Humble Pie [12/20]
Dean wakes up slowly, the peeling paint on the ceiling swimming into view along with the slow sound of deep, relaxed breathing from his brother in the other bed. The curtains are drawn but they’re thin, and judging from the amount of light that’s managing to get through them to partially flood the room, it’s got to be nearly lunchtime.
His stomach agrees.
Okay, fine. Time to get up. Sleeping in was never going to last, anyhow. Not now that he’s woken up.
He drags himself out of bed, casting around momentarily for his pants which he must’ve shed on the way to the bed although he can’t actually remember much other than bringing Castiel in and laying him down on the crappy sofa downstairs.
He finds a pair of pants and is halfway through pulling them on before he realizes they’re ten sizes too big. Sam’s. Damn. Then, to make things worse, in hopping around and trying to get them off, he stubs a toe, and his subsequent swearing wakes up Sam, who levers himself onto his elbows and does his best impression of an amused pigeon.
Dean’s response is to chuck a pillow in his brother’s direction. “Quit laughing at me, bitch.”
“Jerk.”
Sam gets up and pulls on his own pants while Dean leans in the doorway, smirking.
“You done?” he asks finally, when Sam’s not only located all his clothing but run his fingers through his hair to sort out most of the knots.
“Whatever, man. We should get downstairs.”
“Damn straight. I’m starving.”
Dean’s serious, but Sam seems to find this amusing, and he’s still smiling slightly as they rumble down the stairs and into Bobby’s kitchen.
30 minutes later and with breakfast over, Bobby calls a planning meeting.
Dean looks around the room at the faces gathered there - Bobby behind his desk, partially hidden behind a wall of books and bottle of whisky; Ellen on the chair by the window; Gabriel (shoulder bandaged, pale and with dark shadows beneath his eyes but all in one piece) and Crowley in the kitchen, Crowley just far enough from his lover to show how pissed he is at him right now, but also just close enough to him to send a message of ‘you fuck with him, you fuck with me’ to the entire rest of the world; Jo leaning casually in the doorway to the left, her blonde hair curling distractingly over her shoulders so that Dean has to clear his throat and busy himself with finding a mug for his coffee. Strange, isn’t it, how knowing someone is off-limits makes them so much more attractive? Take Castiel, for instance. He was off-limits from the word go, when Sam first put his foot down, but not he’s doubly - no, triply - off-limits because a) he’s actually Zachariah Adler’s property, and b) he’s actually no one’s property at all and his big brother just turned up which is awkward at the best of times let alone now with all the other complications and shit.
Speaking of. Sam’s by the bookshelves, ridiculously tall and with his eternal ‘somebody just shot a panda’ face on. Little Sammy, Dean’s baby brother who’s not so much of a baby anymore but who’s still his responsibility.
And Castiel?
Castiel is sitting on the floor a few feet away from Dean, roughly halfway between him and Ellen, legs tucked neatly underneath himself and head slightly bowed, although whether from submission or habit or a desire not to meet anyone’s eyes, Dean doesn’t know. I know, though, and I can tell you that it’s a mixture of all three, plus a fourth Dean never would have guessed: embarrassment. Castiel cannot stand being seen like this, not by anyone, but especially not by his brother. It makes him want to curl up with shame. Oh, how far he has fallen! He used to have the world at his fingertips; now, he is less than nothing.
But back to Dean. Not least because he’s going through his usual self-hatred ritual of ‘I brought everyone here, this isn’t their fight, what am I doing, this is all my fault’. It sounds a little bit funny when I say it like that. But it’s not. Not to me, and certainly not to Dean. You would have to experience it yourself to understand fully - and, I don’t know, maybe you do. Maybe you’re just like Dean, at least in this respect.
But if you’re not, let me have a stab at explaining.
This is the feeling of waking up every morning guilty. Of laughing and joking because you know that if you’re serious for just the slightest moment you might break down. You might never bounce back. This is the feeling of exhaustion so deep it’s ingrained in your bones; it never leaves, so you’ve evolved, you’ve come to accept it, and you try to move on, dragging all the weariness and guiltiness along with you like a ball and chain. Your heart is your lead weight, it pulls you down, and you can’t bring yourself to examine it because if you do you will just hate yourself even more.
This is the feeling of being strong for those around you, but especially your little brother, because that’s what you do, that’s what you’ve always done and always will do. It’s not your sole purpose in life, but it is your most important one. And you try to feign indifference, you try not to care about people too deeply because you know that you’ll only get hurt, either when you realize that they don’t care about you or when they themselves are hurt because of you, when something else is your fault, another thing to feel guilty about.
This is the feeling of being afraid, all the damn time, and hiding it because you have to.
This is the feeling of responsibility.
This is the feeling of being Dean Winchester. And it never, ever goes away.
