Archive of Our Own

——

If you’re not the one for me, then how come I can bring you to your knees? 

If you’re not the one for me, why do I hate the idea of being free? 

And if I’m not the one for you, you’ve gotta stop holding me the way you do 

——

Cas thinks he could be happy like this. 

Before this, before Cas and every other angel were forcibly ejected from heaven by Metatron, he always knew that there was a divide between himself and Dean.  Not just the we-really-need-to-talk-about-this kind of divide, or the I’m-ignoring-you-because-I’m-mad-at-you kind of divide, but the type that means no matter what happens, no matter what kind of long shot they attempt, it just won’t work out. They - Dean and Cas- won’t work out. Cas believed there would always be a problem- something that inevitably goes wrong when one of them is human and the other is an angelic warrior a couple billion years old. 

And it’s not to say that Dean and Cas are together together, because Cas is very much aware they are not, but he’s known for a while now- probably longer than he’d even admit to himself- that there are not a lot of places he would rather be than with Dean- in whatever capacity possible- for the rest of his existence. He can’t think of one place, in fact, that dares even to try and hold a candle to the place at Dean Winchester’s side. 

But now, as a human, there’s no such gaping divide between them anymore. Cas still has all of the knowledge an angel can possess after watching creation from on high the moment it came into existence, but he now has the shocking ability to die (again) with that knowledge now. But despite his newly-inevitable fate, Cas thinks that his current situation is much more acceptable than it was before, and significantly less problematic. Angels won’t be coming after him, thanks to the time-consuming task that is dealing with newfound morality, and other power hungry beings still on the table won’t be eyeing him up anymore. 

So this is a good thing, Cas reminds himself. Being human. He can live here, in the bunker, with the people he loves most in the world, and with them all together, maybe he can be at peace just being with them. That is what humans do, after all- they simply be with one another. 

He sits down in the wooden chair at the side of the table in the main hall of the Bunker, chewing on some food he procured from the kitchen, too distracted in the rich tapestry of a future filled with happiness he’s woven to focus on what he’s tasting at the moment. Even though on some level he can tell the food tastes significantly more than molecules, it all pales in comparison to such grand, intoxicating thoughts.

And that’s the crux of it all, isn’t it. Happiness. Joy. Love. Cas is not sure if he’s ever truly been in possession of the former, but he craves the discovery of the feeling like almost nothing he’s ever known. 

He does have an idea of where his happiness may lay, though. 

Cas knows that Dean would never… want an angel. Certainly not one that can’t follow orders, can’t keep his loved ones safe, can’t seem to fit in with humanity in the way he should, can’t do the million other small things that are expected of him, yet fail to fall within his grasp of comprehension. 

He inwardly laughs at how he used to so righteously consider himself an angel without flaws. 

Cas isn’t an angel anymore, though. Now, he’s mortal. And call him naive, but he’s hoping that along with his change of life expectancy, he'll hopefully be able to rectify at least some of his failings. To be useful. To be more than the angel on-call (Dean’s words). How could he ever despise his humanity- it’s given him the greatest chance to prove that he is worthy of staying with the Winchesters. That he’s worth it. 

So really, this all is for the best. Cas truly believes he’ll be able to be happy. 

He’s withdrawn from his hopeful revere by Dean’s slow approach to where Cas is sitting, and Cas immediately gazes up from his seat at him. It’s… it’s different from how Cas saw him- perceived him, technically- before, with the entirety of his angelic power roiling behind his endless eyes. 

Cas had always had his Grace flowing through the veins of his body the entire time he’s been with Dean, and had gotten accustomed to seeing the shine of his soul, so pure and good , suffusing through Dean’s body. Thinking back on it now, Cas remembers no matter what they were going up against or what was thrown their way- including Cas himself, thanks to Naomi- Dean’s soul was so bright with love that Cas often used its presence as a way to reassure himself. 

Even back in Lucifer’s crypt, when Naomi had tried her best to have Castiel take Dean out- to murder him- part of the reason that he was able to break free from her control was that when Dean was in front of him, on his knees and bloodied by Cas’s hand, his still soul shone with the colour of eternal goodness. Cas was about to kill him, about to end his life under false pretenses, and yet Dean’s soul still shone-unmarred by his violence and impossibly bright in the darkness surrounding them in the crypt.  

Safe to say, it’s been an adjustment to not have the comforting and familiar presence of Dean’s soul around him, but Cas isn’t too distraught. Now, with his newly-resurrected-from-the-dead human eyes, he sees Dean’s face just as any other mortal would, and it’s just as captivating. He’s beautiful. 

He’s still beautiful. Still Dean Winchester. 

The thought isn't new to Cas- it’s certainly one that’s crossed his mind many times over the years. He has a feeling today will be far from the last time he thinks that thought, too. 

Castiel loves Dean. Cas has fallen in love with him, and it scares him. More than any other falling he’s done- of which there’s been a lot. Angels were never meant to do anything except follow orders. They were never meant to rebel, to take the side of humans over their own. Angels were certainly never supposed to feel anything, so Cas’s love for his Righteous Man is something thoroughly new to this world. Cas used to be scared, used to be filled with a terror so encompassing and brutal because of his inability to understand what was happening to him. Cas, despite the unending amount of knowledge at his disposal, simply couldn’t fathom what it was that he was feeling so thoroughly, so deeply. 

It had taken him a few years, but he’s managed to figure it out. It was love that terrified him. 

Cas has stared down the Morning Star himself, fought innumerable wars, laid siege to the pit of damnation, and never once felt a moment of fear or concern. But love, love born of emotion he was never meant to feel has so encompassingly scared him. 

Cas finally comes back to the present, to Dean saying that they need to talk. Cas feels what he suspects to be a small flutter of happiness, of contentment at Dean’s words. “You know I always appreciate our talks, Dean. Our time together.” Cas couldn’t be more honest if he tried. He not only appreciates all the time he gets to spend talking with Dean, but he covets it all away and cherishes it. The significance of Dean choosing to spend time with him discussing the details of Pink Floyd’s discography, discussing the merits of modern conglomerate entertainment compared to the classics, discussing any other innumerable and inane topic is not lost on him. Cas knows Dean is not very close with a lot of people, so Cas being someone different, someone special to Dean makes him feel… proud. So quietly and softly proud. 

Cas believes that if he never spent another second away from Dean, he’d consider himself light years more lucky than he could’ve ever dreamed. He gazes at him as Dean perches on the table in front of him, ignoring the chair that Cas had pulled out- his clumsily selfish attempt at being even closer to Dean. Or perhaps Dean had not even noticed Cas moving it. 

Cas gazes at him. 

He then notices Dean’s expression. Cas’s soft smile begins to falter. 

Dean looks like he’s just hefted the world’s burden- and then some more- on his shoulders. Already, Cas can see that it’s too much for any one person- never mind someone who has already done and sacrificed so much for this broken world. 

He wants to take some of the weight for Dean. He wishes that Dean would let him. 

But it’s okay, Cas thinks. No matter what’s wrong or what’s just developed, it will be okay, because they can solve it together. Like they’ve always done. 

Dean says, “You can’t stay,” and Cas finally registers the taste of the residual food in his mouth. It tastes like ash. 

He wonders if this is what it feels like for humans to die, and then he remembers he already died as a human, and it didn’t hurt this much.

——

Dean knows he isn’t a deserving person. 

He has done so much more than a lot of bad things in his life, and even worse in his death. His past is one sore, painful regret, and yet every single hurt, every single death, it all pales in comparison to what he knows he’s just done to Cas. 

Cas, the former angel, Dean’s best friend- that title never really rang completely true in his head- is now stuck with the plight of brutal humanity after millennia as an angel . And what had Dean done with this development in Cas’s life? He made Cas leave. 

He’d thought when Ezekiel was telling him what he’d have to do, what he’d have to sacrifice in order to keep Sammy alive, that maybe this time it wouldn’t hurt as much as when Cas leaves of his own volition and with no warning. He told himself that this time, Dean wouldn’t feel so empty inside after the presence of Cas has left him, but that’s not the case. 

No, this time, it’s much worse. 

Cas had just come back from being killed by a reaper, and Dean cradled his still-warm face in his hands like a shattered promise, desperately trying to fit the broken pieces back together again so he might feel the movement of Cas’s body- his face- just one more time. And he almost didn’t. He would have lost Cas again if it hadn’t been for Ezekiel. 

Dean had watched Cas come back to life under the very hand that would then hold the door for him as he left the bunker. He made Cas leave the only home he’s known outside of Heaven, and he couldn’t even make himself tell Cas that it wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t his fault in the slightest. No, Cas just had the horrible misfortune of being important to Dean Winchester. 

He hates almost all of the choices he’s been forced to make, but he’s never regretted one that resulted in Cas being with him, being an unwavering pillar beside him. Dean knows he would suffer endlessly through hell all over again if it meant that Cas would come to him, to burn his mark onto his shoulder and take up a place at his side. That terrifies him- all of the lengths he’s willing to go to for the promise of that warm hand on his shoulder, and safety in intense blue eyes. 

Of course, despite his many, many failings, Dean is not delusional. He knows an angel would never want him. Want him as a hunting partner? Maybe. Want him as a sometimes-tolerable friend? Sure. But romantically? Not a chance in hell. 

How can anyone - even the very best of people- be worthy of an angel ? Dean doesn’t even try to delude himself into thinking he is one of those deserving people. He’s poisoned everything he’s touched, inadvertently or not, and the first thing he did when he met Cas was stab him in his heart. He knows it is only a matter of time before the wound eventually bleeds out and Dean Winchester murders an angel. 

But when Cas became human… Dean had thought that maybe they were a little bit closer to equals. Not by much, but maybe just enough. Cas, of course still heavenly and good in his own way, but now mortal. More within grasp. At the very least, Dean could be the one to show him everything new about humanity. It would have been an honour. 

All the new senses, new experiences, new emotions, and Dean could have been the one to show a millennia-old creature them all. The memories of firsts are always the ones that stay and reside the longest, and Dean has wanted to simply revel in his own selfishness. He had wanted Cas’s human experience that had started out so horribly close to being so short, to be so, so very good. He had wanted Cas’s experience of humanity to be one that Cas could even learn to enjoy.  He had wanted to show him that it’s not all bad, that being a human with him- and Sam and Kevin- can be okay sometimes, even if it still doesn't measure up to what Cas had as an angel. 

Cas is good. Dean just wants good things for Cas. It’s as simple as that. 

But now everything he’s been quietly hoping for with Cas has been thrown off of the high rise of all his wishes, destroyed on the unforgiving ground of reality below. It’s even worse, somehow, because none of  it is someone else’s fault. 

Dean, true to form, is the one throwing his happiness to its death below. 

He hates it, and he fucking hates himself for ever having anything resembling hope in the first place. You really would expect him to know better by now. 

But he’d stupidly, so stupidly thought that it wouldn’t be too bad of a thing to do. Sam’s life or Cas’s home. It was a horrible choice to have to make- forcing Cas to find another place to live as a human- but at least it wouldn’t cost Cas his life the way Ezekiel leaving Sam would. 

But what else was he supposed to do? What else can he do? 

He’s spent every single moment ruthlessly pondering, trying to sift through his options and come up with one that doesn’t destroy the best thing in his life. There should be a way out somewhere, a way to work this all out. There has to be. He- Cas can’t just stay gone.

Dean is tearing out his heart, ripping it to shreds in his own bloodied hands as tears sting and slip down his cheeks. 

