Chapter 1: Fallen Leaves
Chapter Text
There’s not much that can surprise Castiel Novak nowadays. Much less anything that goes on after a show while they’re on tour. After a decade of doing those, he’s grown used to it.
They’re in Chicago tonight. Their show ended a little over two hours ago, and the after-party is now in full swing.
From where Castiel is sitting, he can see his best friend and bass player Balthazar at the bar, surrounded by a group of people as they do body shots of off Max, his drummer and other best friend’s body. Alicia, the second guitar player of their band Free Will, also Cas’ best friend, is standing across the room obviously getting it on with a couple from the way she has a hand on the woman’s waist and the other laying on the center of the man’s chest.
Cas smiles. Nothing out of the ordinary for an after-party, after all. If anything, he almost finds it calmer than usual.
“Are we trying this out or what?” a voice next to him brings him back to his own setting.
He’s sitting on one of the leather couches in the center of the room, surrounded by people. It’s something Cas had to get used to early on- being surrounded by people he doesn’t even know, all the time, in every setting. He got uncomfortable a lot, at the beginning of their career.
Nowadays, though? Cas doesn’t find it in him to even care about anyone or anything, if not for the white powder line meticulously traced on the coffee table in front of him.
The man next to him, a low-class drug dealer and frequent flier of their afterparties that goes by the name Zachariah (Cas has abandoned the pretense that he knows any of these people’s real name by now), pats his back good-naturedly.
“What, are you afraid I don’t bring you something of quality?”
Cas shakes his head, a cocky smile on his lips as he makes eye contact with a pretty something sitting at the bar across the room, not far from where Max and Balth have been having fun.
Huh, he thinks to himself.
“Not at all,” he says next, before bending down and carefully sniffing down the drug up his nose.
It’s always the same with cocaine: first it feels a bit foreign, the texture of the powder going up the nose and falling into his throat. Then there’s the first rush, coming after half a minute, where Cas always feels like he could fly.
He’s always dreamt of it, even as a kid: having wings and the opportunity to travel around the world to see whatever he’d want, whenever he’d want to. He grew up then, and the dream of having wings as a 5-year-old turned into bitterness with the knowledge of it being impossible. He replaced it with the band's ability to tour around the world, but it wasn’t the same as little 5-years-old Castiel wanting to have wings to fly across Europe and Asia.
Cocaine, and drugs as a whole, gave it back to him.
Then there’s the way it settles into his bones, making him feel content, happy even. He sits back on the couch, a satisfied smile on his face as Zack next to him starts laughing uncontrollably after taking his own line.
Cas stays in a state of comfortable easiness, barely listening to what’s going on around him- it’s nice that they don’t need him to do much more than interjecting with a few words here and there, so he can stay in his own world while enjoying the way the drug makes his limbs lighter and his brain higher.
He doesn’t lose sight of the pretty man at the bar, though. And when the opportunity presents itself- really when the pretty man locks eyes with him again and a smile appears on his lips- Cas gets up and crosses the room.
“Hello,” he says simply as he comes to rest against the bar, next to the pretty man. “I’m Castiel.”
“Pretty much everyone in this bar knows who you are right now,” the pretty man laughs.
“Fair enough.”
“I’m Kyle,” the pretty man- Kyle- says, with a smile.
“Hello, Kyle,” Cas says, groggy in the best way. “Would you like to go somewhere quieter, maybe?”
Kyle turns to look at him properly, and Cas doesn’t miss the way his eyes glide over his body greedily. He smiles, sure of himself.
“Sure,” he finally says, and Cas would pump his fist in the air in victory if he could.
In the state of things though, they barely make it to the alleyway before Cas pushes Kyles into a wall and starts devouring his mouth.
“Someone could see-” Kyle starts, giving back teeth for teeth.
“No one gives a fuck,” Cas says with a giggle before diving back.
He doesn’t know how much time they take to go from there to his room, doesn’t even really remember how he came to rip both his clothes and Kyle’s off. All he knows is, his phone on the bedside table goes off three times before he silences it, and he’s almost made it to the point where he’s going to slide into Kyle’s deliciously prepped and ready for his cock’s ass when his phone rings again.
“Maybe you should answer,” Kyle says, his voice muffled by the pillow where he’s pressed.
Cas sighs, already mourning the sight and feeling of Kyle’s tight asshole around his rock-hard cock, and grabs his phone before answering. On the bed, Kyle simply turns on his back, naked and quite beautiful, and looks at him as whoever called him finally states their offense.
“What?” he all but grumbles into the phone, standing in the middle of the room as Kyle’s eyes roam his naked form appreciatively.
“Castiel?”
Castiel almost let the phone slip out of his hand and shatter to the floor.
He didn’t think he’d hear Hannah’s voice ever again.
“Hannah?” he says, and he’s forgotten about everything else- about the show, about Balth and Max downstairs getting trashed, about Alicia no doubt having a grand old time in her own room with the couple she was ravishing when they left, about Kyle lying naked in his own bed just a few feet away from him.
He hasn’t seen or heard from his sister in an entire decade. As soon as Castiel and Jimmy escaped the family home and never turned back, their entire family became like strangers to them, Hannah with them to Cas’ greater despair.
He didn’t care about his parents, didn’t give a shit about Michael and Luke, but Hannah’s absence has always been what hurt him the most.
He heard of his mom and dad’s passing a few years back only because Balthazar’s family still lives in Anchor Bay, up in the Mendocino Mountains, not because any living members of his so-called family had seen fit to inform their two youngest sons.
Not even Hannah.
“I’m sorry to disturb you at such a late hour,” his sister says at the other end of the line. “But something happened.”
Cas briefly flits his eyes back to Kyle lying in his bed before concentrating back on the conversation.
“Don’t worry about it. What’s going on?”
To say that he was ready to hear whatever she had to say would be considered a mistake, looking back. Soon enough, Cas will regret not having bathed a little longer in the blissful state that both cocaine and sex on top of a great past show had put him in. He’d mourn the innocence and freedom of a before this moment.
But for now, he just waits for Hannah to tell him why she’s called.
“It’s James,” she simply states, voice neutral like she’s talking about the baker down the street of the house they lived in together for 19 years.
She still says it like Jimmy hadn’t always hated his given name. She says it like Jimmy hadn’t asked them all to stop using it. She says it fleetingly, without any care for her own brother. She says it like it’s a foreign name on her tongue and Cas fucking hates everything about it.
“What about Jimmy?” Cas asks, immediately going back to when he last heard his brother, right before the show a few hours ago when they FaceTimed so that Claire, Jimmy’s 7-year-old daughter, and Jack, his 2-year-old son, could say goodnight to uncle Cas.
Hannah takes her sweet time to answer from wherever she is across the country. Cas has the time to run approximately 50 different scenarios in his head (ranging from “he got hit by a tow truck and is in a coma” to “he sent me a dog” because, well, it’s Jimmy).
Nothing could’ve prepared him from the metaphorical tow truck that hits him right in the chest when Hannah finally speaks.
“He’s dead, Castiel. I don’t know why they called me instead of you, but James is dead.”
She says it like it’s nothing, like Jimmy wasn’t even a notable person in her life. She says it like it’s a chore to even deliver the news to him.
It feels like the whole world just stops turning, and Cas’ stoned brain can’t even process it right away. All he can feel is the way his stomach churns before turning to stone, how his entire body feels like the blood just stopped circulating.
He’s dead, Castiel. James is dead.
It’s like he just sobered up all the alcohol and drugs he took in the past 3 hours alone in the span of barely 5 seconds. The violence of it all still resonates within his bones when he finally manages to talk.
“What?” he asks, and he hates the way his voice trembles and almost breaks, hates everything about this moment and the man in his bed that’s looking at him while he crumbles.
“James is dead, Castiel.”
“Wh-how?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about the kids?”
“He had kids?”
Hannah at least manages to sound surprised, which unfortunately means she might be human after all.
“Claire and Jack. Did- who called you?”
“The Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.”
“And they didn’t tell you anything?”
Cas could break something right about now. Hell, he should.
“No. Just said “your brother is dead, sorry for your loss” and hung up.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cas grumbles into the phone, trying to keep it together.
“Don’t blaspheme the Lord, Cast-” Hannah starts with a stern voice.
“OH FUCK YOU, HANNAH, AND GO TO HELL WHILE YOU’RE AT IT,” Cas finally snaps before sending the phone flying across the room and shattering with a distinct sound into the wall.
Kyle looks at him with an alarmed look, and Cas has never wanted to be anywhere else but in this very room than right now.
“Are you okay? What’s going on?”
Jimmy’s dead. Jimmy’s dead. Jimmy’s dead.
“I need you to leave,” he says as quietly as possible as the words still ring in his head.
He hears Kyle stir on the bed as he lets himself go to his knees on the carpet covering the room’s floor.
“But-”
“I need you to leave, now,” he repeats, not turning to look at Kyle even though he knows he’s being unfair right now.
It’s not like it’s his fault, after all.
He doesn’t hear the door when it closes. He doesn’t even move from where he’s fallen to his knees, doesn’t even think of putting his boxers back on. He can’t move. Can’t do anything but listen to the voice in his head.
Jimmy’s dead. Jimmy’s dead. Jimmy’s dead. You’re all alone. Jimmy’s dead.
The coke in his bloodstream doesn’t make him feel like he can fly anymore. It makes him feel like he’s suffocating.
A door opens in a distant reality and Cas doesn’t open his eyes to it until a warm palm lands on his shoulder.
“Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you naked and submissive, Cassie, but what’s going on here?” Balthazar’s warm and friendly voice shatters the state of Castiel’s stupor.
“We need to- we need to go back,” he manages to say, almost out of breath.
Comprehensive, Balthazar’s blue eyes look back at him. “To go back where? What’s going on?”
The first tear that escapes Cas’ eye is so heavy, carrying all the pain and misery his bones can feel, that Cas doesn’t manage to hold it back.
The dam fucking cracks and he’s sobbing on the carpet of a hotel room floor, naked and broken, miles away from home.
“We n-need to go back to-to San Fran, because Jimmy,” he manages to say, as Balthazar’s grip on his shoulder turns heavier by the second. “Jimmy’s dead, Balth, Jimmy’s dead.”
Balthazar doesn’t ask. Balthazar doesn’t say shit like “I’m sorry for your loss” or “what happened”. Balthazar doesn’t tell Cas to hug it out or stop crying.
Balthazar gets up and hands Cas his stupid fucking boxers, and says “let’s get everyone on a plane”.
Castiel has never been more grateful for his best friend than he is tonight.
✧✧✧
“Your beer is lukewarm and it smells like St Patrick’s Day exploded all over your bar,” Dean says as Benny slides across the bar to where he and Sam are sitting.
“My beer is better than the cheap-ass thing you kept in your fridge for 5 years, and good evening to you too, asshole,” Benny answers as he takes a mouthful of the beer in front of Dean, tasting it before shrugging. “It’s completely fine, you’re just a jerk.”
Sam snorts from where he’s sitting next to Dean, drinking his own beer.
“We knew that already,” he says with a smile, causing Dean to just roll his eyes.
He enjoys the banter between them three- hell, if it wasn’t like that, he doesn’t think he would enjoy spending time with his best friend and his brother the same. But Dean has been through a lot the past month alone, and sometimes, just sometimes, he wishes he could stay home alone without anyone trying to needle his thoughts out and pushing him to go out.
Even when “home” is on the decade-old couch of his best friend, all the way across town in Oakland.
“Fuck both of you,” he says instead before taking a gulp of his beer.
Okay, maybe Benny has a point, it’s not that bad. He’s not about to admit it, though.
“What’s gotten his panties in a twist tonight?” Benny asks Sam.
I got my heart broken and I’m unemployed, living on my best friend’s couch like I’m so kind of a teenager when I just hit 30, Dean thinks. I also forgot to take my meds, so that might be why I feel like shit now.
He lets Sam respond as he nurses his beer instead.
“Cole sent some of his stuff back to him in a box, I think he’s being all sad about it.”
“Did I tell ya yet that this man was the worst kind of asshole?” Benny asks, with the voice of a man who knows he said this twenty times over already. “Because he is.”
“I know, Ben.”
But I loved him, even when we got to the point where we argued every night, even when he thought physically hurting me was the answer. I loved him and I love him still and I don’t know how to deal with my entire world falling apart.
Not that he says all that to anyone, not really. He has a reputation to maintain, after all.
It hadn’t surprised anyone, really, when Dean appeared on the threshold of Benny’s apartment with a duffel bag on his shoulder and half of his face battered a month ago. Everyone knew about Cole’s behavior, everyone knew about what had been going on between them for years, but it’s not like Dean had ever asked for help from anyone.
Benny opened his door wide open and as soon as he sat on the couch, Dean let go of everything. Sam joined them as soon as he possibly could, and they both stayed here with him as he went through all of the horrors he had been through, only to land on one thing: he and Cole broke up, Cole didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, and despite being heartbroken, Dean understood that it was for the better.
It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt like a son of a bitch, though.
“Doesn’t mean I’m not sad, that’s all,” he tries to shrug it out, but when Benny’s eyes land on him again, he can see the concern right there in the blue of his irises.
“Maybe you need a distraction,” Sam suggests as he looks down at his phone. “I have a party to attend tonight, wanna tag along?”
“Yeah, sure, what’s more lame than tagging along to your little brother’s university party at 30?”
“Stop being a grouch,” Sam laughs as he gets up and puts his jacket on.
It’s the middle of May in goddamn California but of course Sam Winchester is wearing a jacket. Dean sometimes wonders if maybe his mom delivered Sam standing up and the kid was born with a bump on his head or something.
“I’m not being a grouch.”
“You kinda are,” Benny interjects, and raises both of his hands in a surrender motion when Dean stares at him. “Just saying, brother, you kinda need to loosen up a little. Just because Cole is gone doesn’t mean you have to mourn the motherfucker or whatever.”
“5 years, Benny. I think I’m kinda allowed to feel like shit.”
“Fine,” Sam says as he puts a 10-dollar bill on the counter. “Just, you know… Don’t do anything stupid about it. I know it hurts, but he’s really not worth it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get out of here already.”
“We’re still on for tomorrow’s game, right?” Benny asks right before Sam leaves. “9 PM, my place, you’re bringing the pizza?”
“One meat lover and one triple cheese your way?” Sam asks before throwing finger guns at both of them.
Really, Dean doesn’t know where and when it went wrong with Sam, but here they are.
“What about a new job?” Benny asks once Sam has left. “You haven’t looked up anything since finishing the Crowley job?”
Dean had been working as a PA for Crowley’s firm for two years and a half, and as Crowley’s PA for a year. Despite the fact that Dean pretty much hated the man, the pay was good and the job secure. And Dean liked his job too much to quit.
But when all hell broke loose with Cole, Dean decided to put in his notice and put as much distance as he possibly could between himself and New York, where his life- including Cole, most of all- was.
And so here he is a month later: still hopeless, still in love with an asshole, still medicated, and still jobless.
The only difference is that he can wander around Benny’s apartment in only his boxers if he wants to, and it’s warm enough outside that he can just throw in whatever t-shirt is clean with a pair of jeans and his sunglasses.
“Not really,” he shrugs. “My company told me to rest a little while they look for something that could be fitting my taste. I probably still have a week or two before they do.”
That’s precisely the moment his phone chooses to start ringing to the tune of Bad Religion’s “The Kids Are Alt-Right”, and an immediate smile pops up on his face when he realizes what it means. Benny rolls his eyes and slides down the other extremity of the bar to serve clients.
“Hey Charles,” Dean smiles into the phone. “What’s kicking?”
✧✧✧
Castiel doesn’t remember much of the past few days. To be honest, he made a point of having a substantial amount of alcohol on hand to be able to go through all this… whatever you can call burying your own twin brother at barely 30 years old.
Having to go and identify Jimmy down at the hospital. Preparing a ceremony. Choosing a fucking casket. Saying goodbye to the only family he had left, and shutting the casket sealed before watching, two little hands clasped in his, as it burnt. Dispersing his ashes in the Pacific Ocean, like he always wanted to. Trying to explain to Jimmy’s kid that their dad wasn’t here anymore. Talking about death with little ones felt more painful than anything else, and Cas drank so much after that last night that he still carries it with him today.
And now he’s here, barely even sober, sitting on his own fucking couch in only his sweatpants, and his best friend- God love her, Cas wouldn’t be here without her but it’s fucking 8 AM- is waving her hand in front of his face.
“What?” he snaps, barely restraining a groan when she hits him in the face lightly. “Ow, don’t fucking slap me.”
There are many things that Charlie Bradbury may be, but one thing's for sure: she doesn’t take shit from anyone, especially not Castiel. And it’s been like that since they met in Kindergarten.
“Then concentrate, because I’m not gonna sit on my ass and watch you let your whole world burn because you’re sad.”
“So you’re saying I can’t be sad?” Cas asks, the edges of low anger burning on his tongue.
He’s not mad at Charlie. He doesn’t think he could ever be mad at her- she’s been a lifeline for him since he was barely 4 years old, lost in the Mendocino mountains with catholic controlling parents, and she kept on being so until then; first as his friend, then as his band and personal manager.
The truth is, he’s mad at the world. He’s mad at the drunken guy who was driving way above the speed limit and crashed into his brother’s car, killing him on the spot. He’s mad at whoever upstairs decided to take his brother and leave his two children behind. He’s mad at himself for not being here right away when Jimmy died, even though the doctors at the hospital all said multiple times that it wouldn’t have changed anything.
He still should have. Jimmy was everything to him, and now he’s gone. And Cas doesn’t know what reality is like, in a world where he doesn’t have his twin brother by his side.
“I’m saying I need you to get a hold of yourself if you want even a shot at keeping Claire and Jack with you, Cas,” Charlie says, and succeeds in getting his attention.
There is no reality where Castiel would ever want to lose Claire and Jack on top of losing Jimmy.
“What does that even mean?” he asks, voice toneless.
If there’s anything the look Charlie gives him can tell, it’s how she sees right through his bullshit.
“That means you gotta get yourself together enough to be there for the kids. And that means you have to hire someone.”
Hire someone?
“What do you want me to hire someone for?” he asks, completely bewildered by the idea itself.
Charlie gives him another one of these looks. The ones that say “you know exactly what I’m talking about, stop playing dumb” and “I will punch you in the face myself if you keep this up”.
Castiel knows her too well for his own good.
“How do you expect to still tour and play with the band while taking care of the kids? Claire has school, Jack goes to daycare. They need someone to drive them back and from there, and they need someone who can be there at all times to take care of them. Do you mean to tell me that’s gonna be you? In the state that you’re in?”
“What does my state have to do with all of this?” Cas asks back, slightly annoyed.
He’s never been a bad person when it comes to family. Hell, he’s never been a bad person period. He has his sins and he tends to it, but that’s how far as it goes.
You’re a drug addict and an alcoholic, you don’t even deserve to have Jack and Claire with you if all you’re gonna do is fuck them up, the little voice in his head helpfully suggests.
Cas tells it to go to Hell.
“Do you expect me to believe you’d be able to take care of them right now, in the state that you’re in, still half-drunk and high from just a few hours ago?” Charlie continues, oblivious to Castiel’s inner thoughts. “They are kids, Cas. They need stability and you’re about as far away from that as I am from heterosexuality.”
Cas can’t help it: he snorts at the incredulity of the whole thing. It doesn’t make Charlie laugh, though. She just crosses her arms on her chest as she looks at him intensely, and Cas can feel that this isn’t one of the fights he’s going to win.
“I’m serious, Cas. I know you love them, but if you want what’s best for them, we need to hire someone and you need to be more careful about your behavior if you want a real chance of keeping them.”
The image of his niece and nephew just a few hours before as they stood together one last time before the coffin of their father, Cas’ brother, pops in his head, and it’s still so raw and painful that he almost breaks right here and now. How little Jack’s hand had felt in his own, and how Claire had looked back at him with tears in her eyes.
Charlie’s right. There is no way he can fuck this up. He has to do this the right way, for Jimmy. For the kids. For all of them.
“Okay,” he nods, resolute. “Can you find someone? Does… Is there a market to hire this kind of person?”
“Oh yeah, you need a specific sort of PA,” she says with a smile as she gets her phone from her pocket. “I have someone in mind already.”
“Anyone I’m gonna like?” Cas asks from the couch, his head hurting.
“I guess you’ll have to wait and see,” Charlie winks at him before exiting the room to make a phone call.
Jesus, what the hell did he get himself into?
✧✧✧
“Are you still looking for a job?” Charlie asks him way too excitedly for Dean not to get suspicious.
He and Charlie met through work a few years ago and immediately got along like a house on fire. Charlie got him into doing LARPing, and Dean got her into whiskey (Sam sometimes jokes that it’s kind of the same thing, because he’s an asshole like that).
Frowning slightly, Dean watches as Benny serves clients. “I mean, kinda. Why? Do you have something?”
Benny winks at him. Dean flips in the bird, and Benny just laughs in response. This is what life is about now, apparently.
“Yeah, it’s kind of specific though and I need someone I could trust with my life,” Charlie says.
“Jeez, your Highness, I didn’t know you thought so highly of me,” Dean smiles.
“Oh shut up about it,” she immediately fires back. “I’m serious, Dean. This is…”
She sounds weird suddenly, and even though Dean doesn’t know what it is yet, he knows something pretty bad must have happened for Charlie Bradbury to be that serious on a phone call.
“Okay, Red. Talk to me. What is it? What do you need me for?”
There’s a beat in their conversation, only broken by the comfy buzz of the bar around Dean. He waits until his friend talks again.
“I’m looking for a PA to take care of someone as well as two kids, 2 and 7. That would mean managing a grown-up pretty hectic schedule while also dealing with making sure the kids are okay on every level, getting them to and from daycare and school. You’d need to live with them during the week-”
“Hey, breathe, Charles,” Dean interrupts. “Sounds like something in my area of expertise. Why do you make it sound like it’s so difficult?”
Charlie takes a deep breath at the end of the line.
“Because it’s for my best friend. He just lost his twin brother, the kids are his. And he can’t- he’s a great guy but he’s also a stupid rockstar who doesn’t realize he’s killing himself already, and I can’t let him throw his life away and lose the kids.”
And yeah, Dean can hear the slight tone of terror in the way Charlie’s voice trembles just enough for him to even distinguish. He understands now, the way Charlie talked earlier, why she needed someone she would trust with her own life.
Dean would ask the same of anyone if he was in those same shoes.
“Okay. Hey, Red? Breathe. It’s okay. I’m in. Where is it? When do you need me to be there?”
“Cas lives in San Francisco.”
Dean can’t begin to explain the relief that courses through him once he hears that. He doesn’t think he could’ve moved just yet, let alone go back to the East Coast, still way too close to New York to his tastes.
“He has a huge apartment with enough room for both the kids and for you to have your private space,” Charlie continues. “The kids are gonna be there in about an hour, so whenever you can be there is good. We can talk about money and contracts when you get there, if that’s okay with you?”
Dean nods, oblivious to Benny’s stare across the bar. Having a private space also sounds like a good idea right now.
“Yeah, that's fine by me. I’ll just pop by Benny’s place and get my stuff, and you can text me the address so that I can get there.”
“Okay,” Charlie says, a little out of breath. Dean has never heard that way. “You’re literally my life savior right now.”
“Why, was I your last resort?” Dean laughs as he drains the rest of his beer.
“No, you were the only person I could think of when I talked to Cas about hiring someone.”
“Cas?”
“Yeah, huh,” Charlie answers. “You probably don’t even know him since you don’t listen to… What is it, nothing before 1979? Like a stupid caveman.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Dean laughs.
“But anyway, yeah, Cas is Castiel Novak. He’s the singer and guitar player of a rock band called Free Will. Maybe Sam has heard of them?”
Dean doesn’t know why but that name does sound familiar. He makes a mental note of checking the band’s name on Google later.
“Yeah, probably, kid’s a nerd. What about the kids then, you told me they’re 2 and 7?”
He waves at Benny from afar, who’s still dealing with clients, making sure he knows Dean is leaving. He’ll text both him and Sam later when he doesn’t have to run to explain the situation.
“Yeah, Claire is 7 and Jack is 2. They’re the best kids, but they also just lost their dad.”
“What about a mom?” Dean asks as he makes his way out of the bar.
“Kelly died after giving birth to Jack, so it was just them and their dad, Jimmy. And Uncle Cas.”
It’s the end of the afternoon in San Francisco, and the weather is nice. Most people are wearing t-shirts and sunglasses on their noses, and there’s a breeze of fresh ocean air that tells Dean the beach is just somewhere down the road.
It feels nice, after so many years in New York.
He tries to ignore the way his heart beats out of time at even the mere mention of the city.
“What about your friend? Cas?” he asks into the phone as he starts walking back to Benny’s.
Charlie sighs at the end of the line, which makes Dean laugh.
“That bad, huh?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just… Well, he’s a typical rockstar.”
“Does that mean booze, women and drugs?”
“Well, add men to that and yeah, that’s about it. He’s a great guy, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had and he was there for me every time I needed him to… But Jesus Christ is he on a bad path.”
“How so?”
“I mean, right now he’s still half-drunk and high from last night, he’s sitting on his own couch half-naked and he doesn’t even see that he has to get himself together for the kids yet. He just… He lost everything, too, but I need him to keep it together enough so that he doesn’t lose Jack and Claire, too.”
The situation does sound complicated, and the fact that Charlie is so close to the situation tells Dean just enough about how emotionally he’s going to get invested. But Charlie is one of his closest friends, and he already kinda wants to meet Cas, Claire and Jack now that he’s heard so much about them.
“We’ll make it work, okay? I’ll be there in about half an hour, and I can meet both your guy and the kids, yeah?”
“If you leave and run away afterward, I won’t be mad at you.”
“Come on, Charlie,” Dean laughs. “It can’t be that bad.”
“You say that now,” Charlie says, sounding defeated as hell, and Dean hates it.
“I’ll be there, okay? Is there a space for me to take Baby?”
He hears her talk to someone, her hand probably covering the phone as she does, before talking to him again.
“Yeah, there’s a private parking spot for her, I’ll lead you to it when you arrive.”
They say goodbye as Dean makes it into Benny’s apartment, and he takes just 5 minutes after having put all his stuff together in a duffel bag to text Sam. His little brother has a way of getting worried sick about him, and he’d rather warn him ahead in case he just breaks into Benny’s apartment because Dean hasn’t been answering his texts in less than 5 minutes.
>> I just got a job. Going to get interviewed right now, but if it goes alright I’m moving in at the guy’s place right away.
<< Dude, that’s great! How did you find something so fast? You were literally saying you weren’t looking earlier.
>> Charlie called me with a job offer. It’s for her best friend, he just lost his brother and he’s getting custody of his kids, but he’s got a… shall we say “demanding job”.
>> Actually, Charlie told me he has a band and you probably knew them. Does the name “Free Will” and Castiel Novak ring any bells?
<< Oh my GOD
<< !!!!!!
<< Dude what the FUCK
>> I’m guessing that a resounding “yes”?
<< Dude, “Fallen Leaves”? “Anxiety”? “45”?
>> Is it French? What is this?
<< I have them playing in the car all the time, you like them!!
>> Does that mean you’ve been lying to me about what you’re playing in MY car
<< We’re not 14 anymore Dean, and besides, you did tell me you liked them!
<< I can’t believe you’re gonna be working for Castiel
>> Well, I haven’t met him yet. He might be an asshole. Charlie told me she wouldn’t be mad if I chose to run after meeting him.
<< He seems like a nice guy. He has a tendency to make it to the tabloids here and there, but that’s mostly because he likes to make out with anyone, really.
>> That’s nice
<< Do not make out with him
>> Why not!!!
>> Jk. I’m a professional. I don’t sleep with my bosses.
>> Yet. ;)
<< You’re awful. I don’t like you.
>> You love me.
He takes the two orange bottles full of the prescription pills that he forgot to take this morning from where they’re sitting on the living room table. He knows it’s not great, that he should be better at following his therapist’s advice (“They’re for your own good, Dean, even if you feel like you don’t need them” Pamela had said three weeks ago when she prescribed it to him after Sam had all but dragged him across time to have his first appointment with a psychiatrist), but he’ll try and do better tomorrow. And maybe he should talk to Pamela about it, too, when he goes to his next appointment in a couple of days.
He’s on his way out when his eyes catch on the box of things that Cole sent back and that he opened earlier. It’s still sitting on the coffee table, just opened, with everything still inside. Dean defiantly chooses to leave it here, and leave Benny to decide what he wants to keep and what he wants to trash.
The thing is, Dean wants to be better. He wants to fight and not let the dark cloud of depression, as Pam had called it, taint his life. And Dean… Dean doesn’t want to think about Cole anymore. He doesn’t want to think about how broken he still feels over their whole 5-year-long relationship. He doesn’t want to look at the raw scars, both physical and mental. He doesn’t want to wake up and reach for the other side of the bed when it’s been empty more often than not in the past year alone.
He just wants to go and do his damn job. He wants to be okay.
After one last look through the place, Dean closes the door to Benny’s apartment and gets down to the basement where his beloved ‘67 Impala has been parked for weeks.
When he feels her roar beneath his feet, it’s like he’s breathing all over again.
“On to other adventures, Baby,” he says, more to himself than anyone else, really.
He doesn’t know where this one will lead, but at least he’ll be near the people he loves, doing a job he likes.
And after all, that’s still better than what he’s spent the past 5 years holding on to.
Chapter 2: Don't Worry
Notes:
Well, I'm back earlier than I anticipated! I've been dealing with a lot of shit where anons are leaving extremely hurtful comments on all of my work and threatening to doxx me when I suspended the ability to comment if you're not logged in, so I decided to respond how I do best: by writing and posting a chapter entirely because I'm a petty-ass bitch.
I hope you guys will like this one! It dives a little bit more into both of Cas' and Dean's histories and you can see the start of the entire pine tree forest between those two coming to life!
I've decided to go with the flow with the posting schedule for this story, so the best way to know when a new chapter is going to be posted is to subscribe either to my profile or the updates for this story specifically.
Thank you to my incredible duo of beta-readers, my beloved Hannah & Nickel. 💜
See you in the comment section, and enjoy!
✧ Your "Glory Hallelujah" playlist ☄️
✧ Your "Free Will - the band" playlist ⚡️
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It takes Dean about 45 minutes to get from the street of Oakland where Benny’s apartment is located to the quiet street of Capra Way, in the Marina district of San Francisco, where Castiel Novak lives. It’s a very nice neighborhood, just steps away from lively Chestnut Street with probably the most beautiful views of Marina Green Dean has ever seen.
Charlie did say the man was a rockstar, after all. Dean guesses he has a right to show it off.
He barely has the time to wonder how much the rent must cost on this street before he sees a flash of red hair and Charlie waving at him from where she stands on the sidewalk. Dean parks the car smoothly on the side, making sure that she’s in no immediate danger (if she even gets as much as a scratch, Dean will never forgive himself).
“Your Highness,” he greets Charlie as he opens his door and gets out.
“Handmaiden,” Charlie greets back with a smile before Dean hugs her swiftly. “You missed Thursday board game night last week.”
Charlie and Dean usually see each other once a week ever since Dean made his way to California, and they were Zooming and Facetiming every other day when he was still in New York. But the past week hasn’t been easy for Dean, and he pretty much retreated to the peace and quiet of Benny’s couch, save for the few times Sam managed to drag him out. It’s not that he’s been ignoring Charlie, exactly; it’s that he was in such a bad place that seeing anyone was barely possible for him.
Dean grimaces, trying to hide his discomfort.
“I wasn’t feeling well,” he shrugs. “Raincheck on that board game night though, yeah?”
You’re not lying to her, exactly, he tries to tell himself. You’re not!
“Yeah,” Charlie says with a smile before patting his shoulder. “Ready for this?”
She sounds and looks on edge, and Dean doesn’t remember the last time he’s seen Charlie behave this way- if there was ever a time she did. She’s usually bubbly and talks a mile a minute, and if you dare mention any of her favorite tv shows or movies, then the conversation is out of your hand.
(Dean never told her, but that’s one of the things he loves the most about Charlie.)
So the fact that she’s so quiet and all-around sad is worrying, to say the least.
“Why do you make it sound like it’s gonna be so terrible? If this guy is your best friend, I don’t see how this could go wrong,” Dean says, trying to calm her. “Also, I’m sorry, we’ve been friends for years, and you’ve never even talked to me about him! What gives?”
Charlie shrugs apologetically before starting to make her way towards the door.
“I usually don’t really talk about it unless I have to. People have a way of treating me differently whenever they learn who I work for and who I’m friends with, and I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”
Even though Dean understands where she’s coming from, he can’t help the little fleck of annoyance at Charlie thinking he’d treat her any differently depending on who she’s working with. He chooses to ignore it for the time being because Charlie seems to be in enough of a bad place already.
“I get that,” he says instead, aiming for what’s the easiest to say. “So, what about Castiel, then?”
“Listen, I-” Charlie starts before turning to catch Dean’s eyes. “I love Cas dearly, but he’s… Right now, he’s a mess, and I don’t know how to handle it. His brother was also a friend of mine, and I’m just- I can’t handle losing both Jimmy and Cas at the same time.”
Her voice is so thick with sadness that Dean goes to hug her right away without even thinking. She doesn’t fight it, immediately melting against him, her arms wrapping around Dean’s side. They stay like that for an entire minute, Charlie just breathing and Dean just being there for her.
Over the past few years, they’ve both been through a lot, and they’ve both been there for each other. But Dean can feel how this is different from all the other times- how it’s different from the time Charlie broke up with her ex-girlfriend Gilda and spent a week eating ice cream on Dean’s couch, how it’s different from when she got fired from her previous job before deciding to launch her own agency.
This goes deeper than anything else, and Dean doesn’t need Charlie to put words on it to understand it. Instead, he just hugs her tighter.
“I’m sorry,” he says before placing a kiss on the crown of her head. “I wish there was something I could do.”
Charlie shakes her head as they separate, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears.
“Just… If this goes okay and you feel like you can handle being Cas’ PA after meeting him, it’ll be the best thing you could do for me.”
Dean smiles, squeezing her hand tight once before letting go.
“Alright, let’s go then.”
The ‘apartment,’ as Charlie called it, looks more like a house to Dean. It’s a two-level little white house, trapped in-between two others and looking newly built. Charlie stops him right before going through the door, indicating the garage door next to where they’re standing.
“Cas doesn’t drive and doesn’t own a car, so you’re free to park Baby in there; I’ve cleared it with him already.”
Dean nods, nerves suddenly overtaking him. This is important to Charlie, but what if things with Castiel don’t go well? What if he’s a giant dick that voted for Trump and goes to Church every Sunday?
Easy there, cowboy. Rockstar, tabloids, likes making out in public, remember that? His brain helpfully supplies.
(It doesn’t calm Dean’s nerves.)
Dean doesn’t have enough time to dwell on it now that he’s here, though. He follows Charlie through a flight of stairs that leads them to a giant living room and kitchen space. The light of the sun is flooding the entire room, making it feel well-lived in and cozy, and Dean’s lost in the contemplation of the magnificent kitchen when a noise somewhere in-between a cough and a laugh tears him away.
He turns just enough to realize there’s a man sitting- slouching, really- on the comfortable-looking couch, only wearing a pair of ratty sweatpants and nothing else.
If Dean had any sort of sixth sense, he’d realize that staring at the man is probably not the kind of thing he should be doing, but he’s only human after all, and that’s a fine specimen even by Dean Winchester standards.
The man’s chest is well-defined, sporting a couple of tattoos here and there, but Dean is immediately taken by the way his mess of raven hair compliments the blue of his eyes so well. He has tattoos on his arms, too, and if Dean thought he wasn’t already fucked, it’s the little laugh that passes the man’s lips as he watches him back that tells him just how much.
“Dean, this is Castiel Novak. Cas, this is Dean, your new PA.”
The man- Castiel, his boss, holy fuck, maybe Sam was right to warn him after all- only smiles wider.
“You have a knack for good choices, Charlie, huh?”
Charlie rolls her eyes at him before swatting him on the arm. Castiel laughs again, letting his head fall back on the couch as he looks at her.
“Behave. And put a damn shirt on, Cas, this isn’t a porn photoshoot,” Charlie says as she makes her way to the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?”
That’s a direct question to Dean, but Cas answers in his place.
“Can I have a whiskey? Neat, no ice.”
“No,” Charlie says as she opens the fridge. “You can have cold water and Tylenol. Maybe a can of soda if you behave. Dean?”
Dean can’t take his eyes off of Cas and the way he straight up pouts when Charlie answers him.
“Huh, yeah, a can of soda sounds good to me.”
He’s barely finished when Charlie tosses what looks like a t-shirt across the room. It hits Castiel in the face, and he groans as it does, but Charlie doesn’t even give him her attention as she takes three cans of pop out of the giant fridge in the kitchen.
“Put this on.”
“Jeez, Charlie, don’t be so pushy,” Castiel complains while putting the t-shirt on. “There. Satisfied?”
He opens his arms to show her that he’s put the t-shirt on, and Charlie rolls her eyes again as she gives Dean the can of soda she took out of the fridge for him. It’s cold against Dean’s fingers.
“Yes. Are you ready to meet Dean properly now?”
Castiel’s eyes find him again then, and Dean tries not to squirm.
There’s just something about the gaze of this man on him that makes him both content in a way he’s never felt and uncomfortable in the weight of it.
“Hello, Dean,” he says, his voice sounding like he’s just swallowed a whole bucket of gravel and poured honey on top of it. “I’m Castiel. Nice to meet you.”
Dean once again sends a silent prayer to Sam’s earlier text.
If I do end up kissing this boss, I swear to God, Sammy, that'll be because God intended to.
“Dean,” he manages to say, his voice toneless. “I heard you were looking for a special PA?”
Cas laughs, but it’s not happy nor sarcastic. It’s just so sad that Dean can feel it reverberating in his bones.
“You could say that,” he says as he nods.
And so, that’s how Dean meets Castiel Novak for the first time.
✧✧✧
The thing is, Castiel might still be half-drunk and high, but he can still form an opinion on what’s a good and a bad idea.
And the other thing is, his new PA is both the best and the most terrible idea Charlie has ever had. As soon as he walks into the living room on Charlie’s heels, Cas can feel it and groans in frustration.
Charlie eyes him suspiciously. “Headache?”
Cas just nods, putting his head in his head under the gaze of the fucking Greek God that just walked in.
Why does Castiel’s life always have to be so fucked on either end?
Once Charlie is finished berating him for not wearing a t-shirt in his own damn house, she moves on to other subjects. Cas loves her, but Jesus FUCKING Christ, he wishes he could be anywhere else than here right now.
Preferably somewhere with alcohol and a ton of drugs to get high on.
“It’s filthy in here, Cas,” Charlie says from where she stands. “When’s the last time you cleaned up?”
“You ask that like I can even remember what I ate last night,” Cas fires back, and he knows he’s being unfair to Charlie, that his place is a mess and that she’s only trying to help.
But he can’t help himself. Everything hurts right now, and he just has to fight it back with more hurt.
“But if that’s so much trouble to you, you can ask your new protégé to help you clean up my fucking mess.”
Charlie’s gaze is icy when he brings his head up to lock eyes with her. It doesn’t help temper his spectacularly bad moods that Dean is looking at him the exact, same way.
“Don’t be a dick,” Charlie says, voice as icy as her eyes look. “It’s not a good look on you.”
Cas has the presence of mind to keep his mouth shut this time, but he doesn’t lower his gaze until Charlie turns her head to look at Dean. He doesn’t know what they tell each other, but after a minute, they both start cleaning up the place. He loses track of time after a while, in all the flurry of conversation that Charlie and Dean have, too concentrated on the pain that reverberates through his entire soul to be in the present right now.
It’s easier, he thinks, to curl up in the quiet comfort of your drugged-up brain. It doesn’t feel as bad to reach out for the other part of your soul and realize it’s gone when both alcohol and drugs help the numbness and keep the pain away.
He’s suddenly ripped away from his thoughts by Dean’s pretty face in his line of sight, and he can’t help it… It’s out even before he realizes it.
“With lips like this, it would be blasphemous to be straight. Have you ever used them to suck cock, Dean?”
He hears Charlie’s gasp from afar, but now that he let this out, it’s not like he can backpedal. He just keeps his eyes on Dean and makes a point of smirking at him, even though the little voice in his head keeps telling him that he’s a fucking idiot.
(Cas even agrees on that point).
He expects Dean to either act scandalized or to go immediately for the jugular. What he doesn’t expect is Dean to smirk back at him as he answers.
“I have, yeah. Why settle for something when you can get the best of both worlds, huh?”
Cas just snorts before letting his head fall back into the couch. “I like him, Charlie.”
“Well, I don’t like you right now,” she chastises from where she stands in the kitchen, her hands on her hips. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
“So you keep saying,” Cas answers to the ceiling.
He’s vaguely aware of Dean doing something to his right and Charlie coming closer, but it’s still a surprise when he feels the couch dip to his left and Charlie next to him.
“What?” he asks, his eyes drawn up in a frown.
“Personal assistant, remember? Dean needs to know a little more about everything he’s gonna have to do before deciding if he’s okay with working for you,” Charlie says. “And honestly, I wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t, since you apparently decided to act like a douchebag.”
She eyes Dean, who’s decided to sit in one of the armchairs facing both of them on the couch, and fuck, it’s a blasphemy to have someone this hot in front of him, and honestly, does Charlie really count on him to not jump this guy’s bones?
Concentrate, the voice in his head snaps at him.
With a sigh, he gives his go-ahead, and they go through the rough lines of what Dean’s job is gonna be, what are the things he’s gonna have to handle when it comes to Cas and his job, and his personal life. Then they reach the part that truly matters.
“So, what’s the story with the kids?” Dean asks both him and Charlie. “What do I have to handle when it comes to them, what are they like, and when are they arriving?”
Cas has to shake himself out of the misery he’s put himself in- mainly, staring at the line of Dean’s right biceps- to respond.
Get yourself together, Novak, his inner voice that suspiciously sounds like Jimmy says.
“Claire is 7 and goes to Sherman Elementary; it’s about 5 minutes from here,” he says, ignoring the way his head hurts. “Jack is 2 and goes to daycare every day, I’ll have to check, but I think it’s also about 5 minutes from here, maybe less.”
He also ignores Charlie's surprised gaze, probably wondering how he can even remember the name of Claire’s school in his current state, but it’s not like she knows how it feels to be hungover in his own body.
It’s practically second nature at this point anyway.
“So you’d be in charge of getting them there every morning and picking them up at the end of the day, and then it’s mostly caring for them at any point, even when I’m not around.”
Dean nods, and Cas tries to ignore the way Dean’s lips captivate him.
“Okay. Anything else I should know about?”
Cas rips his eyes away from where they’ve been resting on Dean’s plush bottom lip, wondering how it would feel between his teeth, to look at Charlie next to him.
And he does not like the look she gives him.
“What?” he asks immediately.
“I think there’s something else we need to discuss.”
If it wasn’t for the alarm sound going on on his own end, the way Charlie’s voice goes into the lows as she talks would be enough of an indicator to warn Cas that a storm is coming.
“What?” he repeats.
The silence is heavy between them, which is probably the reason why Dean breaks it first.
“Hey, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna leave you to it and put my car in the garage while you talk about the rest? Unless there are more things for us to discuss?”
Charlie smiles at him, the picture of composed.
“Nah, I’ll have your contract ready within the hour. You can settle in the downstairs bedroom until then and come up here once you’re done. You’re good with that, Cas?”
“Sure,” Cas nods. “There’s a set of keys on the wall next to the door; there should also be a remote with access to the garage door. You can keep that one for the future; it has the keys to the front door and back door too.”
Dean nods before taking his leave. Cas watches him leave, something stirring in his gut, before turning his gaze to look back at his friend. Charlie swallows before finally saying what she seems to have been pondering for a while.
“You need to quit.”
“Quit?”
He’ll blame it on his hangover, but he doesn’t understand right away. He thinks about the band first, and how the only way for him to ever quit would be in a coffin.
Then it all makes sense, right as Charlie talks again.
“You need to stop taking drugs, and you need to stop drinking.”
Cas can’t help himself once again: he laughs.
First, losing Jimmy. Then, figuring out that he’s going to have to take care of the kids. And now, having to quit the very things that keep him alive.
“You’d be better off asking me to leave the band, honestly,” he tells Charlie.
And it’s sad, he thinks. It’s sad that it’s gone to these ends, that there isn’t a day where he wakes up and doesn’t think about where he’s gonna get his fix. It’s sad that the first thing on his mind isn’t coffee, but “Where’s the bottle of whiskey?”
Charlie’s gaze is severe.
“Do you want the kids to go to foster care?”
“What? No, but-”
The very idea of losing Jack and Claire is enough to send an electric shock through his entire body.
“Then you will quit fucking around with drugs and alcohol and get yourself together, Cas. Because as competent as I know Dean is, if you’re a drug addict and an alcoholic on top of being the picture-perfect image of unstable? Then social services will take the kids away.”
Charlie’s voice is kind, but it’s also firm and methodic. She doesn’t intend to let this go, and she doesn’t intend for Cas to disagree.
“It’s not-”
“-up for discussion,” Charlie finishes in his place, and he frowns. “Cas, it’s either you agree to an outpatient program that can help you or social services will take one look at your file, one look at your house, and one look at your face before deciding to place Jack and Claire in foster care.”
She’s cold and brash as she says it, which isn’t something Cas is used to. He knows, in some corner of his mind, that it must mean it’s a serious conversation, that he needs to hear what she says.
He thinks of Jimmy, then. Of the last time he came to one of their shows, with Claire and Jack in tow. Of how he smiled whenever Jack would throw himself into Cas’ arms as soon as he’d walk through the door. And he makes a decision.
For Jimmy. And Claire. And Jack. Because maybe Cas doesn’t deserve it, but they do.
“Okay. Okay, Charlie.”
She looks like she’s gonna start crying at that, and Cas could swear he sees her eyes growing wet before she turns her head.
“Okay. I’ll set it up, then,” she says before getting up.
Cas catches her hand before she’s out of his grasp.
“I’m sorry,” he sighs. “For being difficult. I just… I don’t know how to do any of that without Jimmy.”
Charlie deflates as soon as he finishes his sentence, and suddenly they’re hugging, half-standing, half-sitting, in the middle of his living room.
“I’m sorry,” Cas sniffles into Charlie’s shoulder and lets go of everything, here in the arms of his best friend. “Do you still think I’m worth all this?”
Charlie swats him on the shoulder again, and he yelps as she releases him. The grin on her face tells Cas just enough about her being very satisfied with herself.
“Yes, I do, you idiot,” she says with a smile. “Be good with Dean. He’s here to help you and the kids, and he’s my friend too.”
“Couldn’t you have chosen an ugly-looking friend instead,” Cas groans, his head hitting the back of the couch again. “Why is it the first time I hear about him anyway?”
Charlie suddenly looks guilty as hell.
“You’ve kinda been told. I just never said his name.”
The puzzle pieces suddenly fit together in Cas’ head, and he understands. Dean is the friend that Charlie crashed with whenever she went to New York.
He’s the one that took her to Broadway to see Hamilton for her last birthday.
“Oh… But I thought he was in New York?”
“Well, he’s not anymore,” she shrugs, and there’s obviously a story there, but Cas doesn’t have the right to dig yet.
He’ll come back to it later, though.
“Hey,” Charlie calls out, and Cas raises his head to look at her. “Don’t fuck this up, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And go take a shower before the kids arrive. I’ll go and see if Dean’s settled.”
And with that said, Cas is left alone in the room, wondering what the hell is next.
✧✧✧
“I’d understand if, after all of that, you decided to run,” Charlie’s voice interrupts Dean’s contemplation of the huge walk-in closet in the room that’s his.
He frowns as he turns to look at Charlie, standing in the doorway.
“Why would I even think about running?” he asks, bewildered.
Charlie sighs before she enters the bedroom and lets herself fall face-first on the huge bed.
Seriously, Dean never had a bed that big, even when he was living in New York with…
Yeah, not touching that one, his mind helpfully supplies.
“Cas was wildly inappropriate with you,” Charlie says, her voice muffled by the comforter on the bed. “I swear he’s not normally that much of an asshole; he’s just…”
“He just lost his twin brother and suddenly has to care for two little kids,” Dean finishes in her place, turning back to empty his duffel bag.
His entire belongings only fill about one-quarter of the closet, but it feels good seeing his stuff displayed like that for the first time since he’s left New York.
And contrary to what Charlie believes, Dean didn’t get a bad vibe from Cas.
“Yeah,” Charlie says from behind him.
He lets the silence settle for a little while as he finishes unpacking before sitting next to Charlie, who's now lying on her back, her eyes on the ceiling.
“I’m worried, you know?” she says.
She sounds exhausted. Dean extends his hand to take hers, and she squeezes back immediately.
“That just means you’re a good friend. He’ll be alright.”
“So, does that mean you’re not running?”
Dean laughs. “I’m not running. You can send me the contract whenever. I’ll sign it.”
“I didn’t even tell you about the pay yet,” Charlie laughs. “It’s better than the Crowley job.”
“Better?”
Dean barely believes his luck. He’s not particularly money-driven, but he’s still intent on paying part of Sam’s tuition, and the Crowley job was his best-paid job since he started working as a PA years ago.
“Way better,” Charlie nods. “I’ll email you the paperwork, okay?”
“Sure,” Dean says. “Should we go back upstairs? I think Jack and Claire are gonna be there soon.”
“Yeah, I want to check on Cas. Make sure he didn’t do anything stupid while we were here.”
“Give the man some credit,” Dean laughs as they exit what is now his own room together.
They’re in the middle of the stairs when Charlie stops in front of Dean and turns around to look at him.
“Are you really okay?”
Dean looks at her with what must be his most puzzled look to date.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“You said you missed Thursday board game night because you weren’t feeling okay,” Charlie says as if she’s just now remembering. “You’d tell me if you needed to talk, yeah?”
Dean’s heart is in his throat at the thought of the little orange bottle of pills he made a point of hiding in the back of the closet because he’s not ready to talk about his mental health yet. He tries not to think about the fact that he hasn’t told Charlie or Benny that he’s going to therapy and tries not to think that he hasn’t told anyone he was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety disorders.
He tries not to think that Sam still thinks he sees a therapist once a week when in reality, Dean goes to see a psychiatrist every two weeks too.
But he smiles back at Charlie, ignoring everything else because he’s Dean Winchester, and Dean Winchester protects the people he loves. He doesn’t needlessly burden them with stuff that doesn't matter.
“Of course I would,” he says.
And somehow, even if it’s a lie, Charlie takes it and turns back to climb the rest of the stairs to the living room.
✧✧✧
The kids arrive at 8.
Cas knows it’s 8 because the alarm on his phone goes off right as the front door opens, and he can hear Jack’s little voice calling for him as he touches the snooze button on his phone to render the alarm for Jimmy’s daily phone call silent.
He tries to ignore the way tears press behind his eyes when he realizes there will never be more phone calls with Jimmy. There will never be any excitement in his bones about Jimmy joining them on tour. There will never be any morning where his brother will wake him up obnoxiously early to go for a run because “the sunrise is marvelous today, Cas.”
And he doesn’t know how to deal with that, doesn’t know how to function with half his soul ripped away from him. But when Jack appears in his line of sight and runs towards him, when Claire immediately follows suit, and they all end up hugging tight in the middle of the living room, Cas thinks that maybe all’s not lost.
It takes a while for the kids to let go, and even when they do, Cas can feel Jack’s tiny hand gripping tight to the fabric of his t-shirt. He squats to be at his height instead, and meets Jack’s hazel eyes with a smile.
“Hey, buddy. I missed you.”
“I missed you too, Uncle Cas,” Jack says with a shy smile.
“Auntie Charlie said you had someone to introduce us to,” Claire says from where she stands behind her brother.
She’s only 7, but she’s so strong-headed and independent that sometimes Cas forgets she’s so young. Her blond hair makes Cas think of her mom, and he mourns the fact that these kids will never ever get to live through life with both of their parents by their side.
But right now, Claire looks like a kid who hasn’t slept a lot in the past few days, and it breaks Cas’ heart.
He eyes Charlie and Dean standing in the kitchen to give them some privacy. He thinks back to his conversation with Charlie earlier, about quitting. To Dean saying he was okay with taking care of the kids on top of being Cas’ PA.
“Yeah,” Castiel says gently, offering his hand to Claire, who immediately takes it. “You’re gonna be living with me from now on, but there’s someone who’s gonna be taking care of you too because I can’t do everything on my own.”
“Can’t Auntie Charlie do it?” Jack asks good naturally as Cas stands and makes his way to the kitchen.
He can feel Dean and Charlie’s gaze on them, and it’s weirdly comforting.
“I’ll be here as often as I can, buddy,” Charlie says as they make it to the kitchen. “But I have a lot of work to do, just like Uncle Cas. But this is Dean.”
Cas helps Jack and Claire up on the kitchen stools, and they both stare at Dean, who’s standing next to Charlie on the other side of the kitchen island.
He’s struck by how fucking beautiful this man is again and, honestly, anyone with a set of functioning eyes would do the same.
He’s changed since he arrived a few hours ago, now sporting a khaki-colored shirt that hugs him in all the right spots and highlights his thin waist as well as the green of his eyes.
God forbid, Cas is so fucked.
“Dean is going to be living with us,” Cas starts, ripping his eyes away from Dean to look at his niece and nephew. “He’s going to take you to school and daycare every morning and pick you up in the afternoon. He’ll be there for anything you need, even when I’m here.”
Jack looks at Dean with a confused frown on his face, and Cas tries to ignore the way he looks so much like Jimmy that it hurts.
“Do you have a car?” his two-year-old asks Dean, as if that is somehow the most important piece of information he needs.
Dean’s smile extends into a grin.
“Of course I do. It’s in your uncle’s garage,” he says softly. “Once you’re settled into your room, I can take you and your sister to see her.”
“Her?” Claire asks, apparently mesmerized by Dean.
He seems to have a way of doing that.
“Yeah, she’s a lady, you know?” Dean says, and Charlie winks at Cas from where she stands next to him. “I got her when I was 18. She was my dad’s before that.”
“She must be super old,” Jack says, obviously impressed.
Dean laughs at that, and Cas does, too.
“Shh, don’t let her hear that,” he says, overplaying it.
And judging by how the kids laugh, he’s already gained his good graces from them. It feels good to hear them laugh, and not for the first time since Dean walked in, Castiel is already grateful for his presence.
Maybe Charlie was right.
“Why don’t we get you guys settled?” Charlie asks, always the one keeping things running.
“Can I get the room next to Uncle Cas’ studio?” Claire asks immediately.
Of course, she’d immediately want Jimmy’s room, Cas thinks as he smiles sadly.
“But where is Dean sw’eeping,” Jack asks as they all move towards the bedrooms upstairs.
“Downstairs, buddy. But don’t worry, I’ll be around if you need anything.”
Damn, he’s good with kids. Cas can’t help but think as they go through settling down the kids and making sure they have everything they need.
Charlie was right. This might have been a good idea after all. Not that he’s about to tell her that just yet…
✧✧✧
The thing is, Dean loves kids.
It’s a statement that’s true in any way or form.
But jeez, is he exhausted.
It’s about 10 PM when both Jack and Claire manage to fall asleep for good, after multiple times of calling for either him or Cas. They did the best with what they had- they’re still deeply traumatized and Castiel, Dean is learning, is not the best at putting on a brave face when he’s obviously working through his own grief.
He’s nowhere to be found when Dean walks out of Jack’s room and closes the door once he’s certain the little rascal is asleep.
The house- Charlie might call it an apartment, but it’s a whole house to Dean- is silent, and when Dean looks at the terrace in the back through the living room window, Cas doesn’t seem to be here either. He’s been around almost every room when Charlie and Cas had him visit earlier, but he wouldn’t know the first thing about looking for where Castiel might be at this point.
He sits at the kitchen table instead, and, after grabbing a drink from the fridge, he finally takes his phone out. There are a few messages to catch up on, mainly Benny asking about the job, and Charlie thanking him for being the best (Dean takes all the compliments he can get).
But most of all, there’s Sam.
<< So did you kiss your boss yet?
<< ohmygodyoudid
<< WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING ME
>> some of us have jobs, Sammaya
<< You’re a dick
>> We have established that a long time ago
<< fair enough
<< also right
<< so how is he?
>> fine
<< that’s all you got for me? he’s FINE?
>> idk man. he’s good looking for sure
>> a bit of a dick at times
>> kids are cute tho
<< how you doing on the not kissing your boss front?
>> a solid 1 out of 10
<< jayzus
>> dick :)
<< goodnight to you too, jerk
“Hey, I’m in the studio,” Cas’ voice suddenly causes him to lift his head up from where he’d been looking at his phone and mainly bothering his little brother.
That explains why he couldn’t hear him.
“You can join, if you want,” Castiel adds from the studio room, situated at the end of the corridor, between the two kids’ rooms.
Dean ponders for half a second before deciding that, after all, he has nothing to lose. He’s a musician too, and it’s not like he hasn’t been dying to see what’s really going on inside of that little studio Cas has built in his own home.
It’s cozy, to say the least. There’s a comfy-looking couch against one of the walls, and in front of that is a huge console with an area to record that’s separated by a glass window in front of said console. Guitars and keyboards are lining the rest of the room, and, when Dean enters, Cas is sitting on the office chair with a green guitar that Dean recognizes immediately.
“Is that a ‘61 Telecaster?” he asks, unable to help himself.
Castiel looks back at him with surprise in his eyes, placing a protective hand on the guitar.
“I didn’t know you were a guitar guy,” he says, almost sounding impressed. “It is, yes. Jimmy bought it for me as a Christmas present about 5 years ago. I’d been wanting this guitar forever, and he just went and bought it.”
Dean sits on the couch carefully, looking at Cas- his boss, he still has to wrap his head around that- who’s very obviously going through something.
“Jack fell asleep, by the way. I checked on Claire, too, and she’s sound asleep as well.”
Cas smiles, looking down at the strings.
“Thank you.”
Dean doesn’t say anything, and for a little while, all that’s in the air is silence. It’s not uncomfortable, nor is it heavy, but Dean is faced with the fact that he still doesn’t know much about the man that’s sitting in front of him.
“You know, my brother told me you were pretty big out here, but huh… I have this rule that I don’t listen to anything that came out after 1979.”
Cas looks back at him with a smile and an affronted look on his face. He even goes as far as to lay a hand on his heart and looking for all the world like Dean’s shot him.
“I’m wounded,” Cas says dramatically, and Dean laughs at his antics. “So that means you’ve never heard of anything by us?”
Dean shrugs. “I mean, Sammy said he put your music on in my car and that I said I liked it, so I guess I have. I just wasn’t aware.”
Cas raises an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know who Sammy is, but he seems like a good judge of character to me.”
“He’s my little brother,” Dean explains good-naturedly. “4 years younger than me. My mom died when we were 4, and my dad pretty much lost it after that, so I basically raised him. We’re… Close doesn’t really cover it.”
There’s a melancholic look on Castiel’s face, and Dean mentally slaps himself for laying his personal history out on a guy who just lost his twin brother.
Well played, Winchester.
“Does he live around?” Castiel asks as he concentrates back on his guitar and starts tuning it.
“Yeah, he’s studying at Berkeley Law, pursuing a PhD,” Dean nods proudly. “He’s got the brains of the family.”
Cas laughs, still concentrating on his guitar.
“If you’re around, I’m sure that means he doesn’t have all the brains of the family,” he says, and Dean can feel the way his cheeks heat up at that.
He does his best to ignore it.
“What was he like?” he asks and waits for Cas to raise his head to look back at him with a quizzical look on his face. “Jimmy.”
There are so many emotions that cross Cas’ face in a matter of a second that Dean doesn’t know how to breathe for a moment.
There’s grief, first, in the way the blue of Castiel’s eyes grows heavier. There’s a fondness in the way his lips immediately stretch into a smile after the question. There’s so much pain in the way his shoulders straighten right away, too, as if remembering the absence of his brother. There’s terrible hopelessness in the way his voice is deeper than its usual tone as he answers Dean, looking at him for a second before looking away.
“He was the best part of both of us,” Cas starts with a sad smile, before looking down at his guitar. “He was kind and clever, the best father anyone could be.”
Dean smiles. “I can see that, just looking at the kids.”
The smile Cas gives him that could power a thousand suns, Dean’s pretty sure.
“You said you lost your mother?” Cas asks as he starts playing on his guitar slowly, the sound soft reverberating through a small amp at his feet.
“Yeah. House fire. Sam was only six months old, I was 4. I carried him out, my dad tried to get to my mom, but it was too late.”
“I’m sorry,” Cas says. “Well, losing Jimmy probably feels like that, but it also feels like… I feel like part of my soul is gone, and I keep trying to- to reach for it, because it’s unnatural to me to feel like it’s not complete. Except he’s not…”
His voice breaks on that last word, and despite his head being down to look at the guitar and the way he’s playing, Dean is almost sure he can see a tear escape Castiel’s eyes.
They’ve only known each other for less than 24 hours, and they’re already there pouring their hearts out to each other. Dean doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad sign.
“He’s not there,” Dean finishes with a sad smile.
Cas just nods, and this time Dean can see the tear that goes down his cheek before Cas wipes it away with his thumb.
“Yeah,” he says with an even sadder smile before looking down at his guitar again. “Can I play you a song, Dean?”
Dean nods, looking back at Cas with unadorned sincerity. When he starts singing, along with the chords, there’s something in the air that Dean has never felt before.
“Don't worry if you don't know what to do
I've spent a little time in worried shoes
I wore them out through walking
It wasn't any use
Don't worry if you don't know what to do.”
Dean doesn’t know if it’s the grief, the raw wound that’s still opened in Cas’ soul, or the way they’re both still getting to know each other. But it’s there, clinging to them like a lighthouse to the shore.
“Don't give up if you just can't get away
Don't listen to the bitter things they say
Put those thoughts behind you
Tomorrow's a new day
Don't give up if you just can't get away
Life hurts
And love will burn
Don't we wish it weren't that way
And if it
Falls to bits
You should fix it
Don't throw it away.”
Castiel raises his head up, his blue eyes catching Dean’s as he continues singing. His voice strikes something inside of Dean. He doesn’t know what just yet, but there’s a feeling echoing against the walls of his ribcage that makes it both hurt and feel like he can fly.
“Don't let your heart get hardened into stone
Or lose yourself in looking at your phone
So many so-called friends
And still you feel alone
You should spend more time
With the do's than with the don'ts
Life hurts
And love will burn
Don't we wish it weren't that way
And when you
Can't pull through
I will help you
I won't push you away.”
Dean thinks about his mom then. About how 4-year-old Dean, many moons ago, didn’t know how to handle the pain and stopped talking altogether. He looks at Cas singing and thinks of Jack and Claire asleep in the rooms next door. He thinks of the pain that’s still seeping through his bones when he thinks about John and Mary being gone, and he doesn’t know how he’d cope with losing his brother on top of it.
Cas keeps singing, his eyes long lost to a faraway point, his hands dancing on the guitar, and his voice deep and beautiful.
“Don't worry if you don't know what to do
Don't worry if you don't know what to do
Don't worry if you don't know what to do
Don't worry if you don't know what to do.”
He smiles as he sings, and Dean catches himself smiling tiredly too. Today has been a lot, but in no case would he have ever thought he’d end up here, in front of this man, singing him a song.
Cas is looking at him as he sings the last few lyrics, and Dean surprises himself by smiling back at him. There’s a thing about Castiel Novak that stirs up an emotion he doesn’t know what to call yet. A thing of bones and broken edges, put away in a dark corner and otherworldly to him as of yet.
“I don't know what I'm doing
No-one has a clue
But you'll figure it out
And I might too.”
But he thinks maybe that’s worth exploring.
Notes:
The song that Cas sings to Dean at the end of this chapter is "Don't Worry" by Frank Turner 🤍
What do you think is going to happen next? Any predictions to how these two are eventually going to fuck it up?
