Work Text:
You said Amara brought Mary back because she wanted to give you what you needed most. And that that might be true, but it's beginning to sound like you aren't what Mary needs at all.
It's the coldest day on Kansas records when everything goes to shit.
At least, that's when Dean realizes that it's all gone to shit. It had actually gone to shit sometime before today, but he just hasn’t noticed until now. And he fully admits that it could just be the nut-freezing cold that’s making everything seem worse; he’s overreacting and blowing it all out of proportion, but something that runs deeper than logic is telling him that something is catastrophically wrong. Somewhere in between the chilly air stealing his breath away and him noticing that the snow beneath his boots was squeaking instead of crunching, it hits him. Icy fingers wind their way around something in his gut, squeezing out gallons of dread and regret.
Dean only partially understands why he's standing outside in the cold without a coat. He'd wandered out there hoping for a breath of fresh air after yet another crappy ending to a crappy phone call, and now he’s still standing there, rooted to the spot, ages after the line has gone dead.
Christ. He really is a thirteen year old girl.
Cas offered absolutely nothing in terms of support or advice when it came to Mary up and leaving. Zero. The conversation ended and the biggest thing sticking with Dean is that 'everything has gone to shit' feeling. His mom left, and Cas -
Everyone left, again, and Dean is just left with something terrible twisting up inside him. A bunch of somethings twisting up, really – it's a whole metric shitload of somethings that he doesn't want to put any actual labels on. He feels like he's lost a chance that he was one step away from having, only to have it disintegrate when it was finally within his reach. It's like being one digit away from winning big at the state lottery, but this is deeper.
Dean sighs and tilts his face up towards the sky, and an unusually clear sky of stars starts to give him vertigo. That’s somewhat fitting, since his insides feel like they’ve been churned up in a blender.
With Mom, he's taking it personally even though he knows he shouldn't. And Cas – he knows he shouldn't take that personally, either. He and Cas have connected and commiserated for years over shitty, absent father issues, and he shouldn't expect the same kind of understanding from Cas when it comes to his mom.
Cas doesn't have a mother.
And really, he literally has not ever had a mother, and that’s because he wasn’t actually born. Cas was freaking made from star particles or cosmic ether or something equally as mind-blowing. Dean knows that Cas couldn't possibly understand the feeling of having a mom and losing a mom when you were young enough to have still been figuring out how to not wet the bed anymore, and then getting that mom back when you're practically on the verge of getting an AARP card on the hunter scale of old age.
So now Dean's repeatedly telling himself that he's imagining things, but his thoughts keep cycling back to a conversation with Cas making him feel worse about a situation instead of better. Okay, yeah – it's not like that's never happened before, but considering the most recent time it had happened it turned out that Lucifer was the one behind Cas's wheel, Dean supposes his own reaction isn't totally unwarranted.
Still, Dean's trying to tell himself he's only thinking all this because the temperature is so low that he thinks his boogers might be freezing in his face. Dean had just thrown a knot of weird emotions at Cas and had not gotten the usual quiet understanding in return.
Instead, Dean came out of the conversation with Cas feeling like he’d just tried nailing jello to a tree.
But what was really getting to Dean was that Cas hadn't seemed like Cas.
Dean could admit that Cas could sometimes be a bit aloof, which was putting it mildly. But tonight, Cas had almost seemed cold. Like he not only didn't care, but also like he was almost mocking Dean for caring. Like he -
“Squirrel, you're going to catch your death out here.”
Dean barely suppresses a groan.
If Dean starts a list of 'things he doesn't want to deal with right now,' a surprise visit from his favorite demon is definitely going to be near the top.
* * *
“So what's this about, Crowley?”
Crowley simply raises an eyebrow in response and Dean feels his eyes roll upwards. Of course Crowley wouldn't come out of the gate with a straightforward answer.
Dean pulls out the overly priced single malt scotch, setting it and an empty Glencairn glass on the table. “Let's try that again. What's this about, dick?”
Naturally, the dick smirks as he pulls out another glass and pours whiskey into each, and Dean thanks whoever the hell is listening that Crowley has again abstained from commenting that Dean not only now keeps Crowley's favorite whiskey stocked, but also keeps it in a freaking crystal decanter.
It may or may not have been the same drink that resulted in a two-hour long debate between Crowley and Dean over how to properly spell “whiskey.” Even so, it's not like Dean's ever going to actually admit out loud that it's now his favorite bourbon, too.
Besides, he's pretty sure Crowley knows.
Crowley holds the the second glass out to Dean, sighing when Dean doesn't reach out for it right away. “I just found you standing outside in sub-zero temperatures. Without a coat, might I add,” he says. “This is the oldest trick in the book to warm you up. Also, you may need this for more than one reason.”
Dean takes the glass but doesn't drink, his annoyance level rising to just barely below a manageable level.
Crowley finally deigns to speak after taking one delicate sip from his own glass. “It's about your angel.”
There are times when Dean really hates Crowley's flair for the dramatic. Dean will never admit in a million years that he's got a touch of the same flair and that might be a small part of why they still actually get along sometimes, but at least Dean's drama tends to involve fire. Pyrotechnics always trumps dramatic pauses. “C'mon, man,” Dean says, taking a much bigger sip than Crowley had just taken, and damn it – it instantly helped warm up his insides. Dean adds 'Crowley being right' to his list. “I'm not in the mood for this. What about Cas?”
“Ah, yes – you would be in a mood,” Crowley starts, and now Dean really is one wrong word away from punching Crowley in the teeth. “I heard about your mum.”
Dean bristles at the thought that Cas had been telling Crowley his private business, but brushes it off. He supposes they had to talk about something while they were on the road. “You're seriously about to get a fist to the face. We're not talking about my mom.”
“I'm just saying that I've been through this already – what with mothers seemingly rising from the dead and then wanting nothing to do with you -”
“Crowley.” Dean's voice is low and dangerous, and Crowley recognizes it.
Crowley raises his glass. “Right. I'm here about your angel,” he says again. “And some possible side effects of the events of last year.”
Whatever warmth Dean has gained from the whiskey is instantly gone.
* * *
“So, let me get this straight” Sam starts, and he's got that look on his face that makes Dean add 'shitty little brother comments' to the quickly growing list of things he doesn't want to deal with right now, but Dean knows he's going to have to suck it up if he's getting any help. “You're worried about Cas… because he was mean to your drinking buddy.”
No matter what had transpired while Dean was walking on the demon side with Crowley, drinking 'buddy' was just a little too generous. “He's more like a drinking acquaintance ,” Dean says, knowing that isn’t quite right, either. “Not the point, though.”
“Dean, Cas has never really been on good terms with Crowley, even when they're working together,” Sam says, and the rationality of it all actually kind of pisses Dean off because of course Sam is right. “Honestly, I'm kinda surprised Cas hasn't killed Crowley yet.”
“Yeah, but according to Crowley, Cas was actually making fun of him,” Dean says, rushing to continue at the look on Sam's face. “Like, really making fun of him.” Dean is painfully aware of how stupid this all sounds, but Cas digging into Crowley over Rowena , of all things, wasn't something Cas did. “Like, worse than when you or I make fun of him. And that just doesn't sound like Cas.” He sighs. “Cas can definitely be a complete dick sometimes, but he's never... cruel.”
Sam finally closes his laptop, at least giving Dean the appearance that he had his undivided attention. “So what are you thinking?”
“I… I dunno, man,” Dean says, taking the seat across from Sam. “It's just… have two angels ever shared a vessel before? What if something… what if something went wrong?”
Sam's eyebrows arch upward, disappearing behind his way-too-long hair. “You think Lucifer has something to do with this?”
“Well, that's kinda what Crowley was saying,” Dean says. The thought that Lucifer and Cas actually have the exact same Daddy and Mommy issues briefly crosses his mind, and Dean pushes it aside. “Crowley spent way more time around Lucifer while he was in Cas's body than we did, and Crowley did say that...”
“What?”
“He said he sounded more like Lucifer than Cas. Like, exactly like Lucifer.”
And finally, Sam is looking appropriately alarmed. “You could have started there, you know,” Sam says quietly as he leans back in his chair.