Instead, Dean buries his head in his hands, still occupying the spot at the same table Cas was so humanly sitting at only a few hours ago, uselessly trying to hide his tears because maybe if the world doesn’t see them, then Dean can pretend that he’s not really this broken husk of a man because Cas is gone.

He’ll find a way to fix this. 

He has to. He can’t fathom any other option. 

——

Cas tries to muffle his broken sobs against his salty-wet palms. 

It’s dark in the supply closet and Cas thinks that’s probably for the best. He finds that sometimes the crackling hum of the unnaturally white light from the LED panels make it feel like he’s trapped in this liminal place, unable to move. The feeling wouldn’t be misplaced, but he doesn’t need constant reminding of the enforced exile he’s in. 

The wall behind his back is cold through his thin shirt and uniform and it serves as a touch to ground him through his muffled crying. 

Cas has fallen so far, he’s lost so much , and it’s not even the loss of his Grace that weighs the heaviest on his mind. He’s lost his family, his home, and his Dean. 

His love. 

Despite Cas’s veritable wealth of knowledge, he still doesn’t understand what happened. He doesn’t get what he’s done, what faux-pas he’s committed that has decreed he deserves this, but he supposes that even the worst monsters don’t know they’ve done something wrong until their death. 

Cas considers it entirely possible that he has slighted Dean, somehow, somewhere along the way, that he didn’t pick up on, and Dean just waited, bided his time, until Cas was no longer an all-powerful angel- and he could actually exact some form of revenge on Cas for what he’s done. 

Cas thought he knew Dean… thought that he was even one of the only people who knew Dean best , and Dean still made him leave as soon as the case was done and tied up. Or maybe Cas is just feeling so bad for himself that he’s trying to find some hidden logic or reasoning when there isn’t one- Cas simply was not someone that was kept around. He can’t even blame Dean for that, really. He barely made the cut to be helpful at a convenience store, so how could he have ever justified being helpful back at the bunker? 

He remembers sitting with Dean one time in the bunker as Dean had ranted about some tragically missed opportunity for rhyming in a Beatles song, how Dean had smiled at him even in his annoyance at the artists when Cas interrupted to agree with him about how ‘weeping’ would, in fact, sound better. Cas doesn’t remember how long they sat there, gazing into each other’s eyes, but he knows now- knows with the absolute certainty that comes with having experienced the very phenomenon- that it felt like falling. 

He reasons that this must be the landing, then. The brutal, crashing down from up high. 

Cas hopes the tear stains dry out of his shirt sleeve cuffs before he has to open the store. He wouldn’t want anyone thinking he’s spilled something on himself.

——

Cas does up only the first button of his shirt, leaving the top one open and the collar askew. He remembers how Dean once reached out to fix and straighten his tie- how he didn’t understand why he felt so much enjoyment at the act, but he did know that he wanted Dean to do it again. 

He has always kept his tie incorrectly tied ever since, and he now carries the habit over to his new outfit. 

Cas tries to keep busy- does his best to beat back the disparaging thoughts, lest they return to overwhelm him again. He’s not sure how much tissue he’s allowed to use from the shelves before it comes out of his meagre pay check. 

He fills the coffee urns, and it reminds him of the mug Dean got him one day, only to proceed to continually steal back and use for his own coffee every morning. 

The dairy case is stocked, and Cas thinks back to a case he worked with Sam and Dean on a cow farm up in Minnesota- one that ended with all three of them covered in mud and smelling awful. He remembers thinking Dean was beauty personified, even before he used his grace to clean them up. 

He untwines the rope holding the stack of newspapers together, and begins to wrap and unwrap and wrap it again all around his fingers. He imagines that some of the stress he feels bleeds out of his veins, into his muscles, and finds its way into the twisted cord. 

Nora walks in and tells him there’s something different about him; something special. 

He wonders what she would think if she knew that he’s never felt less uncommon than he does standing in this store.

He tosses out the stress-filled rope and turns back to the stack of newspapers. The headline proclaims that a ‘Local Man Presumed Dead. Fourth unexplained disappearance in weeks’. 

He spares a second to wonder if anyone would notice if he went unexplainably missing, and then thinks that some questions are best left unanswered. 

He pulls out his phone, punches in a number, and doesn’t begin his call with ‘Hello, Dean.” 

Dean doesn’t notice the change in greeting. 

Dean asks how he’s doing, and Cas doesn’t bother saying anything other than that he’s busy, simply because he thinks Dean wouldn’t even care if he lied. 

——

Dean had expected to never hear from Cas again after what he’d said to him- what he’d done to him- but here he is, driving out to take a look at a case because Cas is the one who brought it to his attention. As Dean was leaving the bunker, he told Kevin and Sam that he’s happy the trip gets him out of research with a smirk plastered on his face. He was also three seconds away from tears and just scared they would see him falling apart at the seams as they parsed the books detailing dead languages. 

While he was pretending to read back at the desk across from Sam and Kevin, he’d wondered if Cas once had heard the languages they were studying being spoken. If Cas once wrapped his tongue around the now unknowable sounds and talked to someone, asking them questions about their life. Dean doesn’t remember anything else from that tome. 

Now, cruising on the highway back toward the one person he just can’t make himself leave alone, Dean wonders if Cas is talking to someone else right now. What he would be saying, what he’d look like as he gave someone else his attention. He thinks about it a little too long, and then he realizes the emotion he’s feeling is not a welcome one.

——

Cas is attempting to fix the lights- to finally put an end to their maddening buzzing that overrides the music playing over the speakers in the store- when Nora approaches him to say that she’s found his toothbrush and his sleeping bag in the back. 

He lies to her, because Dean once told him that’s what humans have to do, saying that he just hasn’t had time after his shifts to go back to the bed and home that he definitely does have. Because that’s what normal people have, right? A home? A place of one’s own with their loved ones? 

Cas tries not to elaborate too much on his supposed home, also not wanting to continue on this topic of conversation for any longer than he has to. 

Nora either doesn’t pick up on his blunted sentences and explanations, or chooses to simply ignore them, and proceeds to ask him on what he thinks is a date. He can’t be quite sure, though, seeing as how his sleeves are still damp from how he felt thinking about the last time he thought he understood a situation as a human. He says yes anyways because it can’t be worse than spending another night in the coldly dark supply room trying to muffle his noises in the already empty store. 

Nora leans in to kiss his cheek, unaware that there is a very different person in her spot when Cas closes his eyes against the contact, then returns to the storage area in the back of the store. 

Cas stands there, stock still, for longer than he should. 

He climbs back up the ladder, ignoring the metaphors held within the action, and continues trying to fix the buzzing. 

——

The highway at Dean’s turned back is busy- endless cars zipping by as he gazes forward into the Gas ‘n Sip, steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

He’s not sure how long he’s been watching Cas man the till, but it was long enough for his vigil to have been interrupted by Sam calling him. 

Sam continues on about updates on how the research of the dead languages is going, and while normally it’s the kind of topic Dean zones right out of anyway, he’s paying even less attention than normal as he watches Cas through the window. 

Sam asks about the case, saying with increasing worry that what Dean is describing might be more of an actual case rather than a hunch Cas has. Sam thinks he should be there with them. 

Dean doesn’t want him there. He just wants to be with Cas. By himself. Alone. 

He hangs up on Sam and keeps selfishly watching Cas as he works behind the till. Dean wonders if he’s allowed to walk in there, back into Cas’s life, and rifling through and disturbing everything like a cold wind through an open window. It seems like Cas is doing okay, at least. No one runs out of the store crying or emotional at something Cas said, so he must be adapting to human interaction somewhat. Dean doesn't know what to feel about that. 

When he finally tears his gaze away from Cas long enough to make his way inside, his coffee is cold. 

——

“If you’re gonna let me down, let me down gently. Don’t pretend that you don’t want me, our love ain’t water under the bridge.” 

The lyrics that float across the store to where Cas is standing behind the register make him wish that he never fixed the incessant humming of the lights. 

“Say it ain’t so, say it ain’t so, say it-” 

“I’ll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols.” 

The smile Cas had just pasted on for the woman who bought lottery tickets immediately slips from his face. Cas didn’t count on actually seeing Dean during this case, nor did he want to. Who would enjoy having that what they desire most dangled in front of them so cruelly, so blatantly ?

“What are you doing here?” He grates. 

Dean looks affronted, but pastes a smile on his face. “Gee, it’s nice to see you too, Cas.” 

Cas doesn’t comment on Dean’s apparent enthusiasm to see him again. This wouldn’t be an occasion to be happy about if Dean hadn’t made him leave the bunker, after all. 

“It’s Steve now.” He gestures to his name tag. “And yeah, you surprised me.” 

Cas isn’t just talking about Dean showing up at the Gas ‘n Sip, but he’s not going to be the one to elaborate. Cas also realizes he can’t look Dean directly in the eye, or at any other part of him without becoming too close to that feeling of learned helplessness he’s becoming all too familiar with on the floor of that dark closet. Cas looks down at the counter, across the store, and out the window, not allowing himself to fall apart at the painfully-human sight of the man in front of him. 

Cas manages to pick up the tail end of what Dean is saying to him, just in time to hear him insult the choices he’s had to make since leaving the bunker. 

“... but, wow, this is some cover.” Dean says, now glancing around the store, too.

Cas scoffs at Dean’s words, then walks them further down the counter, ensuring no one else would be privy to their conversation. 

“My grace is gone. What did you expect? Do you have any idea how hard it was? When I fell to Earth, I didn’t just lose my powers, I-” he cuts himself off, refusing to go too far and say everything that’s been pounding in his head. 

I lost my family. My home. My best friend. My love. 

Cas doesn’t bother even fantasizing about saying the rest to him. He doesn’t think Dean would care, and even if he did, it still wouldn’t make a difference. He still made Cas leave. 

——

Dean is trying so goddamn hard. 

He’s trying to lighten the mood as best he can, trying not to focus on the stone wall between the two of them. Cracking useless little jokes, pointing out what funny things he notices, smiling suggestively at Cas when the woman at the store asks if 7pm is a good time for Cas to come over, even when all Dean can feel is possessiveness over Cas. He tells himself that he forfeited every last ounce of claim over Cas the moment he sat in front of him and asked if they could talk. 

Instead, Dean teases Cas that the reason for his new identity is really that woman, that she’s why Cas is looking and acting like he’s just been waiting for the first opportunity to shed every single piece of his former life.  That the woman he’s going on a date with is the reason why Cas is so intent on leaving everything behind. It’s not like there’s much back there for him, but still. 

Rationally, Dean knows he’s just trying to make this fucked up situation better for himself, despite the obvious and glaring blame that rests on none other than his shoulders. He’s trying so goddamn hard to put on a face for Cas, to try and make it seem like Dean isn’t torn up inside, like he isn’t getting dragged all over again to a whole new kind of hell. 

He knows, though, that the facade is only for himself. 

Because Cas seems to be doing perfectly fine- better, even- without him. And fuck, isn’t that just the story of Dean’s life. 

——

Dean eventually gets Cas to join him at the high school and go over the crime scene together. He savours every moment he gets to spend with him, even if the silence in the car during the ride over was so bittersweet and heavy it felt like getting buried alive. 

He finishes interviewing a witness, and turns around to confer with Cas. At his side is empty, cold space. 

Cas isn’t there. Dean can’t see him. 

Panic sets in immediately, his head whipping his head around, eyes scouring the surroundings for the smallest hint of dark hair and tall frame. He jogs around the corner of the school bus, considers the need to start running, when he finally spots Cas. He’s leaning over the trunk of the Impala with his head bowed as if in supplication, distress clear in every line of his body.

