My Eyes Are An Ocean 1/2
Title: My Eyes Are An Ocean 1/2
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 10,300
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: It's amazing what you decide you can get away with when you can't see a damn thing.
Dean has his head dragged back so far his neck feels close to breaking. Straining against the hand that's twisting it, until muscles and tendons won't turn any further. Until he's gasping, both hands on Lucifer's wrist, trying to stop that one movement and failing in inches. His knees sink deeper into the ash that covers the ground and he knows it's now or never, because otherwise Lucifer is going to tear off his head and show it around like some grisly trophy, and quite frankly Dean thinks he deserves a better end than that.
Angels are drowning in the sheer weight of demons pouring over them. There isn't enough room left to breathe, or speak, and Dean knows that if there's one thing hell has in abundance then it's numbers.
So it's now, it's now or never, for the spell pieced together from fragments that were never supposed to exist, that might rip the world open, or save it.
He's about to power up an army of angels.
But there so damn many of them. He's almost certainly not coming back from this.
He finds the one he knows, the one he trusts, fighting through the blood and gore to get to him, and Dean decides that yeah, he can do this.
So he does.
Castiel's human skin comes apart in one great wave of sound and light.
The last thing to go is the sharp blue of his eyes.
And then Dean's screaming-
-
He jolts awake in the dark.
The whole world is endless blackness and it's still more than a little messed up that he forgets every time, every single time. You're supposed to wake up, open your eyes, and be able to see. Yeah, not so much any more.
He leans sideways finds the nightstand, and there's a scatter of stuff there that's only half as useful as it used to be. Watch, phone, gun, but it's his stuff and he can't for the life of him wake up without checking it's still there. Or let anyone else have it. You take the things you can't change, but Dean's pretty possessive of what's his, it stays his until someone gives him a damn good reason. Some people would say he takes that to stupid, reckless extremes. But yeah, you know your own weaknesses or you let them kill you.
He knows that if he misses and sends everything clattering onto the floor then Sam will bound in here like some sort of heroic gazelle to save the day. And Jesus, Dean's had enough of that to last a lifetime and it's been- what three weeks? Three weeks since the apocalypse was heroically cut short when he set off the religious equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
And now Lucifer's cooling his ass back in some uncomfortable cell in the depths of hell, and quite frankly Dean can't think of a better place for him. He hopes he rots there for the rest of time.
Dean can't tell what time it is, or if it's daylight, he can't tell if it's cloudy, or raining, or hell even if the curtains are open. But he does know one thing. The world smells like breakfast. Which is a pretty good start.
He knows exactly where he put his jeans the night before but he still spends half a minute looking for them, because it turns out things move in his room during the night. Or at least that's what he's going with until he gets a better explanation. Because he's already decided that 'because he's blind' is a stupid excuse and he's not going to use it. Much like everyone else, they're still tiptoeing around the issue. Because he saved the world but apparently no one's allowed to bring up the fact that he blinded himself in the process. In fact everyone's going to great lengths not mentioning it and pretending it doesn't exist.
Of course, Dean's doing his best to fuck with their uncomfortable hero worship by existing as much as humanly possible. Sometimes he does it by accidentally walking into them. Which is kind of funny. But he's only done that on purpose a couple of times. And only to Sam. He'd tried with Castiel, only the angel has an annoying ability to never, ever be in the way, which considering his personal space issues before is strangely irritating. It leads to Dean pretty much having to flail an arm in his general direction if he wants to actually grab hold of him. Cas always ends up a lot closer then.
It's almost like they're playing some sort of game. If Dean wants to walk into Cas he has to work at it.
He opens the door and it's just as dark outside it. Which shouldn't be surprising at all, but there's still that little voice in the back of his head that expects him to walk out of a pitch dark room into the light. Yeah, it never happens but his brain is still catching up.
He's fairly sure there's nothing on the way to the stairs. At least not any more.
He'd never realised before how much Bobby's house was a maze of things stacks of books, magazines, boxes. Because at first Dean had been smacking into them all the damn time. Feet, knees, hands, elbows, he hadn't realised how much space he took up until he was forced to blunder around without looking where he was going. Literally.
Which left him feeling vaguely guilty, and irritated, at scattering Bobby's possessions every which way- Though he never ran into them twice. Once he'd hit them they just hadn't been there later, like the others had just been quietly moving them. Either that or Bobby has rats, big rats, big book-eating rats.
He very carefully finds the top of the stairs. He'd woken up on the couch to start with, then spent the first six days stuffed in the living room while everyone patched themselves up and quietly talked around him, like angels had taken his brain as well as his eyes. It was weird how you could feel people staring at you even when you couldn't actually see them. Though, on the plus side, Dean had never been made so many sandwiches in his life. It turned out 'we're really sorry you got your eyes burnt out' sandwiches were pretty damn good. Until not all the sandwiches in the world could have made him stay downstairs any longer.
He'd spent two hours convincing Sam that no, he wasn't going to spontaneously fall down the stairs if he slept up there instead. He was blind he wasn't suddenly stupid. Sam doesn't like the 'b' word, it makes his silences more intense and then Dean gets nothing from him. He can make all the angsty faces he wants but he's got to talk as well, or Dean's left floundering in the dark and no one wants that.