“This Adler guy,” Ellen says once they’re all on the same page. “Sounds like he’d be off your back if you just gave him the slave.”
Dean has always respected Crowley’s level-headedness, but now it turns from mild respect to downright admiration, because the man somehow manages to restrain Gabriel who has launched into full Attack Mode, which would be Super-Effective if it wasn’t for Crowley.
“That’s my brother you’re talking about!”
“I know that and I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped.”
“Wait a minute here,” breaks in Dean, because it looks like Crowley’s having a hard time stopping Gabriel from strangling someone. “No one’s giving anyone to Adler, okay?”
“Why not?” asks Jo from the doorway. “No offense, but I don’t see how you’re going to get out of this any other way.”
“First, because I say so, and second, because it doesn’t seem to me like Adler’s the backing-down type. Even if we gave him Cas - which we’re not - something tells me he’s not going to turn around all smiles and sunshine and drop charges or whatever. He wants us gone. That may be because of Cas, it may be because of what we know. But either way, he’s not going to just leave us alone, even if we give him Cas.” A sea of blank faces. “Is he?’ C’mon, Cas, help me out here. You know the guy. Would he back out?”
Castiel looks up at him, blue eyes registering surprise at being included. He blinks once, thoughtfully, before speaking. When it does come, he sounds careful, timid almost, and each word is enunciated as though he’s avoiding treading on broken glass: “I highly doubt it. My Ma- Mister Adler is not exactly what you would call … forgiving.” A wry twitch of the mouth, too small and fleeting to be called a smile, has Dean’s insides twisting unpleasantly. “I have no reason to believe that he would look favorably upon you.”
Dean pauses to swallow because for some reason his mouth feels horribly dry. “Well,” he says finally. “There we have it. It’s not happening. We need another plan.”
“How about the good old-fashioned ‘give Gabriel his brother back and get on the first plane out of here’?” Crowley’s voice is smooth as ever. “Then maybe I can go home. I’ve got a rather important appointment, and delightful as your company is, I’d really rather not miss it, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s not, and we can’t.”
That’s what Dean says, anyway. Because, technically, they could. It would be relatively easy to fly off to somewhere different - Europe, maybe, so they don’t have to learn an entire different fucking language, although getting through customs at the other side might be more tricky because of all the new immigration laws - but they could do it, with a little bit of lying to see them through. But to make it work, to make it safe, they’d have to split up. Take off in different directions and never have anything to do with one another ever again. Run, and keep running.
But this is the Winchesters we’re talking about here. And, for better or worse, they don’t do ‘alone’. They are each other’s greatest weakness, but together they’re stronger than they could ever be apart.
Yes, they could do this. They’re both good at what they do, and Sam even has enough education to be able to get himself a decent, law-abiding job if he wanted to. They could survive alone. Dean could do this on his own. He just doesn’t want to.
And there, my friends, are the Winchester brothers in a nutshell.
“What makes it most complicated,” muses Sam, “is the whole Zachariah aspect. I mean, keeping under the radar of the cops and Gordon is hard enough, but Zachariah seems to be helping us. He calls us whenever the police are about to arrive, right? He warned us about the Roadhouse, and again with the roadblock, and then again last night. But he works for Divinity, who are the ones who sent Gordon in the first place …”
Jo shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t like the call his bosses have made.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense - he wants Cas back, so why would he be helping us? I mean, he’s on the side of the cops, right?”
“Unless the police are on his side,” Castiel says gravely.
“How do you mean?”
“A man of his power could easily be controlling the police, using me as an excuse for them to be chasing after you. But he doesn’t want them to catch you, he just wants to squeeze you. So he can control you. That’s what he does: controls people.”
Dean is glad that he manages not to shiver, because the look in Castiel’s eyes is damn scary. “But control us to do what?” he wonders.
“I don’t know. Keep you quiet, maybe. But I do have an idea. Because what you really need is to stop Divinity and the police from coming after you, and I think it could be possible.”
The shock in the room is palpable, surprise and confusion evident on every face. In the end, it’s Ellen who asks the question that all of them are thinking: “How?”
Castiel stands now, bare feet brushing against the wood of Bobby’s floor. “The slaves,” he says seriously. “We could use them to our advantage. If I could get word to them, I am sure there are many who would help us.”
“Get them to rebel, you mean?” asks Jo, one step ahead as usual.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s very romantic and not at all practical,” says Crowley finally, when the implication of what Castiel has just said has sunken in.
“Thanks for your input, kid,” Bobby says, somewhat more kindly. “But that just ain’t gonna work.”
“It could. I have some … friends. Balthazar. Inias. Maybe even Uriel and Hester. They would help us.”
“Cas … Slaves don’t rebel, not anymore. Divinity will have all sorts of security measures and shit. There’s no way these pals of yours would risk their lives to help us.”
