#offbeatwrites

The taste of blood is sharp and metallic in Dean’s mouth. He swallows past it, steadying himself for the next hit. He’s used to parrying blows and running, stitching up wounds with cheap dental floss and self-medicating with the cheapest whiskey at the gas station. This is nothing. 

There’s a brush of fingers on his back, and before he can yank his pistol out of its holster, he’s falling to the ground next to the Impala.

“Sorry,” Cas says mildly.

“Dammit, Cas.” Dean rises to his feet, slightly unsteady. He presses a hand to his mouth and it comes away bloody.

“You were going to get seriously injured.”

“I was on a hunt.”

“Exactly.” Cas reaches forward, and Dean swipes his hand away.

“I don’t need to be healed.”

Cas, who has no concept of personal space (or knows about it but chooses to ignore Dean, which seems more likely), presses two fingers on Dean’s lips despite his protests. The pain goes away immediately, replaced by a tight feeling in Dean’s chest.

He’s just healing you, Dean thinks to himself. He’s an angel, it’s his job.

Dean wakes up in a cold sweat.

It’s the same nightmare that haunts him every other time he shuts his eyes, to the point where he feels almost like he can’t venture near his bed. It doesn’t matter how long he stares at Cas’s face before falling asleep, when he drifts off he’s back in that room in the Bunker, watching Cas’s eyes fill with tears as the Empty’s inky blackness starts to seep in. He drifts off and he’s sitting on the floor, head in his hands. He drifts off and he’s on the stairwell, begging to trade himself if Cas will just come back. 

Dean rolls over and sees what he knew was there, what he watches every night now: Cas, human-ish after being rescued from the Empty by Dean himself (with some help). His hair, streaked with grey now that he’s aging a bit, is strewn across his forehead, face lit up by the moonlight streaming in through the window, lips slightly parted. Cas lets out a sigh and shifts against his pillow.

Cas is here, Dean reminds himself. He’s here and he’s real and he has a pulse. He’s here and he loves you. But still, the fear remains. What if this is the dream, and when he actually wakes up, Cas will be gone for good?

“Dean,” Cas says softly, eyes still closed. 

“Go back to sleep.”

Cas shakes his head slightly and reaches out a hand, feeling through the blankets until he finds Dean’s. He tangles their fingers together. “I’m here.” 

“I know.” Dean swallows. 

Cas tugs on his arm slightly, and Dean goes willingly, letting himself be pulled into Cas’s sleepy embrace. Within moments, Cas is breathing slow and steady again. Dean tucks his head into Cas’s shoulder and breathes in. 

To be honest, Dean had thought he was used to being lonely. 

For years, it was just him and Sam. Dad was gone most of the time, leaving them in dingy motel rooms while he went on the bottle or a hunt or, oftentimes, both. Then Sam went to college, and for a while it was Dean and his dad, but John Winchester’s fiery temper didn’t get better so they still spent a lot of time apart. Dean knew the long nights, the lonesome bars, the inky darkness of the sky, hustling alone for enough money to buy a greasy burger and get a place to sleep. 

But things changed. He and Sam started hunting together again, and along the way, Cas joined the team. And then Dean was practically always with Cas–enough that it was a running joke for every one of their cosmic enemies. Eventually they moved into the bunker, and while it wasn’t exactly the home Dean’d dreamed of, it was a place to lay his head down, have his own bed and a favorite spoon in the kitchen. 

Tonight, Dean is on the road alone for the first time in a while. Sam’s off on a hunt of his own with Eileen (Dean’s interested to see where that’ll go), and Cas is doing something angel-ey and important, rendering him unreachable by phone. The service in Heaven sucks, apparently. 

Well, the cell service, anyways. 

Dean turns down the volume on the Impala’s speakers and clears his throat. “Heya, Cas. Hope you’re not doing anything too important right now.”

The speakers hiss slightly in response, but that’s probably the age of the car and not anything celestial.

“I’m just driving. It was an easy one today, didn’t even need to use my FBI badge. I’ll probably stop for the night soon.” As if to punctuate, Dean yawns. The clock on the Impala’s dashboard says it’s 10:02 at night. “I hope you’ll be at the bunker when I get back.” 

Dean takes the next exit with a sign saying it has lodging and turns into the parking lot of a Super 8. His room is cleaner than most and the shower at least tries to heat up, plus the pizza delivery guy actually comes to the right room. All in all, he’s certainly had worse days, although the loneliness continues to nag as he drifts off to sleep.

