For better or worse, the
bunker’s in shit shape. Repairs take up a lot of their time, and while it’s
hard work, Dean’s thankful for the distraction. If he works himself hard, he’s
so damn tired when he crawls into bed that he doesn’t think or dream or cry.
The worst part is that
damn kid starts following Dean around like a lost puppy. For a while, he seemed
to like Sam more, which was just fine with Dean. Dean doesn’t like the kid for
obvious reasons (“He’s Lucifer’s kid,” he tells himself. “Enough said.” “Sure,”
he answers back. “Has nothing to do with him being the reason Cas got
killed.”), and it creeps him out when he feels the kid watching him.
“Keep him on a shorter
leash,” Dean tells Sam one night. “I don’t want him around me.”
“Yeah right.” Sam snorts.
“I’ll just tell the all powerful nephilim what to do.”
“He ain’t all powerful.”
There’s one very important thing he can’t do, so he’s basically useless.
Can’t even control his powers.
“Well, he’s more
powerful than me. And he’s not even doing anything. Just give the kid a
break.”
Since Sam refuses to
help, Dean goes back to ignoring Jack. The kid’ll take a hint eventually,
right?
Wrong. A week more of
having a silent shadow trailing him throughout the bunker has Dean grinding his
teeth and wanting to punch a few more walls.
“What?” Dean snaps one
day. He’d been tuning the Impala just for something to do, and the normally
soothing task has him completely on edge because can’t Jack just leave him
the fuck alone!? “What do you want? Why you keep following me around?”
Jack doesn’t even look
taken aback by the outburst. “I want to learn more about humanity.”
“What? TV, the internet,
and Sam not good enough resources for that? Why you bugging me?”
Jack tilts his head to
the side and Dean wants to go over and physically straighten it. How dare
this kid be like him.
After a moment of
consideration, Jack answers. “I know my father—”
“Cas isn’t your father.”
“… I know my father
was fond of humanity, and of you and Sam in particular. If Castiel trusted you
both, I thought you would be good models for how to behave. Maybe you’d give me
insights on how to be the type of person Castiel and my mother would have
wanted me to be.”
Dean wipes grease off
his hands and doesn’t meet Jack’s eye. “Yeah, well, stick with Sam. I ain’t
exactly a role model.”
“That’s not true.”
The flashback is short
but vivid, and Dean feels short of breath. It’s like the world’s closing in on
him, and he gropes for the Impala just so he can keep his balance.
“Sam says that you and
Castiel were close,” Jack continues on, as if Dean’s not having a nervous
breakdown in the middle of the garage. “Closer than he and Castiel were. I
thought that would make you a better choice to learn about humanity. Surely
Castiel saw something in you that was worth seeing.”
“I-I’m not— he didn’t—”
His knees give out and he lets himself fall to the ground. Jack lays a hand on
his left shoulder and Dean shudders. Like father like son, he supposes.
“You are, and he did.”
As if Jack at all knows what Dean meant to say. Dean sure as fuck
doesn’t know, so it’s absurd to think this month old creature possibly could.
They stay there like
that, with Dean trying to catch his breath and wishing he could cut out his
heart, it’d hurt less. Jack stays at his side, kneeling beside him and keeping
a steady hand on his shoulder. When his head clears, Dean can’t help but laugh
at how fucked up his life is. He’s losing his shit because the love of his
life—an angel, for fuck’s sake—is dead, and that same angel’s adopted
son—the spawn of the literal devil—is trying to comfort him.
What a world.
“Alright, enough of
that.” He shrugs off Jack’s hand and pushes himself to his feet. “I’m telling
you, kid, I’m not special. And I don’t appreciate the silent brooding as you
watch me do stuff. It’s creepy.”
Cas used to be creepy,
too.
“I’m sorry.” Jack looks
more frustrated than apologetic. “I’ll go—”
“Whoa whoa, I didn’t say
that.” He hands a tool to Jack and ushers him over to the Impala. “If you’re
gonna stick around, you gotta make yourself useful.”
“I don’t know anything
about cars.”
“You think I did either
when I started? No. You gotta learn. You said you wanted to learn how to
be a better human, why not start with learning how to be human, period. We can
add in the morals and stuff along the way. Got it?”
The corner of his mouth
perks up a little. “I got it.”
“Alright, so this here
is the battery…”
Dean doesn’t want to be playing
babysitter or uncle or dad to this kid, but Jack has a point. This right here,
the two of them bonding over the Impala’s hood? This is what Cas would’ve
wanted. And if Dean can’t save Cas this time, well, at least he can do his best
to follow his wishes.
The second is turning his back on heaven for Dean.
The third is a series: tearing the wall down in Sam’s mind, opening the door to purgatory… and then turning to Dean and telling him he’s sorry.
(And the fourth is one we don’t get to see.)
But when he’s done, he turns to Dean and says, “I remember you.I remember everything.”
…
Cas isn’t just everything to Dean.
Dean is everything to Cas, too.
me: if we don’t get a montage of Important deancas scenes in 13×01 i’m going to cry
also me: if we get a montage of Important deancas scenes in 13×01 i’m going to cry
Contrary to popular belief, Dean is not worried about Cas. Does he start subtly tailing him around the Bunker? No. It could maybe be interpreted that that’s what he’s doing, but he’s actually just got a bunch of shit to do that just so happens to be in whatever room Cas is occupying at the moment. It’s a coincidence, thank you very much. Jesus, Sam, it’s not like Dean’s a stalker.
Except that he’s a little bit of a stalker.
Fine, okay—yes, Dean does start kind of… mother-henning a little bit. Does he freak out when the leaves turn and Cas goes out without a hat? Yeah. But that’s only because he doesn’t want to deal with the guy once he inevitably gets sick! It isn’t worrying, per se. Dean’s actions are totally motivated by self-interest.
Seriously, he could care less that Castiel, freshly-Fallen-Angel-of-the-Lord, spends like four hours a day outside doing god knows what. That’s not a thing Dean thinks about at all. And like, the fact that Cas always comes back all smiley? Or leaves with a lunchbox? He doesn’t give a single fuck. Not one.
Which is why, of course, Dean is now following roughly twenty paces behind Castiel, hunched over and, by everyone else’s definition of the word: sneaking. Of course, according to the Exhaustive and Wholly Accurate Dictionary of Dean Winchester, he is taking a nice, long walk. Alone. To get some air. And he’s hunched over because it’s cold—oh hey, wow, is that Cas? Huh, what are the odds!
It should be noted that Dean is fooling exactly no one.
Except, it seems, Castiel, who has apparently just been thrilled to have the eldest (more attractive) Winchester stuck to his ass for two weeks. Which is… kind of awesome, from Dean’s perspective. For no particular reason.
Dean follows Cas into the woods behind the Bunker in what he considers to be stealth mode, and it turns out he doesn’t have to trail him for very long. Castiel soon discovers he has a human visitor when a fucking mangy wolf fucking jumps him from out of nowhere.
And the wild thing? While Dean is yelling for Cas to save himself and trying to fight the damn beast off, Castiel just whistles twice, speaking softly in what sounds like Enochian before the thing goddamn whimpers like it’s disappointed and lopes back to… to who… its master?? Did Cas tame a wolf???
The mutt licks the side of Castiel’s face, and Dean figures that’s an unequivocal yes.
What the fuck.
The fucker’s even laughing; one of those whole, fully-body things as the wolf knocks him off his feet and tackles him like they’re cubs play-fighting. Cas wears that really pretty, gummy smile Dean loves, and scratches behind her ears. “Good girl, Moz.”
“Moh-zod,” Dean mumbles to himself, frowning. What the hell kinda name is that?
Pushing her off of him, Castiel sits up and wraps his arms around her, playfully growling into the fur of her neck. Dean’s nose wrinkles in disgust because jesus, man, you got no idea where she’s been.
“Dean,” Cas says, like they walked out here hand-in-hand instead of in a shroud of deception. “Meet Moz—Joy. That’s her name in English. She was abandoned by her pack and found me about a month ago.”
“Found you…?”
Castiel nods. “Mm. I was on a walk when she came right up to me.” He kisses her muzzle. “She was lost, too. Weren’t you?” he asks her with a smile. Looking at Dean, he says, “she must have sensed me.”
“Sensed you. Right.”
Except the more Dean thinks about it, the more he becomes convinced of the fact that—yeah, of course a wolf found Cas in the middle of fucking Kansas when they haven’t been here for generations. Of course. And of course, the dumbass decided to make friends with it. And of course… of course he look so happy, sitting on the muddy ground, play-fighting with a frickin’ predator. A-And he reaches into his freaking lunchbox to get a piece of raw porc and feed it to what should be a dangerous, wild animal.
But she’s not, here. She’s… sweet. Misunderstood. Happy. Above all, Dean can tell she’s happy. That she makes him happy. And honestly, that’s kind of all Dean’s ever wanted; he just never thought it’d come in the form of a fully grown wolf.
“Jesus, Cas, you’re amazing,” Dean breathes, totally overcome. His eyes widen and his face heats. Cas pauses. “I—uh. I mean, an amazing friend. Best friend. You’re an amazing, um, best… ah… Cas…?” The last is whispered just before Castiel kisses him.
In the forest behind the Bunker, in the company of a freaking wolf, Cas just gets up, walks over, and lays one on him. “Thank you,” he murmurs upon pulling away. His hand comes up to entwine with Dean’s. He steps forward. “Come meet her. Moz, come say hi to Dean.”
Dean does this in a moment of rage, frustrated and suddenly furious at Cas for leaving him, again, intentional or not. He rips out the film and throws the tape onto the floor before stomping out.
One minute later, he stomps back in, picks up the tape, and spends the next ten minutes painstakingly cranking the film back into the cassette with the lid of a ballpoint pen.
My notifications on every device right now are just people describing Dean weeping while re-twisting the tape and I am not okay
reblogging this scene again because I can’t hear anything over how happy Dean actually is to have Cas back
how much he likes doing stuff with Cas, just being with him
or the fact that he’s legit randomly telling him in the middle of business that he wants to spend time with him ouside of business and he’s not even joking, like he’s not mocking Cas or being sarcastic or anything, he’s really simply asking him out
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