Dean Winchester fucked up.
Okay, what else is new, but he fucked up real bad this time.
For starters, the former reigning King of Hell is chained up in his basement and there's an honor student with an axe to grind and access to literal axes feeling kinda raw about not being allowed to kill him yet. Every demon fucking shit up on Earth right now is kind of his fault, because he's the one who talked Sam out of slamming the gates on Hell. The heavenly nukes aren't flying anywhere but American Airlines, but they are walking, driving, taking public transit, and broadcasting themselves on The 700 Club. One of them's currently taking residence in his brother, and don't doubt he's starting to have some major regrets about that one, but it's not like he can lodge a formal complaint when the fucker's basically holding him hostage. And that brings him to the most recent fuckup, because Dean finally, finally brought Cas home, but now he's standing at the foot of the stairs with a packed bag looking like his whole world is ending.
"The room's great. And, like, all I was really using it for was our weekly tabletop session, and that's been on hold since Bry had to start physical therapy on Fridays anyway," says Charlie, as manic and peppy as Cas is beaten down. "I can move the table out and rearrange some things. Make room for a bed."
Castiel's heavy-lidded eyes flit up. He nods faintly. "Thank you."
"Hey," she says. "It's no big." She glances over at Dean, worrying at her lip with her teeth, then punches Cas on the shoulder. "Uh, why don't you get your stuff loaded up into my car. Go on, I'll be there in a minute." She tosses him her keys, which hit his chest with a loud clink and tumble down into his splayed hands. He looks between them silently, then trudges off toward the garage. Dean can practically hear the sad ass Charlie Brown music trailing after him when he goes.
Yeah, he fucked up pretty bad.
Charlie waits until Cas has been gone for a minute before she speaks. "Can I assume you're doing this for some… some secret reason that's actually a good reason and not some stupid self-punishing noble hero bullcrap reason?"
Dean sucks his teeth. "Okay, I—I deserve that."
Charlie frowns at him.
"It's a—it's important. I swear to god, it's—it's really important. I don't wanna do this," Dean says quietly. "You know I don't wanna do this, probably—probably better than anyone. But it's. It is important, and I can't—I can't say why. Not yet." Charlie doesn't look impressed, but he can see her resolve wavering. "I promise I will tell you when it's safe, but believe me when I say it's not safe for him to be here. Not right now. And I trust you to look out for him."
Charlie nods once, unhappily, and sighs. "If I lose my security deposit because I have to put up angel wards, I'm making you pay for it in cash."
Dean huffs. "Yeah, okay, deal."
He walks her out to the garage, where Cas is waiting by her car, examining her ring of keys, specifically her keychains. Any other day, Dean would be thinking how weirdly endearing it is, watching a former Angel of God play with little plastic Xena and Gabby, but right now he just feels like shit.
"Got some cash and a phone for you," Dean says, holding out to Cas a folded over bundle of bills from his emergency stash and one of his burner phones. "Some hunter numbers programmed in there already, if they call you lookin' for me, you, uh. Well, you know where to send 'em."
"Right," says Cas. He hands Charlie her keys, and takes the money, which he stuffs into his pants pocket, and then the phone, which he stashes in his hoodie. He's a tall, broad guy, but he looks oddly small without his suit and trench coat. Even more so, with the downward slope of his shoulders.
"Charlie, she's, uh. She's gonna help you get set up. Help you, you know. Do the human thing. You'll be all right."
"Thank you, Dean."
Dean's throat feels dry. He doesn't want Cas to thank him for this. He wants Cas to tell him not to make him leave. He wants him to protest, to argue with him. He wants an excuse to cave. He doesn't know how he can, with Zeke breathing down his neck about it, but he'll figure it out. He always does.
But Cas doesn't say a word in his own defense. Charlie's already sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for Cas to climb in next to her.
"All right," Dean croaks, and takes Cas by the shoulder, pulling him into a hug. Cas is stiff, arms dangling by his sides. He still smells like Dean's shampoo. Dean releases him and steps away quickly, before he can allow himself to enjoy it. Not like he has the right. "Okay. Uh, right. You got this, man. Um. See ya."
Cas doesn't look him in the eyes again. He dips his head, methodically opens the door of the car, and climbs in. Charlie beeps twice, gives Dean a little wave, and the two of them disappear down the tunnel, back out into the world.
When Dean schools his face into something resembling normal and walks back out into the main room, Kevin is seated at the map table in his pajamas, buried in a box of Krunch Cookie Crunch up to his elbow.
"You seen Sam?" Dean asks. Ezekiel told him to get Cas the hell out, ASAP, then made himself scarce, but he's gotta come back sometime or else Sam'll get suspicious about the missing time. He's gotta come up with an explanation before he does. That kid's always got so many questions.
"Went for a run." Kevin scoops a handful of cereal out of the box. "Where's Castiel? He regret eating a whole box of frozen burritos yet?"
"No, he's, uh. He and Charlie just left. They're doing their own thing for a while."
"Charlie too? Huh," Kevin says around a mouthful of dry cereal. Dean's gonna have to feed that kid something that didn't come out of a box soon. "No offense, she was nice I guess, but she kept trying to bond with me over having 'leet haxxor skills'? It was embarrassing."
"Having what?"
"See, you're cringey too, but it's the kind of cringe I can deal with," Kevin says. "Like regular old guy cringey."
Dean recoils as if wounded, then stomps out of the room muttering. Then he stress-cleans the kitchen and takes inventory while he waits for Sam to return, practicing what he's going to say.
Of course Sam is confused, but after a while of Dean dodging his questions with, "Cas just decided it would be better to keep some distance while things are still hot," and, "Charlie's not stupid, she knows how to set up angel roach motels," and, "I dunno, Sammy, you wanna waterboard me too?" he eventually gives up.
Charlie texts him when they arrive back at her place. Dean responds promptly, despite the protests of every cell in his body, because he knows how Charlie gets when he ignores her texts. It's the least he can do. He owes her.