Every day has been the same. 

Dean wakes up alone in the old, rickety house. He’s always up with the sun; he never sets an alarm. The secondhand quilt on his bed always ends up on the floor, because he never sleeps well. There’s nightmares and restlessness and the witching hour. 

Downstairs, he makes coffee and takes it out onto the porch if it’s not too cold. He reads a book, always from the library. His library card has his actual name on it, which is always weird for him. Luckily, no one in small-town Kansas asks too many questions. 

He doesn’t need a job–he had more than enough to get by after trading in his bit of the bunker. Even so, he works part time at the local auto body shop to give him something to do with his mind and keep him from being alone all the time. Sam and Eileen come and visit, but they’ve got their own life. The guys at the shop call him “Dean Winner,” and he never corrects them, because it’s nice to have a nickname and be a part of something. He never really got to be normal.

Dean doesn’t feel like a winner, though. He’s forty-five, battered and bruised, living alone in a house that was cheap because it needed–and still needs–so many repairs. Sometimes he wonders why he’s still alive, why the Empty didn’t take him too, why only knowing about how Cas felt at the very end seems like such a betrayal from fate itself.

They could have had so much more time. 

On the fridge, under a magnet for the tiny supermarket in the next town over, is a photo of them from Dodge City, in their cowboy hats. Dean always wishes he had more–time, photos, memories, mementos. He can’t watch Looney Tunes, dodges every car that even vaguely resembles a Lincoln Continental or a maroon truck. There’s a hole that he can’t fill.

But he keeps trying, doesn’t he? He makes eggs and bacon for breakfast, has a friend or two, frequents the public library. He visits the hardware store three or four or five times a week, keeps his house up. Drives around listening to the songs he remembers putting on Cas’s mixtape in the Impala (when he can bear it–Cas must have had the tape in his pocket when he…because Dean couldn’t find it anywhere). Goes to bed not long after sundown. Avoids bourbon but has a beer or two. 

If Dean ignores the fact that they’d practically had to climb a mountain to get here, this is a great date. 

(“It’s just a hill, Dean,” Cas had said patiently at least three times as they’d walked up what definitely seemed like a mountain.) 

It’s ironic, isn’t it? Dean Winchester, who had spent his life running, jumping, outsmarting, shooting, and always being a step ahead of the rest, was slowing down. Dean Winchester, who had always thought that he was in for an early end, was getting old. Is getting old. He’s forty-five now, which in the grand scheme of things is still fairly young, but his bones are tired from years of misuse. At least they were able to walk up this “hill” as slowly as they wanted. 

Nothing is chasing them anymore. 

Dean turns to look at the man sitting beside him. They’re having a picnic, that was the whole point, and Cas has a sandwich in one hand and a book in the other. Once he turned human, he had to get reading glasses, which are perched precariously on his nose. There are streaks of silver through his wild black curls. 

It occurs to Dean that all of this means that he’s really and truly alive. His muscles ache and his sandwich was a little bit soggy, but the sun is shining and Cas is humming slightly as he reads, accompanying the birds chirping in the background. Every time other people on hikes pass their picnic blanket by, they wave, and Dean waves back. He’s just another person, being a part of it all. 

Cas glances up from his book and smiles warmly at Dean. 

Dean wakes up with his head pounding, a sharp ache in the middle of his temple. He squeezes his eyes shut, sparking stars. He’d told Cas last night when they’d made it back to the bunker that he was fine, but he was pretty sure they both knew that was a lie; no one gets thrown against a wall and is “fine.”

(Dean would know.)

He eventually pulls himself out of bed and pads down the hallway to the bathroom. A hot shower does nothing for his head, but maybe a greasy breakfast and a handful of pain pills will. Sam’s still out on his hunt and Cas doesn’t have to eat, so Dean is pretty confident that he can fix his problem before Cas finds out–until he gets to the kitchen, where Cas is sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. 

Busted.

“You want breakfast?” Dean asks the angel, trying to keep his tone nonchalant, but his scratchy voice gives him away. Cas doesn’t have to eat, but he can if he wants to.

“Dean,” Cas says.

“Eggs? Bacon? We might still have some sausage…”

“If I let you make me breakfast, will you let me heal you?” 

