SPN: Star of the Morning (2/8)

[what_we_dream]

Title: Star of the Morning (2/8)
Series: Supernatural
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Post The Rapture, AU

Summary: Castiel, removed from his host, is forced to make a temporarily substitution. Dean is so not onboard with this plan.

 

Castiel is quiet on the drive, as per orders. Sam keeps giving him funny looks. Jimmy lies on his stomach and hisses when they hit uneven patches. It’s awkward. But not as awkward as the motel.

They drive for a couple of hours and smear their tracks by changing roads and directions nearly every time they come to a major crossroads. They end up on the western border of Mississippi at what’s not much more than a truck stop. Dean, currently the only one who can walk straight, gets out to book rooms. And therein lies the problem. Rooms, plural. None of them is fit to be bunking on the floor, and he’s sure not sharing a bed with Sam – that’s so elementary school. Either of them sharing with Jimmy is out of the question entirely, logically because with the man’s back that’s a danger, but realistically because neither of them could share with a stranger. At least, not one without a skirt. Dean winces at the image, and then further because he has an angel in his head. Castiel’s never had a problem reading his thoughts, even when he wasn’t in Dean’s head.

Dean rubs the bridge of his nose, and walks back to the car for the argument he knows is coming.

It’s Sam, of course. Jimmy’s too out of it to care, and even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t. But even with everything that’s happened, Sam’s still way too into sharing and caring for Dean’s taste.

“You shouldn’t be alone,” says Sam heatedly, arms crossed, leaning back against the Impala.

“Fine, I’ll bunk with Jimmy,” returns Dean with unusual agreeability.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well one of us has to. The man can’t look after himself normally, never mind now.”

“I just –”

“Dude, I’m all angeled up. I don’t think it gets much safer than that. So you gonna share, or am I?” He’s so done with this conversation, was done with it years ago.

Sam glares, but says, “Fine.” He had this lost before it was started, and they both know it. Still, no Winchester has ever given up fighting a losing battle. Which is pretty much why they’re in this mess in the first place.

“Okay then. Bring the stuff.” He opens the back door and fishes Jimmy out, the combination of Castiel’s minor assistance and several hours of rest having helped the man, who although still walking stiffly, can get around without the clockwork movements. Dean locks up while Sam carries the packs over to the motel. They’ve got adjoining rooms, at least.

Dean stopped noticing furnishings years ago, all he sees is two beds and an absence of danger. Jimmy pads over to the nearest one and collapses face-down on it, not bothering to kick off his shoes. He is, however, careful to keep the fabric of his clothes off his lower back. Dean bandaged the burn up once they’d gotten further away from the barn, smeared it with what cream they had and covered it carefully with gauze to keep out infection while Sam went out to get dinner for the road, but even the weight of clothes is doubtless still excruciating.

In Dean’s head, Castiel stirs just slightly. Dean stiffens but doesn’t freeze. He does startle though, just a little, when Sam comes up behind him to hand him his bag. He covers it with a cough.

“Seriously, Dean, maybe I should hang around for a while.”

“I’m fine,” growls Dean, gruffly.

“But –”

“Fine!” he repeats. “Enough with the hovering; you’re practically clucking!” He mastered the this conversation is over tone a long time ago. It was always a favourite of Dad’s.

Sam backs off, raising his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright! I guess… bang on the wall if you need anything.” He nods at the wall connecting their rooms.

“Yeah, sure.” Dean shoulders his bag, and walks out. He hears Sam lock the door behind him.

Dean steps into his own room and shuts and locks the door, stands there leaning against the cool wood for a minute. Then he strides into the room, drops his bag on the bed, and begins to sort through it.

“So,” he says, conversationally. “You’re in my head.”

There’s a pause, a slight sensation of stretching, and then Yes, says his own voice.

“Well, if you’re gonna stay there, d’you think you could start talking with your regular voice? It’s kind of creepy holding conversations with myself.”

My voice would rupture your eardrums, Dean.

Dean flinches slightly, just a twitch of the eye, at the memory of shattered glass, of bloody ears. “Not that one. The – Jimmy’s voice, I guess.” Now that he says it, it sounds stupid. But that’s never stopped him before.

Castiel is quiet for a while, maybe thinking, maybe just not paying attention. But when he speaks again, it’s in Jimmy’s gruff tones.

Better?

Dean can hear the disapproval. This would have been so much easier if it had happened before Castiel’s trip to Angel Brainwashing Camp.

“Kind of,” says Dean, weighing the creepiness factor of his own voice talking back to him in his head, versus someone else’s. Really, it’s just replacing one bad scenario with another – I’m becoming something else to something else is becoming me. It’s not panic – he still trusts Castiel enough to reign in his fears – but it’s sure as hell not comfortable. He finds what he’s looking for in his bag – his sleeping shirt – and drops it onto the floor. Sits down, idly turning the worn fabric over in his hands.

I regret the necessity of this, Dean, says the angel, eventually.

“Yeah, well, you were saving my bacon. I can’t really complain.” A better answer than, do you regret it because it’s uncomfortable for me, or for you?

