fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2015-01-02 06:49 pm
some_stars) wrote2015-01-02 06:49 pm
Entry tags:
WIP Amnesty 2014
yeah, it's all Supernatural fic. sorry. i didn't do much this year, what with all the crazy. and by "all" i mean two, because most of my SPN WIPs are recent and i haven't yet given up hope. but one of these is from a year ago, and one's newer but would require way too much work to set it up, for far too little reward, and i care about it less than any of the other six stories i have going, so, nope.
first: the file that was originally titled "SPN FIC WHYYYYY.docx" and is now "dean is bisexual the story the journey the life.docx": this was going to be this whole big twenty-year-spanning story about dean discovering that there are other communities of hunters besides the one he came up in and knows. like for instance the communities formed by all the trauma-victims-turned-hunter who AREN'T straight white men, and in particular queer communities. i had so many notes for this and it was going to be very meaningful and have an arc and all kinds of stuff but in the end all i actually generated was this scene, which still has [[NOTES TO SELF TO FIX STUFF]] in it, because i gave up. it also has me, as usual, setting everything in and around houston whenever possible because this stupid fandom and its stupid nomadic characters requiring stupid research, ugh. also because where the fuck are all the latinos on this show, i mean, i know, wrong place to go for even the most basic level of "don't brutally murder your few occasional COCs" much less demographically correct representation, but seriously, the fuck, the U.S. does actually extend to latitudes south of 40.
content notes: use of homophobic slurs by POV character/sympathetic protagonist, plus another character. also it's SPN preseries fic so therefore child neglect & emotional abuse.
The first queers Dean Winchester ever meets are two hunters, and he maybe doesn't handle it so great. He's fifteen, when he meets them, and the meeting doesn't last even an hour all told, but he remembers for a long time; for always.
It's early December, and they've been in Texas for two weeks, Dad working a tangled ghost job outside Houston that had been more detective work than salt and matches and bones, because Don Speedwell had called in a favor and anyhow Dad had been planning on New Mexico already, knew a guy who knew a guy who might maybe have a book that one of Bobby's friends had heard of, once. That kind of thing. It didn't sounded like much to Dean, but he'd been looking forward to New Mexico, a little. He hadn't had a chance to see much four years ago but he'd liked the view from the highway, the desert. And it was a direction, and maybe--if this guy had the book, if he maybe even had more than that--a place to stay for a little while.
So they'd pitched south to Angleton, where naturally it turned out there was more than one spirit, and Don's info was wrong, and the two-day stopover turned into twelve days of libraries and county records. Dean wasn't old enough yet to go out on real hunts with Dad--soon, he knew it was going to be soon, he'd shot up three inches in the last [[X]] months and there'd been a couple times, a couple emergencies, [[ETC ETC]] But research duty apparently he was ready for, whole days in the library poring over shitty xeroxes of fifty year old paperwork. Not exactly his style. At least Sam was happy to be dragged along this time. Whole days in the library reading anything he pleased was apparently Sammy's big time eleven-going-on-twelve-year-old bag.
It paid off, at least; found the right name in the right place and twelve hours later he was packing up, his bag and Sammy's, waiting for Dad to get back and do the same. Except when Dad got back he sat down, shook his head.
"Got a lead," he said. Which meant a lead on the thing that killed Mom. It always did, when he didn't say it. Dean would've known anyway--Dad was tense, a little wild-eyed, and he'd clearly had more than one last beer with Don before leaving town. Not that he was smashed or anything, just, Dean could tell.
"This guy Don knows, he's been tracking [[WHATEVER]], called in an update today sounds like--well, like it could be something. Or nothing, but Don said..." Dad stopped. After a second he took a deep, slow breath. "He said this guy doesn't get worked up about nothing, as a general rule."
[[something something maybe]]
The guy Don knew lived in Houston, apparently, and had a spare room. "Shouldn't be but two days at the outside," Dad said, packing after all. "Maybe three. Looks like longer than that, Don will drive you boys up. Till then you just sit tight and call him if you need anything."
He gave Dean fifty dollars and wrote a name and number on the motel notepad. "Emergencies only," he said as he tore it off and handed it over, and Dean nodded, because yeah, he knew. Calling Dad when he was off on a lead about this thing--well, you didn't.
He glanced at the name--Joe Portillo, nobody Dean knew. "You ever heard of this guy?" he asked, and why that should make Dad's shoulders tense up, Dean had no idea. It only lasted a second before he went back to rolling up his last couple shirts and jamming them into his bag.
"No. He's just somebody Don knows." He yanked the zipper shut. "Whole lot of hunters out there I don't know," he said. "Big country."
Dean looked at Sam, who'd been staring the whole time at one of his library finds, some beat-to-hell paperback with a dragon on the back and the front cover torn off that he'd grabbed from the reject book pile. Staring and not turning a single page. He met Dean's eyes, though, and after a second shrugged. Dean could hear him in his head: Why's Dad acting so weird?
Then Sammy shrugged and looked back at his book, and Dean figured he had the right idea. Dad got a little funny sometimes, when he was following one of these leads. You just had to keep your head down and let it pass.
Two days, maybe three. Which is why he's not worried, yet, a couple nights later, not staying up awake and waiting and on edge, why he's asleep when the frantic knocking starts and nearly bangs down the door.
He jerks awake right before the first knock, hearing the shuffling outside, heavy uneven steps--two, something heavy dragging, a few muffled swears and something brushes up against the curtained window as its shadow moves past. He just has time to turn and check on Sammy--awake, dead silent, lying there frozen with one half of his face still buried in the pillow, one wide eye staring up at Dean--before the first knock.
The first one's not loud, actually, just normal. Then another, too soon, and another, and then whatever's out there starts to bang like it's trying to bring the whole motel down on top of them. Dean gets the gun from the bedside drawer and stands up. The carpet's scratchy and thin, reminds him that he's barefoot, in his underclothes.
He only freezes for a second. Maybe two. The air's cold on his skin even though winter down here is a joke, and his chest is pounding but his heart seems to stop. Stupid, so stupid, he's not scared. And if he is it's only because Dad's off following a lead on the thing that killed Mom, which is somehow more--away than a regular hunt. More gone. Leaving Dean more alone.
Only a second or maybe two. He bites his lip hard and sudden and pads over closer to the door, about halfway there. The peephole's no good, he remembers suddenly. Some asshole in the distant past stuck a wad of gum over it on the outside, and the crap had long since fossilized; Dean had given up on it after five minutes with a screwdriver and a couple deep gouges in the splintery wood around it (and, more to the point, a shallow one across the top of his hand). If he'd known they'd be stuck here so long, he'd have tried harder.