(Side note, how great is Charlie? I love her so much)
Chapter 3: Hell or High Water
Summary:
"Man, all my life I've been
Searching for someone, to show me how it feels to be loved
And how to love somebody back
And after stumbling through the years
I thought I found you, just to see you fading out into the night
Was it the trick of the light?
Or a shot in the dark?
Was it hell or high water that broke our hearts?
Was it something you said?
Or just a cruel twist of fate?
Was it hell or high water and is it too late?"
Hell or High Water — Passenger
Notes:
Welcome back, folks!
I'm sorry it took me so long to update. I've been dealing with a lot personally and professionally (included but not limited to a possibly ruptured tendon in my hand and arm), so it's been a real not-so-good time to go through. I can't promise that I'll be updating this story as regularly as I tend to usually do, but rest assured that this will be completed!
No real trigger to warn about here except the usual: there is drug talk, someone talking under the influence of drugs and alcohol, the usual.
Special thanks to Nickel & Hannah for beta'ing this for me today, y'all are the real stars. 💜✨
See you in the comment section, and enjoy!
✧ Your "Glory Hallelujah" playlist ☄️
✧ Your "Free Will - the band" playlist
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Castiel would love to say that things go smoothly, that the kids acclimate well and don’t talk about Jimmy at all, and that his path to sobriety is a smooth one.
But the reality is, everything sucks, he’s never going to be good enough for his brother’s kids, and fucking hell this sobriety bullshit is HARD.
It’s been three weeks since the call. Three weeks since hearing that his brother, the most important person in Castiel’s life, was dead on the pavement of a street not even five minutes away from his house.
Three weeks since Jack and Claire barrelled into his legs and demanded to be held, told bedtime stories, and started calling his house “home.” Three weeks since Charlie pushed him into that outpatient rehab program that Cas both loathes and is grateful for.
Three weeks since sex-on-legs, also known as Dean Winchester, has been living in his own house and became a vital part of simply functioning, and that’s the new dawn of Castiel’s sanity right here.
The thing is, the kids alone are hard to handle for the simple reason that they are kids: they get upset, they cry at night, they’re moody, and they never want to eat anything other than pasta and french fries. But they’re kids; they are supposed to be that way.
Castiel is not a child. As a matter of fact, he has never really been one: forced to grow up faster than normal children to be able to care for himself in an environment that was built for him and his brother to fail. He’s never been allowed to be a child, and maybe, if he was actually going to therapy, they’d get a good look at this part of his life and understand that’s why he’s been self-destructing. But Castiel is NOT going to therapy, so no one is going to figure that shit out for him.
But as he wakes up and immediately feels the need to hurl as soon as he opens his eyes, he feels like maybe he should be allowed to be a child again.
“I’m guessing that head of yours doesn’t feel better, then?” a smooth, but balanced voice interrupts Castiel from slamming his bathroom door shut.
Right. Dean.
Dean, who woke up in the middle of the night and came to check on him, found him lying on the floor and put him back to bed. Gently, without a single word of contempt or chastisement. He even stayed until Castiel fell asleep again.
Dean, who’s been doing everything a mere mortal can do to help his stupid ass go through the absolute pain and misery that are drugs and alcohol withdrawals. He’s been on the receiving end of every single one of Cas’ bad moods, supplications, cries, and insults, yet he’s still here.
Dean, who’s been handling everything for three weeks: from Castiel’s hectic schedule to his equally hectic moods, as well as dealing with the kids from morning to bedtime.
Dean, who’s been joining him in the studio at night after kids have gone to bed every single time Castiel has asked him; even if they sometimes don’t even exchange a single word; Dean watching as Cas records something in the booth.
Dean.
Castiel hates him. Loves him. Is grateful for him. Everything kind of merges into a ball of many different things he tries not to look too closely at, in fear of drawing conclusions he wouldn’t like.
“What do you want?” he snaps instead, wiping his mouth over the bowl of the toilet, trying to forget that he wouldn’t be here in the first place if Charlie hadn’t insisted he quit using and drinking.
At this point, it just feels like his body doesn’t want to get rid of any of his addictions since it keeps demanding that he drinks and sniffs and smokes and injects himself with whatever he has on hand.
This fucking sucks. He’d be way better off if he was allowed a beer and a rail of coke every night.
“To make sure you’re still breathing, mostly,” Dean says, cool as a fucking cucumber from where he sits in the dark, resting in one of the chairs in the corner of the bedroom.
Cas tries to ignore the way his mind immediately goes to the wrong place- how sinful Dean would look if he was lying in his bed half-naked instead of looking at him from across the room- and staggers back to the bed, letting himself dramatically fall onto the mattress.
“Doesn’t mean I’m alive, does it?”
Dean’s gaze is burning hot on him; Castiel can feel it even as he makes a point of only looking at his own bedroom’s ceiling.
“Oh, so you’re in a dramatic mood this morning. Duly noted,” Dean snarks back, and fuck, Cas loves him. And hates him.
“Go get me a beer,” he says in an attempt to keep the upper hand. It’s something Dean never lets him have anyway.
“Go get it yourself,” Dean says as he gets up and casts an unimpressed look at Cas’ form.
But his voice is smooth, almost gentle when he picks up. It makes Cas’ heart leap in his chest, and again, he tries not to look too closely at what it might mean.
“Jack is already asking for you. Just get dressed, and I’ll get your breakfast ready, okay?”
His voice is smooth and warm, and Castiel would bathe in it if he could. As it is, though, he just watches as Dean exits the room and goes downstairs to join Jack and Claire in the kitchen, leaving Cas alone in his misery.
The clock on his bedside table says it’s already 8 in the morning, which means the kids are set to leave in less than an hour. After that, Cas will get his weekly counseling session with Doctor Adler- a bald man he’s grown to hate simply for the fact that he can- and then the rest of the day will be up for him to fill with whatever he wants.
Except- today is not a normal day, he reminds himself.
Today is the first day he’s allowed out in three weeks. Today is the first day he’s allowed to play a show again, and suddenly the grumpy sluggishness that slowed him down gives way to a deep sensation of excitement, and Cas almost gets dressed with a smile.
Once he’s thrown a t-shirt and a pair of faded jeans on, he rushes down the stairs (despite the fact that his legs definitely aren’t prepared for it, if the way he groans when he hits bottom is any indication), and joins the people who have become his only family at the kitchen table.
Jack is in the middle of consuming a bowl of cereal (Cas is pretty sure there is more milk on the table than inside the bowl at this point), and Claire is sipping on her orange juice while Dean flips… Yes, those are pancakes.
“Uncle Cas!” Jack says excitedly, splashing more milk on the table in the process, but Cas can’t help but melt at the way his nephew smiles at him, as though he’d discovered something precious.
That’s pretty much his only comfort in all of this. The way these kids look up to him and love him unconditionally, even when Cas can’t bring himself to do so.
“Can I have some of those?” he asks as he bends down to place a kiss on Jack’s forehead.
“He lives!” Dean says, his back turned to him, and Cas can’t help but roll his eyes as he kisses Claire’s cheek before sitting down in-between the kids.
“Barely,” he grumbles, but lights up when Dean places a plate with several pancakes stacked together and a cup of black, steaming coffee. “Thank you, Dean.”
He means it, too. If there are one or two good things to take out of this entire mess, despite the pain and the all-around shitty situation, it’s how Dean has been taking care of him and the kids.
“You’re welcome,” Dean says as he turns around to finish the batter on the stove. “You excited about tonight?”
“What’s tonight, Uncle Cas?” Claire asks, watching
Castiel turns to look at her with a gentle smile on his face as he tastes the pancakes- the bastard is even a better cook than anyone else Cas knows; Dean Winchester really has everything for himself.
“I’m doing a show tonight. It’s been a few weeks, so I’m excited,” he explains and watches as his niece’s face lights up in recognition.
“Can we go with you?” she asks excitedly.
Cas turns from her to look at Dean, a question in his eyes. But his PA shakes his head with a small smile before he starts talking to Claire.
“Not this time, sweetheart,” he says before smiling a little wider as Claire pouts. “Uncle Cas is gonna be out pretty late, and you guys need to keep a normal schedule because there’s school tomorrow.”
“I don’t wike school,” Jack helpfully supplies, his mouth full of Cheerios.
Cas smiles as he puts a lock of hair on Jack’s head back in place, smoothing it back tenderly. This kind of love is like something he’s never felt, and he knows without a doubt that he’d give up anything for these two tiny human beings sitting at his table.
It’s why you’re doing this, his mind helpfully supplies. You’re doing it for them.
“I didn’t either, buddy,” Dean laughs. “But I promise the next time Uncle Cas has a show on the weekends, we can go, okay?”
That seems to settle Claire down, and she wolfs down the rest of her breakfast in no time before rushing up the stairs to get dressed. Jack then demands to be let out of his chair and sits on Cas’ lap as he finishes breakfast- well, as Jack steals pancakes from Cas’ plate, really.
Dean looks at them with a cup of coffee in hand, leaning back against the kitchen counter. Cas doesn’t know if he’s aware of how cool and all-around beautiful he looks; he’s wearing a pair of jeans that are ripped on one knee and a black Led Zeppelin t-shirt that looks soft, worn enough to tell Cas it’s probably one of Dean’s favorite, along with a black and red flannel.
He looks so good, it shouldn’t be legal. And he doesn’t even know.
“So, what are your plans today?” Dean asks after one last sip of coffee, putting down the mug in the sink.
“Need to be at the Golden Bull around 3, I think.”
“That early?” Dean asks.
He’s not questioning it, Cas can tell. He’s just curious about how it works. Cas kisses Jack’s forehead as he finishes his last pancakes and coos happily at him, and he can’t help the smile that rises on his lips.
“Yeah. Need to set things up. Since it’s a hometown bar show, we’ve got a couple of roadies, but I like being there to make sure everything is set up correctly.”
“How about your bandmates?” Dean asks, taking the empty plates from Cas and puts them in the sink with the rest of the dishes. “Do they get in this early, too?”
“Not all of them,” Castiel explains. “Max and Alicia- they’re our guitar and drums players- usually get in at the same time as me, but it’s always a mystery when Balth is going to show up.”
“That you’re best friend, right?” Dean asks with a smile.
Cas loves so many things about Dean- it’s actually almost scary after only three weeks- but the way he makes a point of being without judgment is probably one of his favorite parts.
“Yeah. We met in middle school. We actually lived together at some point in the early years, him, Jimmy, and me.”
“And he’s kind of a loose cannon, right?” Dean asks, before drawing closer, momentarily stealing Cas’ breath away with how green his damn eyes look, and taking the paper napkin away from Jack’s mouth. “Don’t eat that.”
“Yeah, Jack, paper is not edible,” Cas says as his nephew looks up to catch his eyes.
Jack looks so much like Jimmy that it’s both painful and soothing to look at him sometimes.
“Yeah, he’s a loose cannon, you could say. But he’s always on time for soundcheck, so we let it slide,” Castiel picks up, watching as Dean starts doing the dishes. “You’re sure you don’t want to come tonight? It’s gonna be a small show.”
I would like to see you there, is what he doesn’t say, but he hopes it translates in the way he says it. He watches as Dean shrugs, his back to him as he carefully cleans plates, bowls, and cutlery.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Cas; it’s that the kids haven’t been here for long and they don’t have a normal schedule yet. I actually would love to be there, but we’re gonna have to pass tonight.”
Castiel nods, understanding. Ignoring the little sting of disappointment in his heart.
“I get it.”
“You’ll text me, though. Right?” Dean asks as he turns back to look at Cas, the dish towel in his hands. “If you need anything, or just to chat?”
Cas smiles. He doesn’t know what it is about Dean that makes him feel so comfortable, even when he’s in the middle of what must be the worst part of his life. Even when he can feel the way his muscles hurt because they crave the drugs they used to get. Even if he’s so exhausted that the bag under his eyes will be a bitch to cover up tonight for the show.
Dean just gives him a sense of comfort and home that Cas has never ever felt before. And it should be stupid and frightening, but Cas doesn’t have the energy to care.
✧✧✧
It’s been three weeks since Dean moved into Castiel Novak’s “apartment” (as he insists on calling it, even though it’s bigger than Dean, Benny, and Sam’s latest places combined), and it’s not until Jack helpfully tells him that “dada has been gone a looooong time” that he even realizes it.
Dean is on his way to pick up Claire from school, with Jack strapped in his child seat safely in the backseat and some Led Zeppelin on low volume warming up the atmosphere. Not that Jack needs it- he’s a chatty kid, always babbling about whatever he can see from his seat or talking to Dean about whatever he has in mind. It’s more something for Dean, really. He doesn’t like not having music in the car, and it calms his nerves down.
There shouldn’t be any nerves, he reminds himself. Nothing is wrong. Today is just another day in the life. You pick up the kids, you go home, you do your job.
Except, today is not just another day in the life. Today is the first time Cas leaves for a show ever since Jack, Claire, and by extension Dean, walked into his life. Today is the first time Cas is going to be out there without a backup to hold his hand if he goes through any withdrawals since his brother died.
Dean is not a pessimist by any means- if anything, he’d considered himself an optimistic person, as long as he’s not looking back at himself- but Castiel’s sobriety has been more than shaky since Charlie essentially forced him into his outpatient rehab program.
Three weeks since Dean walked into this place, three weeks since seeing Castiel for the first time only wearing a pair of outdated sweatpants and nothing else, three weeks since Jack and Claire crashed into him and decided to love him as if he were one of their own.
Dean never knew the love of kids could be such a strong thing.
There were some not-so-good parts, for sure. Waking up at any hours of the night and rushing up the stairs because Jack had a nightmare, Claire was sick, or- more than anything else, really- because Cas was in trouble.
Castiel, Dean soon learned, is someone people would either qualify as a work of art (in the nice, diligent way that people use to say someone is quirky or out of the box) or a work of art (in the not-so-nice, not-so-diligent way that people use to say someone is a piece of shit). Cas could be both of these things, incidentally. He was always absolutely irreproachable with the kids, which was what really mattered: he made sure they were cared for, and was always there for them as soon as they wanted him. He could be sweet, too, when he read to Jack and Claire before bed, or when Jack insisted that his uncle eat everything like he did (so, cut in tiny little squares) and Cas obliged.
With Dean, he was either friendly and open- at night when Cas asked Dean to join him in the studio and they stayed there together for several hours, sometimes not even exchanging a word, just Dean watching as Cas recorded something from the booth- or snarky and all-around bitchy.
Sobriety had been a long road already, despite only being on the path for three weeks. Castiel didn’t cope well with withdrawals from both alcohol and drugs and tended to be self-destructive when it happened. Dean learned to deal with the cries, the supplication for “just one beer, Dean, please,” “just get me one fix,” the insults when Cas didn’t get his way, or the apologies murmured low in the quiet of his bedroom when Castiel eventually made it to his bed and lied there silent for hours.
Weirdly enough, it didn’t make Dean want to run. Even weirder, Dean felt like he and Cas actually bonded over the past three weeks, to the point where he found it weird to not have Cas around tonight.
Looking back, if asked, Dean is pretty sure that he would do it all over again.
“Dean?” Jack’s little voice cut through the air, tearing Dean away from where he’d been staring at nothingness.
“Yeah, buddy?” Dean answered, shaking himself up and turning back to look at the toddler.
Jack smiled back at him, little white teeth and hazel eyes twinkling with that innocence that makes kids so unfiltered. “Where’s Claire?”
That’s when Dean realized he’d parked in the school’s parking lot but didn’t actually go through the process of picking Claire up, and right then and there, he decided to push all thoughts of Castiel, and how he might be coping with whatever could be happening on the opposite side of California, and get the fuck on with his schedule.
It’s not until they’re home, the kids bathed and fed and calmly cuddled up onto the couch to watch two episodes of Paw Patrol before heading to bed that Dean decides to check his phone.
He’s got a couple of texts from Benny and Sam, mainly to get some news from him (Dean’s been kind of MIA for the most part of the last three weeks, using his free days to either sleep in or go for drives), and a text from Charlie about tonight.
>> When are you coming over? It’s been weeks, man.
>> That boss of yours getting you in trouble so much that you don’t have time to answer your best friend?
<< Don’t be a drama queen, Benjamin.
>> Fuck you Winchester
<< I’ll be around on Sunday, okay?
<< None of your tepid-ass beer
>> OH FUCK YOU
Sam’s just being Sam, as usual.
>> So how are things going with Cas?
>> (this is me trying not to open this conversation with “have you kissed him yet” because I feel like I wouldn’t like the answer)
<< You’re such a freak
<< I haven’t kissed Cas yet
>> Does that mean you might consider it?
<< Why do you want to know so much about my love life Sammy, it’s freaky at this point
>> Oh I’m sorry, I forgot that I shouldn’t be worried about my big brother getting his heart ripped again by another asshole.
>> I just want you to be safe, that’s all
<< I’m fine, Sam
>> You haven’t been fine for more than 5 years, Dean. Don’t bullshit me.
<< I’m not kissing Cas yet, so put this crap away and stop bothering me
>> You said “yet”
<< Yeah cause he’s hot as fuck and I might decide to kiss him at some point. Happy?
>> Just don’t be stupid
<< Your face is stupid
Then he gets to Charlie’s texts, and that’s when he gets worried.
>> call asap pls
>> DEAN!!!
>> CALL. ME.
He pushes the third phone number he has on speed dial and waits for Charlie to pick up.
“What took you so long?” are the first words he hears through the phone, instead of Charlie’s usual cheery tone.
“Good evening to you too, your Highness,” he snarks, an eye on the couch where Jack just cuddled up to his sister.
He resists the urge of snapping pictures of them to send to Cas before he gets on stage and concentrates on his conversation with Charlie instead.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie sighs. “Good evening, handmaiden.”
“What’s wrong?”
Charlie doesn’t have to say much for Dean to know when something isn't right. It’s right there in the way she talks.
“I’m just- I’m stressed.”
“About?”
“Cas.”
Dean tries to keep the surprise out of his voice. “You’re stressed about Cas? Why?”
There’s a beat before Charlie answers, her voice smaller than Dean has ever remembered.
“I don’t think he’s sober right now, Dean. Or, you know… Clean, or whatever.”
Something ruptures in Dean’s heart.
“He’s been… I thought he was doing better, for the most part.”
“Yeah, me too, but he’s… He’s at least high as a kite right now.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s just-”
He hears Charlie’s breath, almost shaking, and if the kids weren’t there on the couch, he knows he’d already be in the car, on the way to the show, to… He doesn’t know. Shake some sense into Cas, maybe.
“I don’t know, Dean. I can’t say for sure. I just- I’m worried. I’m really worried.”
Dean doesn’t remember the last time he heard Charlie talk like this, or if he ever did. She sounds so distraught that her voice is almost unrecognizable.
“Do you want me to come over?”
“Dean, you can’t.”
“I can take the kids-”
“No, you can’t,” Charlie interrupts him. “I’d rather be the one to see him like this than have Claire and Jack be confronted with whatever shit he’s taken this time.”
Something sinks in Dean’s stomach. He doesn’t know if it’s deceit or fear, and he refuses to wonder.
“Tell me what you need, then.”
He hears Charlie take a big breath at the other end of the line.
“I need you to be there when he gets back, and I need you to talk to him.”
“That will be all?” Dean can’t help but snap back with dripping sarcasm.
He regrets it as soon as it’s out of his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he immediately says. “I just- I’m not a professional here. I’m just his PA; taking care of his life. I’m not… equipped to talk about addictions, here. And what if he comes home completely smashed?”
“It’s likely what’s going to happen, you know.”
“Perfect.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie says. “I wish there was another way, but he refuses to listen to me. The only person he seems to listen to is you.”
Dean scoffs. “That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve only been here for three weeks.”
I was with Cole for five years, and I never made any difference.
“Maybe you don’t see it, but I do.”
“What?” Dean asks, completely bewildered.
It’s just not possible that he’s had any kind of impact on someone like Cas. He likely never will.
“The way he talks about you. Or how he listens to you. You… There’s just something about the two of you.”
Dean sighs.
“Okay,” he says, not convinced. “So I just sit him down and, what? Drag his ass to the hospital?”
He can almost hear the way Charlie rolls his eyes at him even from halfway across town.
“Just- Make him admit that he has a fucking problem. Because until he realizes he’s gambling with his life, he won’t make any progress. He has two kids to take care of that have no one beside him. It’s not just him anymore.”
That sounds like something you should probably tell yourself too, the voice in Dean’s mind says, before Dean tells it to shut the fuck up.
“Okay,” he nods, trying to smooth his voice back out.
It’s not Charlie’s fault. None of it is.
“Keep an eye on him, okay? And I’ll wait for him to come home.”
“Okay,” Charlie says, her voice almost faint on the phone.
When Dean hangs up, Jack and Claire are asleep, huddled close together on the couch.
Dean doesn’t snap a picture to send Cas. He doesn’t deserve it.
✧✧✧
Castiel is flying.
He’s missed this. Being able to feel the crowd around him, singing his own lyrics back to his face, dancing along the groove of Balth’s basslines and Max’s beat. Seeing the smiles on peoples’ faces as they danced. Feeling the energy around him, of Alicia jumping up for a solo, of Balthazar supporting his vocals.
He’s missed this. The way he flies so high, he could catch the stars. And in a moment there, he almost forgets about everything- Jimmy being gone, the kids being fatherless, his fucking bullshit sobriety, the pain that resonates inside his very own bones.
Tonight he’s flying. And no one is going to take it away from him, at least not yet.
He’s just turning the key into his house’s front door, seconds after his taxi dropped him off, when the… door opens itself? He doesn’t even know anymore.
Until there’s a flash of green, and a checkered black and red flannel, and the scent of… motor oil and sandalwood.
Dean.
Ah, fuck, Cas didn’t really think this through, did he?
If the way the green of Dean’s eyes feels so cold when he stares down at him is any indication of what’s to come, Cas is in so. much. more. shit than he’s ever really been before.
“Good evening,” he tries to say, the buzz coursing through his veins ever so pleasantly despite the chilly welcome party.
But Dean doesn’t smile. Doesn’t even move, really, until his hand is on Cas’ arm and he’s all but dragging him inside his own house.
“Dean, Dean stop. I think we should-” Cas tries.
But Dean is a methodical son of a bitch. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything until Cas’ ass is on his own couch and finally, he’s moving.
“You think we should what, Castiel?” Dean says, his voice cold and dripping with so much contempt that Cas suddenly feels cold inside out.
It’s not right. It shouldn’t be-
“I don’t like when you call me Castiel,” Cas says from where he’s sitting.
Dean scoffs. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
He’s snappy, and cold as ice, and Cas doesn’t understand why it hurts when he flies so high he could touch the moon.
“I don’t like it. Only Jimmy called me Castiel. And Jimmy…”
“Is dead,” Dean helpfully supplies.
His green, green eyes are cold, so cold, and Cas is shivering.
“Why’d you do it, Cas?” Dean asks.
Cas stares at him blankly for what feels like an eternity, and just when an idea is starting to form inside his brain, Dean’s careful cold mask starts to splinter.
“Why’d you do it? Huh? You have two kids in there that are holding onto you. You are EVERYTHING they have left in this stupid fucking world, and what, Castiel? You just decided to hell with it? They don’t matter?!”
“That’s not-”
“I’ve been waking up every night for the past three weeks to put you back to bed, to clean up your fucking mess, to hear your insults and your pleas, all of that, for you to throw it all away on a whim tonight because what? You needed a fucking fix?!”
“I didn’t-”
But Dean’s on a roll now, Cas can tell. For all that he can still feel the energy from the show vibrating through his cells and the way the drugs make him float; he can also feel the way Dean’s anger charges up the energy around them, how his mouth is drawn so tight because he’s so pissed at Cas, at the world, at… himself, maybe?
Wait. That doesn’t make any sense.
“You decided to do that freaking show and to get as high as you could possibly get, and then you have the audacity to walk in here like it’s not an issue, like you couldn’t have died tonight, leaving Jack and Claire all alone and behind.”
“They have you,” Cas says, his voice small.
Dean looks back at him in shock, like he can’t even believe what he’s just heard.
“I am nothing, Cas,” he says after a beat, and for the first time since Cas walked in, Dean sounds so broken that something inside of Cas’ very own soul breaks.
And he means it, Cas can tell. He truly believes he’s nothing, that he’s not worth anything to anyone. Cas doesn’t know how, or what, or why, but something happened to Dean at some point that was so deeply painful that he truly believes he’s nothing.
“You can’t just say that,” Castiel says, as gently as possible, and for the first time he takes their surroundings in.
Dean is kneeling in front of him on the carpet. The couch is a mess, with blankets everywhere, which tells Cas that his niece and nephew probably built a fort earlier tonight. And Dean… Dean looks so torn that Castiel hates himself.
“They love you. Can’t you see?” Cas says, and hears the way his voice sounds so soft, just like butter, doesn’t even know where it came from, really.
But it hurts too much to hear Dean say that, as if he’s nothing to anyone, when he’s… everything.
He’s the moon. The stars. The sky that Castiel never catches unless he flies.
And he’s dangerous, Cas knows. They’re not of the same world, Cas shouldn’t be saying or even thinking any of that shit, but there’s something in the forest green of Dean’s eyes that’s so compelling.
“You have a problem, Cas,” Dean says, tearing Cas away from wherever he floated away. “I need you to see that. You have an issue, and it’s time you deal with it properly.”
Cas breathes, his eyes on Dean. He’s so damn beautiful, and he truly thinks he’s nothing.
That’s not right. That shouldn’t be right.
“Cas,” Dean snaps his fingers in front of his eyes, bringing him back to Earth. “Goddammit, what the fuck did you take?!”
“I don’t know,” Castiel shrugs. “Something Zack had. Probably cocaine, I don’t know.”
It’s not of import, he wants to say, but Dean’s eyes- Dean’s eyes are so green.
You are everything, and I already know that not even a month into knowing you, he wants to say, but Dean’s mouth is drawn into a tight line, and he’s mad at him.
Castiel just wants to fly, away, away.
✧✧✧
It shouldn’t hurt that way, to see someone who is essentially your boss in the state that Castiel is in front of Dean’s eyes right now.
But it does. And Dean doesn’t really understand why, until it hits him in the face.
Castiel is just as broken as Dean is, has always been, really.
He tells him he’s had cocaine like it’s just a formality. Like he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, and Dean doesn’t need a college degree to see the layers of deep depression lying right here in front of his own eyes.
Cas looks glorious, beautiful, incandescent. He also looks like a kid who’s never had anyone truly care for him, a bird that’s been injured so many times that he stopped caring and started finding ways of protecting himself instead.
“Cas, hey,” Dean tries to get Cas’ attention again, and when Castiel’s ice blue eyes find him, his heart misses a beat.
It doesn’t mean anything, he tries to tell himself, while the other voice in his head says, you know it wasn’t like this with anyone else, even Cole.
Dean concentrates back on Cas, willing the inner voices to go away.
“Talk to me,” he says gently. “I’m right here. You can tell me anything.”
Cas looks at him and suddenly it’s all there: the pain, the open ache, the brokenness of the man sitting before him. It takes Dean’s breath away for a second, until he composes himself.
He’s still kneeling in front of him, like a dumbass, on the carpet in front of the couch.
“Come on, Cas,” he says as he moves to sit, gently placing a hand on Cas’ knee (and ignoring how good it feels to just touch someone else).
It’s pathetic is what it is, someone tells him inside his head.
Shut the fuck up, he tells the voice.
“It’s easy,” Cas finally says, his voice almost rough with disuse, despite the fact that he’s spent two hours singing on stage just about an hour or so ago.
“What is?” Dean asks, facing him on the couch.
His hand is still on Cas, having migrated from his knee to his arm, but he can’t will himself to let go. Cas doesn’t seem to want to, either.
“Cocaine. Booze. Playing. It’s… easier for me to exist within those spaces. I feel like I’m drowning if I don’t have those things with me.”
He seems to open up slightly. Dean sees it in the way he turns to look at him and how his eyes drop in intensity.
His pupils are still blown to hell, though, which tells Dean exactly how high and drunk he still is.
He hates that he has a second to spare to think that he also looks beautiful, wearing a pair of fitted black jeans and a black shirt not even halfway buttoned. He tries to keep his eyes on Cas’ face, but there are a few times they wander south, to catch a glimpse of Castiel’s tanned torso.
“Why do you feel like you’re drowning, Cas?” he asks, his voice soft.
Cas looks back at him with almost childlike wonder.
“No one has ever… gotten me, in a way. Jimmy was the only one, and even then, he- we were so different. And now he’s gone, and I can't-”
“You don’t know how to function without him,” Dean finishes in his place.
Cas smiles- a terrible, painful smile. “Yeah.”
Dean breathes. “You’re not on your own, though. Not anymore.”
Castiel laughs, but it’s a bitter thing- it’s cold and full of so much ache and grief that it’s almost suffocating.
“I’ve always been on my own. I’m always- even when I’m surrounded, Dean, even with my closest friends, or my brother when he was still here, I was… I might not be alone, but I always feel-”
“Different.”
This time, Cas’ eyes snap back in surprise at Dean, who only smiles back at him.
“Yeah, I know what that’s like,” Dean shrugs like it’s no big deal.
Like it’s no big deal that he’s sharing something with his boss that he’s never shared with anyone. Like it’s no big deal to talk about how alone is always felt, stuck in between a beat-up dad that never saw any good in him and Sammy, who’s always been so smart. Like it’s no big deal to admit aloud that he’s always felt like he didn’t belong anywhere because no one understood him completely.
No big deal indeed.
“I just wish Jimmy was still here,” Cas says, without any heat, without any of the snark or sarcasm that are so Cas.
It’s just painfully earnest and full of regrets.
“But he’s gone, Cas,” Dean says as gently as he can and watches as a tear rolls down Castiel’s cheek as he closes his eyes, as if taking Dean’s word like a slap to the face. “I know it’s hard, and it’s shitty, and he shouldn’t be, but that’s the reality of life right now. Your brother is dead, and you have two little ones sleeping upstairs that really need you to get your shit together because if you don’t? They’ll have no one.”
Cas nods, sniffling as tears keep rolling down his cheek. Dean moves his hand from Cas’ arm to his hand, gripping him tight.
“Right now, you might feel like you have no one, but you have me. You have Charlie. You have Balthazar, and Max, and Alicia. You have Claire and Jack. But most of all, you have yourself.”
Cas scoffs between his tears. “What good am I to myself? I’m a junkie with a drinking problem at barely thirty-years-old.”
“Hey, look at me,” Dean presses, crouching down to lock eyes with Cas and only picking up when he does. “You have yourself and that’s the most important part of all of this: you get to decide if you want to win this fight.”
The house is silent for what feels like forever. Cas’ hand is warm in Dean’s hand, as it squeezes back timidly. Tears keep rolling, and Dean has to keep himself from wiping them away himself- that wouldn’t be very professional, he thinks (he does his very best to ignore the fact that none of what is happening right now is professional because it’s just too much to think about).
And then, Cas nods. Silently, with his blue eyes full of tears.
“Okay,” he says, still nodding and crying. “Okay. Can I ask you something?”
Dean’s heart is in his throat when he answers. “Anything.”
Cas closes his eyes again, chews at his bottom lip. “Will you help me?”
Dean’s second hand flies to Cas’, grips it tight between his own fingers.
“Of course.”
“Do you promise?” Cas asks, the blue of his eyes so achingly beautiful, swimming in tears, that Dean’s stomach makes a swoop.
“I promise.”
It’s past 2 AM, Dean’s barely been here a month, but now there’s a promise between him and Cas.
He doesn’t know yet how he’s going to keep it, but he’s going to try.
Come hell or high water.
Notes:
Fun fact: "The Golden Bull" is a bar in Oakland that's partially owned by Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, and where East Bay bands (mostly garage rock and punk) play, as well as Billie Joe's own side projects (there are too many to list by that point).
So, where do you think we go from here?
Chapter 4: ...To Be Loved
Notes:
Welcome back to another chapter of this rock'n'roll drama! I've been working on this chapter for the better part of this past week, and I hope it starts answering some of the questions you've been asking as well as making you want to yell at me (let's be real here, we all know how I am).
No real TW here, but the very last part of this chapter is extremely NSFW, so if that's not your jam, skip it (although it's an important part of the story, so you might miss out on some context).