Three days later he'd missed a step coming down and gone crashing down on one knee, palm sliding on the wall a breath away from falling the whole rest of the way. Until a hand caught his elbow and straightened him back up again like he weighed nothing at all. He'd laughed into the sleeve of Castiel's coat, relief and embarrassment and something that felt like genuine honest-to-god amusement. And he hadn't laughed like that for what felt like a really, really long time. Dean was determined Sam was never, ever finding out about that. Cas never said a word. Because Cas has his back, Cas always has his back.
There are at least two people in the kitchen, someone's clanking near the sink and someone's clanking at the table, but Dean's going to guess there's actually three, because Cas has been here exactly as long as they have and, as far as he can tell, he hasn't left yet. Castiel doesn't make any noise but he doesn't eat and he doesn't cook.
A chair shoves back and, judging by the gangly screech from the amount of weight on it, it's Sam. Dean comes to stop, because it wouldn't be the first time Sam's flung himself back right into Dean's path and Dean's smacked straight into him. Sam had angsted about it for the entire morning, like a girl, until Dean had threatened to take the car out if he didn't shut up.
A hand touches his elbow, too slow and too careful to be Sam, which tells Dean that Castiel is to his left and the chair is right in front of him. He drags it out and sits himself down, works out with quick prods off his fingers whether he has a plate in front of him or not. Not, as it turns out.
Sam's fork clanks against his own plate, suggesting his food has his full attention.
Dean doesn't believe it for a minute.
A lot of things are more difficult now that he wouldn't have thought, like eating. Eating should not be hard, but his inability to actually see the fork, or what he's putting in his mouth is strangely unnerving. Also, he's jabbed himself in the mouth more times than he would have liked. It's unattractive to not be able to find your own mouth ten times out of ten. But he's working on that. He's working on a lot of things, but there's not exactly any rush any more.
They'd won, they're safe.
Even if he thinks Sam is still waiting for him to collapse into a pile of hysterical tears at some point in the future. Because apparently there's a whole wealth of inner anguish he's not dealing with. Like maybe it hasn't sunk in yet. But Dean's half convinced that Sam's the one who's not dealing with it because he keeps swinging between trying to coax him into some sort of breakdown and trying to pretend everything's fine.
Dean hasn't seen anything for three weeks and quite frankly he's still more relieved about the world not sliding into hell and no one dying than he is upset about the whole eyeball thing. Besides, the whole blindness thing gets him extra bacon. So it has its upsides.
"Arms," Bobby says somewhere in front of Dean and he obediently lifts them out of the way until the 'clank' of plate on table tells him he now has breakfast.
There's no talking for a while after that. Because breakfast deserves a little respect.
"I'm going out again today," Dean tells the world at large, because looking at people when you can't tell if you're looking them in the eye is just plain weird.
He can tell Sam isn't happy about it, he's probably wearing that horribly pinched face that's really, really unattractive.
"Is Sam wearing that really unattractive disapproving face?" Dean asks the air to his left.
"I believe so yes," Castiel tells him.
Dean suspects his brother is now glaring at Castiel. Cas could so take him.
"Dean, you got lost outside yesterday," Sam says carefully. It's a wonder he hasn't worn out his worried voice yet. Dean would have, Dean would have been exhausted if he had to worry as hard as Sam seems to.
"I found my way back eventually." He goes for breezy and carefree, because he knows it annoys him.
"Cas brought you back," Sam points out.
Which isn't true, Cas had just walked with him, he'd found his own way back. He'd followed the sound of Sam fretting and fetched up right outside the door. He's half tempted to tell him as much but he's distracted by the more important hunt for bacon, which he knows damn well is still on his plate.
"Don't you think that should tell you something?" Sam says quietly, voice soft like he doesn't want to say it at all.
Dean stops trying to find his bacon and glares across the table. "Like what?"
"That you shouldn't be doing it."
Dean can feel Sam's frown all the way across the table. Like he knows exactly what his reaction will be, but he just can't stop his mouth from talking.
"I shouldn’t be doing it?" Dean says slowly, more than an edge of irritation under the words. "Sam I'm perfectly aware that there are things I can't do now. Driving, kayaking, bowling, running into traffic. Walking around outside and telling people how to kill things, that I can still do."
He's been stabbing his fork towards Sam while he's speaking, and he realises that's probably not a good idea. There's a pointed silence, and yeah, that's what Dean really hates, when he can't see what the hell's going on when he's just had his say. Because reading Sam's face had been one of the things he was really, really good at. He refuses to look frustrated, because he gets the horrible feeling that will make Sam backpedal so fast he'll end up on his ass.
"Cas, what face is he pulling right now?"
There's an irritated sigh to his left, which Dean's fairly sure is Sam's 'oh my god the universe is so mean to me' sigh number seventy six, with extra floppy hair and pouting.
"He looks contrite," Cas supplies with deadly seriousness.
"Damn right you should look contrite," Dean tells Sam's general direction.
"Dean-" he starts.
"Don't you Dean me," Dean snaps back.
Sam's huffing annoyance, Dean can tell, there's an unhappy, over-protective petulance to the silence. But blind or not Dean's still the oldest, and he saved the world, so Sam can do what he's told.
"He's pouting now isn't he?"
"Yes," Castiel tells him without even a pause.
"I knew it, I knew it!"
Sam grumbles something Dean hears perfectly well, but pretends he doesn't, then gets up. Dean thinks he's leaving but he goes the other way. Drifts towards the smell of food and the sound of Bobby quietly disapproving at them all from under his hat. Sam drifts behind Dean, taking up space in the world, a vague tower of hovering and fuss that Dean is tempted to try and stab with his fork. But it's Sam, so he doesn't.