The knocking stops, and there's a voice, low and urgent. "Open the door, open the fucking door!"
It sounds like a person. A scared to shit person, but a person. A man. Not that all kinds of things don't sound and look just like people--but not that many. And a lot of them don't do so great with 'scared,' or 'genuinely not sounding like something that wants to eat you.' Something in Dean's chest unlocks a couple inches, and he steps closer, slow and careful.
"Is this--" The voice drops more, maybe turns away, and Dean can't quite make out the next few lines, or the reply from the second voice. Then the first guy says, "Is this John Winchester's kids in there?"
Which is either a good sign, or a seriously fucking bad one.
[[something something]]
"It's Joe," the man says. "Joe Portillo. Jesus Christ, tell me he told you where he was going."
"He told me," Dean says. He glances back at Sammy--still not moving an inch but sitting up now, one hand under Dean's pillow, good boy--and makes up his mind. "All right. All right, step back from the door."
There's a creak as whatever's leaning on the door moves away, and a couple seconds of shuffling from outside. Dean steps up, lifts the gun with one hand and turns the lock with the other.
After that everything happens real fast for a while. Two men drag Dad in--not quite dragging, he's not all the way out, but they've each got one arm around their shoulders and when they lower him onto the bed he just--goes, hits the mattress heavy and stays there, barely moving. One of them goes back and grabs a bag from the doorstep, shuts the door and Dad's shirt is covered in blood, jesus, covered, and his face is busted almost as bad as Dean can ever remember seeing it. The men are talking, pulling his shirt open, rummaging in the bag--bandages, all right, at least they've got supplies, and they seem to know what they're doing. They haven't even looked at Dean since they came in.
Dean slides into this routine cool and easy: get safe, check the situation, handle it. He sends Sammy to the front desk to ask for another blanket and deliver a story about an unexpected, and loud, drunk uncle. He gets the first aid kit, even though the men have their own, and gets washcloths and water, and bites out questions--is he breathing, where's the damage, what did this, how much blood--that he's had memorized for years. Like tying off one thread after another, and feeling about the same level of fear as he feels when he's sewing a button back on. This is while the emergency happens.
And then it stops, and there's just Dad--bloodied up, out of it, sure to bitch about Joe's stitches like he bitches about everybody's stitches except his own--and Sammy--pouring out a fresh salt line, the only person in the room not streaked with blood, sitting crosslegged on the other bed and watching, quiet as you please--and Joe and the other one, bandaging and cleaning and, now that the danger's past, talking to each other, and grinning.
The other one looks up and grins at Dean, maybe noticing he's gone still. "You still with us, kid?"
Dean crosses his arms and looks at Joe. "Who the hell is this? Dad didn't mention anyone else."
"He didn't," the other one says not actually under his breath, "you don't say."
Something passes between the two men--a look with something heavy hanging off it, a whole conversation. After a second, Joe says, "This is Tommy. We work together."
"Pleased to meet you." Tommy sticks out his hand. It's still bloody. So is Dean's, to be fair.
He would've shook it--he would, he's about to, so what if maybe he takes a few seconds first to let the guy hang, because there's something off here even if they did help Dad out and maybe save his ass. He's about to, when Sammy pops up next to him from out of frigging nowhere and does it instead.
"Sorry my brother's a jerk," Sammy says, oblivious to Dean's glare. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Sam, this is Dean."
They love Sam, of course. Everyone loves Sammy, not that Dean can blame them. He's not usually such a people person, though. Especially not the last couple weeks. He's been so quiet it's weird, the last couple of weeks.
[[something something time passes]]
"So you guys always hunt together?" Sam asks. "Like cop partners? We never met anyone like that."
"Yeah we did," Dean says, cutting in for the first time in like ten minutes of chatter. "[[STUFF I WILL INVENT LATER]]"
"That was just because [[WHATEVER IDK]] though. And [[WHOEVER]] are married," Sam rolls his eyes [[--]], "that's not the same. I thought you guys were all like Dad and Bobby and those guys. I didn't know any hunters had partners, like, always."
He talks like he's sounding out new words--hunters, partners, always, trying them on for size. Surprised. Dean doesn't get a chance to figure out what that means, though, because Tommy and Joe are sharing another one of those heavy looks, the kind with a whole conversation inside, only this conversation isn't so much narrowed eyes and set jaws. This one's more of a soft half-smile look, bright eyes crinkling around the corners, more--fond.
They haven't even touched each other but just like that, Dean knows.
"Yeah," Tommy says, breaking the gaze and looking back at Sam, "yeah, some of us do." Outside of a few clipped questions and answers when they were patching Dad up, it's the first thing Dean's heard him say that doesn't sound like maybe the next words are going to be you want to take this outside? Just normal and warm, relaxed, like--Dean can't keep himself from scowling, doesn't try very hard, because that's not right, a guy sounding like that. A guy like them, who looks regular and isn't--it's not right.
And it's not like he says anything. He's not an idiot; him and Sam don't stand a chance against two grown men--actual men, hunters--he's not going to start shit. But he scowls and crosses his arms again and apparently that's enough, because Tommy and Joe both go real still and look at him. At the exact same time, like they fucking practiced or something.
Nobody says a word, but all the air drains from the room in an instant and Dean's stomach is twisting, knotting, his whole body going cold and then hot. He pulls himself up straighter and stares. They look away first. Of course they do.
Sammy glares at him, head tilted in a question that Dean is definitely not going to answer. "I'm going to call Don," he announces. "I guess you guys can get out of here."
Dad would probably want him to keep them there, just in case, until he came around or Don got here. [[SOMETHING SOMETHING, he wouldn't if he knew, could he know, surely not, etc]]
Joe looks like he's about to raise the same objection. Tommy rolls his eyes and mutters, "yeah, tell us how you really feel, kid," but he doesn't get up.
Dean can take care of Sam. He can take care of Dad. He doesn't need a pair of fucking faggots to watch over him.
[[they leave, a couple more lines...idk]]
Dad comes up far enough to check in with Dean--Sam's here, I'm here, we're fine--then dozes off again. Don shows up not long after and shakes him awake again but doesn't look too worried, and Dad's snoring by the time he leaves. He and Sam sleep almost until noon. Dean sleeps like shit, and gives it up around sunrise.
He waits until Sam's in the shower to bring it up. "Dad?"
Dad looks up from his gas station breakfast taco for a second and makes a hmm sound before turning back to it. He's eating slow--moving slow, even after downing two of the five pills left over from the last prescription, first thing when he woke up.
