FIC: Settling (Castiel/Dean Winchester) [5/6]
Title: Settling [Part 5/6 of Bunker!Verse]
Author: todisturbtheuni
Rating: R.
Genre and/or Pairing: Fluff; Castiel/Dean Winchester
Spoilers: Up to 8x13.
Warnings: Cursing.
Word Count: 2808
Summary: Dean's finally learned to appreciate the value of a day off.
Also available on AO3 | Part I: Faith | Part II: We're Okay | Part III: Let 'Em | Part IV: Falling
When Dean staggers into the kitchen in the morning, it’s not exactly the morning after that Sam imagined. He’d been braced for a lot of suggestive eyebrow-waggles, merciless smirking, and comments full of innuendo--but instead, Dean looks worse than he’s looked in days: dark circles deepened under his eyes, a certain haggard, gaunt look that Cas has been wearing, transferred to Dean.
Sam feels goosebumps rise on his arms.
Dean glances at him and grunts a good morning, then heads straight to the coffee pot, leaning down on his elbows beside it, watching it percolate. Slowly.
“What’s up?” Sam asks, trying to keep his tone casual.
Dean doesn’t look at him. His green eyes are a little blank, almost dazed, and when he says, “Cas is human,” it’s with a tone of shell-shock that Sam hasn’t heard in a long time. Maybe not since Wyoming, and fuck, was that almost a decade ago now?
“Human,” he repeats, and he sounds a little shocked himself.
Dean scrubs a hand over his face and goes back to watching the coffee pot. “He Fell,” he confirms, a little more firmly now. “Last night. Somethin’ about...he’s cut off from Heaven again, and there’s no angels left on Earth, so.” He clears his throat. “Human.”
Sam blinks. “Is he okay?” he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Dean lifts his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. “He seems all right. Gonna take some getting used to.”
Sam pauses, and then, judging that he won’t get more than a look for the comment, asks, “Are you okay?”
Dean looks fucking terrible. Exhausted, worn down, burned out. But he smiles, and it actually touches his bloodshot eyes, crinkling the crow’s feet at the corners. Sam thinks that Dean looks middle-aged, and wonders when that happened, when he got the chance to develop the barely-there pudge on his stomach or the laugh lines around his mouth.
“He’s safe,” Dean says, pulling the coffee pot out and taking down what Sam has realized is his favorite mug; it’s the only one he ever uses. “Yeah, he’s not an angel anymore, but he’s still Cas, and he’ll be fine. So, yeah. I’m fuckin’ awesome.”
The funny thing is that Dean looks like he actually means it, half-smile lingering at the corner of his mouth as he pours coffee, and Sam reflects on the fact that Dean even has a favorite mug, that he’s got a robe and a bedroom to call his own, and his throat tightens up a little, because he didn’t think that Dean could ever embrace these things--could ever make himself a home.
“Good,” Sam manages, and then, inspired, because Dean’s not going to let this conversation go on much longer, he adds, “That’s great, Dean. I’m happy for you.”
Sure enough, Dean looks up, raises an eyebrow, and the content little half-smile turns into a smirk. “I’m sorry,” Dean says, and he doesn’t look sorry at all, “did I trigger something? Do you want me to braid your hair and listen to you cry about your feelings now?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he mutters, looking back to his laptop, and Dean just snickers, sitting down across from him. “Look, I think I’m gonna clear out for a few days, check up on Kevin. He’s not answering his damn phone again.”
“Probably a good idea,” Dean grunts. “Last time I was there he was livin’ off tofu dogs. That was it. Refrigerator full of ‘em. That can’t be healthy.”
No, it really isn’t, and Sam frowns at his computer, worrying. Kevin’s had the same deranged energy around him that Sam had, back when Jess had just died and he was cutting a swath of revenge through every supernatural piece of crap that got in his way, and he knows that’s not good for a person but he also doesn’t know how to help the kid--God knows Sam never really figured out how to deal with the acute sense of loss himself.
“You’ll be okay with Cas?” Sam confirms, and Dean gives a huff of exasperation.
“Me’n Cas’ll be fine. Go save the prophet from himself.”
When Sam takes off later that morning, Dean and Cas are in the kitchen eating breakfast, and Cas’s bare feet are in Dean’s lap. It makes him miss Amelia with an ache that persists even when he leaves the vision behind and drives, the growl of the Impala’s engine comforting beneath him. It’s a good five hours to Warsaw, and only if he pushes, but he takes his time; he’s in no rush to get back. The countryside streaks by beside him, snow melting in ragged heaps on the shoulder, and he tries not to chart the route to Texas in his head.
It’s after nightfall when he pulls up to Garth’s houseboat, and, as always, he can’t hold back a snort at the paint emblazoned on the rear of the vessel. Did the sock puppet or the boat come first? he wonders, bemused, and locks the Impala behind him.
The boat is quiet, water lapping around the dock as Sam takes the stairs a few at a time, stretching his legs after the long drive. “Kevin,” he calls, banging the door with his fist a few times. “It’s Sam.”
