fic: threadbare
TITLE: threadbare
RATING: PG 13
GENRE: gen, h/c
SPOILERS: up to 9.13
WORDS: 1817
CHARACTERS: Dean, Cas, Sam
threadbare
Castiel is trying to break into a can of alphabet soup with a pairing knife.
“Usually a little easier with a can opener,” Sam says, spying on him from the doorway.
Cas pretends like he hasn’t heard him and continues stabbing at the edge of the tin. It’s possible he’d forgotten a can opener was a device that… existed, but he doesn’t want to give Sam the satisfaction. Not tonight. It’s petty, but Cas doesn’t care.
Sam sighs impatiently, stalks into the kitchen and rummages loudly through a big drawer of utensils.
“Swear we have one here somewhere…”
“I don’t need your help, Sam.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Just go back to bed.”
“Who said I was in bed?” Sam asks, yawning. He looks at Cas’ face and his eyes widen slightly. “Hey. What’s going on with you? Is everything okay?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Sam closes the drawer and leans against the counter. “I don’t know, man. You tell me. You’re gripping that knife like it’s the last Apollo bar on the island.“
Cas wants to scream. Instead, he pries open a jagged corner of the soup can and dumps it into the pot on the stove. “Did you tell Dean he was selfish?”
“What?”
“Why would you say something so… so…. hurtful?” Cas asks, looking up from the soup.
“Seriously? You taking sides now?”
This is the worst part of being friends with the Winchesters. The part they never told him about when he signed on. Castiel can accept the necessary violence, the new and various enemies accrued purely through association. It’s to be expected. What isn’t to be expected is this terrible feeling of being pulled in opposite directions by the very people whom he’s relied on to guide him.
Right now, though, he knows exactly where his sympathies lie. He can’t help it.
“It’s not about sides, Sam. It’s about methods of approach,” he says, doing his best to sound vaguely impartial. Alienating Sam at this point surely won’t help matters. He has to set an example.
“Methods of approach? Really?” Sam asks, folding his arms across his chest and staring at the battered knife.
“I get it,” Cas says, tuning on the burner. “Because of the way I opened the can, you consider me hypocritical.”
Sam shakes his head. “Cas… Dean needed to hear the truth.” He paces to the sink and pours himself some water, shutting the tap abruptly.
“Sam,” Cas says quietly, and squints at Sam who seems so self-assured, so convinced he’s right, that it’s condescending. It’s also sadly unconvincing. “Is it possible… that maybe you needed to hurt him because he hurt you?”
Sam swallows the full glass in two long and focused gulps.
“No. Look, Cas. I get that you’re trying to make peace here, but there’s a hell of a lot you don’t know.”
“There ‘s a lot you don’t know, Sam.”
Sam raises his eyebrows. “Like what?”
“Maybe you should ask Dean.”
“You don’t think I’ve tried? Damnit, Cas,” he says, slamming his empty glass on the counter. “You know how much better things would be right now if Dean could just tell me what he was actually feeling?”
“Yes. You’re right about that.”
“Look, I may have been a little harsh, but I was angry, man. Honestly, I’m still pretty pissed. Seems like I’m entitled to that, you know?”
“I understand, Sam. I do. Just don’t loose sight of what’s important. I don’t want you to regret… I mean, if anything were to happen… “
“Hey. Is there something you’re not telling me? Is it Metatron? What? The angels?”
“No Sam. Nothing like that. Never mind. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said anything. It’s just difficult seeing the two of you so distant.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll work it out somehow.”
“Of course,” Cas says, swallowing the lump in his throat.
“Anyways, what’s with the soup? I thought you were uh, disgusted by all the molecules in food or whatever.”
“I… I enjoy the letters,” is the best Cas can come up with on the spot. “There’s an appealing surrealism to eating a language.”
“Uh huh. Sure there is…” Sam says with a soft laugh. He hands Cas a big brown mug from the dish rack and pats him on the shoulder. “Night, Cas.”
Cas feigns a smile and stirs the soup as it starts to bubble, tries to stop himself from fantasizing about dumping the entire thing on Sam’s head.
-*-*-
It’s much darker in Dean’s room than the kitchen. The smell of sweat mingles with that of Dean’s musty LPs and the mothballs left behind by the previous tenants. Dean is exactly where Cas left him, sitting in bed hugging his knees to his chest. He raises his head only slightly, rubs a hand over his damp, raw looking eyes.
Cas sets the soup down on the night table. He sits on the edge of the bed facing Dean, close enough to run his hand down the back of Dean’s head and rest it on his neck. Dean doesn’t flinch. “I brought soup,” Cas says.
