Chapter Text
Sam calls the day before Dean’s birthday, and it’s as much of a surprise as it isn’t.
It’s Cas that he calls first, but Cas doesn’t think anything of it right away. They talk fairly often, and Sam knows Cas’s schedule, and Cas has just finished up a fingerpainting class for kids, so when the phone starts to ring Cas assumes it will just be another call like they usually have.
“I’m coming home,” Sam blurts out, before Cas can even say hello.
There’s a sharp silence between them for a moment.
Sam cracks first. Tentatively, he says, “Cas?”
“I’m here,” Cas answers. He sits down in one of the classroom chairs. “Hello, Sam. Did you just say you’re coming home?”
“Yeah,” Sam confirms. “We’re just about to cross the Texas-Oklahoma state line.”
Cas is still learning to pick up on a variety of different social cues, but he knows Sam Winchester better than he knows most men, and it’s easy enough to pick up on the anxiety in his tone. “So you’ll be back before Dean’s birthday tomorrow.”
For some reason, this makes Sam pause again.
“Ah,” Cas murmurs. He catches it just a moment too late. “You said ‘we’.”
It makes sense, then, why Sam would call him first instead of his brother to let them know he’s coming back, and it continues to make sense as Sam carefully and quietly explains that while, yes, he is coming home and sticking around, he isn’t coming back alone.
“I take it you found the answers you were looking for,” Cas guesses.
Sam’s laugh is small and disbelieving over the line. There’s a faint rumble of an engine in the background. “Yeah, uh. Got a little bit more than I bargained for with this one, but. I did. Find the answers. And now, uh. Now we can just. I mean, we can move on now, you know? I know who sprung me free. Michael and Adam are out. Lucifer’s gone for good.”
“And the nephilim…”
“He’s not even born yet, Cas,” Sam whispers harshly, before Cas even truly finishes his sentence. “He’s just. Christ, it’s a kid that barely even has fingers and toes yet. He doesn’t even have a name. Can’t we give him the benefit of the doubt?”
Cas hesitates. He doesn’t even know what he’s meant to say. “Sam—”
“I was six months old, Cas,” Sam interrupts. The fight is gone out of his voice now, and all that’s left is undeniably Sam, at his basic core. Kind. “I was six months old. And someone else, someone decided that I should be the bad guy, someone else chose me before I was even old enough to walk. I’m not letting it happen for this kid, alright? I’m not.”
“Sam,” Cas says again.
It’s a long moment before Sam says anything else. Neither of them truly know what to say, anyway. But then Sam sighs and says quietly, “I don’t know how to tell Dean. I don’t want to, I dunno. Let him down. I don’t want this to start another freaking fight. But. God, I have to, Cas, and I don’t even have to for me. It’s not for me. It’s for the kid. Can you understand that?”
If Cas strains his ears and listens hard enough, he can hear the thready beat of Claire’s music and the sound of the pottery wheel she’s been using since she came in with him, even though he can’t see her. He thinks about how she asked if she could come with him to the rec center for his classes today, and how she asked to drive, and how it still makes him nervous to see her behind the wheel even though she’s only a few months away from sixteen but he let her do it anyway.
“I can,” he says quietly. “And I can’t. It’s very likely I’ll hold my breath the whole time. But. You’re my friend, Sam, and I trust you. I’ll, uh… back your play, if you’re serious about this.”
The breath of relief Sam lets out is tangible enough Cas can practically hold it in his hands. “Thanks, man,” Sam mumbles. “I… seriously, thanks.”
“But if there’s ever a moment where it even seems like this might put Claire in danger—”
“No, yeah,” Sam interrupts. “I get it. You have to keep her safe. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
Cas lets out a measured breath. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”
“Cas, this won’t, uh,” Sam starts. He huffs quietly, frustrated. Cas wonders if Kelly Kline is asleep in the passenger seat next to him. If that’s why he whispers. If that’s why he feels safe enough to say any of this at all. “I mean. Dean’s birthday’s tomorrow. I’m not… ruining it, am I?”
“I can’t answer that,” Cas tells him, voice careful. “But. I do know he’ll be glad to hear you’re coming home.”
