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It wasn’t exactly a secret that Dean Winchester loved his little brother, even if he didn’t go around saying it all the time. Demons knew it, angels knew it. Hell, God had written it as one of the goddamn rules of the universe. And yet, here he was, jaw clenched around the desire to tell Sam to find somewhere else to be.
The first time Cas died, it had been to help Dean – to hold off the other angels while Dean went to try and stop the Apocalypse. And he came back just in time to save Dean from stage four stomach cancer courtesy of Zachariah.
The second time, Dean had been on the ground in a bloody heap and Cas had reappeared out of thin air to heal him. The third time, Dean had been listless for months after watching Cas dissolve into a puddle of Leviathan goo, only to get the shock of his life staring into a pair of familiar blue eyes, just when he’d needed a miracle the most. The fourth time, Cas practically died and was brought back in his arms.
And the fifth… Dean didn’t like to think about those weeks at all. Instead, he focused on the part where Cas came back – that moment when one phone call made Billie bringing him back to life a reward instead of a punishment.
Six times! Six. Times. This dude had the nerve to die on him – and on each occasion, he only half made up for it by coming back. Except, this time, Sam was hogging Cas’s return tour all to himself, like he didn’t realize Dean got first dibs on the angel.
And yeah, he knew he was being ridiculous. Sam had lost Cas, too. Sam had spent days after Chuck was taken care of wanting to know more about how – it – happened, only to be met by stony silence from his brother.
But Dean lost Cas more. He always lost Cas more. Angels and demons knew that, too. So did Chuck. So did Sam, who’d teased him about their “profound bond” after that school play for long enough that Dean slowed down near a cornfield and pushed him out of the Impala, just to teach him a lesson.
The last few days, Dean had spent locked up in his room, watching the bunker security footage from that night on repeat, having scrubbed it from anywhere but his personal laptop, and trying to match Cas’s record of drinking an entire liquor store. He’d, at first, been using his green army jacket like a pillow, but worried that he’d drool on it, he shoved it to the very back of his closet instead (as if that wasn’t a fuckin’ metaphor).
The only thing that was currently stopping him from vibrating out of his skin with impatience from the minute Cas reappeared and Sam reached for Cas’s shoulders was the way Cas kept looking at him.
At first, it was a quick glance while he hugged Sam – a worried, couldn’t-help-himself look over Sammy’s shoulder that darted away as soon as he’d been caught. And then, as Sam had pulled back with a “We missed you, Man,” and started asking about how Jack had rescued him from the Empty, Cas’s eyes had slowly returned to Dean’s. Every few seconds, he looked at Dean again, even while he answered Sam’s questions. Dean didn’t let his gaze waver once.
He didn’t know what his face was doing. He looked pissed, probably, if Cas’s answering face was any indication. I don’t know why I get so angry, he’d prayed to Cas once, but this wasn’t like that. He knew why he was angry. He wasn’t sure if Cas did, though.
Made any more deals that you forgot to mention? He thought hard in Cas’s direction.
The angel flinched, stopping whatever he was saying to Sam midsentence.
“Dean,” he rumbled, turning his body only slightly to face him head-on.
The Empty’s full of demons, right? Find one of them to sell your soul to? Or maybe, you promised one of your old angel buddies 10 years off your life because you felt bad for ganking their sorry ass. Oh, wait. You married that djinn queen a couple of years ago. Did that come with any alimony you forgot to mention? Heard those guys are worse than loan sharks.
“Dean!” the angel repeated much more sharply, an annoyed glint in his eye that was so Cas that it reached out and squeezed Dean’s heart – a painful, vice-like grip.
“What? I don’t get a speech? You sure as hell got a speech,” Dean said out loud for the first time, causing Cas to wince again and Sam’s head to snap around.
“Dean…?” his brother questioned, a frown of confusion on his face.
“Stay out of this, Sammy,” Dean responded, not even looking at him, his voice low. “Spit it out, Cas. What catch are we looking at here? Since you’re always tangled in more strings than Pinocchio. You’ve probably got as long of a nose, too.”
“There’s no ‘catch,’” Cas said – with air quotes – because he was infuriating. “Jack, as you know, has taken up the position of God now.” He didn’t sound happy about it, which – fair. Dean wasn’t exactly singing hymns, either. “He got me and several other angels – the ones we can trust – out of the Empty. Most of them will be staying in Heaven to help with his rebuilding efforts, but he thought…” Cas cleared his throat and squared his shoulders, “…I would be happier ‘commuting’ from here. If that’s… if you would be comfortable with that.”
“Cas, what are you talking about? Of course, we love having you here.”
But Cas wasn’t asking Sam, and they both knew it.
“Doesn’t seem like being here has made you very happy. Not for a couple of years, at least,” Dean couldn’t help but point out, while Sam’s expression got even more pissy in the background. But Dean didn’t care if Sam thought his attitude came out of nowhere; Cas understood what he was talking about.