He can't stop himself from imagining it. Cas sleeping on Charlie's couch, like he had before. Maybe watching Lord of the Rings for the first time with her. Dean wanted to be the one to show it to him for the first time, but there's no way he's gonna beat Charlie to the punch. At least Cas'll get to see it. It's better, Dean tells himself. He'll get to see all the things Dean wanted to show him, and Charlie will do it without making him think he should be embarrassed by it. Dean won't be able to cook for him, but he'll get to eat takeout and taste it like a human would. Charlie will help him get a mattress in the spare room, and he won't have to sleep in a shelter, or in an alley, or under an overpass. Maybe it has a window. He wouldn't have a window in the bunker.
He worries when he thinks about Charlie helping him find clothes, because Charlie's not exactly known for her restraint. Cas doesn't know about styles, or colors, what they'll convey to new people. What if he attracts the wrong kind of attention? They have enough to worry about with angels and demons running amok, Dean doesn't want to have to worry about Cas getting beat up because he doesn't know straight guys don't dress a certain way. He can't protect himself the way he used to.
But Charlie's not stupid either, he knows. He's gotta relax. Charlie's not scared like he is, but she's out, and Dean's not, and she's been out a long time. He's just gotta trust that she knows what the hell she's doing. He's got bigger problems than Cas's social skills.
He circles the thought for a while, though, like worrying a split lip, because he can't help himself. Because of course he'd been thinking of Cas as theoretically straight this entire time, because Dean tends to assume most people are straight unless they give him a good reason to assume otherwise, but it's one thing to assume and another to get what's more or less confirmation of fact.
Maybe it was just because Cas was borrowing a normal-looking married guy's face, but even though he was an awkward little dork with nary a clue in his head about the meaning of boundaries or personal space, Dean had always figured that when it came down to it, he'd want normal guy stuff. And yeah, Cas had missed the mark when Dean dragged him to that brothel, and yeah, Cas had turned him down the time Dean went through a bout of temporary insanity and came onto him, but after all that he'd turned up married to that chick that fished him out of the river. And the moment Cas went full human, with all the drives that entailed, he'd wound up in bed with as pretty a girl as Dean's ever seen. Or at least, a girl-shaped reaper. So obviously it was just Dean he didn't want, not women in general.
Dean drowns that thought out with beer, because it's a stupid, pointless fucking thought.
He refocuses all the pent-up nervous energy he's worked up on Kevin and Sam. Kevin gets irritated easily if Dean hovers too much, and when ignoring him doesn't do the trick, he tends to hole himself up in his bedroom. Which is fine. He's a teenager, he's allowed to be a moody little shit as long as he's getting enough sleep and eats at the table every once in a while.
Sam, on the other hand, isn't taking seriously at all Dean's warnings that he needs to rest up and regain his strength. As far as Sam knows, he was falling down dying one day, fell asleep for a few more, and woke up fit as a fiddle. The only thing that makes Dean think maybe Sam doesn't feel as swell as he says he does is the way he eats. As an adult, Sam's always been more of a health nut than Dean, and maybe it's just because Dean's cooking more often now than before, but it seems like it's getting harder and harder for him to adhere to whatever diet kick Sam's on as the weeks go by. He asks Charlie about it once, and she tells him to lay off and stop being such a freak about Sam being a vegetarian or whatever she thinks, but he doesn't know how to explain that it seems like something else.
Maybe it's some left-over neurosis from trying to make sure Sam wasn't malnourished when he was little. Dean can overlook him eating salads all the time, because at least salads tend to have some protein to fill them out. Sam's not a vegetarian, or at least he isn't yet, because he'll eat the chicken Dean grills up ahead of time and keeps in the fridge for him, and when they're out on a case he makes do with gas station turkey sandwiches. He can even deal when Sam starts spending too much time reading the packages when they're on supply runs, counting out calories and trans fats and weeding out whatever doesn't pass muster. Theoretically, all the processed food in the country shouldn't be pumped up with Leviathan cocktail anymore, but he can get why a guy might have some lingering hangups. No, the thing that gets Dean worried is the point where Sam starts drinking nothing but juice for every meal.
"The hell is that," Dean asks when Sam emerges from the kitchen with his second giant bottle of murky green liquid that day. Breakfast is one thing, cause Dean's seen the kid slurp down a morning smoothie more than a few times, but this is something else.
"I'm doing a cleanse," Sam says, avoiding eye contact. He flips through the book he's been engrossed in for the last hour, looking for anything that might help them figure out how to unlock the pearly gates and shove the choir back inside.
"A cleanse," Dean repeats. He looks down his nose at Sam, waiting for him to lift his head up from his book. He stubbornly refuses.
"Yeah."
Dean taps his finger against the spine of the book in front of him. Across the table, Kevin is ignoring the both of them, headphones firmly on.
"What's it supposed to cleanse?"
"You know, toxins. It just flushes out your system, gives your body a soft reboot." Sam sounds like he's quoting whatever crunchy granola blog he found the idea on.
"You mean it makes you shit liquid for a couple days?"
Sam rolls his eyes. "You wanna give me a lecture about healthy living, Dean, why don't you tell me what timezone it's five o'clock in?"
Dean leans over, positioning his elbow in front of the bottle next to him. "Man, shut up." He tries to go back to reading, but his eyes slide around the page blankly, not taking anything in. He reads over the same sentence three times trying to process it before he scoffs and gives up. "Toxins."
Dean hears Sam huff. He can't hear his lips pursing, but he can picture it clearly without looking up.
The problem is when Sam says "toxins", what Dean hears is "impurities". It puts him right back to that fucking hotel, Sam sweating out every last drop of life in him, burning up with a death-grade fever, babbling semi-coherently to Dean about how he's never been pure.
And he doesn't even know. He doesn't know what Dean did to him. What Dean put inside of him. He doesn't know, but on some level, maybe he still feels it in there. Maybe he's trying to flush it out.
He slams the book shut and stalks off. He needs to go for a drive until he doesn't feel like he's gonna hurl anymore.
—
He's got enough to worry about right now that it's probably not the best idea to start up a project, but in his defense, this one sort of fell into his lap. One of Dad's old hunter contacts, guy named Lunzer, calls him up out of the blue one day to say he's selling his self-storage business and if he wants his dad's stuff, he needs to have it cleared out by the end of the month.
He's known for a little while that his dad had a few storage units scattered across the continental US. He'd have to go through his journal page by page to figure out where all of them are and how he's kept them paid for all these years. He'd figured it was mostly in trade—'I saved your life, so let me dump my junk here.' This guy Lunzer, though, he'd been in the life for years, had worked with their dad on a few cases back when Dean was still a little kid.
"Hard times," he said on the phone. "Huntin' don't pay, and I can't keep up with runnin' this place, with my health bein' what it is, and all the doctor bills. Sold it to U-Haul. But I figured, you know, you boys, you'd probably want John's things. And some of that stuff, it's too dangerous for anyone but y'all to deal with."
So Dean rents a truck, and he and Sam haul ass over to Virginia.
The truck is new enough that there's no tape deck, just a CD player, and Dean never hopped on that trend, so he has to make do with the classic rock stations he can find flipping through the radio as they pass the border from Missouri to Illinois to Kentucky. He takes it straight on through for twelve hours, only stopping for gas and a bite, until they hit Lexington. Sam offers to drive the second six-hour stretch to Luray over a carton of beef and broccoli, sock feet kicking at the legs of the vinyl motel table he's hunched over.
"Yeah, okay," Dean agrees. He's more neurotic about letting people drive Baby, though of course Sam is in the vanishingly small list of people he'd allow behind her wheel, but he feels no similar compulsion to protect the honor of their rental truck. He crunches down on an egg roll, licking oil off his thumb. "So, done with the, uh, algae smoothies then?"
Sam huffs. "It's easier like this when we're on the road."
"To eat actual human food? Instead of whatever those snails in fish tanks eat? Yeah, I bet," says Dean.
"Honestly," Sam says, his shoulders going back the way they do when he's gearing up for a fight, "the way we eat on the road, I have to make up for it later."
"You sayin' somethin' about the way I eat?" Dean shoves the rest of the egg roll into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously just to get Sam riled up. It seems to work, because Sam shoves his chopsticks into his carton and slides it away.
"Yeah, maybe. I mean, Jesus, dude, how many times has Cas hit the reset button on your insides?"
"He doesn't do that," Dean says, but he feels a little tickle of panic in his throat, because he has no idea if Cas does that. He knows about the first time, the Big Heal, when Cas yanked his ass out of Hell and put him back together newer than he'd been the day he was born. Cas healed all his scars, all his old breaks and aches and twinges. He'd come out of that deal with foreskin, for fuckssakes. Cas had almost definitely healed up all the smoke in his lungs, the blockages in his arteries, the swiss-cheesing he'd put his liver through. But did he do that every time? He felt Cas's grace like a hot bath, warming him from the inside out. Was that why?
"Not anymore, he doesn't," Sam says pointedly. "He's human now."
"Cas isn't— he's not like, a button you can press for an extra life, Sam."
"Does he know that? Cause you kinda treat him like it," Sam says, and drags his carton back over to dig through it for a slice of beef.
Dean's face flushes hot with anger and embarrassment in equal measure. "Dude," he says, wounded.
"Maybe that's why he left," Sam says, eyes focused on the table. Which is good, because if he looks Dean in the eye right now, Dean might throw something.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Whatever. If you give yourself a heart attack by the time you're forty, he's not gonna be able to fix you. You might have to actually start taking care of yourself. That's all I'm saying."
"Great," Dean says. "Thanks for sharing, Dr. Oz."
A moment later, Sam fires back with, "What I put in my body is none of your business."
And there's really nothing Dean can say to that, is there? Not a damn thing.
He keeps his mouth shut the next morning, when Sam switches to the alternative station. Shotgun, cakehole, he knows the deal. With nothing to occupy his attention but the hilly forests of West Virginia and some head-scratching song on the radio about somebody's boyfriend looking like a girl that Dean is not in any kind of mood to unpack, he turns his attention to John's journal, reaching into the bag he's got shoved down by his feet in the truck cab to draw it out.
The man's been dead for years now, but Dean could swear the thing still smells like him, and he feels like he could turn around and find his dad looking over his shoulder every time he reads it. His fingers left imprints in the leather, common paths worn smooth. Now, of course, every time he opens it, he sees that little HW embossed on the inside fold, too. The ghosts John hunted aren't the only ones that live on in that book.
What Dean looks for now are other places like the one they're headed to. He knows it's not the only one—that business with the rabbit's foot in New York was pretty unforgettable— but it's not like Dad left them a neat and tidy list of all his assets when he died.
There are a lot of coordinates. Dean knows what some of them lead to. Others are still unexplored, little mysteries their father left them that could almost add up to something like a Last Will and Testament. Less than a mandate, less than an estate. But something. And he knows their dad left him a will, of sorts, if you can call a deathbed request a will. But if saving Sam was the first order he ever took from his dad, not letting him die was the last he ever disobeyed. Every day of his life, Dean disobeys that final command. Maybe that's why it still feels unresolved between them. Maybe he's trying to find some other business of Dad's that needs finishing, so he can put this shit to rest.
When they drive up with their rental truck, devil's trap scrawled on the roof in white paint where hopefully no one will notice it, Lunzer hands them a set of keys and thanks them for coming. "I wouldn't boot y'all out, but it'd be hard to keep them from clearin' y'out by force without me hangin' around cookin' the books, y'know? And I don't want some poor fuck who don't know rednecks from rugarus gettin' into any of this mess," he says, his jaw trembling with the effort it takes him to speak. One side of his face is a little slack, the parting gift of surviving a stroke.
"We appreciate you lookin' out all these years," Sam says, and shakes the man's tremulous hand.
"Hey, least I could do. Your dad's a hero. Saved my hide. My wife's, too." He wipes at his lip with his knuckle, blinking wetness away. "You know, it's been rough goin' last few years, but… After that business, I quit huntin'. Decided I'd rather see my kids grow up firsthand. And these years, they've been a gift. But we need men like your dad around, that's for sure. That's for sure."
Dean doesn't know why he feels like there's a lead ball in his stomach. He paints on a smile and nods deferentially.
"Glad you boys are followin' in his footsteps. I hear anything, I'll send it your way. You take care."
"Yes, sir," Sam says, and then Lunzer leaves them to it.
It's not quite the treasure trove they found last time. There's boxes of bullets he probably kept stashed away in case of emergency, and a few old guns that need a little TLC. Dean'll take them apart and clean them out back at the bunker. Dean pops open a plastic tub and finds it's full of documents and certificates, mostly regarding their dad's military career, none of it that they're ever likely to need, but not something he wants to leave behind without having a closer look through. They don't find anything of his or Sam's, this time, no old trophies or science projects or baby's first sawed-off, but he does find a wooden chest that looks incongruous with the rest of the findings.
It's polished cedar, beautiful, with only minor scuffs in the finish. There are leaves and flowers carved into the lid, weaving themselves around the opening. He'd take a look inside if the hinges weren't rusted shut. He tries to pry it open, but he's afraid of damaging the wood. He'll have to take it back and unscrew the latches to get it open safely. He and Sam haul it into the truck with the rest of Dad's things, wrapping it up with a ratty blanket that Lunzer tells them is theirs to keep.
All said and done, they probably could have carried the load with just a trailer, not that Dean would subject Baby to such an indignity. It's barely half full. Dean peers at Sam, who chugs a bottle of vending machine water that crushes itself in his hand.
"You up for taking this show back on the road?"
Diverting northward adds a few more days to their trip, but that's nothing for the two of them, even if their truck makes it a little more arduous. Being in New York always makes Dean feel too young, for some reason. Too many memories, and stepping back inside that old storage unit doesn't help things. It's been years, by Earth's reckoning. A century, by Sam's, and half that by Dean's. Neither of them are the same people they were the last time they saw this place.
Sam picks up his old soccer trophy. Dean watches him do it, feeling like a slide caught in a projector, layering the new image over the old one and seeing it in double. Sam's older now, his hair longer, his cheeks hollowed out, and instead of quiet wonder, he looks at the gilded piece of plastic in his fist like it's a piece of trash he plucked off the ground.
"You really want us to keep all this stuff, Dean?" He turns it, reading the inscription. "1995. Jesus. Y'know, I never played soccer again, after that year? Never stayed somewhere long enough to join a team again, I guess."
Dean remembers that year. He wonders if Sam worried about him at all, thinking he was lost in the woods somewhere, or chained up in some werewolf nest, instead of where he really was, getting three square and thinking he was the kind of guy who could take a girl to a dance. Maybe Sam was too busy winning soccer trophies to worry. But Dean doesn't know, because he's never explained.
Good for him, honestly. That's what twelve year olds are supposed to do. He should have been doing more of that.
"Let's just take it back home. If you wanna toss it after that, be my guest," Dean says. But quietly he thinks, wouldn't it be nice? Some mementos of being a real kid? Something that normal people have in their homes? But maybe not. Maybe for Sam, it's just a reminder of something he can't be anymore. Something he never really was.
Sam shrugs, and sets the trophy on top of a stack of notebooks. "We're gonna have to start cataloguing some of these artifacts. I still want to digitize the—"
"—library, yeah dude, I know. I mean, hey, it's perfect right?" Dean summons a grin, trying to appeal to Sam's bookworm tendencies. "We've basically got our own supernatural archive. Kind of a museum of the fucked-up spooky scaries. Makes sense to make sure it's all safe and properly identified in, say, some kinda secret underground bunker? Yeah?"
"It's gonna be a big project," Sam says, but Dean can see him starting to agree already. He wags his eyebrows.
"Give Kevin something to take his mind off the tablets. Maybe ask Jody if she knows any other hunters who just love the smell of the Dewey Decimal system in the morning."
Sam looks genuinely interested now. "If we get Bobby's phone tree back in order, we could be kind of a hub for other hunters. An on-call encyclopedia."
"Now you're cookin' with gas," Dean cheers, and loads a box full of cursed objects into the truck. Once they're done, the drive back home is practically cheerful, the air between them as light as it's been in ages while Sam dreams up what the hunting community could be like, if they just put a little effort into networking.
He realizes, with a sinking sensation that ruins it all, that it's been days since Zeke showed himself. For a little while, Dean forgot he was even in there.
He peers at Sam's profile, the slope of his nose, the easy quirk of his smile. He looks good. He looks happy. Dean doesn't want to spoil things between them. It's a fragile equilibrium these days. Best to just hope Ezekiel's almost done healing, that soon Sam will be all the way better, and free.
—
It's possible that Charlie is mad at him.
The first couple weeks, she updated him every so often, sometimes with pictures. Dean's got a whole photo library of Cas and his firsts, now, like he's a baby taking his first steps or something. Castiel's First DQ Blizzard. Castiel's First Star War. Castiel's First Happy Hour. And he's relieved to see that he and Charlie have actually done all right getting him dressed up like a civilian—he's ditched the suit but kept to the relative safety of slacks and button-ups, for the most part, though there's one or two shots of him wearing what must be one of Charlie's Moondoor t-shirts, and the way he fills it out leaves him feeling just this side of crazed. When did Cas get so… built? Wouldn't Dean remember if Cas was built?
He kept his responses to Charlie's updates light and brief. Awesome, he'd lie. Tell Cas hey. Because he was too much of a coward to do it himself.
The problem is simple: he's fucking jealous. It's stupid, because he knows, he knows he did this to himself, but there it is. Because Dean wanted to be the one to introduce Cas to all his favorite flicks. Dean wanted to be the one to get him drunk and take him to McDonalds for midnight french fries. Dean wanted to take him shopping at Goodwill and make him try on goofy t-shirts and take pictures of his dorky little frown in the dressing room. He wanted—he wants.
And he's pretty sure Charlie knows what Dean wants, because the pictures start taking on a pointed quality, at least to Dean's mind.
First she sends a pic of Cas with a faint frown and a hot red sunburn across his cheeks, because she forgot to teach him about sunscreen. And Dean feels a pang of upset at that, that she's not doing everything she can to protect him, not like Dean would—but then he remembers she's got a job, and a life, one that doesn't revolve around teaching a billion-year-old man-sized baby about basic skincare, and Dean's the one who abandoned him anyway.
Then she sends a pic of his farmers' tan.
It's mostly his back. There's no reason Dean's mouth ought to go slack like it does. In the photo, he's facing away from the camera, his dark, overlong hair curling around the backs of his ears. He's due for a trim. His neck is flushed, his ears bright pink. There's the relatively pale skin of his back, unmarked except for a few moles and freckles, the jut of his shoulder blades and the dip of his spine down to the waist of his jeans, and the clear line on his bicep, everything below which is warm brown, down his forearms and to his fingertips. His arms are bigger than Dean realized. There's a vein running down the back of his hand, and a tensed muscle easily visible under the surface of all that tanned skin. He's seen Cas naked before, but Cas popping around erratically and chatting his ear off about the flight patterns of bees had felt a fair bit different. He didn't exactly have a chance to drink it all in.
And that's what he's doing, he realizes, drinking him in, because fuck, he must be thirsty if just a flash of Cas's tanned forearm is doing it for him. He groans, clicking his screen off and thunking his forehead down on the table. When Sam asks him what his deal is, he just says he's sick of categorizing the lore, despite the fact that he hasn't looked at the books in front of him in at least an hour, and excuses himself to mess around in the kitchen.
The next pic Charlie sends, a few days later, is Cas in a suit, which would be well within the realm of normal if he weren't also, judging by the crowd behind him, at a gay bar. Charlie is next to him, also in a suit, which is unusual, and then he takes in the fact that they're both holding up FBI badges (Right side up! reads the text underneath) and that the person standing immediately behind them is a drag queen dressed like the Statue of Liberty, and Dean realizes it's an early Halloween party. Charlie's cut her hair, and it's styled in a neat bob. Fuck his life, she's dressed up as Dana Scully, which means she roped Cas into being her Mulder.
Cas is supposed to be my Mulder, Dean catches himself thinking, then makes a bewildered face at himself for it, because what the fuck. If anyone's the Mulder, it's Dean, and that is absolutely not the fucking point what the fuck. He shoves his phone back into his pocket with a huff. If he weren't just loading up the car to take out a chupacabra with Sam he'd go do target practice or drink himself stupid about it. As it is, he just fires a few extra rounds into the thing when they finally find it and uses a little too much lighter fluid when they torch it, trying to find satisfaction in the size of the fire if nothing else.
The pic she sends after that, though. That one's the kicker, because it's just Cas sleeping. It's late, and his phone lights up, and there on the screen is Cas curled up on Charlie's couch, draped under a green windbreaker, with his hand curled up by his cheek. His eyelashes fan out over his cheeks, his mouth slack. He's probably drooling. Something behind Dean's ribs twists, and nothing's happening, he's just sitting in bed, but it hurts like someone reached inside and squeezed.
His throat closes up, and he thinks, I'm fucked, because he knows what he wants, and he wants it so bad he can't even lie to himself and say that's not what this is. He knows what it is. It's not even a sex thing. Dean doesn't want to wake him. He wants to run his fingers through his dark, shaggy hair, and lean in and kiss him on the forehead, and he wants to get him a blanket and let him sleep. He wants him to be in Dean's bed. He wants him to wake up here, to brush his teeth in Dean's sink and let Dean make him eggs in the morning. He wants Cas home.
Shhh, says the text, followed by a little shushing emoji. Dean scrubs his hand over his face and feels the heat of it, knowing what he must look like and hating it. He has no idea what to say to this. Charlie's fucking killing him. The last thing he wants is to admit that, but he's at the end of his rope. This is torture.
He snaps a picture of himself flipping off the camera and sends it to her.
Charlie calls him.
"Don't fucking call me," Dean hisses when he picks up. "You're gonna wake him up."
"Holy shit," Charlie laughs under her breath. "Oh man. It's way worse than I thought."
"Shut up. I'm gonna fucking murder you," Dean says, quietly furious.
"I'd like to see you try," Charlie says. "Okay, I'm in my room, the door is closed, so don't worry about me spilling the beans or anything, you big baby."
"Why are you doing this? Like, what do you think is gonna happen here?"
"I dunno, Dean, have you talked to Cas at all?"
Dean's silence is all the answer she needs. He hears her sigh, a loud gust of air into the receiver.
"Dean, why won't you call him? Or come visit? Something?" He chews the inside of his cheek, trying to figure out how to answer. She doesn't wait for him. "Whatever stupid mess you got yourself into, does it mean you can't at least talk to him?"
"No, it— no," Dean finally says, reluctant, like he has to force himself. "No. I just feel like shit. I feel like an asshole, and I can't. I just can't, Charlie, okay?"
"You understand that this is a self-perpetuating problem, yes? One with a pretty straightforward solution?"
"Talking to Cas doesn't actually solve any of my problems, dude," Dean says.
"It solves one of them," she snaps. Her voice sounds softer when she speaks again. "Look, you miss him right?"
Dean can't answer. She knows the truth anyway.
"Well, he misses you. He avoids talking about it, but he's pretty bad at hiding it. Every time they play classic rock on the radio or some commercial or something he gets this look on his face. There's this movie they keep playing ads for… I dunno, at first I thought maybe he had a thing for Bradley Cooper or Amy Adams or someone, but then I figured out it was just Led Zeppelin."
"Don't be stupid, he doesn't… It's not like that, okay? We're not…"
"Yeah, all right. Sure." By her tone, she's done with that line of questioning. It's a relief, but Dean doesn't really feel better. "Just. Will you tell me? Please? Whatever it is. And I won't be mad. Or maybe I'll be mad, but I'll help you first, and I'll be mad later."
"You can't help me, kiddo."
Charlie scoffs on the other end. "Yeah, well, why don't you let me decide that, kiddo? I'm twenty eight, dude." He hears rustling, the sound of her sitting down on the end of her bed, maybe. He can picture the look on her face, the exasperation and weariness. Yeah, he'd be disappointed in himself, too. "I don't wanna fight with you. And… don't think I mind lookin' out for your guy, cause he's probably the best roommate I've ever had, except for the 'inviting in strangers and letting them use our shower' thing. Which I guess I can't be too mad about, but a girl needs some warning. But I don't think any of us wants him staying here forever. Right?"
"He's letting strangers into your apartment?"
"Not strangers, I guess. People he meets at the park. People who need a little... extra help? No angels or demons, they wouldn't get past the front door, so relax, okay?"
"He's been inviting in randos he met at the park?"
"Yeah, dude. He works there," she says. "Maybe you'd know that if you talked to him, ever."
"I just…" Dean pinches the bridge of his nose, rubbing at the tension building by his eyes. "It's dangerous. For you, for—for other people, and I just need to figure out how to deal with the home situation first. I swear to you. Please, just, gimme some time."
"Whatever it is, just figure it out. Okay? For your sake, too."
"Yeah," Dean says. "Yeah, I know. I'm. I'm trying."
"Okay. I'm gonna trust you."
Why?, Dean thinks, and then he says goodbye.
—
He's not proud of it, but sometimes he takes his frustration out on Crowley. He's an evil demon bastard, so you can only feel so bad for the guy, but it's probably not peak mental health for Dean to hang out in a dungeon with the King of Hell, comforting himself with the thought that at least he's not that guy.
"Squirrel," Crowley coos when Dean tromps into his cell. He sits himself down on a tabletop, a safe distance across the room. "My, aren't you looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning." He grins faintly. "Or evening. Little hard to tell. Might be nice if you cracked the window for me once in a while."
"You love hearing yourself talk, huh?"
"And why shouldn't I? My voice does have a sultry, alluring quality," Crowley says, low and teasing. "Why else would you be down here yet again if not to hear it?"
"Aren't you from Scotland? Shouldn't you sound more like..." Dean tucks his chin into his chest, contorting his throat and doing his best Gimli. "'Ach, oim Crowley, me mum's a haggis,' or something?" Okay, he skewed a little more Dick Van Dyke at the end there, but he tried.
Crowley doesn't even look offended, just vacantly unimpressed. "You're from Kansas, shouldn't you be speaking in monosyllables in between spitting chaw into an empty beer can?"
Dean gives him a flat smile.
"You know, these digs are pretty cozy. We didn't have to get you set up down here with a nice comfy chair or nothin'. The only thing stoppin' me from ganking you right now is that I think you might be able to tell me what I wanna know."
"And what is it you want to know, pray tell?"
Dean hadn't actually thought that far, but he doesn't want Crowley to know that.
"You told Kevin you killed his mother."
Crowley flashes his teeth. "I certainly did."
"Then you told him you were lying."
"Full points to Team Squirrel."
"Were you lying?"
"Oh, yes."
"Which time?"
Crowley's eyebrows lift, his smile curling. Dean lets out a growl under his breath.
"Don't screw around with me, you limey bitch. You think I can't make you talk? In case you forgot—"
"I know, I know, Alastair's apprentice, blah blah, Hell's next top dominatrix ten years running, very intimidating, really. I'm positively dripping. Is that why you're keeping me kenneled like a good little doggie instead of taking Old Yeller out back? I mean, I know I have a delightful personality, and the conversation must be sparkling compared to what you're used to, but is this really it? Every time you and Nancy Drew hit a dead end, you come to me for a little 'break in case of emergency,' smash a couple of my fingers, and call it a day?" He splays his fingers out on the tabletop, examining his short nails. "Well, it does add spice, I suppose. All right, break out the sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel. Let me have it."
Crowley has an incredible knack of taking the fun out of it. Now, instead of feeling ready to work out some righteous anger, Dean just sort of feels sick with himself. He shakes his head, turning his back.
"Forget it," he says. "You'd just enjoy it. I'm not here to give you a happy ending."
"Ah. And I was so close," Crowley says lightly. Dean's almost to the door before he adds, "Suppose lovely Mrs. Tran will just have to be patient another day. If she has that long."
Dean almost stops. If Crowley's not fucking with him… but no, he's Crowley. Of course he's fucking with him.
But what if he isn't?
No. No, even if he isn't, there have to be other ways of finding her that don't involve talking to Crowley. The fucker has a way of talking his way out of things, and Dean's not gonna get blindsided by it this time.
—
They're trying to charm their way into another of Dad's secret stashes when all hell breaks loose.
Not in the very literal sense that the gates of Hell open and spill forth countless demons, but in the semi-literal sense where a demon posing as a Castle Storage employee beats Dean over the head with a stick and he wakes up in an empty storage unit.
He cranes his head around quickly to look for Sam, and regrets it instantly—his head throbs violently and his vision spins. It's nearly pitch black inside, the thin crack of light near the door the only reprieve, but looking at it still hurts, and he winces away from it, groaning.
"Aah, fuck," he mutters, and starts to take stock of himself. His hands and legs aren't bound— yet. That's a plus. He feels around his head, wincing away from the bloody gash on his temple. "Sam? Sam, you there?"
"Hello?" The muffled voice sounds like it's coming through a tin can, and it's definitely not Sam, but Dean latches onto it like a lifeline anyway.
"Hey, who's there?"
He hears two taps from his left. He scoots closer, trying not to jostle his head too badly, and hits a metal wall. He rests his forehead against it gently.
"I heard them bring you in," says the voice. "I've been here for months, but you're the first new person I've heard."
"Months?" Dean groans. "The fuck did we just wade into?"
"I don't know if you'd believe me," the voice says.
Dean snorts. "I dunno, I might. Hey, look, don't worry. I deal with this kinda thing all the time. Kinda my job. I'm gonna get you out of here, okay?"
"Are you a hunter?"
Dean's surprised, but maybe he shouldn't be. "Yeah, yeah, I'm a hunter. Name's Dean Winchester."
"Dean Winchester," the voice says haltingly. Dean tenses. Maybe he shouldn't have said. They've made just as many enemies as they have friends over the years.
"Yeah," he says, trying for bravado. "What's your name?"
"Dean." The voice sounds strangled, tremulous. "It's Linda."
"Linda?" Dean balks. "Linda Tran?"
"You didn't come here for me, then," she says, halfway between hope and resignation.
"We thought you were dead," Dean says, smothering his guilt. Crowley, that son of a bitch. It must have been a real gas, watching all of them scrabble around in the dark for the truth. When Dean gets out of here he's gonna choke the fucker out himself, if Kevin doesn't get to him first. "Crowley tricked us. I'm sorry. But we're gonna get you out, I promise."
"Is Kevin safe?"
"Yeah," Dean says. "Yeah, I mean, all things considered, he's doing just fine, Ms. Tran."
"They have me in handcuffs," she says. He hears a thread of steel in her voice that wasn't there before. "If I could just get my hands loose, I could short out the power on the door."
"Shit," Dean says. He braves another look around the empty storage unit. There's a security camera up in the corner of the room, and an electrical box by the door with wires feeding up towards the ceiling. "My hands are free. I don't got my tools on me, though." He reaches down to his boot, feeling around between it and his sock. He cackles when he pulls his swiss army knife free. Sloppy work, demon flunkies. "Shit, okay. Got the next best thing."
Dean pushes himself to his feet, leaning heavily against the corrugated metal wall. He takes it slow, feeling his way over to the electrical box. The screws take a little cajoling, but he manages to get them loose, and then the lid comes free. Inside is a mess of colored wires.
He's always liked making things work. It always seemed to him that Shop was the only one of his high school classes that was relevant to where he knew he was gonna end up one day. That wasn't why he liked it, though it was nice to feel like he was doing something practical with his time, something his dad might see the use in. He liked it enough that even after he'd dropped out and he didn't have any obligation to care, he took himself over to the library to read up on what he imagined the rest of the curriculum might be. He had Bobby around to teach him about cars, but it was Dean working on his own steam when he taught himself the basics of electrical. His EMF walkman was the crowning achievement of that particular self-driven project.
So, yeah. He knows how to make things work. And knowing how things work is step one to breaking them.
He yanks his jacket off, wrapping it around his hand. It's not a glove, but it'll have to do. He plucks out a green wire, sets the knife to it, and tugs.
He hasn't electrocuted himself, so that's a win. He pockets his knife, reaching down to the bottom of the door. He yanks upward. It lifts, giving him enough space to shuffle underneath.
The light outside is blinding after squinting through so much darkness, but he doesn't have time to let himself adjust. He still doesn't know where Sam is, or how much backup his dweeby little demon pal might have. He breaks open the electric lock on the next unit over, working quickly to free Linda next.
When the light hits her, she winces away. Her hair is lank with grease, her clothes filthy. Her cheeks are sunken in. Despite all that, her eyes are full of righteous fire when Dean bends down to break her out of her cuffs.
"Where is Kevin?" Linda staggers to her feet, leaning on Dean's arm as she tries to find her bearings. Dean can imagine the shape she's in, after being held in a cage for so long. "Is he somewhere safe?"
"Just about the safest place I can think of," Dean says. He doesn't mention that Crowley's there too. They'll burn that bridge when they come to it.
"Take me to him," she demands.
"Workin' on it, ma'am."
He's leading Linda down the hallway on unsteady feet when he hears it. A high-pitched sound, like a screaming teakettle if the teakettle were a person being boiled from the inside out. Light flashes from somewhere down another corridor. Dean's stomach drops.
"Sam," he bellows. "Sam!" He drops Linda's arm, letting her hold herself up as he dashes towards the light. When he rounds the corner, Sam's back is to him, tall and square and imposing. At his feet, an employee bleeds from the neck, an upturned bowl spilling its dark red contents on the floor. Nearby, the other employee is slumped, his eyes hollowed out sockets, still faintly smoking. Dean's stomach lurches. He steps closer, then startles away when something crunches under his boot. He glances down. It's the kid's glasses.
Ezekiel turns to him, his eyes glowing like blue torchlight. The light gently fades, but there's nothing but flint behind it.
"Sam?" He hears shuffling in the hall. "Ms. Tran, stay outside, it ain't safe yet," he hollers.
"I have dealt with the demon," Ezekiel says.
"Okay, yeah, and how am I gonna explain the hollowed-out meatsuit?" Dean hisses.
Ezekiel turns, looking at the empty shell of the human vessel dispassionately. He nudges it until it lies flat on the ground. He raises Sam's foot. Dean winces away before it makes impact. The sound isn't anything he hasn't heard before, but that doesn't comfort him in the slightest. When he looks back, there's no evidence of the smiting left. Just meat. He feels sick.
Ezekiel sits Sam's body on the ground, setting him up against a shelf. He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, it's just his little brother, blinking up at him, confused, like Dean's woken him up early for school.
"Dean?"
"Sammy, hey," Dean says, jaw trembling. "You missed a hell of a fight."
—
It's an awkward drive home with Linda wedged between the two of them in the truck's cab. They've stolen the security camera's hard drive and packed up the bodies in the back, along with their dad's things. They have an impromptu cremation a few miles into the woods on the road home. He's not sure if it's a good or a bad thing, how unfazed Linda is by it all. She stays with the truck while they do it, eating her gas station lunch with quiet dignity.
Dean lets Sam drive. He also offers Linda to stop at a motel, let her get new clothes and a shower before she sees Kevin, but she refuses.
"I don't care what I look like," she says. "I just want my son."
Dean doesn't tell her how she smells after a month in those conditions. Sam has the windows cracked anyway. But he thinks about how he'd feel, if his mom showed up out of the blue alive one day. Dean supposes he wouldn't care what she smelled like, either.
They give her a cursory explanation of the Men of Letters when she marvels at the size of the garage. Even then, she only cares so much. Dean can see the anticipation in her tightly clasped fingers and the stillness of her shoulders. Sam leads her into the bunker, and Dean calls Kevin's name sharply, hoping he's not locked up in his room with his headphones again, or worse, down in the dungeon letting Crowley get a rise out of him again.
"Kevin," says Linda. Dean hears a clatter from the library. Kevin whips around the corner. He's got bags under his round, wide eyes, and a patchy week-old beard, but for the first time in ages, he looks like what he is— a kid that misses his mom.
His arms go around her. She's crying, and they're both saying something to each other, but Dean can't watch for long. He should be happy. This is the first thing he's done right in a while, even if it was a complete accident, even though they probably could have done it sooner if they'd figured out Crowley's fucked up little game. He glances over at Sam, who's watching the two of them with a sad little half-smile. Sam catches his eye, then jerks his head in the direction of the kitchen.
"We'll give you two some space," Sam says. "You can show her around, yeah, Kevin?"
"Yeah," Kevin sniffs. "Yeah, I… yeah." Linda wipes his face with her knuckle.
"We'll talk later," Dean says, and pats Kevin once on the shoulder as he passes. In the kitchen, Sam sits at the table, sinking like he's weighed down with concrete.
"What's up, man?" Dean grabs a couple of beers from the fridge, popping the caps off with his swiss army knife. He sets one in front of Sam before sitting across from him. Sam takes it, but he doesn't drink. He just fiddles with the label vacantly.
"I… I'm feeling pretty useless right now, Dean," he says, and finally takes a sip. Dean scoffs, but Sam just shakes his head. "I mean, I don't remember a thing that happened. That demon took me out, and it was like… I dunno. You did all the work, again, and I was just dead weight."
"Don't say that," Dean says, dread building in his gut. "It could've just as easily been me down for the count. You've saved my ass a hundred times."
"Yeah, but that was before…" Sam huffs, chewing the inside of his cheek. "I really thought I was better."
"You had an off day. Everybody has off days. You'll get your head straight."
"What if I don't, though?" He looks up at Dean, all earnestness and fear. "You know as well as I do, one off day is all it takes, and that's… you know. Lights out."
"You can't talk like that, Sammy."
"Why not? You do all the time."
"Yeah, but I'm old and haggard. You're the one who's supposed to outlive me for years and years, gimme some long-haired little nieces and nephews."
Sam snorts. "Dude, you're thirty-four, not eighty-four." The far-away look returns to him, and his shoulders sink further. "I feel like something's really wrong with me, Dean. I… I feel like I'm asleep more than I'm awake. I go on runs, and when I get back, it's like… I can't remember where I went, or what I thought about, or if I even ran at all. I feel like…" He pushes the bottle in his hand away, the glass scooting across the table. Dean wants to take it and down the whole thing himself. "It feels like after… you remember how I was. After. After Lucifer."
"Sam, no," Dean says. Sam curls in, his shoulders hunching more, and Dean feels like pure shit.
"What else am I supposed to think? I still don't really understand what Cas did to… I mean, what if it's just another wall? What if it's all locked up somewhere in me, and it all just comes leaking back out one day? I feel like I'm losing it. And if, if I am, I'm— I'm putting all of you in danger, if you can't count on me to—"
"Sam, look, man— I know you're freaked, but I promise you. I promise you, you just need to heal up. You have been through the wringer in every way imaginable, of course you need time to get back to a hundred percent. But you will," Dean says. He clenches his fist until his knuckles crack. "I swear to you, man, I'm gonna help you figure this out. But don't waste any more of your time thinking about—" Dean swallows hard. "You're gonna be fine. Just sleep on it, and we'll figure out a plan. Hit the books. The whole nine. Okay?"
Sam doesn't look convinced, but he nods faintly. "Yeah, okay."
Linda and Kevin disappear for a few hours. When Dean sees her again, her hair is wet, and she's dressed in Kevin's clothes, a Princeton t-shirt and sweatpants rolled up at the ankles. He offers to take her home to grab some of her things, or at least to a store to get new things, because they have no idea how safe her house is. It's not like Crowley is there to monitor things, but even tied up in their basement, he still finds ways to screw them. Dean learns that she and Kevin have talked it over, apparently, and agreed that she ought to stay in the bunker with them for the time being. She asks where the nearest Kohl's is.
They plan a trip, all four of them up to Nebraska to go shopping, after Linda's had time to rest a little more. Kevin hardly ever ventures outside, so it's good to see him making plans. Now that the excitement has faded, he looks tired, and he hardly lets his mother out of his sight. Dean knows how he feels. Not for the first time, he laments what a wreck they've all made of this poor kid's life. He can see himself at that age, having long buried the idea that he could be a normal person who has after-school sports, or clubs, or a girlfriend to lose his virginity to at prom or something. All the teen movie crap that never comes true.
He tries to put together dinner for the four of them. He's got a bag of potatoes that are starting to grow eyes, so he figures he can bake them and heat up some of the chili he stuck in the freezer. Sam can use as much or as little sour cream as he wants. It's a good compromise. He's setting the tupperware in the sink to defrost and scrubbing the potatoes off when his phone rings. He hits the handle on the faucet with his elbow, drying his hands on his pants, and fishes it out of his pocket. His heart kicks up a wild rhythm. He answers.
"Hey, Cas." His voice sounds rough. He clears his throat. "Uh, long time no hear."
"Hello, Dean," says Cas. Dean shuts his eyes. His voice rumbles in Dean's ear, even through the receiver.
"Everything okay? Charlie's been, um. You know, keeping me updated. But, uh. It's good to hear from you."
The line is quiet for a moment. "Yes," Cas says. "I. You as well."
"Right," Dean says. "Great. Um. So, yeah, what's up? This a social call, or…" Dean was joking, but he hears Cas sigh, and disappointment blindsides him. "Oh. Or, huh."
"I may have a case for you and Sam," he says. "One that's beyond mine or Charlie's ability to handle."
"You and Charlie aren't trying to work cases by yourselves, are you?"
"Yes, actually," Cas says, with a hint of indignance. "We're neither of us completely incapable, nor inexperienced." Dean hears rustling on the other end, and the creak of footsteps. "Her coworker had an issue. A haunted 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix. The tape deck wouldn't play anything but the soundtrack to St. Elmo's Fire."
Dean whistles. "Classic."
"Yes. We salted and burned the upholstery. That took care of the issue."
"Good job, Scooby Gang," Dean says. He feels a little tickle of pride, underneath the worry and anger that Charlie's getting mixed up in ghost hunts without telling him about them. "So, what's too big a caper for the seasoned ghost hunters?"
"There's been a series of suspicious disappearances. All missing persons presumed dead, but the bodies haven't been released to their loved ones. There were reports of a strange substance at the scenes."
"Sure sounds like an us thing," Dean agrees. He hears more clattering on the other end. "You looked into it already?" Cas doesn't answer. There's another sound of shifting. "Cas? You want me to meet you up there at the scene, or at Charlie's place, or what?"
"I— I'm busy. But I thought you'd want to know about the case."
"Busy? Cas, what—" He hears another clatter, and then nothing. He glances at the screen. The call has ended. Dean frowns. "What the hell, Cas?"
He sends Charlie a text, then another three. Then he starts packing a bag.