As per usual, thank you to Nickel and Hannah for guidance, counseling, beta'ing and enabling my filthy mind to come up with one of the most sinful things I've ever written 🥵
The song that Cas sings in this chapter is "Mittens" by Frank Turner.
See you in the comment section!
✧ Your "Glory Hallelujah" playlist ☄️
✧ Your "Free Will - the band" playlist
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Things happen in a whirlwind.
One minute he’s sitting on the couch pouring his heart out to Dean, a man Castiel’s known for less than a month, holding his hands, crying like a goddamn baby; the next he’s in bed, warm under the covers, still dizzy from the fresh kick of alcohol and cocaine still running through his blood.
And Dean is still sitting next to him, right there on the chair next to his bed. The sun is shining through the blinds, so Cas figures he dozed off at some point without even realizing. He tries to get up, but even just holding himself on his elbow is too much.
Fuck, his head hurts.
“How are you feeling?” Dean asks, and his voice is so soft that it warms Cas up in all the corners that are supposed to hurt.
This is dangerous, a little voice in his head says. Nothing good can come out of this, you’re just gonna hurt him and break him, and it’ll all be your fault. Stop playing.
Cas refuses to listen to it.
“Like I exploded and got put back together,” he says, and God, even just talking hurts.
Dean smiles gently at him, and Cas feels it again- that thread of warmth that courses through him, the green of Dean's eyes seems so deep he could get lost in it.
Fuck, why does he have to be so good like that?
“Can you promise me something?” Cas asks, fatigue so deep in his bones that he doesn’t have the mental strength to put himself together.
Dean nods, eyes so earnest and unguarded that Cas almost does something even stupider, like asking Dean to kiss him.
“Shoot.”
But instead, he goes for something else.
“Promise me not to send me to the hospital.”
Cas sees the moment Dean falters, the moment he doubts, the moment he almost refuses it. Cas’ head is floating; it’s too hard to fight right now.
“Please,” he pleads, closing his eyes. “I’ll do anything. Just don’t- don’t send me away.”
Dean doesn’t need to know why Cas won’t go, doesn’t need to know how it’s connected to so much trauma that it overloads Cas’ brain every time he so much as thinks about it. He doesn’t need to right now. But still, Cas catches the flick of understanding in the green of Dean’s eyes when he opens his eyes back up, turning just enough to watch him.
It’s a long time before Dean nods, but Cas feels like he can breathe again.
“Okay,” Dean says. “But I need you to promise me something in return.”
“Of course,” Cas says immediately, because there’s no doubt in his mind right now.
He can’t go back to the hospital. Can’t let himself fail that way. Can’t let the kids see him there.
“Start your outpatient rehab program back up. This time, don’t fall off the wagon,” Dean says, each of his words heavy but delivered with soft edges and worn out ease. “It’s gonna be a challenge and you’re gonna hate it, but I know you can do it. And if you need me to make good on that promise? Make good on yours.”
Castiel swallows. He thinks back to last night, the groove of Balthazar’s bass and Max’s kick; the way the crowd yelled his own lyrics back to him and how it felt like saving grace. He thinks back to Claire, asking Dean to go to the show with them. He thinks back to Jimmy, and how he always did his best to make sure that Cas was safe.
And he makes a decision.
“Okay,” he says. “Yeah.”
When he sinks back into sleep, there’s a hand inside of his, warm. Holding him tight.
✧✧✧
It’s not an easy process. The day after the concert fiasco, after Cas agrees to start his outpatient rehab program back up, Dean spends a long time in the room with him while Cas oscillates between conscious and unconscious states. They still don’t know what he took last night- there’s a possibility that Cas doesn’t even know- so he agreed to keep watch while Charlie took the kids out for the day.
The days that follow are peculiar: Cas barely makes it out of the room, only eats when forced to, and doesn’t let the kids see him. It’s not that Jack and Claire don’t ask, but Dean can see why Castiel doesn’t want them to see him; he practically looks like a zombie. His features are drawn, his eyes are red because he’s been crying himself to sleep and going through the roughest part of his detox process, and if this already hits Cas this hard, he can’t even begin to think about how it would go with the kids.
“Is Uncle Cas a’right?” Jack asks one morning, in between making puddles of milk on the table and chewing up his soggy Cheerios.
Dean considers telling him no, explaining that Uncle Cas has a lot to deal with, that he’s sick and will be back with them when he feels better. But when he sees the way Jack’s big hazel eyes widen as he waits for Dean to answer, when he feels Claire’s gaze draw up to him, he knows he can’t break that innocence just yet.
They don’t need to have that burden put on them. They’ve already dealt with so much since their father died, and they’re not doing so bad. Sure, Dean’s received a few calls from Claire’s school because she got into fights. Sure, Jack still demands that Dean be there until he falls asleep because he’s terrified of being alone. But all in all, they’re dealing.
Learning that their uncle, the last family that they have, is dealing with something bad, is not going to do them any better.
“He will be,” Dean says, choosing the best option: not lying to them, but not telling them the whole truth. “He’ll be able to join us again soon, okay?”
“Kay,” Jack nods before going back to his bowl of cereal, and that’s that.
There’s a difference between this time and the time before, Dean can tell as days pass by. Cas doesn’t fight the process like he used to, never asks Dean to let him drink, never even fights with him. When Charlie comes around, none of his sarcasm from a few weeks ago that went along with his first few days of rehab is there.
It’s been almost a full week when Dean gathers the strength to ask Cas about it.
They’re sitting in the studio, Cas with a guitar on his lap, focused on his console, and Dean with a can of soda in hand, sitting on the comfy couch in the back. The kids have been in bed for close to an hour, and it’s the first time since the show and what followed that Cas asked if he could come back here (he asked Dean, as if he was the employee here).
It’s been a tiring day for Dean, to say the least: after telling the media that Castiel was “sick” (that’s the official version they’re currently sticking to), he and Charlie had to figure out how to reschedule all of Cas’ appointments and commitments- including several of the band’s shows- so that he could be left alone for about two months. Dean spent most of his morning on the phone dealing with scheduling conflicts, and then he and Charlie spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to fit the band’s rescheduled tour dates into the already very busy schedule of the next six months.
All of that to say: Dean is tired. He doesn’t have the usual filter that he makes a point of leaving when he talks with Cas; the little voice in his head that tells him he’s your boss and be a goddamn professional.
“What changed?” he blurts out suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between them over the past hour in the process.
Cas turns on his chair to look at him with a quizzical look, a guitar pick in between his lips. He’s sitting with a leg folded underneath him, his jeans ripped on one knee and an old t-shirt from a band Dean doesn’t know that probably dates back to at least two decades ago.
He looks beautiful. It’s unfair, really.
“What do you mean?” he says, losing the guitar pick.
“I mean- You’re different.”
If Cas’ eyebrow ever goes higher, it’ll probably replace his hairline.
“Yeah, Sherlock, I haven’t had drugs or alcohol in-”
Cas stops to look at the watch that’s sitting on his wrist, before looking back at Dean with a tiny smile.
“Eight days, four hours and eight minutes.”
“Damn. You remember it down to the minute?” Dean asks, seriously impressed.
Judging by the state he was in when he came back home, it’s clearly a wonder that he remembers this.
“Nah,” Cas shakes his head, looking at his shoes. “Balthazar told me. He was with me. I don’t remember shit for that night except for the look on your face when you opened the door.”
Weird thing to remember about that night, Dean’s little inner voice says.
“Oh, that makes sense,” he says instead, willing the voice to stop.
“What do you mean I’m different?” Cas pushes, his voice a careful blend of curious and scared.
Dean looks at him this time before responding- really looks at him.
He’s different even in the way he sits, more relaxed and like some of his previous defenses vanished. He’s different in the way he talks- softer and slow-spoken. He’s different down to the way he acts- with the kids when he spends time with them, with Charlie, even with him.
Everything Dean thought he knew about Cas before, how he thought of Cas as a cocky, independent, self-assured man has vanished, replaced by something else. Something different.
Dean takes a breath.
“It just feels like you’re letting go of something, I don’t know. You’re not the same person I met a few weeks back.”
When Cas looks back at him, his smile is a mosaic of so many different emotions that Dean feels each and every single one of them like a punch to the throat: the sadness is there, sure, but there’s also a different hopelessness that wasn’t there before, and a glint of pride with a spark of defiance. It’s raw and confusing and Dean doesn’t know what to do with it, doesn’t know how to react, really, other than knowing that he’ll be there for Cas as long as he needs him to.
“I’m just trying,” Cas says, his smile so painfully honest, “to be the man my brother thought I could be. To be someone I can look back at and be proud of. To be someone-”
He stops there, lets go of Dean’s gaze, and if Dean was going there, he’d say something about how the top of Cas’ ears suddenly look a little pink.
But he’s not going there. He can’t. No matter how beautiful and charming and all-around perfect he thinks Cas may be. He’s also his boss, and he’s struggling too hard right now for Dean to even think about screwing this up.
Nice choice of words, the little voice in his head says.
Dean tells it to shut the fuck up.
“To be someone that the people who like me, love me, look up to me- can be proud of.”
Dean smiles at Cas. He can’t help it. This Cas has already done such a hard thing, a long way from his piss-poor first attempt a few weeks back, that it’s hard to not be supportive.
“I’ll be there,” he says.
He watches as Cas’ timid smiles morphes into a big grin.
“I’m glad,” Cas says, before turning back to the console and going back to recording a riff.
✧✧✧
Dean makes the suggestion two weeks into Cas’s rehab.
Cas has been recording stuff out of his own home studio for the last few days, but Dean can tell that he misses playing with the band, even though Cas doesn’t really mention it.
It’s early in the morning, before the kids even wake up, when Dean is up and preparing a cup of coffee for himself, when he texts Charlie about it.
>> Hey Red, you up?
<< Why are YOU up?
>> Couldn’t sleep
<< :( u ok?
>> i’m fine
<< you always say you’re fine
>> because I am!
<< but you’d tell me if you weren’t, right?
Dean takes a deep breath. It’s been getting harder, keeping everyone away from his own issues, using Cas’s daily troubles to keep himself from thinking about his own stuff too much. But the truth is, Dean isn’t doing any better either. He still goes to therapy on his days off, still takes his meds like he’s supposed to, but he also still wakes up almost every night reaching for the other side of his bed, whether he wants to or not. It still hurts so deep inside his guts that Cole is gone, that the past five years were essentially a lie. There is still a hole in his heart, and the fact that his ex is a piece of shit and that Dean doesn’t want anything to do with him anymore doesn’t take that away.
Dean often thinks about the things that carry his memories, the things he left behind. One of his greatest fears has always been to live an unremarkable life, to be forgotten by the world and the people he loves. That’s probably why he spent a lifetime dedicating his time to things that can't love him back (Cole the most recent of those things) all in the hope that they might outlive him.
The only conclusion to come to is that our memory is held within the things we love, and in this way, it's possible to live forever.
The problem with fragility is that you begin to see everything in terms of risk. Starting something new becomes a question of survival - can I survive another loss? Sometimes you meet someone you know you will not come back from. You know that losing them will take the last brick from your crumbling exterior.
This is how it's been for Dean ever since he walked out of his and Cole’s shared apartment in NY, ever since he got on a plane and got the hell out of New Jersey. Nowadays most people, most things, simply don't make it through the last of his barriers. It’s not like he can allow himself to let anything through the minefield that his heart has become, not when there’s already just too little of him left to try and save.
But, in the rarest of cases, someone finds you and reminds you how it feels to find the light, to find the person you once were. Even when you're sure this could be the end of you, you find yourself unable to do anything other than loving them.
That’s how Cas is starting to stitch himself into the cracks of Dean’s heart. It’s terrifying and thrilling and Dean doesn’t know how to do anything else but let it happen. They say that the past is destined to repeat itself. That you will endure the same lesson over and over until you learn from it.
Dean doesn’t want a repeat of Cole. Doesn’t think he’ll be able to even handle it. Cynicism and caution can help protect a brittle heart, but caution got tossed in the wind the very first time Dean saw Cas’ smile. And even though he’s convinced himself that people can’t ever love him, even though he doesn’t know how people can look at him and not see the chaos that wraps its way around his ribcage, Dean is unable to shake the idea that there’s something there that he might deserve.
A lot of time in his life, he’s been unable to shake the idea that he doesn’t deserve the good things that might happen to him; that he’s somehow not worthy of happiness. That’s probably the cruelest part of struggling with mental health: it makes being loved something difficult, something to question.
Of all the curses Dean’s destined to carry, the simple idea that he’s not enough continues to be the heaviest. He is lost to a thought buried deep inside his own bones, cursed with the idea that he will never be enough.
Dean’s long referred to himself as broken, but looking back, maybe that’s not entirely true. He’s lost so many parts of himself along the line- when mom died, when dad stopped being a dad, when he wrapped his own car around a tree, when the first blow of Cole’s knuckles on his face hit- that for a long time he didn’t recognize who he really was with the pieces he’d been left with.
But in the end, maybe all these cracks are just the shifting that comes with growth. Maybe the damage he’s been left with doesn’t mean he’s broken, they just mean he’s damaged goods, learning growth.
If Dean’s being honest, his troubles didn’t start with Cole either. His troubles started when mom died and dad started drinking enough every day to forget about his own kids. His troubles started when he had to get food on the table for his baby brother at barely ten years old. His troubles started when John left them alone in motel rooms for days with only ten bucks to live off of.
He doesn’t know that he’s ever been “fine”; doesn’t even know what it feels like, waking up with no baggage and the weight of the world on his shoulder. So he does the work: he helps Cas as best as he can, he’s doing his job taking care of Jack and Claire, he goes to therapy, and he takes his stupid meds.
Something’s gotta give, right?
>> sure
>> i was actually texting you about an idea that i just had
<< huh oh
>> what?
<< it’s always scary when you get ideas before 6 AM :l Did you even have a coffee?
>> currently brewing
<< okay shoot
>> do you think you could get max, balthazar and alicia down here this week? cas won’t tell but i can see he misses playing with them
>> he’s been doing better and i was thinking of trying to find something that can give him some relief as well as rewarding him
<< you’re a genius
>> ha! toldja
<< shush
<< i’ll get them on board. is he available this afternoon?
>> well he ain’t going anywhere for the next two month, charles
<< ok
<< i’ll call u
Dean gets his phone back in his pocket and goes back to his freshly brewed coffee, a smile on his lips as he watches the sun rise on the San Francisco Bay, painting the houses and the street below in a soft golden and red.
So maybe Dean is damaged. Maybe he’s always going to be damaged. But that doesn’t mean he can’t try and repair what’s broken; figure out the missing part and fill it with something else. Maybe the answer to his troubles is to keep trying.
Maybe all he’s got left is a broken heart and damaged bones. Maybe the strongest part of his body is what he still carries. Maybe some emotions have grown to be so much heavier than they should be, but it took Dean a long time to understand something important about anger, hatred, resentment: these emotions take a toll on you, they burn themselves into your palms and insist that you take them with you.
Some days it still feels like his skin is made of bruises; tiny asterisms of a past he still can’t forget. In truth, he can’t remember who created which galaxy: a dingy motel door that he punched, Cole’s feet when they hit his stomach, or the slice of a knife in a gloomy bar many years ago.
But the truth is that carrying these emotions isn't helping him, and holding on to his trauma is probably only making it so much harder to heal. He’s been trying to focus on forgiveness, on letting go. His therapist told him that’s “the only way you can really hold on to the things that matter, the only way you can stop the past destroying the future.”
Dean believes it.
He watches the sun timidly wake up at the same time as the house around him, and tries to remind himself that not everything that’s heavy needs to be carried.
Some stories are tattooed in ink and can never be washed away. He’s just gotta learn to live with it.
✧✧✧
Castiel is having a really hard time wrapping his head around what’s happening right in front of him in the living room of his own apartment. He actually has to pinch himself to believe that it’s real.
The fact that he’s been completely sober for two weeks helps a lot, convincing him that this isn’t some kind of fucked up dream fueled by whatever he’s put inside of his body.
Jack’s little feet pounding on the floor as he excitedly runs for him is another one of these things.
“Uncle Cas! You didn’t tell me you were gonna be p’aying here!”
Cas bends down just enough to scoop his nephew up in his arms, and tenderly smooths the lock of hair that fell down on Jack’s forehead back. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to feel the outpouring of love he has for these kids. He didn’t believe it was possible to love another human being so much until Claire was born, and then Jack.
He makes a point of not registering the silent pain in his heart when he can’t help but think of Jimmy, and how his absence still hurts as it did the very first day.
“That’s because I didn’t know,” Cas explains with a smile. “Dean surprised me.”
“Hell yeah I did,” Dean says from where he’s helping Alicia plug her amp in.
Castiel can’t even control the warmth that spreads through his entire body at Dean’s wink. He simply refuses to look too closely at it. There are too many different emotions that surround Dean, and right now isn’t the best of times to examine them, so Cas isn’t going to.
It’s not that they’ve never done this; hell, most of his memories from 15 to 20 are of him and Balthazar rehearsing on the shitty couch of Max and Alicia’s first dingy apartment. But he hasn’t done this in years, not since they built their own studios in downtown Oakland.
But there’s something special in the way Balthazar settles on the couch with an old guitar and chats animatedly with Claire; there’s something special about watching Max take his percussion box out of its cover, or as Alicia and Dean chat easily about the guitar she has in hands.
Everything seems to fit so perfectly, and Cas suddenly feels the urge to play.
“You guys ready?” he asks his bandmates, tearing himself out of his own slumber.
All eyes are on him suddenly, and he can see the way Claire’s eyes twinkles, and how Jack watches everything with widened eyes. Dean sits next to them on the couch, and Jack immediately cuddles up to his side.
“What do you wanna play, Cap?” Max asks, using the nickname he decked out on Cas many years ago.
Cas isn’t bothered by it anymore. He understood a long time ago that it was Max’s way of saying he loves him. Instead he just smiles, gives Balthazar a knowing look.
He doesn’t even have to say a word before his best friend starts playing.
Castiel wrote this song so many years ago it feels like a completely different life. He was so young and so lost back then, all alone in the city for the first time in his life.
He remembers writing the lyrics on a loose sheet, folding it in six and burying it in his back pocket because it was snowing and the flakes that were falling were starting to wet the paper, and Castiel didn’t want to lose this.
“Wandering lonely through the snow streets of New York
I stumbled on a thrift store that sold postcards by the yard
I bought a mile and shipped them home so I could read
Ten thousand ten-word tragedies, the lives these strangers lead
To remind myself the things I need.”
He’d spent Christmas in New York that year, and doesn’t even remember how he spent New Year’s Eve apart from the fact that he was so high he passed out on the floor in a shitty condo in downtown Manhattan.
It feels like a lifetime ago, and for good reasons: all the people around him right now, the little ones that are looking at him as he sings with so much love in their eyes, his best friends surrounding him, being there for him and doing what they do best; and Dean.
Oh, Dean. He’s trouble in a bottle. One in a million. Castiel doesn’t know how he knows, but he just knows. When he meets his eyes above Claire’s blond hair, Dean’s green eyes catch his in an instant, and he can see so many emotions in there he has to look away for a second.
“Cause I once wrote you love songs
You never fell in love
We used to fit like mittens, but never like gloves
You left me feeling like
We'd never really been in love.”
Castiel remembers, as he sings the words he wrote about a long-lost girlfriend from two decades ago, how alone he’d felt in New York. How cold it was at night when he wandered the streets, looking to score. He remembers the pain of his first tattoo, the one that sits on his ribs; a protection sigil in an ancient language.
He remembers feeling free and feeling miserable.
“I once wrote you love songs
You never fell in love
We used to fit like mittens, but never like gloves
And I once wrote you postcards
You never wrote back
Promised me you would and I'm still waiting for them.”
But Dean smiles at him now, as Castiel keeps singing and playing on his old guitar, and Cas feels the way it warms him up from the inside, the polar opposite of how he felt years ago. He looks at Balthazar, at Max, and at Alicia, and he feels their love from across the room.
Castiel does not feel so miserable right now. And his freedom is right there within his reach, ready for him to take it.
“You left me feeling like
We'd never really been in love
Don't wanna fit like mittens
I wanna fit like gloves
Wanna fit like gloves.”
Dean’s smile and the green of his eyes, they’re what feels like gloves now, Castiel realizes. And it’s scary and insane and a little thrilling to realize, maybe. It’s dangerous and heavy and probably every bit of bad ideas melted into one…
“I once wrote you love songs
You never fell in love
We used to fit like mittens but never like gloves
Never like gloves.”
But what if Dean was the gloves all along?
✧✧✧
Dean is as mesmerized by the band playing in the living room as the kids; perhaps even more. He can bitch all he wants about no good music having been made after ‘79, but the fact is, Free Will is good. The lyrics are good, the music is top of the shelf, and Dean would have so much to say about the band’s entire chemistry, even as they play acoustic and mess up songs and try new stuff Cas has written while he was secluded in here. They’re good, and Dean’s almost ready to put his “no good music has been written after ‘79” motto in the bin just because of them, which sure is something.
Then there’s just something about Cas. Dean has been trying to avoid it, to ignore the way his heart swells every single time Cas so much as smiles at him, or how it hurt to see him so broken up and sad when he came home two weeks ago, drunk and high off his ass. But it’s getting even more difficult as they go through the days- it’s hard to ignore how Dean’s smiles get easier whenever Cas is around, or how much more fun he has with the kids if Cas is in it too.
He’s not avoiding it because he’s scared, not really. He’s avoiding it because nothing remotely good can come out of having a crush on your boss. It’s dangerous is all it is, and Dean isn’t ready to get his heart broken by someone all over again, not so soon after Cole beat him up and threw him out; maybe not ever again.
Dean’s not an idiot. He knows he has a crush. Hell, maybe even more than that. But there’s also a silent pain in his ribs, a phantom pain of something else that keeps him from going all in.
It’s not like we do feelings in this house anymore.
Would it even be worth it? For so many years, Dean gave Cole the benefit of the doubt. Because he always apologized, always doted on Dean until he saw red again, always said “I didn’t mean to hurt you, baby, I’m sorry” afterward in bed. He always gave Cole a pass, and it bit him in the ass just months ago.
Cas isn’t Cole, that much he’s sure of. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t break Dean’s heart, or that he’s a good guy either. Hell, in the last few weeks he’s been here, Dean’s documented himself enough on Castiel alone to know that he doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to relationships (Sam even called him “not relationship material” at one point, which made Dean snort for good measure, because that’s just his damn luck, isn’t it?). So why would it be any different with him?
The point is, once the kids are in bed after two stories, and Max, Alicia and Balthazar have all left after one last drink (soda pop for everyone, because alcohol is now forbidden under this roof), Dean’s too tired to realize the situation he’s put himself in is dangerous.
It’s not even Cas’ fault, either. Dean’s been around him long enough by now to know when the guy is fried, and the way he’s slumped on the couch tells Dean just enough about just how tired he might actually be.
“Do you want your tea?” Dean asks Castiel from the kitchen, already halfway into sorting through the ingredients and how much they’ve got left.
He really has to do a grocery run tomorrow.
“Actually, do you think you could make me a coffee?” Cas’ voice interrupts him, and Dean lifts his head up to look at him across the room.
“You’re gonna be up all night if I make you a coffee right now, man.”
“Yeah, but I… I think I’m on to something,” Cas says, and only then does Dean realize he’s been writing in one of the numerous notebooks that are laying on the coffee table in front of him.
It doesn’t happen every day, but it’s been happening more this week, and Dean’s generally careful about not disrupting Cas when it does (something about the “master being at work” or some shit, he doesn’t even know). So he makes them both coffee while the silence between them only gets disrupted by the sound of Cas’ pen on the paper and the coffee maker doing its thing.
Five minutes later, there’s a steaming cup of coffee next to Cas’ notebook, and another in Dean’s hands as he sits on the couch next to his friend.
Friend. The word doesn’t even sound foreign in his head when he thinks about it.
There’s that thing, too, where his relationship with Castiel has definitely evolved past the simple ‘boss and employee’ context and became something resembling friendship, and Dean still doesn’t really know if that’s a good or a bad thing. It’s just there, and it’s why he silently stays next to Cas on the couch while Cas writes instead of going down to his bedroom and getting some sleep ahead of his schedule.
It’s also why, when Cas closes the notebook and relaxes onto the couch next to him before sighing happily into the cup of coffee Dean has made him, Dean sees nothing wrong with making space next to him for Cas to curl into.
The damn guy, this beautiful specimen of a man, almost has his head on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean sees nothing wrong with it.
Somewhere, somehow, Dean knows Sam is already screaming at him for being a grade-A idiot, but it happens anyway, and Dean’s guts warm happily as Cas exhales, his breath skittering on the skin of Dean’s neck. Cas' head is still on the fabric of the couch, but they’re so close that it would be the same if he had his face tucked into Dean’s neck.
Dean is half hard into his jeans just thinking about it, and no matter how much he works to try and forget about it doesn’t make him get any slacker.
Down, boy. Now is not the time to sport a semi because your boss slash somehow-friend is hot as fuck.
“Thank you,” Cas says, softly into the quiet space between them, and it takes a lot for Dean to not just kiss him right here and then.
The little voice in his head is telling him to be careful, because Cas isn’t Cole and he’s going through something that’s already complicated enough without adding any nonsense to it. But there’s another part of Dean, no matter the danger and the complications, that tells him that maybe this is it. Maybe he and Cas were always bound to meet each other, that maybe this is what they’ve both been waiting for, and what happens if they don’t go through with it?
What happens if they don’t?
“For what?” Dean asks as he turns to look at Cas.
His eyes are so blue you could probably put the entire Pacific Ocean in there, and still, it wouldn’t even do enough justice to the blue of Cas’ irises.
“I know you’re the one who had the idea about inviting everyone over to play,” Cas explains, his voice a warm rumble of honeyed gravel. “Charlie told me.”
“It wasn’t such a big thing,” Dean shrugs, looking at Cas with a smile. “I just knew you missed playing with them.”
“I did, but how did you figure it out?” Castiel says, watching him closely.
I just paid attention, Dean almost says, but that would be admitting to watching Castiel way more than is professional, Dean figures.
“I just listen to you,” he says instead, before finishing his cup of coffee and straightening himself as he places it on the coffee table.
Cas doesn’t move, staying curled up on the couch with his cup in hand. He looks more disheveled than usual, in his old pair of jeans and a t-shirt that has seen better days.
He’s beautiful, and it’s as unnerving as it is incredible.
“Still, thank you,” Cas presses. “For everything you do.”
“You’re welcome, man. That’s what I’m here for.”
“No, you don’t get it,” Castiel says as he suddenly gets up and takes a hold of Dean’s empty cup on the table to take to the sink. “It’s more than that. I know I’m paying you to do a lot of things, but you didn’t have to do any of the nice things you’ve been doing for me for the past few weeks.”
Dean watches him carefully, follows into the kitchen and sits on one of the chairs as Castiel apparently decides he wants to do the dishes.
“I know that, but… I don’t know, Cas, have you ever had anyone doing nice shit for you just because they thought you were worth it? Because you are, man.”
Castiel stops moving just as if a train had just hit him. He sees the moment where Cas pulls himself together, too. He wonders for half a second if maybe he pushed too far, but before he makes any conclusion, Cas starts answering.
“Not really. I mean, I love my friends, but we’ve basically been living out of each other’s pockets for years. And Jimmy… Well, that’s different, because he’s my brother. Was. Whatever.”
Dean catches the way Cas’ shoulders straighten at the mention of his brother. It still hurts as deeply as it did the first time Dean walked in, he can see that just in the way Castiel reacts at the mere mention of Jimmy.
Nevertheless, he presses on.
“So that’s a no. See why I might have wanted to do something nice for you?” Dean says, and catches Cas’ gaze as he turns back and leans against the sink to look at him. “You deserve more than people just being there when there’s something in it for them, too.”
The silence between them stretches out for an entire minute, and it’s not even uncomfortable. Cas dries the coffee cups and puts them away in the proper cupboard, even takes things out for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. Dean watches him as he does it, buzzing with the warm sensation of a good night in.
“I’m glad you’re here, Dean,” Cas says, standing in front of Dean on the other side of the table, both of his blue eyes like lasers on Dean. “I’m glad we’re friends.”
Dean smiles back at him, the man that’s become a friend over the past couple of weeks, even though it’s probably a bad idea and he already gives enough boners to serve as a spank bank for every single one of Dean’s wet dreams.
“Me too, man,” he just says, smiling back at Cas with the easiest smile on his lips. "I'm glad we’re friends.”
The little (annoying) voice in his head, the one that suspiciously sounds like Sam’s worst bitch face, tells him that “friends don’t give you boners just by the way they look at you”.
Dean refuses to listen to it.
✧✧✧
Dean wakes up with a jolt.
He went to bed early that evening, as opposed to what he usually does. The kids are away for the next two days, which means it’s only him and Cas in the house, and he’s been waiting for this to happen for the better part of the last week.
Dean loves his job, loves the kids, but he can’t deny there’s some greatness in having a couple of days to recharge. He’s been planning on that early night ever since he learned about Jack and Claire staying over at one of Claire’s friends house for two nights, and he’s set up a night catching up with Sam and Benny tomorrow.
He’s barely awake yet, not even knowing why he woke up so suddenly, when he hears his name shredding the muffled silence of his bedroom, coming from upstairs.
“Dean!”
Dean gets up and goes up the stairs so fast he barely realizes he doesn’t have anything but a pair of black boxers on. It doesn’t even matter, not when it’s Cas’ voice calling for him.
It’s been an entire month since Cas started his program back up, and he’s been doing so well. They celebrated yesterday, the kids (and Dean) coming home with a bouquet of flowers, and the night ended up with all of them watching Toy Story (Cas’ favorite movie). It hasn’t been easy and Dean refuses to overlook the amount of effort Cas has been putting in, especially when he looks back to the first weeks of his arrival. Things are so different from the first time, it’s sometimes hard for him to realize he’s only been here for a little over two months.
He’ll blame it on how panic makes him completely unresponsive to everything around him later, but at the moment the only thing he can hear is the sound of Cas’ voice calling for him. If he did pay any attention to his surroundings, he’d probably hear the way Cas’ voice sounds husky and completely out of breath, or the familiar noises that come from the bedroom.
But he doesn’t. So when he pushes the door to Castiel’s bedroom, he expects to find him fighting something in his sleep, or crying in bed.
What he finds himself is completely different, and way, way more arousing.
There Cas is, naked as a jaybird and on full display, on all four in the middle of his bed, and looking like he’s having the absolute time of his life mounting the black dildo that’s stuck to his headboard.
Cas doesn’t even spot him at first, too busy moaning his pleasure as he goes down the shaft of his toy, burying it deeper inside of him, eyes closed in delight. He looks downright scandalous, the curve of his perfectly round ass disrupting the laws of physics and the sheen of sweat on his back making Dean want to lick it off of him. His cock, thick and looking gorgeous, follows the movement of his body, looking as hard as a rock as Castiel rolls his hips on the dildo.
God, how much I’d give to suck that dick.
“Oh, Dean, yes,” Cas moans, and Dean’s mind explodes.
He wants me. He’s fucking himself calling for me.
Dean’s brain might be offline and downright insane, but his dick surely isn’t, and he’s barely been standing there for half a second when his cock starts chubbing and straining in his boxers.
Traitor.
“Cas-” Dean starts, his voice so wrecked he barely recognizes it.
Fuck, I want him so bad. I want to be that cock so fucking bad.
Castiel finally opens his eyes then, finally takes Dean's presence in… But as crazy as it may sound, and while Dean might have expected him to stop and immediately try to cover himself, or simply yell at Dean to get the fuck out, something in the blue of Cas’ eyes almost seems pleased at seeing him here.
That’s not possible, he tells himself. You’re just seeing what you want to see. You just want to keep looking at him fucking himself on that big plastic cock until you come. You’re just horny for the guy.
“I’m so sorry, I- I thought-,” Dean starts, taking one step back.
But Cas doesn’t stop his movement on the dildo. If anything, he actually seems to increase the roll of his hips, looking absolutely obscene as he does so. His eyes even roll back in his head on one of his thrusts, and Dean can only admire the curve of Cas’ throat as he moans.
How much I’d give to bite the skin of that throat. Fuck, how much I’d give to bury myself down that throat.
The sound of the plastic cock squelching deep inside Cas’ hole tells Dean just how wet he must be. Dean’s dick is so hard the head is almost poking out of the waistband of his boxers.
“Don’t- don’t go,” Cas answers, after what seems like so long but is actually just five seconds. “Dean, stay.”
For a wild second Dean’s almost sure he hasn’t heard right. Surely, Cas isn’t asking him to stay and watch him as he fucks himself silly on a toy. But then he catches Cas’ gaze, the way the blue of his eyes has almost disappeared, eaten up by the black ring of his pleasure-blow-up pupils, and he can’t help it.
He takes a step forward.
Cas whines, needy, looking like a complete sin as he mounts his toy quicker and quicker.
“Dean,” he whisper-moans, wrecked in the best way. “Dean, come here.”
Dean’s brain has permanently left the building. He only has eyes for the sinful form of Cas’ ass going even quicker on the toy, the slapping sound of his ass cheeks against the headboard and the little moans that Cas keeps releasing.
He takes another step forward, and Cas’ eyes are right there looking at him.
“Just- just tell me to go and I will,” Dean says, almost shaky.
Don’t send me away, don’t. I want you, the voice in his head says, and Dean thinks back to Sam’s “don’t kiss your boss”, way before he even meets Cas. I want you, even if it messes things up. I want you so bad.
“But I want you to stay,” Cas says, taking Dean’s breath away as he starts mouthing at his cock through the fabric of his boxers.
This is Heaven. This isn’t real. This is probably a dream.
But Cas’ mouth feels as real as ever when it goes from mouthing at his now rock-hard cock to his balls through the thin fabric of his underwear. It feels crazy good as his teeth tug at his waistband and pulls them down while Cas still doesn’t slow down the roll of his hips, burying his toy even deeper into his own asshole.
It feels holy when Castiel looks up at him, a cocky grin on his lips, right before he takes the head of Dean’s cock into his mouth and starts sucking, eyes on Dean and swallowing precome oozing from Dean’s slit.
It’s dangerous and it’s insane and it’s sinful and it’s so, so, so good when Castiel swallows him down completely, stuffing his throat with Dean’s cock at the same time as he’s letting the toy slip out of his used hole, the head catching on his rim and making him moan around Dean’s length. He relaxes his throat, like a fucking professional without even so much as a gag reflex, and lets Dean’s cock fill him completely, tears leaking down the corner of his eyes, before releasing it, the head still in his mouth as he fills his ass with the dildo relentlessly, over and over and over again.
This is Heaven. I don’t care if it’s real. I don’t care if it’s a dream.
Dean lets one of his hands cup Cas' jaw before going down the line of his back and landing on his asscheek. His cock is buried in Cas’ throat when he slams his hand on the perfectly round curve of his butt, Cas whining when he does. He lets his finger go down just enough to circle Cas’ hole, where the toy keeps stuffing him completely full, smiling in delight when Cas moans like a pornstar when he rubs the pad of his finger on the overused rim, feeling the way the toy stretches him so well.
“Dean,” Cas pants, completely out of breath as he licks at Dean’s balls letting go of his cock for just a minute. “More.”
So Dean gives him more, slipping a finger easily beside the toy, fucking him wider and even better. Cas writhes on the bed, obviously enjoying it.
“You like it, huh?” Dean tries, careful to watch how Cas responds to his words. When Cas whines in delight once more, he picks up again. “Like being completely filled on both ends like this? Is this enough for your tight little hole, do you need more?”
“More,” Cas says, and howls when Dean adds a second finger next to the first one, sliding in easily with the toy. “Dean, oh my God-”
“Shh, it’s okay baby,” Dean lets out, trying to keep himself from thrusting all the way down Cas’ throat as Cas takes him back in his mouth, alternating between sucking his dick and sucking his balls. “Come on, sweetheart, I’m gonna make it so good for you.”
He pumps his fingers inside of Cas’ wet and hot channel for a few more strokes, going with the speed of Cas’ own thrusts on the toy, before finally releasing him. Dean’s cock is back down the back of his throat by the time he draws back to his initial position, his fingers still wet from the lube inside of Cas.
“Cas, Cas- oh, Cas,” he chants, as Castiel keeps his rhythm, sucking the ever-loving shit out of his cock and destroying his ass with his own toy. “Sweetheart, you’re so good, you’re so good.”
Dean’s mouth disconnects from everything else and then he’s just chanting Cas’ name, saying sweet nothing into the space between them while Cas keeps sucking him off and fucking himself without missing a beat.
Cas’ eyes never let go of Dean, except for when they roll out in pleasure inside of his own skull. At one point, when Dean can’t help himself and slides a hand in his hair, taking a hold of Cas’ head and fucking his throat relentlessly, they start rhythmically closing and opening up.
And on the last thrust of Dean’s cock inside his throat before he releases Cas’ head, Castiel starts coming, completely untouched.
Dean feels it in the same way you’d feel a hurricane- Cas starts shaking, falling apart around the length of Dean’s cock inside his mouth. His throat contracts, making Dean absolutely lose his mind as he thrust out. Dean watches as his legs tremble, and as the thick length of Cas’ cocks release long, white strokes of come on the sheet underneath.
It takes everything in Dean not to come at the thought of licking it all up, but he’s not far behind. Cas hasn’t let go of his cock, still suckling at the head as he comes off his high. Dean’s hand in Cas’ hair starts carding through the sweaty mess of dark strands, and his other one comes to rest on the line of Cas’ jaw.
Castiel looks up to catch his eyes then, mouth full of cock and eyes as blue as ever. And if Dean had any doubt about Cas’ intention once the ecstasy of orgasm had passed, there doesn’t seem to be any in Cas’ mind right now.
“You’re so good,” Dean whines, his thumb brushing the corner of Castiel’s mouth, where his lips are stretching to wrap around Dean’s cock. “So good for me.”
He lets his hand go down the length of Cas’ throat, let himself palm his own dick through the tender skin of Cas’ neck when he buries himself one last time in the welcoming heat of his boss’ mouth, balls pressed against Cas’ face. It might even be what causes his demise, feeling the curve of his own cock right there, inside someone else, sinful in every way and so damn hot.
It takes him like a wave, as he thrust out. It’s in the way Cas’ tongue follows the vein underneath his cock, or how his throat constricts around him as he thrust out. It’s in the way Cas’ doesn’t let go of Dean’s cock, suckling at the head and tonguing at the slit until he finally gives in.
“I’m gonna-”
He can’t even finish his sentence, bliss taking him like a freight train.
“Come inside my mouth,” Cas says around his cock, spit and precome escaping from his lips, sinful in so many ways that Dean couldn’t even count even if he wanted to. “Dean, give it to me.”
It’s in the way Cas says it, with authority and absolute certainty. It’s in the way he says “Dean” like it’s both a prayer and a blessing. It’s in the way the blue of his eyes twinkle with something that Dean cannot name yet, but that he hasn’t seen in the two months he’s been here.
So Dean complies, like a good little soldier, and comes right there into Cas’ mouth, filling it to the brim. He watches as Cas swallows all of it, sucking his dick until Dean can’t take the oversensitivity anymore, and licks his lips with a satisfied smile when Dean’s cock finally falls out of his mouth.
And it brings them here, to the moment where Dean stands naked and sated in front of his boss, also naked and having had his employee’s dick into his mouth just five seconds ago. It brings them to this moment, Cas’ ass still filled with a fake cock, traces of Dean’s come still on his chin, and a smile still on his lips.
Well, Dean thinks.
At least I didn’t kiss the boss.
He doesn’t even know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but at this point, they’re way past good or bad anyway.
Notes:
Well, that happened... Now what? 😏
Chapter 5: The boy's a time bomb!
Summary:
"Well, he's back in the hole where they got him living
Like a rat but he's smarter than that nine lives
Like a cat fifteen years old take him to the youth authority home
First thing you learn you gotta make it in this world alone.""Time Bomb", by Rancid (1995)
Notes:
Annnnnd welcome back! We're officially more than halfway through this fic, and this is what I like to call "the turning point" (aka shit is going to hit the fan).
No TWs that I can think of as of now, but don't hesitate to let me know in the comments if I should warn for something.
The only thing I'll say is that this story is now officially the smuttiest I've ever written (and if you're familiar with my work, you know what this means). So yeah, smut ahead, ahoy sailor.
Thank you to me beta team for enabling me (literally) 💜 (shenanigans to see here, here and here)
The song that Cas sings in this chapter is "Home" by Foo Fighters.
See you in the comment section!
✧ Your "Glory Hallelujah" playlist ☄️
✧ Your "Free Will - the band" playlist
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The thing is, things have no reasons to be complicated.
Cas had plenty of sex with plenty of different people over the years, and it never has to be complicated. He likes when it’s easy, when everyone knows what they get from it, when the silences aren’t heavy, and the aftermaths aren’t dramatic.
But this isn’t what last night was. Cas knows this as soon as he’s alert enough the next morning to remember what happened.
It’s not that he intended for Dean to walk in on him getting his rocks off on his favorite dildo, but it’s not like he’s mad about it either. He couldn’t really deny that he’d been wanting Dean for some time now, and boy was he right about wanting him. Last night felt like both a fever (really wet) dream, and Cas’ throat is still sore from how deep Dean had fucked his face- and he still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to act now that he knows what Dean tastes like in his mouth, and how gorgeous he looks when he comes.
The aftermath wasn’t even that uncomfortable: Dean got his boxers back on and Cas laid in bed, sated in the best way. He thinks he might have dozed off immediately after, because when he woke up in the middle of the night, his dildo was clean and resting on the bedside table and he was wearing his sweatpants again. Which would mean Dean…
Dean took care of him. Even after everything, Dean still took care of him.
Castiel tosses in bed, lies on his other side, stares across the room at the chair where Dean used to sit at the very beginning of his detox process. Where not so long ago, Jimmy used to sit too when he would spend the night here with Cas and the kids, and they’d chat until the small hours.
Even just thinking of Jimmy in passing still hurts. Not like it did the very first day, but it’s still there in the back of his head; a subtle needle constantly going at his heart, never stopping even for one single moment. Like a bee stinging him every step of the way.
Jimmy still exists in this reality, the one where Cas gets to stay and wake up in every morning; the one that weighs so heavily on him that sometimes he doesn’t make it out of bed at all. He’s still the person Cas remembers the best, and he knows that’s not how his brother is anymore, but he’s still there. Still breathing beneath his own skin, still alive and shining like a diamond in this parallel reality that Castiel refuses to let go of completely.
If he closes his eyes for long enough, he gets to pretend Jimmy is still sitting in the chair across the room, probably laughing at him for falling for Dean in the first place. If he pretends long enough, he gets to keep his brother alive through fragments of memories, conversations, moments. He can still pretend that the world he built still stands and that he doesn’t have to open his eyes to reality.
Castiel understands what it means to stand at the edge of yourself, yet never be brave enough to take the next step. He understands what it is to lose someone you love, and be completely unable to pull everything they were from between your ribs.
What he does not understand is what it means to let go of a memory, to close the doors he’s opened and forget what lies beyond them.
This thing in his chest is full of rooms he’s built to hold others, and it rattles between them like a loose bone. The truth is, he still doesn’t know how to clear the ruins inside his chest that Jimmy left behind. His broken heart is a home of empty rooms, just waiting desperately for someone, something to fill them up again.
Maybe Dean could be the answer to that, but it’s both frightening and daunting in the best and worst ways.
The thing is, things have no reasons to be complicated when there are no feelings involved.
But Cas is pretty sure he’s caught feelings now, and if this isn’t karma coming back to bite him in the ass, now he doesn’t know what is.
✧✧✧
“You what?!”
Dean sighs into his beer, not very keen on suffering through another one of his little brother’s monologues about how stupid he is. But from the way Benny is staring at him, looking like he’s in shock, maybe Dean is bound to get one anyway.
“It's not like I planned it, you know?” he tries, but Sam still has that same bitchface on, and Benny doesn’t seem to be able to utter a single word. “Oh come on, don’t give me that face.”
“What face?” Sam counters, still wearing the exact same bitch face.
“That one that says you’re about to tell me I’m a massive idiot,” Dean says, already grumpy about it.
Honestly, he’s already been hard on himself enough for today. He left the house early this morning, not even getting himself a cup of coffee because he wanted to make sure he didn’t cross paths with Cas just yet (something about having had sex with the man the night before and not knowing where they stand or how to act about it), and spent the rest of his day moping while he ran errands around town, stopping for lunch before he headed to the bar where Benny works for the beer they’d plan on getting together with Sam weeks ago.
Which brings them to this moment, after Dean finally cracked and roughly explained what happened with Cas the night before because he might be many things, but he sure as hell isn’t a good liar, and Benny and Sam both know him well enough to know when something is going on.
“Well, to be fair, you are a massive idiot,” Sam helpfully supplies.
“Yeah, well,” Dean fires back, taking one last sip of his drink before looking back at his brother. “Unless you have something nice to share with the class, I’d rather talk about anything else.”
This seems to hit home, if the look that Benny gives Sam and the way Sam sighs is any indication. The next time Sam opens his mouth, his tone is a little kinder, if anything.
“I just want you to be okay.”
“I’m fine,” Dean says, turning to look away.
“Far be it from me to think you’re lying, brother, but after everything that happened with Cole, I think both Sam and I are just concerned about your well-being,” Benny chimes in.
Dean knows, realistically, that they mean well. That when he wound up on Benny’s doorstep a few months ago, he was barely a shell, wounded in so many more ways than just one. Both Benny and Sam did their best to try and help him. That they’re just scared he might get into another tricky situation, and none of them actually know if Cas is any better than Cole (if anything, from what the public knows about him, Cas wouldn’t fare that well opposed to Cole).
“I know that,” Dean says, eyes on his beers to avoid the concerned looks of his brother and his best friend. “But I really am fine.”
“So you didn’t run away from Castiel’s house at the crack of dawn to avoid running into him?” Sam asks, sarcasm dripping from his voice, and Dean has to force himself not to roll his eyes too hard in fear of injuring himself.
“And what if I did? Maybe I just wanted a day away from everything, just catching up with my brother and my best friend.”
Sam watches him, clearly suspicious, before bringing his beer to his lips.
“Okay,” he shrugs, the impertinent asshole. “Maybe you did. But what do you plan on doing about the… whatever you call this clusterfuck of a situation?”
The real answer is, Dean doesn’t know. He wishes he had a plan, something to say or do that would quiet down his fears and expectations. He wishes he had a big idea on how to play this out, what to tell Cas. He wishes he knew what he wants, but the truth is, he has none.
There’s no denying that he feels something for Cas. He doesn’t know what it is just yet. Dean’s heart is still heavy with ruins of hope. Even now, after everything he’s been through, after Cole broke him down for so many years and in so many more ways than just one, he still holds up hope like a prayer in his palms. Even now, he’s more flame than candle.
It seems like such a simple thing from the outside: to be hopeful, to always look towards the horizon. But to Dean nowadays, hope is often heavier than sorrow, twisting and burrowing into the softest of places. And yet, hopeful he remains. Even when he knows just how much it can hurt him. Even when it has hurt him just months ago, making itself a place in-between the fabric of Dean’s soul. Even when it’s caused him nothing but pain in the past.
Dean doesn’t know any other ways to be.
“I don’t know,” Dean shrugs into his beer, as sincere as ever. “I guess we’ll see what happens.”
And he means it, too. No matter how hard Sam rolls his eyes or how loud Benny’s sigh is, Dean isn’t keen on putting a word on anything that’s happened so far. He doesn’t know where Cas stands in all of this, doesn’t know what he’s looking for or even if he’s looking for anything.
So Dean resolves to finish his beer and carry on, waiting to see what Cas’ next move is going to be.
He’s already wasted half a lifetime trying to stay alive. What’s more than a couple of hours?
✧✧✧
Castiel hears him coming in.
It’s really late (or super early, depending on your worldview), but Cas couldn’t fall asleep. After an entire hour spent tossing and turning in bed, he decided to get up and do something with himself instead of sulking in bed like a teenager. The kids are still out for tonight; they’re only scheduled to be back tomorrow after school, so he’d made his way to the living room and watched a documentary about bees, sipping on his favorite tea that Dean had made a point of stocking on during his last grocery run.
The point is, Castiel hears the door opening and closing, and the sound of Dean’s footfall on the stairs before he hears him stop barely two feet into the kitchen.
Castiel doesn’t turn to look at him, even though his heart stutters in his chest.
Don’t act like there’s anything out of the ordinary, you idiot.
“You’re staring,” he says instead, keeping his eyes on the TV where a beekeeper shows the camera how he collects honey. “Anybody ever told you that’s rude?”
Dean stifles a laugh, Cas’ heartbeat finally quiets down and he turns to look at him.
“I told you that,” Dean counters.
Fuck if he doesn’t look beautiful. It’s past 2 AM and Cas is pretty sure being this good-looking wearing a pair of jeans and a flannel should be completely illegal. And now that he knows how Dean looks when he comes, now that he knows what he tastes like when he’s buried deep inside his throat… It’s way harder to ignore.
“Well, you were right,” he says, trying to appear casual.
Don’t like you’re in love with the guy, you fucking dumbass.
“First time for everything, I guess,” Dean sighs.
Cas turns his head back on the TV, willing himself to act normal, dammit.
It all flies out the window when he feels the couch dip and Dean sitting next to him.
Fuck, he smells so good it’s a miracle Cas still has his clothes on. But Dean is uncharacteristically quiet next to him, and he doesn’t like it.
“You’re weird,” Cas says after a full minute of silence between them, only the sound of the documentary still playing on the TV disturbing them. “What’s up with you?”
He glances at Dean, the light of the TV being the only thing in the room that’s momentarily illuminating their faces. He looks like a Greek statue, all chiseled, scruffed jaw and beautiful angles. He also looks tired, from what little Cas can see from only the corner of his eyes.
Whatever plan had started to build up inside his head completely vanishes then, and Cas relaxes into the couch.
They don’t have to decide that it meant anything at all. Not right now, maybe not ever.
“You’re weird, man,” Dean says, and Cas can feel him relax next to him. “Why are you even still up?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Cas shrugs, aiming for nonchalant. “Why are you up?”
“Stop asking me the same questions, you weirdo.”
“You’re a weirdo,” Cas smiles, turning to look at Dean more blatantly.
Dean smiles back at him, all teeth and fucking beautiful, and Cas ignores the valiant little twitch his heart makes inside of his chest.
“Fuck off, Novak,” Dean says before he steals the remote from Cas. “Why are you even watching this-”
“I like the commentary, it soothes me,” Castiel shrugs. “Don’t put anything dumb on.”
Dean looks outright scandalized.
“Are you saying Dr. Sexy is dumb?”
Cas can’t help but snort. Give it to Dean to obsess over a low-grade medical drama of all things.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re saying Dr. Sexy is dumb!”
And as they keep quipping at each other and bickering over what to put on in the middle of the night instead of both heading to bed like regular adults do, Cas keeps trying to ignore the way his heart finally feels at rest with Dean sitting next to him.
Just for a few hours, he allows himself to feel at least a little bit content.
✧✧✧
To Dean’s immense surprise, they just... don’t talk about it. And they’re not even weird around each other, too.
If anything, Dean finds himself more comfortable in Cas’ presence than he did before; they spend time with each other almost every night in the studio or the living room, they talk just like they did before, and Cas still goes through his detox process like a champ.
The band comes around a second time, and both Jack and Claire watch them play with stars in their eyes. It seems to make Cas happy, and it’s all Dean really asked for.
“Cas looks good,” Charlie tells him that night after they both exited Claire’s room.
She requested both of them to read her a story, and “aunt Charlie makes the best voices” was Claire’s argument (she won them over easily).
“He’s been doing pretty well,” Dean nods at her before realizing she stopped at the top of the stairs. “What?”
Charlie looks at him, a frown on her face. “You on the other hand…”
Dean takes a breath. “What about me?”
He mentally goes through the possibilities. He took his meds this morning, check. He took a shower two hours ago, check. He refuses to examine the possibility that he might have feelings for his boss, check. He hasn’t contacted Cole or even looked up what he was up to on social media in over three months, check.
Charlie’s gaze is heavy on him, like she’s weighing the pros and cons of listing everything that’s wrong with Dean right here and now, before she finally decides to drop it.
“You’re sure you’re doing okay?” she simply asks.
Dean takes another breath. Braces himself. Rolls his eyes for good measures.
“Peachy, Red. What’s with the interrogation and long faces?”
He’s only joking to try and lower his own damn nerves. He’s made a point of not involving anyone in his own mess, and he doesn’t intend on starting now of all moments.
And Charlie has enough on her plate as it is.
“I’m just looking out for you,” Charlie says after a long moment just looking at him.
Her voice is soft in a way that Dean isn’t used to, and it almost hurts the shattered pieces of himself that still lies at his own feet.
“You don’t need to,” he says instead, turning back to finally start going down the stairs. “I’m fine.”
For tonight, Charlie drops it. But Dean knows his friend better than expecting her to drop it completely. By the time she leaves the house, the sun has long set and Cas is holed up in the studio, so focused on his console that Dean isn’t sure he even hears him as he walks in.
It takes Cas a whole fifteen minutes before turning back to face him, his eyes still on the guitar that’s resting on his knee. He seems to be looking for the right chord to fit with a melody he’s recorded the night before.
“Did Charlie leave?” he asks, trying a G minor before grimacing. “Ugh, why is nothing working?”
Dean smiles in spite of himself; Cas is always a bit grumpy when he’s into some sort of creative process (which seems to be the case these days), and it’s actually quite unnerving.
Not that he’d tell him that himself.
“Yeah just now,” he answers instead, his eyes not leaving Cas while he attempts to figure out what's wrong with his fingers sliding on the strings of his guitar. “Maybe you need a break?”
At that, Cas looks up from his guitar to look at him.
(Dean ignores the loop his heart does in his chest.)
“What do you suggest I take a break for?”
There’s something in the way Cas says it, like he’s waiting to see what Dean does to cross an invisible barrier.
They keep avoiding what obviously happened between the two of them, despite the fact that barely a week ago Dean had his dick down Cas’ throat. Dean doesn’t know if he’s happy or sad about it, but all he knows is this: it was just sex. Plain, old and simple sex without strings.
It’s sort of a relief, too. It means Dean doesn’t have to look too closely at what happened and how he still feels, because it was just sex.
And what’s wrong with just having a little sex?
So Dean just arches an eyebrow in response, just cocky enough to cause Castiel to smile and put his guitar away.
And that’s how barely 5 minutes later, Dean finds himself still sitting on the studio’s couch, his jeans and underwear on his ankles and a very appreciative Cas on his knees, sucking the ever-loving shit out of Dean’s rock-hard cock.
“Jesus,” Dean exhales on a particularly sinful twist of Cas’ mouth on his dick. “You’re so fucking good at this.”
Cas makes a “pop” with his lips, releasing Dean’s cock for a minute and looking at it just as if it was a lollipop, giving its head a kitten lick before teasing the slit with the tip of his tongue, making Dean groan in delight.
“Don’t blaspheme while I have your cock in my mouth,” is the only thing Cas says before taking him all the way to the back of his throat in one single stroke, and Dean loses all ability to say anything that doesn’t start with “Cas” or “fuck” as Cas gags on his dick.
Cas is just so good at sucking cock that if there was some sort of diploma, Dean’s pretty sure he’d graduate top of the class. Dean has never been touched that way- certainly not by Cole, who probably gave him a blowjob once in 5 years, and only because he was drunk off his ass.
Sex with Cole was all about his own pleasure and after a while, Dean had found himself reluctant to even ask for what he wanted. Instead, he let his ex-boyfriend lead the charge, fucking him whenever he wanted to and using his mouth as he saw fit. It’s not that Dean didn’t take any pleasure in this, but it has never been about him and his pleasure at all.
It took him several months to realize how deep that had fucked him up. If he’s being honest, it took him until the first time Cas put his hands on him to realize his entire sexual history from the past five years was traumatic.
He tries to put Cole in the back of his mind and concentrates back on what Cas is doing to him- mainly, the way his mouth just lets go of his cock to go and swallows each of his balls carefully like a goddamn mastermind. Dean lets one of his hands slide down his thigh to card through the mess of Cas’ hair, and catches Cas’ blue gaze watching him, one of Dean’s balls still on his tongue and a fucking smile on his face.
“How’s that break treatin’ you, baby?” Cas asks, voice warm and deep, before mouthing along Dean’s shaft as he goes up, sliding his tongue cleverly against Dean’s frenulum.
Dean can’t help the whine that escapes him, and how his eyes roll back momentarily, his hand tightening in Cas’ hair as he takes him back into his mouth like a pro. He doesn’t want to look too closely at how Cas just called him “baby”, and certainly does NOT want to examine the fact that it’s what made him moan in the first place.
It’s just sex. We’re just blowing some steam. Nothing else.
“Too damn good, that’s for sure,” he exhales, letting his head fall back against the couch, mouth hanging open as Cas goes to fucking town on his dick. “Oh, fuck, Cas.”
Cas guides Dean’s second hand to his hair after a while, his skin soft and warm against Dean’s fingers, and urges him to fuck his face like he did the first time.
And Dean’s a simple man, so he obliges.
It’s as sinful as the first time, maybe even more because this time Cas’ eyes are on him almost the whole time, and Dean gets to watch as his dick hits the back of Cas’ throat and his eyes water as he tries to accommodate; he gets to watch the bulge of his own cock as it rests inside Cas’ throat; he gets to watch the mess of come and spit that start dripping out of the corner of Cas’ mouth after a few strokes.
He gets to watch as Cas’ hand slides inside his own jeans and he starts touching himself, too turned on by what he’s doing to Dean to resist jacking himself off. His dick is thick and hard with want, leaking at the tip, and Dean has never wanted to sit on a cock so badly in years.
“You like that, huh?” he asks as he forces Cas’ mouth down his dick, his nose coming to rest against the curl of Dean’s pleasure trail’s hair. “Is that so good you need to touch yourself, sweetheart? Yeah?”
Cas only makes a sound of approbation as he gags, and Dean watches in shock as his eyes roll back and Castiel comes, Dean’s dick buried in his throat and thick ropes of come covering his hand. He lets Cas come off of his dick for five seconds, watches in awe as he licks his own palm clean, and then watches that same hand return to Dean’s dick.
“Your turn,” Cas says, one hand jacking Dean’s cock as he suckles at the head of Dean’s dick before opening his mouth wide, only letting his tongue lick at the slit.
“On your-” Dean starts, completely out of breath
“On my face, c’mon, Dean,” Cas interrupts him, as if telling his employee and friend to come on his fucking face was a normal thing. “Give it to me.”
And because Dean is a good boy, he does. It barely takes a minute from there until he covers Cas’ beautiful face in thick, wide, white rope of come. And as he watches Castiel lick his lips and gather Dean’s release covering his cheeks and nose with his fingers, licking it off his hand, he thinks that it’s a shame that he doesn’t have the refractory period of a 16-year-old boy anymore, because there’s nothing he’d want more than to fuck Cas against his console right now.
Just the memory of how tight he felt around his fingers and his dildo the other day is enough to make his cock twitch valiantly.
And Cas smiles at him, and Dean smiles back, like two fucking idiots. And they’re alright, because it’s just sex.
And what’s so dangerous about sex, right?
✧✧✧
Castiel hears Claire crying as clear as a bell, even though he’s asleep and it’s the middle of the night.
He’s never been so fast on his feet and out of his room before.
Claire’s room is right next to his, so Castiel doesn’t waste any time and rushes inside to find her sitting in the middle of her bed, covers a mess, crying.
It’s then that he realizes she’s calling for Jimmy.
He doesn’t know if he’s ever felt this helpless and profoundly sad before, but when Claire reaches for him he immediately picks her up into his arms and lets her squeeze him as hard as she wants until she finally stops crying.
“You’re okay,” Cas repeats, on and on again. “I’m right here with you. It’s okay.”
It takes a long time for Claire to quiet down, her face still pressed tightly against Cas’ neck.
“Uncle Cas?” she finally asks, her little voice so soft it hurts.
“Yeah, honey?”
Cas draws back just a little to look at her- to look at the blue of her eyes that’s so similar to Jimmy’s (and himself), to the way her blonde hair cascades on her shoulders. She’s beautiful and she aches for someone that isn’t here anymore, just like him. And it’s not fair.
“Is Dean going to leave?”
Everything in Castiel seizes.
He doesn’t want to even think about Dean ever leaving. The simple thought makes him sick to his stomach.
“Why would Dean leave?”
Claire’s eyes are so big and frightened, and Cas realizes he’s right there with her. Just the mere idea of Dean not being here anymore is suddenly opening up a whole lot of scary things and it’s not pretty to look at.
Would Dean leave? What’s gonna happen the day he does?
“I thought daddy would never leave and he did,” Claire explains, her cheek pressed against Cas’ soft-worn tee. “And I was thinking that I really like Dean, and now I’m afraid he is going to leave, too.”
There are no words to explain how Claire’s simple words and fear shatter something inside of Cas. No words to explain how it hurts to hear your 8-year-old niece say “is everyone going to leave me” because she lost her dad. Cas is at a complete loss.
So he does what he does best instead.
“Dean’s not going to leave,” he promises as he hugs Claire closer, cradling her carefully into his arms. “I promise.”
“And you’re not going to leave either, right?” she asks.
“Of course not, sweetie.”
“Okay,” she simply says, and goes right back to sleep as Cas keeps rocking her until she’s safe to put back to bed again.
He goes back to bed, too, but the idea of Dean leaving sticks to his guts and makes him toss and turn for what feels like forever.
Why is this so fucking frightening? Why does it feel like he’s been kicked in the guts every single time he even considers the possibility that Dean will eventually leave?
He refuses to see the obvious, even though it’s right there at the back of his mind.
Instead he gets up and goes down the stairs.
✧✧✧
He’s oscillating between consciousness and dreamland when he hears the door open, and then the bed dips and there’s a warm body against him.
“Cas?” Dean asks in the dark, barely awake, but not quite asleep. “Cas.”
Cas doesn’t say anything, just burrows closer against him. And Dean is a simple man, made of simple needs and desires, so he closes his arms around him, sighs with contentment when Cas’ face finds the crook of his neck and presses against the skin of his throat.
Heaven.
“-t’s going on?” he asks, voice still thick with sleep.
“Nothing,” Cas whispers, his breath warm against him. “Go back to sleep.”
“Why are you in my bed, Cas?” Dean presses, even though he hugs Cas impossibly closer.
He smells so good. So warm and delicious and fuck, Dean is so damn enamored with this man and it’s such a fucking mistake.
“Can’t sleep,” Cas just says like it’s enough of an answer to why the hell he’s made his way to Dean’s bed in the middle of the night. “Wanted you.”
Dean’s dick, the traitor, is already half-hard at that.
“Yeah?” he asks, turning just enough that his lips brush Cas’ ear. “What do you want me for?”
Cas turns his head and their noses brush playfully. Dean is barely breathing at all.
He feels Cas’ hands going from where they’ve been resting on his hips before one of them sleeps under his boxers and grabs his cock, already at half-mast.
“Mhm,” Dean moans softly into the quiet of the room. “Okay. What do you want to do with that?”
Cas keeps stroking him painfully slowly, and Dean almost starts when he feels Cas’ lips following the line of his jaw before he bites a kiss under his chin.
He’s so damn soft and full of want and Dean is so, so damn fucked.
“Lie down,” Cas whispers in his ear, hand still going up and down Dean’s now-hard cock.
And Dean does, because he’s only human and a weak one at that. He hisses slightly as Cas miraculously comes up with lube that’s a little cold before he starts jerking him off again.
“You clean?” Cas asks, and Dean’s so surprised by the question that he doesn’t realize that Cas’ hands are now on his chest.
Both of them.
“Yeah,” he says into the dark.
He hasn’t fucked anyone in years. Hasn’t had anyone sucking his dick in more than five years apart from the last two times with Cas.
