The lips of the bottle are cold against Dean’s own. He likes it that way—the ice before the bitter taste and heat. His mouth the gateway between tangible and fantasy where he can pinpoint the spaces to untangle and let go.
It’s a game: Drink. Sink deeper into the motel pillows. Drink again.
It should make Dean’s skin feel less real. It should curb the way his eyes feel dry and heavy. Should lull him into a sense of heady nothingness. But Dean’s stomach churns against the liquid and the mattress is too hard.
“God,” he says, his chest struggling under an unseen weight. It isn’t a prayer or a curse. Instead, it’s a word to try and incinerate the nerves already sparking inside him. Finish the job.
But it isn’t God that answers. It’s Cas, standing like a wall. Strong. Fierce. Not like Dean, who tries to turn away from the angel the moment he appears inside the motel room. It’s Dean who can’t even bring himself to act like he’s ok. He only has enough reserves left now to hide. Only has the strength to close his eyes against the light with force.
And he shivers when Cas’s hand falls on the skin of his arm, holding it tightly.
Dean wonders if Cas can feel his blood move beneath his skin. Wonders if Cas sees any life left in the shell of Dean’s body.
“Dean,” Cas says, and it’s worry. It’s pain. It’s recognition that Dean exists, even if the hunter doesn’t want to be real right now.
Dean wants to look at Cas. He knows the angel has always seen him. And he knows Cas’s soul has spoken to him, too. If only the words could translate. Because maybe Cas could say what Dean needs to hear. Could fill up the empty room with words neither of them ever learned. Words like “hope,” and “safe.”
And Cas’s hand waits. Waits for Dean to allow it.
It takes a long time. It’s reluctant. It’s a fist that sprouts from a tight wad, blooming like a reluctant flower to slowly, lightly touch Cas’s skin back with his own. To give the angel the ok.
It’s brief. It’s shaky. It’s enough.
Dean feels Cas’s heat against his back as the angel lays down behind him. And Cas talks through his fingers, saying the things his mouth can’t. He tells stories with their skin, letting his palms run along Dean’s back and chest and arms. Anywhere he can find to spread his heat like balm.
Then it’s the angel’s mouth against his neck, breathing home into Dean’s spine and hair while Cas’s palm rests lightly on Dean’s stomach, skirting under the hunter’s shirt.
And when he finally feels Cas’s mouth on his back, small kisses through the fabric, the hunter wonders at the need for words at all. Because it isn’t desire, it’s worship. It’s Cas telling him he’s glad Dean’s alive. Glad he’s here.
Dean swallows. He flips onto his back, giving Cas further purchase on his skin. But Cas’s hands have stopped, and part of Dean wants to open his eyes. To see if Cas has left him here to the silence. But he can’t bring his eyes to face the emptiness. And as his skin starts to cool in the wait, he suddenly can’t breathe, Dean’s lungs jolting and shaking while he cuts off his own air supply.
Cas, Dean prays. Cas, touch me. Talk to me.
But the hands don’t return. Instead, Dean is startled when he feels a heavy weight on his chest, right against his heart. He can feel through his shirt where Cas’s ear is pushed up against his skin. Can feel Cas’s tiny breaths of admiration as the angel inhales at the sensation of each heart beat.
The burn inside Dean’s stomach starts to subside and his hand makes his way into Cas’s hair, resting his fingers in between patches of it. Neither of them move except to breathe. Dean doesn’t open his eyes. No one speaks.
But Dean can hear Cas anyway, telling him all the things he needs to fill the silence. And suddenly maybe, just maybe, Dean thinks he might know what hope feels like.
AU where John Winchester loved his boys just a little bit less and put them up for adoption and they were raised in a healthy, functional home.
They’re good boys. Mischievous, too smart for their own good, scrappy, practically attached at the hip, but good boys. Dean had a hard time adjusting at first, nonverbal and nightmare-ridden from post-traumatic stress, prone to panic attacks when alone, but their adopted parents found the best child psychiatrist they could afford and in time he began to heal, began to break out of his shell. Even when he wasn’t talking his empathy was remarkable, and as he’s grown a whip-smart analytical intellect developed to supplement it.
Dean remembers their birth parents like looming figures seen through smoke, but Sam, Sam grew up in this life, and their adoptive family is the only one he’s ever known. He has a rebellious streak a mile wide and it frustrates no one in the world more than it does Dean (still prone to hovering over or trailing behind him with a dreamlike missive ringing in his ears like the last audible echoes of a scream – Look out for Sammy), but he’s smart and strong and driven, independent and devoted all at once. He has these fits at times, though, and Dr Margaret (now the family psychiatrist) calls them rage attacks but they feel like blisters of thick oil growing and bursting inside him from gut to teeth. Over time he learns to swallow them down til he can go somewhere quiet, like the creek where the brothers chased frogs barefoot and shot BBs at old cans, to give in to the festering dark where he can’t hurt anyone else. Everyone knows sweet, sweet Sammy is the one with the temper. It gets chalked up to adolescence but he knows damned well it’s always been this way and probably always will.