When no one answers, he opens the door himself, hand already on the knife in his jacket. Something about the quiet doesn’t sit quite right, and after a lifetime of hunting, Sam knows better than to ignore a gut reaction like that.
“Kev,” he calls, more quietly now, and considers digging his flashlight out, too, because the interior of the houseboat is dark--but then he hears a groan from behind the table and stills, fingers tightening on the handle of his blade as he moves forward, quiet, eyes on where the sound originated from.
The dark shape on the floor just turns out to be Kevin, the anti-possession tattoo on his forearm intact; Sam catches a glimpse of it as he presses a hand to his forehead, lips twisting in a cringe.
“Kevin,” Sam says again, dropping down to one knee beside the prophet, and Kevin opens his eyes. He looks terrible, the dark shadows worse than the last time Sam saw him, a smear of blood under his nose. “Were you attacked?”
Kevin blinks up at him. “Attacked?” he repeats, and then his eyes focus, a light of recognition suddenly firing up inside. “Sam? What’re you doing here?”
“Checking up on you,” Sam replies, offering a hand to help him up, and Kevin lets himself be hauled to his feet. “Were you attacked?”
“No,” Kevin says, with a violent twitch of his head. His eyes are already swiveling away from Sam, going back to the massive board of notes and scribbles on the wall of the houseboat. “No, I think I just fainted. Maybe had a seizure. Not sure.” Before Sam can cut him off with a furious, What do you mean, you’re not fucking sure, Kevin continues, “What time is it?”
As Kevin gravitates bodily back to that wall of notes, Sam checks his watch. “Eight.”
“Oh,” Kevin says absently, squinting now. “What day is it?”
“Tuesday,” Sam replies, watching the prophet carefully.
“Oh,” Kevin says, with another violent twitch that might have been a nod. “Good.”
“Kev,” Sam starts, but just then, Kevin sways dangerously and Sam darts forward to catch his fall. “Hey,” Sam says, more worried than angry, now. “Stay with me, Kevin. How long’s it been since you’ve eaten? Something other than hot dogs?”
“Tofu dogs,” Kevin corrects faintly. “I don’t know.” He promptly passes out, going limp in Sam’s grasp.
With a heavy, exasperated sigh, Sam leans down to let Kevin drape over his shoulders, locking an arm under his knee and a hand around his wrist. “Jesus,” he mutters as he straightens up. “You dumbass. You’ve gotta take better care of yourself.”
Sam knows there’s only one way to guarantee that, so he carries Kevin out to the car before returning to the houseboat to gather up his notes and the tablet. There’s plenty of room in the bunker, and he doesn’t like the idea of having all of them in one place, but someone’s got to get it into Kevin’s head that he’s killing himself, and Dean’s become a pro at force-feeding lately. Sam thinks his brother actually likes the domesticity, likes cooking and then stuffing his food down unsuspecting throats like a middle-aged housewife. He smiles at the thought.
If he leaves now, he can make it back to Lebannon well before dawn.
“So,” Dean says, with a yawn and a stretch, and lets his hands come to rest on Cas’s ankles. “What do you want to do today?”
Cas looks at him with surprise. “You don’t have a case?”
Dean shrugs. “We’ve only been taking on the big stuff. Plenty of other hunters to go around.
The surprised look didn’t fade. An eyebrow quirked up; Cas’s toes wiggled in his lap. “Really,” he replied, suspicious now.
Nonplussed, Dean stared back. “Yeah, really,” he said. “Gotta be fresh for whenever that tablet gets translated. It’s not exactly the Apocalypse out there--we’ve had some weird fuckin’ cases since I got back, man. And not necessarily weird in the deadly way, but in the there’s-a-nerdy-jealous-witch-behind-them way. We’ve been filtering our caseload.”
The corner of Cas’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “That’s not like you. You were still insisting on taking on every case you noticed when Lucifer was roaming free.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve grown.” It was sarcastic, but Dean smiled back, anyway. “So I’m not hunting a damn thing until Sam comes back with that prophet.”
“I thought he was just going to check in on Kevin.”
“Kid looked terrible last time I was there. If he’s the same, no way Sam’s leaving that houseboat without him. I know my brother. He’s a sucker for strays.” I am too, Dean thought, and cleared his throat. “So. First day human. Should do something fun.”
Cas was staring again, head tilted a fraction to the side. “We were in Purgatory for so long,” he said quietly, his features serious now. “I’d almost forgotten this aspect of your personality.”
Dean flicked the bottom of Cas’s foot and stood up. “Guess it’s time to remind you, then.”
“Shouldn’t we...” Cas hesitates, looks down at his hands. “Shouldn’t we talk about where I’ve been?”
Dean edges around the table, close enough to cup a hand around Cas’s cheek, fingertips brushing into his dark hair; Cas closes his eyes at the touch, presses into it, and Dean thinks that something so minor hasn’t made his pulse leap like that in a long time, maybe ever.
“Nah,” Dean says quietly. “Not today.”