Nevertheless, although you agreed, it was under duress.

That hits a nerve, one contact with the angels has been slowly uncovering. “You know, the fact that you knew that, and accepted anyway kinda makes me wonder how many of your guys’ vessels really were willing, and how many had their arms twisted.”

There’s a heavier shift, a feeling like something rolling over inside of him.

We do what we must in difficult times, rumbles Castiel, with a little less irritation than Dean was expecting. But we do not threaten, and we do not contend refusals.

“Bull. You did both to me.”

You’re special.

“I’m getting really tired of hearing that,” snarls Dean, standing abruptly.

It’s a gift.

“It’s a fucking curse!”

They’re not mutually exclusive concepts, says Castiel gruffly.

“You need to get a new dictionary, Cas, because in mine they really are!” He storms into the bathroom, stares at his flushed face in the mirror.

“Are you watching me? Right now?”

Only through your eyes, says the angel, a cryptic answer in a straightforward tone.

“Well, don’t,” says Dean, and turns on the shower.

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The shower isn’t refreshing. It’s not so much concern that Castiel might be watching him – he’s an angel for Chrissakes, he must’ve seen plenty of naked men, even if Jimmy doesn’t appear to have changed clothes once since they met him, and anyway angels aren’t even interested in sex, almost certainly – as the situation in general. Dean doubts sleep will help, but it’s better than standing around thinking, so he just washes off the sweat and sluices some water through his hair, and gets out.

Castiel is silent as he gets into bed, turns the light out from a handy bedside switch. Dean wonders, fleetingly, whether the angel’s ever slept. He doesn’t really care.

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His lungs are burning. They’re black with smoke – every time he coughs his hand comes away covered with black sludge. The ground is a sea of flames; the flesh burned off his feet a long time ago, leaving just charred bones. Each step, each movement, each shift in his weight is excruciating, is agony, but it’s nothing to the whips, the whips of white-hot metal flailing the skin off his back, and Dean screams and screams and screams and –

Dean, shouts a voice, echoing through the caverns with the clarity of a trumpet’s call, Dean, wake up!

Dean starts awake, covered in sweat and panting like he’s run a marathon, with the scent of brimstone still thick in his head. The blankets are stifling and he throws them off so fast he rips the threadbare sheet. Lies on his side while his sweat cools on his skin and tries to slow his breathing.

“Cas,” he says eventually, voice closer to breaking than he likes. He covers it by compensating too far in the other direction, thick and harsh. “You woke me up?”

A shift – the angel stretching? – and Cas answers, Yes.

Dean laughs shakily. “What, you couldn’t just wave a hand and make it go away?”

It’s happened before. The dreams stopping just as they start, or fading into calm nothingness before they wake him. Whether it’s been angelic interference or simply his own psyche working to protect him he doesn’t know, and in just this one matter hasn’t had the strength to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Not here, says the angel.

“You keep saying that,” says Dean, eager to talk about anything other than the dreams, than the fire, than the Pit. “What do you mean?”

There’s that rolling sensation again, Cas unfolding himself from the corner he’s been sitting in. Although Dean’s getting cold without the blankets, he suddenly feels a surge of warmth.

Simply that I can extend only a small amount of my power through you, as I said before. More might harm you. It means that I’m limited in my actions, much more than even with a full vessel.

“Right,” says Dean, meaning what?

There’s a sound almost like a sigh, but the angel continues. I can’t stretch myself beyond you, can’t use any senses you do not have. A pause, and then, It’s quiet a lot like being trapped at the bottom of the ocean – mostly blind, mostly deaf, hardly able to move.

The angel’s voice is almost completely flat.

“Uh,” says Dean, after a minute. And then, “That’s kind of heavy, Cas.”

Don’t worry about it, says Castiel, back to his usual aloofness.

Ignoring him, Dean closes his eyes and concentrates. Tries to look at the shape of his mind, which is not something he has much experience with. But any hunter needs to be able to recognise abnormalities in his own head, because if they’re there, odds are something nasty wants him dead. Dean knows what shape his mind should be, although the landscape changed pretty substantially after he got back from Hell. In any case, it’s not like it’s hard to spot Castiel – hiding an angel in your head is like hiding an elephant in a living room.

Castiel is still a bright presence far in the back of his mind, a presence Dean has been keeping the hell away from. But he looks closer now, probes with senses he has no name for, and finds that what before he had taken for the angel lounging against the furthest borders is actually the angel wrapped tensely in against himself, power pulled into a tiny, tightly walled space. The closer he looks, the dimmer the form becomes, as though the angel is shading himself from Dean or, more likely, Dean from him.

It’s probably his imagination giving a form to something he has no way to comprehend, but he has the impression of a form sitting with limbs drawn right up to the chest, further confined by wings drawn around in a snug cocoon to hold back a landslide of strength. An ocean trapped in a closet.

“That… looks really uncomfortable. Is that what it’s always like?”

No. In a proper host, there’s much less restriction. There are still limits, but not a constant need for such tight restraints.