Dean's mouth is open before he realizes he doesn't know how to say...what? He's not sure; it just seems like he has to say something.
"Those guys who brought you back here," he tries. "They--did you know? That they're..."
Shit, he doesn't even know how to say it. He knows the words--he knows a lot of words--but hell if he knows which one he can say to his dad, who's never, ever said any of them, at least not to Dean. His dad who's completely alert all of a sudden, staring at him like he's searching for something.
"Did they do something?" he barks. For a long, helpless moment Dean has no idea what that's even supposed to mean.
When it clicks, he flinches. "No! God, no, of course not!" Should he have thought of that, last night? It hadn't even crossed his mind, not even after they took such a shine to Sammy, who everybody loved. Who'd said more words to them in ten minutes than he had to Dean the last few days put together. Sam had liked them back, liked them just fine, and Dean hadn't thought anything of it.
The guilty lurch his stomach gives at that is familiar, but--it wasn't anything like that. Dean would have noticed, he'd have noticed right away. They hadn't been dangerous. Not that way.
"No," he says one more time.
Dad stares a second longer before dropping his eyes again, slumping back down with another almost-conversational grunt.
The grunt is all he gets, and it's not like Dean doesn't know what it means--discussion over, move on--but for some stupid reason, he can't make himself drop it. "I was just wondering if you knew."
"Of course I knew," Dad snaps. "I have eyes, Dean. Anyway, Don mentioned it." The taco's cold by now--Dean can see the cheese all congealed, the clumps of powdered egg crumbling--but Dad tears off another bite and gives it a couple wincing chews and all his concentration. He looks embarrassed, Dean realizes. He looks the way he looked when he gave Dean a box of condoms and a mumbled twenty-second speech on his fourteenth birthday--only worse, now. Because you don't talk about this.
Except Dean can't stop. "So you knew, and Don--and Don's friends with them? And you're okay with it?"
"For Christ's sake!" Dad slams the taco down and turns to look at Dean, shoulders pulling in. "Nobody's goddamned friends with anybody. I was following a lead, looks like it might even be something this time, which I guess you don't care about anymore--"
He deserves that. Dad's been awake for an hour and Dean hasn't even thought to ask what he found out, he deserves that and worse but it hurts. He almost misses the rest, trying to breathe around the sudden stabbing rock in his throat. Some things are hard to miss, though.
"--and I'm supposed to turn it down and walk away because it happens to come from a couple of cocksuckers?"
They stare at each other in the silence that follows. Dead silence, you might call it, except Dean actually knows what that means and this--a shallow, jagged breath from Dad; thuds and clunks in the next room; distant shouting in the parking lot and his own pulse pounding in his ears--is anything but. His mouth is open, he realizes, and it still takes him a second to close it. It's only the sound of the shower cutting off that finally breaks the quiet and lets Dean look away, lets him think, wait, what happened, something just happened.
He wants to keep talking. He wants to explain: they're like us, they're not like in movies, they're not queer so how can they be queer?
Dad says--much quieter, controlled again, not looking at him--"Why the hell are you so damn interested, anyhow?"
It's not a question he's supposed to answer.
next up: much more recent, because i ran across the idea of newly human castiel being totally fucking freaked out by having a nightmare and not even realizing what it was (in this amazing fantastic incredible fic), and i thought: that is delicious and i want more of it. more new human cas nightmares, more dean holding him, more more more more yes please. and then naturally i went and made it all miserable.
this is a post-S8 au that would require too much explaining and i decided not to bother, but basically: sam is not quite mortally ill, and castiel falls close to them somehow and (also somehow) finds them almost right away, in the process bringing fallen angels down on them and they all have to flee. i was interested--am interested--in the extent and depth of dean's anger at cas in 8x22; i felt like it was so clearly about more than just what castiel did literally moments after being freed from months of torture-induced mind control. because dean never did get a chance to be properly angry at castiel for abandoning him to stay in purgatory and self-flagellate for eternity instead of going with dean who needed him. so it seemed like there was really this deep untapped well of anger and it was finally making its way to the surface, and i wanted to see MORE of it but this show never ever ever lives up to its potential. so, this. which then i didn't actually write.
SO. okay. content notes: implication of possible suicidal behavior; description of a panic attack; immediate-post-trauma behavior in general. also hurt/comfort with the comforter thinking some mean things about the comfortee, which is maybe a weird thing to warn for but it would sure upset me if i was in an h/c-craving headspace.
Maybe they're in a motel, on the way back from the hospital, and they're short on working stolen cards just at the moment so Cas sleeps on the short motel room sofa—and honestly he didn't look like he'd appreciate the difference if he did get a mattress; just sat down and curled his bare feet up under him and he was out.
And yeah all right, the guy hadn't slept in--who knew how long, at the least not since he found them, muddy and shoeless and one arm scratched to hell, just the one. And he wouldn't say a word, and he wouldn't go to sleep. Until right now. But Dean could've used his help, actually. If Cas had been dead on his feet then Sam was--no, he couldn't even go there, not even form the words. Sam was better than he had been, but he was AMA and mostly deep, deep under. He'd been awake maybe eight hours of the last thirty-six, truly aware for maybe half that, in five or ten or thirty minute snatches. And he was still out in the car, and from the sounds he made when Dean slung his weight across his own back and dragged him in and rolled him off onto the bed, apparently everything still hurt everywhere.
Dean knew the feeling.
He stood there for a second, a minute, looking at them both. His feet felt heavy, stuck to the floor. Sam's deep-sleep breath was a sound Dean knew by heart, but the uneven whuffling sounds Cas made were new, uneven and unpredictable. Just for one second he hated that sound more than anything he'd ever heard.
The feeling washed through him, went away. He closed the door and locked it, got in bed. Put his gun where it should be. Then he followed after the two of them, running close behind.
*
The screaming woke him up instantly, his whole body tightening as he slammed back down into it. It was more like shrieking--birdlike, something wild and lost. Something old. Dean sat up, gun in hand, and the scream cut off right as his feet hit the floor. Sam was stirring--just stirring, all that noise and he couldn't even wake up--and in the half-second it took Dean's eyes to flick his brother's way, Castiel scrambled over the couch and into the corner and wedged himself in tight between the sofa and the far nightstand. Absolutely dead silent now. Dean couldn't even hear him breathing.
He felt like he was still in a dream: that horrible strange bird-scream, the greasy yellow streetlamp light shining through the window above the curtains, printing one long bar of light against the wall. Cas was huddled in the room's darkest corner, eyes wide and unseeing and his face still streaked with blood and dirt.
