foolintherain | DEERINGTON INBOX

He's fourteen, man. You can't just--

[ He groans, drags a hand down his face. ]

It's not his future, man. It's all already happened. We used a spell to de-age him, to get rid of Lucifer. He's not...some younger version. He's already done it all, you can't just--

[ His face twists, frustrated. ]

Sammy's a kid again. He's got a second chance to just be a kid, and now he's convinced he's ruined everyone's lives and he's a horrible person.

[ Cas's chin lifts, impassive at the reminder of Sam's age. He was never a child, and from what he understands, neither were the Winchesters. Still, fourteen seems old enough to Cas to understand right from wrong, and "de-aging," if that is what it was, and not some variation on time travel, doesn't change a person. Talking to them can. De-aging any of them wouldn't change them. If you ask Cas, that was a mistake. ]

Have you perhaps noticed, Dean, that we're not in the real world? This isn't a second chance that God gave us out of the goodness of His heart. This is a purgatory. We're all already dead. So either we: "A," wake up from this god-child's dream with everything the same as we left it or "B," we learn something and take that back with us to reality. Which do you want for Sam?

I've been here for two months, Cas. I've noticed. I'm just saying you need to cut him some slack. We don't know what's going on, we don't know if we're getting sent home or not, we don't know if we're moving on from all this.

[ He gestures vaguely at the whole of Deerington. ]

You don't know this isn't a second chance. Hell, you thought it was our last night on earth last night and now here we are, a day later, still carrying on, and we might still be tomorrow. My point is--

[ What is your point, Dean? Really. ]

You should have let me and Sam tell him. He doesn't even know you.

[ Everyone Cas has spoken to has implied that this world is ending. The alternative to not returning to their own version of reality is... What? If this world ends, where else does that leave them, but shuffled off to some other, possibly bleaker, immortal coil? He levies Dean with a tired stare. At least Dean's arguing with him again. It's better than the alternative, he supposes. Cas sighs, head dropping to his chest, and he stands. His hands rest on his hips as he looks at Dean, still so grateful to have Dean here, still so very, very tired. ]

Okay.

[ He's not sorry, but he's done arguing about it. ]

[ He'd expected more pushback, but Cas' acquiescence isn't that surprising, either. ]

Look, all I mean to say is we're alive. Okay? Here, in this shitty city, I'm alive. So are you, so is Sammy. It's probably not cause of God, but it's damn sure because of something bigger than us. And man -- I don't wanna give that up. Not this time. Not when I've got another shot. So I'm sorry if I wanna actually try and think the best right now, cause that's about all I've got.

[ Is this really about Sam, Dean? ]

[ Whatever Dean believes, no matter how unlikely, it's made him happier. So this is about Sam, in that way. Dean wants to live in ignorant bliss, and he wanted that for Sam. Cas can't say he blames them. It feels like giving up, but isn't that the game? Anything to survive. If Dean is happy living in a fantasy world with his "innocent" younger brother, then Cas should be happy for them, but he can't bring himself to feel the same. But ultimately, what he thinks doesn't matter. He'll always defer to Dean. ]

What would you like me to say to Sam?

[ He deflates a little, putting his hands in his pockets before shaking his head. Dean isn't sure what he wants, really - an argument, an agreement, some...semblance of that tiny slice of hope he's somehow gained.

They're not really 'hoping' people though, are they. ]

Nothing. It's -- it doesn't matter.

[ He wets his lips, glancing at Cas' dirty jeans and hands. ]

What're you doing out here?

[ There's a big difference between "nothing" and "it doesn't matter," but with the argument ending, Cas doesn't push for details. He'll just avoid Sam the younger, which should be easy enough since he's seemed to have made himself scarce since that conversation, unsurprisingly.

Cas looks down at the garden briefly, the next subject, before looking at Dean again. ]

Weeding, mostly. Hope you don't mind my taking the initiative here. I promise I haven't been telling any of the pea sprouts about their past failings.

[ When it came to repairing buildings or caring for plants, it's obvious where Cas's preference fell. Help to feed the people he cares about and also commune with nature? It's one of the chores of surviving that never felt like one, to him. ]

[ It's probably a stupid question since Dean found Cas on his hands and knees in the dirt, in the garden, but it's a subject change, a segue into something else, so, you know. Whatever. It works. ]

No, I don't mind at all. It's all pretty bare bones. If you can make something more out of it, by all means.

[ Dean has a lot to keep up with around here. While the cabin isn't falling apart anymore, there's upkeep and still a handful of repairs to be made. Plus, managing their food stores, making sure it's all rationed out so that there's enough for everyone that's here. It's helpful that Ariadne and Evelyn both brought whatever they had available, more provisions are always helpful.

Cas keeping his hands busy with the garden is exceptionally helpful. It's one less thing for Dean to deal with.

He's suddenly struck with the memory of a similar scene, back home, standing over Cas, arms folded, watching him garden. Seems he's fallen into his 'fearless leader' role once more, just in a different place and time.

He's not quite sure how he feels about that. ]

Need any help?

[ Dean was doing fine, and the garden doesn't really need much tending. Getting it started is the hard part, and Dean had managed that on his own. But it's something Cas can do to feel useful, besides counting provisions and, you know, doing shit all but getting high.

Cas does need any help, just like Dean didn't. Not physically, at least. They need it in other ways, though, and the offer alone has Cas smiling. ]

Yeah. Help would be appreciated, as long as I'm not keeping our big boss man away from his, uh... more pressing duties around camp.

[ Because that's what this is now. It's Dean's home, but it's just another camp of wayward survivors. Cas knows how to feel about it. It's not best case scenario, maybe, but it feels like home. Cas wouldn't want to be anywhere else. ]

[ Dean snorts, pulling his hands from his pockets as he comes to squat down beside Cas, tugging at a weed. ]

We're just missing all the tents.

[ He manages to gently tug the weed out by the root without disrupting any of his seedlings. Success. ]

Not much to do except bang on the car or weed the garden. [ He could go kill some monsters, he guesses. It had been exhilarating when he'd done it the previous month. ]

[ Weeds just never stop fucking coming, so there are plenty of little bits to pull out. At least it's something to do. Plucking one after another. It's cathartic in its own way, though Cas is automatically enjoying the company more than the job, as soon as Dean's kneeling next to him. Cas another little clover sprout to the pile and chuckles, looking at his dirt-smudged hands, and Dean's. ]

Well, when we're done here, if you want to bang on the car, I'm available.

[ Shameless. You should know better and watch your words around this degenerate, Dean. ]

[ Oh, Cas. If you think Dean didn't say it that way on purpose, you don't even know him at all. ]

It's a little exposed. [ He says wryly, brushing a little dirt from his already grease smudged hands. ] The backseat is slightly more private, at least.

[ He can say that with the utmost confidence, at least. ]

[ That's the like, crazy part. Cas knows Dean better than he knows any other human being on the planet, and so Dean flirting isn't any surprise, and obviously Cas has been flirting with Dean since shit went sideways and hope left the dancefloor, but Dean flirting back is— ]

Right. The backseat sounds significantly more cozy than the hood.

[ Unreal, basically. Like a dream which, this place is, but still. Mind blowing. Cas looks over at Dean, still smiling but a little bit of confidence lost because this is not how he saw things going, considering... Well, all of him, but all of him, and Dean, and his first night in Dean's shared basement, specifically. He digs his fingers back into the earth, which feels surprisingly real for a dreamworld, and sifts out another clump of grass from the garden bed. He doesn't look up at Dean again just yet, and his voice drops quieter, even though he hasn't seen or heard anyone nearby since Dean's arrival. ]

Dean... About, uh... the other night. I guess, uh...

[ He doesn't want to meet Dean's eyes, afraid of what he could see there: anger, judgement, disgust. A whole range of emotions that cut like knives, but he lifts his chin and forces himself to look at Dean anyway, telling himself that he can take it, that there's always an antidote for any wound, even the incessantly painful, excessively bloody kind. ]

I guess I just wanted to know why.

[ Dean shifts to a seated position, mindful of his precious little sprouts, smoothing his hands on faded, worn denim. He had a feeling this chat was coming, and he'd been avoiding it, kind of, because that night feels surreal and like a dream and Dean was never super great at talking about his emotions to begin with and now it's even worse.

But they do need to talk about it.

The question confuses him, though - and he tips his head, meeting Cas' eyes, brow pinched as he tries to formulate a reply, but all he comes up with is: ]

What do you mean, why?

[ This isn't a conversation Dean wants to have, or one Cas wants to have, either, and he would have been perfectly content to never talk about it again and go on as if it had never happened, if Dean hadn't flirted back. Because Dean isn't the kind of guy to flirt with people he isn't willing to fuck, and that's why him flirting with Cas now is just... It's fucking confusing. He holds his breath. ]

Why me?

[ Cas keeps his expression serious, his eyes as attentive as he can make them, even though instinct is screaming in him to laugh, to joke, to run the fuck away from the danger. But if he doesn't find out from Dean now, where they stand, it's just going to keep eating away at him like it has been, and with the mist and monsters everywhere, he shouldn't be going as fast through his personal supplies as he is. ]

[ Dean swallows, setting his jaw, muscle twitching in his cheek as he regards Cas. He's quiet for probably far longer than Cas is comfortable with as he thinks, trying to parse out an answer that isn't knee jerk and douchebaggy. It's a good question, why Cas. Why now, in the midst of chaos, when the world is crumbling around them yet again? Why not before, when they were in a similar situation? What changed?