Suddenly the whole world narrows down to the pressure on his dick as Castiel fucking Novak sinks down on his cock, already wet with lube and prepped, and Dean gasps, both pleasure and surprise, so fucking raw it almost hurts. His boxers still sit under his balls, painful in the best ways.
“How-“ he manages to utter, confused and turned on and so fucking horny.
“Don’t ask- Oh fuck,” Cas moans as he bottoms out, and Dean has to remember how to breathe. “Fuck, Dean.”
It feels so completely surreal, how good and warm and tight it suddenly is around his cock that Dean doesn’t control much of anything anymore. Both of his hands fly out to grasp Cas’ hips in the dark, and all Dean can see then is the outline of Cas’ beautiful body as he rides his cock.
“Cas,” he moans, back arching with pleasure when Castiel moves his hips faster. “Oh, God, sweetheart-”
“I- I dreamt about,” Cas starts, one of his hands sliding one of his hands that’s been resting on the center of Dean’s naked chest to his heart, where his old tattoo still is. “Having you like this. For so long, Dean.”
Another sinful roll of his hips and Dean watches in awe as Castiel’s head snaps back, exposing the line of his throat to the moonlight, like a renaissance painting.
He’s so beautiful and he’s there with Dean, wanting him, giving him everything.
He’s Dean’s, non-ashamedly and so painfully whole.
“Yeah?” Dean asks, out of breath. “How do I compare to your dream?”
And with that, Dean easily rolls them around and suddenly Cas is resting on his back, Dean’s cock still deep inside of him, and both of his legs hiked up on Dean’s hips.
Dean noses at his jaw, thrusting once, so painfully slow he almost whimpers.
“So good for me, Cas,” he says into the space between them. “You like that, huh?”
He hears the way Cas’ breath stutters when he slams into him for the first time, so much deeper than before. Feels the way his legs tighten around his waist as he drives into him relentlessly. Bites at the skin of his throat, salty with sweat as Castiel arches back in pleasure, moaning Dean’s name as some sort of a prayer. The quiet of the room is now only disturbed by both of their moans, the sound of Dean’s balls slapping against Cas’ ass as he keeps driving into him, and the bed rocking in time with their movements.
And some part of Dean knows, realistically, that “just sex” doesn’t feel like that. That “just sex” doesn’t get him this worked up in so little time, and isn’t supposed to make him want to give everything to the man writhing underneath him as he thrusts into him over and over again.
Some part of him already knows he’s fallen for this man so hard there will be no going back, but Dean doesn’t want to examine it. Not yet. Not when he has Cas so painfully close he can almost taste him on his tongue.
Cas gets even more vocal when Dean starts jerking him off in rhythm with his thrusts. His cock is so hard in Dean’s hand, so thick that Dean’s mouth water at the possibility of sucking him off.
“Would feel fucking great in my mouth,” he says instead, rolling his hips into Cas and brushing his prostate just enough for Cas to cry out. “Fuck, Cas.”
“Dean-” Cas moans, Dean’s hand going quicker on him. “I’m gonna-”
“Shh, I got you,” Dean says, brushing a kiss against Cas’ temple.
They haven’t even kissed, for God’s sake, and yet this feels so intimate, the way they both seem to trust each other with their own bodies. Dean feels himself growing closer, closer, closer, just as Cas starts crying out and coming inside of Dean’s hand.
It takes Dean like a fucking fireworks. He doesn’t know if it’s the way Cas clenches so hard around him as he comes, or if it’s how Cas moans his name over and over again as Dean thrusts hard into him. Everything narrows down to this- to the weight of Cas’ hand on his neck, and the other one on his back; to Cas’ face pressed into the space between his shoulder and neck; to Cas’ legs, pulling him impossibly closer.
When he comes, everything narrows down to this- to Cas inside his bed, giving him everything, and holding him close.
“Cas,” Dean moans, and it might be a prayer at this point but Dean doesn’t care, doesn’t think he even can.
He keeps fucking into Cas all the way through his orgasm, filling him up with his own release and thrusting it back into him until Cas whines and it becomes too sensitive for Dean to keep going.
They stay like this for what feels like hours, Dean still lying on Cas, his head on his naked chest, hand tracing the shapes of the tattoos covering his skin, and Cas’ hand in Dean’s sweaty hair.
Just breathing. Together. Covered in rapidly cooling down sweat and… fluids.
“Need to clean up,” Dean manages to utter, sleep already threatening to take him. “Cas-”
“Shh,” Cas says, his voice hoarse. “Go back to sleep, Dean.”
Dean smiles, already halfway into slumber, but just awake enough to feel Cas’ lips bite a kiss into his shoulder.
Only awake enough to hear himself say “stay” and Cas responding “of course”.
God, he’s so damn fucked.
✧✧✧
“Unc’e Cas?” Jack’s little voice disturbs the quiet the studio had been bathed in for the past half hour.
Cas turns from where he’s been sitting behind his piano to look at his nephew. Jack is wearing green pajamas with dinosaurs on it, and he still has his dino plushie that Dean got for him a few weeks back in his hand. He looks like he’s barely awake, yet he’s standing in the middle of the studio.
“What are you doing here, buddy?” Cas asks as he stands up and quickly goes to pick Jack up.
As soon as Jack is in his arms, he cuddles up against him, his little head against his shoulder.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Cas asks, still confused as to what his nephew is doing up at ten at night.
Jack shakes his head. “No. I just missed you.”
Cas can’t help but smile, even though his heart breaks a little at that. He brushes a kiss on Jack’s forehead before going back to the piano, sitting back down with Jack on his knees. Jack looks at the keys with wonder in his eyes as he sets the dino plushie on top of the piano.
“Can I touch?” he asks, almost reverently.
“Yes,” Cas laughs. “Just be gentle.”
“Okay,” Jack nods before touching a key very carefully.
Castiel doesn’t know how long they stay here like that, Jack touching the keys and frowning at the sounds the piano makes, and him smiling so wide it kind of hurts after a while. But when a hand pats his shoulder he almost starts, before seeing Jack smile back at the person the hand belongs to, and realizing it’s just Dean.
Dean.
It’s been a whole day since Cas decided “to Hell with precautions” and slid in bed with Dean. A whole day since Dean asked him to stay, right after they had sex, and Cas agreed. A whole day since he’s felt the touch of Dean’s hand on his skin and he’s already burning up with the need to feel him closer.
He’s really failing at this no-feelings-just-sex thing too. It’s not like he meant to develop anything, much less with his own PA, but he can’t ignore the fact that it’s here anymore. He can’t ignore the way he feels instantly better with Dean in the room, or how his heart leaps in his chest when he catches Dean’s gaze or his smile.
Castiel is in love like he’s never ever been before. And there’s no denying it anymore. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with it, or if he’s ever going to let Dean know, but he can at least acknowledge that the whole “sex without feelings” thing they’ve got going on is utter and complete bullshit.
“I think it’s time for you to go back to bed, buddy,” Dean tells Jack, so damn softly and huggable that the kid goes easily when Dean opens his arms and picks him up from Cas’ lap.
Dean winks at Cas as he takes a hold of Jack’s plushie and turns around after Cas gives Jack a quick kiss on the cheek. Cas’ heart swells so fucking hard in his chest as he watches them both, Jack explaining things to Dean with his little kid voice and Dean listening to him as if Jack was telling him the best stories in the world, and he could almost cry.
He loves them so much it’s almost unbearable to keep to himself.
He turns back in his seat, facing his old friend. Castiel started learning the piano when he was so young that he barely remembers anything before. It’s been with him forever, his oldest friend and companion on all of his life trips around the sun.
He opens up the notebook that’s been resting on the top of the piano, gets a hold of his pen.
Sometimes when you can’t tell people you love them, you can just write music instead.
✧✧✧
Once Jack is back in bed, Dean takes a few minutes in front of his door, making sure he doesn’t get back up.
It gives him some more time to think about what his next move is going to be.
Last night was both amazing and scary in multiple ways. Dean hasn’t felt this deeply for anyone in a long time- maybe forever, and it’s daunting.
He never meant to fall for anyone; especially not someone who’s both his boss and friend. And he doesn’t know what to do about it, doesn’t even know what he wants.
All he knows is that he feels. When he woke up this morning to find Cas cuddled up to him, head on his chest and arms tight around his waist, it’d been so hard to get up and leave the room; but it was scary, too, to feel so much for someone lying next to him.
There are places Dean always thought the light couldn’t find him; where the darkness holds him in the same way he holds everything he loves: with no idea how to let go. But even here, in all this dark and all this cold, in all the mess that followed him all the way from New York City to San Francisco, Cas found him.
Maybe he was always supposed to be next to Dean. Maybe he’s the only light Dean’s ever really needed. And isn’t that fucking terrifying?
Some days Dean feels so much heavier than he ever used to, as if his body is weighted and sick with remembrance. The past has a tendency to infect the present, to remind him every version of himself he never wanted to be. And he’s forced to carry every moment with him, until he can finally find a way to put it down.
All of it is weighted with memory. All of it is weighted with the person he used to be.
Castiel means something to Dean that’s so much more than everything else he’s ever felt in his entire life. Which is another way of saying that he’s already prepared to lose him.
He’s going down the stairs when he hears Cas’ voice coming from the studio, and the piano’s keys are getting louder as he slowly walks until he’s standing in the door, watching Cas as he plays and sings, oblivious to the world.
“Wish I were with you, but I couldn't stay
Every direction leads me away
Pray for tomorrow, but for today
All I want, is to be home.”
Home has been such a difficult concept to grasp for Dean. All his childhood, home was a jumbled mess of motel rooms and car trips around the midwest. Then he rejected the very notion of home, going from shelters to group homes to sleeping in the street. Then came Cole, and stability, but even then their apartment was never a place Dean called “home”.
“Stand in the mirror, you look the same
Just looking for shelter, from the cold and the pain
Someone to cover, safe from the rain
And all I want is to be home.”
Dean has come to realize a long time ago that home was never just a place; home has always been a feeling, people you care about, and safety. Home was Baby’s backseat at 21 when he slept in his car for weeks. Home was New York, the noises that filled the city center in the early hours and the dichotomies that came with it: exhausting and exhilarating, humbling and inspiring. Home has always been Sam, and the way Dean can always count on Sam to catch him if he falls.
“The echoes and silence, patience and grace
And all of these moments I'll never replace
No fear of my heart absence of faith
And all I want, is to be home.”
Home is right where Dean stands, in the opening of the door to Castiel’s studio. Home is the way Jack’s little hand refused to let go of Dean’s shirt until he was asleep. Home is how Claire keeps asking him if he’s gonna be there when she wakes up.
Home is how Cas looks at him when they’re alone. It’s Cas laughs at his stupid joke, how Cas kisses his skin so reverently, how Cas takes care of him.
Home is here.
“People I've loved, have no regrets
Some might remember, some might forget
Some of them livin', some of them dead
And all I want, is to be home.”
Dean thought of love as a monster for so long; something we sought out only to find peace, only for it to break us apart in the end. He’s always thought of love as drowning, as a cure for thirst, but maybe love can be something different. Something that doesn’t mean pain and agony. Something that doesn’t have to be a name carved into your neck; something that doesn’t mean everything good has to leave.
Maybe we are designed to love, in the same way we are designed to breathe. Maybe love, and everything it takes from us, is simply the cost of living.
“And all I want, is to be home.”
Everything Dean wants to know of love sits quietly within the sound of one single name.
“Cas,” he breathes into the silence of the room.
Cas turns back to look at him from where he’s sitting, where his hands were still flying on the keys of his piano just seconds ago.
It takes Dean an incredibly long time to realize that there are tears rolling down Cas’ cheek, and that the blue of his eyes is drowning in tears.
He’s across the room and holding Cas’ face between his hands before he even realizes.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, heart beating so fast it fucking hurts, as if it’d want to escape his ribcage. “Cas-”
“I’m in love with you,” Cas says.
He says it so simply; like those five words aren’t so heavy with meaning that he can just whisper it in the small space between them. So simple that it echoes into Dean’s ears, not quite reaching him until it feels like he’s been kicked in the guts.
Cas loves him. Cas loves him.
“Cas-”
“You don’t have to say it,” Cas smiles, looking so sad that Dean wants to shake him. “I know.”
What does he mean he knows? What does any of this fucking means?
Even Dean himself doesn’t know anything.
“No,” Dean shakes his head, watching powerless as Cas keeps crying, and he’s so fucking beautiful and so damn earnest and Dean wants him to be his so bad it hurts. “No, you don’t understand.”
So Dean does the only thing that makes sense. The only limit they haven’t crossed, like a mutual agreement. Because it would have made everything too real, too meaningful.
But isn’t that what this is?
Dean kisses him, like a man drowning. He kisses him and Cas kisses back, hands finding their way into Dean’s hair and pulling him closer.
If Dean was a writer, he’d say that it feels like the world stop turning on its axis if only for one minute; he’d say that it feels both like catching fire and finding grace; he’d say that when Cas moans into his mouth, catching his bottom lips and tugging, it’s like a lightning bolt coursing through his entire body.
If Dean was a poet, he'd say that even the darkest parts of him want to be someone who deserves Cas; he'd say that with Cas, he is all of his broken parts finally warming themselves beneath the sun, every bone-knit weakness brave enough to acknowledge that this is Home.
If Dean was a poet, a writer, and anything other than a regular human, he'd say that every part of him refuses to be anything other than in love with Cas. That Castiel might be the last chance he’s willing to take, the last leap of faith he’s willing to jump.
But Dean is no writer, no poet, nothing other than terribly human and ordinary. So instead of all of that, Dean draws back just a hairbreadth, letting go of Cas’ lips.
And because Dean is so terribly human and painfully ordinary, the only thing he can feel is the way he cannot breathe anymore, the crushing weight on his chest growing and growing and growing. Suddenly all that makes itself known is the way Dean’s guts feels like they got punched out, and all he can do is let tears come.
Cas’ eyes are so, so blue when they look at him, it hurts Dean in so many different places.
He should’ve fucking known this would come back to bite him in the ass.
“Dean?”
“I just- I,” Dean manages to say, crippling weight still pushing hard on his chest. “I’m sorry.”
He’s out of the room before he even knows, and the only thing that’s echoing in his head as he rushes down the stairs to the garage to get to Baby and get the hell out of dodge is Cas’ voice.
I’m in love with you.
But Dean isn’t a man anyone can love. To those with certain traumas, a car backfiring can sound like a gunshot. And this is how happiness feels to Dean, like a precursor to grief, like loss has wrapped itself in beauty and stood again by his side. Loneliness can feel like a comforting emotion when you know little else, but we are designed to live our lives alone.
And so he reached out again with the hope of finding more than just his name, weighted with the cursed metal of time. More than just another waiting loss. Cas touched his skin, touched his soul and he was happy.
He still has no idea what to do with that emotion. All he knows is the taste of fear on the tip of his tongue, and running away at the back of his throat.
✧✧✧
Castiel only realizes the sun has risen when it starts bathing the studio in that almost otherworldly glow it only gets really early in the morning.
He hasn't been able to move. Not since Dean walked out.
The pain is so raw, etched into the fabric of his skin that he doesn't know where it ends.
Castiel has been waiting his whole life for something to turn these kindling bones into an inferno; just waiting for the day it finally ignites. He's always been looking for the spark that makes him burn. All he's only ever been is kerosene, in love with the idea of a spark.
So many words to say, is always been waiting for Dean. He knew he loved him even before he understood what that meant.
And now Dean's gone, and Cas is sitting here; watching as the sun keeps rising, just like any other day.
Notes:
... I did warn you that shit was going to hit the fan, didn't I? 😬
*dodges tomatoes*
What do you think comes next?
Chapter 6: One steps forward, three steps back
Notes:
A bit of a shorter chapter today in terms of word count, but I don't think you're gonna hold that against me somehow... It's packed in with a lot, so strap in and see you in the comment section!
Thank you to Hannah for beta'ing this one like a champ!
✧ Your "Glory Hallelujah" playlist ☄️
✧ Your "Free Will - the band" playlist
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Dean is in the middle of a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream when Benny’s voice interrupts his musing.
“Why are you Bridget Jones-ing all over my couch now?”
Dean rolls his eyes for good measure, shoveling another scoop of his ice cream before slouching against his best friend’s couch.
“I kinda ran away from Castiel’s house,” he announces, still feeling the crushing dread that overcame him just a few hours back- the weight of it all still sinking deep inside his bones.
Benny arches an eyebrow at him, clearly wondering what kind of bullshit Dean’s gotten himself into this time. Dean can’t really blame him: Benny’s couch was also where he ended up almost four months ago when he left New York and Cole behind.
Cole. His name alone is enough to make Dean shiver with… He actually doesn’t know how to qualify the emotion that goes with it. It’s another sort of weight, mixed-in with some fear deeply ingrained in his mind, going along with all the scraps and cuts and bruises that may have healed physically, but that are still right there on Dean’s psyche.
“Okay,” Benny says, approaching the couch- and Dean- like a wounded beast. “What happened?”
Dean shovels another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth, temporarily taking him away from responding and putting his brain offline just for a few seconds. But Benny knows him well- better than anyone that isn’t his brother, probably. The next thing he does is take away the pint of ice cream and walk to the freezer to put it back in.
Dean pouts, because surely if you got your heart broken a few months back and sped head-first into another super risky relationship (“of sort”, Dean tries to correct himself, refusing the weight of the word “relationship” to cloud whatever he and Cas have started together), your best friend shouldn’t be taking your ice cream away.
“Don’t be a child and tell me what’s going on,” Benny says, voice a quiet rumble that always eases Dean’s thoughts. “And then maybe you can get your ice cream back.”
“I’m not a child,” Dean complains, but Benny only smiles, a little askew and ruefully.
Dean hates it.
(Loves it. Loves Benny with all he has, like a second brother that was gifted to him all those years back when they first met.)
“Dean. C’mon on, man. What’s going on?”
“You were right, you know,” Dean laughs heart-heartedly.
Benny sits down next to him on the couch, but Dean refuses to turn his eyes from the far-away point he’s fixed them on. It would make it even more unbearable to look at Benny and see the disappointment on his face.
“You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific there, brother,” Benny says, his voice kind. “I’m right a lot.”
“Fuck you,” Dean grits his teeth, before letting go.
After all, Benny has already seen it all. He doesn’t scare that easily.
“It was a bad idea. To get involved with Cas.”
The silence that follows is so meaningful it actually gets heavy in a matter of just a few beats. Dean’s opening his mouth to say something- anything- when Benny speaks again.
“I never said it was a bad idea.”
Dean snorts. “No, but you didn’t need to. Sam was graphic enough for the both of you.”
Benny sighs, and sags into the couch next to him. When he finally turns his eyes to look at his best friend, Benny looks sad, and maybe a little mad.
“Are you sure your mother didn’t give birth to you standing? Because it sure feels like you’ve hit your head quite a lot.”
Okay, so maybe Benny is more than just a little mad, then.
“First of all, don’t bring my mother into this,” Dean says. “Second, what did you think then? Because you sure as hell looked like an entire bag of ice had been dumped into your panties.”
Benny glares at him, but Dean has known him long enough to know that his best friend is just concerned for him, underneath the layer of silent anger.
“What were you running from?” Benny finally asks, voice calm and questioning.
Yet again it takes Dean by surprise.
“What?”
“When you left New York all those months ago. What were you running from? Why did you leave?”
Dean almost feels his heart seize in his chest. “Are you fucking kidding me? Like you didn’t have a front-row seat to all of it?”
Benny sighs. “Just… Humor me, man. I promise this has a purpose. Tell me why you left, what you were running from.”
Dean takes a deep breath. Tries to ignore the feeling of tears pressing behind his eyes.
It’s like he can still feel it- the weight of Cole’s hands on his throat as he used him every day; the press of his fingertips when pressed against his hip bones, leaving marks on his skin that would turn purple the next morning and that Dean learned to conceal; the sharp sting of his laugh as Dean told him that night that he was done, that they were breaking up, that he was leaving; the icy blue of Cole’s eyes, so different from Cas’, watching him as he packed his whole life into one simple duffle bag.
He can still feel how Cole’s flat, cold, utterly indifferent “good riddance” hurt him in so many different places that he still aches, even months after.
Dean loved him. Hated him. Stayed with him for so long because he actually convinced himself he could fix him. But the truth is, you can never fix someone when they don’t see they’ve got issues in the first place; that’s where Dean went wrong, trusting Cole and waiting for him to change when he had no intentions of ever doing so.
Dean has learned, since then, that the strongest part of his body is what it carries, and that some emotions are heavier than others. He’s learned that sometimes, letting go of them is the only way to hold on to what really matters.
For the Winchesters, it seems like love always has a way of becoming intertwined with loss. That’s partly why Dean has been unable to love anything or anyone without acknowledging the space they’d need in his chest if they came to leave. That’s why there is still a Cole-shaped heart inside of him, whether he likes it or not. And it still hasn’t healed.
Maybe it won’t, ever.
“I left because Cole was a bastard,” Dean manages to utter through his teeth, ordering himself to not shed a single fucking tear for the man. “I ran away from someone that was past saving, that I should’ve left the first fucking time he punched me.”
Benny nods, calm as ever. “And you did the right thing, brother. Now, tell me: what were you running from when you left Cas and the kids behind?”
Getting hurt is the first thing that comes.
The second thing is you break everything you touch, and that right here is John Winchester’s voice inside his head, decades back, blaming him for shit he wasn’t responsible for.
Then, like a wave, he thinks of one thing:
Shit. The kids.
“I-,” he starts. “I…”
“Take your time,” Benny says, but it does nothing to calm the hellish beat of his heart.
Dean has learned to make a home in the darkness, to welcome heartache and anxiety as old friends. There is something comforting in accepting sadness, no longer tormented by the light; by hope.
And then he met Castiel, at a time when he finally found himself comfortable being lost. And suddenly everything seems terrifying again; suddenly another loss seems more than he could possibly survive.
“I can’t fall in love again,” Dean says, voice barely above a whisper as he turns to catch Benny’s gaze.
But Benny only stares back at him without judgment, blue eyes quieting down the dread threatening to overcome Dean again.
“Why not?” he simply asks, as if there was no reason to be afraid.
But Benny doesn’t know.
Benny doesn’t know that every day when Dean looks into the mirror, he barely recognizes the person he’s become; doesn’t know how to reach out for the face that looks back at him and how to make sense of all the people he’s been.
Benny doesn’t know about all the sleepless nights, spent lying on his back with his eyes glued to the ceiling, unable to move or speak because fear would paralyze Dean to the extent of not even being able to roll on his side and close his eyes.
Benny doesn’t know that it’s the weight of all the ways his life could have been different; the chances Dean didn’t take, the roads that he chose not to follow- that it’s these unlived lives that haunt him, that are so heavy for him to carry.
Benny doesn’t know that every morning when Dean wakes up he still reaches for the other side of his bed, even though what’s left of his and Cole’s relationship is only ruins designed to hurt him.
Benny doesn’t know that Dean has made it difficult to love him in return. Not deliberately, or perhaps not at first, but now Dean only knows how to push people away. He’s only ever loved from the length of an arm, and then when he let his defenses down for the first time in his life, Cole walked in and burned it all down.
Benny doesn’t know, and it’s not Benny’s fault that Dean won’t share with the class. All Dean knows is that he can’t go down that road again.
Cas deserves so much better than some wreckage, rusted by the rain and degraded by the passing of time.
Better than him.
“I just can’t,” Dean says, like it answers everything.
Like it’s enough of an explanation for Benny to understand everything that stays untold.
The knock on the door is what prevents Benny from responding. He frowns as he gets up, but points a finger at Dean as he makes his way to the door.
“I’m not done with you yet.”
“Not like I’m going anywhere,” Dean grumbles, sagging deeper into Benny’s couch.
But it’s not until Sam is standing in front of him, looking like he’s run the whole way from campus to Benny’s apartment, that Dean truly feels like he’s being trapped.
“Did you really have to call a code red for this shit?” he complains, and Sam’s brows only seem to draw tighter in concern.
Benny makes his way back to them, beer in hand as a sign of peace (at least Dean tries to believe so), and Sam sits on the other side of Dean.
God, it feels just like in the movies.
“Stop looking at me like I’m going to explode,” he snarks at Sam as he uncaps his beer and takes a gulp.
Fucking hell, he’s missed this. He hasn’t had a drink in God knows how long since…
No. Nope. Not going there.
“Well are you?” Sam asks, like it’s as simple as saying the sky is blue and water’s wet.
Dean rolls his eyes. “I don’t need a goddamn intervention.”
“Yeah you’re the picture-perfect of sanity right now,” Sam mocks, and Dean rolls his eyes again.
Leave it to Sam to go straight for the dramatics. He turns to Benny instead.
“Why’d you have to call him?”
Benny just shrugs, not looking guilty for one bit. Dean hates him a little.
“I’m sorry brother, your well-being takes precedence over you telling me you want to drive yourself into a wall at full speed.”
“I was just joking. You didn’t have to call his stupid ass for this.”
“Hey! I’m missing an International Criminal Law course for your ass!” Sam exclaims.
“Well no one asked you, Samantha!” Dean replies, with a bitchface to rival Sam’s.
It looks like Sam’s on his way to retaliate when another voice cuts through the room.
“Can you two take a breather? Sheesh!”
Dean almost feels lightheaded because of how fast his head snaps to find Charlie, of all people, standing in the entryway of Benny’s apartment.
“Charlie?!” he says, more surprise in his voice than he’d like to admit.
Charlie shrugs, looking completely at ease with the whole thing. “What? Benny called Sam, Sam called me,” she explains as she makes her way to them and ends up sitting down next to Sam. “The door was open,” she tells Benny. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not one bit,” he says, as if the whole ‘a stranger walking into my apartment’ thing is a no-brainer to him.
Not like Charlie really is a stranger since she’s Dean’s friend (at least he thinks so, but he might have to revise that theory after today), but she and Benny have never met before today.
Dean’s head is really spinning now.
“Why are you here?” he snaps, and almost immediately regrets his tone.
All of these people- his two best friends and his little brother- are here with him because he needs them; because without their support, love and acceptance, Dean would be a complete and utter wreck.
Get it together, Winchester. They’re just trying to help.
Charlie doesn’t seem to take Dean’s tone personally though. She accepts Sam’s beer, takes a sip of it and waits until she’s given Sam his beer back to answer.
“Sam called me, said you were going through something, and then Cas called me.”
It’s like a bucket of ice-cold water has been dumped on Dean right here and now.
“I’m in love with you,” Cas had said, and Dean pure and simple panicked.
Because love is such a terrifying concept.
It may as well be true for many of us: we know that to love something or someone, means we are risking having to mourn them. For some, this fear is enough to stop us from letting people in; loneliness then becomes a defense mechanism, protecting our hearts from demise.
But we cannot live our lives this way. No matter the cost, some people are worth every moment of pain we may have to carry. Love is simply worth the risk.
But Dean is still terrified. When he trusted Cole, all of those years ago before it all turned to ashes, he took a leap of faith and got so severely burned from it that he’ll bear the mark forever.
Love may be worth the risk, but is Cas?
✧✧✧
The house is somehow less alive without Dean. The world is a little quieter, and drained of the color that seemed to follow at his feet.
Cas doesn’t sleep that night after Dean leaves.
He tosses and turns and cries, but sleep never comes. Which means that when he hears Claire calling for Dean, he’s awake to hear the crack in her voice when she doesn’t find Dean in the kitchen, or anywhere else. He hears her going from the kitchen to the end of the living room, running downstairs to find his bedroom empty, opening the door to the garage to realize his car is gone.
That’s why, when he hears Claire’s feet pounding on the floor, he’s waiting for the moment the door to his bedroom thunders open.
That’s why, when he catches how red Claire’s eyes are and the way her bottom lip trembles, he can do nothing except scoop her up in his arms and hug her so tight he actually doesn’t know who’s holding whom: the 8-year-old kid who lost a dad barely three months ago, or the disaster of an uncle that’s been desperately trying to do better and who’s fucked it all up, all over again.
And for what? Love? As if it hasn’t proved to bring only misfortune and pain already. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad in the first place.
“You said he wouldn’t leave,” Claire says after a while, her little voice all broken, left in shambles by a promise Cas made her barely 24 hours ago that’s already broken. “You said he wouldn’t leave, but his car is gone and his room is empty.”
Cas almost scoffs- if Dean took his car and the contents of only the duffel bag he’s carried from wherever the fuck he came from with him, then he truly left for good.
Life has a funny way of reminding you that happiness will just never be in the cards for you.
“I’m sorry, honey,” is all he can say before Claire buries her head back into his neck and starts crying.
He doesn’t know how long they stay like this, Claire in his arms, intertwined like two vines of the same flower. All he knows is that he goes through the rest of the day like a ghost through a haunted house.
Jack asks for Dean and Cas manages not to cry as he explains that he doesn’t know if Dean will be back, doesn’t even know where he’s gone to.
He goes through the motions, trying hard not to fail at all the tasks that Dean used to do. Trying to convince himself that if he does it well enough, maybe Dean’ll be proud.
Claire barely leaves her room, except to have dinner with Cas and Jack. She hardly speaks, her eyes red and looking sad to her bones. Jack doesn’t speak much either, even when Cas puts on Shrek - one of his nephew’s favorites- which is a testament to how heavy the atmosphere is.
It feels almost scary, to feel how much space Dean has taken in their shared life. He’s only been here three months and a few weeks, and yet it’s like Cas and the kids can’t function without him anymore.
Cas barely looks at the studio all day, can’t even bring himself to enter the room at all, if it means having to feel the way Dean’s hands on him felt the night before, and how good it felt to finally kiss his lips. Cas can’t go through that only for his heart to break all over again when his brain tirelessly brings back the sound of Dean’s voice when he said “I’m sorry” and fled.
(Cas would be sorry, too, if he was someone as good as Dean that found himself falling in love with a wreck like him.)
Tomorrow they’re back to school and daycare. With Dean gone, Cas will have to handle those himself.
Naively, he thinks maybe Dean will reappear. He almost prays for it as he slips in bed that night, but he changes his mind when he sees his brother’s face on his phone’s lock screen looking back at him.
If there was a God at all, he wouldn’t have taken Jimmy. He would’ve taken him, the perpetual screw-up of a human being that has a drug and alcohol addiction.
Dean left and this isn’t a life anymore. Just time, and quiet. And a darkness that used to fear Dean’s light.
Deep down, Cas knows what he’s trying to say is that he misses Dean. That the world is a little harder without him in it. That the wolves are closer, braver, without his light to keep them from stalking the edge of the darkness.
Everything is darker, harder, colorless.
And it should be easy to move on. Cas has had countless people in his arms or bed before, and it’s always been easy.
But not this time.
Not this time.
He’s almost asleep when his phone rings, and he answers without even looking at the caller ID.
“What?” he grumbles into the phone, still in a haze.
“Cas?”
Charlie’s voice is enough to cut through the half-awake half-asleep state Cas is in right now.
“Well, if you called this number, who else did you expect to pick up at,” he squints at his watch in the dark. “2 AM. What the fuck, Charlie?”
“You answered.”
“Force of habit.”
“Fuck you!”
“Okay,” Cas yawns. “Good night, Charlie.”
“If you hang up on me right Novak, I swear to God I will have your ass.”
Cas snickers. “It’s not that difficult to have.”
“Fuck you,” Charlie says again.
“Is there a point to this conversation or am I being held against my wishes for nothing?”
“Would you quit being dramatic?”
“That’s impossible,” Cas answers dramatically as he sits down in the middle of the bed, cover pooling around his waist. “It’s ingrained in my very being.”
Charlie laughs at the end of the line, and for the first time since last night, the smile on Castiel’s face feels genuine.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Charlie says after a beat.
“That’s why you called at 2 AM?!” Cas asks, faking offense.
Charlie sounds almost sad when she answers this time. “You know it’s not.”
Cas lets himself fall back on the bed, ever the drama queen.
“Is he alright?”
“Define alright.”
There’s a sound in the background and Cas is suddenly pretty sure Charlie is calling him from her bed.
“Are you with him?” he asks.
“He’s asleep in the guest room, yeah. He didn’t want to stay at Benny’s, so I told him he could come with me.”
Cas closes his eyes. “Did he tell you what happened?”