Dean doesn’t realize he’s at Cas’s side until he asks, breathlessly and with no lack of desperation in his voice, “Cas, what’s wrong?”

“I’ve seen this before. In Heaven. Dean… this is bad.” Cas clearly expects Dean to be worried about the case, but all he can think of is how it had just felt thinking Cas was gone again. 

Dean can’t tear his eyes away from Cas as he explains the class of angel responsible for the killings, managing only, “Well, we’ve gotta stop him.”

There’s a pause. “You have to stop him.” 

It’s then that Dean thinks he may just understand a little bit more now. “You’re scared,” he surmises, and somehow manages to hate the situation he’s forced upon Cas even more. 

“It’s different now, Dean,” is all Cas says, and he can’t help but think of how right he really is. Everything is different. It all is. Cas is human, and instead of that fact connecting the gap between them, it’s shoved them apart even further. All thanks to Dean, of course. 

So even though every last bone in Dean’s body screams to keep Cas close, he respects Cas’s wish because if there’s anything left he can do to alleviate the sadness and fear behind Cas’s eyes, he’ll do it. Dean wouldn’t want to spend any more time in his own company, either. 

He cracks a joke, plasters on another half-smile, and prays Cas can’t see what’s in his eyes instead. 

——

Dread settles like a burning stone at the bottom of Cas’s stomach. 

They pull up at Nora’s house at exactly 7pm, courtesy of Dean having offered him a ride to wherever he needed to go. Cas mumbles out a thank you for the ride, and exits the car as quickly as possible. 

“Cas, wait.” 

Maybe later Cas will feel embarrassed about the speed at which he closes the car door and turns back to face Dean, but not right now. 

“I can’t let you do this,” Dean says.

He feels like he can’t breathe. The weight in his stomach feels like it’s dropped out, that there isn’t anything grounding him. And Cas may not be well versed in the ways of the human body yet, but he thinks that his heart shouldn’t beat this fast. He even wouldn’t be surprised if Dean could hear it thundering. 

“What?” 

He shouldn’t let himself have hope. It’s dangerous, so dangerous, deadly. After all, the last time he had hope was when he was sitting at the bunker table, thinking of all the things he could do with De-

“You’re gonna wear that, on a date?” Dean asks, and Cas’s face falls, his heart stumbling in his chest. 

Of course.

Cas tears his gaze off of Dean’s face and back down to his clothes. He wonders if Dean knows how much weight his words carry. 

“This is all I have, Dean.” 

He wonders how Dean doesn’t realize he lost everything the day he left the bunker. 

——

He’s inside the house, hiding a rose behind his back, and upon hearing Nora’s words, he wonders if there’s a limit to how often someone can be let down or led astray. 

Nora leaves him unexpectedly alone, his only company her young child. 

He pours out his heart to the crying baby and thinks that maybe the similarities between the two of them are more tangible than he’d like to accept. 

The baby’s forehead is hot. 

He calls Nora, but she doesn’t answer. He wonders if the outcome would be any different if he called Dean, and then realizes that maybe it’s better to not know. He makes the decision to go to the hospital, but Ephraim is waiting for him at the door. 

Ephraim says that he isn’t here for the baby’s pain, but for Castiel’s own. He followed the overwhelming sound of Cas’s pain right to him. 

“You have no idea how loud it is. I could hear you for miles,” Ephraim accuses him. 

Cas knows he can’t argue. He doesn’t even try. 

He almost succeeds in completing the banishing sigil on the glass of the front door, but Ephraim notices at the last second. He beats him bloody and to his knees. Ephraim twists his left wrist in a hold he knows will break the carpal bones with just a fraction more force. 

His blood drips onto the carpet below, and he wonders if this is the end. 

Dean runs into the room, angel blade brandished. Ephraim doesn’t hesitate in sending him crashing into the wall. 

“You say you want to live, but you can’t see what I see,” Ephraim is telling him. “By choosing a human life, you’ve already given up. You chose death.” Cas isn’t paying attention. All he wants is for his final sight to be that of his Righteous Man. Ephraim reaches his hand out for him, death a warm glow in his palm, and Cas doesn’t try to stop it. He just keeps looking over at Dean, still, and lying in a heap on the floor. 

Dean pushes himself up and skids the angel blade across the floor to him. Cas buries it in the Rit Zien in front of him, light exploding from Ephraim’s body, and Cas is reminded of the bright, broken LEDs at the Gas ‘n Sip. 

——

“There’s no putting the angels back in heaven. It’s done.” Sam pauses. The crackle of static over the line is so very, very loud. “Are you gonna tell Cas?” 

That’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it? Is Dean going to be the one to let Cas down one final time? The one having to bear telling Cas he’s permanently trapped in humanity now? That there’s no way out for him? 

Dean hears the door open behind him, catches some snippets of Nora and Cas’s hushed conversation, then hears Cas’s footsteps making their way towards the car. 

He doesn’t know what to tell Sam. He doesn’t know what to tell Cas.

Dean ends up not managing anything. “I- I gotta go,” he croaks, and hangs up. He turns to watch Cas walk towards him and the Impala, bloody rag wrapped around his left hand. For just a split second, a single moment, he imagines things are different. He wants-

“Where to, Cas?” he asks, as Cas reaches the Impala. 

Cas doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look at him, and ain’t that just a kick. Uninterrupted stares used to be his defining feature. 

But Cas just opens the passenger door and gets in. As Cas disappears into Baby and out of sight, Dean loses the smile he’d hitched on and wonders how he’s going to survive this.

He stands for a beat longer in the cool night air before opening the door and getting in. Cas stock still, staring resolutely down at his hastily-bandaged hand. 

“Come on, man. Just tell me where you wanna go and I’ll take you, okay?” The second Dean says it, he wants to stuff the words back in his mouth because if Cas says he wants to go back to the bunker, Dean’s not sure if he’s strong enough to tell him that he can’t come home with him. Ezekiel’s ultimatum still standing or not. 

“The Gas ‘n Sip is fine, thank you.” Cas says quietly, eyes still trained on his lap. 

Feeling what can either be relief or disappointment, Dean shifts out of park, and almost pulls onto the road, when he finally processes where Cas told him to go. 

“Wait, Cas- hold on. Why the Gas ‘n Sip? It’s closed, isn’t it? It’s gotta be past 11 by now. I mean where’s your place? Where are you staying?” 

Cas finally swings his gaze up and Dean feels his soul being pierced with his too-deep gaze.  

“That is where I stay, Dean. It’s all I- that’s where I stay.” Cas looks away from what must be blatant shock written on Dean’s face and out the window to gaze or zone out or probably look anywhere but back at him. 

Cas’s next words are a whisper- the sharp strike of raindrops on foliage. “I don’t know what you expected of me, Dean.” 

Dean…  doesn’t know what he expected either. What, that Cas would somehow be able to secure a place to live with zero prior knowledge of how to do so? That he would be happier and better off in the real world with none of the people he’s closest with to support him? Maybe he’d just wished that despite everything, somehow, it’d be okay. 

Dean wants to beg for Cas’s forgiveness until Cas can’t stand the sight of him anymore. 

Then he realizes that half of that is probably already true. 

Dean’s next words come out quiet, broken in the dark between them. “Cas, I-” 

He stops. Swallows, looks down and away from Cas’s face to Baby’s steering wheel in front of him. Everything he wants to say gets stuck, barbed, inside his mouth, his stomach, his lungs, and he takes a deep breath. Ensures none of it comes spilling, ripping out and somehow finding a way to fuck things up even more. “You can stay in a motel with me, okay? You don’t have to go back to the store tonight.” 

Cas doesn’t look at him. 

“Okay, Dean,” is all he says. 

——

For Cas, this hurts even more than if Dean had just left him with his dark supply closet and sleeping bag. Because now… now he’s learning what it would be like to stay with Dean. The way he wanted to. Everything he’d hoped for before Dean kicked him out, dangled in front of him like irresistible bait, except the difference between Cas and a fish is that he knows what’s coming at the end- the pain, the leaving, the despair- and he chooses it anyway. 

There’s two beds in the room. 

He supposes he should be grateful there was even one.  

Dean gives him a change of clothes immeasurably more comfortable than his work outfit, but Cas can’t- won’t-  allow himself to enjoy yet another comfort that will only last tonight. 

He changes in the bathroom, struggling to wash his face with only his right hand. His left still throbs from his failed blood sigil. He stares at his reflection in the mirror and thinks he’s never felt more useless. 

There was a time when the glass would crumple under his gaze like paper over a flame, and the dark cloudy skies would part for the burning moon if he so desired. 

He dries his hand on the scratchy motel towel, picks up his blood-stained clothes, and fumbles them when he tries to open the bathroom door without using his left hand. He dumps them on the floor beside his bed and sits down on the soft comforter he’s tortured with impermanently enjoying. 

He closes his eyes and hears Dean get up and walk into the washroom. 

He doesn't bother with turning on the television to try and find something he would probably like, either. 

When some indeterminate amount of time has passed Cas as he admired the back of his eyelids, Dean comes out of the bathroom, and sits on the opposing bed, directly in front of Cas. 

He opens his eyes to gaze at Dean. 

While he may be resolutely denying himself a lot, he can’t bring himself to pass this sight by. 

Cas doesn’t know what to say. Is there even anything left? 

He just looks at Dean and Dean looks right back. 

Why’d you do it, he wants to ask. 

I thought we were at least friends, he demands. Did I fail to understand even that?

I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m scared to figure it out because I never wanted to be without you in the first place, he cries. 

Cas can just make out the faint song playing in a room across the hall through the stone-heavy silence of their room. 

“Oh, I know that this love is pain, but we can’t cut it from out these veins, no…”

Cas swallows, still not looking away from Dean’s face. 

“They say love is pain, well darling, let’s hurt tonight.” 

The song fades away and neither of them move. He slowly loses track of how long they stay there, sitting marble-still in front of each other. All at once and so, so slowly, the delicate and unmoving space between them shatters. 

Not saying a word, Dean reaches out. He crosses the distance between their beds and takes Cas’s injured hand carefully in his own. He touches the edge of the yellowed dish rag they wrapped around his palm in Nora’s kitchen like it’s a delicate painting he can’t believe he’s holding in his hands. 

Cas catalogues every movement, every shift of Dean’s face with his selfish eyes, memorizing in preparation for the absence of him Cas knows is inevitably coming. Dean keeps holding Cas’s bloody hand in his own. He sees the very second Dean takes a slightly deeper inhale than the last, and decides to say something. 

“I… can I fix this, Cas?” Dean’s voice comes out shredded. “The bandage?” 

He pauses. “I don’t want you to get an infection from this.” 

Dean’s eyes seem to be pleading, brimmed with inexplicable sadness.

While Cas isn’t going to tell Dean to stop touching him, he’s confused as to why Dean appears to care so much about a wound he knows Dean has written off as a scratch in the past. Especially when in relation to the other, arguably more important things in Cas’s life right now. 

Cas isn’t sure what to feel, never mind what to say as a response. 

“Okay,” he quietly settles on. 

Dean flashes a small, grateful smile that Cas wishes didn’t make him feel the way he does. 

“Okay,” Dean parrots softly, and stands up to walk over to his bag for his medical supplies. Cas tells himself he doesn’t- shouldn’t- miss the warmth of Dean’s hands. 

Dean returns to the bed with a clean cloth, some antiseptic, medical tape, and bandages. Not saying another word, he carefully unwraps the dish rag from Cas’s hand and sets it on the floor beneath them. Cas looks at the little pieces of dried blood and flayed skin dotting the perimeter of the cut and thinks of broken, buzzing lights. 

He wonders if he’d somehow been injured worse by Ephraim, would Dean have let him come back to the bunker to be healed. Would he have had to take him back, his own supply bag insufficient? Would he have even bothered with that much effort?

Cas decides he doesn’t want to look down at his wound anymore- at his hand resting helplessly, desperately in Dean’s grasp. He opts to watch Dean’s face as Cas feels him touch his injured skin. Cas feels rather than sees Dean unwrap the tensor bandage and wind it slowly around Cas’s wrist and lower forearm, presumably creating support for the strained muscles before he starts wrapping the uncut areas of Cas’s palm, his face one of careful. quiet concentration. 

Once Dean seems to be satisfied the bandage is tight, but not too tight, he grabs the clean cloth and pours some antiseptic on it. He reaches back for Cas’s hand, but just as his fingers are about to make contact, he stops. Cas still isn’t watching his own hand, but he imagines he can feel the warmth from Dean’s skin permeating the scant space and caressing his own. 

Dean looks up at Cas, still watching his face, and warns softly, “This might hurt a bit.” 

He looks back down at their hands. “I’m sorry.” 

If Dean means the words as any other kind of apology, Cas doesn’t comment on it.  

All he does is continue watching Dean silently. 

He feels Dean bring the cloth against his palm, cleaning out the cut, and the sting barely registers. He’s suffered pain much worse. Dean’s left hand under his own, holding it as he slowly wipes the dirt out of the cut almost hurts more. 

Dean glances up after a few more passes with the cloth and Cas hopes to the God he doesn’t believe in that his expression betrays nothing. No wince of pain, no grimace, no smile. 

He wonders how Dean justifies it. Saving him from April, only to force him out into a world he doesn’t understand without powers he needs to protect himself, then trying to help him with a minor injury. 

Dean, cradling his hand like glass from a broken light, wraps the clean, white bandage around his palm and ensures no parts of the cut are exposed to the air, but still leaves Cas with enough uncovered so he still has range of motion. Dean lifts Cas’s hand up a bit between them, checks to make sure the material isn’t twisted or too tight on the other side of his hand either. 

Seemingly content with the state of the bandage, Dean peels a few short pieces of tape and secures the end of it down before smoothing over all of it with his fingers, placing all of the medical supplies on the floor rather than back in the bag across the room. 

Cas obviously knows Dean is finished with the bandaging, but Dean doesn’t withdraw, doesn’t pull away, just keeps holding Cas’s hand with both of his, thumb brushing back and forth over the slope of Cas’s wrist. His heart pounds and he thinks Dean might be able to feel it even through the layers of cloth he just adorned Cas with. His thumb just keeps going forth and back, back and forth. 

Cas can’t remember the last time a touch was laid so gently upon his body. 

Cas pulls away, lies back on the painfully comfortable bed, and goes to sleep. 

Cas gets up and walks out of the room to trek back to the Gas ‘n Sip. 

Cas gets in the Impala and drives back to the bunker with Dean. 

But oh, only in his mind. He’s never pulled away from Dean’s touch and he doesn’t possibly think he’s going to be able to start now. 

Cas loses track of time like a rabbit in a snowstorm. He forgets to keep track of how long they stay there, sitting on opposite beds and facing each other, connected only at the hands in his lap. He begins to wonder if it even mattered in the first place. He’s still watching Dean, watching his thumb trace unending infinities on Cas’s skin. 

Dean’s thumb suddenly stills, though, so maybe it was never unendings and maybe Cas should know better by now as Dean sharply pulls his hand away and away and back to his own side of the divide between them and Cas feels like he’s being thrown off of a cliff, tumbling end over end into an abyss of empty, cold space.  

Dean looks up to Cas’s eyes, and it must break something further in him, must taunt him back over that line because the next thing Dean does is reach back over to Cas and rest his palm against Cas’s face so he can swipe away the tear that Cas hadn’t realized was trailing down his cheek until that moment. Dean’s eyes, his beautiful, emerald star eyes, glaze over Cas’s skin like it’s the greatest tragedy and biggest miracle of his life and his thumb starts up those same soft swipes back and forth over Cas’s skin but this time it's along the curve of his cheek. 

Cas closes his eyes. Tells himself that he shouldn’t enjoy this. The closeness, the touch, the company, the comfort. Any of it. 

On some level he still believes he doesn’t deserve it, and on another, knows that he’s not going to end up doing anything other than wanting it all over again and again. 

Anything that Dean gives to him- his time, his smile, his touch- will be taken away and Cas doesn’t yet know how to pick himself back up in all its absence. 

The loss, impending like a tsunami wave he knows is coming but helpless to stop, doesn’t change the bliss that the feeling of Dean’s skin on his creates, though, no matter how he tells himself to resent it. 

“Cas… I’m so sorry. You- you have to believe me. Cas, please-” Cas slowly opens his eyes and sees Dean’s face cracked open, pleading. “Can I- please, let me…” 

Dean trails off, his voice barely a whisper as he leans forward towards Cas, every inch closed between them addicting like none other. The space around Cas’s skin becomes a little less empty with every second, Dean’s right hand still cupping his cheek as Cas wonders what it would take to chain Dean onto his skin and he feels himself struggle more and more to maintain his breathing pattern. 

“Let me… let me help, just for a bit.” Dean’s voice cracks, hitches and Cas feels something shatter in him. “Just for tonight. Please.” 

Cas’s eyes flutter closed. He watches the last of his meagre vestiges of resolve and foolish, such foolish pride fly softly away on the soft breeze formed by the exhale of Dean’s breath grazing his skin. 

He breathes out. 

Whispers back, “Okay, Dean.” 

There and then, Cas makes up his mind with all that’s left of his formerly angelic resolve. Decides that no matter what happens tonight or tomorrow, no matter what he feels or what he’s left aching for, it has to be- it must be better to have these memories than nothing but wishes and dreams. 

Cas knows he’ll probably regret giving Dean everything- everything he’s able to take away with a snap of his fingers and a well-timed goodbye clap on his shoulder, but the thrill of handing it over- the thrill of surrendering to the inevitability and giving up- is a drug that Cas is intending to overdose on.

It’s not like this is the first time he’s given everything to Dean Winchester, after all. He did it the first time they met, allowing Dean’s blade to part his flesh so perfectly and deep into his heart. Really, he shouldn’t even be complaining about the circumstances. It's all been so clearly pre-ordained, hasn’t it? 

So, he lays it all at the altar of Dean Winchester and hopes that his offering will garner him some level of usefulness and be acceptable. 

Dean’s thumb makes another cuttingly-sweet swipe over his cheek, catching his last teardrop on the pad of his finger as he closes the distance between them and pressed his lips, as soft as fresh snow, against Cas’s and Cas swears the ground shifts. 

He immediately feels more tears well up at Dean’s overwhelming tenderness, and he squeezes his eyes shut even tighter as he brings his hands up from his lap to cradle Dean’s face. Dean’s lips move against his and he feels the euphoria of intoxication sweep through his helpless body. 

Dean kisses Cas so lightly, so softly, and he imagines that there’s words laced in each touch of Dean’s mouth against his, words he so hopelessly imagines are those of promises that will never be broken. Dean keeps pressing kisses to his lips, and Cas keeps stealing them away. He latches onto them, memorizing each and every single one in the moment so he can properly miss them all later. 

It’s everything he’s wanted, and it’s terrifying him. 

Dean kisses are so breathlessly unhurried you would never be able to tell there’s an expiry on them, a deadline written in blood and tears. He takes his time splintering Cas into pieces and his tongue trails a warm path against Cas’s lip. He tastes better than anything Heaven could dream to offer.  

Cas parts his lips on a quiet sigh, then again on an even quieter whimper as Dean so beautifully finds a way to get closer to him, slowly licking into his mouth. Cas can’t stop the helpless noises he makes in the back of his throat as Dean’s tongue slides against his, pleasure singing in every inch of his skin.

Dean wrenches away, dragging air into his lungs. 

 “Fuck, Cas,” he gasps, sounding broken. Dean doesn’t wait for a response from Cas and immediately collapses forwards, right back into him. Dean starts kissing him more and more hungrily, more and more incendiary, and Cas can’t, doesn’t want to do anything but revel in the desire of finally being able to have . 

At one particularly electrifying drag of Dean’s tongue against his bottom lip where it was caught between Dean’s careful teeth, Cas releases a moan into his mouth, wordlessly begging for more. His skin feels electrified, the caress of Dean’s hands on his face that travel down to the bottom of his ribs to nest perfectly at the curve of his waist set flame to every nerve in his body. 

Cas chooses to take the issue into his own hands by finally moving from his seated position on the edge of his bed and moving over, closer, to Dean on the other bed, and swings his legs over Dean’s thighs, straddling him. Cas anchors his hands on each side of Dean's face and gets more .

Dean’s hands land on Cas’s hips like an inevitable anchor as Cas dedicates his new angle and position to learning the contours of Dean’s mouth, drawing choked-off groans from Dean’s lips. 

Dean draws back slightly from his exploring mouth, and before Cas can object to an interruption in the proceedings, Dean directs his attention to Cas’s jawline, his neck, trailing heated, bruising, claiming kisses along them. Dean’s hands tighten and burn like a brand on his hips and he chokes out a moan at the feel of Dean sucking along his pulse. His teeth scrape gently over the sensitive skin of his throat, and Cas is reduced to gasps that Dean can likely feel against his lips.

Cas is swept along in the tide, lost to everything but the pull of Dean’s touch against him. He’s so caught up in the feel of Dean’s lips on his neck, Dean’s body against his, that at first, he doesn’t hear Dean’s words whispered against the column of his throat. 

“... be so nice, please , Cas. Just let me- I’ll make you feel good, I promise. I can do it. I’ll make it so good.” 

He accentuates pleading words with kisses to Cas’s skin, and Cas doesn’t think before twining his fingers into Dean’s soft, soft hair and pulling him up to kiss him so very desperately. 

“Cas- is that a yes?” Dean barely gets the words out and into the air before Cas drags their mouths back together, desperation churning in his skin to have Dean as close to him as possible. 

“Yes, Dean. It’s a yes.” He groans, claiming Dean’s mouth again before his traitorous tongue can voice any other pleas. 

Cas takes his hand away from where it’s entwined in the hair at the back of Dean’s neck to skim down his chest and push Dean flat against the bed, possessiveness singing in his veins as he brings his other hand up to brace his weight above Dean. 

Before he can seal their lips back together, another sensation slams into him, this one so much less than enjoyable he has trouble identifying it for what it is. 

He chokes as pain blazes up his palm and wrist, his arm buckling underneath his weight and sending him pitching and collapsing down on Dean’s side.

“Cas, Cas, shit , are you okay?” Dean’s words are frantic as he sits up and twists to lean over Cas, hands skimming up and down his sides in a more categorical and assessing way than the way they had been just moments ago. Cas grimaces, still on his side and now cradling his injured hand.

He sees Dean realize what happened, the creases of his eye immediately softening and Cas wants to scream that he shouldn’t be allowed to look at him like that. 

“You gotta be careful, man.” Dean whispers. 

Cas just stays silent, swallowing thickly against the wave of uselessness, and waits for the pain still lancing up his wrist to dissipate. Dean reaches to gingerly pick up his hand, and Cas isn’t surprised to feel the pain immediately start to subside at Dean’s touch. He wonders if the receding wave of discomfort pain could count as winning the battle while knowing he’s going to lose the war. 

——

Dean breathes out a sigh of feverish relief. 

His heart is still pounding, his hands still slightly shaking from the terror of Cas having been seriously hurt because of something Dean had so stupidly, so fucking selfishly started. He does his best to ignore the tremors rocking his hands, hopes Cas doesn’t think anything of it either, and he focuses instead on checking that the bandage is still firmly in place, that the tape is still holding it securely, that the cut on Cas’s palm didn’t reopen. 

“I think everything’s still all good,” he relays, glancing up at Cas, gauging his expression. “Make sure not to put too much pressure on it, okay? And- and try to watch your wri-” He’s interrupted by Cas using his good hand to grab the back of Dean’s neck and pull him back down into a bruising kiss. 

“Cas-” he starts again, but he’s never been so pleasurably cut off by a well-timed bite to his lower lip. 

“It’s fine, I’m fine, Dean,” Cas pleads, using his good hand to pull and manoeuvre Dean fully on top, covering his body. “You- you said you’d make it good. I want… I want to feel good, Dean, please.” 

Fuck. 

He’s so goddamn selfish. He knows it, knows it like a flame knows the air. Knows Cas should have realized by now what kind of person- if you can deign to even call him that- Dean is. What happens to those who stick around, those Dean can’t bring himself to cut free, those he can’t seem to stop hurting, can’t seem to stop getting hurt because of his own fucking mistakes. He knows what kind of person he is and he still can’t bring himself to deny his- to deny Cas a goddamn thing. He couldn’t have been satisfied with just knowing Cas is okay on his own here, away from Dean. 

“Yeah, Cas. I got you. I’m here, I’ve got you, don’t worry.” 

He wonders how horribly he’s wrecked and ravaged this angel, destroyed him so thoroughly that he’s lying underneath him now, begging for, wanting the very thing that tore him into pieces. 

He slowly pulls Cas further up the bed, still ever careful of his bad wrist, until Cas’s head rests against the pillow, his dark hair splayed out like some profane and mangled halo. Dean tears his eyes away and moves to lave kisses slowly down Cas’s neck, slipping his hand under the hem of his own shirt that Cas had borrowed. He doubts he’ll ever be able to make himself wear it again. 

“Can I take this off?” he whispers against Cas’s neck. “You don’t have to do anything, sweetheart, I’ve got it. I got you.” 

Cas manages to compose himself despite the quiet whimpers he’d been letting out at the slide of Dean’s lips and teeth against his neck, “Yes, Dean, you can, please just-” Cas cuts himself off with a gasp as Dean’s hand trails higher beneath his shirt and traces the planes of his chest, his angel eyes now hidden beneath eyelids that are squeezed shut. 

And while yeah, Dean would be down for Cas to lay him out and have his own way with him- way more than down, if he’s really going to be even the slightest bit honest with himself- but it’s clear that Cas would definitely be inconvenienced by his injury, and Dean. Dean just wants to do what he can to take care of him. Selfishness, remember? He also doesn’t put it past Cas to hurt himself doing something and just keep going through the pain. 

He tugs Cas’s shirt the rest of the way off, again being careful of his injured hand, and makes his way back down Cas’s body, pressing light kisses into his skin as he goes. Dean’s hands follow the direction of his mouth, skimming down Cas’s sides just as slowly as his lips move, trying to treasure the feel of his body as much as he possibly can. 

Cas’s breathing becomes uneven, his hands twisting back into Dean’s hair like they belong, and maybe if Dean tries hard enough, he can fool himself into thinking that they do. 

Dean pauses his kissing when he reaches the waistband of Cas’s pants, his hands coming to rest just above the line of fabric, and he looks up at Cas through his eyelashes, Cas’s hands still curled almost comfortingly in the length of his hair. 

Cas looks… he appears halfway to destruction- torn apart and shredded under Dean’s ministrations, even with half his clothes still on. Even in the muted light of the motel room, Dean can see that his irises have been engulfed by the black of his pupils. 

Startled by the hunger he can see swimming in them, Dean breathes hitches as he remembers learning that pupils dilate because they want to see more, take in more, have more. 

His insides feel like they’re melting under the burning weight of Cas’s gaze, and he wants to shrivel, wants to curl up inside them and hibernate. He needs to move, needs to prove that he’s not paralyzed, so he leans back down and mouths at the skin of Cas’s navel. He doesn’t break eye contact, though. He makes sure Cas watches him do all he can to worship his body. 

“Can I take these off, sweetheart?” Dean whispers against Cas’s soft, unblemished skin, and watches with undisguised relish at the way Cas’s quakes and the breath punches out of his chest when he hears the endearment. Cas doesn’t look away either as he nods frantically, not able to attempt words. 

Dean finally breaks away from their held gaze to brush his fingers down Cas’s skin until they slip underneath the waistband of Cas’s pants and underwear, slowly tugging them down, his lips a helpless shadow as they follow the path of skin that he reveals. 

The fingers still in Dean’s hair start to tighten almost imperceptibly as his mouth continues down, down, down. When Dean pulls the clothes down and away from the hard length he’s felt against him the whole time he’s been resting on top of Cas, he loses his breath at the sight of the glistening tip, curved soft and achingly towards Cas’s stomach. He continues his slow path, though, simply letting his lips drag slowly down the length as his hands pull Cas’s clothes further down his thighs. 

He kisses down the crease of his thigh, trails his nose along the delicate skin of the inseam, enjoying as Cas tenses and relaxes, shivers and gasps against the feather-light touches. 

Dean decides not to make Cas wait any longer, and pulls Cas’s clothes the rest of the way off, before kneeling up off the bed to remove his own. 

Dean didn’t know it was possible to devour something with just a look, but Cas manages to do just that as he lays still splayed out and watches Dean strip off his clothes at the foot of the bed. Dean holds his gaze once again, watches how black eats all the remaining blue in his eyes away. 

As his underwear joins the pile of clothes on the floor, Dean walks over to his small bag of medical supplies and grabs the small jar of vaseline from the inside pouch, then returns to set it gingerly on the bed beside Cas’s outstretched thigh, praying that Cas can’t hear the how his heartbeat has kicked up more than a few notches at the proximity of the small bottle. 

He leaves it for now, though, and resumes his position halfway down and over top of Cas. His hands settle on Cas’s hips, his thumbs tracing small paths on the jut of bone as he reacquiants himself with the inebriating warmth of Cas’s skin. 

He sends a questioning glance up at Cas, and softly chuckles at the convulsive nod Cas gives him. Once he’s reassured, he gradually leans down and traces Cas’s length, slowly, with the flat of his tongue. 

Cas moans at the touch and Dean has to close his eyes, feeling the arousal in his stomach burn hotter and hotter at every noise that falls from Cas’s bitten lips. 

Cas’s hands are once again anchored tightly in Dean’s hair, his head now pressed harshly back against the pillows, broken noises slipping from him at the insistent heat of Dean’s mouth- now wrapped around the head and making leisurely bobs up and down his cock. 

Dean pulls up a bit, his lips breaking the suction with a dirty wet noise, and mouths at the head, leaving kiss after kiss as his fingers press softly at the space behind Cas’s balls. He spares another look up at Cas right before sealing his lips around his dick and goes back down, down, down, until his lips are pressing into the skin of the base.

Cas’s hips sharply buck up, and the noise Cas makes at the development puts anything- anything Dean’s ever heard to shame. He swallows around Cas in the back of his throat, pulling another sob from the man beneath him, and slowly comes all the way back up his cock, tonguing the slit and running his thumb at the spot beneath the head a few times before pressing a kiss to the top of it. He continues pressing kisses all along the length, Cas’s noises only getting louder. 

“Dean, Dean oh- please, please just-” and how can he possibly refuse Cas anything. He brings his spit-wet lips back up from where he was tracing a path with his tongue, and pauses before resting his hands on top of Cas’s that are twisted in his hair. He holds eye contact as presses down with Cas’s hands, showing, pleading, begging him to take what Dean so deeply wants to give him. 

Understanding dawns, and Cas’s mouth falls open, a wordless gasp falling from his mouth. Trusting Cas knows what to do, Dean takes his hand away from Cas’s and rests them on his thighs. Still looking deep into his lust-blown eyes. And waits. 

Cas doesn’t make him wait long. 

Slowly at first, but picking up speed, he pushes Dean down- not ungently- and pistons his hips up, moans falling like waterfalls. 

Dean’s eyes flutter shut and he lets the perfect feel of Cas on his tongue, moving so perfectly into him- into his throat- wash over him. Cas’s long fingers anchored perfectly against him and he lets it all fill his senses and quiet every other thought that isn’t the angel below him. 

Cas brushes the back of his throat and as Dean doesn’t have nearly the mental capacity needed to stop the moan that vibrates in his throat. 

“Dean, oh god,” Cas is almost gasping now, his rhythm beginning to shift and falter against Dean’s lips. 

He pulls Dean up, a thin string of spit connecting them, and Dean searches Cas’s face. His eyes are squeezed shut, his mouth a solid line and Dean so tentatively asks, “Was that good, Cas?” because really, all he wants is this to be good, so good for Cas. 

Cas deserves- god, Dean knows he deserves more. That he deserves comfort, he deserves the very best of life, someone who can give him everything he wants. Cas deserves someone so much better than Dean, and yet he still can’t help himself from asking if Cas thought he was okay. 

Dean presses on, hoping he doesn’t come across nearly as self-conscious as he feels. “Did I make it good?” 

Cas grabs the back of Dean’s neck and yanks him up his body into a searing kiss instead of answering, and Dean would have been happy to take that as his praise. But Cas breaks away from Dean’s mouth, to look up at him as he declares, “When I say that there aren’t words, Dean, I mean that no language had, has, or will ever exist to have the adequate means to describe how good that felt. How good you feel.”  

Dean’s mouth drops open, his entire vocabulary lacing up their running shoes and sprinting fast as lightning away from him. 

There’s one word that he can manage, of course. 

“Cas,” he breathes, his voice almost catching on the single syllable, overflowing with emotion. He closes his eyes for a moment, focuses on his own breathing and Cas’s warm body still beneath him. His intestines feel like water his heart is going to pound out of his chest and-

Dean manages to center himself, reminded of what he’s trying to do for Cas right now. He’s not focusing on himself here, no matter what Cas is doing to him so easily, no matter what he’s making him feel. 

“I think… you’re going to like the next part, Cas.” He lets a gentle smile grace his lips, lets it accent his words. He sees an answering smile in the twitch of Cas’s upper lip. “I’ll go slow, okay? And you’re telling  me if you need me to stop. Okay?” 

Cas brushes a soft kiss against his lips. “Okay, Dean,” he whispers, his hand resting on the back of Dean’s neck, his hair fucked five different ways already. 

Dean kisses him one last time before moving back down. He kisses Cas’s upper thigh as he reaches for the vaseline still on the bed beside them, but having rolled away. He doesn’t open it yet, though. He just moves it so it’s now resting right beside Cas’s hip, more within reach for when he’s ready to use it. 

Dean nudges Cas’s legs a bit more apart, making enough space to settle between them. Slowly, he caresses Cas’s thighs- God, what thighs they are- with both his hands, his thumbs skimming teasingly along the inside. He grips Cas just below his kneecaps and bends his legs at the knee, planting Cas’s feet on the mattress. Now , Dean has a perfect spot to work between Cas’s legs. 

Letting go of Cas’s thighs once he’s assured Cas won’t move, Dean snakes his hands around them to rest on Cas’s hips as he bends to kiss the head of Cas’s cock. A bead of precum forms at the top, and Dean immediately goes to lap it up, but he doesn’t suck Cas back down. Instead, he keeps trailing kisses down his length, past his balls, right to Cas’s furled rim. 

The moment his lips first make contact, Cas shudders. 

“Oh, oh Dean,” 

Dean pauses for a moment, looking up. “Is this okay, Cas?” 

Feverish nods. “Yes, yes it’s okay. I want- I want you, I want it all, Dean.” 

A little stunned by Cas’s eagerness, but happy he’s on board, Dean lowers himself back down between Cas’s legs. 

He kisses, then lays soft licks all around Cas’s rim, content just to lavish his body with all he can give. He slowly latches his mouth onto his rim, sucking gently and letting the tip of his tongue lap lightly against Cas’s body. Dean wedges his shoulders underneath the back of Cas’s thighs and wraps his arms over the top of them, laying his palms down on Cas’s stomach, firmly holding him still against the uncontrollable shivers that now wrack his body.

“Dean, Dean, oh, please, I can’t-” Cas doesn’t finish formulating the thought before he dissolves back into twitches and soft whimpers.

“Just relax, sweetheart. I’ve got you,” Dean promises, licking back over his rim, slowly pushing the tip of his tongue inside. Cas writhes, already pushing back onto Dean’s mouth against the intrusion. Dean keeps licking into him, each time going in further than the last as Cas continues to relax around him. 

Even after Cas is more than stretched enough at this point, Dean just keeps going, wringing all the broken noises from Cas that he can manage with just his tongue. He starts to curl his tongue, reaching a hand to slowly jack Cas’s cock in rhythm with his mouth. Cas cries out, chest heaving, his hands tightening even more in Dean’s hair. 

“Dean, co- come on, please. Please.” Cas chokes out. 

Dean pulls away, delighting in the shiver he sees run through Cas’s body and nuzzles against Cas’s upper thigh, his hand never ceasing on Cas’s dick. “Let me take my time, let me make you feel good, sweetheart, it’ll be so good, I swear.” 

Cas only whimpers, throwing his head back on the pillows and fisting his good hand in the sheets, but doesn’t argue with Dean’s plans. 

Dean goes back down, slowly but surely licking Cas open more and more, relishing in Cas’s whines and pants. Still thrusting his tongue inside, he grabs the vaseline, slathers some on his fingers, and starts tracing small, soft circles around where his tongue disappears inside Cas’s body. 

A few more licks, then Dean slowly pushes his first finger into Cas alongside his tongue. Cas, who’s steadily been finding his way past the point of clarity for a few minutes now- and doesn’t that just make Dean feel so twistedly satisfied- moans at the stretch and shoves back on Dean’s hand. 

Dean continues thrusting, alternating twisting his finger and curling his tongue inside Cas. When Dean rubs over Cas’s prostate, his whole body convulses- precum beads at the head of his cock that Dean just swipes his thumb through to collect it and uses to slick the way of his hand while Cas sobs and clenches on his fingers. 

He adds a second finger, now scissoring inside Cas as his tongue continues fucking in between them. If it weren’t for the building ache in Dean’s jaw, he thinks he’d be happy to live out the rest of his days here; between Cas’s legs, a tongue and two fingers deep in him as Cas writhes and makes incoherent noises above him. 

Dean lays a few more kisses to where Cas is stretched beautifully around his fingers, then pulls his mouth away to suck gentle bruises into the crease of Cas’s hip as he focuses on mercilessly rubbing Cas’s prostate with his fingers. 

As Dean’s working on the third bruise to adorn Cas’s skin, he slows down the pace of his hand just enough to slowly push a third inside. Cas groans and clenches around the intrusion for a moment, then relaxes and pushes back, trying to get the digits as deep inside as he can. 

“Oh,” Cas groans. “Yes, Dean, that’s so-”

Slowly pumping all three fingers inside, Dean kisses across Cas’s hip. “I know, I know, sweetheart. ‘S good, isn’t it.” A hint of self-satisfaction creeps into his tone as he watches Cas gasp and try to fuck himself back on Dean’s hand, rolling his hips. Dean did that. Him. He’s making Cas feel good, giving him unquestionable pleasure, watching him moan his name with it. 

“I’m ready, Dean. I’m ready, please, please just hurry up” Cas begs, and Dean’s insides twist themselves in some gruesome pride because this was never meant for him, this was never something he deserves. It’s supposed to be about Cas taking as much pleasure as Dean can give him and it's horrible how Dean finds himself reveling in every breath, every twist of Cas’s body, every brush of their skin. But, oh, how he wants it all anyway. 

He keeps fucking his fingers into Cas, making sure to brush that spot inside him ever other thrust, then releases his cock with one more brush over the slit, and crawls up his body to kiss him, deep and hot and everything he’ll never have again. Cas’s mouth immediately falls open against his, and Dean wastes no time exploring even more of what Cas’s warmth has to offer. Cas must not mind the slight delay in proceedings; his hands fly up to frame Dean’s face and keep him in place as he takes his turn thoroughly plundering Dean’s mouth. 

Dean feels the gasp in Cas’s throat- that hitch on his tongue- when Dean’s fingers start rubbing circles over his prostate. Cas pulls away from Dean’s lips just to give himself enough space to pant breathlessly against his mouth, “Dean- Dean I’m g- going to-” 

Immediately, Dean stops his assault on Cas’s prostate and gently pulls out his fingers. As much as Dean would enjoy Cas coming on his fingers and nothing else, there’s still one more thing he wants to give to him. One more thing to give Cas the pleasure he so clearly deserves. 

He reaches for the jar of vaseline and spreads more than he probably needs over his valiantly-ignored cock. 

“Come on, Dean, please.” Cas pants, seeing him position himself back between his legs. Dean still pauses, though, the head resting right against Cas’s rim. 

Because above all else, he wants to know Cas is ready and truly wants this. So he pauses, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the ridge of Cas’s hipbone in what he hopes are grounding touches. “Are you sure, Cas? We can always stop if you-” 

“Don’t you dare,” Cas threatens, bending up and wrapping his hands around Dean’s ass, pulling him forward and into his body. The head of Dean’s cock pushes against his asshole, and there’s a brief moment where Cas’s body doesn’t look like it will yield, a brief instant of resistance, but then the muscle gives, and the tip slides in. 

“Oh,” Cas moans, his voice cracking, shattering. 

Dean- only barely inside Cas- fights against the sudden stimulation and tries to reign the impending orgasm he feels with Cas around him. Tight, warm, and perfect, Cas allows Dean further and further inside him until his pelvis rests against the back of Cas’s ass. 

“Oh fuck, Cas.” Dean groans. “God, you feel so good.” 

“Mmm,” Cas hums, moving his hands from Dean’s ass up to wrap his arms around Dean’s shoulders and pull him down against his body, helpless, so Cas can whisper- in what is possibly the most erotic moment of Dean’s life- “Come on. Fuck me, Dean,” in his ear. 

And so, helpless and incapable of disobeying, Dean does. 

He does his best to start out with slow, gentle thrusts so Cas can adjust to the feeling, and they leave Cas whimpering into his ear as Dean mouths along his jaw and neck. He can feel his orgasm building with the maddening feel of Cas around him, but he pushes the feeling harshly away. He swore- he wants this to be good for Cas, and he’s going to every damn thing he can to keep that promise. 

Dean presses one last kiss to Cas’s lips before he leans up and starts moving faster, harder. 

He knows he’s hit Cas’s prostate when Cas’s whole body convulses, clenching down tightly on him. “Oh, right- right there,” he pants. “Right there.” 

Dean lifts Cas’s legs a little bit higher, pulling them around his hips to perfect the angle, and begins setting a punishing pace. Cas falls apart beneath him and Dean doesn’t think a more beautiful sight exists, until Cas’s mouth drops open around a scream that mangles its way into somehow being his name. Cas’s body is shaking, clearly right on the verge of an orgasm as Dean keeps thrusting into him. 

“Yeah, yeah I got you, Cas,” he says and wraps his hand around Cas’s cock in what he hopes is in time with his thrusts. Cas’s noises get louder as he finally comes. 

“Dean,” he sobs out, body clenching around him, Cas’s fingers almost pulling out his hair as he shouts pure heavenly ecstasy and spills between them and onto his stomach.

“Jesus fuck, Cas. Holy shit. I- I’m-” 

Cas wraps his arms around Dean again, holding him tight against his searing body as Dean topples over the wave of his own orgasm into Cas- into rapture. He fucks Cas through both of their orgasms, burying deep inside as he collapses forward fully onto Cas’s now-sticky chest, plastering himself so selfishly all along him. 

He’s spent his whole life not being strong enough, so it’s not a surprise when he can’t dredge up the resolve to tear himself away from Cas in this moment. 

His heartbeat begins calming back down to somewhat normal ranges, then all of a sudden Dean can hear the pumping of Cas’s heart through where his head is resting on Cas’s chest. Cas’s arms are still wrapped around his shoulders and tears start to well in his eyes as Cas’s pulse sounds like divinity in his ear. 

He lies there. Stays for longer than he should, longer than what’s absolutely required and certainly longer than what he deserves because maybe he just wants to close his eyes. Maybe he just wants to listen, to feel the warmth, to feel Cas. His eyes sink shut and he commits the sound of the strong thump of blood rushing through Cas’s human, so human, heart to memory and prays that if he is allowed one part of tonight to keep forever, it is this moment. The warm feel of Cas’s skin all along his own. 

Eventually, Dean lifts his head up, and once he sees the blissed out expression gracing Cas’s features, he presses a soft kiss against Cas’s lips as he slowly pulls out. He gets off the bed to grab a cloth from the motel bathroom, then gently clean them both up. He takes his time, because no one ever called Dean an unselfish bastard, makes sure no sticky residue will dry on Cas’s skin and become uncomfortable. 

God, all he wants is for Cas to feel good and it chokes in his throat like broken glass. 

He adds the dirty cloth to the pile of their discarded clothes, then gets back into the bed. The moment Dean lays down, intent on at least attempting to give Cas some space from his mutilated feeling inside, Cas reaches for him. Reaches for his left arm with his uninjured right and pulls Dean forward so he turns onto his side and wraps himself around Cas’s body. They’re spooning and Dean is one step away from hyperventilating and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever going to be able to breathe the same as he used to. He imagines Cas found some way to worm into his chest, into his lungs, and made his own home right there, intent on making sure Dean will never be able to forget the space he occupies inside him.

Cas must decide that Dean still isn’t close enough and, oh, God, he must have gone insane because has he forgotten what happens when you get too close to him? Has he forgotten what Dean did? Forgotten who Dean is?

Cas pushes back against Dean’s front, then lays his arm overtop of the one that Dean has splayed across his chest. 

“Mm,” Cas hums, snuggling into Dean’s arm even deeper, tightening his hold along Dean’s arm. 

Dean just… gives in. What else could he possibly do? He’s not strong enough to deny himself and Cas this, no matter how much his lungs are screaming at him that he’ll never deserve this, not in any lifetime. He anchors Cas against him and hopes it’ll be enough to make him forget he has to let go and walk away in the morning. He pulls Cas closer to his chest, kisses the back of his neck, and thinks that he’s never felt as undeserving as he does in this moment, slipping off towards sleep with Cas in his arms. 

——

Cas thinks Dean is asleep. He hopes Dean is asleep behind him so he won’t hear or see how Cas trembles. Tears slowly slide down his cheeks to pool on the pillow beneath his head, soaking into the fabric against his face and he wonders if the pillow cases take longer to dry than his shirt sleeves do. 

Dean is a sleeping, warm comfort pressed all along his back, his legs and feet tangled with Cas’s own, his arm resting so beautifully underneath Cas’s palm, and Cas cries quiet tears of their inevitable loss. 

He doesn’t regret anything, though, not a single moment, not a single part of what he and Dean did together, because like he said before; if he’s going to lose Dean in the morning, he’s going to make sure he gets to have Dean for himself in the first place. 

True to his promise, Dean made Cas feel good, very, very good- impossibly even better than Cas had ever dreamed. He’s spent a lot of time dreaming. The memory of it, though, of every single shift of Dean against him, in him- Cas is helpless to do anything but let it wash over him and pull him under it’s swell, choking in his chest until he thinks that’s the only thing that’s left inside. He’s happy to pay that price, though, if that’s all he has to suffer in return for being able to have Dean the way he’s always wanted- even just once.

To Cas, this could very well be his paradise in Heaven for all he cherishes and resents it. 

So, he lets himself be pulled under and lets his tears track salt across his face as he pushes back against Dean’s chest in an attempt to ground himself against the storm of emotions. Dean’s body burns down his back, and he refuses to let himself fall asleep in the horribly comforting warmth of his arms so Cas doesn’t miss a single moment with him. If he holds his breath and stays as still as death, Cas can feel Dean’s heartbeat through the skin on his back. 

The Tenth Commandment burns bright in Cas’s mind as he selfishly and without any remorse commits every last moment that he spends with Dean’s chest slowly rising and falling behind him to memory. 

Thou shalt not covet. 

Cas counts every minute that passes, he covets, covets, covets every last second and forces himself not to fall asleep, lest he lose one of these immeasurably precious minutes of this beautiful closeness. 

——

Dean wakes slowly, surrounded by soft light and some beautiful, all-encompassing warmth. He feels happy for reasons yet unquantifiable to his still sleep-ridden brain, but that’s only up until he realizes it’s because Cas is still asleep in his arms beside him. 

Cas’s back is no longer pressed to his chest. In his sleep, Cas must have rolled from where he was facing away from Dean, and turned right into Dean’s chest. His head is pillowed on top of his heart, his arm now slung over Dean’s waist. Cas’s hair brushes his skin, and he can’t do anything but stare, his brain buzzing some cosmic white noise. 

The sight- the honour- of having Cas splayed so close and tenderly over him sends what must be palpitations to his already-shattering heart. 

Overcome, he wraps his arms around Cas’s waist, presses his prone form into him, and gently kisses the top of his head. He thinks that there has to be another way, that maybe Sam is strong enough to be okay without Ezekiel, that maybe he wasn’t even being serious when he threatened to leave Sam- 

Cas wakes up. Not slowly and gradually, either. One moment he’s tucked peacefully against Dean’s body, the next his eyes are wild, hair mussed worse than Dean’s ever seen it, and there’s terror in his shining eyes. He’s beautiful. 

“Cas… you... all good, or…” Dean trails off, unsure of what to make of Cas’s expression. 

Cas tears his eyes away from where they’d been glued to Dean’s face and looks around the room frantically- his gaze darting from the sunlight streaming in through the motel window to the electronic clock on the nightstand beside their bed. 

6:27 a.m.

“No,” Cas whispers, his voice breaking, “I fell asleep. I fell asleep …” 

Cas sounds so uncomprehendingly shattered that Dean’s sure there’s something he’s missing. Before he can even try and ask what’s so wrong, Cas rips away from him and turns off the side of the bed, putting his feet on the carpet, his elbows on his bent knees, and then his head in his hands. 

“Cas, Cas, hey, come on. Tell me what’s wrong. What can I do, tell me what I can-” Dean, with his arm still halfway extended to try and comfort him, freezes as Cas lifts his head from his hands and turns to look back at Dean. 

And Dean? Dean feels like he’s been flash frozen and turned into fucking ice with the way he feels himself stop dead. Because when Cas turns around to face Dean, there’s tears in his gaze and red beginning to rim his eyes. Dean can’t bring himself to form a single goddamn word as he watches a tear bead at the corner of Cas’s eye until it slips over the edge and begins to crawl down his cheek. 

He- Dean has never seen Cas cry before. It scares him like nothing else in his life has. 

In the silence, all Cas manages as he stares into Dean’s eyes with his own watery ones is, “I fell asleep.” 

Dean doesn’t know what to say, even if he could. Cas blinks one more tear before standing up, grabbing some clothes, and locking himself in the bathroom. 

Dean stares at the door, his thoughts nothing but static until the clock hour changes to a 7, then he numbingly gets out of bed and goes through the motions of getting cleaned up. He starts putting away all of their stuff back into their bags. When he picks up the bottle of vaseline lying in the carpet, he stares at it in his hand as the static in his head makes him feel as though he’s drowning underwater.

When Cas exits the bathroom some indeterminate amount of time later, it’s with a disturbingly large billow of steam and the distant mask across his face Dean became so familiar with during their case. He wants to haul Cas’s body into his and ask if it’s okay if he never lets go. 

Selfish. 

Stop being so selfish. You got what you wanted last night. Why can’t that be enough for you? Why can’t you go without hurting those you love even more than your bloody, twisted hands already have?

Dean quickly turns away from Cas, uses the washroom, then carries their bags out to the Impala. He deposits them in the trunk, gets in the driver’s seat, and waits for Cas to come out, too. He turns on the radio and resolutely keeps his thoughts on Don Henley crooning through the speakers.

Ten minutes later, Cas opens the passenger door and slides in, his attention unquestionably focused out of the window and very obviously ignoring Dean. Cas doesn’t say a word for the whole drive, and Dean finds himself somewhat grateful because he doesn’t know a single word that he’d be able to say back. 

He’d probably find a way to make things worse, if that were possible. 

When they pull up outside- the Impala coming to a stop in the same spot Dean gazed at Cas through the window as he watched him work- it feels like the needle for a lethal injection is being slipped under his skin. He looks over at Cas, silently begging for him to do something, say something, anything. 

The buttons on his shirt are undone- the top one open and his collar askew. He wonders if at this point Cas does it on purpose. 

He reaches, frantically grasping, for words. 

“Listen, Cas, um, back at the bunker, I, uh” Dean can’t look directly at Cas so he opts to focus on Cas’s hands still in his lap. “Sorry I told you to go,” he finishes lamely. It’s the understatement of Dean’s life. He wants nothing more than to wrap Cas back in his arms and never let him go again, but fucking Ezekiel is still healing Sam. 

Cas doesn’t say anything, probably mentally scoffing at his sheer ineptitude, and looks back away from him and through the front windshield. 

“I know it’s been hard on you, you know, being on your own. Somehow you’re adapting. I’m proud of you,” Dean says, instead of the broken ‘I love you’ that’s clawing, tearing its way through his throat. 

And, oh, isn’t that a horrible thing to realize. He loves Cas. He’s in love with Cas and yeah of course he is, and now he’s realizing how could he not ? It’s Cas . 

And yet, it’s a brutal, loathsome thing, you see. It creates cold, empty caverns in his chest because Cas does not love him, even if he’s no longer an angel and now capable of emotion. How could he possibly after everything Dean did to him? 

So he’s not going to say a damn word because what kind of horrible thing would that be to do. To declare this pathetic love in some manner of excuse for everything he’s done to Cas? Like some trembling and unholy declaration from the very man who kicked him out of his life? It won’t make a single goddamn difference in the end. 

Cas just glances over to him and says simply, “Thank you, Dean.” 

Dean has been around enough of Cas’s staggeringly sincere declarations to know when he truly means something. He chooses to make the best choice he can in the moment and keep his mouth shut. 

There’s a pause, and then Cas starts saying that he thinks he should be doing something, he should be trying to help, and Dean tries his best to mean it when he tells Cas that he and Sam got it, they’ll take care of the angels, and that Cas is human now so it’s not his problem. 

Cas, with an almost disdainful look on his face, chooses not to point out that by that logic, it shouldn’t be Dean and Sam’s problem either. 

Dean still can’t bring himself to tell Cas the real reason that he had to leave, the reason he can’t come back and help them with the angels, no matter how fucking much Dean wishes he could. 

At the very least, Cas is safe here. Alive. And that’s worth more than Dean could ever say. 

The silence between them stretches on- an ever-tensing rubber band that snaps the moment Cas opens the door and gets out, not saying a single word as he looks back through the passenger window at Dean. 

As Dean meekly waves goodbye, he realizes that he doesn’t know when or even if he’ll ever see Cas again. Who in their right mind would even want to?

Dean watches Cas turn the key to the Gas ‘n Sip with his right hand, his left still safely enclosed in the bandages Dean so carefully wrapped him in last night, and then he disappears out of Dean’s sight. Vanishing into the back of the store. 

The Impala idles in front of the Gas ‘n Sip in silence for a lot longer than it should. 

——

Cas knows there is a lot he has to be doing right now. A lot that he has to do to get the store ready for when it opens in an hour, but he just can’t force his limbs to pick him up and off of the floor. 

He’s in the ever-deprecating supply closet- had gone right there the second the front door closed behind him and sealed him out of Dean’s life once again. His knees are still pulled up to his chest from where he sank to the floor against the wall and he’s not sure if his legs are numb or not or maybe that’s just how his body feels now. 

There’s what feels like a yawning cavern in Cas’s stomach- the kind that feels like it’s hemorrhaging blood and warmth out through his skin, a waterfall of heat he can’t seem to shove back inside himself no matter how hard he tries. No matter how tightly he wraps both of his arms around his torso so that it seems like there’s something holding him together for the moment, something from keeping every single and little thing from spilling out of him and onto the unforgiving closet floor. 

It’s a mistake, though. The pressure around his middle suddenly throws him out into the cold open air, into the memory of Dean’s arm in the same place his is now, when Dean took the place of the cold, hard wall behind him and slept softly against him instead. 

Cas’s head falls forwards onto his knees that are still pulled up to his chest and he squeezes his arms around himself tighter. 

——

Cas drags himself through time. He sleeps through hours upon hours, plagued by memories, then wakes up and gets ready for work. He works until he’s exhausted- often times more mentally than physically- and then he gets ready to fall back asleep where he isn’t aware of how slowly time passes by.  

He repeats the cycle an indeterminate amount of times. It could be two weeks that goes by, maybe three. Maybe a month. Cas isn’t sure, and it’s not like it matters anyway because the rate at which the future crawls closer has never meant less. There’s nothing there for him.

He’d like to say that there were at least some moments in which he wasn’t missing Dean, but he finds lying tiresome these days. 

When he wakes up, he mourns the one time he got to do so in Dean’s arms. When he sets up the store for the morning, he wonders what it would be like to have Dean with his rumpled morning look and coffee dependency with him. When he serves the customers that come in, he remembers the way that Dean used to look into his eyes when he was excited to tell him something. When he gets ready to go to sleep, he imagines Dean’s hands running over his aching, cold skin. When he sleeps, he dreams of all the things he wants. 

He gets used to waking up with one of his hands still reaching for something so grotesquely unattainable. 

The days go by and Cas loves Dean Winchester endlessly. He still doesn’t regret the night they spent together, no matter how much it tears his organs up inside when he remembers it, because it reminds him that at least he can remember it.

The days continue to pass him by. 

The nights pass him by. 

And then one early morning, before Cas has even gotten out of his bed roll to get the store ready, a loud car engine pulls up to the store and then promptly cuts out. Cas squeezes his eyes closed and comes to the conclusion that maybe he’s just really tired. Hallucinating, at the most, and tries to go back to sleep. 

Someone bangs on the front door. 

Cas squeezes his eyes tighter and wills the person to go away and let him ache in the early morning quiet. 

The banging stops, and Cas relaxes minutely. Then it starts up again, even louder than before. Cas waits another few seconds, then slowly lurches to his feet, shirt still rumpled with the buttons undone, and reluctantly goes to the door. He walks tiredly through the back hallway and out to the main part of the store. It’s early, but not too early that there isn’t enough natural light to illuminate the store enough for him. 

He doesn’t turn the lights on as he passes them, gaze still a bit hazy and unfocused as he passes the last couple shelves to reach the door and it’s unwanted customer. 

He gets to the door, sleep and exhaustion still laced in his body, and looks through the glass. 

Cas freezes, struck numb at the sight of his Righteous Man looking through the Gas ‘n Sip door. He watches, helpless, as Dean opens his mouth and tries to talk to him, even though his words come through the thick glass between them muffled and almost indistinct.

“Cas… Cas, please let me in. I know- I know you don’t want to see me, but please just-” Dean cuts himself off, looking down and away from him at the cement below, gathering himself. “Just let me explain, and then if you never want to hear from me or see me again… I’ll leave you alone.” He trails off, his last words having been barely audible through the glass, and Cas wonders if maybe he’s still asleep. 

Cas doesn’t know what to think. He’s torn between turning away and leaving so that maybe he’ll be able to retain his sanity when he finally does stop dreaming and wake up, and between drinking in every single last and tiny detail of the sight in front of him, just so he can say that he knows just a little bit more- has been in the presence a little bit longer- of Dean Winchester. It’s really not that difficult of a decision. 

His eyes never leaving Dean, he steps forward and unlocks the door. 

Dean seems to almost crumple in relief when the door swings open under his hand. He slowly steps across the threshold and looks at Cas like he’s… like some animal that is going to change his mind about the safety of Dean’s presence and run away as fast as he can. 

Instead, as Dean stands and faces him, Cas steps around and locks the door behind him. “Safety regulations,” is what he gives as an explanation at Dean’s confused expression. 

“Oh. Uh, right. Yes. Makes sense,” Dean stammers as Cas steps back again, looking right into Dean’s eyes. Cas just waits, not wanting to cut short a single part of this, content to just rest in the silence and look at him. 

“Um, so what I wanted to say at-” Dean looks down at his watch. “Jesus, 6:48 am, apparently- wait, why are you here this early anyway?” 

“I never left, Dean. I still sleep here,” is all he gives as an explanation before lapsing back into silence.

If it’s possible, Dean manages to look even more distraught. “Oh god, right, fuck, I’m sorry, I just… say what I came here to tell you. The whole story, that is, because you deserve- god, you deserve so much, but everything I- all I have is to tell you everything, and just hope that it helps.” Dean takes a breath, then starts talking like he’s been waiting for permission to let the words come pouring out. 

“It started… Sammy got sick, really sick, Cas. He was in the hospital and he wasn’t going to make it. I prayed to you so many times, but you never came, so then I prayed to all of the angels. And eventually one showed up. He said his name was Ezekiel, and that he could help Sam, but he’d have to do it from the inside. He said he had to… possess him, but Sam couldn’t know. Eventually, we figured it out with Sam being none the wiser about how he was getting better. And it was all working well enough until… well, basically until you became human.” 

Dean pauses, his words losing some of their urgency and turning whisper quiet. “‘Cause then Zeke told me that if you stayed in the bunker, he would be forced to leave Sam because you- you had a target on you, or something, and would draw attention.” 

Dean suddenly steps forward, reaching for Cas’s hand that Cas much more than willingly lets happen, and keeps going. “You have… you’ve got no idea how much it killed me to not only watch you leave again, but this time leave because of my own goddamn mistakes, because I told you to. And I thought that even though you’d be out there, even by yourself, you’d still be alive. And if Zeke left Sam… I thought he wouldn’t be. It was a horrible thing to do and I’m so fucking sorry, Cas, because-”

Dean lets out a half-choked out chuckle, and Cas is reeling from all the new information, but he still relentlessly, endlessly gathers up more of the sounds that fall from Dean Winchester’s lips. 

“Well, even longer story short, Ezekiel wasn’t Ezekiel, he was Gadreel, and I got him out of and away from Sam, who’s okay now, by the way. That was, uh, 3 hours ago. And now,” Dean looks down, his hands still holding Cas’s between them, his thumb brushing over his knuckles. “Now, I’m here. So I could tell you everything. And so I could tell you… if you, by some chance, want to… you could come back to the bunker. Back home. Uh. With me. Come back home with me.” Dean looks away from his face, instead turning to look back down at their joined hands, a slight red tinge making itself known on the skin of Dean’s face as he continues to inspect how his thumb makes pass after pass across Cas’s skin. 

Cas still has half a mind to think he’s still dreaming, but he doesn’t think his unconscious mind has ever been able to replicate the feeling of Dean’s hand on him so accurately. 

“You… want me to come back?” he asks hesitantly, still unsure and somewhat unbelieving in the sincerity of Dean’s offer. “You want me to come back to the bunker with you?” 

Cas pauses, another thought coming to him. Dread rises a broken tide in his stomach. 

“For how long? How long would it be before I’d have to leave again?” He asks and pretends his voice doesn’t break at the end. 

He’s not sure he’ll be able to handle being forced from the bunker- from his home all over again. To have to once again so shamefully pack up the few things he possesses and walk out of the bunker right back to the LED lights of this store. That is, if Nora would ever consider taking him back in the first place. He wouldn’t be surprised if she said no to him as well. 

He spent one night with Dean in the beautifully tortuous way that he truly wants, and it changed him, forever. Being able to have Dean like that rearranged every atom inside his mortal body and remade him into some wholly new creature only capable of measuring all other experiences in the light of that one night. But to be able to return and live in the bunker with his family- his love- again? Only for it all to be taken away at some indeterminate time in the future? Would Dean consider him worthy of getting a warning this time? 

Dean’s face falls. “I… I’m not going to make you stay if you don’t want to, and I’m- I’m not saying you can’t leave if you like, either, but you can stay in the bunker for as long as you like, Cas.” 

Cas feels the bottom of his stomach drop perilously out. “Don’t say- how could you say that to me. You can’t just… that is cruel. Even I can recognize that I don’t deserve that.” Cas takes violent steps away from Dean, forcing now necessary space in between them. He can feel the sensation of tears forming behind his eyes, that oh-so familiar wet burn that he’s grown to loathe because it makes him feel so useless , so unable to do anything but succumb to that which he can’t hope to control. 

“Cas, Cas, trust me, I know you deserve-”

“You can’t just dangle this in front of me- this home, this family- and expect me to just… be okay with walking away from it for a second time.” He forces himself to look into Dean’s eyes as he pleads with him to understand. “Dean, I know you think that I’m adapting well and doing great on my own, but I’m telling you, I’m not. I don’t want to be. Can’t you see that I’m not- I won’t be able to deal everything being taken away again-” 

Dean’s eyes go wide, so wide. 

“Cas… Cas, listen.” Dean gasps, speaking so quickly that Cas almost misses half of the words. “Kicking you out of the bunker was the worst mistake I’ve ever made and probably the biggest regret I’ll ever have. I’m not asking you to forgive me, or to forget about what I did to you, but I swear- I promise on my life, Cas- I’m never going to make you leave again. I’m not… dangling this in front of you, I’m simply giving it to you. If you want.” 

Cas is frozen. He’s never been so unsure of a situation in his life. 

All he can do is watch as Dean takes a tentative step towards him, getting that little bit closer just so he can continue, quieter, with downcast eyes that measure the space in between them, “I haven’t been the same without you, man,” he whispers, a confession in an early-morning gas station. “All I do is either think about you, or think of how I can fix everything so you can come back to the bunker. With me.” 

Dean takes another sharp breath, his eyes glistening just a little bit more in the morning light. “That whole time we were working the case… God, I was trying so goddamn hard to put on some kind of brave face for you. Smiling, making jokes, acting like everything is alright just so it would take the pain out of your eyes, even just for a bit, so the pretending would all be worth it. And I’m a horrible person for it, I know that, because I saw the pain, the sadness, and I still couldn’t do anything.”

Dean presses on, taking another step back towards him. “And then we spent that night together in the motel, and God, Cas, that’s when I knew all I want- all I’m going to want, forever- is to be able to make you feel good, feel treasured, feel happy. And I know- fuck, trust me, I know you deserve so much more, someone so much better, but I’m selfish, Cas. I- I want that to be me, even though I’ve done nothing but hurt you, over and over again.” 

Cas is stock still. He’s sure that if he dares twitch a single muscle, everything is going to shatter and come crashing down around him. 

Dean exhales  a deep breath, clearly trying to reign in his emotions and the tears Cas can see in his eyes, a now-blurry mirror of his own. “I’m sorry, Cas. I’m so fucking sorry and I’m never going to stop being sorry. So, if you want, you can come back home and stay for as long as you like. And if you don't want anything to do with me, just tell me, okay? And I’ll make sure to stay out of your way, I promise. And if you don’t want to come back at all, that’s- it’s fine, too. I… I‘ll do some research, find you a place wherever you want, set up a cred-” 

Dean abruptly cuts himself off, freezing for a moment, then lets out an unbelieving laugh and Cas thinks that this is it. He knew it was too good to be true, he should never have gotten up, never opened the door-

Dean seems to smile, helplessly, almost against his will, and seems to abandon his attempt at holding the tears back, and says,

“I love you, Cas. I love you.” Dean is still smiling and Cas feels his heart stop in his chest.

He must be dreaming. Unconscious. 

Every inch of his skin is on fire. 

He closes the distance still remaining between them and seals his lips over Dean’s, hoping that if he presses hard enough, if he stays close enough, he’ll be able to immortalize those words against their lips. He feels and then tastes one of Dean’s tears slide down to where his own skin pressed against Cas’s. 

Cas pulls away, Dean frantically searching his face. 

“I’ll come back with you,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss as soft as fleece to his lips, and Dean chokes out a broken sob, his eyes squeezing shut. 

“Cas… are you sure? You don’t- you’re not obligated to, you really don’t have to if you don’t want to. You ca-” 

“I’ll come back with you because I want to, Dean. I want to be there with you, with Sam. With my family,” Cas promises, cupping Dean’s face in his hands and softly wiping away the tears with his thumbs. “Just… please don’t make me leave again. I promise I can be useful, I’ll find something to do. That’s all I ask. Please, I-” 

Dean frantically shakes his head, twisting his hands in the lapels of Cas’s shirt and pulling him back in. “No, no, never, Cas,” he gasps in between feverish kisses he presses to Cas’s mouth. He brands Cas with his mouth, an anointment of a promise as he speaks the words Cas has always wanted to hear against his own lips. “You have never had to be useful, or worthy, or anything like that Cas. Hell, just look at me.”

“Dean…”

“You’re never going to have to leave again, I swear it, okay? No matter what. Angel, human, couch potato, somewhere in between, it doesn’t matter. I want you. I swear, Cas. You can stay. Forever and for as long as you want.” 

Cas, for the first time since he sat at the Bunker table so long ago and imagined the future he could have, truly smiles.