"Don't even think about taking my bacon," he says instead.
"What are you psychic now?"
"Yes," Dean says simply, because if he can start that rumour going around it will be awesome.
~~~
There are things Dean still knows how to do.
He's been bragging that he can take apart all the guns and clean them with his eyes closed his whole life, and it turns out he can. It takes him a little longer, a lot longer. But as long as he makes sure that none of the pieces roll away he's just fine thank you very much.
He suspects Castiel is watching him. He thinks maybe he's been watching him since he started.
Creepy angel stalking should be more creepy when you can't actually see yourself being stalked. Of course Dean hasn't felt like it's stalking for a long time now, it's just Cas, being Cas. Because he's one of them, even if he is, at the same time, completely different, so if he wants to sit at the table and stare at Dean and not say a god damn word then he's allowed, in some weird special way.
It's like the same way everyone's magically mute when it comes to talking about Dean not being able to see anything. Though if Dean brings up, just once, how much he's really, really sick of that he might never stop and then he'll just be the blind guy picking on everyone.
"You should talk to Sam," Castiel says quietly, like he hasn't been sitting there for half an hour already. Dean's far too amused at the thought that maybe he's spent the whole time thinking of something to say. Because really, he can make pretty much anything sound like a pronouncement of terrible doom. Which is more amusing than it has any right to be now that there isn't any doom and Castiel's voice has been reduced to making the weather, the food and occasionally the laundry, sound like the end of the world.
"I've tried," Dean complains. "He either gets that 'deer in the headlights' look, which I can see fine even without eyes. Or he just runs away, and it's not like I can chase him." He could chase him, he'd probably just end up knocking himself out, or landing on his face and that's just not attractive, really not attractive, and probably wouldn't help his determination to still be badass.
"He finds it difficult," Castiel adds quietly.
"He finds it fucking terrifying," Dean corrects, because it's the truth, there's no point denying it. It's easier to be honest when you can't see people's reactions but with Sam...well Dean can imagine his reactions pretty damn well and that's almost as bad.
Castiel sighs agreement.
"He's not ready yet, you know what Sam's like." It occurs to Dean that Cas probably doesn't know exactly what Sam's like, he's just been there long enough that Dean assumes sometimes. "If the conversation isn't his idea he gets that weird hunted look about him and you feel like you're forcing him to have an opinion, and it's like kicking a puppy, then you feel bad."
Dean tips his head to the side. "You could talk to him if you like."
"No," Castiel says, and Dean is, yet again, amazed at how deep his voice can go when he's being chastising. Castiel's voice was just a voice before, but now sometimes it goes all the way through him, a curl of sound that's maybe less human when he can't see the face to go along with it.
A voice that's always so close that sometimes he feels like he can reach out and touch it.
He makes a rude noise instead.
"I knew you'd say that."
"I find it unlikely that Sam would open up to me."
Dean is never going to admit how glad he is about that, ever.
"Sam likes talking to you."
"Not about this I feel." There's an edge under there, soft and uncertain, like maybe Cas believes Sam blames him too, and yeah, there's a lot of that going around. Dean isn't entirely sure why, because if Cas hadn't been there it wouldn't have mattered. There were a hundred damn angels in the city that day.
Dean doesn't think Sam blames Cas.
In fact, Dean wouldn't be surprised if Sam had found some convoluted way to blame himself. Which, when he eventually admits to it, Dean is going to smack him for. As long as he stays still, because otherwise it's just flailing and that's never going to make anyone feel bad.
"You know I'm not going to talk to him yet. You know we're going to blunder around each other for a while until it gets all angsty and ridiculous, that's what we do."
"Perhaps you should change what you do," Castiel says quietly.
Dean turns his head sideways and throws him a 'you're annoying' expression without even thinking about it. But Castiel sighs like he saw it just fine. He likes that they've pushed Castiel into all those hilarious conversational noises of frustration of annoyance. It makes him feel like family.
"It was a suggestion."
Dean grunts. "You just brought it up because you're an angel, you like everyone to get along."
He drops his hand on the table, and something clatters off into the distance.
"Shit."
Castiel's chair makes a soft noise and then there's the slow clink of something being put back in its place.
"Thanks," Dean says quietly. He puts the gun back together, slow careful movements until its familiar weight is heavy and reassuring in his hand. Blind men and firearms, a truly winning combination. He laughs and there's only the faintest edge of bitterness to it.
Castiel lays a hand down next to Dean's, and that's simply an offer to guide him out of the kitchen, avoiding the chairs and door frames and other crap that seems to get in his way on purpose. Dean knows he should refuse, not just because it's not the sort of thing he does, not because he doesn't want to rely that much on anyone. No, mostly because that's something he doesn't think he should get used to.
That he shouldn't wrap his fingers around the warmth of Castiel's wrist.
But he does anyway.
~~~
No matter what Sam thinks Dean knows exactly how far he can wander away from the house before he loses his sense of direction. He knows it's sixty odd steps until the dirt changes to grass and he figures as long as he doesn't spin around in a circle he's good to get back again. Which he's in no great rush to do at the minute.
Bobby has visitors and though Dean's more than happy to nod in their vague direction and talk about how it not-being-the-apocalypse is pretty damn awesome, he can feel the way Ellen and Jo look at him, that sort of horrified pity painted over with careful fierceness. It's easier to sit on the grass and stare off into the distance like he's contemplating something important. At least that's what he pretends to do until footsteps meet him there, shape looming over him in a way that feels too long and too dramatic to be anyone else.