They hang up not long after that, Sam murmuring something about Kelly waking up and wanting to focus on the road, and Cas sits for a long while just staring at his cell phone and wondering what’s coming next for his family. Claire finds him there, when she finally finishes whatever project she’d started, and she pulls her headphones out when she sees the look on his face.
“What happened?” she asks, in the voice of someone far too young to know that a look can mean something bad.
“Sam’s coming home,” he tells her. His knees creak when he stands up, and he winces.
Claire just nods. “He’s bringing the kid, isn’t he?”
Quietly, he promises her, “I will make sure you’re safe, no matter what.”
“I know,” Claire says, though there’s still an uncertain look on her face. She glances out the window and bites the inside of her cheek. “I know you’ll try your best.”
And Cas—there’s nothing he can say to that. He just pulls her into a hug and kisses the top of her head, as though it answers or solves anything, and he holds on tight.
“Son of a rat bitch motherfucking bastard bitch—!”
The outburst is followed, alarmingly, by the sound of something heavy falling to the floor. Probably Dean’s hammer. Again. Cas pauses and glances up, giving Dean a chance to call him up if he needs help, but Dean just gets back to work tearing up the floorboards to the attic. Cas sighs.
“Don’t repeat those words,” he says mildly to Claire. She just snorts in reply.
“Should we be letting him through a tantrum like this? Like, should we check on him?” Claire asks. She leans forward when Cas dips the nail polish brush back into the bottle, wiggling her toes. “Sorry, you missed a little spot right there.”
Cas nudges Dean’s glasses back into place on the bridge of his nose and squints at the spot Claire points to. “Dean’s an adult, and he’s not having a tantrum. He’s just… processing. It’s better if we don’t, ah. Poke the bear, so to speak.”
“You think he’d be in a better mood since it’s his birthday,” Claire says, exasperated. She fidgets from her spot on the arm of the couch, almost kneeing Cas’s chin in the process of him painting her toenails. “Whoops, sorry. Anyway.”
“Tomorrow is his birthday. And, well. The circumstances are a bit different this year.”
Claire huffs. “Why, ‘cause Satan Jr. and his mom are gonna be our new roommates? Our lives are already so friggin’ weird, this is nothing new.”
“I just told you not to cuss,” Cas sighs.
Upstairs, something falls to the ground again, and Dean lets out another string of colorful expletives. Claire gestures up the stairs as though she’s proving a point. It’s startling, for a second, taking her in. She mimics so many of Dean’s mannerisms without even knowing it. With that snarky expression on her face and that Led Zeppelin shirt stolen from Dean’s laundry basket on her back and that expectant way she looks at him, like she knows she’s riling him up and enjoying it, Claire looks so startlingly similar to Dean that it knocks the breath right out of Cas’s lungs.
“Do you think he needs help?” Claire asks, curling in on herself again.
Cas pauses. There’s an instinctual urge in him to just agree, born of some desperate part inside of him that’s been beating against his ribcage and begging him to check on Dean. He could agree. He could insist that they do this together, that they finish the last of the attic renovation as a family. They’ve put so much of this house together already. Cas knows it could be an easy sell. But. There’s another part of him, a louder one that knows Dean almost frighteningly well, and it tells him that this is time Dean needs for himself.
“He’ll ask if he needs help,” Cas says finally.
Claire wrinkles her nose, disbelieving, but she lets the subject drop.
Dean doesn’t ask for help, but he comes down the stairs not long after Cas finishes painting Claire’s toenails. He takes the armful of old floorboards out the garage and dumps them, presumably, into the back of the truck. Cas is about to ask him if there’s more that needs to be thrown out when he feels Dean’s fingers running through his hair and tugging him up into a sweaty, salty kiss.
“God, get a room,” Claire groans.
“We have one,” Cas says mildly. He smiles up at Dean, dazed.
Dean winks back at him, still not pulling fully away. Cas searches his face, lingering on the tightness at the corners of Dean’s eyes and the way his mouth downturns once the room grows quiet again. He looks better, at least, than he did when he first found out. Cas hopes this means it will continue to get better.
“What time is Sammy getting in?” Dean asks.
“I believe they said around eight. Maybe a bit later if they had to stop.”
Dean just hums at that.
Dinner is a quiet affair, tense as they wait for Sam and Kelly without truly acknowledging it. Cas tries to hold on to Dean as much as he can. As though it might steady him. As though it might reassure him.
There’s nothing he can think of to say. Cas doesn’t know how to express the trepidation he feels, instinctual, ingrained in him since he was created out of dust and molded into an angel. Doesn’t know how to protect Claire from whatever they’re letting in their house. Doesn’t know how to reassure Dean that everything will be fine. Doesn’t know how to tell Sam that he believes him, he wants to believe this child will be good, even with every instinct telling him not to. Cas understood, long ago, that human emotions are larger than they appear and far more complicated than the labels that get slapped on the tin, but. It’s one thing to know that and another to experience it, all of it, at once.
But then Claire kisses the top of his head before she goes up to her room to work on homework, and Dean puts dinner away and fishes two sodas out of the fridge for them, and Cas picks a movie he knows they’ll both like and settles easily into Dean’s side, and it feels a little easier, at least for a moment.
It’s just after nine by the time they hear Sam’s car rumbling down the road, and Dean tenses underneath Cas’s hands. Cas lets him go and pauses the movie.
“Dean,” he murmurs. “It’s going to be alright.”
“Sure,” Dean agrees, halfhearted at best.
He meets his little brother at the door, because he always does, come rain or shine, and Castiel watches a few paces behind as Dean tugs Sam into a bone-crushing hug. It’s odd, Cas thinks, that someone as big as Sam can make himself seem so small.
“Heya, Sammy,” Dean says gruffly.
Sam pulls Cas into a tight hug, too, once Dean lets go of him and they all shuffle further into the house. Over Sam’s shoulder, Cas catches sight of Kelly Kline.
She raises her hand in a small, timid wave. “Hi.”
Cas reaches out to wrap his fingers around Dean’s wrist, habitual. But Dean just knocks their knuckles together and gives him a small smile. Then he turns on his heel and heads towards the kitchen, asking over his shoulder, “So. Anyone up for a good old-fashioned hot chocolate?”
Dean putters around their room for so long that Cas watches the minutes tick by on the alarm clock until it changes to midnight, January 24th. Dean’s still pacing, pretending he isn’t by periodically picking things off the ground and placing them somewhere else, and down the hall from them there’s a stranger sleeping in Cas’s old bed and downstairs there’s Sam sleeping on an air mattress and wondering what the hell he just got himself into. And there is all of this, under their roof, and with it there is Dean pacing on his birthday, no doubt trying to find a way to fix everything.
“Dean, come to bed,” Cas says quietly. Dean stops and looks at him. Cas could take his own beating heart right out of his chest and he still wouldn’t come close to wearing his emotions the way that Dean does. Something inside of him softens. “Please.”
If there was any fight in Dean, it’s knocked out of him with that one word. His shoulders sag, cut free, and he crawls into their bed, curling himself around Cas. “Sorry I acted like such a dick today.”
Cas shrugs. “You weren’t a dick to me. You weren’t a dick to Claire. You took out your frustrations on the house, making it safer for Claire. As far as your behavior goes, I have seen worse.”
“Shut up,” Dean mutters. He ducks his head into Cas’s neck and breathes in. “Smartass.”
“It’s after midnight, you know,” Cas says, against the shell of Dean’s ear. Pressed tightly to one another. Not close enough. “Happy Birthday.”
Dean doesn’t say anything at that, just makes a noise at the back of his throat and presses his lips to the hollow of Cas’s neck. Cas reaches up and brushes his knuckle against Dean’s cheek. He hasn’t shaved in a few days. Cas goes back and forth between loving it and hating it. He thinks he’ll spend the rest of his life going back and forth with it too.
Dean reaches up and catches Cas’s wrist before he can pull away. Gently, he kisses the scarred skin atop Cas’s knuckles. Cuts put there by so many different fights that all of them have started to blur together. Dean stitched up his knuckles, once. His kiss sends the same thrill down Cas’s spine.
“C’mere,” Dean whispers, and he lets go of Cas’s wrist so he can pull Cas closer and kiss him for real.
Cas hums, melting into it. Dean’s hair is getting longer, just enough that it’s not such a struggle for Cas to run his fingers through the ones at the back of Dean’s neck. Just enough that if he tightens his grip, he can angle closer and closer and closer. Dean’s mouth opens with a quiet, pleased sound that Cas can taste on his own lips.