"Christ," Dean said aloud, by accident. He hadn't known he was going to talk. His voice came out dry and loud. Castiel twitched, once, with his whole body. Christ, yeah, fuck, what was he gonna do about this.
He sat back down and put his gun on the nightstand, next to the broken alarm clock. That was the noise that made Sam stir again, make a soft unhappy sound and lift his head a couple inches--wincing with the effort--just enough to get his mouth out of the pillow.
"Dean?" he said, except he slurred over the vowels like it was too much work to move his face enough to pronounce them. D'n, nhuh, uh, and Dean could hear the fear in there, the tension that should've had Sam's hand under his pillow and his whole body ready to spring.
"It's okay," Dean said, quietly. "We're fine, we're good. Go back to sleep, okay?"
"Screaming," Sam managed--vowels and all. "Not you?"
"No. Not me." Had he ever made a sound like that? Could a person make a sound like that? He wouldn't have thought so, but here they all were. "It was Cas," he said, when Sam kept looking at him. "Nightmare, I think. I'm gonna go..." He glanced back toward the corner, where Cas hadn't moved except to press his face down against his knees so he was all the way hidden.
If I can't see you, you can't see me. It would walk on by, pass you over. That was the rule with monsters, and somehow little kids all knew it, by some stupid lizard-brain reflex. Couldn't be evolution, because that shit didn't keep you alive.
"Gonna go and get him back to bed," Dean said to Sam. "You too, c'mon."
"You did," Sam said. "Before. Used to...keep me up." He was drifting off as he said it, each word softer and more melted than the last. Us't...k'mup. Sam closed his eyes. "Then it didn't."
D'nt, half into the pillow, and he went down again.
Dean got up and went and looked down at the sharp tight ball Cas had made of himself. He thought about just pushing the couch aside and opening up the space. Instead he crouched down, made himself smaller. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dark and he was up close, he could see the way Cas was shaking, almost vibrating really, fine tremors rippling all over him.
"Hey," Dean said. He kept his voice low, just above a whisper. "Hey, Cas, you're okay. You're okay. Just had a nightmare."
Cas squeezed himself somehow impossibly tighter, and for a moment Dean thought: This is it. Whatever he did up there, that's it for him, he's not coming back from this one. Maybe he hadn't. Wasn't like Dean had asked him any questions when he'd come to them. He hadn't even heard Cas's voice yet, not since--this. Hadn't heard his human voice. Just that screaming.
Dean really didn't feel like he was awake.
"Cas," he tried again, and this time Castiel lifted his head a little, just enough to look up at Dean. On instinct, Dean settled down out of the crouch and sat cross-legged, lost an inch or two and got them level. They watched each other for a minute; Dean kept his body easy, easy. Shoulders low, jaw loose.
"It hurt," Cas said, his voice rusted over. He started coughing, and it kept going until Dean realized he couldn't stop and ran to the sink outside the bathroom and filled a paper cup halfway with lukewarm water. Cas hadn't folded himself back up by the time Dean got back to him, and he wasn't shaking too hard to hold the cup and drink every last drop.
He hadn't seen Cas drink either, Dean realized. Sleep or eat or drink or even take a piss, though he guessed that followed logically from the rest. Not a single human bodily function for thirty-six hours plus--however long he'd spent getting to them, probably. Jesus Christ. Dean thought maybe Cas would have let himself die of dehydration, and he didn't know if "by accident" was worse than the alternative.
He got some more water and tried to make Cas drink it slow. Cas wouldn't, just tipped his head back and swallowed and panted when the cup was empty, thrust it at Dean again. Dean rolled his eyes and got more, just a little. After it was gone Cas pressed his face into the empty cup, like he could smell the ghost of the water he'd just swallowed. It was starting to crumple under his grip.
"Take it slow, okay?" Dean said. "You fucked up your body pretty good. You can have more in a few minutes."
When Castiel nodded he let out a hard breath, because he didn't know if he could stand to force the issue. Force Cas, grab him and hold him. That one arm, his left arm, was so fucked up, and most of the cuts and scratches had already closed over before they'd had a chance to clean them.
"You gotta let me take care of that in the morning, okay?" He gestured toward Cas's left arm. "And the other stuff. Your feet are probably shredded, huh?"
"I think so," Cas said. "They hurt a lot. I lost my shoes, I was running."
"Yeah?"
Cas nodded. "I had to run. There was--I'm not sure. It felt like so much, here--" He unfolded a little further and poked himself in the chest. "And I saw them all falling and burning and I felt--this body--" His face twisted as he looked down at himself, like he'd eaten something rotten but wasn't allowed to spit it out.
"Sure," Dean said agreeably, though part of him wanted to say something sharp to that sour-milk face. "That central nervous system can be a real bitch, huh?"
"I," Cas started, and promptly proved him right by bursting into tears.
"Whoa, hey--" Dean reached for him but stopped his hands a few inches short of touching. Castiel was crying, sobbing really, heaving choked breaths and rocking and staring at Dean with wide shocked eyes and a face like he'd just been slapped. He didn't hide his face again, or cover it with his hands, or even look down, like a person would do.
Christ, he didn't know anything. Dean shoved the couch aside just enough to squeeze past, ignoring the way Cas flinched when he did it. He crawled into the little dark space Castiel had made and pulled him into his arms, because there wasn't anything else to do, absolutely nothing at all.
"Sshhh, hey, come on," rubbing slow circles on Cas's back, the way he knew how because he always had, "ssshhh, baby, I got you, it's okay. It's okay." Cas's mouth moved silently against his shoulder. Tears were soaking through Dean's shirt; he could see the dark wet patch in his mind, tears and spit and some snot too, because the body was a bitch, a real bitch. "Gonna be okay," he told Cas, mumbled it into his hair. Realized he'd just lied out loud to him for the first time ever.
The shaking slowed, and soon it mostly stopped except the occasional shudder. Cas shifted around but settled himself again still inside the loop of Dean's arms, and Dean let him stay there. He closed his eyes. He was so tired. He thought maybe he could sleep for a month. Maybe a year.
"I'm sorry," Castiel said, some time later, and Dean was far too close to sleep to bother telling him to shut up.
