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The moment Dean opens the door and sees Cas standing there, he shuts the door so fast the whole cabin rattles.
And yet, just meters away from him his infant daughter sleeps, blissfully unaware of whatever bullshit is going on with her parents. Not for the first time, Dean wishes to be a baby cradled in his mother’s arms, just sucking his thumb and minding his own fucking business, zombie apocalypse and fallen angels be damned.
“Dean,” Cas’ voice calls out to him from behind the door, the only sound disturbing the peace in Camp Chitaqua. “Dean, just open the damn door.”
Dean hangs his head low, a vein throbbing at his temple. Back to the door, with his hands pressed against the wood, he considers the benefits of giving in and allowing Cas inside. Lately, all they seem to do is scream at each other in public places and Dean isn’t a complete fool when it comes to it. Half of their verbally eviscerating rows are born from his vitriol and unwillingness to let go, the anger that seems to soak out of his pores, that seems to spill out of his mouth like poison, like the same virus that keeps killing people.
It's grief and desperation and fear and fury and loss all rolled into one, and he’s tired of making himself sick with it, and he’s man enough to admit that his anger started dwindling as he looked into Gracie’s eyes for the first time.
She was born to a broken world and a set of equally broken parents. Every time Dean carried her in his arms, he felt like the exhausted, weary man he had become, aged by the brutality of the past couple of years. He wonders if Cas feels like that too, doubting he'd be able to carry their daughter in his arms and feel completely unburdened. Out of a sudden, he yearns for Cas so much it's like a physical ache.
With a tired sigh, Dean opens the door.
“What do you want?” he asks, less biting than he intended. Cas stands with his arms hanging by his sides, his hair messy and his eyes a little lost and dull, like they always are when he’s coming down from a long high. It makes sense, since there’s no way in hell that he’d knock at Dean’s door at midnight while stone cold sober. No one really wants to handle Dean while sober.
(Also, no one wants to wake him up before he's gotten his four hours.)
“I just needed to see you,” Cas begs, but Dean knows him well enough to know when he’s holding something back. He steps away from the door to let Cas in and allows him to go to Gracie’s little wooden crib and check on her. Softly, tenderly, Dean watches as Cas touches her forehead and seems to deflate, strengthening a connection with her that Dean himself probably doesn’t have. From what Cas has explained to him, she possesses the last bit of Cas’ Grace, the smallest part that still lived within him after he fell.
Maybe, when she’s grown enough, she’ll be able to give it back to him. Maybe she’ll help him regrow his own, or just power him up through her own will. In the meantime, she’s just a sleeping baby, and Dean doesn’t know how he feels about a future where she’s powerful enough to fight Lucifer.
“Why are you here, Cas?” Dean asks, sitting on his bed, the sleepiness that was previously trying to drag him in finally crawling back. “I haven’t seen you in days. Thought you were wrapped up in your latest orgy,” he says, with a sneer, showing his true colors again.
Cas’ shoulders slump and he steps away from the crib, stealing one last look at the baby before choosing to sit next to Dean on the bed.
“I wasn’t in an orgy, Dean,” Cas sighs, laying his hand next to Dean’s, close enough that their pinkies show. “I was looking for Grace.”
“She’s been here all day.”
“Not that Grace,” Cas smiles, a sardonic, tired thing. “I dreamed of a weeping willow near a river, in the outskirts of what used to be known as Louisiana.”
“Fuck’s sake, Cas, that’s why you’ve been gone a week?” Dean hisses, turning to look at Cas.
The drift between them started like this: Dean got swallowed up in his own grief and Cas grew quiet. Dean got angry and Cas got quieter. Dean grew vines around his heart and Cas lost himself to a never-ending haze. They became strangers, but the pull between them never faded. Just like Dean’s love for Cas.
It took finding Cas in bed with two women and men for Dean to realize that he had lost him, and it took saving him from an overdose to realize that he never had him in the first place. Dean had been too much of a coward to fight for him.
He couldn’t blame Cas for slipping through the cracks, but he could lash out at him out of anger and resentment, like a jilted lover. A discarded one who never was used.
And so, in the quiet of the night, Dean always allows Cas in, pretending to look away in the morning.
Until Grace came into existence.
“I didn’t find it,” Cas dares interrupt his thoughts, dejected and sad. “I didn’t find it, Dean. I needed it so much.”
“Fuck,” Dean kneels in front of him, his hands on Cas’ knees. “It wasn’t worth the risk, you hear me? Don’t pull that shit again.”
“But I wanted to…” Cas stops and closes his eyes, a hand slowly making his way on top of Dean’s. “I’m so tired, Dean. I wanted to be who I was before. The one you wanted.”
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Dean hisses. “You know what I want? I want you alive, you said you’d be there for me. You’d said you’d be there for her, and stop the disappearing act—I. Fuck.”