“It would be to help them, too. And I think you will find that a slave will gladly risk a lot more than just their life if there is just the smallest chance of freedom.”
And no one argues with the look on Castiel’s face.
His stomach agrees.
Okay, fine. Time to get up. Sleeping in was never going to last, anyhow. Not now that he’s woken up.
He drags himself out of bed, casting around momentarily for his pants which he must’ve shed on the way to the bed although he can’t actually remember much other than bringing Castiel in and laying him down on the crappy sofa downstairs.
He finds a pair of pants and is halfway through pulling them on before he realizes they’re ten sizes too big. Sam’s. Damn. Then, to make things worse, in hopping around and trying to get them off, he stubs a toe, and his subsequent swearing wakes up Sam, who levers himself onto his elbows and does his best impression of an amused pigeon.
Dean’s response is to chuck a pillow in his brother’s direction. “Quit laughing at me, bitch.”
“Jerk.”
Sam gets up and pulls on his own pants while Dean leans in the doorway, smirking.
“You done?” he asks finally, when Sam’s not only located all his clothing but run his fingers through his hair to sort out most of the knots.
“Whatever, man. We should get downstairs.”
“Damn straight. I’m starving.”
Dean’s serious, but Sam seems to find this amusing, and he’s still smiling slightly as they rumble down the stairs and into Bobby’s kitchen.
30 minutes later and with breakfast over, Bobby calls a planning meeting.
Dean looks around the room at the faces gathered there - Bobby behind his desk, partially hidden behind a wall of books and bottle of whisky; Ellen on the chair by the window; Gabriel (shoulder bandaged, pale and with dark shadows beneath his eyes but all in one piece) and Crowley in the kitchen, Crowley just far enough from his lover to show how pissed he is at him right now, but also just close enough to him to send a message of ‘you fuck with him, you fuck with me’ to the entire rest of the world; Jo leaning casually in the doorway to the left, her blonde hair curling distractingly over her shoulders so that Dean has to clear his throat and busy himself with finding a mug for his coffee. Strange, isn’t it, how knowing someone is off-limits makes them so much more attractive? Take Castiel, for instance. He was off-limits from the word go, when Sam first put his foot down, but not he’s doubly - no, triply - off-limits because a) he’s actually Zachariah Adler’s property, and b) he’s actually no one’s property at all and his big brother just turned up which is awkward at the best of times let alone now with all the other complications and shit.
Speaking of. Sam’s by the bookshelves, ridiculously tall and with his eternal ‘somebody just shot a panda’ face on. Little Sammy, Dean’s baby brother who’s not so much of a baby anymore but who’s still his responsibility.
And Castiel?
Castiel is sitting on the floor a few feet away from Dean, roughly halfway between him and Ellen, legs tucked neatly underneath himself and head slightly bowed, although whether from submission or habit or a desire not to meet anyone’s eyes, Dean doesn’t know. I know, though, and I can tell you that it’s a mixture of all three, plus a fourth Dean never would have guessed: embarrassment. Castiel cannot stand being seen like this, not by anyone, but especially not by his brother. It makes him want to curl up with shame. Oh, how far he has fallen! He used to have the world at his fingertips; now, he is less than nothing.
But back to Dean. Not least because he’s going through his usual self-hatred ritual of ‘I brought everyone here, this isn’t their fight, what am I doing, this is all my fault’. It sounds a little bit funny when I say it like that. But it’s not. Not to me, and certainly not to Dean. You would have to experience it yourself to understand fully - and, I don’t know, maybe you do. Maybe you’re just like Dean, at least in this respect.
But if you’re not, let me have a stab at explaining.
This is the feeling of waking up every morning guilty. Of laughing and joking because you know that if you’re serious for just the slightest moment you might break down. You might never bounce back. This is the feeling of exhaustion so deep it’s ingrained in your bones; it never leaves, so you’ve evolved, you’ve come to accept it, and you try to move on, dragging all the weariness and guiltiness along with you like a ball and chain. Your heart is your lead weight, it pulls you down, and you can’t bring yourself to examine it because if you do you will just hate yourself even more.
This is the feeling of being strong for those around you, but especially your little brother, because that’s what you do, that’s what you’ve always done and always will do. It’s not your sole purpose in life, but it is your most important one. And you try to feign indifference, you try not to care about people too deeply because you know that you’ll only get hurt, either when you realize that they don’t care about you or when they themselves are hurt because of you, when something else is your fault, another thing to feel guilty about.
This is the feeling of being afraid, all the damn time, and hiding it because you have to.
This is the feeling of responsibility.
This is the feeling of being Dean Winchester. And it never, ever goes away.
“This Adler guy,” Ellen says once they’re all on the same page. “Sounds like he’d be off your back if you just gave him the slave.”
