#knuckles doesnt get tagged. hes dying (this aint about him)

[couch-house]

Commission for @frostios of Matilda and Silver hanging out! plus some other bonus drawings for a special ant's special day!!!

Check my pinned for comm info!

[winchester-reload]

I accidentally drunk-posted this to ao3 last night, so I might as well post it here too since it’s episode-related. There’s a second half I’m not done with yet, but this bit stands on its own as a coda, or whatever.

Pairing: Dean/Cas

WC: 1400

tags: first, kiss, angst, episode 14x12 pre-coda

also on ao3

Cas came into the bunker like a thunderstorm, expression cloudy and eyes hot enough to start brush fires. He dropped the big book that’d been tucked close to his chest onto the library table in front of Dean, and it coughed dust as the water-warped pages accordioned together, fluffed up again. Kicked the old, thread-bound cover back, revealing the yellow vellum page; Possessionem, atque tutelam &, Vatican Ed. 1723, it said.

Dean uncurled from his book, hands slipping to the edge of the mahogany as he pulled in tight. Cas wasn’t supposed to be back yet. Last text Dean got said maybe Tuesday would see him in Kansas, and that meant Dean wasn’t supposed to have to deal with this. He should have already been gone.

Wonderful.

He cleared his throat. “Who’s your friend?” he asked, trying to keep it light.

“Oh, that?” Cas puffed, carelessly spilling into the chair opposite Dean. The airiness of his response was drowned out by the vinegar he had pickling his words. “It’s a book, Dean.”

“Well, shit, Cas. You don’t say—?”

“Yes. It’s a book that Jack and I managed to track to— and retrieve from—a catacomb in New York. Now, ask me why we went to all that trouble.”

Dean hesitated. Then, “Why?” because he was nothing if not a glutton for punishment.

“Well, because we heard it had some particularly potent protection sigils, which, might— ” He pecked an elbow onto the tabletop, twisted his hand in an overly-animated open shrug “—hypothetically—be beneficial to someone harboring an unwanted invader. Why? What did you do this last week?”

It was baited. Dean didn’t need the all caps, period-after-each-word, version of it to see that. He chewed his cheeks, slid his copy of Vonnegut away. Dog-eared pages flat against the table now until someone else bothered to pick it up. “Okay,” he said scratching his neck. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you talked to Sam.”

“What would give you that impression?”

“Cas, it’s a ma’lik box—”

“Yes—” Cas said, mocking, “I’m familiar with them.”

It triggered that little muscle twitch at the back of Dean’s jaw. “Okay, here we go—” and Cas shot back out of his chair.

“Jack and I were out trying to find literally anything that might help you, and all the while you were out building some stupid, secret box to go bury yourself in— And you weren’t even going to tell me—? So, yes, Dean. Let’s “go”,” he spat, throwing the quotes. “Why are you so impossible?”

“Alright, back off—” Dean bristled. He wanted to keep it civil—fuck, he needed to. The last thing he wanted was to have to ruminate on a fight with Cas for the next forever-billion-years, but the asshole was a button-pusher. Always had been. “I get it, okay? You’re pissed. You wanna be pissed, be pissed, but it ain’t gonna change anything. Billie said what she said.”

Cas rounded on him surprisingly quick, leveled a look so dark, it practically bred its own shadows. “No,” he said, flat, “you’re right, of course, it doesn’t change anything. But do you know what does, Dean? The fact that you’re lying!”

A fingernail of shame suddenly surprised Dean, twisted into his chest. “No—” he stumbled. This was getting away from him quick. Too quick. He scoffed, smiled, tried to brush it away. “Uh, no. You’re wrong—”

“Uh, yes. I’m right—” Cas contested. “See, because if Billie’s answer was to bury you with Michael at the bottom of the Pacific, there would have been no death note to hand you— because, in that scenario, Dean, you’d never die! And maybe Sam doesn’t know that, but I do!” He plucked his chest, tie swinging as he leaned in. It dredged up all those old, angelic chills Dean had filed in the archives of his memory; the weight Cas carried with him like churning ozone when he was all keyed up. “So, why don’t you tell me what the book really said?” he suggested with a low growl. “What you’re actually running from.”