"Hey, Sammy," Dean says.
Sam's stopped thinking that's some sort of magic, it was funnier when he was still surprised by it.
"They're gone, they just dropped in on their way through."
Dean nods.
"Castiel hung around for a while looking remote and angelic."
He can't resist a laugh at that. Because yeah, he remembers exactly what that looks like. "Man, I miss watching him work a room."
Sam snorts and sits down next to him with a series of grassy thuds.
"Have you talked to him about what he's still doing here?"
Dean sighs, and shakes his head. Sam shifts quietly, like there's something he wants to say but he isn't sure how, or if he even should. Dean turns his head sideways and raises an eyebrow. Sam huffs air, like Dean's just creeped him the hell out. Which he secretly thinks is pretty damn hilarious.
"When he looks at you," Sam says quietly. "He looks guilty."
"Yeah, I know," Dean tells him. Because he doesn't have to see it. He thinks maybe Cas feels guilty all the time now, he's never really been chatty but now sometimes Dean barely knows he's there until he drifts close enough. Until he drifts close enough to touch.
The touching used to be a lot easier to ignore. When they were saving the world, when it didn't matter, when it was just a thing. A thing Dean put down to Cas being an angel. That flare of different-wrong that made him want sometimes. That thing he made sure Cas never noticed. He thinks maybe Sam's noticed, Sam's been noticing a lot of things. But he doesn't talk about any of them, doesn't ask about any of them. So Dean never finds out what he thinks about any of them. Jesus, it's amazing they ever accomplished anything at all really.
"How can you-" Sam starts tentatively, and then drops the question like it might lead somewhere dangerous, like they might have to talk about that whole thing they don't talk about.
Dean's had enough.
"Dude, are we ever going to talk about this?" He demands.
"About what?"
Ah the familiar sound of panic.
"About the fact that I saved the world, saw an angel and got my eyes burned up." The silence goes on for a really long time and Dean can't tell for the life of him what's in it. He doesn't turn his head to look at Sam, because it won't make any difference.
"Oh that," Sam says suddenly with exaggerated nonchalance and Dean's startled into laughter so loud and so sudden it makes his chest hurt.
"You're messed up you know that?" he accuses, and he swears he wouldn't have it any other way.
"I'm smiling at you like you're an idiot now, you realise that right."
"I figured as much," Dean tells him, and he's going to miss that smile, that's one of his favourites.
"He doesn't always look guilty you know, sometimes he just looks lost. Like he wishes there was some way he could -"
Air moves in front of Dean's face and he assumes Sam just made a 'fix you' sort of gesture.
"Yeah," Dean says quietly.
"Did you ever ask him?" Sam asks carefully.
Dean nods, then realises Sam might not be looking again.
"Yeah, I did." And it had been, without doubt, one of those conversations he wished he'd never started. Because he gets the feeling it had hurt Castiel a lot more than him. "Something to do with looking at an army of angels I think, it's not like my eyes are broken they're just- not there any more. Like my vision is just gone and there's nothing there to fix."
Sam shifts quietly for a minute.
"So angel magic's a bust then?"
Dean snorts laughter. "Pretty much yeah."
"And you, are you- I mean you haven't really talked properly and I just thought -" Dan hears a 'shuffle-shush' sort of sound which he thinks maybe is Sam shrugging.
"I'm fine, seriously, I am," Dean tells him, and he doesn't even have to fake his honesty, because that's all there is there.
"Is it weird that I think maybe you shouldn't be?" Sam sounds confused, but Dean kind of gets that. He's confused about it himself.
"You think I don't know I shouldn’t be," he says, and it even sounds ludicrous when he says it. "Seriously I know I'm pretty much useless in the grand scheme of things now but everything we did, everything we went through-" Dean stops and waves a hand, but that's not good enough, and kind of pointless if Sam's not looking.
"Yeah," Sam agrees anyway. Dean's not really sure where to look, so he just thinks the hell with it, and looks at Sam. Because even if he can't read anything off of Sam's face any more. Sam can still read his. If he's willing to look at it.
"I never, ever thought we'd get any sort of happy ending. I thought it would be a mess, I thought we'd be dead or worse. And I'd pretty much accepted that was exactly what was going to happen. Then right at the end it's like someone said, 'ok, this is what I'm going to take, just this.' And you know what, I decided it's a pretty fair freakin' trade. "
The quiet drags on, and Dean's hand twitches, shifts on his knee for something to do. Because none of his brutally honest conversations with Sam seem to turn out quite right. In fact most of them seem to go straight to hell. He's tired of that, so damn tired, he wants everything from here to be from here and not before.
"Don't you think?" Dean thinks maybe he can hear Sam swallowing, though it's quiet, it could just as easily be the wind. Whoever said you got great hearing when you went blind they lied their ass off. You just have less stuff to see distracting you.
"Yeah," Sam's voice sounds quiet and faraway. "Yeah, I guess."
"Besides I still have things to do. I still have to work out how to sneak up on you in the dark," Dean tells him, because yeah, he's so doing that as soon as he stops bumping into things.
"You wish, I'd hear you crashing into things a mile away."
"Yeah that's why I'll be hiding under your bed."
"Funny," Sam says, and Dean could have heard the sarcasm there a mile away.
"Dressed as a clown," he adds.