Dean has always respected Crowley’s level-headedness, but now it turns from mild respect to downright admiration, because the man somehow manages to restrain Gabriel who has launched into full Attack Mode, which would be Super-Effective if it wasn’t for Crowley.
“That’s my brother you’re talking about!”
“I know that and I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped.”
“Wait a minute here,” breaks in Dean, because it looks like Crowley’s having a hard time stopping Gabriel from strangling someone. “No one’s giving anyone to Adler, okay?”
“Why not?” asks Jo from the doorway. “No offense, but I don’t see how you’re going to get out of this any other way.”
“First, because I say so, and second, because it doesn’t seem to me like Adler’s the backing-down type. Even if we gave him Cas - which we’re not - something tells me he’s not going to turn around all smiles and sunshine and drop charges or whatever. He wants us gone. That may be because of Cas, it may be because of what we know. But either way, he’s not going to just leave us alone, even if we give him Cas.” A sea of blank faces. “Is he?’ C’mon, Cas, help me out here. You know the guy. Would he back out?”
Castiel looks up at him, blue eyes registering surprise at being included. He blinks once, thoughtfully, before speaking. When it does come, he sounds careful, timid almost, and each word is enunciated as though he’s avoiding treading on broken glass: “I highly doubt it. My Ma- Mister Adler is not exactly what you would call … forgiving.” A wry twitch of the mouth, too small and fleeting to be called a smile, has Dean’s insides twisting unpleasantly. “I have no reason to believe that he would look favorably upon you.”
Dean pauses to swallow because for some reason his mouth feels horribly dry. “Well,” he says finally. “There we have it. It’s not happening. We need another plan.”
“How about the good old-fashioned ‘give Gabriel his brother back and get on the first plane out of here’?” Crowley’s voice is smooth as ever. “Then maybe I can go home. I’ve got a rather important appointment, and delightful as your company is, I’d really rather not miss it, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s not, and we can’t.”
That’s what Dean says, anyway. Because, technically, they could. It would be relatively easy to fly off to somewhere different - Europe, maybe, so they don’t have to learn an entire different fucking language, although getting through customs at the other side might be more tricky because of all the new immigration laws - but they could do it, with a little bit of lying to see them through. But to make it work, to make it safe, they’d have to split up. Take off in different directions and never have anything to do with one another ever again. Run, and keep running.
But this is the Winchesters we’re talking about here. And, for better or worse, they don’t do ‘alone’. They are each other’s greatest weakness, but together they’re stronger than they could ever be apart.
Yes, they could do this. They’re both good at what they do, and Sam even has enough education to be able to get himself a decent, law-abiding job if he wanted to. They could survive alone. Dean could do this on his own. He just doesn’t want to.
And there, my friends, are the Winchester brothers in a nutshell.
“What makes it most complicated,” muses Sam, “is the whole Zachariah aspect. I mean, keeping under the radar of the cops and Gordon is hard enough, but Zachariah seems to be helping us. He calls us whenever the police are about to arrive, right? He warned us about the Roadhouse, and again with the roadblock, and then again last night. But he works for Divinity, who are the ones who sent Gordon in the first place …”
Jo shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t like the call his bosses have made.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense - he wants Cas back, so why would he be helping us? I mean, he’s on the side of the cops, right?”
“Unless the police are on his side,” Castiel says gravely.
“How do you mean?”
“A man of his power could easily be controlling the police, using me as an excuse for them to be chasing after you. But he doesn’t want them to catch you, he just wants to squeeze you. So he can control you. That’s what he does: controls people.”
Dean is glad that he manages not to shiver, because the look in Castiel’s eyes is damn scary. “But control us to do what?” he wonders.
“I don’t know. Keep you quiet, maybe. But I do have an idea. Because what you really need is to stop Divinity and the police from coming after you, and I think it could be possible.”
The shock in the room is palpable, surprise and confusion evident on every face. In the end, it’s Ellen who asks the question that all of them are thinking: “How?”
Castiel stands now, bare feet brushing against the wood of Bobby’s floor. “The slaves,” he says seriously. “We could use them to our advantage. If I could get word to them, I am sure there are many who would help us.”
“Get them to rebel, you mean?” asks Jo, one step ahead as usual.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s very romantic and not at all practical,” says Crowley finally, when the implication of what Castiel has just said has sunken in.
“Thanks for your input, kid,” Bobby says, somewhat more kindly. “But that just ain’t gonna work.”
“It could. I have some … friends. Balthazar. Inias. Maybe even Uriel and Hester. They would help us.”
“Cas … Slaves don’t rebel, not anymore. Divinity will have all sorts of security measures and shit. There’s no way these pals of yours would risk their lives to help us.”
“It would be to help them, too. And I think you will find that a slave will gladly risk a lot more than just their life if there is just the smallest chance of freedom.”
And no one argues with the look on Castiel’s face.