Work Text:
II.
For the next few days, Dean can't stop looking at himself. Every reflective surface holds him for a few seconds at least. And nowhere he looks is there anything that should be there.
Sam teases him a few times about his sudden vanity, but something in Dean's face clues him in that this isn't really joke time and he stops.
After two jobs and four different motel rooms – that damned ghost caught a ride across two friggin' counties and they finally had to face it down in a friggin’ landfill: how was that fair? – Dean takes his dozenth shower, avoiding the mirror like it's haunted. He yanks on the cleanest pair of jeans he can find and whatever T-shirt comes to hand first, and, scrubbing one hand through his hair, wanders out the motel room door.
They didn’t plan it – pulling into this motel just because it was handy and looked clean – but it has a really nice view.
The Impala is parked right out front – backed in as always. Beyond that there's the rest of the parking lot, the road – rural route something-or-other, East Overshoe, Idaho – and then nothing but an expanse of unmowed fields. Hay, he supposes. He can smell something sweet and faintly green on the breeze and there’s a line of trees with one giant in the middle that splits the field in two. He imagines there must be a trickle of water running down there from the way the grass gets thicker and greener; most of it must be going to that huge tree. He has no idea what it is; Sam would know immediately and tease him for not paying more attention on any of the thousands of hunts that’ve taken them into the woods.
It's beautiful, especially with the late afternoon sun slanting down, casting long shadows from the motel building, the cars, and the road signs towards the field, like pointers. The long uncut grass sways gently in a slight breeze and seems to glow in the dimming sunlight, like it's storing up the light somehow and might continue to glow even after the sun goes down.
They're about a mile out from the nearest town. Sam had said something about getting a paper and some food and sloped off about an hour ago while Dean was still half-asleep. He hadn't realized his brother was planning to walk, but there was the car, large as life.
Without any clear plan in mind, he pads out onto the warm asphalt and pushes himself up – carefully – onto the hood of the car. One leg stays stretched in front of him for balance, the other foot is on the warm chrome of the bumper.
'I have been thinking.'
Dean starts, tries to hide it, then sighs. 'Yeah, Cas?' He doesn't look around.
'Yes.' Cas comes into his peripheral vision, looking out over the parking lot, seeming to study the distant hayfield with careful attention. 'And I still do not understand.'
'What don't you understand, Cas?' Dean keeps looking out towards the field, too. 'I thought I explained pie and deep-frying.'
'Your skin.'
'My--' Dean jerks around to stare at him. Castiel continues to look out over the parking lot, dark blue eyes fixed on something invisible to Dean. 'What the fuck are you thinking about my skin for!'
There is a hesitation – just a split second. Then Cas takes a breath and clambers up on the hood beside Dean. Dean feels the suspension of the car give, not as much as when he climbed up, but a little as Cas makes himself comfortable, gathering the tails of the trench coat about his legs. He sits upright – not like Dean, who’s half-slumped forward, hands linked loosely between his knees – but like he’s in a classroom, expecting to be called on. He doesn’t look at Dean, just keeps his gaze out over the hayfield, inspecting it as though he will be tested later.
Dean feels that he has missed something – something has slipped past him and he's not sure what it was and he doesn't even know how to go about finding out what it was.
'I was thinking about what you said about your skin.'
'Oh.' A classic Dean Winchester comeback: snappy, witty, to the point.
'I am...confused.' The hesitation is unusual, the word choice even more so.
'That's gotta be a first,' Dean mutters.
'Not quite.' Castiel takes him totally seriously – or is taking the piss, Dean can never tell. The angel's deadpan is too damned good. He should never have shown him those Buster Keaton movies. Still, they were one of the first things that had ever gotten Cas to laugh.
There is a moment of silence that stretches to two, three – and Dean, with his growing conviction that his skin, all over, is prickling and somehow Cas is seeing all of him, has seen all of him and considered him and come to some conclusion Dean can’t even begin to understand, can't stand it any more. 'Well? So? And? What?'
'I do not understand.'
'Oh, for Christ's--' Dean sees Cas wince and holds up a hand. 'Ok, sorry, sorry. But if you don't tell me what you don't understand, I can't help.'
'Jimmy has scars.' Castiel holds his hands out flat for a moment, palms to the sky, then rolls up his right sleeve – pushes it up, actually, the trench coat bunching at his elbow to reveal a short, almost perfectly straight burn scar just below the elbow. 'I asked him about them.'
'Yeah?' Dean doesn’t know what else to say. He’s never really figured out how to talk to Cas about the fact that he’s really two people except that one of them is asleep most of the time. It seems easier to avoid the whole question.
Castiel taps the burn. 'This is from something called a barbecue.’ He turns his steady gaze on Dean. ‘What is that?'
'A – oh, uh –‘ Dean, aware that his thoughts had been wandering, flounders. ‘It’s... it’s a party. Usually outside. It's – there's a lot of food, a lot of people – usually booze. You grill – ‘ He makes vague movements with his hands as though flipping a burger. ‘Uh – do you know what a grill is?'
Castiel nods. 'Jimmy said he was burned when his daughter accidentally picked something hot off the grill. He knocked it from her hands but received a wound.'
'Well – uh – that's a shame. But – that's a barbecue. Um – except normally, maybe, you try to keep the little kids outta the hot stuff.' Dean can't believe how garbled a description that was but Cas seems satisfied or at least doesn't ask any other questions. He also doesn't seem inclined to speak again. 'So? You asked Jimmy and---?'
'He told me about several scars on his body and told me how he got them. He remembered the pain of some and not of others. This one--' Cas rubs the burn mark gently. '--he remembers fear for his daughter, her cry of pain, knocking the hot thing out of her hands – only later did he feel the pain.'
'Yeah, well--' Dean shrugs. 'That's life, isn't it? You don't notice the pain 'til later.' He nudges Cas, still a little surprised as he does it that he can do something as physical and normal as nudge an angel in the ribs. As always, Cas is more solid than he thinks he will be and he finds himself wondering for a heartbeat about those other scars Jimmy has. 'You know what that's like. You've gotten the shit kicked out of you a few times.'
'Yes.' Castiel pushes up his other sleeve, this time almost to his shoulder, looking down with mild interest at a tangled mass of scar tissue on his left bicep.
Dean feels an unexpected pulse of guilt. The demon, crazier than the normal run, had bulldozed straight through him and Sam, knocking him silly against the bumper of his own damned car! and was chewing on Cas before either of them could recover. It had only taken him a few minutes to recover his wandering wits and gank the thing with Ruby's knife, but it was long enough for it to start making a meal out of Cas' left shoulder. 'Why'd you let that scar, anyway?'
Cas shrugs, pulling his sleeves back down and resettling his cuffs. 'I was curious.'
'Jimmy didn't mind?'
'No. He – thinks they look tough.'
Dean snorts. 'Tough?'
'I believe he was making a joke,' Cas says thoughtfully. 'Is that what you think?'
'That he was making a joke?'
'That your scars made you look tough.'
Dean snorts again and shakes his head. 'Hell no.'
'Good. Because they did not.'
'Thanks!'
'What?'
'You sayin' I didn't look like a total fuckin' badass?' Dean cocks his head, staring Cas down, only half-joking.
Castiel shakes his head. 'No. But your scars had nothing to do with your being a badass.' He mouths the unfamiliar word carefully and Dean wants to laugh. 'But I do not understand why you miss them.'
'I—I dunno, man.' Dean shrugs uncomfortably, linking his hands between his knees, returning his gaze out over the hayfield. Crows are circling there now, looking at something he can't see. 'They—were just part of me, y'know? I mean...'
'I know.'
'I just...' Dean pauses and stares at his hands for a minute. 'You put me back together, right? Hauled me up outta all that blood and shit and noise and...and...glued me back together?'
Castiel nods slowly. 'Yes.'
'So you saw...' The bitter taste is back in his mouth and he can’t finish the sentence.
Castiel nods again.
'So why didn't you put them back?'
'Why do you miss them?'
Dean sighs explosively. 'They...told me about who I am. Was. I ...fuck it, Cas, I don't know. I don't--' Dean stops. Castiel is laughing at him. Looking at him and laughing his ass off. 'The fuck!'
'As if you wouldn't know who you are! As if I would not know who you are!' Castiel throws his head back and lets it all go, laughing harder than Dean has ever seen him, even at Buster Keaton.
'Well, I'm glad my personal trauma gives you joy, Cas!' But Dean can't help smiling, then chuckling, then laughing as Cas continues to hoot with amusement.
Finally, catching his breath and beginning to wind down, Castiel looks at Dean, cheeks flushed, shaking his head. 'You are sometimes a very foolish man, Dean Winchester.'
Dean whacks his knee. 'Hey, buddy, it's been said by bett--'
And Dean doesn't get to finish the rest of the sentence because Cas kisses him again, but not on the forehead.
Dean is too baffled to think of anything very meaningful in the moment. Later, he remembers thinking that he wouldn't have thought kissing an angel would involve the scratch of stubble. Or slightly rough lips. Or the faint taste of coffee mixed with...rainwater?
He does reach out to taste more, not quite sure of what his mouth is doing without his express permission but unable to stop it.
And then Cas pulls back, eyes wide and shocked and, for a minute, Dean thinks he's going to apologize which is totally crazy because that was just a kiss – no big deal, nothing to apologize for, it was kinda nice, in fact and what the fuck is he thinking and in the moment of his confusion, there is a beat of wings, a swirl of dust, and Cas is gone.