"Fuck you," Sam says with feeling and Dean laughs and laughs
Part Two....
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 10,300
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: It's amazing what you decide you can get away with when you can't see a damn thing.
Dean has his head dragged back so far his neck feels close to breaking. Straining against the hand that's twisting it, until muscles and tendons won't turn any further. Until he's gasping, both hands on Lucifer's wrist, trying to stop that one movement and failing in inches. His knees sink deeper into the ash that covers the ground and he knows it's now or never, because otherwise Lucifer is going to tear off his head and show it around like some grisly trophy, and quite frankly Dean thinks he deserves a better end than that.
Angels are drowning in the sheer weight of demons pouring over them. There isn't enough room left to breathe, or speak, and Dean knows that if there's one thing hell has in abundance then it's numbers.
So it's now, it's now or never, for the spell pieced together from fragments that were never supposed to exist, that might rip the world open, or save it.
He's about to power up an army of angels.
But there so damn many of them. He's almost certainly not coming back from this.
He finds the one he knows, the one he trusts, fighting through the blood and gore to get to him, and Dean decides that yeah, he can do this.
So he does.
Castiel's human skin comes apart in one great wave of sound and light.
The last thing to go is the sharp blue of his eyes.
And then Dean's screaming-
-
He jolts awake in the dark.
The whole world is endless blackness and it's still more than a little messed up that he forgets every time, every single time. You're supposed to wake up, open your eyes, and be able to see. Yeah, not so much any more.
He leans sideways finds the nightstand, and there's a scatter of stuff there that's only half as useful as it used to be. Watch, phone, gun, but it's his stuff and he can't for the life of him wake up without checking it's still there. Or let anyone else have it. You take the things you can't change, but Dean's pretty possessive of what's his, it stays his until someone gives him a damn good reason. Some people would say he takes that to stupid, reckless extremes. But yeah, you know your own weaknesses or you let them kill you.
He knows that if he misses and sends everything clattering onto the floor then Sam will bound in here like some sort of heroic gazelle to save the day. And Jesus, Dean's had enough of that to last a lifetime and it's been- what three weeks? Three weeks since the apocalypse was heroically cut short when he set off the religious equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
And now Lucifer's cooling his ass back in some uncomfortable cell in the depths of hell, and quite frankly Dean can't think of a better place for him. He hopes he rots there for the rest of time.
Dean can't tell what time it is, or if it's daylight, he can't tell if it's cloudy, or raining, or hell even if the curtains are open. But he does know one thing. The world smells like breakfast. Which is a pretty good start.
He knows exactly where he put his jeans the night before but he still spends half a minute looking for them, because it turns out things move in his room during the night. Or at least that's what he's going with until he gets a better explanation. Because he's already decided that 'because he's blind' is a stupid excuse and he's not going to use it. Much like everyone else, they're still tiptoeing around the issue. Because he saved the world but apparently no one's allowed to bring up the fact that he blinded himself in the process. In fact everyone's going to great lengths not mentioning it and pretending it doesn't exist.
Of course, Dean's doing his best to fuck with their uncomfortable hero worship by existing as much as humanly possible. Sometimes he does it by accidentally walking into them. Which is kind of funny. But he's only done that on purpose a couple of times. And only to Sam. He'd tried with Castiel, only the angel has an annoying ability to never, ever be in the way, which considering his personal space issues before is strangely irritating. It leads to Dean pretty much having to flail an arm in his general direction if he wants to actually grab hold of him. Cas always ends up a lot closer then.
It's almost like they're playing some sort of game. If Dean wants to walk into Cas he has to work at it.
He opens the door and it's just as dark outside it. Which shouldn't be surprising at all, but there's still that little voice in the back of his head that expects him to walk out of a pitch dark room into the light. Yeah, it never happens but his brain is still catching up.
He's fairly sure there's nothing on the way to the stairs. At least not any more.
He'd never realised before how much Bobby's house was a maze of things stacks of books, magazines, boxes. Because at first Dean had been smacking into them all the damn time. Feet, knees, hands, elbows, he hadn't realised how much space he took up until he was forced to blunder around without looking where he was going. Literally.
Which left him feeling vaguely guilty, and irritated, at scattering Bobby's possessions every which way- Though he never ran into them twice. Once he'd hit them they just hadn't been there later, like the others had just been quietly moving them. Either that or Bobby has rats, big rats, big book-eating rats.
He very carefully finds the top of the stairs. He'd woken up on the couch to start with, then spent the first six days stuffed in the living room while everyone patched themselves up and quietly talked around him, like angels had taken his brain as well as his eyes. It was weird how you could feel people staring at you even when you couldn't actually see them. Though, on the plus side, Dean had never been made so many sandwiches in his life. It turned out 'we're really sorry you got your eyes burnt out' sandwiches were pretty damn good. Until not all the sandwiches in the world could have made him stay downstairs any longer.
He'd spent two hours convincing Sam that no, he wasn't going to spontaneously fall down the stairs if he slept up there instead. He was blind he wasn't suddenly stupid. Sam doesn't like the 'b' word, it makes his silences more intense and then Dean gets nothing from him. He can make all the angsty faces he wants but he's got to talk as well, or Dean's left floundering in the dark and no one wants that.
