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keep_countingCharacters/Pairings: Dean/Cas, mentions of Sam, Bobby, Ruby and John Winchester.
Rating: R
Warnings: Slight violence in accordance with the nature of the show, spoilers for season 4 and 5 respectively
Genre: Romance/Character-study/Angst/Hurt-Comfort/Slight tweaking of canon (but only slight)
Word-count: 2,249
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
Summary: Dean is two years old, when the angel first whisper to him.
He is two years old when the angel whisper to him. He won’t remember it, of course. When you’re two years old, your whole world is your mother and your father, and the flowers you can blow so their white, fluffy seeds break free and float through the wind.
Dean doesn’t remember the voice beside him, soft and soothing – he has forgotten about it the next day already, occupied by toys and food and his mother’s smile.
He doesn’t know it yet, but he should be counting those smiles. He won’t have that many of them.
What he also doesn’t know, is that he’s met an angel, before he knew there were angels, before he even knew there were people outside of his own family. Before he had a brother.
(in Dean’s mind, there really isn’t any ’before Sam’. Sam is his everything: he might as well have been born the day Sam was – or maybe he was born the day he rescued him out of their burning home. Either way, there is no ’before Sam’, and so there is no angel in a faint, childhood-memory)
He’s four and his house is burning down when he stops believing in angels: not that the idea had been that fully-formed to begin with. He was four and filled with thoughts of other things – of playing and his family and his brother, his brother, his brother – but he remembers, the lullaby and the goodnight kiss, his mother voice: ’angels are watching over you, sweetheart’.
Dean remembers that: won’t ever forget it, actually. There is ash floating in the air, like feathers from a dark wing, like fluffy seeds breaking free, and he decides, no, he knows, that there are no such things as angels. The angels would have saved his mother.
He doesn’t remember the angel’s voice in his ear as he sat in a field, only his father’s anguished face and the black, soulless eyes of the things they hunt – so it is a bit of a shock when he is suddenly confronted, head-on with…
With something else.
“I am an Angel of the Lord,” the voice is deep and baritone, and the eyes and features certainly could be taken for angelic, but the jacket is still bloodied after the knife, ruined after the shooting and this thing – Castiel – does not look like the cute cherubs in church-paintings, he looks like a sharp sword without an edge to hold unto, like something wild and unruffled – something Dean doesn’t know how to fight.
“Bullshit,” he says. “There is no such thing.”
He’s decided there is no such thing, after all, and if he is nothing else, Dean at least is stubborn about his beliefs. Because if there really are angels…
Where were you?
He doesn’t pretend to understand, only quietly accepts, because Castiel’s eyes are a piercing blue and there is this sense of protectiveness, like Dean knows that the other guy – the angel – wouldn’t lie to him. It is almost something akin to familiarity, and maybe it’s the fact that this guy – this angel – has dragged him out of Hell, ‘gripped him tight and raised him from perdition’ or whatever bullcrap he wanted to drone on about: maybe it’s the fact that there’s a huge mark on his shoulder, fitting the guys – the angel’s, angelangelangel – hand perfectly, like his very own name-tag. And the thought of Castiel marking him is oddly dizzying, because he shouldn’t like it, doesn’t like it, is mad about it, but he cannot deny that it is not an entirely unpleasant prospect. He supposes, at least, that he was lucky to not get saddled with one of the other angels, because they appear to all consist of douchebags and Dean is already getting tired of this shit.
Not Castiel though. Dean may grumble and be unfair to the other man, may expect more than he supposes Cas is willing or able to give (and what is he supposed to do with this feeling, this absolute sense of trust when he knows there are things that Cas won’t and can’t tell him?), but he is not… not actively trying to push him away. The knot in his stomach, the feeling of dread about Hell and about breaking the first seal, about Sam’s new and dangerous habits… that knot loosens a little whenever the angel arrives, even if it is with bad news.
He tells himself it means nothing. That there isn’t a longing for his mother to be here, because his mother would adore Cas and would turn around and say ‘I told you so’ with that twinkle in her eye that Dean might have just made up, because he was four when she was ripped away from him and he hadn’t had enough time to memorize all those features yet.
He tells himself there isn’t a longing for Cas to stick around more. And if there is, it is only because it is tied to that other longing, the one where his mother is there, alive, the one where Sam isn’t betraying him and lying to him with every breath he takes. The one where he is still somewhat whole.
(Dean doesn’t remember it, but it is the one where he is sitting in a field of dandelions, blowing until their fluffy, white seeds are all over the air, surrounding him like feathers or dust mites, and he’s grinning widely because he is two years old and this is the most wondrous thing he has ever seen. And an angel whispers in his ear)
It’s a long while before he admits it to himself, but it does happen. It happens after Adam, when everything still feels ready to blow up in his face. He is sitting on the hood of his baby, half-empty beer going warm and stale in his hand, staring at the dark sky. Sam’s somewhere else, in the motel-room or with Ruby or at Bobby’s or anywhere else and Dean’s head is buzzing and he must be drunk, because right at this moment he doesn’t really care, and he always cares where Sam is, what Sam is doing, because he’s been down the road of ‘lost’ before and he knows he can’t do it without his brother.
He’s getting scared that maybe his brother can do it without him though.
There is only the soft whoosh, that alerts him to the newcomer and he is too tired not to smile, because any company would honestly be welcome right now, and Castiel’s would be in particular.