“Thanks,” Dean says into his knees, hoarse and timid. He looks exhausted. But Cas supposes what Dean’s struggled through in these past few hours would drain the energy out of anyone. “Not really hungry.”
Cas takes his hand back to clasp it with the other. “Dean, you need to tell Sam.”
Dean shakes his head. His lips rub against his jeans and it becomes something for him to focus on. He’s so shaken it’s hard to imagine he’s been able to hide it from Sam at all. Or it would be hard to imagine, if Cas didn’t know Dean as well as he does.
“We can help you, Dean. But we need to do this together.”
“Cas, please. I can’t… He won’t… Fuck.“
This is the thing about Dean. He’s fine-or at least he can pretend to be-until he actually has to express himself. That’s when he falls to pieces. That’s when Cas’s heart breaks; as he watches Dean struggle to hold himself together enough to simply put six words together without choking on his own vulnerability.
As Dean’s entire body tenses and he curls further into himself, Cas moves closer, runs his hands up and down Dean’s biceps. “It’s alright, Dean. Just breathe,” Cas says. It doesn’t matter what Dean’s trying to say anymore.
As soon as he’d returned to the bunker, Cas had sensed it. Maybe even before then. Dean hadn’t tried to hide the Mark from him, but he had acted nonchalant about it. A means to an end, Dean had explained, swallowing his third whiskey of the evening. Just a little demonic drivers license.
But Castiel knew. It was so much worse than that.
He had waited for Dean to turn in for the night, knocked on his door expecting a confrontation. It hadn’t gone quite as he’d expected; without anything more from Cas than a demand that they talk, Dean had quietly broken down.
It’s doin’ something to me, Cas, he’d whispered, and proceeded to confess everything; On the past few hunts he’d experienced moments where he’d felt as though he were changing, where he’d had really fucked up thoughts. It was like a cancer of hate and anger that coated his insides. He felt as though he was being hollowed out, losing vital organs.
Dean had struggled to get all these words out, often unable to. Teeth clenched. Eyes filling to the brim with tears more than once. Cas had sat and listened for almost two hours. Told Dean that what he knew of the Mark of Cain was limited, but indeed frightening.
And now, closed in on himself like a wounded coyote, still struggling to breathe evenly, Dean’s exactly that: frightened. Maybe more frightened than Castiel has ever seen him.
Taking as deep a breath as he can manage, Dean stares at the ceiling and slowly tries to speak again. “I know I signed up. I asked for this. But…” His knee jiggles and he rocks back and forth just slightly enough to notice.
Cas rests his hand on Dean’s knee and it stills. He should have been with him. Should have forced him and Sam to stick together. Yes, Sam had needed healing. But Dean had needed looking after too. He’d needed a friend, and instead he’d had Crowley.
Now it’s up to Cas to make up for that. “You weren’t yourself,” he says. Dean stills completely then, looks up at Cas with wide, lost eyes.
“Cas… I’m not myself. I feel like… like this thing’s eatin’ me inside out.”
“Dean…”
“I already hurt enough people tryin’ to do good,” Dean whispers. He holds his arm out then, for the first time, and grips it just below the mark with his other hand. “If this thing’s doin’ to me what it did to… what it did….”
“Dean, I won’t let that happen.”
“Yeah. Neither will I,” Dean says coldly, as his gaze wanders down his arm a few dangerous inches.
Cas hates that about Dean. Hates how little value he places on his own well-being.
“Don’t say that. Don’t think that, Dean. Please. I won’t let you give up on yourself so easily.”
“That ain’t givin’ up, Cas. It’s taking control.” He makes a fist with the hand on his outstretched arm and draws it towards his chest. He flexes his jaw.
“You don’t need to have control all the time. You don’t need to do this alone.”
“Don’t you get it? I need to protect you, Sam, everyone… from me.”
“And what about you? You are worth protecting. You are worth saving.”
Dean turns away. He rolls onto his side and stares into the space between the bed and his desk, his fingers twisting at the corner of his pillowcase. Cas knows. He knows Dean wants help. The problem is that he doesn’t believe he deserves it.
Cas sits against the headboard, letting Dean face away from him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t touch him. He only listens to Dean’s breathing, waiting for it to even out.
The idea of it stopping is unacceptable.
Dean doesn’t sleep, but eventually he closes his eyes and curls his arm around his pillow, hugging it to his chest. Cas draws up the wool blanket from the foot of the bed and tucks it over Dean’s body. It’s scratchy and threadbare and Cas recognizes it from pallets Dean’s slept on before. It isn’t enough. He’s never had enough.
How can he make Dean understand? Castiel has made numerous errors in judgment, chosen to ally himself with the wrong side more than once. But the one cause that he will always be sure of, the one battle that he knows he’s always on the right side of is the one to save Dean Winchester. Cas knows no one more deserving.