Three days later he'd missed a step coming down and gone crashing down on one knee, palm sliding on the wall a breath away from falling the whole rest of the way. Until a hand caught his elbow and straightened him back up again like he weighed nothing at all. He'd laughed into the sleeve of Castiel's coat, relief and embarrassment and something that felt like genuine honest-to-god amusement. And he hadn't laughed like that for what felt like a really, really long time. Dean was determined Sam was never, ever finding out about that. Cas never said a word. Because Cas has his back, Cas always has his back.
There are at least two people in the kitchen, someone's clanking near the sink and someone's clanking at the table, but Dean's going to guess there's actually three, because Cas has been here exactly as long as they have and, as far as he can tell, he hasn't left yet. Castiel doesn't make any noise but he doesn't eat and he doesn't cook.
A chair shoves back and, judging by the gangly screech from the amount of weight on it, it's Sam. Dean comes to stop, because it wouldn't be the first time Sam's flung himself back right into Dean's path and Dean's smacked straight into him. Sam had angsted about it for the entire morning, like a girl, until Dean had threatened to take the car out if he didn't shut up.
A hand touches his elbow, too slow and too careful to be Sam, which tells Dean that Castiel is to his left and the chair is right in front of him. He drags it out and sits himself down, works out with quick prods off his fingers whether he has a plate in front of him or not. Not, as it turns out.
Sam's fork clanks against his own plate, suggesting his food has his full attention.
Dean doesn't believe it for a minute.
A lot of things are more difficult now that he wouldn't have thought, like eating. Eating should not be hard, but his inability to actually see the fork, or what he's putting in his mouth is strangely unnerving. Also, he's jabbed himself in the mouth more times than he would have liked. It's unattractive to not be able to find your own mouth ten times out of ten. But he's working on that. He's working on a lot of things, but there's not exactly any rush any more.
They'd won, they're safe.
Even if he thinks Sam is still waiting for him to collapse into a pile of hysterical tears at some point in the future. Because apparently there's a whole wealth of inner anguish he's not dealing with. Like maybe it hasn't sunk in yet. But Dean's half convinced that Sam's the one who's not dealing with it because he keeps swinging between trying to coax him into some sort of breakdown and trying to pretend everything's fine.
Dean hasn't seen anything for three weeks and quite frankly he's still more relieved about the world not sliding into hell and no one dying than he is upset about the whole eyeball thing. Besides, the whole blindness thing gets him extra bacon. So it has its upsides.
"Arms," Bobby says somewhere in front of Dean and he obediently lifts them out of the way until the 'clank' of plate on table tells him he now has breakfast.
There's no talking for a while after that. Because breakfast deserves a little respect.
"I'm going out again today," Dean tells the world at large, because looking at people when you can't tell if you're looking them in the eye is just plain weird.
He can tell Sam isn't happy about it, he's probably wearing that horribly pinched face that's really, really unattractive.
"Is Sam wearing that really unattractive disapproving face?" Dean asks the air to his left.
"I believe so yes," Castiel tells him.
Dean suspects his brother is now glaring at Castiel. Cas could so take him.
"Dean, you got lost outside yesterday," Sam says carefully. It's a wonder he hasn't worn out his worried voice yet. Dean would have, Dean would have been exhausted if he had to worry as hard as Sam seems to.
"I found my way back eventually." He goes for breezy and carefree, because he knows it annoys him.
"Cas brought you back," Sam points out.
Which isn't true, Cas had just walked with him, he'd found his own way back. He'd followed the sound of Sam fretting and fetched up right outside the door. He's half tempted to tell him as much but he's distracted by the more important hunt for bacon, which he knows damn well is still on his plate.
"Don't you think that should tell you something?" Sam says quietly, voice soft like he doesn't want to say it at all.
Dean stops trying to find his bacon and glares across the table. "Like what?"
"That you shouldn't be doing it."
Dean can feel Sam's frown all the way across the table. Like he knows exactly what his reaction will be, but he just can't stop his mouth from talking.
"I shouldn’t be doing it?" Dean says slowly, more than an edge of irritation under the words. "Sam I'm perfectly aware that there are things I can't do now. Driving, kayaking, bowling, running into traffic. Walking around outside and telling people how to kill things, that I can still do."
He's been stabbing his fork towards Sam while he's speaking, and he realises that's probably not a good idea. There's a pointed silence, and yeah, that's what Dean really hates, when he can't see what the hell's going on when he's just had his say. Because reading Sam's face had been one of the things he was really, really good at. He refuses to look frustrated, because he gets the horrible feeling that will make Sam backpedal so fast he'll end up on his ass.
"Cas, what face is he pulling right now?"
There's an irritated sigh to his left, which Dean's fairly sure is Sam's 'oh my god the universe is so mean to me' sigh number seventy six, with extra floppy hair and pouting.
"He looks contrite," Cas supplies with deadly seriousness.
"Damn right you should look contrite," Dean tells Sam's general direction.
"Dean-" he starts.
"Don't you Dean me," Dean snaps back.
Sam's huffing annoyance, Dean can tell, there's an unhappy, over-protective petulance to the silence. But blind or not Dean's still the oldest, and he saved the world, so Sam can do what he's told.
"He's pouting now isn't he?"
"Yes," Castiel tells him without even a pause.
"I knew it, I knew it!"
Sam grumbles something Dean hears perfectly well, but pretends he doesn't, then gets up. Dean thinks he's leaving but he goes the other way. Drifts towards the smell of food and the sound of Bobby quietly disapproving at them all from under his hat. Sam drifts behind Dean, taking up space in the world, a vague tower of hovering and fuss that Dean is tempted to try and stab with his fork. But it's Sam, so he doesn't.
