#mishachester

I fucked up big-time, Cas. I don't even know if you're gettin' this, but... oh god, Cas, Kevin he's, he's dead. Sam's gone and Kevin's fucking eyes are burned out and--fuck, please come back. Please, Cas, I don't know what to do. I need you here, man, I can't... Oh god.

Dean knows what he said. He prayed for the first time in weeks, months, hoped desperately that Cas had his ears on, and Cas can't finish his sentence, can't repeat the words, but that's okay. 

"Is it true?" he asks Dean, voice low and quavering, very human no matter how big the celestial stick up his ass is. 

Nodding, Dean clenches his eyes shut and grips the back of Cas's jacket a little tighter, a little harder. "I had no one else to call. I didn't... I wanted you."

"I'm here, Dean," and not for the first time, Dean thinks that Cas is too good for any of this. Too good for Dean, that's for sure. 

Cas pulls back then, cold air whooshing down Dean's front and making him shiver. His arms twitch, wanting to reach out, but he stops them. Instead he takes Cas back outside, round the perimeter of the bunker, where the grass grows long and wild, where the trees creak and sway in the wind. Where there's a mound of freshly dug earth with Kevin Tran underneath. 

"Tell me what happened," Cas says.

So Dean does, tells him every damn detail of the godawful mess. What he did in the hospital, why he kicked Cas out, how he buried Kevin this morning because he couldn't bear to burn him more. It takes a surprisingly short time, actually, and he feels lighter with every sentence, with the relief of finally being able to offload to his best friend.

There are no words from Cas in response; he simply gets to his knees in the dirt and places a hand reverentially on the roughly hewn wooden plaque at the head of the grave. "Did you make this?"

"Yeah." Dean had sat through the night last night whittling it down, hands shaking too much to do a proper job, but sufficient nonetheless. Kevin Tran, it reads in bold, blocky letters, saviour of the earth. Because what did 'Prophet of the Lord' mean, really? Nothing. All that title did was ruin his life, lose him his loved ones. But helping save others, taking down Leviathan, facing off with Crowley, slaving over the tablets... yes, saviour of the earth. 

"I wanted to wait," Dean confesses, thumb rubbing absent-mindedly at the hard callouses the shovel left behind on the palm of his hand. "But I didn't know if you were coming and it had already been two days, I couldn't just... leave him there in the library." 

For a while Dean stands in silence while Cas whispers inaudibly with his eyes shut. He looks like he's praying, but they both know that'll do no good. Dean stands and watches and waits, the sky darkening as storm clouds roll in, a light smattering of rain dusting his pale, unshaven cheeks. 

Eventually, Cas gets to his feet again. His eyes look wet. "You should sleep, Dean, have something to eat. You look terrible and you're no good to anybody like this."

"No good to anybody anyway," Dean counters immediately, the thought making his stomach churn. "All I ever do is screw things up, get people killed or left behind." He can see Cas wants to protest, but he doesn't want to hear it. "I mean, look at you, Cas! I called and you came and that, that is fucked up. You don't owe me anything, by all rights you should hate me, but I'm a selfish bastard who wants to keep you around anyway. Aren't you gonna have a go at me? Tell me how badly I messed up this time? C'mon, Cas, yell or punch me or something!"

Cas regards him carefully, like he's planning what to say and how to say it and whether it will defuse the bomb that's waiting to go off. "This is not your fault," he whispers eventually, but Dean only shakes his head and huffs in disbelief. "I'm not saying allowing Ezekiel, or whoever it is, into Sam was wise. But you took the only option offered to you in a terrible situation. I understand that, and I could never hate you for it, Dean." 

All the fight seeps from Dean's bones; he aches and hurts everywhere and suddenly wants nothing more than to close his eyes and welcome oblivion. "Cas..."

They're back in each other's arms again, clinging tightly against the wind and the rain, and there's no hesitancy in the way Cas's arms wind solidly around Dean's back this time, palms open and wide, warm where they're pressed to his henley. 

"I should have told the bastard to shove it, made him let you stay," Dean mutters, because that was what he'd wanted to do, what his every instinct had screamed at him to do. 

"Dean, you don't have to--"

"Yeah, actually I do," he interrupts, pulling his head back to look Cas in the eye. "I never wanted you to go, man. That was the last thing I ever wanted. You know that, right? Tell me you know that."

Cas smiles. A tiny, barely-there thing. "I do now."

"And we can work together. To fix this. To get justice for Kevin and bring Sammy home. We can work together, Cas... We work together."

Cas's fingers twist into the henley in time with his shaky exhale, hot air puffing onto Dean's cheek. "We always have," he agrees, and it's like permission, acknowledgement for Dean. Knowing, now, that he's not the only one going crazy here, the only one who feels like stardust is burning up his veins. 

"Yeah," he breathes, and then they're kissing, and who could say who initiated it, but here they are, mouths pressed hotly together and hands grabbing at each other until they're impossibly close, fused together from chest down. 

A small, distant part of Dean thinks that they don't have time for this, that they've gotta be out there, doing something, but then Cas's fingers are in his hair and his tongue is in his mouth and it's like everything he didn't know he wanted. 

When they break apart for air, Cas's eyes are closed and he whispers, "Are you going to ask me to leave again?" and Dean recoils like he's been hit. 

"What? No! Cas... fuck," he rambles, and then he's on him again, pressing hot dragging kisses to Cas's jaw, his cheekbones, the crinkle between his eyebrows, the soft spot beneath his lower lip, down his neck until he realises Cas has no pulse anymore. It's a jarring realisation so he pauses and asks, "Are you going to keep this grace forever?"

And Cas answers, "I don't know. I miss more about being human than I thought I would. Everything I hated at first, hunger, exhaustion, even pain. I miss it all now. But I am not as useful to you without my mojo."

The words seem so easy now, Dean wonders why he's never had the courage to say them before. "Dude, if you think you're just a tool to me, you obviously haven't been payin' attention. If you wanna find your grace, be an angel again, then I'll help you. If you wanna be human, then I'll help you with that, too. It's your decision, but either way I ain't going anywhere."

Cas places his palms on Dean's cheeks, says "thank you" in a way that speaks volumes, and kisses him again lightly. "Now let's go inside, because you catch a chill. I'll make you some food, and then you can sleep. Later, we will come up with a plan."

like… it would have been so good if it ended halfway. but ctulhu? seriously?