“Hey,” he says, voice rough and strained. He feels like he hasn’t spoken all day. He hasn’t spoken for hours, he knows that, because it’s been a while since he sat here, since he got the beer and decided to watch the stars from the best place in the universe – his car.
“Are you intoxicated at the moment?” Cas asks, coming up the side of the car, stopping too close and too far away to where Dean is sitting, perched on the hood, beer almost dropping from his hands.
Even in the darkness, only dimly illuminated by the stars and moon above, Castiel’s eyes are so very blue.
Dean thinks that if he was braver, or just drunker, then he would kiss the other man – angel.
“Little bit,” he admits, grinning wildly at Cas who twitches slightly, as if unsure to smile back (he almost never smiles, and Dean thinks that’s something they share, the lack of genuine smiles – him and Sam and the angel) or maybe get ready to fight. Dean thinks he must really look like a maniac to get that response from a thousand year-old celestial being.
That thought sort of sobers him up, because it is certainly more close-to-earth than goddamn angel, and it is also farther from home because his mother never…
“Hey, get me one of those!” he says suddenly, eyes landing on the white flower on the side of the road, pointing and almost dropping the beer in his haste to show Cas what he means: he is earned a very odd look for his trouble, but the angel walks quietly over and swoops down to pluck the flower, walking back in that direct, brisk pace of his. When Cas isn’t looking like a lost puppy, he always looks like he knows exactly where he is going, and Dean resents and envies that a little bit. It is also surprisingly hot, and he lets their fingers brush as he takes the flower, whatever silly-nilly feelings about getting flowers he might be having tightly squashed down inside of him.
“These are my favorites,” he confides in Cas, his smile real now, not stretched as wide, but soft and slightly playful, and if he had looked up then he would have seen blue eyes watching them with rapt attention, as if focusing on his lips could somehow save the whole world from total destruction. “I used to play with them as a child,” he continues, doing just that and watching as the seeds dislodge themselves, one at a time or in groups, intertwining and separating and intertwining again, a quick dance through the air before getting swallowed by the darkness again, finding a new home somewhere else.
Cas says nothing, and when Dean looks up, there is a different look on his face, something Dean thinks he’s seen on the angel’s face before, in flashes and glimpses.
It is sadness, and it looks so very wrong on the other man’s face.
“Screw that,” Dean thinks, or possibly says out loud, and there is a startled look on Cas’ face at that, which is so much better than the pain in his eyes before, and then suddenly Dean is kissing his angel, lips brushing against each other once, twice, almost shy, and then determined because he’s drunk and he feels as sad as Cas looked and nothing in this world is fair or safe anyway, so he might as well go and do something stupid about the one good thing in his life right now.
His brain register that Castiel is kissing him back, and now there’s a real shock, Dean Winchester kissing a goddamn Angel of the Lord of all things - but then said angel is pulling back again, yet not far because Dean’s hands are fisted in the lapels of that stupid coat. Cas could break the hold, easily, could slip away between Dean’s fingers with those crazy powers of his, but he doesn’t.
“I was not aware of that,” Castiel breaks the silence, and Dean blinks, totally confused, before he elaborates: “that dandelions were your favorite flowers.”
The pain is back, the sadness lurking just in the shadows of his face. Dean’s eyes flickers away, to where he dropped the flower, because he doesn’t want to look at Cas when Cas looks at him like that: like Dean is taking something away from him, when actually he’s trying to give him everything he’s got. Everything.
“Only when they’re like that,” he quietly says. “When you can… rip them apart like that, and they’re still whole.”
He feels more than sees Cas nod, and then he actually steps closer, to the car and to Dean, his forehead brushing against Dean’s hair, his breath warm even in the hot summer-air.
“Did you come here for any particular reason?” Dean asks, because the silence is becoming a bit too much.
“No,” Cas answers, and Dean thinks ‘liar’. “I will be back later, when there is more to report.”
He is already gone before Dean can tell him that it wasn’t a dismissal, it was a plea for him to stay.
(He won’t admit it, but he always wants Cas to stay. He wants Sam to stay, he wants Bobby to stay, he wanted his dad to stay, but he couldn’t make any of them do that, no matter how hard he tried. He hasn’t tried that hard with Cas, and he doesn’t care much for analyzing why. But he knows that he wants Cas to stay)
The Apocalypse happens, and Dean forgets about dandelions and lonely nights on the roof of his car (even if those are still a permanent fixture in his life), and then he’s suddenly standing in front of his parents again, young and almost-whole and…
Dean is two years old when an angel speaks to him for the first time, quiet whispers in a field of dandelions. He doesn’t remember this later, years later, when he is broken and battered and about to give up, because everything seems lost and everything has been lost, even Castiel betraying him to the angel’s plan and…
He has to remind himself that Cas came back, that he sacrificed himself to do the right thing, to help them out. Dean is grateful for that. If he was still a whole little boy, he might even be able to properly thank him.
Maybe one day, he thinks, and Michael grins at him through his father’s face.
“It’s so good to see you again, Dean,” he says.
“We’ve never met,” Dean hisses, because his mother might have believed in angels, but he never saw them, never met them, until that day in an old barn, shooting and stabbing and watching as someone with piercing blue eyes turned his world upside-down.
He doesn’t remember being two years old and hearing an angel’s whisper, a quiet promise of a future intertwined, of destiny deciding his course.
Michael laughs.
