I love the bones of you (Dean/Castiel, pg-13, 3500 words)
Many thanks to lazy_daze for listening when I wanted to turn Castiel into a sloth, to envinyatar15 for helping me find a goddamn point, and annabeth_fics and catdancerz for letting me pick their brains. Title from Elbow.
For thunder_nari at spn_j2_xmas. Hope you like it! :)
I love the bones of you
(Dean/Castiel plus some hints of Sam/Ruby, pg-13, 3500 words, secondary character death)
Dean has been missing for three days.
Before Castiel finds Dean, he finds ten corpses and Sam Winchester beaten bloody and unconscious. Dean is with an eleventh corpse when Castiel finally catches up with him. He smiles at Castiel and sucks blood from his fingertips.
"Y'know, if you'd found me three days ago, there'd be a whole lot of people still alive. One little hexbag and you're wandering around like a lost lamb," says the demon that's wearing Dean's skin. "Guess Ruby was good for something after all."
Ruby was the first corpse, found beside Sam with her knife sticking out of her throat. Castiel thinks maybe she's the reason Sam survived.
"You shouldn't have taken him," Castiel says.
"Why the fuck not?" says the demon. It dips its fingers, knuckle-deep, into the corpse's splayed ribcage. "Why's he so special? 'Cause he's yours?"
"You shouldn't have taken him," Castiel says again.
"Don't like it when someone like me gets nice and tight up inside this body, huh? Gotta tell you, I've ridden a lot of bodies in my time, but this one? This one gave into it the sweetest. Just opened right up for me. You maybe ought to try it sometime. Ditch the holy tax accountant and just slide on in."
Its eyes are flat and beetle-black in the cold darkness of the gas station. It watches Castiel from where it's crouched over the body. From the mess it's made of the body, it's impossible to even guess the gender. Castiel has seen human bodies deconstructed before but he always finds it hard to believe that the slippery redness that rolls out when they're opened up is all that there is to them.
There is more to Dean, he believes, than blood and bone and muscle. There's some hidden mystery, beyond simple anatomy, of who he is.
"Leave," Castiel says. "Now."
"You wanna know a secret? He'll let you in, might even sing a hallelujah that you'd grace him with your presence. But, buddy, that'd be a missed opportunity right there."
It stands, and when it walks towards Castiel, the corpse's bones crackle and splinter beneath its feet. It moves close enough that Castiel can feel the hot poison of its existence, like an infected wound.
"In case you're too goddamn angelic to figure it out," it says, "you don't wanna possess him. You wanna fuck him." It leans in, Dean's mouth almost touching Castiel's skin, almost. "That's what you're thinking when you look at him," it tells him. "That's what that feeling is, that itchy hot feeling that you can't get your head round. You wanna fuck him. And he'd definitely let you do that. He'd want you to bend him over and fuck him so hard he saw the face of God."
The demon is still laughing at its own joke when Castiel presses the heel of his hand to Dean's forehead and burns it out.
:::
Dean comes to, but briefly. He looks straight at Castiel, makes an abortive move towards him, skids in the slick of blood beneath his feet, goes down heavily on his knee.
Passes out.
Castiel gathers him in his arms, holds his dead weight easily against his chest, and tips him so Dean's head lolls back. He shapes his mouth to Dean's, carefully parts his slack - (unexpectedly soft) - lips with the tip of his tongue, and breathes pure light into him.
Then, because these three days of Dean being lost have had a significance that the past two thousand years have not, Castiel kisses Dean chastely on the temple.
:::
There is an abandoned farmhouse standing alone on the horizon, its roof rising just barely above the knot of trees that surround it. Castiel trudges through the sopping, gray sludge of snow with Dean slung over his shoulder, and starlight and his own bone-white radiance to light his way.
Inside the farmhouse, it's neither particularly clean nor comfortable, but it's somewhere for Dean to rest. Castiel lays Dean down on the sofa. Then he puts the remains of an old chair into the wood-burning stove and tells it to burn. The fire is small and sulky, but adequate.
Turning back to Dean, Castiel unbuttons his overshirt - stiff with old blood - and then pushes his t-shirt up the smooth, hot expanse of his belly and chest. His fingertips search out the tattoo, illuminated by the stuttering firelight. The design is intact, it seems, but then Castiel notices the fatal flaw: a single break in the line, where he healed skin but not the ink drawn over it. It's enough, enough to have let the demon in.
Everything that Dean has suffered these last three days, the nightmare he has lived and the people he has killed - Castiel is to blame.