"Don't even think about taking my bacon," he says instead.
"What are you psychic now?"
"Yes," Dean says simply, because if he can start that rumour going around it will be awesome.
~~~
There are things Dean still knows how to do.
He's been bragging that he can take apart all the guns and clean them with his eyes closed his whole life, and it turns out he can. It takes him a little longer, a lot longer. But as long as he makes sure that none of the pieces roll away he's just fine thank you very much.
He suspects Castiel is watching him. He thinks maybe he's been watching him since he started.
Creepy angel stalking should be more creepy when you can't actually see yourself being stalked. Of course Dean hasn't felt like it's stalking for a long time now, it's just Cas, being Cas. Because he's one of them, even if he is, at the same time, completely different, so if he wants to sit at the table and stare at Dean and not say a god damn word then he's allowed, in some weird special way.
It's like the same way everyone's magically mute when it comes to talking about Dean not being able to see anything. Though if Dean brings up, just once, how much he's really, really sick of that he might never stop and then he'll just be the blind guy picking on everyone.
"You should talk to Sam," Castiel says quietly, like he hasn't been sitting there for half an hour already. Dean's far too amused at the thought that maybe he's spent the whole time thinking of something to say. Because really, he can make pretty much anything sound like a pronouncement of terrible doom. Which is more amusing than it has any right to be now that there isn't any doom and Castiel's voice has been reduced to making the weather, the food and occasionally the laundry, sound like the end of the world.
"I've tried," Dean complains. "He either gets that 'deer in the headlights' look, which I can see fine even without eyes. Or he just runs away, and it's not like I can chase him." He could chase him, he'd probably just end up knocking himself out, or landing on his face and that's just not attractive, really not attractive, and probably wouldn't help his determination to still be badass.
"He finds it difficult," Castiel adds quietly.
"He finds it fucking terrifying," Dean corrects, because it's the truth, there's no point denying it. It's easier to be honest when you can't see people's reactions but with Sam...well Dean can imagine his reactions pretty damn well and that's almost as bad.
Castiel sighs agreement.
"He's not ready yet, you know what Sam's like." It occurs to Dean that Cas probably doesn't know exactly what Sam's like, he's just been there long enough that Dean assumes sometimes. "If the conversation isn't his idea he gets that weird hunted look about him and you feel like you're forcing him to have an opinion, and it's like kicking a puppy, then you feel bad."
Dean tips his head to the side. "You could talk to him if you like."
"No," Castiel says, and Dean is, yet again, amazed at how deep his voice can go when he's being chastising. Castiel's voice was just a voice before, but now sometimes it goes all the way through him, a curl of sound that's maybe less human when he can't see the face to go along with it.
A voice that's always so close that sometimes he feels like he can reach out and touch it.
He makes a rude noise instead.
"I knew you'd say that."
"I find it unlikely that Sam would open up to me."
Dean is never going to admit how glad he is about that, ever.
"Sam likes talking to you."
"Not about this I feel." There's an edge under there, soft and uncertain, like maybe Cas believes Sam blames him too, and yeah, there's a lot of that going around. Dean isn't entirely sure why, because if Cas hadn't been there it wouldn't have mattered. There were a hundred damn angels in the city that day.
Dean doesn't think Sam blames Cas.
In fact, Dean wouldn't be surprised if Sam had found some convoluted way to blame himself. Which, when he eventually admits to it, Dean is going to smack him for. As long as he stays still, because otherwise it's just flailing and that's never going to make anyone feel bad.
"You know I'm not going to talk to him yet. You know we're going to blunder around each other for a while until it gets all angsty and ridiculous, that's what we do."
"Perhaps you should change what you do," Castiel says quietly.
Dean turns his head sideways and throws him a 'you're annoying' expression without even thinking about it. But Castiel sighs like he saw it just fine. He likes that they've pushed Castiel into all those hilarious conversational noises of frustration of annoyance. It makes him feel like family.
"It was a suggestion."
Dean grunts. "You just brought it up because you're an angel, you like everyone to get along."
He drops his hand on the table, and something clatters off into the distance.
"Shit."
Castiel's chair makes a soft noise and then there's the slow clink of something being put back in its place.
"Thanks," Dean says quietly. He puts the gun back together, slow careful movements until its familiar weight is heavy and reassuring in his hand. Blind men and firearms, a truly winning combination. He laughs and there's only the faintest edge of bitterness to it.
Castiel lays a hand down next to Dean's, and that's simply an offer to guide him out of the kitchen, avoiding the chairs and door frames and other crap that seems to get in his way on purpose. Dean knows he should refuse, not just because it's not the sort of thing he does, not because he doesn't want to rely that much on anyone. No, mostly because that's something he doesn't think he should get used to.
That he shouldn't wrap his fingers around the warmth of Castiel's wrist.
But he does anyway.
~~~
No matter what Sam thinks Dean knows exactly how far he can wander away from the house before he loses his sense of direction. He knows it's sixty odd steps until the dirt changes to grass and he figures as long as he doesn't spin around in a circle he's good to get back again. Which he's in no great rush to do at the minute.
Bobby has visitors and though Dean's more than happy to nod in their vague direction and talk about how it not-being-the-apocalypse is pretty damn awesome, he can feel the way Ellen and Jo look at him, that sort of horrified pity painted over with careful fierceness. It's easier to sit on the grass and stare off into the distance like he's contemplating something important. At least that's what he pretends to do until footsteps meet him there, shape looming over him in a way that feels too long and too dramatic to be anyone else.