“So?” Dean says. “What d'ya think? I mean, Lucifer's definitely out of Cas, but what if -”
Sam pushes back from the table. “Gimme two minutes,” he says as he heads towards the shelves, seemingly looking for something specific.
And sure enough, two minutes later, a thick tome is slammed open in front of Dean on the table. “How's your Enochian?” Sam asks.
“Rusty,” Dean responds, even though it's sharper than ever with the endless angelic research he did in the last year, but Sam doesn't need to know that. “What's this?”
Sam points at a line.
“'And the departed shall remain, and the remains shall be the departed,'” Dean reads, not missing a beat. Sam raises an eyebrow and gives Dean a look that clearly tells Dean that Sam doesn't believe Dean's Enochian is rusty at all, but thankfully Sam doesn't comment. “So… what the hell does that mean?” Dean asks.
“Cas is actually the one who found this after… after Gadreel,” Sam says, and Dean winces, shoving the rising feelings of regret and sorrow back down as far as he could. He has enough crap making him feel like shit right now; no use in piling more on. He nods at Sam to continue.
“It means that when an angel leaves a vessel, they leave a part of themselves behind,” Sam says, and Dean again feels like the cold from outside has seeped into his core.
“So… a part of Lucifer really is inside Cas?” Dean's fingers twitch and he’s suddenly overcome with the need to do something even if it’s totally useless, like just breaking things, or locking himself in his room to drink for the next three days.
“Maybe?” Sam says. “Cas says it was grace with Gadreel, but it was harmless. But Lucifer...”
“Lucifer isn't a normal angel - he's an archangel,” Dean responds. A realization suddenly hits Dean. “Does… does this mean you have a piece of Lucifer, too?”
The look on Sam's face tells Dean that the thought has clearly occurred to him before and knowing Sam, it had probably kept Sam awake at night for hours. “I actually don't think so. Or if there was a piece, it's long gone.”
“Right,” Dean says. “But Cas...”
“Lucifer is an archangel, and he was possessing another angel,” Sam says. “If Lucifer left behind grace -”
“It's not like useless grace left behind in a human vessel,” Dean says, the threads starting to weave together in his mind. “Because Cas can actually use grace.”
“Right. His natural state is to have grace,” Sam says.
It's really starting to sound like Crowley's hunch might actually have some meat to it, which Dean doesn't like at all. He can't just ignore it and hope that both he and Crowley are just being overly sensitive about their mothers, and that's certainly a thought that Dean never expected to have in his entire life. “And Cas's grace has pretty much been torn to shreds over the last couple of years,” he says, closing his eyes and resting his head on his hand.
Sam doesn't really need to finish the train of thought they're on, but it's probably instincts and habit that make him follow it to the end. “Cas could have just started using that grace without even realizing it,” he says. “Or… absorbed it and -”
“Sam,” Dean interrupts him. He really, really needs Sam to stop talking right now , because it's starting to seem like there really is something dangerously wrong with Cas. Or at least could be wrong with Cas.
And thank goodness for little brothers that know when to not be shitty, because Sam shuts up and sits back down across from Dean. There is blessed silence for a solid minute.
“Dean.”
“Sam -”
“No, you need to listen to me,” Sam says, and this is a flavor of little brother that's different from shitty or understanding, but one that Dean is still familiar with, and it's one he almost always hates - this is perceptive little brother. This is the one that takes a fist to Sam's face in order to make him stop, but even that's only going to delay the inevitable. “We could be totally off base here. Cas could just be in a crappy mood. He feels like he's responsible for Lucifer and he's gotta work with Crowley. That can't be a picnic for him.”
Dean sighs and finally meets Sam's eyes. “It's not just that,” he says.
“Did… did he say something to you, too?”
Dean doesn't give Sam anything indicating an answer, but of course Sam knows exactly what that means and he lets out an overly dramatic, exasperated sigh. “Dean, look - this is all coming across as really... abstract because I have no idea what Cas has actually been saying. I don't know what he said to Crowley and I don't know what he's said to you. And I haven't talked to Cas at all since he left,” Sam says. “And yeah – you might know Cas better than anyone, but I definitely know Lucifer better than you.”
Okay, yeah. Sam probably has a point there. That doesn’t mean Dean has to admit it.
“So…” Sam continues. “What did he say?”
Dean sighs. “It's not exactly what he's saying,” he says. “It's how he's saying it. Crowley said he was… sarcastic. Like, appropriately sarcastic.”
“Are you seriously worried about Cas because he’s finally figured out sarcasm?” Sam is definitely veering back into ‘shitty little brother’ territory.
“He was cruel, Sam.” Dean knows he’s repeating himself, but he doesn’t know how to make Sam understand that Cas isn’t cruel.
“Uh, still have no clue -”
“Okay.” Dean gets up and refills his whiskey. “I was talking to him about Mom.” Dean feels like he should brace himself for some bitching because Sam has been trying to get Dean to talk about Mom for months, and then he goes and talks to Cas instead.
Thankfully, Sam doesn't say a word. Instead he just wears an expression that Dean can't read, and he nods at Dean to continue.
“He said -” Dean cuts himself off. He doesn't do this – ever - but his worry for Cas is starting to trump his need to keep certain things about Cas buried. “He said that I wasn't what Mom needed.”
He doesn’t mention the rest of what he’s thinking - that he’s pretty sure that Dean isn’t needed by Cas, either. He’s got to keep some of it close to the chest, after all.
“Dean -”
“I know, Sam,” Dean says, absently waving a hand. “He's right. That's the truth. Mom made that pretty damn clear when she left.” He downs the rest of his whiskey in a gulp. “Like I said, though – it was how he said it.” Cas's voice, with an unrecognizable jeering tone, rings in his mind, and he stares absently into the empty glass, watching a stray drop of liquid slide down the side to the bottom. “It just didn't sound like Cas.”
Sam makes a noise that's somewhere between a sigh and a cough. “Dean, I'm not gonna say that you're… reading too much into this. You kinda -” Sam stops, the side of his mouth quirking upward just slightly. “You kinda always read too much into Cas, but you're also almost always right.” Dean glances up in surprise, but braces himself for that placating, damn overly understanding little brother. “You've always known when something is up with him, like, weeks before we figured out you were right. Like… after purgatory, and when he was possessed by Lucifer. You could tell something was wrong.”
There's a lot about Cas that Dean doesn't tell Sam, but Dean also knows that he doesn't need to say a damn word, because Sam just gets it.
Dean shrugs and gets up to refill his glass. He holds the bottle up in a silent offer to Sam, but Sam shakes his head and continues.
“This time, though? I kinda… I kinda think...”
“What?”
“I think you should just… talk to him.”
Dean stares at Sam because that's just a dumb fucking idea, and that's just not like his brother. Everyone's acting strange these days. “So you think I should just straight up ask Cas if he thinks he has a piece of frigging Lucifer floating around inside his head? Oh, yeah, that's… smart. Screw caution, right?”
He turns away from his brother, draining his glass in one go. He can't help but think of Cas, trapped in a ring of fire and confirming that yeah, he had been lying to them, spying on them, and working with Crowley behind their backs. Or the other time when Cas wasn't Cas, back in Lucifer's crypt, and his fists rained down on Dean's face at the command of some angelic bitch he couldn't see.
Every time he asks Cas if reigning suspicions have any weight, Dean winds up being proven right in the most painful ways possible. It doesn't exactly make him eager to have to do it again.
“Dean, if it's true...” Sam says, standing up and moving towards Dean and his whiskey. “Even with a tiny piece, Cas is still Cas, right? But we should find out as soon as possible. Plus... if there is something to this, Cas might not even know. If there really is a piece of Lucifer in him, and it really is doing something to him, shouldn't we tackle it sooner rather than later? Before it really screws with him?” Sam fills up his own glass. “Besides that...” He takes a deep swallow.
Dean grabs the whiskey back and fills his glass again, getting the feeling that Sam is about to say something else that'll piss Dean off.
“I just had to watch you look for a way to get him back for months,” Sam says. “For months, Dean,” he continues when Dean makes a noise to interrupt him. “You were barely sleeping, hardly eating. All I usually saw was the top of your head because your nose was always stuck in a book looking for something to help him.” He sighs. “Look, we just got him back. Let's make sure you keep him this time, okay?”
Dean downs the entire glass again at Sam’s admittedly rare stupidity. Cas isn’t Dean’s to keep . And if there is really is a piece of Lucifer riding on Cas’s coattails, talking to him is the most moronic plan Sam has ever come up with.
“Dean.”
Sam goes ignored as Dean again fills up. Dean knows this needs to be one of his last glasses, or he’s going to be a bear in the morning.
“C’mon, Dean,” Sam insists.
“What, Sam?” Dean finally turns to meet Sam’s gaze, and - damn , that’s the scariest look Sam has had on his face in years.
“There’s never going to be a right time, Dean.”
Dean’s first instinct is to play it like he’s completely ignorant of what Sam is implying, but he knows that would just turn into a pointless, circular argument. “Sam, please just… just shut up.”
“No, I won’t,” Sam says, and now he’s gone well beyond ‘shitty little brother’ and right onto lighting all of Dean’s unspoken boundaries on fire. “I apparently need to be the one to say it, because somebody has to. I’ve been watching this crap for years, and - ”
“Sam!” Dean snaps. “Shut -”
“No,” Sam says again. “I’m tired of watching you -”
“ - up!”
“No, I won’t shut up, because you do enough of that yourself!” Sam abruptly stands up, slamming the book shut. “I’m not sure if you even know what I’m trying to tell you. You need to admit it someday, Dean. You are in -”
“Sammy, I am one second away from demolishing your entire face,” Dean says. “Would you please stop talking for one goddamn fucking minute?”
Sam evidently knows his brother well enough to follow that instruction, but Dean doesn’t have a doubt in his mind that he’s only got about ten seconds to say something that would make the silence permanent.
Dean lets his eyes slip closed. “Believe it or not, Sam, I know exactly what you’re trying to tell me, and I’m gonna tell you right now - just don’t.” Dean opens his eyes and peeks over at Sam, making sure that Sam isn’t going to interrupt him again.
But of course he is. “Dean, at some point it needs to be said out loud -”
“I know that!” Dean feels like he’s about to hurl the glass he has in his hand, so he sets it down and takes a breath. “I know it needs to be said out loud. But the first time it’s actually said, it’s gonna be me.” His voice is shaking, and he hates it, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. He steadies himself as best he can before daring to look Sam in the eye. “It’s gonna be me, saying it to him. To Cas. Got it?”
Sam’s ‘shitty little brother’ expression freaking melts into the stupid puppy dog eyes.
Dean promises himself that when the day is over he’s locking himself in his room with Jim Beam, some pretzels, and a copy of Jackie Brown.
* * *
Dean doesn't even feel the usual vindication he gets whenever he's right. Calling Cas was a monumentally stupid idea, after all. Dean – One. Sam - Zero.
Because now Cas is standing right in front of him, even though not even two minutes ago he'd just told Dean he was over 700 hundred miles away. Dean hasn't really figured out if he misses Cas unexpectedly popping in on him or not, but regardless, last he checked, Cas's wings were still broken.
“What the fuck, Cas?” Dean hasn't even had a chance to hang up, but the call has been dropped and Cas is two feet away from him, slipping his phone into the pocket of his trenchcoat.
This was not the plan. The plan was that Dean would call Cas and get him to start heading back to the bunker. Then, in a day or two or however long it took Cas to get back, Dean would talk to him, and Sam would wait in the other room with a banishing sigil ready in case the Lucifer-piece theory turned out to be right and was affecting Cas more than Sam thought.
And so Dean went outside again, ignoring the freezing cold, and called Cas.
But that well-laid plan flies right out the window when Cas decides to use the phone call to reveal that he’s been pretending to be weaker than he actually is.
Cas could fly again.
Unfazed by the bitingly cold air around him, Cas peers up into the sky, the first flakes of the next round of snow falling around him, and with the moonlight reflecting off of the snow and ice around them he almost seems to glow, and Dean is forcefully reminded of just how inhuman Cas is.
“I thought it would be best to have this conversation face to face,” Cas says. “Dean, why are you outside in this weather?”
“Why are you flying?” Dean shot back. “Aren’t your wings broken?” Normally, Dean wouldn’t ever say something like that to Cas, but this wasn’t exactly a normal situation.
