Chapter Text
Four months ago
It all ends in Mr. and Mrs. Kline’s house, 8715 Munro Avenue, a nondescript one-story ranch. Ground zero to what authorities ultimately identify as a gas explosion. It takes out four-blocks in every direction. Luckily most people are at work or school, so casualties are limited.
All Dean really remembers is a lot of light and noise. Jack was there, and so was Cas, clutching Jack’s shoulder. Jack was doing that glowing-shaking-screaming thing he does, Amara was trying to stop him, and Chuck-in-Sam’s body was trying to duck out of the way.
That’s when Dean started yelling, tried to charge right into it, but Eileen grabbed him by one arm, and Michael grabbed him by the other.
Somehow Sam – really Sam – met Dean’s eyes from within the mass of blinding light, and the bitch actually had the wherewithal to smile. “It’s okay, Dean,” Sammy said. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Blaze of glory.
And then there was nothing.
And the next second Dean’s lying flat on his back in a bunch of yellow grass and dead sunflower stalks. The sky is the kind of milky white that comes from a thin sheen of cloud-cover, too wimpy to decide whether it’s going to clear up or brew a storm in earnest.
Dean takes a minute to take stock of his body. Legs: check. Chest: rising and falling. Arms: A-Okay. Dick: yup. Still there. Head: heavy, but apparently attached to his neck.
“Dean?” says Sammy, and Dean just about stops breathing. He sits up so quickly his vision swims, but he doesn’t care. Then he pushes himself to his feet, and his entire body seizes up in protest, but he doesn’t waver, because Sam’s kneeling about twenty-feet away, hip-deep in dry grass, and he looks dazed but unhurt. He looks like Sammy.
“Sam,” Dean chokes out. Sam doesn’t have a chance to get to his feet before Dean staggers over to him and collapses to his knees in front of his brother. “Sammy.” He pulls Sam into a hug. He doesn’t want to let go. He doesn’t have to ask whether Chuck is really gone; he just knows. This is all Sammy.
Sam’s arms shake as they wrap around Dean in response. His hands fist against the back of Dean’s shirt, just like he used to when he was a little kid and Dean woke him up from a nightmare.
“It’s over?” Sam asks. Dean can tell his brother is crying. Dean feels tears well in his throat, but he swallows them down. He doesn’t need that right now, not when Sammy needs him.
“It’s over,” Dean whispers into his brother’s shoulder. “Really over.”
“Sam?” it’s Eileen’s voice, worried and confused, and Sam snaps away from Dean’s embrace. He shoves himself to his feet.
“Eileen!” He yells, and then swears when he realizes that won’t do any good. Eileen is standing several yards away. She turns, one hand holding her hair out of her face.
Sam’s already running toward her, when she spots him. Dean swears: it’s straight out of a cheesy romance film, running through a damn wheat field into your lover’s arms. Sam and Eileen meet half-ways, crashing into each other. Dean’s fairly certain Sam makes the first move when he plants his lips over Eileen’s mouth, but she certainly responds enthusiastically.
Something twinges in Dean’s chest. He has to look away. He tells himself he just wants to give his brother a little privacy. He stands to his feet and looks at his shoes, then he takes a look around.
It’s just a field, like any one of the thousand he and Sam have passed on their road trips across the country. But it makes Dean think uneasily of that field Amara tugged him off to when she first showed up. So, Dean’s relieved when he spots another figure walking toward him. It quickly reveals itself to be Adam.
Dean takes a few steps forward, not entirely sure how he’s supposed to greet his half-brother.
Adam’s eyes are red. When he reaches Dean, he says in a strangled voice, “Michael’s gone. I – I told him it was okay.”
“I – ah – sorry man,” Dean says. He claps Adam on the shoulder, because he’s not sure the man would accept a hug right now. And inside his chest, Dean’s heart is racing. Because Adam losing Michael makes Dean painfully aware of Cas – and where the fuck is he, anyway? Because doesn’t he have a place in this weird-ass family reunion –
But just as Dean thinks it, his eyes fall on Cas, walking forward. Cas isn’t wearing his trench coat, instead, its bundled in his arms, draped across another figure Dean can’t quite make out. Dean’s stomach drops, and he has the sudden, irrational urge to go running off through the wheat like Sammy did – but that’s stupid. So ridiculously stupid, and Dean doesn’t know why –
Cas gets closer, and it takes Dean a minute to realize the thing in Cas’s arms is, in fact, Jack. Body loose and sprawling. The kid’s unconscious. Has to be unconscious. Dean isn’t going to think about the other option. Not yet.