He lets Cas go through the myriad of old board games the Men of Letters kept in the bunker while he sifts through his vinyls, looking for something good to listen to, and finally settles on the Eagles, turning the volume down low. He’s glad when Cas just comes up with a deck of cards, because poker’s easy to teach and he still has a vague distaste for board games after the incident with Sorry! in the mental clinic. And Cas, predictably, picks up on it quick, and it doesn’t matter so much what they’re doing, just that Cas is sitting here, with him, frowning at the fan of cards in his hand and the stack of chips at his elbow, and his feet are tangled up under the table around Dean’s calves, and they laugh and talk like they haven’t gotten to in years--just the two of them, Dean and Cas, not the Righteous Man and the Fallen Angel.
When it’s late enough, Dean gets Cas dressed in old clothes that fit well enough--a pair of his jeans held up with a belt, boots, a t-shirt and jacket, all a little oversized but he looks good, anyway, and then they walk into town to the local bar because Sam took the Impala. Cas walks a little slowly, still stiff from his crash landing, but their shoulders brush often, Dean letting him know that it’s okay. Sometimes Cas rolls his shoulders, a little motion that looks almost like unfurling wings, as if he’s testing out how it feels to not have them.
They get a booth in the bar and tackle hot wings and cheeseburgers; Cas curiously watches the hockey game playing on one of the bar’s many TVs and steals a lot of Dean’s fries and makes a pleased face around the first mouthful of every pint of beer. Hunting and tablets and secret factions of angels all fade so far back into his head that Dean nearly forgets them. They play pool and Cas, predictably, wins, and by the time the last call goes up they’re both loose-limbed and laughing, Dean’s arm thrown out around Cas’s shoulders as they leave the bar and walk home.
And when Cas leans up to kiss him just inside the door, tasting like warm beer, Dean digs fingers into his hips and blindly backs him toward the bedroom. Cas makes a noise in his throat, a muffled groan that Dean wants to bury himself in as Cas brings a hand up to cup the back of Dean’s neck and lets himself be pushed by Dean’s momentum; Dean’s been thinking about this since he watched, stunned, while Cas kissed Meg and thought, a little blindly, do that to me. And Cas does, the force of his lips a wave of heat, soft and insistent on Dean’s while the rasp of his stubble scrapes Dean’s skin, making him shudder.
He pushes Cas down to his bed, toes off his boots as Cas scrambles to get his shoes off, and follows him down. Cas rucks up Dean’s shirt, getting cool hands on warm skin, and Dean kisses him again, settling in the bracket of Cas’s legs, their bodies pressed together in one long line from hip to chest. All the blood has officially evacuated his brain, and Cas’s blown-out pupils--not to mention the rigid heat pressed into Dean’s hip--indicate he’s not the only one, so he drags his mouth across the stubble beneath Cas’s jaw and lets Cas claw his shirts off.
“Dean,” Cas breathes against his skin; Dean gets his teeth into the curve where Cas’s neck meets his shoulder and Cas breaks off with a groan, loud and surprised, his hips bucking up against Dean.
He’s back to kissing Cas deep into the mattress, swallowing down all the noises Cas’s throat offers up, hands jerking open belt buckles, when a door slams in the distance and Sam’s voice shouts, “Dean!”
It’s anxiety with an edge of irritation, and Dean knows his brother well enough to know it’s not really an emergency, but he still groans and rises up and Cas stares up at him, panting, lips puffy and bruised, hair crash-landing-vertical after being rubbed against the mattress.
“Son of a bitch,” he mutters, and yanks his t-shirt back over his head as Cas sits up, re-tightening his belt.
When they get out to the library, Sam’s dropping a half-conscious Kevin into an armchair by the fire. Sam’s armchair, which he won’t even let Dean sit in. He’s wearing Bitchface #9, which means that Kevin must have really stepped in it. He crouches down, muttering under his breath, and gives Kevin’s shoulder a gentle shake, but the prophet doesn’t respond; the kid’s passed out, head lolling to the side in the armchair. His nose is bloody, dripping over his mouth onto his shirt.
“Garth kick him off the houseboat?” Dean asks, voice still a little too hoarse for casual conversation.
Sam’s got a wad of tissue mopping up the mess now, sliding up to hold it at Kevin’s nose. “No,” he says. “Garth’s not checking up on him often enough, and neither are we. He’s staying here. I think he had a seizure.”
“Or too many hot dogs,” Dean ventures.
Sam finally gets up, satisfied that the blood has stopped flowing, and turns; his eyes sweep over their appearance--clothes askew, boots removed, hair ruffled, a bruise sucked into the crook of Cas’s neck--and he promptly cringes.
“Oh my god, my eyes,” he mutters, staring determinedly over their heads.
Dean can’t help a smirk. “Thought you were happy for me, Sammy,” he teases.
“I’ve got this,” Sam says, and flaps his hands at them without making eye contact. “Christ, I’ll only yell if we’re under attack from now on.”
Dean grabs Cas’s hand and, laughing now, tugs him back out of the library while Sam makes exaggerated retching noises behind him and even Cas chuckles and he thinks, yeah, he could get used to this.
Go on... Part VI: Game Over.