Of course, nothing having to do with them was ever really normal.
Cas sighs. “Can we go inside?” And there's that tone – that unfamiliar, disdainful inflection – that just sounds so utterly like not Cas. He sounds like he's talking down to Dean. A chill runs through him, and Dean knows it's not due to the temperature.
“No!” Dean said. That sense of loss, the worry, and the nagging pit in his stomach all comes flooding back. Well, it never really disappeared to begin with, but now Dean honestly feels like throwing up his bourbon all over Cas’s shoes.
And the jerk would deserve it, too.
Were they ever going to catch a break?
It had been years – years – since Dean was Dean and Cas was Cas. It had been pretty much since before the Leviathans, and even before that, Cas had been busy betraying them and double-crossing Crowley, back when Crowley was still an actual evil asshole. So really, it had been since the original apocalypse – since the last time Lucifer was an actual, real, walking-the-earth threat.
But after God and Amara, Dean thought they'd finally found even ground. He thought that they'd finally gotten a chance to breathe, and to figure each other out. It was supposed to be their year. The season of Dean and Cas. He thought they would -
Dean doesn't know what he’d thought. He's currently shoving it all back down as deep as he can, because apparently whatever chance he'd been thinking they had was getting crushed by the fact that Cas had a piece of frigging Lucifer inside him, and now he was flying again and hadn't said a damn word.
So Dean's gut was right. Everything has all gone to shit. Again.
“Dean.” Cas is reaching towards him, and Dean takes a step back but Cas is faster. A hand lands on his shoulder and he blinks, and suddenly Dean is out of the wind and the snow. They're… well, they're somewhere else. A cabin, or something, with a crackling fire, an ugly rug, a recliner, and a love seat.
How fucking romantic.
It's a shock to the system, and his gut still feels cold.
“You're concerned,” Cas says, and Dean is thankful that Cas sounds like himself, at least for now. “You don't need to be.”
Dean let out a bitter laugh. “I'd say I do.”
“Why?”
And that sounds like Cas, too, reminding Dean of all the times that Cas has asked Dean 'why' humans do something or another.
“'Cuz...” Dean sighs and flops down in the recliner. Maybe he's overreacting. Maybe there's nothing wrong at all. He feels like a yo-yo, manic feelings jerking him from depressed to elated in the blink of an eye. He rubs a hand over his face, wondering where to start. “How'd your wings get fixed?”
Cas sighs and takes off his coat, draping it over the back of the love seat before sitting down across from Dean. “They're not… fixed.”
Dean bites back a retort that had at least three good swear words, knowing it wouldn't accomplish anything. “Then how'd you get from the middle of Bumfuck, Kentucky to Lebanon in two seconds flat?” He finally looks up to look at Cas head on, and holy crap if they get through this in one piece and are still... friends, Dean really hopes he takes that stupid coat off more often.
“I can… heal them,” Cas says. “Temporarily, anyway. I can… fill in the cracks.”
Dean doesn't like how much Cas is avoiding giving him direct answers, so he decides to throw direct questions at Cas, instead. “Are you healing them with Lucifer's grace?”
Cas's eyes widen. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” Dean says, sneering. That’s all the confirmation he needs, and Dean firmly places ‘Cas being screwed up again’ up at the very top of his list of shit he doesn’t want anything to do with.
“I...” Cas slouches back in his seat and rests his head in a hand, looking almost bored, and this entire thing is just confusing the hell out of Dean. He can't figure out if he likes this more relaxed, less stick-in-the-mud Cas, or if he should be missing the Cas he's always known and – and Dean is so not finishing that thought.
“Crowley stopped by,” Dean finally says.
Something flickers across Cas's face. “He is… annoying. I wish I didn't need his assistance, but he has access to information and places that I, unfortunately, need.” He lets out an exasperated sigh. “I wish I could keep him tied up and gagged until he's actually useful.”
Dean doesn't disagree with that assessment, but now Cas is back to not sounding like Cas again. The words sounded like Cas, but the way he was saying them… “Cas, he and I… we're both...”
