#hard to know what direction he’d go since he was softening up in s5

[spacematriarchy]

Title: after tomorrow Square Filled: The Cage (S5) Rating: G Summary: Sixteen hours til Detroit. One last night on Earth. So long as they were together, the time wasn't going to waste. Word Count: 2060 (read on Ao3) Created for @swansongbingo

The four of them lasted late into the night and into the small hours of the morning, but by two AM, after a long, difficult day of draining demons, it was clear that members of the party were fading, and they were fading hard.

With a big stretch of his shoulders, Bobby yawned, and collected himself and his empty beer bottle together. “Sorry, boys,” he said. “Guess having to walk around on my own legs all day takes more outta me than it used to. I’m turning in.”

“No worries, Bobby,” Sam said.

Bobby stood from one of the two camp chairs they’d thrown out on the front patio, and Dean, sharing the bench with Sam, dropped his feet from where they were propped up on the bannister to let him pass. Bobby turned to Castiel - long since having fallen asleep in the other camp chair - and lightly slapped him on the knee. He startled awake.

“Sorry,” Cas mumbled, though he surely couldn’t have known what he was apologizing for.

“C’mon, Columbo,” Bobby said. “Give the fellas some time before bed.”

“Of course,” Castiel said, still only half awake, and started trying to leverage himself out of the chair.

“No, