#this fic is dedicated to my prof who pushed our final paper from fri to sat <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[lies-unfurl]

13.22 coda: circles

Dean/Cas, PG, fluff, talking, hurt/comfort, bedsharing

Dean kinda maybe really fucking wants to take a shower, to scrub the sweat and grime from his skin and replace the weird smoky scent that permeated the other universe with the sandalwood of the fancy scrub Cas bought him, but there are two dozen people who haven’t had running water in god-knows-how-long, and he’s selfless enough to admit they have priority.

So instead of letting hot water steam away his aging body’s complaints, he makes some spare beds, points them out to Mom, who seems to be in charge of orientating the strangers to the new world, and then, when people are dispersing, stands up and manages to catch Cas’s eye, though all of his attention seems to be focused on whatever conversation he’s having with Jack. Dean jerks his chin in the general vicinity of their room and then starts down the hall. Cas will come when he’s ready.

He’s just stepping out of his pants, shirt already on the floor, when the door opens and Cas comes in, going straight to sit on the bed and take off his shoes. They stay like that for a minute, undressing in silence.

It all kind of hits him when he sits down on the bed in just his sweats, his shoulders so incredibly sore that he doesn’t know if they could bear the weight of fabric. “Holy shit.”

Cas looks at him and nods. “Indeed.”

“Jesus. I don’t even know what to say.” He rubs his eyes, tired in an aching, bone-deep way, but also too awake and overcome with the past two days to want to lie down and wait for the nightmares he knows will greet him.

Cas, who’s slipped into an old Metallica t-shirt and the sleep pants that hug his ass just right, leans over and begins rubbing his back. “You don’t have to say anything.”

He means to reply to that with some stupid comment, maybe about how he can’t ever be quiet with Cas’s hands on him, but what comes out instead is, “Gabe’s dead.”

Cas stills for just a fraction of a second. “I... expected as much.”

Dean reaches up to lay his hand on Cas’s, which is almost in the same spot he once marked Dean. “I’m sorry. He died a hero. Not that it means anything.”

“I... I barely got him back. It won’t be much different before.” He gently pushes Dean’s hand off of his and goes back to kneading deep circles into Dean’s deltoids.

Cas is wrong, of course. You’ve learned to live with the dull ache of grief, and then all of a sudden they’re there and you’ve got hope, you’ve got happiness -- when it all goes away, it’s worse than if they’d just stayed dead. He would know, with how low he sunk after Mary had left him to hunt.

But there’s not much he can think of saying that would mean anything to Cas. Especially because of how aware Dean is of the unfairness at all -- they both lost their brothers, but only Dean got his back. 

So he sits in silence as Cas rubs away pains he wasn’t even conscious of, and even though Dean knows he has the calloused hands of a warrior, somehow they feel soft against his skin, and warm enough to melt away the knots in his muscles. His own hands itch to try to give something back to Cas, but on nights like these he knows that Cas will push them away, kind but firm, reminding him that he doesn’t feel those minor pains like Dean does (and Dean thinks he’s lying, but he hasn’t yet figured how to call him out or prove him wrong so, selfishly, he doesn’t fight the admonitions and takes all that Cas gives him while offering nothing in return).

It’s Cas who breaks the silence:

“I killed myself.”

“Huh? What?” He twists back to look at Cas so quickly that a sharp pain flares up his neck, and of course Cas sees his wince, because he frowns, puts his hands on Dean’s cheeks, and gently turns his head so that he’s facing forward once again.

“My alternate self. I wasn’t sure if you saw him when we were storming the compound.”

He hadn’t. “Shit. Uh. You doing okay?”

He thinks Cas nods, but he isn’t sure. “He... wasn’t me. I saw inside him, saw some of his story as I killed him. Naomi made him her protégée. And of course she’d demonstrated on him plenty. He’d done awful things, but...”

“He was still you.” Dean kind of hates himself for the thought, but he’s glad it was Cas who did it, not him. He doesn’t know if he could’ve stabbed something wearing Cas’s face, no matter how evil it was.

“In a way.” His thumbs dig in on opposite sides of Dean’s spine, and he lets out a sound that could maybe be called a whimper, because it just feels so fucking good, like Cas is smoothing out pains he’d stopped even noticing.

“He had a stupid accent,” Cas adds. “I don’t think his Jimmy ever left eastern Europe. Or he was just obnoxious.”

“Jimmy made a good call. Was never really into those accents.”

Cas leans in and kisses the back of his neck, hands never stilling. Dean closes his eyes. Cas holds in his affection sometimes, just like Dean does, both of them too afraid to show that vulnerability in front of someone they’ve already lost so often, but the past few days saw them brushing shoulders with the fragility of life and right now there just isn’t time to think too deeply about how much it’ll hurt if -- when -- this ends.

Cas keeps rubbing those circles until Dean’s thoughts are covered in a sluggish fog, until even the images imprinted on his eyelids -- the blood spraying from Sam’s neck, decaying ruins in the light of that pale sun, how Gabe’s wings had stretched behind him, full and whole and so different from the mangled burns Cas’s had left almost a year ago, but Cas came back and he doesn’t feel like Gabe will get that lucky -- even those begin to blur. His chin dips down towards his chest.

“Come on,” Cas murmurs. He makes Dean stand as he pulls back the covers. They climb in together and lie down, Cas’s chest to his back. One arm circles over him while the other comes to rest at his nape, absentmindedly playing with the short hairs there.

His eyes are heavy when he feels Cas press a soft kiss on the top of his head. “You saved so many people today,” he whispers. “Your family, and all the others. Sleep. I would cross universes for you; I’ll keep you safe while you rest.”

Dean wishes he had the words to respond to that, but he’s out before they come.