“Not properly, but none of us are idiots, Cas.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, knowing damn well what Charlie means.
“He’s just afraid,” she says instead of answering his question. “I know it’s going to sound cryptic, but it’s not just about you two. Dean… He’s been through a lot.”
“Haven’t we all?” Cas sighs. “He never talked about anything. I barely even managed to find out about Sam and Benny just a few weeks ago. Dean just… doesn’t share.”
“I know you think you might know Dean through and through because he’s good at hiding his issues, but you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Is he a serial killer?”
“Stop trying to make me laugh, you asshole,” Charlie complains, and Cas quirks his lips in answer, knowing he made her smile even if his heart is as heavy as a stone right now. “I’m just saying, he’s got a lot of baggage. He didn’t leave because he… didn’t return the feeling.”
Cas’ heart burns in his chest. “How do you know that?”
Charlie sighs. “Because I’ve known Dean for a long time. I know all about his baggage. And it’s not mine to share, but… I’m just trying to soften up the blow.”
The silence stretches on for a beat or two, Cas staring into nothingness and Charlie just breathing, lying on her bed across town. They must make quite a picture like this.
“Did you mean it?” Charlie finally asks.
“What?” Cas asks, as if he didn’t perfectly understand what Charlie is asking about.
“When you said you were in love with him.”
I can’t do anything but love him. Even amongst the fear, the terrifying nature of healing, the anxiety and sudden specter of heartbreak, love persists. Maybe that is how it’s meant to be. Maybe loving him is the price I have to pay for living.
“With all of my stupid heart,” he says almost solemnly.
He can almost hear Charlie’s smile across the line.
“Then show him.”
✧✧✧
Dean awakes to the sound of emptiness- nothing beyond his own breath and the quiet ruffle of the sheets as he sits down in bed.
Charlie’s guest room is painfully blank. An empty chair and desk, a closet (also empty) and shades of blue on the wall- none of which come even close to the shade of blue of Castiel’s eyes.
Dean falls back to bed with a groan.
It’s late, given the way his stomach grumbles. Later than he would usually get up, but he doubled his dose of meds last night to make sure he’d get some sleep, and he’s paying the price now.
One look at his phone confirms it; it’s past noon, and there’s a text from Charlie saying she ordered him a pizza about ten minutes ago.
He tosses the phone away and gazes at the ceiling instead, trying to get rid of the med-induced haze he’s still in. He tries to not abuse their purpose, but last night was such a shit show that he’s pretty sure he would never have fallen asleep without it.
Once upon a time, when Dean was young and helpless, he might have dreamt of falling in love. Today though, the simple thought of letting himself be vulnerable again (no matter the person) only sends him into panic attacks.
I’m in love with you.
Cas’ voice still echoes inside his head, even 48 hours after everything happened. He tries to silence it, to stop himself from going on overdrive. He rolls on his side, eyes fixated on the wall. All the shades of blue.
It reminds him of Jack, and how his little face would light up when he’d go and pick him up from bed in the morning. It reminds him of Claire and how the blue of her eyes would sparkle with mischievous energy when he’d pick her up from school and she’d manage to convince him to stop for ice cream.
But most of all, it reminds him of Castiel; how the blue of his eyes looked troubled the first time Dean saw him barely clothed on that couch, and how different it had looked when Cas caught his gaze from where he sat in front of his piano.
Dean closes his eyes, feeling anxiety rising again. He’s not even been awake for ten whole minutes, dammit.
Dean has struggled with his mental health and with anxiety for a long time now. Trauma is one of those weights he can’t seem to learn how to let go of, even when it drags him beneath the water.
“There is an end to this, I promise you,” his therapist had said the last time he saw her. “Even when it feels like you’re breathing lungfuls of water, the surface is closer than you think.”
Dean doesn’t know how he’s supposed to believe that. He might be lying in bed, head above water, but it still feels like he’s drowning; like the specter of the years of trauma Cole’s inflicted on him, whether visible to the eye or not, is still squeezing his throat and preventing him from breathing.
The truth is, Dean doesn’t know how to be the person Cole has left him with. This might be his hands, his mind, and his words, but he’s the one that has broken him in so many ways that now he can’t even let himself fall in love with someone else.
A stray tear escapes Dean’s eye, silent ache echoing through his bones as he lays here while the rain ripples down on the window.
The silence around him is only disturbed by the doorbell after a while, and Dean reluctantly gets up, slips into his old pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that has seen better days, and gets down the stairs to open up the door to the pizza delivery guy. He might be broken and with the mental stability of a teaspoon, but he still needs to eat and a pizza sounds like the best idea of the day.
Except it’s not the pizza delivery guy standing in front of Charlie’s door, with a soaked denim jacket and looking like he’s run through the storm.
He still looks fucking glorious, and is that not unnerving?
“Cas,” Dean says, out of breath and wondering if this is real.
Cas almost smiles, something different in the way he stands.
“Hello, Dean,” he only says, before slipping a hand inside of his jacket and coming up with…
“Did you make me a mixtape?” Dean asks, wonder in his voice because surely this cannot be real.
He tells me he’s in love with me and now he’s running across town with a mixtape he made for me?
Cas shakes his head slightly, looking down at his own feet.
“Not quite,” he smiles timidly, still not looking at Dean. “I just- Just listen to it. Okay? Listen to it and if you want to talk then… Then call me.”
Dean looks at this man, this beautiful, wonderful, insane man that came into his life and crushed everything he ever thought he knew; this man that carved himself a space into the very fabric of Dean’s soul even though it had been so bruised that sometimes it didn’t feel like much anymore; this man that has been through so much, too. Dean watches as he walks away, rain pounding on his shoulders and soaking his old jacket even more. He watches, mesmerized, until Cas turns left and escapes out of sight.
Only then does Dean look down on the cassette tape he’s holding in his left hand.
Only then does he realize the tape is labeled For Dean.
Notes:
Who doesn't love a good old mixtape, huh? 😬😏
Fun little game for you: try to guess what's on the cassette tape in the comments, and watch my social media (as well as the Spotify playlists) to try and guess what might be on that damn mixtape! I'll be dropping a tracklist during the coming week 👀
Chapter 7: For Dean (unplugged)
Notes:
Okay, get ready for an emotional rollercoaster... and see you on the other side (by which I mean, in the comment section) 🤙🏻
For better experience, please put this playlist on while you're reading!
Thanks to Nickel for beta'ing this one 💜
✧ Your "Glory Hallelujah" playlist ☄️
✧ Your "Free Will - the band" playlist
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Dean drives.
It’s what he knows best. The only place in the world where he feels completely safe is right there, on the bench of the Impala, holding the steering wheel with one hand while the other rests on the crisp vinyl seat right next to him.
It’s raining like hell on the bay of San Francisco, which isn’t abnormal, but it does paint a melancholic picture. Dean races through the street, leaving the Marina District behind and heading for the bridge. There’s no real destination in his mind, not that his brain would be capable of handling anything other than what he’s listening to right now. Every single cell in his body is turned toward the voice that comes from the speakers, warming him up from the inside.
The first song on the cassette tape that Cas handed him, barely an hour ago, is the song that he was singing in his studio just two days ago. The song that broke all of Dean’s barriers down and led them to kiss. The song that Castiel finished right before telling Dean he was in love with him.
---
“Stand in the mirror, you look the same
Just looking for shelter, from the cold and the pain
Someone to cover, safe from the rain
And all I want is to be home.”
---
Dean remembers the way Cas felt in his arms, his lips soft against his own just as if it happened a minute ago. He remembers the way the dread built up in his stomach before rising up and taking his lungs, preventing him from breathing properly. He remembers running and the complete despair of not knowing how to react, how his body felt so heavy to move, yet getting away seemed like the only escape he could make.
Cas keeps singing on the tape, unfazed. His voice is soft and warm, getting into every little nook and corner that has been left untouched in the months since Dean left New York for California, broken and ashamed.
He passes by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, rushing toward the Oakland Bay Bridge when the second song comes on. The guitar riffs are simple and a little rough, but Cas is playing acoustic, which is one of the things Dean loves the most. When he starts singing the first verse, his voice is a little rougher than in the first song, and his tone is different too. But when Dean listens to the words he’s singing, it’s like something fractures and opens wide in his chest.
---
“I need a family to drive me crazy
Call me out when I'm low and lazy
It won't be perfect, but we'll be fine
'Cause I've got your back, and you've got mine
You got mine.”
---
Dean’s deepest desire in life has always been to have a family of his own- something he never got to have as a child. He doesn’t remember much from before the house fire and losing his mom, but he does remember the aftermath and how it ate his father alive, leaving him and Sam behind when they were still way too young to fend for themselves. Dean was barely 17 when their dad died, and he’d pretty much raised Sam on his own for most of the last decade.
---
“We'll have tiny boxes for memories
Open them up and we'll set them free
There'll be bad days and some hard times
But I'll keep your secrets, if you keep mine.”
---
Part of him wants to believe that Castiel is making this declaration to him. That, if he’s recorded this song and put it on a mixtape that he made specifically for Dean, it has to have some proper meaning. But the other part of him, the one that screams a little louder because it’s so much easier to bring himself down, is the one that tells him that it’s just too good to be true.
That ‘things like they only happen in the movies’.
That Dean had never been good enough for Cole to want to start a family with him (he’d straight-up laughed right in Dean’s face when he talked about having a kid during their relationship), so why would Castiel- the magnificent, beautiful, talented rockstar that’s idolized by millions of people across the world- would want any of that with him.
I’m in love with you still echoes in Dean’s head as he finally reaches the bridge, the rain still thundering on the ceiling of the Impala.
I’m in love with you, Cas had said, and right now, his voice echoes against the curves of the car, telling Dean his love is the one love that he needs to know.
It’s louder than the rain, somehow.
✧✧✧
16 hours earlier
---
The sky is threatening to open and cast its wrath down California as Cas dials up a number he knows by heart by now. It might be one in the morning, but Balthazar still picks up as easily as he does during the day.
“What’s up, Kurt Cobain?” he asks with a drawl to his voice that tells Cas just enough about what he might’ve been doing.
“Fuck off,” Cas says without real heat. “If you're done banging whoever she is, I need your help with something.”
Balthazar laughs. “Hey, maybe they’re a he, how would you know? So much for mister diversity over here!”
“Bal…” Cas sighs, not wanting to bicker with his friend for the first time in maybe forever. “Please.”
“Alright,” Balthazar says, sensing the shift. “Shoot.”
“Do you have a bassline for “Get Better”?”
He hears Balth do a double-take on the other end of the line, and he knows what’s coming even before he says it; that’s one of the perks of working with your best friend of several decades.
“Does your ‘something’ start with D and ends with ‘ean’, by any chance?”
Cas sighs. “Why does it matter? Do you have a bassline or not?”
“It matters because I care about you,” Balthazar sighs into the phone before answering the question. “I have a bassline, I can email it to you if you need it.”
“Thank you,” Cas smiles. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Cassie, that’s like asking me to not be an asshole. It just doesn’t work like that.”
There’s a beat before Cas’ computer beeps with the sound of a new email coming in.
“Thank you,” he says into the phone.
He hears Balthazar sighing before his voice picks up, gravelly and tired. “Are you okay? Do I have knees to break?”
“No, you don’t have any knees to break,” Cas smiles. “And I… That’s complicated. I just- I know I have to get him back.”
“He left?” Balthazar says, sounding surprised.
“Yeah,” Cas nods, even though Balthazar is on the other side of the Bay and can’t possibly see him. “It’s my fault. There’s so much about Dean that I need to figure out, and I should’ve before; I-”
“Are you running after him?” Balthazar interrupts him.
Cas glances at his monitor's screen, where all the demos he’s already recorded are listed. He’s 11 songs in, but he still has 4 or 5 more he wants to incorporate on that tape that’s currently waiting on his desk. The kids will be up in a couple of hours, and Dean isn’t around to help anymore, so he’ll need to be there.
That means he doesn’t have much time.
“Yeah,” he says, not a shadow of a doubt in his mind. “I am.”
At the other end of the line, it’s like he can practically hear Balthazar snicker.
“He really must be something, alright.”
Cas doesn’t know how to explain it to him; that the moment he met Dean’s eyes for the first time, high and half-naked on his couch, he knew he was someone he was destined to write for.
That maybe Dean had been the reason he’d always written for, so he could learn to twist the ink into the shape of a name; that as long as Dean’s echo finds a home beneath his skin, he’ll keep writing for him. Even after he’s gone, even if Dean doesn’t hold Cas’ name between his teeth the way he does: like a prayer and a wish.
“You sound surprised,” he only says.
“You never run after anyone. That’s like, rule number 1 in the Castiel Novak book of How To Deal With Relationships.”
Cas still doesn’t know how to explain it to him; that the first time he saw Dean was like he got struck by lightning; that there’s just something about Dean that’s driving him insane in the best ways.
That he doesn’t know how to call it anything other than love; that everything seems so much quieter when he’s not here, like every moment really has meaning when Dean is there to see it.
“I’m on my way,” Balthazar surprises Cas seconds later.
“Huh?” Cas asks, confused.
“Do you think I will let you deal with the kids on your own while you record I don’t know how many songs to tell Dean you love him, like some kind of Don Juan?” Balthazar answers. “Not on my watch. I won’t let you live this down if it works, though.”
Cas grins. “I can work with that.”
“Good. Be there in 20.”
“Thank you,” Cas says before they hang up.
There are many reasons as to why Balthazar and Castiel have been best friends for so long, but one of the main reasons is always gonna be the same; it’s the capacity they have to be there for each other, no matter the lengths they have to go to.
Waiting for his best friend to arrive, Cas returns to the song he was asking Balthazar’s bassline for and gets back to work.
✧✧✧
Dean’s almost at the end of the Oakland Bay Bridge when the 3rd song finishes, Castiel’s voice furiously chanting that “we can get better, because we’re not dead yet”; and Dean wants to believe in him so hard. But there’s that voice again inside his head that sounds suspiciously like a mix of both his father’s and Cole’s, and he hates himself for even listening to it, but it’s the way he’s wired.
You’re never gonna be good enough for anyone, son, so get away from everyone before you break them.
It’s still raining, but it’s quieter somehow- as if leaving San Francisco behind and rushing towards West Oakland meant Dean’s mind could only grow calmer.
There’s a bit of static on the cassette tape before the next song starts. Dean is finally getting Baby off the bridge and taking a left towards Emeryville when Castiel’s voice sounds again. There are two guitars on this song, playing two different lines, and Cas’ singing complements them beautifully.
It hits Dean front and center when Cas starts singing the second verse; it’s like Castiel found a little secret door and busted it wide open, and suddenly Dean feels so intensely that he has to pull over and stop.
---
“Find somebody to learn
Boy you gotta love someone more than yourself
I can feel the fire of the city lights burn
It's hard to find angels in hell
Flying along, and I
Feel like I don't belong and I
Can't tell right from the wrong, why
Have I been here so long
In a city of devils we live
A city of devils we live.”
---
Rationally, Dean is pretty sure Cas is singing about his time in Los Angeles, and how alone he felt in the city of Angels. But deep down, he can’t help but think about his last few months in New York- when the place he used to call his own started to feel like a cage where he couldn’t breathe anymore.
He’d been in New York for years and still, going back to his place after work only meant being afraid that he’d say the wrong thing to Cole and get hurt for it. He’d loved New York so intensely that it felt like a dichotomy to suddenly go from feeling like you belonged somewhere to feeling utterly trapped and, at heart, miserable in a place that used to be safe.
He had loved Cole so much. The first few months had been nothing short of a fairytale: Cole was an attentive lover and a friend, checking all those little boxes in Dean’s mind (caring, protective, handsome). Then somehow, things went downhill, and Dean lost himself. He could’ve gotten away quicker, but part of him refuses to acknowledge that they had a problem. He wanted to love and be loved, and it took him a long time to realize Cole would never be who he needed him to be.
He’d had to reconcile his feelings with the fact that sometimes, people don’t want to be saved. Sometimes people are just past saving, too. And no matter how much Dean might have loved him, Cole was one of those; too far gone and undeserving.
---
“Questions I can't seem to find
To the answers I already have
And you can't see the sky here at night
So I guess I can't make my way back
Flying along, and I
Feel like I don't belong and I
Can't tell right from the wrong, why
Have I been here so long?”
---
Dean doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears rolling down his cheek start falling over his hands that are still gripping the steering wheel tight even though he’s come to a stop on the side of the road right before reaching South Berkeley.
It’s not sadness, not really. It’s more of a realization that he’s lost so much in the past few years, both of himself and his life, that he doesn’t know what he’s still carrying.
It’s easy to tell yourself you’re not falling apart; most of the time, Dean repeats it to his reflection in the mirror, keeping his usual “I’m fine” folded behind his teeth. The reality of it is, there’s more to living than just surviving, and you need more than just breathing in and out to make it out alive. Some days just dragging himself out of bed and simply existing feels like a victory.
The next song starts as Dean is still crying, as rain continues pouring down on the Impala’s ceiling, and Dean's chest continues opening wide, like a wound that hasn’t healed up yet and stitches that pull more apart as minutes go by.
Cas is playing piano on this one, and Dean recognizes the first few notes: it’s one he played a few weeks ago, but he didn’t have lyrics by then. He started out on the guitar and then moved on to his piano, Dean’s eyes never leaving him.
He remembers the warmth of the studio and the comfort of their conversation late at night as Jack and Claire slept. He remembers the first few lines of the song that Castiel wrote down on his worn-out notebook, the one he’s currently singing as Dean tries to get a hold of himself.
Then Cas gets to the part he hadn’t written yet when Dean last heard the song, and Dean can’t help but wonder, once again, if it’s him Castiel is talking about.
---
“But you don't know what it feels like to fall in love with you
No you don't know what it's like when you can't go back
'Cause I only lose my mind when I ain't got you
And how can I win when I'm always bound to lose?
Oh, when I ain't got you?
No no, I ain't got you.”
---
The idea that anyone could love him for exactly who he is is such a foreign concept for Dean, who’s been used to adapting and changing for pretty much everyone in the past three decades of his life. He had to be a parent- both a mom and a dad- to Sam first, pretty early on in their lives when John failed to be one to both of them. Then he had to be a guardian when he reached majority and still took care of Sam. Then, for Cole (and pretty much every single one of his relationships before- be it Cassie, Lee, or Lisa), Dean adapted; Cole didn’t like Dean’s love for mechanics and cars, so Dean put Baby in a garage and didn’t use her for years; Cole didn’t understand Dean’s love for classic rock, so Dean didn’t listen to his favorite bands when Cole was home; Cole didn’t like Dean’s attraction to women, so Dean hid it under a deep layer of self-hate and never looked back.
---
“But you don't know what it's like to lose you?
'Cause I only lose my mind when I ain't got you
And how can I win when I'm always bound to lose?”
---
Dean dials Castiel’s phone before he even realizes it. Cas keeps singing on the tape, unaware of Dean’s state and tears.
---
“Because I tried to hold on tight
To make you mine but lost each time
And I always lose my mind when I ain't got you
But I think it's time to let you go
To let your heart find a home
I need to let you go.”
---
It barely rings twice before Cas picks up.
“Dean?” he asks, voice all concerned and soft, and Dean has never wanted to crumple into someone else’s arms as much as he does right now.
“H-how can you… how can you love someone as broken as I am?” Dean manages to say through his tears, voice wrecked and sad to his bones.
“Dean, hey,” Cas says, the warmth of his voice finding Dean all the way from the Marina District to South Berkeley and filling all the little nooks and corners inside Dean’s broken heart. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”
Dean wants to tell him that everything hurts. He wants to tell him about the meds he takes every day just to try and function. He wants to tell him about the mess of his heart and how it’s barely still alive. He wants to tell Cas that it terrifies him that he’s going to love him because loving him means being afraid to lose him.
The tape keeps going, beginning a new song. Dean tries like hell to concentrate, to see through his tears, to talk to Cas, who’s waiting for him on the phone, but then the lyrics to the new song hits him in the face and more tears follow.
---
“I just wanna be somebody to someone, oh
I wanna be somebody to someone, oh
I never had nobody and no road home
I wanna be somebody to someone
And if the sun starts setting, the sky goes cold
Then if the clouds get heavy and start to fall
I really need somebody to call my own
I wanna be somebody to someone
Someone to you.”
---
“It’s dangerous,” he finally manages to utter. “To love someone as… as b-broken as I am.”
“Dean…” Cas says at the other end of the line, and Dean doesn’t know what it is, but he feels calmer, more determined. Like something happened that made him realize what he really wanted.
If only Dean could say the same.
“I know that I don’t know everything about you, but you’re not broken, Dean.”
Dean laughs half-heartedly. “If you knew all about what I am, you wouldn’t be saying that.”
You’ll never be enough for anyone, Cole had said when they fought one last time before Dean had finally walked out. You’re too broken and imperfect and a failure in every way. Nobody is ever going to choose you.
“Okay. Can you listen to what I have to say? Please?” Castiel says on the phone, bringing Dean back to Earth.
Dean takes a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Cas says like he’s gearing up to something big. “You say I don’t know enough about you to say that you’re not broken, so what about this: what I know about you is enough to tell me that you’re worth it.”
There’s a beat before Cas picks up, and Dean tries so hard to keep a sob from falling from his lips.
“What I know about you? It’s that you’re a generous, down-to-earth, kind man who would do anything for the people he loves. And if you’re feeling broken, it doesn’t mean you need to wait until you’re all fixed up for someone to choose you. Because that’s not love.”
The sob Dean’s been trying to keep from escaping his mouth is out before he can even try to stifle it. This is too much. It’s like Cas knows exactly how it feels to feel so broken, and when Dean thinks about it, maybe he does.
“If all I can do for the rest of our lives is just hold your hand, I’m still going to choose you, Dean,” Cas says, voice steady and almost calm in the midst of Dean’s tears. “That’s what love is. It’s choosing, despite the failure, despite the brokenness, despite the imperfection… It’s choosing to love someone, especially when it’s not easy.”
Right at this moment, a new song starts playing. This one Dean has never heard before; it begins with three chords before Castiel’s voice is there again, singing.
---
“Midnight comes in
Paris and as
I light my cigarette
The rain it hits my face
So I start walking
Toward the Ferris wheel
From my hotel on
Champs-Élysées
For now I am alone
I might always be alone.”
---
“Dean,” Castiel says at the other end of the line. “Are you still here?”
---
“My heart is in the city of love
But it's raining in Paris
What good is a heart of gold
With nobody to share it with
It's coming down, it's coming down
My head can hardly bear it
My heart is in the city of love
But it's raining in Paris.”
---
“Yeah,” Dean breathes into the phone, his voice barely above a whisper. “Why-why would you love me like that? Nobody has ever loved me like that. Why would you?”
“I don’t know, Dean,” Cas smiles into the phone. “There are just things in life that aren’t explainable. The first time I saw you, I could feel something in the air shifting between us. And I’ve never been able to look back. You’re just… it.”
“I have PTSD, Cas,” Dean says into the phone, his voice so horribly broken that he barely recognizes it.
It feels like such a big deal to say the words aloud. On the other end of the line, Cas hums as if Dean hadn’t just admitted his biggest flaw to him.
“My last relationship, when I was in New York,” he continues. “He treated me like an object. He abused me, physically, mentally. It’s been months, and yet I can still… I can feel his hands on me every night.”
Cas is silent just for one more beat. And then:
“Is that why you left? Did I trigger you?”
---
“So let it rain on me
See my heart's on fire
But I always got cold feet
Love never really did anything for me
Try telling that to this goddamn city
And if the storm should stop
I'd ask you to dance on some cliche mountain top
We'd share straws at your favorite coffee shop
But life, it ain't no romance novel.”
---
“Yeah,” Dean nods. “I’m so fucking afraid, Cas. And it’s not fair to you. You shouldn’t have to go through that to-”
“If it means I get to be with you?” Cas interrupts. “I will go through anything, Dean. If it means I get to be with you? Anything.”
The absolute certainty in Castiel’s voice causes a fresh wave of tears to escape Dean’s eyes.
“Unless… Unless you don’t want that,” Cas says, and Dean absolutely hates the brokenness in his voice.
“I do want that,” he manages to say through his tears. “I just… I’m a mess, Cas.”
Cas laughs. “And you think I’m not? You had a front-row seat to it all these past few months.”
The cassette tape stops, ready for Dean to turn it over and discover the next few songs. But so far, he cannot move, watching as cars go by off San Pablo Ave.
It takes him a minute before he finally speaks up again.
“You made me a mixtape,” he says, a little bit in awe.
“I did,” Cas says quietly into the phone. “Do you like it?”
“All those songs… Are they all about me?”
“Most of them, yeah. A couple of them are about me and how I feel, but most of them are about you. It’s… It’s easy to write when you have a muse.”
“Shit, Cas,” Dean snickers, swapping his thumb through the mess of tears on his cheeks. “Who would’ve thought you’d be a romantic son of a bitch.”
“I could’ve told you.”
Dean reaches for the cassette tape and turns it around, his thumb coming to rest on the label where Cas scribbled “For Dean”.
He thinks back to New York and Cole and how everything went to hell so quickly. To coming back here and finding a job, coming into Cas’ life by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. He thinks back to how Jack fell asleep in his arms every night last week and how Claire refused to go to bed if Dean wasn’t the one reading her a story.
It’s not an easy thing, to heal. But deep inside, Dean can almost feel part of his heart stitch back together, piece by piece. He’s not foolish enough to think love can erase trauma, or that he’ll heal easily. But maybe, just maybe, they can do it together if they try.
“Will you come back home?” Cas asks quietly into the phone, his voice almost that of a kid’s.
Home, Cas says of the house, and Dean’s entire body tingles. Home he says of his own apartment like it’s such an easy thing to fold Dean into it all. Home he says like it’s not up for discussion, as if Dean had already gained access to his heart a long time ago.
Dean has never called anywhere Home before; even New York was just New York, with all its craziness and noises and boisterous lives. No one could ever claim New York as a home, if only by virtue of New York being so many things to so many people at once.
But Cas says Home and Dean shudders, like the storm hit him front and center and fills him with a live wire.
He puts the cassette tape back in, setting it so that it starts reading the other side.
“Yeah,” he says as the note of the next song begins, trying to not break down on the phone as his brain processes everything. “Just- Just give me an hour.”
“Okay,” Cas says, and Dean can almost hear the timid smile he probably has on his lips right now.
Dean smiles, tears still rolling down his cheeks. “Okay.”
“The kids are out with Balthazar. They miss you.”
Dean laughs through his tears, quietly. His chest feels funny, with all the warmth and pain that cohabits.
“I miss them too,” he says softly.
Cas’ voice on the tape starts just when they hang up, and Dean is hit once again by how raw this new song seems to be. Cas said there were a few songs that were about him, and this seems to be one of them.
---
“'Cause I've been on a losin' streak
My hearts made of stone and I can't trust my own damn feet
To show me the right way home
It's been a hell of a year
I'm strugglin' to see what the next one looks like
Without you here, my love
I'm never enough.”
---
Dean dries his tears, trying like hell not to let more fall down. When he feels confident he’s not gonna crash the car, he starts the engine again and gets back on the road- only, this time, he has a destination in mind.
✧✧✧
The sound of the rain rippling against the windows is the only thing keeping Cas from falling asleep on the couch. Well, that and the cup of hot coffee in his hands.
Balthazar took the kids for a sleepover at his place, which, again, makes Cas think of how grateful he is for his best friend. They’ve spent the whole day together here, Cas catching on the sleep he didn’t get the night before and Balth handling the kids.
It’s almost 9 PM, but he can’t stop his brain from wiring, repeating his conversation with Dean just about an hour ago over and over again.
Then he thinks of Jimmy and the never-ending cycle of regrets his death brought.
In the end, there is never as much time as you think.
More and more, Castiel has come to think of Jimmy’s death as a wake-up call. For so long, he took his brother’s presence by his side for granted, so sure that when the time would come, he’d be the first one to go. Then Jimmy died, leaving Jack, Claire, and himself behind, and suddenly Cas’ entire life’s beliefs meant nothing anymore. The “good one” had been taken away, and all that was left was his kids and the “lesser one”. How was it fair?
In his mere thirty years of existence, Cas has never been able to cope with the permanence of real loss, to lay bones in the earth and think of them as anything other than gone. But if he had to take a guess, he’d say that this is the way of all things: we are all made to be lessened, to give way to life beyond us. It’s important to remember that our time is limited; to remember the value in loving and living, in the beauty of getting to experience everything… Even when those things break us.
Especially when those things break us.
Maybe the fact that time runs out is the very thing that gives it meaning. Maybe the temporary nature of being human is a gift, we just have to learn to recognize it.
Over the past 4 months since Jimmy died, Castiel has spent a lot of time reflecting on grief and on how to lose someone you love is to lose a part of yourself. The reality of it is, no one knows when the hands of the clock will reach for them. But since losing Jimmy, Castiel has changed his tune as to how he’s decided to live; he used to be so afraid all the time, but that got him nothing else but pain, self-inflicted abuse and misery.
Then Dean came into his life with all the finesse of a wrecking ball, and it’s like Cas knew, no matter how resistant he might have tried to be. Every moment of pain suddenly made sense, if it meant just seeing Dean smile, or hearing him laugh with Jack and Claire.
Castiel has long considered himself damaged beyond repair, broken in every single way; the pieces of his very being too jagged to ever stitch back up together again. He’s never known how to make peace with who he is, how to make a home of this battered body. Everywhere he looked, the only thing he could see were traces of how he fucked up: the needle tracks on his arms and shoulder, the long scar on his groin from when he got attacked with a knife in an alley when scoring cocaine a decade back, even the refined scar in his left eyebrow that he got when he was 7 years old and busted his brow bone open (Jimmy had laughed back then, thinking there was now a way to tell exactly who was who).
This body is the last place Cas has wanted to be most days until it became somewhere Dean would lay his head. These hands never felt like his own until he felt Dean holding them, lips never ready to open until Dean kissed them. All of these scars littering his body with stories and misguided anger suddenly felt sweeter under the pads of Dean’s fingers.
Castiel has always wanted out of this body until Dean touched it, and suddenly it made sense.
In the end, there is never as much time as you think, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride. And so, maybe Castiel has never been broken… just cracked enough to let Dean in.
When the doorbell rings, Castiel jolts out of his own head and makes his way to the door, coffee cup still in hand.
He doesn’t know why he’s even surprised. Dean told him he was coming back. They talked to each other just an hour ago on the phone. And yet, as Dean stands in the door, hair mussed by the rain and blue flannel on, Cas is still taken away.
“Dean,” he starts, voice shaking with the force of how much he feels. “You know you have a key-”
It’s a dumb thing to say, but it’s all his brain is capable of coming up with.
“I’m in love with you, too,” Dean interrupts him right away, seemingly out of breath.
As if he’d kept it on the tip of his tongue ever since he walked out of the studio two nights ago.
And Cas looks at him, really looks at him- this beautiful, insane man that brought down so many of Cas’ own defenses and barriers; this man that shines a light on so many aspects of Castiel’s life that he always refused to see before; this man that Jimmy’s children adore, and that’s already so part of their lives that not having him around for 2 whole days felt like torture- and he’s stricken by how much he feels.
Love is a thousand things at once, but at the center of it is a choice: it’s a choice to love people wholeheartedly. It’s a choice to be kind, and it is a choice to be patient.
And Castiel chooses.
“I’m sorry,” Dean says, misinterpreting Cas’ silence for… anger, maybe? “I shouldn’t ha-”
“Just come here,” Cas says, leaving his coffee cup on the cupboard and reaching for Dean, still standing in the door. “Come here.”
It’s only then, as his hands grip Dean’s arms and pull him closer, that Castiel realizes Dean’s eyes are all puffy and red as if he hadn’t stopped crying ever since he left. He changes courses then, letting his hand slide on Dean’s arms until he can cup his face.
Is there a word for greener than green?
Cas’ thumb catches the first tear that rolls down Dean’s cheek. He wipes it off softly, and then lets his thumb follow the curve of his cheek until it comes to rest on his bottom lip.
“Cas,” Dean says, only a whisper for the two of them, before turning his head just enough to kiss his palm, so softly that it echoes within the very core of Cas’ soul.