Cas is starting to frown at Dean's words, and Dean gets it. Crowley is not exactly an approachable topic between Dean and Cas, for a whole boatload of sticky reasons.
“We're both getting this feeling that you're not… you're not acting like yourself.”
“I know.”
Whatever response Dean had been expecting, however he'd been expecting this conversation to go – this isn't it.
“I do have a piece of Lucifer's grace,” Cas says. “It's small – minuscule, really, but it's there, left behind when Amara pulled him out of my body. It's so small that I didn't even realize it was there at first. I only noticed it when Crowley left… to see you , I assume.” Cas meets Dean's gaze, and there's something cold in Cas's eyes that Dean doesn't recognize. “He left, and I no longer wanted to...” He sighs again, leaning forward and resting his head in his hands. “It's inside me, and it's... latching on to me. Grace calls to grace, even when that grace belongs to a different angel.”
Despite that warmth from the fire, Dean feels a chill run through him. “And you're...”
“It's… affecting me,” Cas admits. “Had I been human – well, truthfully, I would have been dead, considering the state that Lucifer leaves his vessels in. But if I'd been human, the tiny piece of grace wouldn't have done anything to me.”
So he and Sam were right on the money, but this is one situation where that doesn't make Dean feel any better. “But it's an angel's grace, so you're...”
“It's made me feel strange. I can't tell if it's because it's Lucifer, or if it's just an archangel's grace in general, but I feel… stronger. I don’t know if I actually am, or if I just feel like it,” Cas says. He drops his gaze away from Dean's, unable to meet his eyes. “I look at Crowley and I want to… to crush him. And at the same time I'm wondering if I'm just giving Crowley a hard time because it seems like he's just emulating… you.”
“What?” Dean asks, confused.
Cas shakes his head. “I'm not entirely sure. His sudden care for Rowena just seems strange for him, especially with all the time they've spent feuding. But it reminds me… of you. It seems like Crowley is trying to become you.”
Well, that's disturbing.
“And yet, all these years, haven't I been doing the exact same thing?”
“What?” Dean asks again.
“Or, not becoming you. But... changing myself, altering things, so that I would be more… acceptable to you.”
Dean can't exactly straight up deny that assessment; after all, one of the first huge things Cas had done for him was turn his back on everything he had always known just so he could help Dean. But Cas was still his own person.
Dean searches for the right words to say, but can't find them.
“So then I get angry with him,” Cas is saying, “and I want to hurt him. Which I suppose isn't all that strange, but… at the same time...”
“But what?”
“I look at humans and they're… small,” Cas says. “And that's definitely not me.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
Cas's eyebrows knit together in confusion. “But I am telling you.”
“No, Cas, I mean -” Dean's lips twitch into the beginning of a smile, because that's the Cas he knows. Then he sighs. “I don't like this, Cas. At all.”
“I'm burning it out.”
Dean blinks. “What?”
“Lucifer's grace. I'm getting rid of it.”
“How?”
Cas sighs. “I can use a… sliver of the sliver. The scale of it might be beyond your comprehension.” Dean rolls his eyes at that, and then realizes he can't tell if that comment was Cas, or Lucifer-grace-addled-Cas. After all, Cas can be kind of a condescending dick sometimes, too. “I can use a small piece for things I wouldn't normally be able to do, like temporarily heal my wings.”
“And that's… getting rid of it?” Dean asks. “You're just… shaving off a little bit at a time?”
Cas shrugs. “As far as I can tell. It felt like the piece got smaller after I flew to you.” He sighs again and leans forward. “I can't… I can't keep these feelings inside me. The feeling like I'm better. Like man is... less than me. I hate it.”
“Yeah. I like you the way you are.” Something inside Dean is cracking. The pressure, the worry, the nagging feeling that he's lost something – it's all crumbling into something Dean might actually be equipped to deal with. There is something wrong with Cas, but he knows it, accepts it, and he's trying to fix it. And most importantly, he's letting Dean know. It's something so small, but it's more of a chance than they'd ever really had before.
Dean considers for a moment, than gets up from the recliner and slides into the seat next to Cas. “So how can I help?”
Cas meets Dean's eyes, and even though Dean isn't any closer to the fire than before, he finally feels warm.
end