It is in the same second that he feels Uriel's presence in the room that he realizes he still has his hand on Dean's naked chest, his heartbeat throbbing beneath his touch. Quick and furtive, Castiel tugs Dean's t-shirt back into place.
"You're not expecting me to stay and play nursemaid too, are you?" Uriel says.
"No," says Castiel. "I want you to go to Sam. Tell him his brother is safe and well, and that he'll return soon."
"And what are you going to do?" Slow and dangerous, like the first spark of wildfire, Uriel smiles at him. "You're staying here with him, aren’t you?"
You wanna fuck him. It's the same tone of voice. That's what you're thinking when you look at him. You're staying here with him, aren't you? The same tone of voice.
Castiel thinks about trying to explain it, explain himself, and then he says, "Yes."
:::
The fire burns low but Castiel doesn't allow it to go out. He covers Dean with a thick blanket that smells faintly of old vegetables. Dean's sleep is restless, distressed, so Castiel thinks at first to tell him the stories he knows, the ancient and incredible things he has seen. But there is too much unhappiness in them. Too much war and terror, too much dying.
So he searches the farmhouse until he finds books, tattered things with broken spines and pages as thin as butterfly wings. He reads Dean poetry by T.S Eliot, which Castiel likes, and then he reads him the first two chapters of 'Dune', which Castiel does not like. He's about to begin on a Perry Mason mystery, which is missing a large section of pages from the beginning, when Dean stirs, rolls over onto his side and the frown on his face smoothes out.
Castiel sets the Perry Mason down very quietly and spends the rest of the night listening to the hush of Dean breathing.
:::
"Sam?"
Dean is still muzzy with sleep as he pushes back the blanket. He looks ill, strained.
"Uriel is with him," Castiel tells him. Before Dean has to ask, he adds, "He's okay."
"Ruby," Dean says. It's not a question.
"She's dead."
Dean licks his lips and looks away from Castiel sharply. It gives Castiel the vague feeling of having failed somehow, even though he is aware his responsibilities regarding Dean don't go so far as his emotional wellbeing and certainly not to the welfare of a demon.
Castiel chooses his words and then says, "She was a demon."
Dean shakes his head, not in disagreement.
"I know she helped you and your brother," Castiel tries again, "but she was a demon."
"Sam lov-!" Dean cuts off whatever words he was snarling out at Castiel, and shakes his head again, as if the effort of trying to make Castiel understand is not worth it.
"She was a demon," Castiel says for the third time. "Nothing like Jessica Moore. Ruby was not an innocent. Ruby was a soldier and soldiers fall."
Dean raises an eyebrow at Castiel. "And that's what I'm supposed to take to Sam? Sorry I killed yet one more person you cared about but-"
"You didn't do this," Castiel interrupts. He's leaning closer to Dean now, and Dean's face is tilted towards him, and Castiel feels an urge to fix him, like he had done in Hell, but he knew how to fix Hell and he doesn't know how to fix this. "You were possessed, that's what you take to your brother."
"She's still gone," Dean says. "How'm I s'posed to face Sam?"
He turns his face away from Castiel, and Castiel feels cold.
:::
They leave after that, walking out into the coppery-pink shine of the winter morning.
"Sam's in Great Falls," Castiel says.
Dean doesn't answer.
Dean finds an old truck in a small shed attached to the farmhouse and he tinkers with the engine until it rattles into life. He climbs in behind the wheel and Castiel waits uncertainly, until Dean gives him a look and says, "Would you get in already?"
They drive in silence. Dean doesn't fiddle with the radio or drum the steering wheel. He stares out at the horizon, where the sun is a pinprick of blinding light, and he hurts. Castiel feels him ache and he prays to God to help him understand why it had to take three days for Castiel to find Dean, to rescue him.
He studies Dean's profile: the firm line of his jaw and the swell of his lips, the sooty curve of his eyelashes, the white ridge of a recent scar on his brow.
"You're staring again," Dean says, flushing slightly. "'m I really that goddamn fascinating?"
"It was like being back in Hell, wasn't it?" Castiel says. He thinks of the blood on Dean's fingers, thinks of Dean's mouth smeared red, and he remembers the brutal, crazy creature he found in the Pit. "I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner."
"Which time?" Dean says. "Hell or being possessed?"
There is no accusation or bitterness in Dean's voice. It's just a question.
"Both times," Castiel says.
Half an hour later - by which time Castiel is sure they are not on their way to Great Falls - Dean says, "You came in the end. S'more than I was expecting."