The rain is still thundering down in San Francisco, and it looks like the storm will keep raging for the next few hours. And Castiel couldn’t care less as he finally pulls Dean ever so closer and kisses him with all the passion he can muster.
Dean sighs against his lips, and Cas drinks it up, not caring for a single moment that they’ve somehow made their way outside enough that rain is suddenly on them. It’s pouring buckets and they’re drenched in just an instant, rain rolling down their hair and faces, soaking Castiel’s tee-shirt in just a few seconds. He doesn’t even find it in him to care that he’s probably going to catch a cold or that he’ll be shivering in less than two minutes if they stay here, kissing in the middle of the street.
He feels Dean’s hands fist his shirt tightly, crashing them up against each other, and he’s never felt this good before. He can feel the rain trickling down his neck and chest, and it doesn’t matter.
None of the shit that mattered before does now. It’s all about this: the way Dean’s hands rest on his hips now and pulls him closer, how he only lets Cas’ lips go when he’s about to kiss him again, how he whispers Cas’ name after a while only to catch his bottom lip between his teeth.
They’re drenched in rain and trembling against each other, but it doesn’t fucking matter.
All that does matter is this: Dean against him.
Wanting him. Loving him.
Castiel has never known how to make a home of this body, but it carries Dean so easily that perhaps if they try hard enough, they can make a home together.
They were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring themselves out again and again.
Notes:
So who saw that coming?
ONLY TWO MORE CHAPTERS! Predictions, anyone?
Chapter 8: Someone To You
Notes:
Well, here we are again... The story ends with this chapter (the next chapter is gonna be a different kind of epilogue than what you're used to from me, but I'm equally excited about it! It'll be up on Sunday).
Thanks to Heather for trusting me with this story, to @SPNFamilyRelief for running the charity, to and all of you who joined along on this ride. I hope you loved this story as much as I did.
The hard-copy version will be available sometime this weekend, keep an eye on my Twitter for an update!
Thank you to Hannah and Nickel for beta'ing this whole story and generally being fucking rays of sunshine. I love you guys. 💜
✧ Your "Glory Hallelujah" playlist ☄️
✧ Your "Free Will - the band" playlist
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
One year later
---
Dean doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or not. The only thing he knows is, somehow his bed just turned very warm, fuzzy and…
Scratchy.
“Cas?” he asks, still halfway into sleep but turning into the warmth nonetheless. “Hey.”
He breathes deeply and here he is: sandalwood and vanilla, Cas’ cologne and hair gel. He smiles when he buries his nose into the mess of hair in front of him.
“Hello Dean,” Cas says, his voice echoing softly into Dean’s chest where he’s pressed, and Dean smiles.
“Mhm,” he exhales in contentment. “Watcha doin’ here sweetheart? Thought you were only going to be here in the morning.”
Cas has been on the road constantly for the past month, and has barely been home more than a day. He was recording a show in New Orleans tonight before heading home in the morning, ready to play their hometown show in Oakland two days after.
Dean smiles and waits for Cas to answer, listening as Cas takes a deep breath before responding, his voice deep and a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“Missed you.”
Dean will deny that the warmth he feels rushing through his entire being has been caused by those two simple words to his dying days if he has to, but for right now, all he does is tighten his arms around Cas and breathe out.
“Didja just cross five states just to sleep in our bed tonight?” he asks, like the little shit he is (and because come on, that’s cute as fuck).
“Depends,” Cas grumbles as he hides his face into Dean’s neck and presses a kiss against the column of Dean’s throat. “Are you gonna be a little bitch about it?”
“Nah,” Dean simply answers, turning his head just enough to brush a kiss on Cas’ forehead. “I missed you too, sweetheart.”
And he did, so much. Every day when he woke up this week, even with the distractions caused by the kids, all he could think about was waking up to Cas sliding into bed with him. And maybe that makes him “whipped”, like Sam likes to tease him about, but honestly, Dean doesn’t really give a shit anymore.
Cas doesn’t respond with words; he simply kisses the bolt of Dean’s jaw and promptly goes to sleep. Dean follows right behind with the knowledge of having his boyfriend back in their shared bed for the first time since he and his band started their promotional tour two months ago.
The past year has been nothing quite like what Dean had expected when he first set foot in Cas’ apartment, to say the least.
First there was the moment Dean came back. It happened only three days after his freak-out, but it might as well have been a whole month for the kids. They came barreling down into his legs and demanded that Dean promised to never leave ever ever ever ever again.
Dean promised- he’s just nice like that (and he missed them as much as they probably did anyway).
Things didn’t change drastically after that. To be fair, the only real change that happened is that Dean moved into Cas’ bedroom and got accustomed to Jack worming his way in-between them every morning instead of having to wake up before him.
Things went as smoothly as they could- the kids were happy about Dean being back, even if they didn’t entirely grasp the change in his and Cas’ relationship (at least until they zeroed in on them kissing in the kitchen one night), and Dean and Cas were taking their time to figure themselves out.
They went on real-ass dates. Cas took Dean to the movies. Dean took Cas to his favorite restaurant. Even more important, Dean took him to Benny’s bar and had Cas meet both his best friend and his brother. It went extremely well, and both Cas and Sam and Cas and Benny have had a very good relationship ever since.
Actually, they’re both coming to the show tomorrow (Benny’s taking Andrea and Sam is taking his new girlfriend, Jess, so Dean plans on being as much of an obnoxious big brother as he possibly can). Dean is grateful to no end; Cole didn’t get along with any of his friends or family, and it had been a major subject of disagreement between them as a couple. Seeing Cas having fun with Sam and Benny? Worth everything in Dean’s life.
It would be lying to say it had been all sunshine and rainbows either; both Dean and Cas had too much important shit on their back for it to be a walk in the park.
Once they decided to really try and be together, Dean had put everything on the table: his past with Cole and the trauma that came attached with it, the meds he had to take in order to not fall apart, the therapy session he had at least once a week… Cas took it in stride, going as far as to go to Dean’s appointments with his therapist, Pamela, from time to time, and making sure he’d take his meds every day.
Castiel, for his part, continued on his path to sobriety and started seeing a therapist that Pam had recommended as well. He was figuring out how his anxiety disorder had impacted his life for years, and working hard to try and correct the way he used to live. He was also back in the studio with Free Will and recording their next album, which was going to be pretty much the same songs he had put on the mixtape he’d given Dean at the time, but recorded with the whole band instead of all acoustics.
He was still grieving the loss of his brother, even more than a year after his death. Castiel came to the conclusion that grief is like sand in the way that it leaves your hand in a matter of seconds, even when you think you’ve got a handle on it. Cas used to hear the old “it gets better with time” adage, but he’s not sure it’s true; Jimmy’s death has a way of hurting just like it did the very first day, and time does nothing to soothe the pain. If anything, it makes it more real in the way it still stings like a needle to the heart.
He’s learned to tame it, to know when to allow himself to ache for someone who’s never going to be there anymore. He’s learned to stop expecting Jimmy to turn around the corner when he’s walking in the street. He’s learned to say goodbye every single day, and the ache is still the same.
He likes to say he’s dealing with it.
Adding the kids to this already complicated mix was perhaps not the best idea, but it’s not like they had a choice either- Claire and Jack were growing up and becoming more independent, and every day was a different kind of struggle. Dean and Cas sometimes went to bed exhausted, but it was worth it in both of their minds- the kids were an integral part of their lives now, and even if they sometimes argued about how to raise them, they were doing the best they possibly could.
All of this brings them to this very moment right now, a year after Dean told Cas he was in love with him too, as they’re standing together in the backstage area of the Fox Theater in Oakland. Free Will is scheduled to play their first gig back since they took a long break to allow Cas to “get his shit together” (Balthazar’s words) and to record their new album, and everyone is excited.
Especially the kids.
“Jack, stop running around, you’re gonna give me a headache,” Cas complains from where he’s tying his shoes on the couch. “Is he even hearing my voice at this point?”
He sounds annoyed but Dean has a year of practice by that point, so all he does is smile back at him from where he’s standing before making his way to Cas and opening his arms for him to crash into. Which Cas does in approximately ten seconds.
“Are you nervous, Novak?” Dean whispers into the mess of his hair as Cas tightens his arms around Dean’s waist. “That would explain your general annoyance at the world.”
“Fuck off, Winchester,” Cas responds without any heat, his voice muffled by Dean’s shirt, which only prompts Dean to snort. “I haven’t been on stage for an actual gig in almost a year and a half. I’m allowed.”
Dean brushes a kiss on Cas’ forehead. “Yeah, you are. That’s normal. Remember what Cain said?”
Cain is Castiel’s therapist; he started seeing him a year ago and he’s been a tremendous help as Castiel learned how to navigate the sometimes troubled waters of sobriety. Even more than that, he’s also a very important factor as to how Castiel has managed to take care of his anxiety.
(He’s also gonna see Cas on stage tonight for the first time, but Cas will probably deny that it adds on to his own anxiety, so Dean doesn’t even try.)
“I know,” Cas grumbles, wholeheartedly embracing his grouchy personality. “Being anxious is normal when you’re about to play in front of more than one person.”
“And there are, what? 3000 in attendance tonight?” Dean asks, peering down at Cas still glued to him. “So it’s perfectly normal.”
“I was never anxious like that before,” Cas complains, and Dean squeezes him closer.
“You were high as fuck every single time before, Cassie,” Balthazar’s voice helpfully supplies.
Cas and Dean finally disentangle, only to watch as Balthazar enters the room with Jack sitting on his shoulders and Claire’s little legs wrapped around his waist, the girl holding on to her uncle by the neck.
Balthazar has been another very important part of how they’ve navigated their new relationship status as well as guardians of the kids; he’s been taking both Jack and Claire at least once a week for a sleepover, allowing Dean and Cas to go on dates. He’s also been encouraging Cas to go to therapy and has been here for them whenever they’ve needed him. He’s met Benny and Sam, and they all get along like a house on fire, which Dean sometimes thinks is extremely frightening (Balthazar tends to bring out the chaotic side of both Benny and Sam, it’s both hilarious and concerning).
“What are you doing to my children?” Cas asks, falsely worried as Jack bursts out laughing when Balthazar takes him off his shoulders.
“Well you’re the one who left them unattended, I just seized an opportunity,” Balthazar says with a wink, before letting both kids down.
Of course, they immediately take off running. Dean sighs.
“Hopefully they’re gonna be too tired to move once you guys actually start to play.”
Cas pats his back helpfully and Dean melts- yeah, the kids are a handful most days, but they’re happy and healthy, which is what really matters.
“Speaking of,” Balthazar says before sitting down on the couch. “We’re 20 minutes out. You ready?”
“Never been more ready,” Castiel says.
And Dean can feel it, in the way Cas’ hand finds his and links their fingers- Cas has gone a long way since that night kissing under the rain. He’s gone even more of a long way since Dean met him half naked and high on his couch.
Things might be a challenge every day, but tonight? Tonight Castiel takes his life back.
Dean has never been more proud.
✧✧✧
The familiar feeling of nervousness that always goes with the prospect of getting on stage to play paralyzes Castiel until he’s there, and suddenly it’s like it disappears with the thousands of smiles that greet them.
“Good evening, we’re a band from Oakland that’s called Free Will, maybe you’ve heard of it,” he fools around with the crowd after three songs and as the roadies are running around making the changes for the next song.
“It’s just like riding a bike” his therapist, Cain, had told him when Cas had confided a few days back. Cas knew he was right, but it’s not until they're well into their gig that he realizes how true that statement was.
---
“Someday you gotta find another way
You better right your mind and live by what you say
Today is just another day
Unless you set your sights and try to find a way.”
---
Cas wrote this song almost a decade back, and it never stops ringing true. But there’s something else as he sings the chorus than what he’s used to; there’s a little thrill in noticing the way the crowd dances, how people sing along to the words he’s written ten years back.
Drugs used to smooth the edges, rendering him unable to notice the tiny things. It’s different now; the nervousness is something he’s not used to, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything if it means sharing so much more with the crowd.
---
“I say fuck authority
Silent majority
Raised by the system
Now it's time to rise against them
We're sick of your treason
Sick of your lies
Fuck no, we won't listen
We're gonna open your eyes.”
---
He dances with the crowd, even letting go of his guitar in the process. Ever since being sober, Cas is rediscovering part of what makes him a musician and an artist; he hasn’t experienced this energy on stage in so long that it almost feels like restarting anew.
---
“Frustration, domination
Feel the rage of a new generation
We're living, we're dying
We're never ever gonna stop, stop trying
Stop trying
Stop dying
Stop dying.”
---
He finishes the song with his guitar on his back, one knee up on a flight case and singing right above the crowd, and he doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt so alive.
It’s a shame that it took his brother dying for him to realize there was more to life than drinking and getting high, but he knows that no matter what, Jimmy’s not far.
“Are you guys ready for some more quiet ones? We’re gonna give Max and Balthazar a little bit of a break, they’re growing old.”
The crowd roars back and laughs as Max and Balth make their silly little salute. Meanwhile the roadies are changing Alicia’s guitar for an acoustic. Cas has let go of his guitar just a few seconds before, and he knows what’s coming even before seeing the piano being brought on stage. The crowd goes a little wild- they know it means they’re halfway into the show by now, know this means Cas is going to play a few songs practically by himself.
“I’d like to dedicate this next song to someone who’s there tonight,” he says into the mic, and smiles as the crowd applauds. “I met Dean a little more than a year ago through terrible circumstances: he had just escaped an abusive relationship in New York, and I had just lost a brother and became a guardian for my brother’s two kids. This next album, which's coming out in just over a month, is called “For Dean”, because he’s the one who saved me and inspired me to go back to writing songs.”
The crowd listens to him intensely, a few of them clapping along. Cas turns just enough on the seat of his piano to look at Dean across the stage, where he’s sitting on the side with Jack on his lap and Claire sitting with Sam. Benny’s with them too, watching and smiling at Cas.
“I never really had a home- growing up, home was wherever my brother was. The past two decades, home was wherever I found booze and a couch. But it changed when Dean came into my life… And so, I wrote this song for him, which I’m gonna dedicate to him tonight; This is called “Home”.”
Then, with all the strength he’s able to muster, Castiel looks at Dean and catches his gaze, all the way across the stage. Dean is smiling back at him and Castiel realizes, again, that he’s never felt so alive.
“Dean,” he says softly into the mic, as if they’re not on stage in front of 3000 people but in their living room. “You’re my Home, now.”
The crowd goes wild again, but all that matters to Cas is how Dean mouths back “you’re my home too” from the backstage area.
And as Cas sings, his eyes never let go of Dean’s.
---
“Wish I were with you, but I couldn't stay
Every direction leads me away
Pray for tomorrow, but for today
All I want, is to be home
Stand in the mirror, you look the same
Just looking for shelter, from the cold and the pain
Someone to cover, safe from the rain
And all I want is to be home.”
---
Castiel thinks of Jimmy, wherever he is now, and how proud his brother would be if he could see him right now. Looking at Dean, he sees the way Jack never lets go of his hand, how Claire keeps herself right next to him.
---
“The echoes and silence, patience and grace
And all of these moments I'll never replace
No fear of my heart absence of faith
And all I want, is to be home
Ooh
All I want, is to be home.”
---
And he knows, deep down, that no matter how hard the choices he made that led him here, they were all worth it if it meant sitting here on the stage of his hometown venue and singing the song he wrote for Dean, more than a year ago.
---
“People I've loved, have no regrets
Some might remember, some might forget
Some of them livin', some of them dead
And all I want, is to be home.”
---
The crowd roars as Castiel finishes. The whole room is lit up with the flash of cell phones, and Cas knows it’s gonna make one hell of a picture later on.
But the brightest light of them all is the way Dean’s eyes shine from backstage. And Cas wouldn’t trade it for anything.
✧✧✧
Dean barely waits until the kids are both in bed to slam Cas into a wall and go to town.
“Dean,” Cas whines from where he’s pressed up against the door of their room, Dean’s lips attacking the side of his neck with all the passion he’s capable of. “Oh my God, get in here.”
Cas pushes him into the room and the door has barely been closed for two seconds when clothes start flying all over the place. He has Dean naked under him in less than three minutes.
And holy hell, what a sight to behold.
It took them some time to get to this stage of their relationship where sex wasn’t just only an escape but a moment to be shared between the two of them. At first, Dean looked ashamed of his own body. Cas had managed to gather that Cole, his asshole ex-boyfriend, used to tell him he wasn’t good enough in every way. That his body- Dean’s downright perfect body- was nothing special.
Ever since then, Castiel has been working hard on proving Dean otherwise.
“Babe,” Dean breathes in-between heated kisses, his hands on Cas’ hips, both of them already rock-hard and wanting. “Cas- I want you, babe.”
The thrill that shoots through Cas’ entire body every time Dean says this is better than any drugs Cas has ever experienced. It’s love, in its purest form.
“How?” Castiel asks reverently, mapping the line of Dean’s throat with kisses.
It might have been a whole year since they started this journey together, but Castiel has always been careful when it came to sex with Dean- from what he’d told him, Dean’s ex used him like a puppet, never caring about Dean’s wants and needs. It’s been a complicated journey for him to even be in bed together with Cas, but even more so- they’ve never had penetrative sex with Dean on the receiving ends.
Which is why Cas always asks first.
And tonight, Dean surprises him.
“Want to feel you,” he says, green eyes shining with so much want that Cas almost shivers. “In me.”
Cas looks back at him carefully, a little taken aback (although in the best way).
“Are you sure?”
It’s a big thing, Cas knows already. It’s a promise and a gauge of trust. But Dean only pushes up on his elbow to kiss the shit out of him in response.
“Never been more sure,” he mumbles against Cas’ lips, bringing him impossibly closer. “Take me, please. Wanna be yours.”
Cas nods- he’s wanted this since the very first day, but he also wants to make sure that Dean can feel all the love and trust he has for him. So he takes his time opening Dean up carefully, listening to the way he whines and moans and trashes on the bed as Cas methodically finger him open. He laughs when Dean orders him to “give it to him, dammit Cas”. He kisses him when he finally presses into him for the first time, the first thrust inside of Dean so beautifully good that he almost passes out.
“You told the world I was your home,” Dean whispers against Cas’ lips before moaning deeply as Cas finally bottoms out inside of him.
“I said it because it’s true,” Cas says softly, in awe of Dean’s body opening up just for him, brushing a kiss on his cheek. “I said it because if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here anymore.”
He starts thrusting into Dean slowly, listening to the way his breath hitches on every stroke, and bathing in the knowledge that if Dean is letting him have this, it’s because he wants him to. It’s because he’s reached that degree of trust they’ve been working so hard on getting to.
The next ten minutes are only whines, moans and love words whispered into slick skin, Dean’s mouth chanting Cas’ name and Cas leaving a trail of kisses everywhere on Dean’s skin.
“I love you,” Dean cries out later, when he clenches hard around Cas right before coming.
And Cas, well, he doesn’t have any doubts anymore. It might have taken years getting here, and it might have been hard, but if it means he gets to end up here, coming deep inside the man he loves, sharing so much more that he wouldn’t even have dreamt of having…
Well, he’d do it all over again.
And isn’t that what really matters?
✧✧✧
Dean awakes to the sound of the bedroom door opening. He’s still pretty out of it, but he can feel the way Cas is curled up against him, his hair tickling against his jaw.
Then he feels a little body crawl up between the two of them, and he doesn’t even have to open his eyes to know it’s Jack.
“What are you doing here?” he whispers as Jack worms his way in-between them, finding a spot right between Dean and Cas’ chests.
“I wanna sleep with you and uncle Cas,” Jack explains simply.
He’s asleep in barely two minutes, and Dean is about to sink back into sleep himself when he feels Cas’ hand tighten around the necklace on his chest.
“Sorry,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
“Don’t apologize,” Dean responds. “There’s no place I’d rather be than right here.”
Two years ago Dean left New York, broken and empty, with no knowledge of where he was going to end up.
Now, in this bed that he shares with the man lying against him, he feels complete, still healing, but whole.
This, he thinks, not for the first time. This is not just a house… this is home.
A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams. Dean’s house is made of love and trust; it’s made of Cas, of Jack, of Claire. It’s made of Benny and Sam who come around every week. It’s made of Cas’ best friends, his bandmates who never pass on the occasion to come here for a night.
With Cas, Dean is at home. Maybe for the first time ever.
And isn’t that beautiful?
Notes:
See you on Sunday for the epilogue! ❤️
Chapter 9: Epilogue
Notes:
I can't believe we're already at the end of this journey... As per usual, I have a few thanks to give, so let's get on it, shall we?
• First and foremost, thanks to Heather for trusting me with this story and bidding for it during the SPNFamilyRelief fundraiser for Ukraine, months back. I hope you love this story as much as I loved creating it.
• To my beta team, the iconic Nickel and Hannah; there would literally be no story without you guys.
• To the gang on my Discord for supporting me and yelling at me as they read through.
• To my Clown Car family for being the best
• special thanks to Matty, who allowed me to use his name in the epilogue. Go check out his music if you haven't already!
• special thanks to Char for always being willing to give me their opinion on all my graphic stuffAnd to you, dear reader. There ain't no me if there ain't no you. Thank you for trusting me with yet another different story. I'm gonna be taking a well-earned break after this one, but it'll just mean I will come back stronger. ❤️
The playlists are still live! Stream them as much as you feel like, they'll stay online for pretty much ever (and I'll most likely still update them monthly, as I still do with all of my other fic playlists)
✧ "Glory Hallelujah" playlist
✧ "Free Will - the band" playlist
✧ "For Dean" playlist
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
✧✧✧
Rolling Stone Magazine
Free Will Deepens Their Punk-Rock Brilliance on ‘For Dean’
With their fourth studio album, Castiel Novak proves to be one of the sharpest songwriters around.
By Matthew Connor
“I'm trying to get better because I haven't been my best,” Free Will’s frontman Castiel Novak informs us of his band’s fourth studio album. “We could get better because we're not dead yet,” he continues. The song is called “Get Better,” and it’s a perfect example of Castiel’s ability to channel his complicated, contradictory feelings into perfectly crafted punk-rock songs.
Novak wrote this entire album as a declaration of love to his now-partner Dean Winchester, and titled it after him in the process. On the phone with me, he told me the story of how he gave Dean a cassette tape where he had recorded all 16 songs of this album by himself, entirely acoustic, and that it was what brought them together. Dean himself played the modeling game, as he’s the one displayed on the album cover, in a black and white photograph taken of him behind the wheel of his own car, a ‘67 Chevy Impala.
As on his band’s previous albums, Novak’s métier is tense, dreamily lush nineties punk-rock, with echoes of Pennywise, Rancid, Green Day, and other artists who specialized in making secret sharing seem like community building. On “For Dean,” every languid lyric and opaque melody feels strategically placed with care and concern.
Nostalgia is a really tricky beast; Free Will certainly have let it go and the scrutiny. I find it best to not worry about any one’s nostalgic tracks and live in the moment. “Boxes” is this moment. It’s the perfect reinvention for Free Will. They have found the silver lining in adversity.
On “Angel of Small Death & The Codeine Scene,” Novak tackles the complicated story of his addiction to drugs and alcohol, personifying his addiction in a blonde woman he can’t stop going back to (With her sweetened breath, and her tongue so mean / She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene / With her straw-blonde hair, her arms hard and lean / She's the angel of small death and the codeine scene / Feeling more human and hooked on her flesh I / Lay my heart down with the rest at her feet / Fresh from the fields, all fetor and fertile / Bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet) and the difficult path to sobriety that he’s been on for more than a year.
Following this very raw and private song is “Brother,” a song that Castiel wrote for his own brother Jimmy, who died almost two years ago in a car crash in San Francisco, leaving two kids behind. Castiel opens up about his relationship with his big brother with gut-wrenching honesty and visible grief (We're living different lives / Heaven only knows / If we'll make it back with all our fingers and our toes / Five years, twenty years, come back / It will always be the same / If I was dying on my knees / You would be the one to rescue me / And if you were drowned at sea / I'd give you my lungs so you could breathe / I've got you brother). It’s practically impossible to not feel the wave of grief when Castiel talks about saying goodbye on their dying days (And if we hit on troubled water
I'll be the one to keep you warm and safe / And we'll be carrying each other / Until we say goodbye on our dying day / Because I've got you brother).
With its acoustic guitar and foreboding feel, “Raining In Paris,” maps out a realization while the protagonist is walking in the city of love (“My heart is in the city of love / But it's raining in Paris / What good is a heart of gold / With nobody to share it with / It's coming down, it's coming down / My head can hardly bare it / My heart is in the city of love /But it's raining in Paris” Novak sings). The next song, “Nevermind,” meanders beautifully through its admission of self-doubt, the guitars buzzing, sparkling, and burning like faint candles of hope, turning the realization “Without you my love, I’m never enough” into something like a separate peace.
The album has moments that move away from punk-rock entirely, either into all-acoustic territory, or softer written pop-punk melodies. Songs like “Drive,” or “City of Devils,” (a walk through Castiel’s own experiences of living in Los Angeles) are a kind of artfully hobbled pop-punk detour, as well as the grim experimental abstraction “Forevermore.”
Some of the highlights, like the surreptitiously lovely “Like The Angel,” balance those murky undercurrents with the sharp, bright choruses Free Will does so well. Castiel might think that “all my days were young and wasted when I was waiting, oh for you, and all the plans that I've been chasing are always fading,” but he seems to have found a permanent solution to this problem, as he follows along with “But ever since I found you, a little light is breaking through”.
Free Will got us accustomed to fast riffs, catchy melodies, and easy lyrics, but “For Dean” is almost its antithesis: it’s deep and meaningful, covering subjects from sobriety to death and, at the center of it all, love.
A solid 4 stars for Free Will’s 4th studio release. The band will be playing the iconic punk rock independent venue 924 Gilman Street on July 22 in Berkeley.
✧✧✧
✧✧✧
Cas awakes to soft kisses being pressed into his neck, and he can’t keep himself from melting.
“De-an,” he groans as Dean maps a line from his neck to the bolt of his jaw before finally kissing the corner of Cas’ mouth.
God, looking this hot this early in the morning should be illegal, Castiel’s pretty sure.
“Good morning, mister number one on the charts,” Dean whispers, a smile on his lips.
Cas almost doesn’t react. Almost. He’ll blame it on the absolute blast this past night was, being back at home with the kids and Dean- and so much Dean within reach that he spent part of the night mapping every single contour of his boyfriend’s body.
Being away sucks, but it always makes for the best rewards when he’s home.
“What?!” he asks, because surely he hasn’t heard that correctly.
But Dean only chuckles as he buries his face right back into the space between Cas’ neck and shoulder, his warm breath against the skin of Castiel’s throat giving him goosebumps.
Shit, that really never gets old.
“Yeah, the album is number one on the charts. I just checked it out, Sam texted it to me.”
There’s a lot of complicated feeling swirling around from Cas’ stomach to his head; pride, most of all, because it took so much to come to this point; a little sadness, too, because Jimmy isn’t here to celebrate what’s most likely the turning point of their career; but also so much love.
Love for his bandmates who trusted him when he came into practice one day with 16 songs recorded on a cassette tape labeled ‘For Dean’; love for the incredible trust that their record label extended to them when they first heard the idea; love for all the people who believed this album could be something beautiful.
Love for Dean, who’s been right by his side ever since Cas made this cassette tape for him. Love for the kids that they’ve been parenting together for almost two years now.
It takes a while to sink in- even though Dean had Cas read Sam’s text and the article he linked that said right there in print that “For Dean”, Free Will’s newest studio album, had entered the national Billboard chart on spot #1 for its first week of release.
But when it does, as usual, Cas buries himself into Dean and cries.
It’s just so many emotions all at once, Cas doesn’t know how to deal with everything right now. Dean just holds onto his hips, carding a hand through his hair and waiting until Cas is calm enough to talk.
“Are they good tears?” he asks after a while, once Castiel’s tears have dried and his breathing has slowed down.
So much has happened in the past two years that sometimes it still takes Castiel by surprise. Grief is a complicated feeling; people say it goes away with time, but Cas is pretty sure it’s exactly the contrary. Every day that passes by reminds him of how much Jimmy’s absence hurts. Part of himself wants to reach for his phone and try to dial his number, but if he has to listen to the robotic voice telling him that “the number you dialed is unavailable” once more, he’s positive he’s going to explode.
Cas nods from where he’s buried into Dean’s neck, his hands tightening around his boyfriend’s waist.
Thank God for Dean. Castiel is positive he wouldn’t have made it this far without him.
“Yeah,” Cas says, voice a little broken, muffled by the fabric of Dean’s shirt where he’s pressed into his shoulder. “I just wish Jimmy was here. He’d be so proud.”
“He is,” Dean says, voice barely above a whisper. “Sweetheart, wherever he is, he’s proud. There aren’t any doubts.”
Cas nods, unconvinced. Dean probably knows, but he doesn’t press. He knows Cas better than to assume he can change his mind when it comes to Jimmy.
“Hey,” Dean says, tearing Cas away from his thoughts. “Are we still on for this afternoon?”
Cas smiles, his heart fucking fluttering in his chest.
Who would’ve thought, huh?
“Hell yeah we are,” he says, drawing back just enough to look at Dean.
He’s so beautiful in his very own Free Will t-shirt that is already pretty worn-out because of how much Dean has been wearing it. The green of his eyes sparkles with so much love that Castiel is momentarily taken away before he gathers himself and captures Dean’s mouth in a filthy kiss.
It takes barely a minute for Cas’ hands to slip beneath Dean’s boxers and cup his ass, squeezing just like he knows Dean loves.
“Mhmpf,” Dean whines against his lips, a smile on his mouth. “Goddamn, Cas, the kids are gonna be in here any minute now.”
“Guess we’re gonna have to be quick, then?” Cas says, cocky as fuck.
He’s #1 on the billboard chart. He’s getting surprise-married tonight. He and Dean are adopting the kids.
He’s allowed.
✧✧✧
San Francisco Chronicle
News >> Music
Castiel Novak and his Dean unexpectedly tie the knot! And officially become adoptive parents.
By Tommy Merlyn
“We just didn’t want to make a big deal about it,” Dean Winchester (now Winchester-Novak) told us when we reached out a few days after the news of the couple’s surprise wedding. “We’ve been through a lot, both personally and together, so it really made sense for us to do this exactly how we wanted it: with our loved ones in our backyard.”
Castiel and Dean met through unfortunate circumstances, when the rockstar hired a new personal assistant to help him cope with the loss of his big brother Jimmy and taking care of his niece and nephew, whom he had just become a guardian of. “Things weren’t easy, but having Dean around made it feel like it was,” Castiel explains on the phone from the Caribbean, where the newlyweds have been staying on their honeymoon trip. “When I told him I loved him, things didn’t go exactly as I planned it. So I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. And then I recorded an acoustic version of our current album, ‘For Dean’, and put it on a cassette tape for Dean to listen.”
Novak’s band, Free Will, released their fourth studio album just over three weeks ago. It’s been in the #1 spot on the billboard chart ever since, which is another victory for the frontman.
“I never expected people to love this album so much, but it’d be lying to say I’m not thrilled,” he explains. “I just wish my brother was here to celebrate. Luckily, we still have his kids.”
On top of the announcement of their surprise wedding, the couple also announced that they’d officially adopted Castiel’s niece and nephew (Claire, 11, and Jack, 5).
“It was something that meant a lot to me,” Dean explains on the phone, with his husband by his side. “We want to be the best parents we can, and Castiel was pretty positive that that’s what Jimmy would’ve wanted.”
The couple tied the knot in a private ceremony in their own backyard in San Francisco. Dean’s brother Sam officiated the wedding; Balthazar Milton, Castiel’s best friend and bandmate, was the frontman’s best man, and Benjamin Laffite, also Dean’s best friend, was Dean’s best man.
The couple then celebrated their kids’ adoption as well as their wedding at home, with less than 20 guests.
The San Francisco Chronicles offers the couple their best wishes!
✧✧✧
✧✧✧
— THE END —
Notes:
Well, this is it, folks! I wanted to go a different way from what I usually go for with an epilogue, so I hope you liked it.
Until next time!
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