And Dean likes a filthy kiss, but he loves it if he’s not the one who started it, and Cas learned months ago just how much it takes to unravel Dean in whatever way he can find. Cas shifts them just enough, until Dean is flat on his back and sighing when Cas settles in on top of him, pinning him to the mattress between his knees. Dean sucks Cas’s tongue into his mouth at the same time that Cas scrapes his fingernails against the back of Dean’s neck, sending thrills through the both of them. Underneath him, Dean writhes as though he’s trying to find a way to pull Cas, impossibly, even closer.
There are few things in Cas’s life that have even come close to comparing to moments like this. Castiel has lived a long existence, so much of it that he’d never be able to remember it all even if he started writing it down today; and though most of it shined, none of it was as bright as the beacon that led Cas to Dean’s soul that very first time in hell. Hardly any of it compares to this.
At the same time that Dean’s hands slide into the back pockets of Cas’s pajamas, Cas giddily thinks that, like Icarus, he was helpless the moment he caught sight of the sun, flying closer not knowing the risks or choosing not to care. Like Icarus, Cas fell. In every way imaginable.
“What are you laughin’ at?” Dean murmurs, feigning affront, but hardly breaking the kiss to ask his question. Cas has lost count of how many times they’ve kissed like this. Lazy then heated then laughing and always caught up in the moment.
He kisses Dean again instead of answering right away. Decides that licking into Dean’s mouth and running his tongue against the backs of Dean’s teeth is more important than answering, because what would he say, anyway? You doomed me, Dean Winchester, before you even knew I existed at all. You were it, the first crack in the chassis, the first one that mattered, and where you grew through the breaks made it impossible for them to ever change me again. You doomed me, Dean, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I had wax for wings or not. I would have plucked them off and thrown them into the flame for you, anyway.
“I love you,” Cas murmurs, as good a place as any, against the hollow of Dean’s throat. It’s an intoxicating sight, the expanse of it; drawn out by the way Dean throws his head back against the pillows on their bed. Cas kisses the spot where he can feel Dean’s heart beating the strongest. “In more ways than I even thought possible. In every breath of air that passes through my very human lungs. In every painful skip of my heart. In every aching bone, in every passing thought, I love you. I love you.”
“Charmer,” Dean gasps out. His hands are still in Cas’s pockets.
Cas moves to another spot and he kisses there, too. Dean’s breath hitches underneath him. It’s another testament to how miraculous Dean is at all; that Cas can kiss these spaces he’s kissed a hundred times before and still get this response. “And just where do you think I learned it from?”
Dean tucks their heads together, so Cas can feel Dean’s grin against his cheek. “Was it me? The answer better be me.”
“Who else would I kiss like this?” Cas asks, a challenge and a promise, and he tugs Dean back up to prove it. He rests the palm of his free hand against Dean’s collarbone. Above his tattoo. Close, again, to his heartbeat, Cas’s favorite place to be. “Who else would I love like you? Everything I have ever done, everything that has ever meant anything, has been done because of you. For you. With you.”
“Cas,” Dean breathes.
“Of course the answer is you, Dean,” Cas says reverently, consecrating the space around them. When a small tear falls from the corner of Dean’s eye, Cas catches it with his thumb and brushes it away. “It’s always been you.”
Dean kisses him again. And again. And again.
They’re up before the sun rises, like they always are. Half tangled in the sheets, breathing one another in. Dean stretches out on his stomach and Cas drapes himself across the broad expanse of Dean’s bare back. His skin is warm to the touch. Idly, Cas traces Enochian sigils against the skin right below Dean’s ribcage, counting each breath that Dean takes. It seems like another lifetime ago that Cas branded these same ribs, with different Enochian sigils.
Cas presses his lips to Dean’s shoulderblade. Quietly, he asks, “What are you thinking?”
It’s a question they ask one another quite often these days.
“I was just thinkin’ that curtain rod is crooked, and we gotta fix it.”
Cas pinches him.
“Fuck, ouch,” Dean whines. He sighs, and Cas curls closer into him. “Nah, I just. I was thinking about.”
“Sam,” Cas guesses.