:::
They stop in a small town outside of Scottsbluff, almost another hundred miles from Great Falls, and Dean starts towards a diner, stops and pats his pockets, curses.
"You don't have any money," Castiel says.
"You gonna fall from Grace or something if I hustle some pool?" he says.
Castiel removes a fresh ten-dollar bill from the pocket of his overcoat. "I thought it was a good idea to be prepared," he says, offering it to Dean. Dean looks at him, really looks at him. He smiles at Castiel as he takes the money and Castiel knows it was a good idea.
They sit in the diner together and still don't talk. There are Christmas garlands strung over the windows and a small, artificial tree is set on the counter. Castiel looks at the way the sunlight sparks off the colored baubles on the tree but it doesn’t hold his attention like Dean does. Dean has found a newspaper to read and he seems intent enough upon it that Castiel doesn't have to bother making an effort not to look at him.
Dean drinks plenty of coffee but he crumbles his piece of pie with his fork and leaves most of it on his plate.
If Castiel doesn't think about the whys, about what's happened and what's waiting to happen, he realizes he enjoys the quiet afternoon he spends with Dean.
:::
That night, Dean puts a spirit to rest. Castiel stands by the grave while Dean digs. It's cold but the exertion puts a light shine of sweat over Dean's skin. Castiel watches the flex and roll of Dean's shoulders and thinks about the muscles beneath the skin, and the cage of bone beneath that. It's fascinating to him how fragile humans are, and yet how much they achieve.
Dean should break so very easily, and yet here he is.
The cut and rasp of Dean's spade on dirt doesn't falter as he starts to talk. "There was this girl. Little more than a kid, really. She was going home to her family for the holidays. Had this big-ass bag full of gifts for them."
Castiel knows which bag Dean is talking about. He remembers it, half-hidden as it was by the girl's dead body - sliced up and sagging open - flung out over it. He doesn't interrupt Dean, lets him talk if that's what he wants to do.
"I was there, y'know, conscious," Dean says. "I saw it all happen, felt it happening. Couldn't stop it. Hated it. But…" For a second, there's a pause in the rhythm in his digging. "But, I caught myself thinking, 'I wouldn't'a done it like that. I'd'a left her eyes 'til last, so she had to watch.' I thought about how I could do it better, like how I'd'a done it in Hell."
Dean pulls himself out of the grave without looking at Castiel. He strikes a match, drops it down onto the rotten coffin and the whole thing goes up in a hollow rush of flame. They stand side by side to watch it burn.
"You aren't to blame," Castiel says. "The demon who rode you is." He hesitates before saying, "And I am. I didn't heal your tattoo properly. It didn't occur to me that I needed to."
For once, he doesn't want to look at Dean. He knows Dean is looking at him but he doesn't want to look at Dean right now.
"Seriously?" Dean says. "You didn't think, when I was fighting a war against demons, that making sure I couldn't get possessed by one figured high on your list of priorities?"
"I didn't think I needed to, because I thought I'd be with you. I thought, once I'd brought you out of Hell, that… that I'd be with you. All the time. That you'd be safe."
Dean doesn't answer. Slowly, Castiel turns to look at him. Dean is still watching him. It's strange for Dean to hold eye-contact like this. Usually, he shies away from it, and it's something altogether new for Castiel to be able to look so deep inside Dean. Dean's not hiding, he's letting Castiel look at him.
Dean's eyes are green and hazel, and there's dirt smudged along his cheekbone and his jaw, sweat in the hollows of his eyes. The firelight over Dean should remind Castiel of the Dean he found in Hell but he can only distractedly try to determine the precise shade between peach and gold that it turns Dean's skin.
"Oh," Dean says finally. He sounds a little breathless. "Okay."
:::
Dean is in the shower. Castiel is left waiting for him in the motel room.
He told Dean he doesn't need to sleep and therefore doesn't need a bed, but now he is left looking at the one bed in the room and thinking of the smirk the motel manager was wearing when they booked in. Castiel is innocent but not naïve; he knows what the motel manager thought, what he thought Castiel and Dean would be doing in this one bed in this cheap motel with hourly rates.
Castiel stands by the window and does not look at the bed. He is glad of this when he feels Uriel enter the room.
"He wants to know where his brother is and when he's coming back," Uriel says impatiently. "What do you want me to tell him? That Dean's on a roadtrip with you and you're both merrily heading in the opposite direction?"
"Dean still needs time," Castiel says. "He's not ready. The possession was hard on him and he regrets what happened to Ruby."
Uriel blinks. "She was a demon," he says, grinding the words out. "He's mourning a demon?"
"Sam was…" Castiel deliberates on how to express it without getting Uriel further wound up, "emotionally involved with her. Dean is sad because his brother has lost someone he cared about."
"A demon," Uriel says.
He shakes his head, opens his mouth to say more but the shower shuts off.
"Go back to Sam," Castiel says swiftly. "Keep him safe. Tell him his brother is fine and will come back when he's ready."
Uriel is gone just as Dean opens the bathroom door. Dean is in a t-shirt and his shorts. He's toweling his hair dry. Barefooted, he pads into the room and throws the towel down over the back of the chair. It hits and then slides to the floor. Dean doesn't even notice.
He doesn't look at Castiel as he says, "You're staring again. Why do you do that?"
"You're beautiful," Castiel says. He's honest because it's easiest.
Dean pauses in the middle of flipping the blanket back on the bed. "Oh," he says. Pauses, then says, "Are you, y'know, allowed to say things like that?"
"In finding you beautiful I'm simply adoring my Father's creation," Castiel tells him.
"Right. Well, could you adore with less staring?"
Patiently, Castiel turns his gaze to the window. It's snowing again but it won't settle. The moon is fat and bleached in the starless night sky. This close to the window, Castiel can feel how bitterly cold it is outside. It's always colder after Christmas, bleak as the new year stretches out before them.
He listens to the bed squeak as Dean climbs in; the blankets rustle, Dean plumps the pillows. Then silence.
"You gonna go perch on the roof or something?" Dean says. "Tuck your head under your wing?"
"Will it bother you if I stay?"
"Why would it bother me?" Dean shoots back without a moment's hesitation. It's almost aggressive.
They've come to it at last. Castiel had wondered if maybe they'd circle it forever. It needs to be addressed; it can't stay between them, hinted at by the tone of Uriel's voice and the memory of what the demon said. Castiel supposes it's better to deal with it now, instead of waiting for Uriel to be in the room or, worse perhaps, Sam.
"We should talk about what the demon said. We should talk about what it said I wanted from you."
"Demons lie," Dean says instantly.
"Except when they tell the truth."
Dean lets out a breath and goes quiet. Castiel turns to look at him. He seems small, hunched up in the bed with his damp hair and too-wide eyes. He lets out another breath and picks at the hem of his blanket. His lips move soundlessly for a moment before he speaks.
"Was it telling the truth?" he says. His voice is quiet.
Castiel watches the world spin outside the window; he feels his grace deep down inside, hot and cold all at once.
"It said you wanted that from me. Do you?"
"If-" Dean says. The word hangs there, ponderous and full of possibility. Castiel focuses on that single word, upon which the very nature of his existence hinges. "If I did, if we did that, would you fall?"
Castiel closes his eyes and sees his grace, iridescent and thick. He imagines touching it, the sparkling-white luminance of it. And he feels his vessel's body constrict, feels the skin grow hot and tight around him when he thinks about Dean.
"I think so, yes," he says.
"Then no," says Dean. "No, I don't want that from you."
Castiel nods and says, "Thank you."
He knows that he'll never allow himself to have this conversation with Dean ever again. And he knows that the one thing in all God's creation that could make him fall… …won't let it happen.
He's not going to fall.
:::
In the morning, Castiel waits in the truck for Dean. Dean climbs in beside him, without looking at him, and opens up the map from the glove pocket.
"You're going to Great Falls," Castiel says.
"No," Dean says. "No, I can't. Not yet. I can't face Sam after what I-"
"Your brother needs you. And you need him." Castiel slides the map from Dean's hand and returns it to the glove box. "You're going to Great Falls."
"You don't fucking well get it, do you? I can't-"
"Sam is alone and missing you," Castiel says. "He'll understand what happened to you. And he will forgive you."
Dean's gaze is fixed on his hands where they rest on the steering wheel. His jaw is clenched. Castiel goes on watching the sky melt from pewter to powdery pink and blue.
"Why are you doing this?" Dean says, his voice little more than a whisper. "Is this because of-?"
"It's because sometimes we need saving from ourselves." He still doesn't look at Dean when he says, "Go to Great Falls. Go to Sam."
It's quiet in the truck for a long moment. Then Dean turns the key in the ignition and they pull out onto the road.
:::
They've been driving a full two hours before Dean says, "Thanks."
Castiel doesn't answer. He just smiles and nods and sinks deeper into his grace.
~end
I have an audience with the pope
and I'm saving the world at eight
but if she says she needs me,
she says she needs me, everybody's going to have to wait.
(An Audience With The Pope - Elbow)
For thunder_nari at spn_j2_xmas. Hope you like it! :)
I love the bones of you
(Dean/Castiel plus some hints of Sam/Ruby, pg-13, 3500 words, secondary character death)
Dean has been missing for three days.
Before Castiel finds Dean, he finds ten corpses and Sam Winchester beaten bloody and unconscious. Dean is with an eleventh corpse when Castiel finally catches up with him. He smiles at Castiel and sucks blood from his fingertips.
"Y'know, if you'd found me three days ago, there'd be a whole lot of people still alive. One little hexbag and you're wandering around like a lost lamb," says the demon that's wearing Dean's skin. "Guess Ruby was good for something after all."
Ruby was the first corpse, found beside Sam with her knife sticking out of her throat. Castiel thinks maybe she's the reason Sam survived.
"You shouldn't have taken him," Castiel says.
"Why the fuck not?" says the demon. It dips its fingers, knuckle-deep, into the corpse's splayed ribcage. "Why's he so special? 'Cause he's yours?"
"You shouldn't have taken him," Castiel says again.
"Don't like it when someone like me gets nice and tight up inside this body, huh? Gotta tell you, I've ridden a lot of bodies in my time, but this one? This one gave into it the sweetest. Just opened right up for me. You maybe ought to try it sometime. Ditch the holy tax accountant and just slide on in."
Its eyes are flat and beetle-black in the cold darkness of the gas station. It watches Castiel from where it's crouched over the body. From the mess it's made of the body, it's impossible to even guess the gender. Castiel has seen human bodies deconstructed before but he always finds it hard to believe that the slippery redness that rolls out when they're opened up is all that there is to them.
There is more to Dean, he believes, than blood and bone and muscle. There's some hidden mystery, beyond simple anatomy, of who he is.
"Leave," Castiel says. "Now."
"You wanna know a secret? He'll let you in, might even sing a hallelujah that you'd grace him with your presence. But, buddy, that'd be a missed opportunity right there."
It stands, and when it walks towards Castiel, the corpse's bones crackle and splinter beneath its feet. It moves close enough that Castiel can feel the hot poison of its existence, like an infected wound.
"In case you're too goddamn angelic to figure it out," it says, "you don't wanna possess him. You wanna fuck him." It leans in, Dean's mouth almost touching Castiel's skin, almost. "That's what you're thinking when you look at him," it tells him. "That's what that feeling is, that itchy hot feeling that you can't get your head round. You wanna fuck him. And he'd definitely let you do that. He'd want you to bend him over and fuck him so hard he saw the face of God."
The demon is still laughing at its own joke when Castiel presses the heel of his hand to Dean's forehead and burns it out.
:::
Dean comes to, but briefly. He looks straight at Castiel, makes an abortive move towards him, skids in the slick of blood beneath his feet, goes down heavily on his knee.
Passes out.
Castiel gathers him in his arms, holds his dead weight easily against his chest, and tips him so Dean's head lolls back. He shapes his mouth to Dean's, carefully parts his slack - (unexpectedly soft) - lips with the tip of his tongue, and breathes pure light into him.
Then, because these three days of Dean being lost have had a significance that the past two thousand years have not, Castiel kisses Dean chastely on the temple.
:::
There is an abandoned farmhouse standing alone on the horizon, its roof rising just barely above the knot of trees that surround it. Castiel trudges through the sopping, gray sludge of snow with Dean slung over his shoulder, and starlight and his own bone-white radiance to light his way.
Inside the farmhouse, it's neither particularly clean nor comfortable, but it's somewhere for Dean to rest. Castiel lays Dean down on the sofa. Then he puts the remains of an old chair into the wood-burning stove and tells it to burn. The fire is small and sulky, but adequate.
Turning back to Dean, Castiel unbuttons his overshirt - stiff with old blood - and then pushes his t-shirt up the smooth, hot expanse of his belly and chest. His fingertips search out the tattoo, illuminated by the stuttering firelight. The design is intact, it seems, but then Castiel notices the fatal flaw: a single break in the line, where he healed skin but not the ink drawn over it. It's enough, enough to have let the demon in.
Everything that Dean has suffered these last three days, the nightmare he has lived and the people he has killed - Castiel is to blame.
It is in the same second that he feels Uriel's presence in the room that he realizes he still has his hand on Dean's naked chest, his heartbeat throbbing beneath his touch. Quick and furtive, Castiel tugs Dean's t-shirt back into place.
"You're not expecting me to stay and play nursemaid too, are you?" Uriel says.
"No," says Castiel. "I want you to go to Sam. Tell him his brother is safe and well, and that he'll return soon."
"And what are you going to do?" Slow and dangerous, like the first spark of wildfire, Uriel smiles at him. "You're staying here with him, aren’t you?"
You wanna fuck him. It's the same tone of voice. That's what you're thinking when you look at him. You're staying here with him, aren't you? The same tone of voice.
Castiel thinks about trying to explain it, explain himself, and then he says, "Yes."
:::
The fire burns low but Castiel doesn't allow it to go out. He covers Dean with a thick blanket that smells faintly of old vegetables. Dean's sleep is restless, distressed, so Castiel thinks at first to tell him the stories he knows, the ancient and incredible things he has seen. But there is too much unhappiness in them. Too much war and terror, too much dying.
So he searches the farmhouse until he finds books, tattered things with broken spines and pages as thin as butterfly wings. He reads Dean poetry by T.S Eliot, which Castiel likes, and then he reads him the first two chapters of 'Dune', which Castiel does not like. He's about to begin on a Perry Mason mystery, which is missing a large section of pages from the beginning, when Dean stirs, rolls over onto his side and the frown on his face smoothes out.
Castiel sets the Perry Mason down very quietly and spends the rest of the night listening to the hush of Dean breathing.
:::
"Sam?"
Dean is still muzzy with sleep as he pushes back the blanket. He looks ill, strained.
"Uriel is with him," Castiel tells him. Before Dean has to ask, he adds, "He's okay."
"Ruby," Dean says. It's not a question.
"She's dead."
Dean licks his lips and looks away from Castiel sharply. It gives Castiel the vague feeling of having failed somehow, even though he is aware his responsibilities regarding Dean don't go so far as his emotional wellbeing and certainly not to the welfare of a demon.
Castiel chooses his words and then says, "She was a demon."
Dean shakes his head, not in disagreement.
"I know she helped you and your brother," Castiel tries again, "but she was a demon."
"Sam lov-!" Dean cuts off whatever words he was snarling out at Castiel, and shakes his head again, as if the effort of trying to make Castiel understand is not worth it.
"She was a demon," Castiel says for the third time. "Nothing like Jessica Moore. Ruby was not an innocent. Ruby was a soldier and soldiers fall."
Dean raises an eyebrow at Castiel. "And that's what I'm supposed to take to Sam? Sorry I killed yet one more person you cared about but-"
"You didn't do this," Castiel interrupts. He's leaning closer to Dean now, and Dean's face is tilted towards him, and Castiel feels an urge to fix him, like he had done in Hell, but he knew how to fix Hell and he doesn't know how to fix this. "You were possessed, that's what you take to your brother."
"She's still gone," Dean says. "How'm I s'posed to face Sam?"
He turns his face away from Castiel, and Castiel feels cold.
:::
They leave after that, walking out into the coppery-pink shine of the winter morning.
"Sam's in Great Falls," Castiel says.
Dean doesn't answer.
Dean finds an old truck in a small shed attached to the farmhouse and he tinkers with the engine until it rattles into life. He climbs in behind the wheel and Castiel waits uncertainly, until Dean gives him a look and says, "Would you get in already?"
They drive in silence. Dean doesn't fiddle with the radio or drum the steering wheel. He stares out at the horizon, where the sun is a pinprick of blinding light, and he hurts. Castiel feels him ache and he prays to God to help him understand why it had to take three days for Castiel to find Dean, to rescue him.
He studies Dean's profile: the firm line of his jaw and the swell of his lips, the sooty curve of his eyelashes, the white ridge of a recent scar on his brow.
"You're staring again," Dean says, flushing slightly. "'m I really that goddamn fascinating?"
"It was like being back in Hell, wasn't it?" Castiel says. He thinks of the blood on Dean's fingers, thinks of Dean's mouth smeared red, and he remembers the brutal, crazy creature he found in the Pit. "I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner."
"Which time?" Dean says. "Hell or being possessed?"
There is no accusation or bitterness in Dean's voice. It's just a question.
"Both times," Castiel says.
Half an hour later - by which time Castiel is sure they are not on their way to Great Falls - Dean says, "You came in the end. S'more than I was expecting."
:::
They stop in a small town outside of Scottsbluff, almost another hundred miles from Great Falls, and Dean starts towards a diner, stops and pats his pockets, curses.
"You don't have any money," Castiel says.
"You gonna fall from Grace or something if I hustle some pool?" he says.
Castiel removes a fresh ten-dollar bill from the pocket of his overcoat. "I thought it was a good idea to be prepared," he says, offering it to Dean. Dean looks at him, really looks at him. He smiles at Castiel as he takes the money and Castiel knows it was a good idea.
They sit in the diner together and still don't talk. There are Christmas garlands strung over the windows and a small, artificial tree is set on the counter. Castiel looks at the way the sunlight sparks off the colored baubles on the tree but it doesn’t hold his attention like Dean does. Dean has found a newspaper to read and he seems intent enough upon it that Castiel doesn't have to bother making an effort not to look at him.
Dean drinks plenty of coffee but he crumbles his piece of pie with his fork and leaves most of it on his plate.
If Castiel doesn't think about the whys, about what's happened and what's waiting to happen, he realizes he enjoys the quiet afternoon he spends with Dean.
:::
That night, Dean puts a spirit to rest. Castiel stands by the grave while Dean digs. It's cold but the exertion puts a light shine of sweat over Dean's skin. Castiel watches the flex and roll of Dean's shoulders and thinks about the muscles beneath the skin, and the cage of bone beneath that. It's fascinating to him how fragile humans are, and yet how much they achieve.
Dean should break so very easily, and yet here he is.
The cut and rasp of Dean's spade on dirt doesn't falter as he starts to talk. "There was this girl. Little more than a kid, really. She was going home to her family for the holidays. Had this big-ass bag full of gifts for them."
Castiel knows which bag Dean is talking about. He remembers it, half-hidden as it was by the girl's dead body - sliced up and sagging open - flung out over it. He doesn't interrupt Dean, lets him talk if that's what he wants to do.
"I was there, y'know, conscious," Dean says. "I saw it all happen, felt it happening. Couldn't stop it. Hated it. But…" For a second, there's a pause in the rhythm in his digging. "But, I caught myself thinking, 'I wouldn't'a done it like that. I'd'a left her eyes 'til last, so she had to watch.' I thought about how I could do it better, like how I'd'a done it in Hell."
Dean pulls himself out of the grave without looking at Castiel. He strikes a match, drops it down onto the rotten coffin and the whole thing goes up in a hollow rush of flame. They stand side by side to watch it burn.
"You aren't to blame," Castiel says. "The demon who rode you is." He hesitates before saying, "And I am. I didn't heal your tattoo properly. It didn't occur to me that I needed to."
For once, he doesn't want to look at Dean. He knows Dean is looking at him but he doesn't want to look at Dean right now.
"Seriously?" Dean says. "You didn't think, when I was fighting a war against demons, that making sure I couldn't get possessed by one figured high on your list of priorities?"
"I didn't think I needed to, because I thought I'd be with you. I thought, once I'd brought you out of Hell, that… that I'd be with you. All the time. That you'd be safe."
Dean doesn't answer. Slowly, Castiel turns to look at him. Dean is still watching him. It's strange for Dean to hold eye-contact like this. Usually, he shies away from it, and it's something altogether new for Castiel to be able to look so deep inside Dean. Dean's not hiding, he's letting Castiel look at him.
Dean's eyes are green and hazel, and there's dirt smudged along his cheekbone and his jaw, sweat in the hollows of his eyes. The firelight over Dean should remind Castiel of the Dean he found in Hell but he can only distractedly try to determine the precise shade between peach and gold that it turns Dean's skin.
"Oh," Dean says finally. He sounds a little breathless. "Okay."
:::
Dean is in the shower. Castiel is left waiting for him in the motel room.
He told Dean he doesn't need to sleep and therefore doesn't need a bed, but now he is left looking at the one bed in the room and thinking of the smirk the motel manager was wearing when they booked in. Castiel is innocent but not naïve; he knows what the motel manager thought, what he thought Castiel and Dean would be doing in this one bed in this cheap motel with hourly rates.
Castiel stands by the window and does not look at the bed. He is glad of this when he feels Uriel enter the room.
"He wants to know where his brother is and when he's coming back," Uriel says impatiently. "What do you want me to tell him? That Dean's on a roadtrip with you and you're both merrily heading in the opposite direction?"
"Dean still needs time," Castiel says. "He's not ready. The possession was hard on him and he regrets what happened to Ruby."
Uriel blinks. "She was a demon," he says, grinding the words out. "He's mourning a demon?"