RATING: PG 13
GENRE: gen, h/c
SPOILERS: up to 9.13
WORDS: 1817
CHARACTERS: Dean, Cas, Sam
threadbare
Castiel is trying to break into a can of alphabet soup with a pairing knife.
“Usually a little easier with a can opener,” Sam says, spying on him from the doorway.
Cas pretends like he hasn’t heard him and continues stabbing at the edge of the tin. It’s possible he’d forgotten a can opener was a device that… existed, but he doesn’t want to give Sam the satisfaction. Not tonight. It’s petty, but Cas doesn’t care.
Sam sighs impatiently, stalks into the kitchen and rummages loudly through a big drawer of utensils.
“Swear we have one here somewhere…”
“I don’t need your help, Sam.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Just go back to bed.”
“Who said I was in bed?” Sam asks, yawning. He looks at Cas’ face and his eyes widen slightly. “Hey. What’s going on with you? Is everything okay?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Sam closes the drawer and leans against the counter. “I don’t know, man. You tell me. You’re gripping that knife like it’s the last Apollo bar on the island.“
Cas wants to scream. Instead, he pries open a jagged corner of the soup can and dumps it into the pot on the stove. “Did you tell Dean he was selfish?”
“What?”
“Why would you say something so… so…. hurtful?” Cas asks, looking up from the soup.
“Seriously? You taking sides now?”
This is the worst part of being friends with the Winchesters. The part they never told him about when he signed on. Castiel can accept the necessary violence, the new and various enemies accrued purely through association. It’s to be expected. What isn’t to be expected is this terrible feeling of being pulled in opposite directions by the very people whom he’s relied on to guide him.
Right now, though, he knows exactly where his sympathies lie. He can’t help it.
“It’s not about sides, Sam. It’s about methods of approach,” he says, doing his best to sound vaguely impartial. Alienating Sam at this point surely won’t help matters. He has to set an example.
“Methods of approach? Really?” Sam asks, folding his arms across his chest and staring at the battered knife.
“I get it,” Cas says, tuning on the burner. “Because of the way I opened the can, you consider me hypocritical.”
Sam shakes his head. “Cas… Dean needed to hear the truth.” He paces to the sink and pours himself some water, shutting the tap abruptly.
“Sam,” Cas says quietly, and squints at Sam who seems so self-assured, so convinced he’s right, that it’s condescending. It’s also sadly unconvincing. “Is it possible… that maybe you needed to hurt him because he hurt you?”
Sam swallows the full glass in two long and focused gulps.
“No. Look, Cas. I get that you’re trying to make peace here, but there’s a hell of a lot you don’t know.”
“There ‘s a lot you don’t know, Sam.”
Sam raises his eyebrows. “Like what?”
“Maybe you should ask Dean.”
“You don’t think I’ve tried? Damnit, Cas,” he says, slamming his empty glass on the counter. “You know how much better things would be right now if Dean could just tell me what he was actually feeling?”
“Yes. You’re right about that.”
“Look, I may have been a little harsh, but I was angry, man. Honestly, I’m still pretty pissed. Seems like I’m entitled to that, you know?”
“I understand, Sam. I do. Just don’t loose sight of what’s important. I don’t want you to regret… I mean, if anything were to happen… “
“Hey. Is there something you’re not telling me? Is it Metatron? What? The angels?”
“No Sam. Nothing like that. Never mind. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said anything. It’s just difficult seeing the two of you so distant.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll work it out somehow.”
“Of course,” Cas says, swallowing the lump in his throat.
“Anyways, what’s with the soup? I thought you were uh, disgusted by all the molecules in food or whatever.”
“I… I enjoy the letters,” is the best Cas can come up with on the spot. “There’s an appealing surrealism to eating a language.”
“Uh huh. Sure there is…” Sam says with a soft laugh. He hands Cas a big brown mug from the dish rack and pats him on the shoulder. “Night, Cas.”
Cas feigns a smile and stirs the soup as it starts to bubble, tries to stop himself from fantasizing about dumping the entire thing on Sam’s head.
-*-*-
It’s much darker in Dean’s room than the kitchen. The smell of sweat mingles with that of Dean’s musty LPs and the mothballs left behind by the previous tenants. Dean is exactly where Cas left him, sitting in bed hugging his knees to his chest. He raises his head only slightly, rubs a hand over his damp, raw looking eyes.
Cas sets the soup down on the night table. He sits on the edge of the bed facing Dean, close enough to run his hand down the back of Dean’s head and rest it on his neck. Dean doesn’t flinch. “I brought soup,” Cas says.
“Thanks,” Dean says into his knees, hoarse and timid. He looks exhausted. But Cas supposes what Dean’s struggled through in these past few hours would drain the energy out of anyone. “Not really hungry.”