“Guess it’s not buckets of fun for either of us,” says Dean, inadequately.

Go to sleep, Dean. Castiel sounds more weary than impatient.

“C’mon, man, we were just getting some rapport going!” Dean grins, but pulls the blankets back over him nevertheless. Castiel’s presence fades, angel curling up further.

“Hey, Cas,” says Dean, riding a weak current of sympathy.

Yes? It is impatience, now.

“No – never mind.” The current falters in the face of more than two decades of hunting, every instinct telling him not to give a quarter, that he’s given too much already. Dean closes his eyes, and tries to go back to sleep.

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He wakes to a knocking on the door, a casual pounding on the other end of the spectrum from the disinterested rapping of room service. He nearly falls out of the bed, the events of the past 24 hours summed up in his bleary brain as: they might be chasing you.

Dean answers the door in his boxers and T, gun held just out of sight behind his back.

It’s Sam, who gives him a look of vague surprised mixed with concern.

“You couldn’t tell it was me?”

“Do I look like Deanna Troi?” Dean turns and walks back to the bed, Sam closing the door behind him.

“Now that you mention it…” Sam trails off at Dean’s glare and switches tones, “I dunno, I thought maybe Cas…”

“Yeah, well, he’s not a real useful houseguest,” says Dean. And then, more forgivingly, recalling last night’s conversation, “He’s got to keep himself to himself. And I’m not really complaining.”

“Right,” says Sam, sceptically.

Dean ignores it. “Anyway, what d’you want? It’s only,” he glances at his watch. It reads 9:54. “Crap.”

“Yeah. We’d better get going.”

Dean stands, drags his bag up and pulls out the first clothes he comes to. “How’s Jimmy?”

“About as well as you could expect. I redressed the burn. Doesn’t look so good, but there’s no sign of major infection.”

“Thank you Dr. Crusher. Got any idea where we’re going?” Dean yanks his shirt off and, after last night’s sweat-fest, heads for the shower again.

Sam ignores the quip. “Nope. Just away from here.”

“Right.” Dean closes the door and turns on the faucet.

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It doesn’t occur to him to ask Castiel about Jimmy’s back until he’s pulling on a fresh shirt, cotton sticking to the slightly damp skin of his own back.

“Hey, Cas?”

The angel stirs, unfolding slightly.

I’m sharing your head, Dean. You don’t have to keep talking out loud, says the angel by way of greeting.

“You can read my mind?” So not good. Not that he ever had much trouble with it before. But Cas wasn’t been around 24/7 then.

Only the surface thoughts. If you can hear them in your head, so can I.

“Sw –” begins Dean, and then stops. Swell. Thanks for the heads up.

Castiel doesn’t bother to answer.

Anyway, Dean glances at his reflection in the still-steamy mirror, just a big blur, and makes a face, When’ll we be good for another round at Jimmy’s back?

Now, if you think it’s wise before driving.

Hey, if it gets this thing stitched up sooner, Sam can drive. Hell, I’d let you drive. Dean considers this. Okay, not you. But Sam can drive.

He shoves his stuff back in his bag, grabs it, and heads out.

In the other room, Jimmy’s still lying on the bed fully clothed on top of the blankets, but he’s rolled over to lie on his side, coat and suit pulled to lie over the line of his side. He’s facing the other bed, back to the door, but turns to glance over his shoulder as Dean comes in. Sam’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom.

“Hey,” says Dean. “How you feeling?”

“Like crap,” says Jimmy, concisely. “Can you do anything about it?”

“Maybe a bit.” Dean drops his bag on the end of the bed and sits down across from Jimmy.

Cas?

Raise your hand.

He does, glancing at the layers of white gauze.

Don’t we need to take that off?

No, says the angel simply.

Dean shrugs. And then a second later stiffens as Castiel stretches, strength spreading like wings in his mind, and power flows down his arm.

Jimmy sighs softly, shoulders slumping as tension bleeds out of them again. And then it’s over, and Dean’s cold and empty again.

He wonders if this is what going cold turkey is like, which leads to the inevitable thought: cold turkey from angel-juice?

Sam’s watching from the bathroom door, toothbrush in hand. Dean gives him a what? look, and he shrugs.

“Got a destination yet?” asks Dean, leaning back to take some weight off his trembling back muscles.

“Maybe north? Eastern seaboard’s got too many people, we’re running out of ground south, and we sure don’t want to go back the way we came.”

“Alright,” says Dean, too tired to snark for the moment. “North it is. Harness up your sled,” he adds, indicating Jimmy with a glance. He stands himself and grabs his bag, swinging it up to his shoulder before his arm starts to shake.

He makes two trips between the motel room and the car, one for his bag and one for Sam’s, in the time it takes his brother to help Jimmy out and into the back seat. Dean, who’s feeling shaky but not incapable, especially on these long empty roads, slips into the driver’s seat, and they’re off. Outside the windows, the icy fields begin to slip by. Dean reaches out and cranks the speakers; he can almost hear the angel’s withering glare in his head. He smiles.