Dean breathes carefully. In, and out. “Yeah. I mean. I’m so friggin’ thrilled that he’s back, you know? And it seems like, for good, which. It’s good. Think both of us deserve a chance to be out of that life, and. Hell, you know I want him here. But. He’s got, just, so much blind faith in this chick. Kelly. And since she thinks her baby’s good, Sam says that’s good enough and that he thinks so, too. It scares me, you know? Kid’s naive. I mean. He isn’t, he’s. Christ, he’s gone through more than even I have, but. He’s still… he’s still just my pain in the ass little brother, right? So what if he’s wrong about this?”
Steadily, Cas shifts so that he can wrap an around around Dean, keeping them close, tangling their legs together. These days it’s hard to tell who the touch is more comforting for. Cas thinks it’d be fine if it was both of them. He presses a kiss to the tight muscle of Dean’s shoulder. “Then we deal with it when that time comes. We always do.”
“But we’re supposed to be out of the life, Cas,” Dean says. “But Sam just brought it home. And, what, now we’re just gonna raise the kid? Hope that we’re better parents than our dads were so he doesn’t grow up wanting to destroy the world?”
“He’ll just be a baby,” Cas murmurs. “A powerful one, sure, but. Sam was just a baby, too, when his path was decided for him. Can’t we give this child the benefit of the doubt? A chance, at least, to make his own choices?”
Dean shakes his head. Still, he reaches up and covers Cas’s hand with his own, twining their fingers together. “The whole thing just scares me. I don’t know how to protect you guys. What if something happens to Sam, or to Claire, or to you?”
“Nothing will happen to us,” Cas promises. He ducks his face into Dean’s shoulder to try and mask his grin. “Have some faith.”
It gets the intended reaction. Dean snorts around a laugh and mutters, “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“I’ve been practicing my humor,” Cas tells him, very seriously.
“You’re such a dork,” Dean murmurs. He shifts in Cas’s arms until they’re facing one another, pulling him close. Cas can just barely make out the details of Dean’s face in the moonlight. Softly, Dean reaches up and brushes his thumb along Cas’s temple. “Hey, how’s the head? Any angel radio today?”
“Some whisperings,” Cas admits. “Most about the demon attack against Sam and Kelly last night. It doesn’t seem like they know exactly what happened, so it’s likely that they don’t know Sam is bringing Kelly here.”
Dean nods slowly. “I guess that’s a good thing. Last thing we need is Heaven’s Mightiest Dickbags in Bennett. At least they still can’t hear you.”
“That, or they aren’t listening.”
“Do you want them to?”
At that, Cas comes up short. Even in the pale light he’d be able to recognize the anxiety hiding in the corners of Dean’s expression. No matter who it is, angels are a highly sensitive topic to those who live under this roof. Carefully, Cas says, “If you’re asking me if I wish I were still an angel, then no. I fear what would await me upon my return to Heaven is a fate that I’d rather not know. And I don’t believe I could willingly walk away from this life. From Claire. From you.”
Dean nods, still quiet. Cas feels the deep breath he takes, rather than hearing it. Dean mumbles, “I’m sensing a but here.”
“But,” Cas agrees, voice just as quiet. This room has felt holy, has felt sinful, has felt safe, but it has never felt like a confessional. Never like this. “If we could communicate with them, it might… Maybe it would make a few things easier. That’s all.”
“You still want to believe they would actually help us,” Dean scoffs.
“It’s how I was created,” Cas says flatly. “It’s how I was trained. And I fought alongside them for eons. I know what they’ve done to us, Dean, but they were still my brothers and sisters.”
Dean pulls him even closer. His voice is apologetic as he says, “I know, m’sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just. I don’t think they’re gonna be the good guys you want them to be in this case, sweetheart. This is gonna be a fight we gotta duke out all on our own.”
“I know,” Cas whispers. He buries his face into the crook of Dean’s neck. “It’s going to be alright, though. I truly believe that.”
“I know you do,” Dean sighs. He falls asleep again, curled into Cas and with his lips brushing against Cas’s temple. Cas just holds him where they are. Unwilling or afraid to let go. He can cling to that, if nothing else. Not letting go of Dean.
He doesn’t fall back asleep, but he stays there while Dean dozes, looking over Dean’s shoulder and out their bedroom window. Watching the sun as it begins to rise.