inonebasket | (no subject)

Dean gives Castiel one of those looks he usually reserves for when Sam's being exceptionally obtuse. A tiny part of him is surprised by how easily he's accepted Castiel being right here this easily--then again, Dean's nothing if not adaptable, and he's had strange and uncomfortable allies more than once.

"Really. You've tried all that." Dean rolls his shoulders. So Cas has been fighting these things, too. Good. He should be fighting them. "Right. Let's slow down this son of a bitch."

Simple. In theory. And Dean, paragon of taking care of other people, even when he's really angry with them and would like to deck them, goes first.

Castiel reached out to grab Dean's shoulder, shaking his head. He's the one without the machete, Dean should do the lopping off and Cas should play decoy.

Tilting his head toward the door, Castiel gestured in a way he hoped Dean understood as an insistence that he take up a position behind the door to jump the thing when it came through as Castiel distracted it.

Gritting his teeth, Dean does that, shooting him a glare that means "you better not just run off when we're done here" but probably comes across as constipated.

Hey, at least he's assuming they'll both survive. That's a good sign, right?

Holed up behind the door and hopefully out of sight, Dean nods at Castiel. He's ready.

Instead of opening the door like an idiot, Castiel hefts his knife and throws it through one of the sigils he'd scrawled on the door in his blood. The response was immediate; the Leviathan -thankfully, one of the dumber ones- burst in and Castiel filled it with an explosive spray of pellets.

Not that it did any good.

The Leviathan pursues Castiel with single-minded purpose and it gives Dean the perfect opportunity to slow it down.

"You're not getting him back, you black-blooded son of a bitch!"

Dean takes advantage of its focus, swinging the machete at the back of its neck with all his strength. Man, he hopes its head comes off on the first blow. It sucks to have to hack through the spine.

Fortunately, he doesn't have to. The head comes off clean and Dean lunges forward to grab it by the hair, stuffing the thing in a broken down freezer and weighing the lid down with a handful of bricks.

That should slow it down for a while.

Castiel tries not to look as stunned as he feels, because of all the things he'd expected Dean to shout at the Leviathan, that was not what he'd expected. Not even close. Castiel would take a moment to wonder about the meaning except that a beheading really does just slow them down, and they should get while the getting's good.

"Dean." Castiel starts for the door. "Do you have a vehicle?"

Of all the things Dean had expected to shout at the Leviathan, that hadn't been it. Yeah. Well. It's been said now, and angry as he is, Castiel's still family. Even at the worst he'd been hoping Cas would come to his senses, and it's just unfair that the moment Cas did the Leviathans walked him into a damn reservoir.

It's also a little unfair that Dean's blaming Cas for that, too, but it is what it is.

Dean grunts, already wiping the muck off his machete. "Course I do. Why, you want a ride? Not gonna use your mojo to just fly away?"

"No." Castiel doesn't elaborate because Castiel just doesn't elaborate.

He knows Dean wants to talk and Castiel doesn't feel like walking when the Leviathan could easily catch up to him after pulling its head back onto its shoulders, so he flicks the safety onto his shotgun, retrieves the knife from the door as he passes and heads out to the side of the Impala.

...actually, he isn't sure if he's allowed in the front seat or if he has to sit in the back. It seemed like the front seat was usually reserved for people Dean liked, so Cas shifted on his feet awkwardly, feeling too different in his jeans and shirt and army surplus jacket, gun cradled in his arm, knife strapped around his leg.

Flying blind. That was the phrase.

Dean does want to talk except for the part where he really doesn't because he doesn't know what to say. He's bad at talking, especially about things like feelings. Crap.

He gives the body a good kick on his way out, just to turn it around and slow it down a little further (he's got no idea if it'll work but that isn't stopping him from trying.). Outside, he yanks the back of the Impala open, stowing his machete and gesturing for Castiel to do the same to his arsenal. Lucky for Cas, Dean's not so unobservant that he doesn't see the fidgeting--and since when does Castiel fidget?

"You gonna get in or not?" Dean slides into the driver's seat, stretching across the seats to shove the passenger side door open.

Since a few months ago. Woodenly following Dean's lead, Cas rests the shotgun on the backseat and climbs in next to Dean. He closes the door and leans against it, as if trying to keep as far away from Dean as possible.

Once again Castiel remembers how much he hates that Dean can make him feel so unsure of himself. That floundering, pathetic tumble as he slips off of his chosen path, careening through uncharted waters like a torpedo without a target. He'd been satisfied, just concentrating on hunting Leviathan. He had his reasons, his wonderfully simplistic reasons, and then Dean had to show up and complicate everything straight to Hell and back again. The bastard.

Castiel looks out the window. He wonders if he should apologize. It seems like the acceptable thing to do. "...Dean, I'm-"

"Can it, Cas, I don't wanna hear your excuses."

He doesn't.

Dean peels out of the driveway in a spray of gravel, heading for the nearest highway. He has no real destination in mind. The original plan had been to head back to Bobby's, regroup, get some info and try to find and stop or slow down another few Leviathans. The original plan, sadly, didn't include Cas, which means Dean gets to take a detour, because like hell he's taking Cas back to Bobby and Sam. Dean wants to deal with Cas first.

"So you came back finally. Y'know, I was starting to think you'd just tucked tail and run, finally figured you'd done something so bad we weren't gonna forgive you. And don't get me wrong, Cas, you screwed up. In a big way. And I am pissed as hell that you didn't even think to ask us for help. Where the hell have you been, anyway? Living the good life up in heaven, huh? You get bored of paradise?"

He sounds a little bitter. He is a little bitter. He's spent half his time hunting Leviathans and half his time having nightmares about Castiel walking into the reservoir. The damn trenchcoat is still tucked under the backseat.

Castiel lets Dean's anger soak into him like rain, like hot shower water because he deserves it and he thinks he might be happy to have it. Dean's anger is a sign that he cared, once upon a time, a sign that he hasn't lost the will to fight and if anything at all Castiel is glad that Dean found it again. Whoever gave it back to him -Sam, Bobby, someone Castiel didn't even know- whoever it was, to them Castiel is eternally grateful.

"You once told me you didn't care about the bigger picture. You only wanted to save a pair of wayward orphans." Castiel touches the hilt of the knife at his thigh, adjusts the strap around his jeans. "I thought that would be a good place to start."

It was alarming, how often Castiel was beginning to look to Dean's words instead of the word of the Holy Father, but with no more Grace to preserve and probably no soul to be damned, Castiel thought it was all right for him to abandon God as his god. Dean's words always struck a deeper chord in him anyway. And well, with his perception narrowed and his ability to protect severely diminished, Castiel was beginning to understand why Dean never seemed to grasp the bigger picture as he had.

Two wayward orphans sometimes could mean more to a person than the entire world, in certain circumstances.

Dean spends a lot of time angry lately. Okay, yes, he's spent a lot of his life in general angry, but lately it's bothering him more. Go figure.

"Oh for--Orphans, Cas? You bring up the damn orphans?" Hello, sore point.

Sure, Castiel probably means to imply that even the worst decisions come from a point of goodness, but this is Dean. He's good at missing the point, so all he sees is the old "good job, Dean, you screwed that one up" barb.

Figures the parallels would fly right over Dean's head, along with everything Cas had been trying to say. At least that hadn't changed. Joy.

Castiel doesn't have it in him to explain, so he moves on.

"I've been attempting to track the Leviathan as they move. I knew they'd been focusing on you and Sam specifically when I saw the bank robbery footage." Actually Cas had known before that, had just felt it in his gut and his...something, but that had cinched it. It was what had pushed him into really moving, rather than just drifting and surviving.

"You didn't seem too interested in dragging your ass out of heaven before. What changed your mind this time?"

No, Dean hasn't figured it out. Yes, Cas is acting weird, yes, he was using weapons instead of angel mojo, but it's not the first time Cas has done that, and y'know what, it's not entirely unreasonable to think that he tapped himself out trying to hold the Leviathan's back.

God damn it Dean, stop gnawing on that bone. Cas doesn't want to talk about himself.

"I haven't been in heaven."

No. Dean likes gnawing on bones.

His second guess is a little more hesitant. "...Hell?"

"If I was, I don't remember it." He would have deserved it, he thinks, and for longer than the month he'd been out of commission.

Edited 2011-11-20 07:13 (UTC)

"Yeah. Well." Dean clears his throat, adjusting his grip on the wheel and driving just a little bit faster. "I don't remember much of hell. For the record."

Why are you talking about this, Dean.

"I don't think I was in Hell, Dean. I think I was just gone." Un-existing, as it were.

Because he needs to talk about something. Yes, this is a terrible something to be talking about, but he needs to...talk.

"Gone. So why are you back? Are you looking for forgiveness? Is that it?" Very bitter. Very...hurt.

"No," because it's true, because it hurts to hear but it looks like it hurts Dean even more to ask it. "I want to at least see two wayward orphans safe before I do anything else."

"Cas, the orphans are safe. Or they were until they got slaughtered. So unless you wanna go back in time and stop me from taking them out of the town in the first place, you're out of luck."

Seriously, Castiel, Dean is too obtuse for your subtlety.

Castiel stares at Dean in that vaguely uncomfortable, soul-searching way before looking back out the window at the scenery flashing by. "My first order of business is to either kill or banish the Leviathan. I haven't planned much beyond that."

"You might lose heaven in the meantime; Balthazar seemed pretty interested. Sure you're okay with that?"