Dean swallowed, tried to hold Cas’ eye, failed. They were close enough now that Dean was all but boxed in his chair, and butterflies played his pulse in response, kicked his heart up into his throat. “Okay, you’re—” he started. Then, “But, that’s totally—” and he stopped, watched Cas’ balled fists turn white at the knuckles. Fuck. “Did you tell Sam?”

“No, but I will tell him. I’ll tell him right now.”

“Don’t—”

“Then what did it say?”

“It said I die old,” Dean muttered, and it was like prying nails from his ribs just to get it out. “ It said I die happy. Natural causes. No Michael. No monsters.”

Cas blinked, caught off guard. The anger in his face diffused then fused again into something so much more knotted up. “I don’t understand—”

“There’s nothing to understand because it doesn’t matter! All the rest of ‘em said I die bad, Cas. All of ‘em! Michael burnin’ me out while he destroys the world—!”

“How does ignoring this one spot of hope fix that?”

“That ain’t hope! I don’t know what to do with that— I don’t even know where to begin to try to make something like that happen! The box is what fixes it! The box, I know how to do!”

Cas’ fingers spread, hands coming up like he wanted to strangle Dean, but couldn’t bring himself to get close enough. “Did it ever occur to you—?” he said slowly. Eyes rolling closed before peeling open again. “—that, maybe, your first step in accomplishing a happy ending, is to stop running? To stop this— suicidal ideation? To just... love, and let people love you?”

Dean shook his head, Cas’ words pooling at the hinge of his jaw and making it hurt. “It wouldn’t matter,” he said, looking at the bookshelves, the corners. Anywhere but Cas.

“Why—?”

“Because no one's gonna love me—” Dean spilled. “Who’s gonna love me like this? An archangel stuffed up in my attic and the rest of me so fucking screwed to hell, I can’t even sleep on a good night!”

Cas balled hands into his own chest, shoulders high and body tight like they were both about to go over some invisible cliff if he didn’t stop the vehicle soon. “I love you!” he pleaded. “Sam loves you! Your family— You are not unloved, Dean!” He had tears in his eyes, but it was easier to ignore them.

Dean shut his eyes, heat washing him. The image of Cas dying on an old couch at the back of the barn flared fresh in his brain— I love you, I love all of you— He tried to swallow it, but it was too sour. Tried to rub it away with the heel of his hand, but it only spread, made speckles. He shook his head, instead, pulled his already loose collar looser. “No, I… Not that kinda love,” he said quietly.

Cas suddenly deflated, arms falling to his sides, weight shifting between his feet. He sunk to the floor at Dean’s knees, looked up, face raw and open and done. “Sam loves you,” he said again quietly. “Jack loves you. Your mother—”

“Cas—”

“—loves you…” He suddenly touched Dean’s knee, stretched up onto his own, wedged between Dean’s legs, quiet and hot, cheeks wet with tears as he pulled all that electric energy in. “But, I—” He grabbed Dean’s face, cradled it between his hands as Dean’s fingers clawed into the fabric at Cas’ sleeve— holding him there, holding him back, he wasn’t sure which. “I love you,” Cas whispered. Something in Dean cracked, split open. He let their foreheads brush. Their noses.

Let Cas kiss him, soft and slow.

Cas kissed like he’d imagined it a thousand times, mapped it. Studied it over and over and over again, until every jump of his lips timed with the thrum of Dean’s heartbeat. The curl of his fingers at Dean’s jaw.

Then it broke, quick as it started, but Cas and all his hasty energy didn’t move back. Neither did Dean. “I don’t know another way to say it,” Cas admitted to the small space between them. His voice finally wavered, broke. His hands uncurled, flat palms drying the tears Dean didn’t know he’d lost. “You have to tell me because I don’t know.”

Dean suddenly remembered to breathe and it came in sharp and unsure. It came in with the smell of Cas and a hit of his blue eyes close enough to taste. Dean swallowed the salt building in the back of his throat and dug his voice out of Cas’ rubble. “That was it,” he whispered back. “You just said it.”

And it seemed utterly ridiculous how everything suddenly felt so simple.