Everything, he guesses. Everything and nothing. They are still the same people, no matter the time he's been here, though he likes to think he's softened a fraction, after everything. Hard to say, though, when he's faced with the most complicated person from his past, a man that has stood by him always, by every bad decision, every bad call, no matter what. Cas has always invoked complicated feelings that Dean didn't know how to deal with, and seeing him again amplified everything he thought he'd buried over the last two months. He'd come to terms with the fact that he'd probably never see his angel again, and right as he'd put it to bed, Cas' face appeared on the network, and everything Dean buried came bubbling right back up to the surface.

He wets his lips and looks at Cas, at the being whose arms he found such salvation in, the man who's kisses tasted like moonshine and the sweetest honey. Thinking back on it makes him twitch in his jeans, because Cas splayed out and spread wide on his lap like that had been one of the most gorgeous things he'd ever seen, and Dean's seen a lot in his life. He remembers what Cas felt like, his heat, how it felt to bury himself in his angel, how it swept him away, how Cas' heat and skin and tears are burned into his retinas, the memory at the forefront of his every waking moment.

Dean could be a dick, here. Easily. He could revert to the man he was when he arrived here, dismissive and cruel, condescending and unnecessarily mean. He could lean on the idea that Cas had used him, that they'd used each other, that it was a one time thing and there was nothing behind it.

It'd be a lie, a cruel lie that they would both instantly recognize for what it was.

He looks down, picking at a weed by his knee, rubbing the grass between blunt fingers. ]

You know why.

Edited 2021-05-30 21:47 (UTC)

[ In a way, this moment feels the same as the one that night when Cas first leaned his head on Dean's lap and wasn't shoved away or berated for it, but welcomed. They've spent so long respecting each other's space while being forced into close quarters that even the idea of pushing for more is terrifyingly strange, a new world, literally. Castiel never would have pushed Dean back home, because there was too much there to risk losing. And it's likely Dean would have pushed back then, rather than accept him as he has here, and it's just... It's a very strange feeling, like coming in from the cold, and the sudden warm has your fingers burning with heat, aching, even as they thaw from frozen.

Dean's silence aches, and his answer is painful, and the "why" that Dean says he's supposed to know splits like a fork in his mind, between this dreamworld being an unreality, or that it's changed Dean in ways that scare Cas as much as it excites him. He looks down at his hands again, at a tomato seedling that's only just sprouted, and already the lowest leaves are yellowing. Gently, he pinches them off. ]

In that case, I wonder... Do you know why you?

[ If he's going to risk nurturing the little seedling of an idea that he might have some kind of significance to Dean, then it's important that Dean knows he's not insignificant to Cas. Maybe it would be easier for Dean, or for both of them, and pointing it out might uproot things before they've started, but he can't let Dean believe that he's anything less than the center of Cas's universe, regardless of what universe they've happened to have found themselves in. ]

Edited 2021-05-30 22:24 (UTC)

[ He doesn't look up, because he really...really doesn't want the confirmation he's sure to receive. He feels a little sick to his stomach, wracked with internalized and misdirected guilt; did he take advantage? Did Cas? Does he feel guilty for fucking a man despite his daddy being dead and gone? He swallows again, digs his nails into his jeans. ]

You needed release. I was familiar.

[ Because even still, Dean has zero sense of self worth. His value was limited to his usefulness and knowledge of both Sam and Lucifer back home, and here, he has made it his personal responsibility to take care of the people currently sharing his home, because he needs to be needed, anything else and he's worthless. ]

[ Familiar, jesus christ. Cas leans back on his heels, chin tilted back, looking directly at Dean, who is, of course, looking anywhere else. ]

Dean.

[ There's a pause Cas takes after he says Dean's name, in which he changes the next words he's about to say from "You stupid son of a bitch" to something a little less inflammatory, considering he doesn't actually want to piss Dean off over what's already a tenuous, frustratingly complicated mess. He links his dirty hands and watches Dean's profile, feeling intimately close and frustratingly distant from him all at once. ]

When I started sleeping around awhile ago, it was because of you. ...Not because I was following your advice about the best way to deal with the neglect of an absent father, but because I... wanted you.

[ He knows that tone of voice. He's heard it before from Cas, when Dean's done or said something stupid, but he's not quite aware of what just yet. He looks up, finally, a little guilty and sheepish, but decidedly wary, because he's really not sure what's coming.

What Cas says isn't really what Dean was expecting. ]

How...the hell does that correlate?

[ And are you sure you want him, Now Him? Because you sure seem to enjoy Past Him a whole lot more. ]

[ Not a bad question, and Cas huffs a laugh, because fuck, he was stupid. Thinking if he just... acted like Dean, he would get Dean, that things would be easy for him to have whoever he wanted, the way Dean does... When he didn't even take into account that the way Dean acts is and has always been that, just an act, and that everything he does to cope is just to cope, not make things better. Cas thought it would make them closer, and all it did was tear them apart. He fucked up in every way a person can, and all he can do now is laugh about it. ]

I don't know anymore. Maybe it doesn't. It was a long time ago.

[ The laughter is quick to fade to a sad smile as he looks at Dean, though, because yeah. He's changed. He's nothing like the person he was, except that he does still want Dean, exactly the way he is. ]

I'm sorry I fell apart, the other night. It had just been so long, and I... still want you. Just you. That's "why you," so you know.

[ No drug Cas has ever tried has been able to take away how he feels about Dean. It aches, and his heart races and throbs, his throat and chest both aching like he can't breathe as he admits it. ]

[ Dean is notorious for unhealthy coping mechanisms and questionable behavioral patterns. He's put on an act for so long, it's hard to even know who he is anymore, though slowly but surely, he's starting to figure that out, here.

Dean hadn't really banked on Cas factoring into the equation, but damned if he isn't here, solid and real, and Dean's eyes are fixed on him now, listening, really listening to what's being said instead of passing it off and deliberately misinterpreting.

The words make his hands shake, and he fervently wishes he'd brought the bottle outside with him because now his nerves are rattled and he's trying to figure out what to say, how to say it. He knows what he feels, and this is the end, and Cas was right when he said this might be our last night to make amends. Any day now, it could be the end, the dream or whatever could crumble and they could be dead. He's missed out on one last chance already. He doesn't want to miss out on another. ]

Cas..

[ He exhales, closes his eyes and takes a moment, heart frantically fluttering in his chest. ]

Want me how? [ He finally manages, voice rough, a little demanding, one hand curled into a fist so tight his knuckles are white, the other planting on the dirt, to lean him a little in Cas' direction, on tenterhooks, desperate for validation, for the things he needs to hear. ]

Edited (word choices) 2021-05-30 23:36 (UTC)

[ The end of the world came and went. Cas was expecting emptiness to come next, maybe Hell. This is different from that. It's another ending, and who's to say there won't be another one after this?

But for Castiel, it doesn't matter. He doesn't have a little brother to protect or vengeance to seek. He welcomes the end. There's only one thing tethering him to reality in the face of oblivion, and that one thing is leaning on closer to him, beautifully vulnerable, and asking "how" as if the answer isn't obvious and understood, that anyone who doesn't want Dean Winchester, incredible, radiant thing that he is, in every way possible, humanly or otherwise, is a fool. And also, coincidentally, so is the man who does.

As Cas brings a hand to Dean's cheek with the confidence that it won't be brushed away, and he leans in, eyes on Dean's lips, something in him is screaming say it, and everything else in him is screaming, don't fuck up. He's not going to be the one who had a connection with Dean, only to watch him sleep around the next day. He's not as strong as Risa. He would rot straight into the ground, add to the compost for Dean's garden. ]

Like... a fool in the rain.

[ Cas leans in and kisses Dean's mouth gently, inhaling the smell of green things and wet earth. His eyes fall closed, and his heart still pounds away in his ears double time, like rain falling. Like Zeppelin. "And the warmth of your smile starts a burning, and the thrill of your touch give me fright, and I'm shaking so much, really yearning. Why don't you show up and make it alright?" ]

[ Dean is trembling under Cas' touch, the tremors shivering through his body as Cas cups his face. He's missed this, missed how openly affectionate Cas can be, the lazy smile, the fluidity of his movements. Even if they were never really directed at him back home, he's missed it and now that Cas is here...Dean needs him.

Cas answers and Dean nearly weeps, because Cas knows him, knows his love of Zepplin, and it's being used against him and Dean doesn't give a single fucking shit. ]

...Cas.

[ Dean chokes Cas' name out against the angels lips, covering the hand on his face, fingers stroking over Cas' skin, emotion threatening to burst out of his chest like a damn face hugger. Dean lasts about a second before he's reaching for Cas' waist, dragging him into his lap, dirt be damned.

And if you promised you'd love so completely
And you said you would always be true
You swore that you never would leave me baby
Whatever happened to you?

Dean kisses him fiercely, hungrily, teasing his lips open, gripping him tight, flush against Dean's chest. ]

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i wrote the word helpful like fifty fuckin times i shouldn't tag early in the morning

i mean i just read it and thought "this is such good writing ugh" so i think you're fine LOL

now i know ur fuckin with me

you had introspection and sensory shit and cute assumed cr DONT START

fine fine fine I GUESS

good!!!

cw; some spicy references

👀

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