"Sam was…" Castiel deliberates on how to express it without getting Uriel further wound up, "emotionally involved with her. Dean is sad because his brother has lost someone he cared about."
"A demon," Uriel says.
He shakes his head, opens his mouth to say more but the shower shuts off.
"Go back to Sam," Castiel says swiftly. "Keep him safe. Tell him his brother is fine and will come back when he's ready."
Uriel is gone just as Dean opens the bathroom door. Dean is in a t-shirt and his shorts. He's toweling his hair dry. Barefooted, he pads into the room and throws the towel down over the back of the chair. It hits and then slides to the floor. Dean doesn't even notice.
He doesn't look at Castiel as he says, "You're staring again. Why do you do that?"
"You're beautiful," Castiel says. He's honest because it's easiest.
Dean pauses in the middle of flipping the blanket back on the bed. "Oh," he says. Pauses, then says, "Are you, y'know, allowed to say things like that?"
"In finding you beautiful I'm simply adoring my Father's creation," Castiel tells him.
"Right. Well, could you adore with less staring?"
Patiently, Castiel turns his gaze to the window. It's snowing again but it won't settle. The moon is fat and bleached in the starless night sky. This close to the window, Castiel can feel how bitterly cold it is outside. It's always colder after Christmas, bleak as the new year stretches out before them.
He listens to the bed squeak as Dean climbs in; the blankets rustle, Dean plumps the pillows. Then silence.
"You gonna go perch on the roof or something?" Dean says. "Tuck your head under your wing?"
"Will it bother you if I stay?"
"Why would it bother me?" Dean shoots back without a moment's hesitation. It's almost aggressive.
They've come to it at last. Castiel had wondered if maybe they'd circle it forever. It needs to be addressed; it can't stay between them, hinted at by the tone of Uriel's voice and the memory of what the demon said. Castiel supposes it's better to deal with it now, instead of waiting for Uriel to be in the room or, worse perhaps, Sam.
"We should talk about what the demon said. We should talk about what it said I wanted from you."
"Demons lie," Dean says instantly.
"Except when they tell the truth."
Dean lets out a breath and goes quiet. Castiel turns to look at him. He seems small, hunched up in the bed with his damp hair and too-wide eyes. He lets out another breath and picks at the hem of his blanket. His lips move soundlessly for a moment before he speaks.
"Was it telling the truth?" he says. His voice is quiet.
Castiel watches the world spin outside the window; he feels his grace deep down inside, hot and cold all at once.
"It said you wanted that from me. Do you?"
"If-" Dean says. The word hangs there, ponderous and full of possibility. Castiel focuses on that single word, upon which the very nature of his existence hinges. "If I did, if we did that, would you fall?"
Castiel closes his eyes and sees his grace, iridescent and thick. He imagines touching it, the sparkling-white luminance of it. And he feels his vessel's body constrict, feels the skin grow hot and tight around him when he thinks about Dean.
"I think so, yes," he says.
"Then no," says Dean. "No, I don't want that from you."
Castiel nods and says, "Thank you."
He knows that he'll never allow himself to have this conversation with Dean ever again. And he knows that the one thing in all God's creation that could make him fall… …won't let it happen.
He's not going to fall.
:::
In the morning, Castiel waits in the truck for Dean. Dean climbs in beside him, without looking at him, and opens up the map from the glove pocket.
"You're going to Great Falls," Castiel says.
"No," Dean says. "No, I can't. Not yet. I can't face Sam after what I-"
"Your brother needs you. And you need him." Castiel slides the map from Dean's hand and returns it to the glove box. "You're going to Great Falls."
"You don't fucking well get it, do you? I can't-"
"Sam is alone and missing you," Castiel says. "He'll understand what happened to you. And he will forgive you."
Dean's gaze is fixed on his hands where they rest on the steering wheel. His jaw is clenched. Castiel goes on watching the sky melt from pewter to powdery pink and blue.
"Why are you doing this?" Dean says, his voice little more than a whisper. "Is this because of-?"
"It's because sometimes we need saving from ourselves." He still doesn't look at Dean when he says, "Go to Great Falls. Go to Sam."
It's quiet in the truck for a long moment. Then Dean turns the key in the ignition and they pull out onto the road.
:::
They've been driving a full two hours before Dean says, "Thanks."
Castiel doesn't answer. He just smiles and nods and sinks deeper into his grace.
~end
I have an audience with the pope
and I'm saving the world at eight
but if she says she needs me,
she says she needs me, everybody's going to have to wait.
(An Audience With The Pope - Elbow)