They love to spar. Dean’s fondness of sports shooting tapers off in favour of wrestling and team sports (he loves the rush and competition but not so much the hurting-people part), while Sam is kind of scary good at Krav Maga once he finds a trainer for it (the discipline does him good).
At eighteen Dean is buried in scholarship offers – engineering, business, sports, he has heart and brains and beauty enough that the sky’s the limit – but passes up the Big Important Offers for the chance to stay in town close to home. Maybe he’ll do MIT later on but he just wants to stretch out his time close to family as long as he can. That’s where he’s happy. That’s where he’s safe.
(And, Sam suspects, it might also have something to do with wanting to stay near that one friend he’s been so close to since junior high. He’s been placing bets with himself on when his brother will nut up and ask the guy out for years.)
He takes a summer job as a volunteer firefighter. He has a panic attack the first time he has to go in. Even though Dean’s too old to see Dr Margaret as a patient she helps him through it, helps him overcome, but he decides discretion is the better part of valour. The family supports him in quitting as much as they did when he took the job: “You already saved me from the fire,” Sam tells him, “you don’t have to prove anything.”
Two years later Sam cashes in on his bet. Mom and Dad are a little shocked but Eric’s been like a third son for so long that when he comes over for dinner with Dean and they’re lacing fingers together instead of trading playful punches it’s just another layer of family, just another kind of love.
One year later Sam nearly hyperventilates over his acceptance letter from Stanford. It’s a full ride though their parents would have put up all they could afford and help shoulder his loans even if it wasn’t. Dean’s heart breaks a little, but Sam’s joy is like wildfire and they promise to visit each other even though Palo Alto is so far away. They make good on it, trading off driving (Dean) or flying (Sam) on breaks, keeping tabs in email and, later on, Skype. Sam brings a girl home with him for Dean’s graduation. They all love Jess, of course, instantly, and she’s instrumental in talking Dean into going after his MSE after all. Dean starts placing bets with himself on how long it’ll take til she’s wearing a ring.
They were good boys, and they become good men. Stalwart, too clever for their own good, not so attached at the hip anymore but still close, still mischievous, but good men. Dean soaks up love and radiates it back into everything he does and everyone he knows. Sam harnesses the dark inside him and turns it into a driving passion to do good and right wrongs, and doggedly ignores the nightmares that seem to come out of nowhere – Jess is there to soothe him when he wakes. Neither of them are marksmen, neither have Latin chants memorised; they don’t fear the night or the fire, nor go looking for trouble in them.
So when Azazel comes for Sam six months after his twenty-third birthday none of them are prepared to put up a fight.
It’s a few weeks before Sheriff Christine Barker can return to work full time; Clark is ok, but the road to recovery for a stabbing wound like that is long and what kind of mother would she be if she didn’t care for him?
She hadn’t let the time off go completely to waste. After all, there had been quite a lot of downtime while Clark rested and watched TV or played video games.
She’d had research to do. Research that probably wouldn’t be approved by taxpayers if she’d done it at work. Looking up known criminals (even if they were long dead, according to the records) was one thing, but looking up monsters and angels and demons? No way to explain that one away without losing her position.
It’s hard to track down the Winchesters–the reports are often contradictory or incomplete, and she doesn’t have access to the FBI files. There are two names the often come up with them as associates: James Novak and Robert Singer. Novak, it seems, is even more squirrelly and difficult to pin down, having walked off from his family years ago. The mother and daughter have also fallen off the grid in recent years. Robert Singer, however, is more consistent, having owned a house and business in South Dakota for years before his death.
Well, that’s assuming he’s actually dead. Clearly Dean and Sam are not. She also doubts they’re the serial killers that were plastered on the news a few years ago, or if they are, then there’s more to the story about the victims.
She shakes her head, presses fingers to her temple. Good thing no one can hear her thoughts.
There’s a name in her notes on Robert Singer. A number, too.
Taking a deep breath, she picks up the phone, glancing at the office door to make sure it is, in fact, closed.
“Sioux Falls Sheriff’s Department, how may I direct your call?” a professionally cheerful voice answers.
“Um, hello. My name is Sheriff Christine Barker, out in North Cove, Washington. Is Sheriff Mills available?”
“Lemme check. She might be in a meeting right now. Can I ask what this is about?”
“I have some questions about a former resident of Sioux Falls. Robert Singer? I think he was known as Bobby.”
The line goes quiet for a moment. “I’ll–I’ll get the Sheriff right away.”
There’s some rustling and a click and then silence. Christine taps her pen on the desk calendar nervously. Another click.
“Sheriff Mills speaking.”
“Hello, I’m Sheriff Christine Barker. North Cove, Washington,” she repeats, although she’s sure Mills has been told this information. “Did you know a Robert Singer? I have records saying you were the arresting officer a few times.”
“I arrest a lot of people. Not like we send each other Christmas cards after.”
Christine sighs. “But–”
“Bobby Singer is dead. Why are you calling?”
She swallows the lump in her throat, suddenly hit with the image of Clark being stabbed by that woman who wasn’t a woman, not really. Being thrown against the vending machine by Jack. The dead look in Dean Winchester’s eyes when he’d told her all about his day job.
“I-I…” She’s not sure what to say. What if this Jody Mills doesn’t know about the monsters? What if she thinks she’s crazy? She squares her shoulders, then adopts the most neutral and professional tone she can. Keep it factual. It’s just another case. “Just a case out here, Sheriff, nothing to worry about. Been looking into two men’s history and Robert Singer was a name that kept popping up. Figured it was worth a phone call.”
Sheriff Mills pauses before she answers, cautiously. “Sam and Dean Winchester?”
Christine blinks. “You know them?”
Mills huffs. “Yeah, I know ‘em. If you’re worried about them, they’re good men. Some of the best.”
“I, uh, I got that,” Christine murmurs. “Sheriff Mills–”
“Jody.”
“Right, Jody. Do, ah, do you…”
Jody saves her from having to explain. “Yes,” she says simply. “I know about it all. I’m gonna give you my personal number. You call if you need it, ok?”
“Thank you.” There’s more relief in her voice than she’d like to admit.
“I might be out of line here, but are you ok? Did someone get hurt?” Jody’s voice has a softness in it, the softness of someone who understands all too well.
“My son,” she confirms. “Doctors say he’ll be alright.” She rubs her eye, tries for a laugh. “Probably more upset I took all his pills with me while he’s home. Said the walls were purple yesterday.”
Jody snorts. “Yeah, that sounds familiar.” A beat. “Sheriff Barker, you’re gonna be ok. You got a pen?”
They’ve been parked for
an hour on the curb, waiting for the grocery store clerk who
may-or-may-not-be-a-werewolf to come home, and there hasn’t been a stitch of
movement.
…well, unless they count the guy’s 90-year old neighbor who came out to
water her garden, hair rollers and all, and winked lasciviously at Sam sitting in the passenger seat. Even if
it did buoy Dean’s mood significantly – it was always a hoot seeing Sammy get
all disgruntled and embarrassed, wrinkling his nose like his sensibilities were offended – it didn’t really have anything to do with the case.
So, yeah. Bored.
He shifts in his seat, kicking out his feet and splaying his legs in the footwell, and glances into the rearview mirror. “Hey,
Cas. Knock knock.”
Castiel looks up, staring at him from the back seat. “…what?”
“Knock knock,” Dean
repeats. He drums the fingers of one hand on his thigh in anticipation.
“…I don’t understand.”
Next to him,
Sam snorts. Dean swats at him to get him to shut up.
“Don’t make me call sweet little Mildred
back here,” he warns Sam, who blanches. “It’s a knock-knock
joke, Cas. I’m pretending to knock on a door, you answer it, and I tell a
joke.”
“I see,” Castiel says.
Dean
secretly thinks he’s full of shit, because his tone implies that he doesn’t ‘see’
at all.
“All right, fine, let’s
try it again. Knock knock.”
“Please come in, Dean,”
Castiel says politely.
Sam makes a strained noise and bites his lips, obviously fighting to keep the amusement off his face.
Castiel just looks confused, glancing from Dean to Sam and then back to Dean.
“Did I do it wrong?”
“Nah, Cas.” Dean tries to sound reassuring, but it’s hard when he’s trying to keep the smirk off his own face. “…well, I mean, technically yeah, but you
didn’t know.”
“What did I do wrong?” He’s starting to look annoyed and smite-y. “What did you expect me to say?”
“You say, ‘who’s there?’, okay? I say ‘knock knock’, you say ‘who’s there?’”
“But I already know it’s
you.”
“…you’re missing the
point of the joke, Cas.”
“Fine,” Castiel huffs,
definitely looking annoyed now. “Tell me again.”
“Okay. Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” Castiel asks,
with the most dramatic, exaggerated show of long-suffering patience that Dean’s ever seen. Dean thinks he needs an updated title: Castiel, Angel of the Lord, Drama Queen.
“Harp,” he says instead.
Castiel squints at him in the mirror.
“…I still don’t get it,”
he says finally.
Dean groans and drops
his head back, thumping it softly against the back of the seat. And then doing it again, for good measure. “No, no, you have to repeat what I say.
I say ‘harp’, you say ‘harp who?’”
“This is a lot of work.”
“Last time,” Dean insists,
because he’s committed at this point, damn it. He will finish this friggin’ joke if it
kills him. “Knock knock.”
“Who’s there,” Castiel
mutters.
“Harp.”
“Harp who?”
“Harp…the Herald Angels
sing,” Dean finishes, triumphant.
Sam groans and puts his
face in his hands. Castiel just frowns at him. Definitely not the face of someone who’s cracking up with laughter on the inside.
“Dude, don’t you get it?
It’s a wordplay joke, Cas. Harp sounds like ‘hark –‘”
“He gets it, Dean,” Sam
interrupts. “He just doesn’t think you’re funny.”
Dean scowls. “Screw you guys, I’m hilarious.”
“You’re definitely not.”
“Shut it, Sammy! Cas, you get the joke, right? Tell Sam that I’m funny!”
“…your face is funny?”
Cas says haltingly, and Dean’s mouth falls open in shock – and betrayal, oh, the betrayal.
Sam bursts out laughing, doubling over and wrapping his arms around his stomach. He almost hits his giant, stupid forehead
on the dashboard, which would have served him right, Dean thinks.
“Oh my god!” he gasps. “You just got
burned by Cas!”
For a guy who’s supposed to be Dean’s friend, Castiel looks
inordinately smug and pleased with himself, straightening up in the backseat. “I did it right?”
“Yeah, yeah, you did it
right,” Dean grumbles. Against his better judgment – God forbid he actually encourage this kind of behavior – his lips twitch in a smile. “Congratulations,
you’re a regular comedian.”
Sam wipes his eyes and twists around in the seat to grin at Castiel. “Good job, Cas. You’re definitely getting funnier. You have my blessing to make fun of Dean
anytime.”
“Hey!”
Castiel looks almost
touched. “Thank you, Sam.”
Rolling his eyes, Dean glances out the windows. The house they’re watching is still stubbornly, infuriatingly, quiet. He sighs.
“Fine, how about this one. An angel and a demon walk into a bar -”
Castiel slowly lowers the battered old copy of War and Peace (and why the hell does Bobby own War and Peace, anyway? Dean wonders) he’s been reading and gives Dean a curious look. “Atoms?”
“You know how many atoms I have in my body.”
“Oh, yes,” Cas replies, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Seven billion, billion, billion of them. That’s only an average, though. To give you an exact figure would take a long and unnecessary amount of time.”
Dean’s still wrapping his head around that one when Cas continues, “I rebuilt you, Dean. I had to fashion you new atoms, craft you new cells. And I had to do it very carefully. I couldn’t help but commit it all to memory along the way.”
“So you know…more?”
Cas blinks. “I know everything about you, Dean.”
There’s a brief moment of quiet between them, filled only by the soft drip of the leaky kitchen faucet on last week’s dishes. Dean runs a hand over his mouth. “Then why are you still here?”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you’ve seen my soul,” Dean says, taking a few bold steps into the room, “and you know my heart the way you say you do, then why the hell are you still here? Because anyone in their right mind would’ve turned tail and left me in the dust by now. And I wouldn’t have blamed them for a second.”
Cas rises from the armchair. “Would you like me to go?”
“No,” Dean says too quickly. “I just – I don’t understand why you haven’t.”
“Dean,” Cas replies fondly, something like a smile coming to rest on his lips.
“What?”
“Dean,” Cas says again, this time with a rare bit of laughter on his breath.
“Sorry, but I’m not really grasping what’s so funny about this. I’m trying to have a serious talk here, Cas,” Dean snaps. He feels foolish, ashamed.
At last, Castiel steps forward. “Do you really think your flaws are enough to keep me from you? I have seen your heart, yes,” he says warmly, “and there is nothing in it that would make me want to leave.”
Dean opens his mouth to reply but finds he has absolutely nothing to say. Cas smiles at him again, this time a little more shyly.
“There are one hundred billion stars in this galaxy, Dean, but the ten trillion cells in your body are far more beautiful to me than any constellation.”
Cas takes another step forward and, with an incredible amount of care, lifts his hands to trace the contours of Dean’s face. And Dean just stands there, watching him.
“There are ninety-nine freckles on your face,” Cas observes.
Dean swallows. “That so?”
A pause, then:
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Okay.”
What follows is the harsh sound of a chair skidding across the floor, two bodies crashing into the nearest wall, a laugh that’s deep and gravelly and heard all too rarely. A man and an angel, atoms and star-stuff, colliding.
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