It startles Dean into taking a few steps forward, and he trips into a jog to reach Cas.
“Dean –” Cas starts.
“Cas, what the fuck?” Dean says at the same time.
“He – he’s alive,” Cas continues in a choked voice. “I believe his Grace was destroyed. And when his soul reattached itself, his body must have – but he’s alive. I thought for a moment, but –”
“Can we – shit, man,” Dean says. He doesn’t know quite how he’s supposed to feel right now. Because Jack is – Jack isn’t dead. And Cas seems to think Jack has his soul back. And Jack just frikken Death-Star-exploded Amara and Chuck. But Jack
Jack killed Mom.
“He tried to kill Sam,” Dean says. And he’s not sure why he says it. He stares at the limp form in Cas’s arms, and it’s impossible to reconcile this quiet, deathly pale child with the Jack who killed Mary and stormed into a living room to destroy God.
Instead, he looks like Jack when he was sick. When he was dying. And Dean well remembers that cold, paralyzing fear as he sat at the kid’s bedside and couldn’t do one Goddamned thing to save him.
Cas looks pained. “Dean, please” he whispers, like he can’t quite believe he’s hearing Dean correctly. Like Dean’s disappointed him in some basic and defining way.
Something inside Dean’s head just decides to stop working. He can’t think about this right now. He wants Cas to stop looking at him. And he wants the kid to – he wants Jack to go away. It would make things a helluva lot simpler.
The other are approaching now. Adam is subdued. Sam has his arm around Eileen’s shoulders, and she’s got her arm around his waist. Neither of them seems to want to let go.
“Is he okay?” Sam says, voice concerned – the voice Dean should have used when he first saw Jack, but Dean – he couldn’t.
“He’s alive,” Cas says. “But he’s – weak.” It starts to drizzle, a fine mist that coats Dean’s skin in a sheen of moisture.
Eileen looks at the sky, then at the kid. “We should get him somewhere warm.”
“I’ve run past this field,” Sam says urgently. “The bunker’s only about a mile up the road.”
OOO
Present day
“Perimeter check?” Dean says.
“Yes,” Cas answers, lifting the blankets and climbing into the bed beside Dean.
“You salt the door?”
“It’s okay, Dean.”
“Maybe I should check,” says Dean, and his voice is high with urgency. A little breathless. Just teetering on the edge of hysteria, and Cas knows it’s a bad night. Dean’s already half-way out of bed.
“Dean,” he says calmly, because sometimes he can get out ahead of it before Dean starts spiraling, before Cas needs to ask him to take the diazepam.
“Just let me,” Dean snaps, and maybe he realizes he sounds sharp, because he swallows a lungful of air, pushes it out too hard, and says again, nearly pleading. “Let me. I just – let me.”
“Okay, Dean,” Cas says. It’s easier to give in on nights like this. Sometimes checking the doors and windows, redrawing salt lines, coming back with a jug of holy water, makes it better. Sometimes it doesn’t, but Cas will deal with that when Dean gets back. Or if Cas has to go after him. But, for now, Cas waits in bed, because shadowing Dean when he’s like this can make him jumpier, can make him defensive and glum and suspicious.
He remembers how Dean’s face blanched when Cas first showed him the farmhouse, how he’d so clearly been trying to hold himself together, been trying to put on a brave smile because he knew how much Cas liked the idea of moving out of the bunker. How he said, voice half-strangled, there are so many windows.
Later that night, Cas found Dean bowed over the sink in the bathroom, shaking, and he choked so many fucking windows, Cas. How the fuck are we supposed to salt all the ledges? And there are so many points of entry. We can’t possibly ward them all – we can’t –
Cas’s heart sank, because he loved the little farmhouse, and he’d been excited to show it to Dean. He thought the clear air, sunlight, and large fields would be good for Dean instead of the musty, dank, and cold bunker.
It’s okay, Cas said at once. We don’t need to buy it. We’ll look somewhere else, Dean. It’s okay.
But the next morning Dean was better, and he insisted that the farmhouse was alright, that he’d be alright, that he was being foolish, and it was okay. They’d be okay. And it would be good. A move would be good. For Jack. For Cas. For Dean. They’d be alright. That was three weeks ago and, for the most part, they have been alright.
