Supernatural fic - "Saving Grace" (Part Eleven)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
A/N: This chapter will probably be the last one for a couple of weeks… next week sierraphoenix and I will be driving to Los Angeles for the SPN convention. The weather around here’s been shitty lately, so point some good vibes our way! If anyone knows Mother Nature, ask her to knock off the ice and snow until we make it to the west coast :)
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Dean returned to the motel to find an empty room, and he hated just how relieved he was that Sam wasn’t there. Still…
He went to the next room over and knocked on the door. When Bobby opened it, he scowled at Dean. “Wondered when you’d turn up.” With only that to clue Dean in, Bobby turned and headed inside.
Dean followed after him, closing the door just as he asked, “Sam was here?”
“Bet your ass he was. Boy blew in here like a freaking tornado right after you and your angel ran off, demanding answers of me.”
“But you don’t know anything,” Dean pointed out as he took a seat at the room’s small table.
“And I told Sam that,” Bobby snapped, sounding just as annoyed about the fact as he was by Sam’s attitude, “but he didn’t want to hear it.”
“Where is he now?” Dean truly didn’t want to ask, mostly didn’t want to know, but he was still the older brother, damnit. It was hardwired in him to look out for Sam. Sam might be able to not care, but Dean couldn’t help himself. He cared. He cared just enough to be miserable every time he was in the same room with Sam.
“I don’t know. When he realized he wasn’t getting anything useful out of me he took off. Hope he’s not doing anything stupid.”
“Yeah, me too,” Dean grumbled.
Bobby sighed and went to the side of the bed and sat down, looking over the table at Dean. Dean cocked his head expectantly. Bobby looked toward the small refrigerator, probably considering the worth of busting into the beer he’d stashed there. If he did, Dean was definitely going to partake.
“Wasn’t just looking for answers Sam did while he was in here. He floated a few theories of his own, too.” Bobby stopped and slid a very guarded, cautious look at Dean.
Instinctively, Dean’s back stiffened. He so was not going to like this.
“You should know Sam’s come to the conclusion that you and that angel of yours are screwing each other.”
“What?!” Just as well he hadn’t been nursing a beer, because at that moment he would have spit it everywhere.
Bobby shrugged, but he didn’t look nearly as scandalized as he rightly should by such an accusation.
That fact made Dean narrow his eyes at Bobby. “Is that what you think, too?”
Silence.
“Bobby?”
“Well, you gotta admit, Dean… the things that angel Remiel said,” Bobby opened his hands, “it’s not hard to follow the bread crumbs there.” And the patent ‘angels lie’ rejoinder Dean might have blurted out didn’t have quite the same ring to it that ‘demons lie’ had.
Dean dropped his head into his hands with a groan. His life totally, completely sucked.
“Sam mentioned Castiel saying you and the angel had some kind of ‘profound bond’.” If that wasn’t fishing for details, Dean would eat his boots.
“Oh, come on… that was… he just meant…” Dean gestured feebly. “Cas and I have been through a lot together, that’s all he was saying.”
When Bobby just looked steadily at Dean, the younger hunter rambled on. “So what if I actually ended up liking the guy? We’re friends, Bobby. What, I can’t spend time with anyone outside you and Sam?”
“No need to get your underwear in a knot. You can spend time with anybody you want.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Bobby sat there awkwardly a moment, cleared his throat, then said, “Just want you to know, Dean, if you and Castiel were… well, I’d be okay with that.”
The surprise of that took Dean aback a second. Of all the things he would have expected out of Bobby Singer’s mouth… “Really?”
“I mean, would I feel better if he was a human, sure, but the fact that he’s got the same plumbing as you doesn’t… and what you boys do in the privacy of your own bed…” Bobby was starting to turn red. If the conversation wasn’t so mortifying, Dean might have laughed. “All I’m saying is, I won’t love you any less because you’re gay, son.”
Dean leaned forward and let his forehead hit the tabletop. “Unbelievable.” Who would have thought helping to roast an angel would be the least strange part of his night?
He lifted his head up and looked at Bobby. The old hunter looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but having this conversation. Dean was in full agreement.
“Listen, Bobby… not that I don’t think you’re awesome for being supportive of… well, you know, you can hold off hanging up a gay pride flag in the salvage yard.”