Cas takes his hand back to clasp it with the other. “Dean, you need to tell Sam.”
Dean shakes his head. His lips rub against his jeans and it becomes something for him to focus on. He’s so shaken it’s hard to imagine he’s been able to hide it from Sam at all. Or it would be hard to imagine, if Cas didn’t know Dean as well as he does.
“We can help you, Dean. But we need to do this together.”
“Cas, please. I can’t… He won’t… Fuck.“
This is the thing about Dean. He’s fine-or at least he can pretend to be-until he actually has to express himself. That’s when he falls to pieces. That’s when Cas’s heart breaks; as he watches Dean struggle to hold himself together enough to simply put six words together without choking on his own vulnerability.
As Dean’s entire body tenses and he curls further into himself, Cas moves closer, runs his hands up and down Dean’s biceps. “It’s alright, Dean. Just breathe,” Cas says. It doesn’t matter what Dean’s trying to say anymore.
As soon as he’d returned to the bunker, Cas had sensed it. Maybe even before then. Dean hadn’t tried to hide the Mark from him, but he had acted nonchalant about it. A means to an end, Dean had explained, swallowing his third whiskey of the evening. Just a little demonic drivers license.
But Castiel knew. It was so much worse than that.
He had waited for Dean to turn in for the night, knocked on his door expecting a confrontation. It hadn’t gone quite as he’d expected; without anything more from Cas than a demand that they talk, Dean had quietly broken down.
It’s doin’ something to me, Cas, he’d whispered, and proceeded to confess everything; On the past few hunts he’d experienced moments where he’d felt as though he were changing, where he’d had really fucked up thoughts. It was like a cancer of hate and anger that coated his insides. He felt as though he was being hollowed out, losing vital organs.
Dean had struggled to get all these words out, often unable to. Teeth clenched. Eyes filling to the brim with tears more than once. Cas had sat and listened for almost two hours. Told Dean that what he knew of the Mark of Cain was limited, but indeed frightening.
And now, closed in on himself like a wounded coyote, still struggling to breathe evenly, Dean’s exactly that: frightened. Maybe more frightened than Castiel has ever seen him.
Taking as deep a breath as he can manage, Dean stares at the ceiling and slowly tries to speak again. “I know I signed up. I asked for this. But…” His knee jiggles and he rocks back and forth just slightly enough to notice.
Cas rests his hand on Dean’s knee and it stills. He should have been with him. Should have forced him and Sam to stick together. Yes, Sam had needed healing. But Dean had needed looking after too. He’d needed a friend, and instead he’d had Crowley.
Now it’s up to Cas to make up for that. “You weren’t yourself,” he says. Dean stills completely then, looks up at Cas with wide, lost eyes.
“Cas… I’m not myself. I feel like… like this thing’s eatin’ me inside out.”
“Dean…”
“I already hurt enough people tryin’ to do good,” Dean whispers. He holds his arm out then, for the first time, and grips it just below the mark with his other hand. “If this thing’s doin’ to me what it did to… what it did….”
“Dean, I won’t let that happen.”
“Yeah. Neither will I,” Dean says coldly, as his gaze wanders down his arm a few dangerous inches.
Cas hates that about Dean. Hates how little value he places on his own well-being.
“Don’t say that. Don’t think that, Dean. Please. I won’t let you give up on yourself so easily.”
“That ain’t givin’ up, Cas. It’s taking control.” He makes a fist with the hand on his outstretched arm and draws it towards his chest. He flexes his jaw.
“You don’t need to have control all the time. You don’t need to do this alone.”
“Don’t you get it? I need to protect you, Sam, everyone… from me.”
“And what about you? You are worth protecting. You are worth saving.”
Dean turns away. He rolls onto his side and stares into the space between the bed and his desk, his fingers twisting at the corner of his pillowcase. Cas knows. He knows Dean wants help. The problem is that he doesn’t believe he deserves it.
Cas sits against the headboard, letting Dean face away from him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t touch him. He only listens to Dean’s breathing, waiting for it to even out.
The idea of it stopping is unacceptable.
Dean doesn’t sleep, but eventually he closes his eyes and curls his arm around his pillow, hugging it to his chest. Cas draws up the wool blanket from the foot of the bed and tucks it over Dean’s body. It’s scratchy and threadbare and Cas recognizes it from pallets Dean’s slept on before. It isn’t enough. He’s never had enough.
How can he make Dean understand? Castiel has made numerous errors in judgment, chosen to ally himself with the wrong side more than once. But the one cause that he will always be sure of, the one battle that he knows he’s always on the right side of is the one to save Dean Winchester. Cas knows no one more deserving.