Cas waits for ten minutes, is about to get out of bed to make sure Dean hasn’t decided he needs to check the outside of the house or grab a shotgun from the cabinet under the stairs, when Dean comes back in, sneaking through the door like a shadow.
“All clear?” Cas asks, and he doesn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but Dean’s voice is still slightly sheepish when he replies, “Yeah.” Because Cas knows that Dean knows he’s being irrational and paranoid when he’s like this; but it isn’t something he can just turn off, so Cas tries to let Dean know that it’s alright, that there’s all the time in the world, and Cas isn’t impatient. That Cas will still be there when Dean comes back.
“Then get into bed. It’s cold in here,” Cas orders, making sure there’s a smile in his voice.
Dean rolls his eyes and huffs, “bossy,” under his breath, but he complies.
It’s been an unusually cold and wet May, overcast and gloomy, and the farmhouse doesn’t have any heating except for a large fireplace in the downstairs living room. Cas hadn’t anticipated it would be a problem in the spring and coming summer months, but it turns out he was wrong. Days have been spent in layers of sweaters and thick socks, and nights under multiple blankets.
Jack has taken the cold especially hard, considering the loss of temperature regulation he used to have through his Grace, and he usually parades through the hallways in a hoodie he stole from Sam and a knit cap pulled low over his ears. Dean protested that it made him look like a stoner.
Dean crawls onto his side of the bed and immediately huddles near Cas’s body, for which Cas is doubly glad: one, because he’s grateful for the extra heat, and, two, because it means Dean’s latest bout of panic isn’t the kind that makes him tetchy and withholding, liable to bite Cas’s head off if he asks whether it’s alright to touch him.
But Dean seems to have calmed down somewhat, even if Cas can still feel his heart racing below his ribs when he winds an arm around Dean’s shoulders and gently rubs his back the way he knows Dean likes.
“Are you alright?” Cas asks, just to make sure.
“M okay,” Dean says, part embarrassed, part subdued, and that’s how Cas knows that it’s mostly true: if Dean had snapped I’m fine then Cas would know they weren’t out of the woods yet. Or worse, Dean might not have answered at all.
Cas is beginning to understand Dean’s idiosyncrasies, the nonverbal and verbal cues for how he translates his emotions. There’s still much to learn, but, as he keeps reminding Dean, they have time.
Cas drops a kiss onto Dean’s forehead. “I love you,” he says.
Dean swallows, but doesn’t say anything. Another positive sign. There are nights when he spits fuck off and immediately rolls away, sometimes gets back out of the bed to take refuge in the bathroom, the couch downstairs, or the back porch. But tonight isn’t one of those nights, and Cas is glad, even though it stings, just a little, whenever Dean doesn’t say I love you back.
Because Cas knows Dean will say it when he’s ready. Cas knows this. For now, Dean communicates his love in other ways: in letting Cas hold him, in needing Cas, in wanting Cas, in cooking for Cas, and in asking Cas never to leave. And that can be enough.
“Is that Jack?” Dean whips his head up so quickly, it’s only Cas’s well-practiced reflexes that save his nose from behind smashed by Dean’s forehead. For a minute, Dean sits perfectly still, eyes glinting in the darkness, breathing hard. Cas hears it too: a door creak shut from down the hall, soft footsteps, a creak of the stairs.
“It’s Jack,” Cas says, keeping his voice measured. “Dean, it’s just Jack.”
“What’s he doing out of bed –” Dean says, and makes to roll out of bed, himself, but Cas reaches for him before he can move. He closes his hand around Dean’s forearm. Dean stills, but barely. Cas can feel the tension in his muscles as everything inside him obviously strains to make sure the house is still secure, that Jack is safe, that it really is Jack.
“I’ll check,” Cas says. “Stay here.” Breathe, he almost tells him, but he doesn’t, because the last time Cas suggested Dean try one of his numerous breathing exercises, he snapped what the fuck you think I’m gonna do? Hold my breath for ten minutes?
“Whatever,” Dean says gruffly, but he falls back against his pillow, and draws his arm over his eyes. It’s his right arm; his wrist is still splinted in a black brace, half metal and half fabric straps. It replaced his cast a few days ago, and Cas already wonders how much longer Dean will put up with it.
Cas eases through the bedroom door. The hallway is silent and dark. Cas can hear Jack faintly from the kitchen downstairs. He hears a cabinet creak open, and then shut. He hears the hum of the refrigerator. Then he hears footsteps back on the stairs. A moment later, Jack reaches the stop of the stairs.
“Everything alright?” Cas asks.