“So, you and Castiel aren’t…”
He didn’t want to tell Bobby the truth - for all the same reasons he hadn’t told Bobby before when he was asking - but at this point not telling him was tantamount to feeding him a lie. He had too much respect for Bobby to do that.
Dean leaned forward and said lowly, “Things upstairs are really hairy for Cas right now, and he needed an insurance policy.”
Bobby’s eyes glinted darkly under his cap. Dean could tell Bobby didn’t like where this was going. “Go on,” Bobby growled. The growl was his second clue they were heading into unhappy Singer land.
“I’m keeping a part of Castiel’s grace.”
Suspicion was wrapping Bobby up in a huge angry look. It had nothing on John Winchester, but it was pretty damn scary in its own right. “Keeping it where?”
Dean patted his chest.
It took only a second for Bobby to figure that out. When he did, he drew back like Dean had yakked on the table. “Damnit, kid! What in the hell made you agree to that?!”
“You should have seen him, Bobby. Cas was getting the crap beat out of him.”
“And how in the hell does putting part of him inside you help him?”
“If a part of his grace is kept clean, he can fight dirtier up there and still recover. Apparently doing wrong stains angels.”
If Dean was hoping for understanding, he didn’t get it. Bobby stood up, furious. “When I get my hands on him, I’ll wring his scrawny angel neck! How could he do that to you?” Bobby made a frustrated sound. “Why couldn’t you just have been gay? I’d prefer that to this.”
“Hey! I asked him to do it… he didn’t want to. Hell, I had to talk him into it.” He’d disregard the gay comment for now. Bigger fish and all that. Dean frowned. “Why are you so upset about this?”
“Because you know what this sounds like to me? A deal. The same deals you Winchesters have been making for years that put your asses in a sling again and again.”
Dean stood abruptly… so fast he knocked over the chair he’d been using. “This is not a deal, Bobby. Don’t you compare Castiel to a damn crossroads demon. In case you hadn’t noticed, Cas is the good guy, and he’s fighting a war up there for us.”
“And he’s put you smack dab in the middle of it, just when you boys were finally out of it.”
“I put myself in the middle of it. Cas is in it waist deep, then so am I. That’s how it works, Bobby.”
Bobby gave Dean a look that the younger hunter could not place for the life of him. Dean almost asked, but he decided he might not really want to know what was going through Bobby’s head.
Then Bobby shook his head and paced for a while. Dean stood back and let him. He wouldn’t feel bad about what he’d done for Cas. He wouldn’t. Nothing Bobby could say would make Dean regret what he was doing for Castiel.
Finally, Bobby was calm enough to look at Dean and say, “So this grace has made you invincible to angel mojo?”
“Kind of, I guess. I didn’t bleed out my ears when Remiel spoke, and I… when Cas ganked him, I didn’t close my eyes like he told us to. I saw Remiel’s true form, and I still have my eyes.”
With a weary sigh, Bobby said, “Peachy. Well, since it’s too late to talk you out of this stupid plan, what are you going to tell Sam? Because he figures you’ve gone all super-Dean from Castiel shooting you full of angel cream.”
“Eww!”
Undaunted, Bobby continued, “I’m guessing you have a reason for not telling him the truth before.”
“Yeah…” Dean growled, “the reason being Sam’s not my brother. He might look like him, but there’s nothing in there that’s anything close to the old Sam, to my Sam. This is important to Cas, and I can’t trust Sam with knowing what I’m doing.” Dean smiled sourly, because it was either that or break something. “Truth is, sometimes I think the only reason Sam’s still hanging around hunting with me at all is because of the angel advantage I’ve got.” Dean let his expression shift to a smirk, and it was only a little self-satisfied… maybe thirty percent, thirty-five tops. “Cas very rarely answers when Sam calls for him.”
Bobby snorted.
“You can’t tell Sam, either.”
“I won’t… but you’ll have to tell him something. Us humans get hammered when an angel unleashes their goods, and you didn’t.”
That was an ugly fact, and Bobby was right about Dean needing an explanation for why it hadn’t done the same to him.
Dean knew the answer long before he would acknowledge it. He tried to beat it back, but the damn thing kept climbing up from the depths of Dean’s twisted mind until it was flashing him its naughty bits.
Finally, he broke.
“Shit…” Dean breathed through clenched teeth.
“What?”
“Can’t believe I’m doing this, but…” Dean looked up at Bobby piteously. “If Sam’s convinced the changes he’s noticed in me are because Cas and I… well,” Dean steeled himself, “let Sam believe it.”
Bobby’s look of surprise matched Dean’s sense of dread.
“You’re gonna lead Sam to believe you and Castiel actually are bumping uglies?”
“Geez, Bobby, what are you, twelve? And… yeah. I can’t think of another way to throw him off the trail. He can’t find out about Cas stashing a piece of his grace in my ribcage, so… unless you’ve got something better.”
Part of him secretly hoped Bobby had a brilliant plan that would blow Dean’s out of the water. Instead, all he got was a grunt and a shrug. “Hmmm… well, on the bright side, shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.”
“Do I even want to know?” Dean asked tensely.
“Just that you and that angel of yours… sometimes, honestly, I wondered myself.”
For a second all Dean could do was gape at Bobby. The old hunter just offered a conciliatory smile.
“Okay, this is officially the most surreal conversation with you I’ve ever had,” Dean groused, “and there have been some really fucking weird ones.”
Having had about enough for one day, Dean bid his farewell to Bobby and headed for the door to get some shut-eye in his own room. If he was lucky, a meteor would fall out of the sky and put him out of his misery.
Just before he opened the door, though, Bobby called out, “Dean?”
“Yeah?” He was almost afraid to listen.
“So… Sam’s completely off base on this one? I mean, nothing’s ever happened between you and the angel?”
How Dean wanted to blurt out ‘no, of course not’, but he remembered in that same instant how he’d gotten Castiel’s grace inside him in the first place. That damn kiss. It made his face flush and any denial he would have come up with then would sound and look faked. Bobby could read Dean too fucking well for that. All he could do in reply was scowl.
Which Bobby read just as well, too, that bastard who was like a father to him.
The totally accepting and understanding twinkle in Bobby’s eye hurried Dean out of the room all the quicker.
Bobby Singer all for gay love… who knew?
Part Twelve
A/N: This chapter will probably be the last one for a couple of weeks… next week sierraphoenix and I will be driving to Los Angeles for the SPN convention. The weather around here’s been shitty lately, so point some good vibes our way! If anyone knows Mother Nature, ask her to knock off the ice and snow until we make it to the west coast :)
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Dean returned to the motel to find an empty room, and he hated just how relieved he was that Sam wasn’t there. Still…
He went to the next room over and knocked on the door. When Bobby opened it, he scowled at Dean. “Wondered when you’d turn up.” With only that to clue Dean in, Bobby turned and headed inside.
Dean followed after him, closing the door just as he asked, “Sam was here?”
“Bet your ass he was. Boy blew in here like a freaking tornado right after you and your angel ran off, demanding answers of me.”
“But you don’t know anything,” Dean pointed out as he took a seat at the room’s small table.
“And I told Sam that,” Bobby snapped, sounding just as annoyed about the fact as he was by Sam’s attitude, “but he didn’t want to hear it.”
“Where is he now?” Dean truly didn’t want to ask, mostly didn’t want to know, but he was still the older brother, damnit. It was hardwired in him to look out for Sam. Sam might be able to not care, but Dean couldn’t help himself. He cared. He cared just enough to be miserable every time he was in the same room with Sam.
“I don’t know. When he realized he wasn’t getting anything useful out of me he took off. Hope he’s not doing anything stupid.”
“Yeah, me too,” Dean grumbled.
Bobby sighed and went to the side of the bed and sat down, looking over the table at Dean. Dean cocked his head expectantly. Bobby looked toward the small refrigerator, probably considering the worth of busting into the beer he’d stashed there. If he did, Dean was definitely going to partake.
“Wasn’t just looking for answers Sam did while he was in here. He floated a few theories of his own, too.” Bobby stopped and slid a very guarded, cautious look at Dean.
Instinctively, Dean’s back stiffened. He so was not going to like this.
“You should know Sam’s come to the conclusion that you and that angel of yours are screwing each other.”
“What?!” Just as well he hadn’t been nursing a beer, because at that moment he would have spit it everywhere.
Bobby shrugged, but he didn’t look nearly as scandalized as he rightly should by such an accusation.
That fact made Dean narrow his eyes at Bobby. “Is that what you think, too?”
Silence.
“Bobby?”
“Well, you gotta admit, Dean… the things that angel Remiel said,” Bobby opened his hands, “it’s not hard to follow the bread crumbs there.” And the patent ‘angels lie’ rejoinder Dean might have blurted out didn’t have quite the same ring to it that ‘demons lie’ had.
Dean dropped his head into his hands with a groan. His life totally, completely sucked.
“Sam mentioned Castiel saying you and the angel had some kind of ‘profound bond’.” If that wasn’t fishing for details, Dean would eat his boots.
“Oh, come on… that was… he just meant…” Dean gestured feebly. “Cas and I have been through a lot together, that’s all he was saying.”
When Bobby just looked steadily at Dean, the younger hunter rambled on. “So what if I actually ended up liking the guy? We’re friends, Bobby. What, I can’t spend time with anyone outside you and Sam?”
“No need to get your underwear in a knot. You can spend time with anybody you want.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Bobby sat there awkwardly a moment, cleared his throat, then said, “Just want you to know, Dean, if you and Castiel were… well, I’d be okay with that.”
The surprise of that took Dean aback a second. Of all the things he would have expected out of Bobby Singer’s mouth… “Really?”
“I mean, would I feel better if he was a human, sure, but the fact that he’s got the same plumbing as you doesn’t… and what you boys do in the privacy of your own bed…” Bobby was starting to turn red. If the conversation wasn’t so mortifying, Dean might have laughed. “All I’m saying is, I won’t love you any less because you’re gay, son.”
Dean leaned forward and let his forehead hit the tabletop. “Unbelievable.” Who would have thought helping to roast an angel would be the least strange part of his night?
He lifted his head up and looked at Bobby. The old hunter looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but having this conversation. Dean was in full agreement.
“Listen, Bobby… not that I don’t think you’re awesome for being supportive of… well, you know, you can hold off hanging up a gay pride flag in the salvage yard.”
“So, you and Castiel aren’t…”
He didn’t want to tell Bobby the truth - for all the same reasons he hadn’t told Bobby before when he was asking - but at this point not telling him was tantamount to feeding him a lie. He had too much respect for Bobby to do that.
Dean leaned forward and said lowly, “Things upstairs are really hairy for Cas right now, and he needed an insurance policy.”
Bobby’s eyes glinted darkly under his cap. Dean could tell Bobby didn’t like where this was going. “Go on,” Bobby growled. The growl was his second clue they were heading into unhappy Singer land.
“I’m keeping a part of Castiel’s grace.”
Suspicion was wrapping Bobby up in a huge angry look. It had nothing on John Winchester, but it was pretty damn scary in its own right. “Keeping it where?”
Dean patted his chest.
It took only a second for Bobby to figure that out. When he did, he drew back like Dean had yakked on the table. “Damnit, kid! What in the hell made you agree to that?!”
“You should have seen him, Bobby. Cas was getting the crap beat out of him.”
“And how in the hell does putting part of him inside you help him?”
“If a part of his grace is kept clean, he can fight dirtier up there and still recover. Apparently doing wrong stains angels.”
If Dean was hoping for understanding, he didn’t get it. Bobby stood up, furious. “When I get my hands on him, I’ll wring his scrawny angel neck! How could he do that to you?” Bobby made a frustrated sound. “Why couldn’t you just have been gay? I’d prefer that to this.”
“Hey! I asked him to do it… he didn’t want to. Hell, I had to talk him into it.” He’d disregard the gay comment for now. Bigger fish and all that. Dean frowned. “Why are you so upset about this?”
“Because you know what this sounds like to me? A deal. The same deals you Winchesters have been making for years that put your asses in a sling again and again.”
Dean stood abruptly… so fast he knocked over the chair he’d been using. “This is not a deal, Bobby. Don’t you compare Castiel to a damn crossroads demon. In case you hadn’t noticed, Cas is the good guy, and he’s fighting a war up there for us.”
“And he’s put you smack dab in the middle of it, just when you boys were finally out of it.”