*
so THAT was cheerful! :D? :D?
check back this time next year for possibly tens of thousands of words of unfinished SPN fic, although hopefully not? or at least not these current tens of thousands i'm working on right now. because they're all pretty great. also FYI, i'm still gonna post finished fic here and to AO3, but if you like SPN then this tag will get you any other fic-like/unfinished/otherwise not quite postable stuff i produce. which currently means some BDSM porn and two pieces of ridiculous future-fic fluff. one has a saber-toothed tiger in it! :D? :D?
first: the file that was originally titled "SPN FIC WHYYYYY.docx" and is now "dean is bisexual the story the journey the life.docx": this was going to be this whole big twenty-year-spanning story about dean discovering that there are other communities of hunters besides the one he came up in and knows. like for instance the communities formed by all the trauma-victims-turned-hunter who AREN'T straight white men, and in particular queer communities. i had so many notes for this and it was going to be very meaningful and have an arc and all kinds of stuff but in the end all i actually generated was this scene, which still has [[NOTES TO SELF TO FIX STUFF]] in it, because i gave up. it also has me, as usual, setting everything in and around houston whenever possible because this stupid fandom and its stupid nomadic characters requiring stupid research, ugh. also because where the fuck are all the latinos on this show, i mean, i know, wrong place to go for even the most basic level of "don't brutally murder your few occasional COCs" much less demographically correct representation, but seriously, the fuck, the U.S. does actually extend to latitudes south of 40.
content notes: use of homophobic slurs by POV character/sympathetic protagonist, plus another character. also it's SPN preseries fic so therefore child neglect & emotional abuse.
The first queers Dean Winchester ever meets are two hunters, and he maybe doesn't handle it so great. He's fifteen, when he meets them, and the meeting doesn't last even an hour all told, but he remembers for a long time; for always.
It's early December, and they've been in Texas for two weeks, Dad working a tangled ghost job outside Houston that had been more detective work than salt and matches and bones, because Don Speedwell had called in a favor and anyhow Dad had been planning on New Mexico already, knew a guy who knew a guy who might maybe have a book that one of Bobby's friends had heard of, once. That kind of thing. It didn't sounded like much to Dean, but he'd been looking forward to New Mexico, a little. He hadn't had a chance to see much four years ago but he'd liked the view from the highway, the desert. And it was a direction, and maybe--if this guy had the book, if he maybe even had more than that--a place to stay for a little while.
So they'd pitched south to Angleton, where naturally it turned out there was more than one spirit, and Don's info was wrong, and the two-day stopover turned into twelve days of libraries and county records. Dean wasn't old enough yet to go out on real hunts with Dad--soon, he knew it was going to be soon, he'd shot up three inches in the last [[X]] months and there'd been a couple times, a couple emergencies, [[ETC ETC]] But research duty apparently he was ready for, whole days in the library poring over shitty xeroxes of fifty year old paperwork. Not exactly his style. At least Sam was happy to be dragged along this time. Whole days in the library reading anything he pleased was apparently Sammy's big time eleven-going-on-twelve-year-old bag.
It paid off, at least; found the right name in the right place and twelve hours later he was packing up, his bag and Sammy's, waiting for Dad to get back and do the same. Except when Dad got back he sat down, shook his head.
"Got a lead," he said. Which meant a lead on the thing that killed Mom. It always did, when he didn't say it. Dean would've known anyway--Dad was tense, a little wild-eyed, and he'd clearly had more than one last beer with Don before leaving town. Not that he was smashed or anything, just, Dean could tell.
"This guy Don knows, he's been tracking [[WHATEVER]], called in an update today sounds like--well, like it could be something. Or nothing, but Don said..." Dad stopped. After a second he took a deep, slow breath. "He said this guy doesn't get worked up about nothing, as a general rule."
[[something something maybe]]
The guy Don knew lived in Houston, apparently, and had a spare room. "Shouldn't be but two days at the outside," Dad said, packing after all. "Maybe three. Looks like longer than that, Don will drive you boys up. Till then you just sit tight and call him if you need anything."
He gave Dean fifty dollars and wrote a name and number on the motel notepad. "Emergencies only," he said as he tore it off and handed it over, and Dean nodded, because yeah, he knew. Calling Dad when he was off on a lead about this thing--well, you didn't.
He glanced at the name--Joe Portillo, nobody Dean knew. "You ever heard of this guy?" he asked, and why that should make Dad's shoulders tense up, Dean had no idea. It only lasted a second before he went back to rolling up his last couple shirts and jamming them into his bag.
"No. He's just somebody Don knows." He yanked the zipper shut. "Whole lot of hunters out there I don't know," he said. "Big country."
Dean looked at Sam, who'd been staring the whole time at one of his library finds, some beat-to-hell paperback with a dragon on the back and the front cover torn off that he'd grabbed from the reject book pile. Staring and not turning a single page. He met Dean's eyes, though, and after a second shrugged. Dean could hear him in his head: Why's Dad acting so weird?
Then Sammy shrugged and looked back at his book, and Dean figured he had the right idea. Dad got a little funny sometimes, when he was following one of these leads. You just had to keep your head down and let it pass.
Two days, maybe three. Which is why he's not worried, yet, a couple nights later, not staying up awake and waiting and on edge, why he's asleep when the frantic knocking starts and nearly bangs down the door.
He jerks awake right before the first knock, hearing the shuffling outside, heavy uneven steps--two, something heavy dragging, a few muffled swears and something brushes up against the curtained window as its shadow moves past. He just has time to turn and check on Sammy--awake, dead silent, lying there frozen with one half of his face still buried in the pillow, one wide eye staring up at Dean--before the first knock.
The first one's not loud, actually, just normal. Then another, too soon, and another, and then whatever's out there starts to bang like it's trying to bring the whole motel down on top of them. Dean gets the gun from the bedside drawer and stands up. The carpet's scratchy and thin, reminds him that he's barefoot, in his underclothes.
He only freezes for a second. Maybe two. The air's cold on his skin even though winter down here is a joke, and his chest is pounding but his heart seems to stop. Stupid, so stupid, he's not scared. And if he is it's only because Dad's off following a lead on the thing that killed Mom, which is somehow more--away than a regular hunt. More gone. Leaving Dean more alone.
Only a second or maybe two. He bites his lip hard and sudden and pads over closer to the door, about halfway there. The peephole's no good, he remembers suddenly. Some asshole in the distant past stuck a wad of gum over it on the outside, and the crap had long since fossilized; Dean had given up on it after five minutes with a screwdriver and a couple deep gouges in the splintery wood around it (and, more to the point, a shallow one across the top of his hand). If he'd known they'd be stuck here so long, he'd have tried harder.
The knocking stops, and there's a voice, low and urgent. "Open the door, open the fucking door!"
