Chapter Text
Dean drifted in and out of pseudo-consciousness for he didn’t know how long, spurred back into the waking world by heavy blows to his head and chest, retreating into the comfort of darkness whenever they briefly cease. He heard Sam’s voice in these broken moments, pleading, sounding far-off and reverberating as if his brother’s in a tunnel: “Cas, stop, listen…. Call it off, you’re killing…. everyone loses people, that doesn’t mean you can… NOW, CLAIRE!”
A trio of punctuating gunshots jolted Dean fully awake, only for a moment: he saw the blur of a falling body but couldn’t make out whose it is; from somewhere, heard the clatter of metal, the distinctive whoosh of wings. Then footsteps, Sam yelling, “Cas! Hey! That you in there?” But as the relative calm of a battle won settled over the warehouse, he let the tension leave his body, and drifted back into the black.
Somewhere beyond his consciousness, the world kept turning.
“It’s me,” Castiel answered Sam, voice ragged. “What’s—Dean!” Cas pushed to his feet and staggered to Dean, leaking grace in places where the other angel had managed to slice.
“Yeah, he’s not good,” Sam worried, following to kneel beside his brother. “Can you—you can’t fix him, can you?” he realized, peering over the angel’s glowing wounds.
“Call an ambulance,” is Castiel’s only reply. His stomach lurched; nobody needed to tell him he was the one who did this. He could tell by the way Sam and Claire lingered arm’s lengths away, the way they watched him like he was a bomb.
Behind them, Claire was already on her phone, saying to the person on the other line, “Yes, this is an emergency.”
Cas reached to touch two fingers to Dean’s forehead, mumbling, “I can at least stop the bleeding.” He looked over to Sam, wondering, “And you and Claire?”
“Scrapes and bruises,” Sam said, swooping an arm behind his back in a bad attempt at hiding what’s obviously a broken wrist.
“What’s our cover?” Claire interrupted, limping up to the pair and the unconscious man. “They’re on their way, and we look like hell.” In punctuation, she spits out a spray of blood.
“Uhh—accidentally got mixed up in a gang fight,” Sam blurted, raking his good hand through his hair. He watched Castiel carefully; the angel hadn’t moved from his position crouching over the unconscious Dean. And his fingers still lingered on the hunter’s battered, swollen face.
Instead, Castiel’s hand moved around to gently cradle Dean’s broken, bruising jawline, the thumb of his other hand ghosting just above the werewolf scratches on his cheek. He knew Sam and Claire were watching him, but he didn’t care. And he didn’t care that his first of many utterances of “I’m so sorry, Dean, so sorry, I love you” came just before the wailing of the approaching siren could drown it out; didn’t care that Claire and Sam heard the broken confession to the bloody man beneath him, beaten by his own hands.
***
Dean spent two days in the Verona hospital before he woke. The painkiller fog only lasted for a moment; his hunter’s instincts kicked in and his heart thumped wildly as he took in the unfamiliar surroundings, sending the pulse monitor into a panic. He tried to sit up, reaching to jerk the IV from his hand, but pain shuddered him backwards and he hissed a swear through his teeth.
“Dean?”
Castiel’s voice brought Dean back down, and he turned his head gingerly. The angel was sunk into one of the uncomfortable, sea-green recliners reserved only for hospitals, but he shot up at Dean’s waking. “Are you alright? How do you feel? Don’t try to move too quickly.”
“Had worse,” Dean answered, surprised by his own voice: it was mostly a wheeze, the noise scratching in his throat. He cleared it, but it didn’t do much good. “You look awful.”
“It’s been a long weekend,” said Castiel wearily, settling himself back into the chair.
“Weekend? How long was I out?”
“The fight was Friday afternoon,” said Castiel. “It’s Sunday evening. The sun went down about an hour ago.”
“Shit,” said Dean, sighing back into the bed. “What happened? Where’s Sam? Claire?”
“Sam’s fine,” said Castiel, consoling. “He’s just gone to check on Claire, back at the house. She broke her leg.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you okay?”
Castiel attempted a smile, but it fell flat. In that moment, he looked as tired as Dean had ever seen him, his head falling into his hands.
“Talk to me, Cas,” Dean urged.
“I did this to you,” he said, matter-of-factly. When Dean shook his head, he continued, “No, Dean. I did. I know what you’ll say—it wasn’t me, it was a spell, and you’re right. It wasn’t me. But they were my hands.”
“Cas, it’s not—it’s not your fault, man. You can’t do that to yourself. You can’t.”
“You would,” the angel answered simply.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t a role model,” Dean scoffed, and then settled. “C’mon, man. I don’t want to fight with you. Not right now. Not anymore.”
Castiel was quiet, thoughtful. Instead of responding, he rose and touched two fingers to Dean’s forehead. “I’ve been too weak to be much help, but I’ve been doing a little a day. Speeding up your healing,” he said. “I’ll let Sam know to bring the car since you’ll be checking out.”
“I will?” Dean asked, but already his voice sounded stronger beneath Castiel’s touch, the pain in his skull still present, but the edge softened. He sat up stiffly, but without issue, and this time did pull the IV. “Huh. Guess I will. Thanks, Cas.”
Castiel nodded and moved across the room to lean against the windowsill. He tapped at his phone, and moments later, said, “Sam’s on his way. I’ll alert the nurse.”
Dean watched him disappear into the hallway, the soft rustle of the angel’s trench coat reminding him of missing wings.
***
“You know he didn’t leave your side once,” Sam said as he helped Dean get settled on the couch. “He almost fought a nurse when they wouldn’t let him into the ICU.”
Dean waved his brother off flippantly; nothing that prevented him from walking was broken, but he was definitely concussed, and the dizzy spells, as much as he hated it, meant he needed a balance.
“I’m serious,” said Sam, stern as a parent. “I know he doesn’t really sleep, but I’m telling you man, he needed it this weekend. He wouldn’t leave you. Not even for a second.” Sam’s eyes shot toward the stairs; Castiel had gone up when they got home to give Claire’s leg a touch of grace.
“It’s Cas, he’s—y’know, weird,” Dean reasoned, sinking into the cushions.
Sam shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. You didn’t see him. Dean, he—”
Sam cut himself off with a brusque sigh as the stairs squeaked with Castiel’s descent. The angel lingered at the bottom of the steps with his hands in his pockets, peering over at Sam and Dean on the couch. The younger hunter rose and looked seriously between them both. “You guys need to talk. So, talk,” he said, and loped past Cas, taking the stairs two at a time.
“I guess I did promise, didn’t I?” croaked Dean, smiling humorlessly and looking down to his hands.
“Dean, it’s alright,” said Cas. “We don’t have to—”
“Yeah, we do,” said Dean, simply.
Slowly, Castiel unstuck his feet from the floor and made his way to the couch, seating himself at the end opposite Dean, but angled in to face him. He watched as the hunter wrestled, again, with that many-tentacled beast locked inside his body, a hand coming up to swipe his face.
“Listen, Cas, I just—” Dean started, and stopped, words broken up by sighs and frustrated grunts. “I’ve never—I’m not—but it’s you.” He looked up to Castiel, who wat watching with that blue intensity, and when it became apparent the angel wasn’t going to speak, he continued.
“A few years ago we were working a case in this church,” he started. “Or cathedral, I guess. Catholics. But anyway, and I—I thought I was done for, y’know? I had the Mark, we were getting nowhere with it, and I—so I went to confessional.” Dean paused, gauging Castiel’s response, but the angel’s face was open, eyes soft. He swallowed, broke his gaze, and went on. “And I told the priest—well, I said a lot of things. But one of them was that I wanted to uhm…to experience people, feelings differently. Or maybe for the first time. And it was—I was talking about you, Cas. It was about you.”
A long silence settled over the living room, and Castiel resisted the urge to reach out and touch the hunter, place a hand on his knee, caress the almost-faded scars on his cheek. But he didn’t; instead, he breathed out a quiet, “Dean, I—“ but was cut off.
“Listen, I’m not good at this,” Dean interrupted. “I never have been. And if we—if we do this thing for real, say it out loud and make it true, I don’t know how that works,” he confessed. “I don’t know what that looks like, Cas. This is uncharted territory. What I do know is you do something to me, and I don’t know what to do with it—because there’s so much of it, and it’s so messy, and complicated, and—”
“Dean, I love you,” Castiel said, cutting off the hunter in his tracks.
“Cas—”
“I love you,” the angel repeated, edging himself across the couch. Without permission, he gathered both of Dean’s hands in his own, and he could feel the speeding pulse beneath their skin. “And I don’t know what that looks like either. But I’m willing to try to find out. If you are.”
Dean swallowed hard, but he nodded, staring at the hands holding his. “Yeah. I think I can do that.”
A brightness spread across Castiel’s face, and Dean couldn’t help but grin in return. “Good,” the angel answered, and leaned forward to pull the hunter into a careful embrace, grazing his lips across the healing scars on Dean’s cheek as he did. From his proximity, he could feel the heat radiating into Dean’s ears.
For a few long moments, Dean buried his head into Castiel’s shoulder, splayed his hands across the angel’s back. When they finally pulled apart, a nervous kind of joy settled in his gut. He couldn’t take his eyes off Castiel’s lips, his bright blue eyes.
“Where would you like to start?” Castiel offered, his head tilting familiarly.
Dean considered for a moment, worrying his bottom lip. He reached over to his phone on the coffee table, checking the time. Nearly ten PM; earlier than he’d usually go to sleep, but hell, it had been a rough week.
“How about here?” he wondered cautiously, angling himself into the crook of Castiel’s arm.
Castiel did him one better. He slid back down the couch and gently pulled Dean along with him, allowing the hunter to lie down and stretch out, and he carefully guided Dean’s head to rest on his leg. “Better?”
“Yeah,” Dean mumbled, settling more comfortably into the position than he’d ever dreamed he would. His eyes fluttered closed and he drifted off to Castiel’s hand resting across his heart, the other carding gently through his hair. And, sometime in the night, he swore he felt warm, chapped lips grace over his forehead, his nose, his mouth, and when he woke the next day he prayed he hadn’t dreamt it.
***
Claire left early the next morning after getting one last shot of grace-healing from Castiel. She said Jody’d be worried if she was gone longer, even though she’d known where Claire was.
So they gave their awkward hugs, said their goodbyes, and watched Claire rattle off down the road in her old car.
The men were ready to leave not long after, and Sam made a point to leave Dean and Cas alone a little longer than necessary for some grace-healing of their own while he packed up the car.
Dean and Castiel both knew what Sam was doing, but they didn’t care. While he was outside they leaned into each other, swapping breathy, tentative kisses against the wall beside the door, hands in each other’s hair, exploring cheekbones and jawlines with fingers and brushes of lips as if at any moment, one of them might disappear.
Everyone agreed it was better if Sam drove. Dean was mostly okay, thanks to the doses of grace, but he was still a little dizzy.
Sam decided not to mention it when Dean slid into the backseat with Castiel. And when he caught them over and over in the rearview mirror—touching hands across the seat, then looping fingers, then slowly sliding closer to each other until, finally, Dean was under Castiel’s arm, head on his shoulder, the two of them eventually a tangled mess of trench coat and flannel in one corner of the car—he pretended not to notice.