. He almost flew from it reflexively.

There was the man who had bloodied himself against his prized possession, by his loved one’s hand, to save his species.

He raked in an ill-conceived manner, crushing more than grabbing any leaves, and Castiel’s Grace reached for him, but.

But he was at peace. He deserved peace—all of humanity did, and if Dean could not have Sam, maybe he could keep this at least. Maybe Castiel could do that for him.

He was one of the best strategists, wasn’t he? What blasphemy it was for him even to suggest needing Dean for this.

Where he stood, Castiel frowned, hands in pockets, a kind of deep loss and a craving more deep than that of Famine both taking hold of his True Form and slowing his vessel’s intent for departure.

It was many minutes before Dean made any progress, and Castiel felt discomfort—shame perhaps, realizing he’d wasted time he could have spent saving the life of this man and every other like him on Earth, simply watching.

Glancing at the ground but then quickly to Dean again, Castiel was unprepared for the sly voice behind him.

It was unwelcome, to say the least.

It's so hard because Dean's my favorite but I empathize with Castiel the most directly I have of any character in my entire life (which is part of why Dean's my favorite). I love them both, I feel for them both when they misunderstand each other and get angry and fuck up, but agh DEAN BABE SOMETIMES YOU'RE WRONG. I don't believe it's abuse and I believe they're fixable issues, but agh sometimes he's wrong.

Not for illogical reasons even--it's hard for Dean to grasp the magnitude of the problem in Heaven in S6, it's hard for Dean to separate I did it all for you from I'm asking you not to in believing that begging Castiel to change his plans will work a second time (because what Castiel says and what he meant are not the same thing and he develops so far from S5 - S6 it's ridiculous), it's hard for Dean to consider the apology catchphrase Castiel repeats over and over in S6 and S7 genuine because he went ahead and did it anyway--but still, he was just as wrong as Castiel, whether I understand why on both ends or not.

He has every right to feel what he feels, just as Castiel has every right to feel what he feels. But I'm Castiel, damn it, so I'm never going to agree as much with Dean as I do with him.

I did the best I could at the time, Dean attempts to forgive me with.

Dean looks away from Cas's nudity to eat assorted nuts.

Dean lies about looking at him and eats sausage.