Sure enough, the angel clenched his hands into loose fists at his sides in a strangely human gesture. “Maybe not purely happy,” he agreed without a trace of shame in his voice. “Our lives have been too complicated for that. But I spent thousands of years as a soldier in Heaven barely feeling anything – and then getting sent back for reprogramming any time a peek of emotion showed through. The pain of being down here, the grief, the anger of it sometimes – it’s been a symptom of caring, of… loving… of being scared to lose what I’ve gained. And I would choose that a thousand times over—”
“Of course, you would!” Dean interrupted bitterly. “You have! You’ve been given that choice time and time again, and I’m here to tell you, Buddy. You chose wrong. Who chooses a life that makes them miserable and calls it a good thing? Who decides they’re going to keep sticking by the same person when all it’s gotten them is dead over and over again? Chuck said you had a crack in your chassis, and Hell if he might not have been onto something, because that is fuckin’ nuts, Man.”
“Really, Dean?” Cas answered back, not quite as loudly, but with an underlying crack to his voice. “You’re going to lecture me about self-destructive self-sacrifice? You’ve spent your entire life fighting other people’s battles! You resigned yourself to Hell to bring your brother back from the dead. Everything you might have ever wanted for yourself, you’ve given up because you thought someone needed it or deserved it more – to the point that the only things you think to ask for now are small indulgences.”
“Whoo, boy, do you have no clue what you’re talking about,” Dean dismissed, getting ready to turn on his heel, Sam already preparing to take a step after him.
“What then?” Cas demanded, his back as straight and tall as the Chrysler building, his voice stopping Dean in his tracks. “Tell me one time you’ve let yourself want something more substantial than a piece of pie?”
“You’re an idiot, Cas.”
The angel only raised one eyebrow, as if to say, I’m waiting.
“You! You son-of-a-bitch!” Dean yelled in a way that was destined to make his throat sore the next morning. “I’ve wanted you. Any time you were dead or fucked off on some stupid side mission, all I wanted was for you to stay around for once. And it’s not like I’ve been exactly subtle about it. I couldn’t stand Jack at the beginning because all I could see every time that I looked into his face was you, dead on the ground. I told Chuck that I would kill Sam so that he would bring you back. I have done everything I know how to do to try to get you to hang around, and you just – you leave. I’m never a good enough reason for you to sit still.”
“Except – except this last time, you had to get all weepy beforehand and tell me how special and amazing I am. How frickin’ important I am to you. So frickin’ important that you’d spent years miserable, wanting what you couldn’t have. Well, while you were too busy denying yourself, Cas, I guess you never actually thought about what you were taking away from me, huh?”
“Dean–” Cas started, only to abruptly stop. His mouth wasn’t left gaping open or anything, but his eyes were huge – caught somewhere between fear and hope. Dean felt cold – the kind of contradictory cold that comes when you’re running a fever and your whole body is shaking. And he felt tired. So tired. The kind of tired that was the result of weeks of staying up into the night, watching the worst moment of your life play over and over again on staticky black-and-white footage, knowing that Cas loving him had killed him – almost more times than Dean could count. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be angry anymore. He wanted –
A flurry of movement caught his attention a split second before he was enveloped in a hug. It wasn’t the usual sort he and Cas exchanged – one arm over the other person’s opposite shoulder. Instead, Cas clung around his neck, Dean’s cheek pressed against Cas’s forehead.
He smelled like honey and thunderstorms and a little like Dean himself and shit – he hated this asshole for how much he made Dean not hate him. For being one of two people Dean didn’t know how to function without. He’d died for Sam before, and he’d probably do it again. But it was different with Cas. When something happened to him, Dean just stopped living.
He cleared his throat against the top of Cas’s head. “Did you mean… what you said before… about….?”
Cas tensed up, trying to move out of Dean’s grip but Dean wouldn’t let him. He didn’t want to look in Cas’s eyes for this – just in case.
“Yes,” the angel eventually answered, a shaky whisper against his collarbone.
“And you meant it like – you know? Not like –”
“You’re too smart to play stupid as often as you do,” Cas chided, but Dean swore he could feel the angel’s rapid pulse.
Well, Dean thought. I can work with that.
And then he pulled back just far enough that Cas was tempted to lift his head, and that’s when he kissed him.
As first kisses went, it was kind of a mess. They were standing too close and not at the right angle for it, and Cas spent the first half of it locked up tighter than Bobby’s old safe room. But Dean didn’t really give a crap. Because right then, at that moment, Cas was alive and beautiful and as stuck with Dean as he could get. And then, the second half of the kiss – well, it just proved that Cas was a pretty good visual learner if he figured all that out just from watching porn. Dean knew he was getting bad knees in his old age, but he didn’t think they’d ever wobbled quite like that.
When he finally pulled away, he was breathing hard – and high on adrenaline.
“I’m having a hard time believing I’m awake at the moment,” Cas admitted, looking dazed and freshly kissed.
There would probably be a time in the not-so-distant future when Dean would freak out about the man-shaped vessel aspect, but for now, the hunter slapped him in the ass.
There was the sound of a whimper.
“What was that for?” Cas demanded, though he didn’t look mad about it, per se.
Dean gave him a cheeky grin. “What? I thought you’d appreciate it more than me pinching you to prove that you’re awake.”
And that’s when he realized that the whimper in question wasn’t from Cas.
“Can someone – please – explain to me what the hell is going on here?!” came Sam’s strangled voice from three feet away. He and Cas whipped to face his brother, who looked to be leaning against the map table for support, his hair slightly wrecked, like he’d been pulling at it.
Right. Well, this was going to be a fun story.