“I put myself in the middle of it. Cas is in it waist deep, then so am I. That’s how it works, Bobby.”
Bobby gave Dean a look that the younger hunter could not place for the life of him. Dean almost asked, but he decided he might not really want to know what was going through Bobby’s head.
Then Bobby shook his head and paced for a while. Dean stood back and let him. He wouldn’t feel bad about what he’d done for Cas. He wouldn’t. Nothing Bobby could say would make Dean regret what he was doing for Castiel.
Finally, Bobby was calm enough to look at Dean and say, “So this grace has made you invincible to angel mojo?”
“Kind of, I guess. I didn’t bleed out my ears when Remiel spoke, and I… when Cas ganked him, I didn’t close my eyes like he told us to. I saw Remiel’s true form, and I still have my eyes.”
With a weary sigh, Bobby said, “Peachy. Well, since it’s too late to talk you out of this stupid plan, what are you going to tell Sam? Because he figures you’ve gone all super-Dean from Castiel shooting you full of angel cream.”
“Eww!”
Undaunted, Bobby continued, “I’m guessing you have a reason for not telling him the truth before.”
“Yeah…” Dean growled, “the reason being Sam’s not my brother. He might look like him, but there’s nothing in there that’s anything close to the old Sam, to my Sam. This is important to Cas, and I can’t trust Sam with knowing what I’m doing.” Dean smiled sourly, because it was either that or break something. “Truth is, sometimes I think the only reason Sam’s still hanging around hunting with me at all is because of the angel advantage I’ve got.” Dean let his expression shift to a smirk, and it was only a little self-satisfied… maybe thirty percent, thirty-five tops. “Cas very rarely answers when Sam calls for him.”
Bobby snorted.
“You can’t tell Sam, either.”
“I won’t… but you’ll have to tell him something. Us humans get hammered when an angel unleashes their goods, and you didn’t.”
That was an ugly fact, and Bobby was right about Dean needing an explanation for why it hadn’t done the same to him.
Dean knew the answer long before he would acknowledge it. He tried to beat it back, but the damn thing kept climbing up from the depths of Dean’s twisted mind until it was flashing him its naughty bits.
Finally, he broke.
“Shit…” Dean breathed through clenched teeth.
“What?”
“Can’t believe I’m doing this, but…” Dean looked up at Bobby piteously. “If Sam’s convinced the changes he’s noticed in me are because Cas and I… well,” Dean steeled himself, “let Sam believe it.”
Bobby’s look of surprise matched Dean’s sense of dread.
“You’re gonna lead Sam to believe you and Castiel actually are bumping uglies?”
“Geez, Bobby, what are you, twelve? And… yeah. I can’t think of another way to throw him off the trail. He can’t find out about Cas stashing a piece of his grace in my ribcage, so… unless you’ve got something better.”
Part of him secretly hoped Bobby had a brilliant plan that would blow Dean’s out of the water. Instead, all he got was a grunt and a shrug. “Hmmm… well, on the bright side, shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.”
“Do I even want to know?” Dean asked tensely.
“Just that you and that angel of yours… sometimes, honestly, I wondered myself.”
For a second all Dean could do was gape at Bobby. The old hunter just offered a conciliatory smile.
“Okay, this is officially the most surreal conversation with you I’ve ever had,” Dean groused, “and there have been some really fucking weird ones.”
Having had about enough for one day, Dean bid his farewell to Bobby and headed for the door to get some shut-eye in his own room. If he was lucky, a meteor would fall out of the sky and put him out of his misery.
Just before he opened the door, though, Bobby called out, “Dean?”
“Yeah?” He was almost afraid to listen.
“So… Sam’s completely off base on this one? I mean, nothing’s ever happened between you and the angel?”
How Dean wanted to blurt out ‘no, of course not’, but he remembered in that same instant how he’d gotten Castiel’s grace inside him in the first place. That damn kiss. It made his face flush and any denial he would have come up with then would sound and look faked. Bobby could read Dean too fucking well for that. All he could do in reply was scowl.
Which Bobby read just as well, too, that bastard who was like a father to him.
The totally accepting and understanding twinkle in Bobby’s eye hurried Dean out of the room all the quicker.
Bobby Singer all for gay love… who knew?
Part Twelve