It sounds like a person. A scared to shit person, but a person. A man. Not that all kinds of things don't sound and look just like people--but not that many. And a lot of them don't do so great with 'scared,' or 'genuinely not sounding like something that wants to eat you.' Something in Dean's chest unlocks a couple inches, and he steps closer, slow and careful.
"Is this--" The voice drops more, maybe turns away, and Dean can't quite make out the next few lines, or the reply from the second voice. Then the first guy says, "Is this John Winchester's kids in there?"
Which is either a good sign, or a seriously fucking bad one.
[[something something]]
"It's Joe," the man says. "Joe Portillo. Jesus Christ, tell me he told you where he was going."
"He told me," Dean says. He glances back at Sammy--still not moving an inch but sitting up now, one hand under Dean's pillow, good boy--and makes up his mind. "All right. All right, step back from the door."
There's a creak as whatever's leaning on the door moves away, and a couple seconds of shuffling from outside. Dean steps up, lifts the gun with one hand and turns the lock with the other.
After that everything happens real fast for a while. Two men drag Dad in--not quite dragging, he's not all the way out, but they've each got one arm around their shoulders and when they lower him onto the bed he just--goes, hits the mattress heavy and stays there, barely moving. One of them goes back and grabs a bag from the doorstep, shuts the door and Dad's shirt is covered in blood, jesus, covered, and his face is busted almost as bad as Dean can ever remember seeing it. The men are talking, pulling his shirt open, rummaging in the bag--bandages, all right, at least they've got supplies, and they seem to know what they're doing. They haven't even looked at Dean since they came in.
Dean slides into this routine cool and easy: get safe, check the situation, handle it. He sends Sammy to the front desk to ask for another blanket and deliver a story about an unexpected, and loud, drunk uncle. He gets the first aid kit, even though the men have their own, and gets washcloths and water, and bites out questions--is he breathing, where's the damage, what did this, how much blood--that he's had memorized for years. Like tying off one thread after another, and feeling about the same level of fear as he feels when he's sewing a button back on. This is while the emergency happens.
And then it stops, and there's just Dad--bloodied up, out of it, sure to bitch about Joe's stitches like he bitches about everybody's stitches except his own--and Sammy--pouring out a fresh salt line, the only person in the room not streaked with blood, sitting crosslegged on the other bed and watching, quiet as you please--and Joe and the other one, bandaging and cleaning and, now that the danger's past, talking to each other, and grinning.
The other one looks up and grins at Dean, maybe noticing he's gone still. "You still with us, kid?"
Dean crosses his arms and looks at Joe. "Who the hell is this? Dad didn't mention anyone else."
"He didn't," the other one says not actually under his breath, "you don't say."
Something passes between the two men--a look with something heavy hanging off it, a whole conversation. After a second, Joe says, "This is Tommy. We work together."
"Pleased to meet you." Tommy sticks out his hand. It's still bloody. So is Dean's, to be fair.
He would've shook it--he would, he's about to, so what if maybe he takes a few seconds first to let the guy hang, because there's something off here even if they did help Dad out and maybe save his ass. He's about to, when Sammy pops up next to him from out of frigging nowhere and does it instead.
"Sorry my brother's a jerk," Sammy says, oblivious to Dean's glare. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Sam, this is Dean."
They love Sam, of course. Everyone loves Sammy, not that Dean can blame them. He's not usually such a people person, though. Especially not the last couple weeks. He's been so quiet it's weird, the last couple of weeks.
[[something something time passes]]
"So you guys always hunt together?" Sam asks. "Like cop partners? We never met anyone like that."
"Yeah we did," Dean says, cutting in for the first time in like ten minutes of chatter. "[[STUFF I WILL INVENT LATER]]"
"That was just because [[WHATEVER IDK]] though. And [[WHOEVER]] are married," Sam rolls his eyes [[--]], "that's not the same. I thought you guys were all like Dad and Bobby and those guys. I didn't know any hunters had partners, like, always."
He talks like he's sounding out new words--hunters, partners, always, trying them on for size. Surprised. Dean doesn't get a chance to figure out what that means, though, because Tommy and Joe are sharing another one of those heavy looks, the kind with a whole conversation inside, only this conversation isn't so much narrowed eyes and set jaws. This one's more of a soft half-smile look, bright eyes crinkling around the corners, more--fond.
They haven't even touched each other but just like that, Dean knows.
"Yeah," Tommy says, breaking the gaze and looking back at Sam, "yeah, some of us do." Outside of a few clipped questions and answers when they were patching Dad up, it's the first thing Dean's heard him say that doesn't sound like maybe the next words are going to be you want to take this outside? Just normal and warm, relaxed, like--Dean can't keep himself from scowling, doesn't try very hard, because that's not right, a guy sounding like that. A guy like them, who looks regular and isn't--it's not right.
And it's not like he says anything. He's not an idiot; him and Sam don't stand a chance against two grown men--actual men, hunters--he's not going to start shit. But he scowls and crosses his arms again and apparently that's enough, because Tommy and Joe both go real still and look at him. At the exact same time, like they fucking practiced or something.
Nobody says a word, but all the air drains from the room in an instant and Dean's stomach is twisting, knotting, his whole body going cold and then hot. He pulls himself up straighter and stares. They look away first. Of course they do.
Sammy glares at him, head tilted in a question that Dean is definitely not going to answer. "I'm going to call Don," he announces. "I guess you guys can get out of here."
Dad would probably want him to keep them there, just in case, until he came around or Don got here. [[SOMETHING SOMETHING, he wouldn't if he knew, could he know, surely not, etc]]
Joe looks like he's about to raise the same objection. Tommy rolls his eyes and mutters, "yeah, tell us how you really feel, kid," but he doesn't get up.
Dean can take care of Sam. He can take care of Dad. He doesn't need a pair of fucking faggots to watch over him.
[[they leave, a couple more lines...idk]]
Dad comes up far enough to check in with Dean--Sam's here, I'm here, we're fine--then dozes off again. Don shows up not long after and shakes him awake again but doesn't look too worried, and Dad's snoring by the time he leaves. He and Sam sleep almost until noon. Dean sleeps like shit, and gives it up around sunrise.
He waits until Sam's in the shower to bring it up. "Dad?"
Dad looks up from his gas station breakfast taco for a second and makes a hmm sound before turning back to it. He's eating slow--moving slow, even after downing two of the five pills left over from the last prescription, first thing when he woke up.
Dean's mouth is open before he realizes he doesn't know how to say...what? He's not sure; it just seems like he has to say something.