“Shit!” Jack says, and nearly drops the bowl he’s carrying when he turns toward Cas in the darkness. Cas raises an eyebrow – it’s language Jack has certainly picked up from Dean. “Sorry,” Jack says quickly. “I was getting – I was hungry so I just went to get some – cereal,” Jack finishes, and sags a little. “I was just getting cereal.”
Privately, Cas thinks it’s a great deal too much nervousness for cereal, but he says out loud, “You should be sleeping, not eating cereal.”
“I was hungry,” Jack protests. And it’s no wonder, Cas thinks, that they go through so much cereal between Jack’s midnight feasts and Dean’s morning binges.
Cas sighs. “Very well. Don’t get milk on the sheets.”
“I won’t,” Jack says. Cas can see a gleam of an abashed smile on Jack’s face.
“Goodnight, Jack,” Cas says.
“Night, Cas,” Jack replies, and turns down the hall.
Cas lets out a breath and turns to let himself back into the bedroom. Dean’s lying where Cas left him: on his back with his arm over his face, but Cas can tell by his stiff posture that he’s been listening intently to the exchange.
“Cheer up,” Dean says, not lifting his arm. “It’s just cereal. He could be doing drugs or watching porn.”
“He doesn’t sleep enough,” Cas protests, and he climbs back into bed. Dean doesn’t immediately curl into him, and Cas hesitates for a moment before he turns on his side, placing an arm near Dean, but not quite touching him, not sure if the dynamics have changed again, even in the course of just a few minutes.
“He’ll be okay,” Dean says. It’s empty reassurance, Cas knows, and Dean knows. There’s not much anyone could say that will help release the tight, unflinching hand of worry around Cas’s heart whenever he thinks about Jack – about Jack not sleeping, not eating at normal hours, spending too much time on the computer or watching television.
But Cas is glad for Dean’s attempt, regardless. Anything is better than Dean’s stony silence that used to greet Cas whenever he tried to voice his concerns about Jack. It means Dean is thawing – that he is slowly but surely forgiving Jack for Mary’s death.
Cas takes a moment to just stare at Dean. He is breathing steadier, but he’s still on his back, too stiff, and Cas doesn’t know how to suggest he relax.
“Dean?” he whispers. And Dean grunts in reply. “May I hold you?”
Cas watches as Dean’s belly rises and falls when he takes a deep breath. He watches Dean’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. It’s only a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity, and Cas tries to think of a way of gently backtracking, at reassuring Dean that’s it’s alright –
“Sure, man,” Dean says, voice painfully casual, and Cas regrets asking. The rules always seem to change, and Cas tries not to let it frustrate him. But sometimes it can be so difficult.
But now Cas knows that withdrawing his offer will just make Dean embarrassed and defensive, so Cas carefully extends his arm, drapes it over Dean’s chest, and edges a little closer.
Dean cringes in response to Cas’s touch. Just slightly. So slightly Cas wouldn’t have noticed it if he couldn’t feel the shiver through his own arm.
“Dean,” Cas says, and immediately begins to withdraw, but then Dean finally takes his arm away from his face, and catches Cas’s arm before he can pull it away.
“No,” Dean says quickly. “It’s okay. I’m okay.” He takes another deep breath, one that shudders on the exhale, but he turns his head and gives Cas a smile that’s not quite convincing. Dean turns on his side so he’s facing Cas. Their faces are close together. “I’m okay,” he says again.
“Would you like me to leave my arm where it is?” Cas says, and he smiles, too, because he wants to keep it light.
“Yeah,” Dean says. He shuts his eyes. “Yeah. It’s fine.”
So, Cas leaves his arm around Dean’s waist, and waits as the tension slowly bleeds out of Dean’s body. He relaxes his grip on Cas’s wrist and lets his arm drop. He leaves his eyes closed. He’s breathing better now, and Cas looks at his perfect cupid’s bow, the angle of his cheekbones, the way his hair sweeps across his forehead. He can’t see his freckles in the dark, but he knows what they look like. He can imagine how they dust his nose and cheeks. He looks a little healthier than he had weeks ago – not quite so gaunt. His face is less angular, and his ribs don’t protrude quite so drastically under Cas’s hand. Cas knows the medication is helping him gain weight, and he’s eating better again.
“You just gonna stare, or you gonna kiss me?” Dean grouses, one side of his lips digging into his cheek.