The last time he cried, Lucifer had taken Sam’s body and beat him to a pulp, before vanishing to wreck the whole world. By the time Cas found him, Dean had no tears left to cry and no will to move on, no choice but to put his heart in a cage, and wrap himself with barbed wire sharp enough to make Cas bleed.
Eleven months ago, Cas almost died on a suicide mission that Dean himself orchestrated. They survived and Dean chased after him at the peak of his adrenaline rush, locked them up in his cabin and fucked the desperation and fear away. For a week, he pretended that he and Cas belonged to each other wholly and completely and once the call of responsibilities became unavoidable, he released Cas into the wild, letting him slip away into the arms of other people and the blissful numbness of drugs.
“I could have lost you,” Dean’s voice breaks as he desperately tries to blink away the wetness in his eyes. “You spent a week walking among crawlers with a machine gun for company, looking for a damn tree while I assumed you were too busy rolling around in bed with other people like a whore.”
“You’re crying,” Cas gasps. Almost in awe, he reaches out to touch Dean’s cheek, looking even more stunned when Dean leans into the touch. “I haven’t seen you this sad in years.”
“I’m always sad,” Dean manages to swallow back a sob. “You fucking moron.”
“Come up here,” Cas says. He pulls Dean up by his shirt, then grabs him by the shoulder and forces him to lie down in the bed. Cas hovers over top of him, a finger running over his bottom lip and Dean can’t look at him, feeling completely wrecked by a mere touch.
“I never thought that I’d see you like this again.”
“Like what?”
“Vulnerable,” Cas smiles, but it’s a sad one. “Stripped away from everything that makes you hard. Grace seems to be your undoing.”
“And whose fault is that, asshole?” Dean grumbles. Cas lowers himself to kiss him on the forehead. He then kisses his eyelids and nose, and finally brushes his lips against Dean’s hungry mouth. Kisses Dean open-mouthed and slow, so good he could cry. It’s like every time they kiss, Cas knows exactly what Dean wants.
Years ago, the night before the world ended, Dean said, “I’m not going to let you die a virgin,” and then climbed into Cas’ lap and rode him hard and desperate enough to feel it after the Apocalypse started.
Now, Cas sucks bruises into Dean’s neck and bites into the tender flesh of his soft middle. Now, Cas pets his thighs and nips at the inner, softest parts of them, so close to Dean’s groin he knows he’s being a tease.
Dean opens his legs further, his entire body trembling with anticipation, silent tears on his face. No one has ever touched him the way Cas does. No one has ever known to touch him like Cas does. Dean’s so wet he could die from dehydration, and nobody would blink an eye.
Cas runs his big hands up and down Dean’s legs, runs his thumbs over Dean’s hips then presses a kiss to his pubic mound, mowing lower until he’s taking Dean’s into his mouth, swallowing him down like he can’t get enough of his taste.
“Cas, fuck, Cas,” Dean gasps, losing all sense of coherency. Cas keeps licking and sucking, merciless, his eyes fixed on Dean’s face the entire time until Dean’s fisting the sheets between his fingers and biting his lips to keep from moaning too loud, afraid of waking up the baby at the other end of the room.
“Please, Cas—just. Please,” Dean whines and Cas, always aiming to please, delivers. He pushes two fingers inside of him without hesitation, never taking his mouth away from Dean’s dick.
Dean comes like that, rocking himself back and forth onto Cas’ fingers, Cas’ mouth still on him. His thighs shake with the force of his orgasm and then he sags on the bed, completely boneless and sated. “C’mere,” he says, grabbing Cas by the hair.
They kiss, sloppy and messy, Dean sticking a hand into Cas’ pants and wrapping his fingers around Cas’ dick. “Take these off,” he whines, stroking Cas hard and fast. “Take your damn pants off and come on me.”
Cas groans, a throaty rumble that seems to come from the deepest part of him. He hastily gets rid of his pants and gets on his knees on top of the bed, bracketing Dean’s hips. Dean strips his cock with an expert hand, lubricating the way with his own wetness until Cas comes on top of Dean’s belly, spilling all over him with a soft sigh.
They lay next to each other, sweaty and dirty, doubt creeping up in the air. Cas makes a move to leave the bed and Dean almost falls into the temptation of snapping at him and calling him something hurtful like whore or slut. Like coward.
Instead, Dean swallows down his pride like a spoonful of bad medicine and tangles their legs together so Cas is unable to leave the bed. The look Cas rewards him with, full of affection and awe, is worth the move.
“Stay,” Dean rests his forehead against Cas’. “Just stay, we’ll talk tomorrow.”
Cas nuzzles his nose. It’s such a sweet gesture Dean almost starts crying again. Do you think there’s still hope for us? he wants to ask, but feels too raw to do it. Maybe another time. Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe he’ll just surrender himself to Cas and see where it goes.
As if he still could read his mind, Cas lays a hand on top of Dean’s shoulder, right above the brand he left on him when they met. “I’m not going anywhere, Dean.”
And for the first time in a long time, since before the drugs and the fall and the heartache, Dean believes him.