"Those guys who brought you back here," he tries. "They--did you know? That they're..."
Shit, he doesn't even know how to say it. He knows the words--he knows a lot of words--but hell if he knows which one he can say to his dad, who's never, ever said any of them, at least not to Dean. His dad who's completely alert all of a sudden, staring at him like he's searching for something.
"Did they do something?" he barks. For a long, helpless moment Dean has no idea what that's even supposed to mean.
When it clicks, he flinches. "No! God, no, of course not!" Should he have thought of that, last night? It hadn't even crossed his mind, not even after they took such a shine to Sammy, who everybody loved. Who'd said more words to them in ten minutes than he had to Dean the last few days put together. Sam had liked them back, liked them just fine, and Dean hadn't thought anything of it.
The guilty lurch his stomach gives at that is familiar, but--it wasn't anything like that. Dean would have noticed, he'd have noticed right away. They hadn't been dangerous. Not that way.
"No," he says one more time.
Dad stares a second longer before dropping his eyes again, slumping back down with another almost-conversational grunt.
The grunt is all he gets, and it's not like Dean doesn't know what it means--discussion over, move on--but for some stupid reason, he can't make himself drop it. "I was just wondering if you knew."
"Of course I knew," Dad snaps. "I have eyes, Dean. Anyway, Don mentioned it." The taco's cold by now--Dean can see the cheese all congealed, the clumps of powdered egg crumbling--but Dad tears off another bite and gives it a couple wincing chews and all his concentration. He looks embarrassed, Dean realizes. He looks the way he looked when he gave Dean a box of condoms and a mumbled twenty-second speech on his fourteenth birthday--only worse, now. Because you don't talk about this.
Except Dean can't stop. "So you knew, and Don--and Don's friends with them? And you're okay with it?"
"For Christ's sake!" Dad slams the taco down and turns to look at Dean, shoulders pulling in. "Nobody's goddamned friends with anybody. I was following a lead, looks like it might even be something this time, which I guess you don't care about anymore--"
He deserves that. Dad's been awake for an hour and Dean hasn't even thought to ask what he found out, he deserves that and worse but it hurts. He almost misses the rest, trying to breathe around the sudden stabbing rock in his throat. Some things are hard to miss, though.
"--and I'm supposed to turn it down and walk away because it happens to come from a couple of cocksuckers?"
They stare at each other in the silence that follows. Dead silence, you might call it, except Dean actually knows what that means and this--a shallow, jagged breath from Dad; thuds and clunks in the next room; distant shouting in the parking lot and his own pulse pounding in his ears--is anything but. His mouth is open, he realizes, and it still takes him a second to close it. It's only the sound of the shower cutting off that finally breaks the quiet and lets Dean look away, lets him think, wait, what happened, something just happened.
He wants to keep talking. He wants to explain: they're like us, they're not like in movies, they're not queer so how can they be queer?
Dad says--much quieter, controlled again, not looking at him--"Why the hell are you so damn interested, anyhow?"
It's not a question he's supposed to answer.
next up: much more recent, because i ran across the idea of newly human castiel being totally fucking freaked out by having a nightmare and not even realizing what it was (in this amazing fantastic incredible fic), and i thought: that is delicious and i want more of it. more new human cas nightmares, more dean holding him, more more more more yes please. and then naturally i went and made it all miserable.
this is a post-S8 au that would require too much explaining and i decided not to bother, but basically: sam is not quite mortally ill, and castiel falls close to them somehow and (also somehow) finds them almost right away, in the process bringing fallen angels down on them and they all have to flee. i was interested--am interested--in the extent and depth of dean's anger at cas in 8x22; i felt like it was so clearly about more than just what castiel did literally moments after being freed from months of torture-induced mind control. because dean never did get a chance to be properly angry at castiel for abandoning him to stay in purgatory and self-flagellate for eternity instead of going with dean who needed him. so it seemed like there was really this deep untapped well of anger and it was finally making its way to the surface, and i wanted to see MORE of it but this show never ever ever lives up to its potential. so, this. which then i didn't actually write.
SO. okay. content notes: implication of possible suicidal behavior; description of a panic attack; immediate-post-trauma behavior in general. also hurt/comfort with the comforter thinking some mean things about the comfortee, which is maybe a weird thing to warn for but it would sure upset me if i was in an h/c-craving headspace.
Maybe they're in a motel, on the way back from the hospital, and they're short on working stolen cards just at the moment so Cas sleeps on the short motel room sofa—and honestly he didn't look like he'd appreciate the difference if he did get a mattress; just sat down and curled his bare feet up under him and he was out.
And yeah all right, the guy hadn't slept in--who knew how long, at the least not since he found them, muddy and shoeless and one arm scratched to hell, just the one. And he wouldn't say a word, and he wouldn't go to sleep. Until right now. But Dean could've used his help, actually. If Cas had been dead on his feet then Sam was--no, he couldn't even go there, not even form the words. Sam was better than he had been, but he was AMA and mostly deep, deep under. He'd been awake maybe eight hours of the last thirty-six, truly aware for maybe half that, in five or ten or thirty minute snatches. And he was still out in the car, and from the sounds he made when Dean slung his weight across his own back and dragged him in and rolled him off onto the bed, apparently everything still hurt everywhere.
Dean knew the feeling.
He stood there for a second, a minute, looking at them both. His feet felt heavy, stuck to the floor. Sam's deep-sleep breath was a sound Dean knew by heart, but the uneven whuffling sounds Cas made were new, uneven and unpredictable. Just for one second he hated that sound more than anything he'd ever heard.
The feeling washed through him, went away. He closed the door and locked it, got in bed. Put his gun where it should be. Then he followed after the two of them, running close behind.
*
The screaming woke him up instantly, his whole body tightening as he slammed back down into it. It was more like shrieking--birdlike, something wild and lost. Something old. Dean sat up, gun in hand, and the scream cut off right as his feet hit the floor. Sam was stirring--just stirring, all that noise and he couldn't even wake up--and in the half-second it took Dean's eyes to flick his brother's way, Castiel scrambled over the couch and into the corner and wedged himself in tight between the sofa and the far nightstand. Absolutely dead silent now. Dean couldn't even hear him breathing.
He felt like he was still in a dream: that horrible strange bird-scream, the greasy yellow streetlamp light shining through the window above the curtains, printing one long bar of light against the wall. Cas was huddled in the room's darkest corner, eyes wide and unseeing and his face still streaked with blood and dirt.
"Christ," Dean said aloud, by accident. He hadn't known he was going to talk. His voice came out dry and loud. Castiel twitched, once, with his whole body. Christ, yeah, fuck, what was he gonna do about this.