"Hey, Sammy," Dean says.
Sam's stopped thinking that's some sort of magic, it was funnier when he was still surprised by it.
"They're gone, they just dropped in on their way through."
Dean nods.
"Castiel hung around for a while looking remote and angelic."
He can't resist a laugh at that. Because yeah, he remembers exactly what that looks like. "Man, I miss watching him work a room."
Sam snorts and sits down next to him with a series of grassy thuds.
"Have you talked to him about what he's still doing here?"
Dean sighs, and shakes his head. Sam shifts quietly, like there's something he wants to say but he isn't sure how, or if he even should. Dean turns his head sideways and raises an eyebrow. Sam huffs air, like Dean's just creeped him the hell out. Which he secretly thinks is pretty damn hilarious.
"When he looks at you," Sam says quietly. "He looks guilty."
"Yeah, I know," Dean tells him. Because he doesn't have to see it. He thinks maybe Cas feels guilty all the time now, he's never really been chatty but now sometimes Dean barely knows he's there until he drifts close enough. Until he drifts close enough to touch.
The touching used to be a lot easier to ignore. When they were saving the world, when it didn't matter, when it was just a thing. A thing Dean put down to Cas being an angel. That flare of different-wrong that made him want sometimes. That thing he made sure Cas never noticed. He thinks maybe Sam's noticed, Sam's been noticing a lot of things. But he doesn't talk about any of them, doesn't ask about any of them. So Dean never finds out what he thinks about any of them. Jesus, it's amazing they ever accomplished anything at all really.
"How can you-" Sam starts tentatively, and then drops the question like it might lead somewhere dangerous, like they might have to talk about that whole thing they don't talk about.
Dean's had enough.
"Dude, are we ever going to talk about this?" He demands.
"About what?"
Ah the familiar sound of panic.
"About the fact that I saved the world, saw an angel and got my eyes burned up." The silence goes on for a really long time and Dean can't tell for the life of him what's in it. He doesn't turn his head to look at Sam, because it won't make any difference.
"Oh that," Sam says suddenly with exaggerated nonchalance and Dean's startled into laughter so loud and so sudden it makes his chest hurt.
"You're messed up you know that?" he accuses, and he swears he wouldn't have it any other way.
"I'm smiling at you like you're an idiot now, you realise that right."
"I figured as much," Dean tells him, and he's going to miss that smile, that's one of his favourites.
"He doesn't always look guilty you know, sometimes he just looks lost. Like he wishes there was some way he could -"
Air moves in front of Dean's face and he assumes Sam just made a 'fix you' sort of gesture.
"Yeah," Dean says quietly.
"Did you ever ask him?" Sam asks carefully.
Dean nods, then realises Sam might not be looking again.
"Yeah, I did." And it had been, without doubt, one of those conversations he wished he'd never started. Because he gets the feeling it had hurt Castiel a lot more than him. "Something to do with looking at an army of angels I think, it's not like my eyes are broken they're just- not there any more. Like my vision is just gone and there's nothing there to fix."
Sam shifts quietly for a minute.
"So angel magic's a bust then?"
Dean snorts laughter. "Pretty much yeah."
"And you, are you- I mean you haven't really talked properly and I just thought -" Dan hears a 'shuffle-shush' sort of sound which he thinks maybe is Sam shrugging.
"I'm fine, seriously, I am," Dean tells him, and he doesn't even have to fake his honesty, because that's all there is there.
"Is it weird that I think maybe you shouldn't be?" Sam sounds confused, but Dean kind of gets that. He's confused about it himself.
"You think I don't know I shouldn’t be," he says, and it even sounds ludicrous when he says it. "Seriously I know I'm pretty much useless in the grand scheme of things now but everything we did, everything we went through-" Dean stops and waves a hand, but that's not good enough, and kind of pointless if Sam's not looking.
"Yeah," Sam agrees anyway. Dean's not really sure where to look, so he just thinks the hell with it, and looks at Sam. Because even if he can't read anything off of Sam's face any more. Sam can still read his. If he's willing to look at it.
"I never, ever thought we'd get any sort of happy ending. I thought it would be a mess, I thought we'd be dead or worse. And I'd pretty much accepted that was exactly what was going to happen. Then right at the end it's like someone said, 'ok, this is what I'm going to take, just this.' And you know what, I decided it's a pretty fair freakin' trade. "
The quiet drags on, and Dean's hand twitches, shifts on his knee for something to do. Because none of his brutally honest conversations with Sam seem to turn out quite right. In fact most of them seem to go straight to hell. He's tired of that, so damn tired, he wants everything from here to be from here and not before.
"Don't you think?" Dean thinks maybe he can hear Sam swallowing, though it's quiet, it could just as easily be the wind. Whoever said you got great hearing when you went blind they lied their ass off. You just have less stuff to see distracting you.
"Yeah," Sam's voice sounds quiet and faraway. "Yeah, I guess."
"Besides I still have things to do. I still have to work out how to sneak up on you in the dark," Dean tells him, because yeah, he's so doing that as soon as he stops bumping into things.
"You wish, I'd hear you crashing into things a mile away."
"Yeah that's why I'll be hiding under your bed."
"Funny," Sam says, and Dean could have heard the sarcasm there a mile away.
"Dressed as a clown," he adds.
"Fuck you," Sam says with feeling and Dean laughs and laughs
Part Two....