Cas smiles more readily, and immediately brings his head forward to meet Dean’s lips with his own. Dean opens his mouth, nibbles on Cas’s bottom lip, slips his tongue out to run around the rim of Cas’s mouth.
Cas responds instinctually – Dean has said that Cas’s not a half-bad kisser, despite his inexperience, and Dean would know things like that, so Cas has learned to take guidance from Dean’s own movements: opening his mouth in the same way, searching Dean’s mouth with his tongue like Dean has done to him – around his lips, over the ridges of his teeth, into the warm and soft insides of his cheeks, curling tongue-and-tongue.
Dean makes a low, soft hum in the back of his throat, and Cas can’t help it – he feels blood rushing to his penis, making him erect, desperate for some kind of touch, warmth, or friction.
Dean moves like he can sense Cas’s arousal. He capture’s Cas’s legs under one of his own, uses it to hook himself closer. Cas tightens his hold around Dean’s waist until they lie with their chests flush.
Dean’s breath is hot and quick. His eyes are still closed. And Cas knows it’s creepy to keep your eyes open when you’re kissing someone – he knows because Dean’s told him – but sometimes Cas can’t help it: Dean is beautiful.
Dean draws Castiel’s tongue into his mouth, circles his lips around it, and curls his own tongue around the tip. Cas’s breath catches in his throat. He ruts up against Dean’s leg almost without thinking.
Dean’s hand creeps to the elastic band of Cas’s sweatpants, inches over the edge with his fingers. Cas draws his mouth away from Dean’s – and his body is thrumming with want, aching with the need to be touched, but Cas never knows how to react when things like this happen. Because he understands that sometimes Dean acts without really wanting to, that he does things out of a misguided need to make something up to Castiel, that he’s overcompensating because he feels like he’s disappointing someone.
It’s hard to trust Dean sometimes – with his own body and with Cas’s.
“Dean,” he breathes.
“Cas, it’s –” Dean says, almost like he anticipates Cas’s reluctance. “It – it’s okay.” His eyebrows are pinched. His eyes are still closed. He swallows. Pushes his fingers further into Cas’s waistband, so his fingertips touch the first strands of Cas’s pubic hair, and Cas gulps.
“Dean,” he says again. He brings up a hand, gently presses his thumb against Dean’s wrist, eases his hand away.
“It’s okay, Cas,” Dean says again, almost urgently, and Cas’s stomach plummets. He can already feel his arousal easing out of his body, for which he’s glad. “I’ll make it good for you. I can – I can make it good.”
“Dean,” Cas insists, and maybe this time Dean will hear it. But Dean’s hand is trembling, very slightly, under Cas’s grip as Cas pulls Dean’s hand out of his pants, lifts it to Cas’s mouth. Cas presses his lips to Dean’s knuckles. He gently plies Dean’s fist open and kisses the heel of Dean’s hand, traces Dean’s thumb with his lips.
Dean sucks in a trembling breath, half way to a gasp.
“It already is good, Dean,” Cas says. “I don’t need you to rush yourself.”
Dean’s kept his eyes closed through the entire ordeal, and Cas knows they’re shut now against embarrassment. Cas lifts his free hand and uses it to cup Dean’s cheek. He can feel the rush of heat under Dean’s skin.
Dean flinches marginally under the new point of contact, but then he turns his face into the touch. Cas sweeps his thumb slowly down Dean’s face, from the edge of his eye socket to the corner of his mouth. Dean curls his hand back into a fist, maybe to get away from Cas’s lips, and grips Cas’s hand tightly.
Dean takes two sharp, quick breaths, and Cas knows he’s trying to ground himself, bringing himself back down from the tension of the previous moment. Then Dean deflates, turns his head into his pillow, releases Cas’s hand, and looks like he wants to hide.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
“I don’t think I should enable your self-doubt by accepting that apology,” Cas says wryly. He waits to see if Dean will be receptive to the humor, but Dean seems too preoccupied with taking deep breaths. Cas nudges his face closer to Dean’s.
Cas sees Dean square his jaw. He knows Dean’s biting his lip against a protest, but then he counts it as progress when Dean doesn’t voice it out loud. It isn’t the first time this has happened – with either Cas or Dean pulling back when things become too heated. Cas knows Dean feels unbalanced and awkward after it happens. He feels like he’s letting Cas down. And Cas is trying to find the right ways to let Dean know that that isn’t true.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Dean,” Cas says firmly, and presses his lips to Dean’s temple. “We have so much time,” he says. And it’s true. All the time in the world.