He sat back down and put his gun on the nightstand, next to the broken alarm clock. That was the noise that made Sam stir again, make a soft unhappy sound and lift his head a couple inches--wincing with the effort--just enough to get his mouth out of the pillow.
"Dean?" he said, except he slurred over the vowels like it was too much work to move his face enough to pronounce them. D'n, nhuh, uh, and Dean could hear the fear in there, the tension that should've had Sam's hand under his pillow and his whole body ready to spring.
"It's okay," Dean said, quietly. "We're fine, we're good. Go back to sleep, okay?"
"Screaming," Sam managed--vowels and all. "Not you?"
"No. Not me." Had he ever made a sound like that? Could a person make a sound like that? He wouldn't have thought so, but here they all were. "It was Cas," he said, when Sam kept looking at him. "Nightmare, I think. I'm gonna go..." He glanced back toward the corner, where Cas hadn't moved except to press his face down against his knees so he was all the way hidden.
If I can't see you, you can't see me. It would walk on by, pass you over. That was the rule with monsters, and somehow little kids all knew it, by some stupid lizard-brain reflex. Couldn't be evolution, because that shit didn't keep you alive.
"Gonna go and get him back to bed," Dean said to Sam. "You too, c'mon."
"You did," Sam said. "Before. Used to...keep me up." He was drifting off as he said it, each word softer and more melted than the last. Us't...k'mup. Sam closed his eyes. "Then it didn't."
D'nt, half into the pillow, and he went down again.
Dean got up and went and looked down at the sharp tight ball Cas had made of himself. He thought about just pushing the couch aside and opening up the space. Instead he crouched down, made himself smaller. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dark and he was up close, he could see the way Cas was shaking, almost vibrating really, fine tremors rippling all over him.
"Hey," Dean said. He kept his voice low, just above a whisper. "Hey, Cas, you're okay. You're okay. Just had a nightmare."
Cas squeezed himself somehow impossibly tighter, and for a moment Dean thought: This is it. Whatever he did up there, that's it for him, he's not coming back from this one. Maybe he hadn't. Wasn't like Dean had asked him any questions when he'd come to them. He hadn't even heard Cas's voice yet, not since--this. Hadn't heard his human voice. Just that screaming.
Dean really didn't feel like he was awake.
"Cas," he tried again, and this time Castiel lifted his head a little, just enough to look up at Dean. On instinct, Dean settled down out of the crouch and sat cross-legged, lost an inch or two and got them level. They watched each other for a minute; Dean kept his body easy, easy. Shoulders low, jaw loose.
"It hurt," Cas said, his voice rusted over. He started coughing, and it kept going until Dean realized he couldn't stop and ran to the sink outside the bathroom and filled a paper cup halfway with lukewarm water. Cas hadn't folded himself back up by the time Dean got back to him, and he wasn't shaking too hard to hold the cup and drink every last drop.
He hadn't seen Cas drink either, Dean realized. Sleep or eat or drink or even take a piss, though he guessed that followed logically from the rest. Not a single human bodily function for thirty-six hours plus--however long he'd spent getting to them, probably. Jesus Christ. Dean thought maybe Cas would have let himself die of dehydration, and he didn't know if "by accident" was worse than the alternative.
He got some more water and tried to make Cas drink it slow. Cas wouldn't, just tipped his head back and swallowed and panted when the cup was empty, thrust it at Dean again. Dean rolled his eyes and got more, just a little. After it was gone Cas pressed his face into the empty cup, like he could smell the ghost of the water he'd just swallowed. It was starting to crumple under his grip.
"Take it slow, okay?" Dean said. "You fucked up your body pretty good. You can have more in a few minutes."
When Castiel nodded he let out a hard breath, because he didn't know if he could stand to force the issue. Force Cas, grab him and hold him. That one arm, his left arm, was so fucked up, and most of the cuts and scratches had already closed over before they'd had a chance to clean them.
"You gotta let me take care of that in the morning, okay?" He gestured toward Cas's left arm. "And the other stuff. Your feet are probably shredded, huh?"
"I think so," Cas said. "They hurt a lot. I lost my shoes, I was running."
"Yeah?"
Cas nodded. "I had to run. There was--I'm not sure. It felt like so much, here--" He unfolded a little further and poked himself in the chest. "And I saw them all falling and burning and I felt--this body--" His face twisted as he looked down at himself, like he'd eaten something rotten but wasn't allowed to spit it out.
"Sure," Dean said agreeably, though part of him wanted to say something sharp to that sour-milk face. "That central nervous system can be a real bitch, huh?"
"I," Cas started, and promptly proved him right by bursting into tears.
"Whoa, hey--" Dean reached for him but stopped his hands a few inches short of touching. Castiel was crying, sobbing really, heaving choked breaths and rocking and staring at Dean with wide shocked eyes and a face like he'd just been slapped. He didn't hide his face again, or cover it with his hands, or even look down, like a person would do.
Christ, he didn't know anything. Dean shoved the couch aside just enough to squeeze past, ignoring the way Cas flinched when he did it. He crawled into the little dark space Castiel had made and pulled him into his arms, because there wasn't anything else to do, absolutely nothing at all.
"Sshhh, hey, come on," rubbing slow circles on Cas's back, the way he knew how because he always had, "ssshhh, baby, I got you, it's okay. It's okay." Cas's mouth moved silently against his shoulder. Tears were soaking through Dean's shirt; he could see the dark wet patch in his mind, tears and spit and some snot too, because the body was a bitch, a real bitch. "Gonna be okay," he told Cas, mumbled it into his hair. Realized he'd just lied out loud to him for the first time ever.
The shaking slowed, and soon it mostly stopped except the occasional shudder. Cas shifted around but settled himself again still inside the loop of Dean's arms, and Dean let him stay there. He closed his eyes. He was so tired. He thought maybe he could sleep for a month. Maybe a year.
"I'm sorry," Castiel said, some time later, and Dean was far too close to sleep to bother telling him to shut up.
*
so THAT was cheerful! :D? :D?
check back this time next year for possibly tens of thousands of words of unfinished SPN fic, although hopefully not? or at least not these current tens of thousands i'm working on right now. because they're all pretty great. also FYI, i'm still gonna post finished fic here and to AO3, but if you like SPN then this tag will get you any other fic-like/unfinished/otherwise not quite postable stuff i produce. which currently means some BDSM porn and two pieces of ridiculous future-fic fluff. one has a saber-toothed tiger in it! :D? :D?