“You don’t have to–”

“I’ve told you before, I’m not wasting my grace.” Cas stands up and crosses to where Dean is standing at the fridge. Before Dean can stop him (and when has a “no” to Cas ever held?), he puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder. 

The grace feels how it always does, sharp and cool, then soothing. The ache in Dean’s head goes away immediately and is replaced by a rush of gratitude. He wishes that he could tell Cas that he’s always grateful, but he can’t.

He’s still driving at nightfall. 

Dean’d stepped out earlier, telling Sam he just needed to go for a drive and clear his head. He wasn’t lying, but the drive is turning out to be longer than intended. He just can’t seem to shake the images of Cas that keep appearing, can’t stop feeling like it’s his fault that he’s earthside while Cas is trapped in purgatory, even if it was Cas who pulled away from Dean. 

Had he not done that, Dean would have never let go, and maybe Cas knew and wanted at least one of them to be saved. 

But what Dean has never been able to tell Cas is that he’d rather they were together than apart, that he’d have stayed rather than be here by himself, with a gaping chasm that nothing can fill. No amount of beer or hunting or watching television with his brother can relieve him of the nightmares, of Cas’s face dancing before him. 

The Impala cruises down the highway, music blaring from its ancient speakers. Every song Dean listens to makes him think of Cas, of another lifetime where he could make the angel a mixtape with all of his favorite songs and they could listen to them together. 

He hates this, hates that they keep getting ripped apart in chaos. It’s always the end of the world and one of them always has to give something up, but they’re always brought back together, unless this is the last time, unless Cas is gone for good. 

They’ve had better hunts, to say the least. 

From the beginning this one was a mess. First, there’s human Cas, still adjusting to truly feeling the weight of his body and having to throw his weight behind a knife, not to mention the recoil on a pistol. Add that to the Impala breaking down on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere and the fact that it was pouring down rain as they meandered through the woods in search of the latest monster, and you’ve got the perfect conditions for Dean to be in a mood. 

He’d let Cas shower first, which meant that in addition to fuming about how their usual brand of stealth was ruined by the storm, he was sopping wet and hovering around the motel room because he didn’t want to make the place grimy. Dean didn’t, and doesn’t, want his frustration to get the best of him like it had before, because he’s not angry at Cas. It’s the whole damn day, and since Cas isn’t juiced up anymore, he can’t do things like break the Impala.

(Well, Dean’s not even sure Cas could do that when he was all angel.) 

Dean squeezes a bit of shampoo from the motel’s tiny complimentary bottle and suds up his hair, savoring every moment that the hot water sprays down his back. Sometimes he’s amazed that his body hasn’t given up on him, after dying, coming back to life, being buried, and being thrown against countless walls and trees by demons and monsters alike. 

From the other side of the thin wall that separates the bathroom from the motel room, Dean hears the television turn on. Cas has gotten into watching things, but it’s usually reruns of obscure detective shows from the 1980s. Dean smiles to himself as he imagines Cas settling in for Matlock or Remington Steele in his pajamas. 

Dean finishes up and towels himself off, throwing on his pajamas as quickly as possible to ward off the chill that comes with being back in the motel’s frigid air (the only temperature options seem to be freezing or boiling). 

In the room, Cas is sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, his hair sticking up in every direction while he reads a takeout menu. He’s holding it far too close to his face; it occurs to Dean that human Cas might need glasses, although he’s not sure how that’ll go, with their lifestyle. Dean turns to the television, a quip about aging detectives at the ready, when he sees a familiar face on the screen: Dr. Sexy. 

“How’d you find this?” Dean asks.

“What?” Cas looks up from the menu. 

“My, uh, favorite show.”

“Channel guide.” Cas picks up a laminated card from the bed and waves it at him.

“I...thanks.” Dean sits down on the other bed. He doesn’t really know what to do with Cas at the moment, because he showed his hand, didn’t he? When Cas got killed by April, he’d felt terror that he’d never experienced except for the other times he’d lost him. The angel walking into the lake, swallowed by darkness, is the first thing of many that comes to mind. 

Cas moves to sit next to Dean, showing him the menu; it’s for a pizza place. They’re sitting close enough that their shoulders are pressed together, and when Cas hands Dean the glossy paper, their fingers brush. Dean glances up, and there’s Cas, eyes as blue as ever. 

Dean takes a slow breath, and Cas smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling.