Chapter Text
“Come on, Cas,” Dean panted. “Just do it already.”
Castiel let out a soft groan and shifted slightly, his body damp with sweat.
“I’m trying. I just- here, move a little to the- there. That’s ...oh. Yes, that’s perfect,” Castiel hummed with satisfaction, the vibration of his deep voice sending a chill down Dean’s spine.
“Are you sure?” Dean asked breathlessly. “I could-”
“No,” Castiel replied quickly. “Don’t move.”
Pound. Pound. Pound.
“Cas?” Dean asked, his voice strained, his back aching from the odd positioning. “I can’t tell if-”
“Just give me a second....I’m almost...there...”
Pound. Pound. Pound.
“Ah!” Castiel exclaimed, triumphant. “There! All finished.” He patted Dean’s back. “It wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Dean straightened up and let his hands fall away from their place against the wall. He let them fall to his sides, and then wiggled them some to get the blood flowing again.
“No, not bad. A little uncomfortable, but not bad. I did say I would help you out.”
Castiel nodded as he smiled back at him. “Yes you did. And now I owe you one.” His smile twisted into something coy and sexy as he pulled Dean closer.
“I’m liking the sound of that,” Dean responded. He reached out for Castiel and wrapped his arms around his waist. “I don’t have any pictures that need hanging, though.”
Castiel smirked back at him, mimicking Dean’s position as he wound his arms around his boyfriend. “I’m sure you’ll find something.”
Laughing softly, Dean leaned in and pressed their lips together, kissing the doctor softly and parting his lips with a quick swipe of his tongue. They kissed in the middle of Castiel’s living room for several moments, just enjoying a brief make-out session before Dean’s shift at the station.
Dean had started back full-time almost four months ago, but today’s shift was the first Dean was going to be allowed back into his role as Captain. Bobby wanted to ease him back into work, where as Dean just wanted to get back out there as soon as possible. Kevin was ranking Captain when Dean was gone and he did a good job, but Dean was anxious to be back in charge. It wasn’t as if Kevin didn’t know what he was doing, it was just that Dean already felt responsible for everyone in his company and he didn’t like the idea of not actually being the one to call the shots. He had been out on several calls since he returned, but Dean hadn’t really felt like he was truly back to work. He wanted back in the driver’s seat, so to speak. The driving was actually Ash’s job.
Castiel had done well so far with Dean going back to work, but today was a big deal for the doctor and his nerves regarding Dean’s profession. Regaining his label as company captain meant Dean would be the one making on-call decisions, which meant that Dean would have to be on the most dangerous calls. They didn’t happen all that often, but when a major fire or traffic accident occurred, the company captain was always required to be in attendance. As the chief, Bobby rarely went out on calls anymore, but he would sometimes show up at the big ones too. “All hands on deck” was the phrase. Castiel hated when Dean said that. It usually accompanied an apology and a quick kiss, before Dean was out the door and running towards danger.
Dean continued to kiss Castiel until they were both breathless and obviously wanting more in the moment. Unfortunately, they really didn’t have time for more. The firefighter pulled away from Castiel slowly, gently pecking his lips a few more times as he did.
“I’ve got to run,” Dean explained. “Are you still coming for dinner tonight?”
“Yes,” Castiel nodded and allowed Dean to untangle himself from his arms. “I’ve got an early surgery though, so I won’t be able to stay.”
Dean pouted in a way he knew would make Castiel laugh.
“That’s not going to work,” Castiel grinned, shaking his head in amused refusal. Dean pulled his lips even further down, furrowing his brow as well, putting on his best puppy dog impression. “Dean,” Castiel groaned, still smiling “Your apartment is an extra twenty minutes to the hospital. I have to be up at four-thirty as it is.”
Dean rolled his eyes and let his pouting expression pull into one of acceptance. “Fine,” Dean replied, “Be that way.” He picked up his keys from the coffee table and put them in his pocket. “Come, eat my food, then leave me all alone,” Dean started walking towards the front door but turned back abruptly, pointing at the doctor with a superficially stern expression on his face. “But don’t expect me to put out. I’m not that kind of girl.”
Castiel looked like he had to try very hard not to laugh, his lips pulling into a smile despite himself. He shrugged and placed his hands in his pockets. “We’ll see,” He crooned, now smirking back at his boyfriend. “See you later, Dean.”
Dean dropped the act and smiled back him. “Later, Cas.”
****
Sometimes when Dean was on a call, he would flip a switch in his brain. Buried deep within his supramarginal gyrus where his brain processed empathy, the switch enabled Dean to do his job more effectively. He never turned it off completely, but dimmed it, like the lights in a movie theatre. When he turned down that switch, Dean was relieved of feeling the things that had the potential to paralyze him on the job. Assisting a birth on the side of the road? Textbook. The smell of burning flesh? Unpleasant sensory experience. Car accident victims screaming in agony? Noise pollution. However, there were some days when Dean couldn’t dim the switch no matter how hard he tried. He’d be on a scene and something would trigger him to search for that switch and it wouldn’t even be there. What he was seeing would be too hard to push through, too terrible to pretend he wasn’t affected by the sight of it.
The traffic accident Dean was called to that day started like any other. He rode in the truck next to Ash, rolling his eyes as Ash sang Sweet Caroline at the top of his lungs over the roar of the engine and the squeal of the siren. It was almost a good luck charm at that point, Ash always sang Sweet Caroline on his way to traffic accidents. He said it helped him focus and despite how inappropriate it seemed to sing such an uplifting song on the way to a major car crash, Dean had learned to appreciate the man’s voice. Then there was Kevin, riding behind Dean in one of the back seats with Donna and the new kid (Dean still had trouble remembering his name). Kevin had a routine of his own. He’d translate Sweet Caroline into Vietnamese while drumming the beat on the back of Dean’s seat. Dean almost had that version memorized and found himself humming along more times than not.
As Ash pulled around the line of cars that had already backed up along the highway, his chorus swelled and then suddenly died. Dean didn’t have to ask why the lyrics had died on this tongue.
There was a small grey car lying upside down in the middle of the highway, glass shards scattered everywhere and reflecting the sun. A large black truck with the front completely destroyed was close by, the windshield shattered and the driver laying several hundred feet in front of it, motionless. A third car stood just beyond the grey one, the back of it crunched in and completely obscuring what kind of car it was. It was blue, but the only color Dean could make out was red. Red covering the highway around the motionless driver. Red cascading down flailing limbs that reach out for help from under the upturned car. Red from the lights of his own truck, blinding him as he forgot how to breathe. Ash pulled the truck up to the scene expertly just as Dean began to pull himself out of the truck, his mind scrolling through protocols and wondering when the first ambulance would arrive.
In moments like those, with the world pushing in from every side, Dean always searched for that switch and dimmed it as low as he could without turning off his emotions altogether. It would leave him feeling robotic, a mechanical instrument that existed solely to save lives and keep his company safe. But that day, as Dean reached for that switch, his eyes landed on something that refused to allow him to push it all away.
A little girl- no, a teenager, maybe fifteen years old. Dean thought she looked a lot like Anna Kendrick, Claire’s new favorite actress. Her long brown hair clung to her face as she pulled herself from the back seat of the grey car, one bloody hand clawing at the asphalt, her right arm pulling her forward. The left arm was almost completely severed and dragging beside her.
Even without his switch dimmed down the way he liked it to be, Dean sprung into action. He could hear Donna pounding behind him with the medical equipment as he raced for the girl. His eyes picked up points of interest across the scene as he went.
He could see that the driver of the black truck was a man, approximately fifty years old by the color of what remained of his hair. He was around two hundred pounds and wearing a blue and red plaid shirt. Half the contents of his skull lay bare on the asphalt. He wouldn’t waste time in evaluating his injuries. There was a woman leaning against the blue car up front, a cell phone in her hand as she used the car for support. Dean hadn’t noticed her before. She must have exited her car sometime between when he assessed the crawling girl and the dead truck driver.
Dean motioned towards the standing woman, who he could now see was in her mid thirties, and at least five months pregnant. She was also crying. He directed Kevin and Ash towards her, just as an ambulance pulled up. He focused on reaching the young woman crawling from the grey car.
“Stop!” Dean cried. “Don’t move, sweetheart. Stay still.” Dean dropped to his knees beside the teen; Donna hot on his heels as she moved to the girl’s other side.
“Hey darling, stay still will you?” Donna asked carefully, her voice strained with the sight of the teen’s disheveled arm. Donna immediately began triaging the wound, pulling items out of her bag as Dean assessed other injuries and looked into the backseat for another victim. There wasn’t one, but there were two bodies in the front, neither of them moving.
The girl cried out as Donna gave her an injection to help with the pain. She had a large gash on her forehead that extended down towards her nose. Her pupils were blown wide, obvious sign of head trauma. She screamed in pain when Donna began to wrap her arm for hospital transfer, tears running down her face.
“My mom, my- AH! my dad. Please- please help- are they- are they- FUCK!”
Dean cringed at the girl’s reaction, but pushed through the moment to look back to the bodies in front. Paramedics were running towards him, the girl would be moved soon.
“Donna, you got her? Probable contusion, and-” Dean carefully lifted the girls shirt slightly so he could place his bare hand on the skin of her abdomen. “Skins too hot. Internal bleeding likely. I’m going to go around.”
“I got her. Go,” Donna replied. Dean heard her updating the incoming paramedics as he moved quickly to the other side of the car.
Upon reaching the passenger side car door, he pulled it open carefully. The man in the passenger seat had his head leaned up against the window, his body slumped into the door. He wasn’t wearing a seat-belt. Dean reached for the man’s shoulder to steady him as he opened the door, supporting his weight as he assessed his injuries. There was a large and bleeding wound on the man’s skull and his back was angled strangely. The man had no pulse, but Dean knew there was no point in calling for a defibrillator. A quick look to the roof of the car where the door met the windshield gave Dean all the evidence he needed to figure out the man’s prognosis. The blood spatter he found there suggested the man had slammed his head into the hard plastic between the car door and windshield, and then was thrown backwards. The strange angle of his back suggested it was broken and the head wound was undoubtedly fatal. The man had likely died immediately upon impact. Dean stood up and began to run around to the other side of the car just as a paramedic opened the driver’s side door and began to help the woman that hung there.
“Weak pulse,” The paramedic exclaimed loudly. “Devon, get a stretcher!” The paramedic cut the seatbelt the driver was wearing and gingerly guided her body downwards before she began checking the woman’s vitals. With the driver in good hands, Dean informed the paramedic that the man was DOA and stood back up to survey the scene again. The pregnant woman was being rolled into an ambulance on a stretcher, a paramedic holding her hand and nodding encouragingly. There was a body bag being rolled out next to the old man laying on the pavement and the two paramedics helping the driver were beginning to carefully remove her from the car. Donna was still with the teenager, kneeling beside her as she ticked off vitals for the paramedic that was taking over. Dean rounded the car to find the teen staring up at the exchange between Donna and the paramedic with an oddly calm look on her face.
“Will I lose my arm?” The girl asked slowly, very little emotion in her voice. It was likely she was in shock. “Are my...parents...?”
“Don’t worry about that right now, sweetheart,” Donna responded. “Just concentrate on your breathing.”
“Isn’t that your job?” She responded with what looked like could have been an eye-roll. Dean’s lips twitched as he moved closer and leaned down next to the girl. She cringed in pain as the paramedic began to prepare to transfer her to the stretcher. “Dying really sucks.”
“Dying people don’t typically have the wherewithal to claim that it “sucks,” Dean responded, hoping to distract the girl from her pain as they began to move her.
The girl closed her eyes and shook what she could of her head, as her neck was braced. “Not true. I bet...cancer patients... say it all the.... time.”
Dean smiled and nodded his agreement. “Well, you got me there.” He placed his hand on the girl’s good arm as they raised the stretcher to begin rolling it towards the ambulance. “You’re not dying though, kid. You lost a lot of blood but your vitals are pretty good.”
“Not a kid,” The girl mumbled. Her eyes began to roll backwards.
“No? What’s your name then?” Dean asked. He helped the paramedics wheel her into the ambulance.
“Alex,” She responded softly before her eyes fluttered shut. “...Jones. Alex...Jones.”