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Post-Episode: s12e12 Stuck In The Middle (With You), Mutual Pining, Drinking to Cope, Found Family, POV CastielDean won't stop looking at him.
Not so much that it would be noticeable to anyone else. He keeps his eyes on the road when he drives them back to the motel, except when he's stealing looks in the rearview mirror. He keeps his head facing forward at the bar, only looking at Cas out of the corner of his eye when he and Sam and Mary all do a shot to honor Wally, and another for Cas himself. Cas joins them, though alcohol does little for him, and the taste even less, because this is his family, and he wants to do as they would, and because Cas can see the way it makes Dean's shoulders relax to see him doing normal things, human things, even though he doesn't need them as humans do. To eat, to drink, to breathe. To beat your heart, to pump your clean, red blood to a tempo that says, I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive.
Mary is quiet. Sam is gentle when he asks how she knew Wally, what he was like in life, but she just sniffs and shakes her head. Her fingernails still have ash underneath, though he knows she washed them the first chance she got. There's still a rusty streak of Castiel's blood in her hair. None of them are surprised when she excuses herself early, presumably to shower and then lie awake, unable to sleep anyway. After so much time on Earth, this, at least, Castiel understands.
"Do you think she's okay?" Sam asks after she goes. He's slowed down, nursing a beer that he probably intends to be his last for the night.
"Would you be?" Dean's moved on to beer as well, and he drains the last of his bottle before he adds it to the collection growing next to him. Sam lets out a wobbly sigh, conceding the point.
Cas can't remember ever having seen it, but according to Dean, Sam's a maudlin drunk. There is a certain quality to his expression now, his eyes red and tired and shining, his hair falling limp over his creased forehead. Already, he has expressed his feelings, of gratitude, of appreciation, of brotherhood towards Cas more times in one hour than he has in their entire years-long acquaintance. There was a time when this might have annoyed Castiel, or even disgusted him. Now it moves him, though the proper way to react still eludes him. He does not know how to be a brother to him as Dean is. He only knows how to be a brother-in-arms. He would, and has lain down his life for Sam, for Dean, for Mary. Living with them is still a work in progress.
Then Sam is leaving too, his large hand squeezing Cas's shoulder before he walks back to their motel. Dean watches him leave, and then his eyes slide right back over to Cas, darting all over him, like he's looking for the blood that had stained his shirt, or the leathery cracking of his skin. He looks at Cas's mouth, clean and pink, no evidence that just a few hours ago, he was vomiting up his own rotten, blackened insides, dying on the floor of a barn, and then he drinks, and drinks, and drinks. When closing time comes and forces them out, Cas slings Dean's arm over his shoulder and helps him walk, just as Mary had done for him. This, too, he has learned, is what family is meant to do.
"Cas," Dean says, warm and heavy, slumped against his shoulder. "Cas, man, I got that waitress's number for you. Y'remember, Cas? She wrote 'er number on the receipt for you, buddy."
"Yes, Dean, I remember," he says. "Watch your step, the curb's there."
"Oop. Cas… Cas, man, you gotta call 'er. She's… She was super into you, dude."
"So you said." Cas adjusts Dean's arm, grip tight around his ribs. Dean turns towards him, speaking in his ear, so that Cas can feel his hot breath against his cheek. He smells of smoke, and of beer.
"Post-hunt sex. It's kinda crazy, dude. Like, intense." Dean's hand splays out in the air, a mimed explosion. "Post… post, like, near-death experience sex. Or like. Post death sex, I guess. Hah." His head droops down, boneless, then lolls back up, nudging against Cas's, ruffling his hair. "How messed up is that, that we both… y'know. Whatever. You should call her."
"I don't think that would be a good idea," Cas says. Whether he realized it or not at the time, he's tried everything Dean's suggesting. It's not something he'd care to repeat with a stranger, even one as friendly as Mandy the waitress, even one who smells as comfortingly of coffee and hamburgers.
"Why not?" Dean's brow creases, and he jostles Cas's shoulder because Cas allows it. "She liked you a lot, man. And she was hot. And you… you oughta have some fun, too, man. When's the last time you had fun? Like… five billion years ago in Babylon or whatever?"
"Babylon didn't exist five billion years ago."
"Your mom didn't exist five billion years ago," Dean says reflexively, before Cas can finish speaking.
"I don't have a—"
"I know, I know, shut up."
They stop outside the motel room so that Dean can try to fish the keycard out of his back pocket. He leans heavily against the wall, but he doesn't let Cas out of his grip. His hand slides down over Cas's arm, down the sleeve of his coat, and grips his forearm. Cas could let it slide down more. Cas could take his hand. Dean's drunk enough that he might even permit it, though Cas is no longer dying.
Dean's eyes find his again. Cas has seen this look on Dean's face before, has known these eyes. Even when he didn't know himself, he knew what it was for Dean to look at him with all the conflicted hope and fear of one seeing a ghost.
"Cas, man, I— Why d'you keep doin' this to me, man?"
It hurts to look at him. Once, Castiel had thought this ache to be the discomfort of occupying a vessel, of feeling all of its beautifully strange, complex structures trying to contain the enormity of his being, or possibly of being on Earth, where everything was immutable and solid, governed by rules he was unaccustomed to. But now the vessel is simply his own human body, and having been human for a time, he knows the feeling never goes away. It merely lies sleeping until Dean Winchester wakes it.
"I'm sorry, Dean." Castiel doesn't know precisely what he's apologizing for. He's spent a lot of time apologizing for a lot of things, and it's usually warranted.
"Don't be sorry," Dean says, "just don't do it anymore." His head thunks against the concrete wall. His hand does slide into Castiel's, then, warm and dry and work-roughened. Cas had spent a particular amount of time on rebuilding Dean's hands, of following the unique whorl of his fingerprints. Dean had complained to him once that he hadn't given him calluses, that he'd had to regain them all the hard way, splitting his knuckles open on the lid of his own coffin. For this, too, Cas wishes he could apologize.
Dean tugs him forward, one arm going around his back while the other pulls his head down, tucking it into Dean's neck. It's sloppy and a little awkward. Cas sinks into it completely.
"Cas," Dean says, low and rough against his temple. His lips are dry, and they catch against his skin. "Fuck, please don't do that again. I can't take it, man. Not again." His fingertips press into Cas's scalp, scratching though his hair. The feeling tingles through him, light and sharply pleasant. Dean's lips press against his brow, too firm to be anything but deliberate. Cas hasn't felt so buoyant since his wings could still carry him, yet he feels like he would crash to the ground were he not being held firmly upright.
The feeling bursts inside him, and fizzles out cold. He ought to put Dean to bed, to make him lie on his side and pour him a glass of water and leave out the bottle of aspirin for him. He has watched Lisa do this for Dean, and Sam as well. This, too, is the duty of family, and he will bear it with gratitude. He'll watch him sleep tonight, though Dean would protest, to make sure he isn't ill.
"Let's get you to bed," Cas says. This is something he has heard people say, and so he says it now too. Dean looks at him, dazed, and wets his lips.
"Yeah, okay."
Cas takes the keycard from Dean's back pocket, while Dean sucks in a sharp breath and leans into him. He opens the door and ushers Dean inside as quietly as he can. Sam is already asleep across the room, headphones in and mouth hanging slightly open with his breathing. Dean crashes to the bed, dead weight. Cas lifts his leg and begins to unlace one of his boots.
"C'mere," Dean mumbles, turned to his side and half-muffled by the pillow. Cas pulls off one boot, and then the other, socks and all. "Hey, hey, no fair. You gotta take somethin' off too."
Cas sighs, then complies with the word of his request, if not the spirit, shrugging off his coat and jacket, draping them over Dean's duffel where it rests on the floor. When he turns back around, Dean's eyes have slipped closed, and he's holding the pillow to his face with both arms wrapped tightly around it. Cas watches him for a moment, the fan of his eyelashes against his flushed cheek, the crush of his mouth to the pillowcase. Then he fetches the aspirin bottle from their bags, and goes to the bathroom to fill a glass with water. These things he sets on the bedside table.
Dean's eyes stay closed, but his hand grasps out and finds Cas's leg. Obliging, he sits on the edge of the bed. Dean drifts closer with the dip of the mattress beneath him.
"C'mon. Stay."
"Until you fall asleep," Cas says, and brushes Dean's hair from his forehead. Dean's eyelashes move, fluttering, as he sighs against the pillow.
"Just stay," he says, barely audible. He rolls back an inch, like he wants Cas to lie down with him. Uncertain, Cas lies down beside him, shoes and all, over the covers. "M'tired."
"Go to sleep," Cas says.
"Okay, honey." He's asleep before Cas can process what he's said.
In the morning, Dean rolls over, slapping the side-table blindly until he finds the bottle, and the glass. Cas, from the chair by the window, watches him drink, spilling water from the corners of his mouth and wetting his shirt. Sam, already awake, is showering in the bathroom. Dean blinks at him, bleary-eyed and cranky.
"Cas," he says, like he's confused. But again, his shoulders relax an inch at the sight of him. There isn't much Cas can do for him, but this, at least, is within his power, for now. "You're still here?"
"You asked me to stay," Cas says. Dean looks up in surprise, pale in the face and with bruised eyes. He likely doesn't remember much of last night. All the better, Cas thinks. Things between them are complicated enough as it is. "For breakfast," Cas adds, an olive branch. "Waffles."
"Oh, hell yeah," Dean says, relieved. "I need something to soak all this mess up."
They have breakfast again, as a family, down one guest. Cas watches Dean eat gratefully, watches the poison leave him with every bite, watches the pallor flee his cheeks. He watches Mary stealing the bacon from Sam's plate, reservedly impish, and he watches Sam fold a straw wrapper into a triangle, which he flicks right onto Dean's syrup-drenched plate. This is his family, he thinks, with a certainty he never felt even at the height of his tenure in Heaven. He has chosen them. Here is how he can love them.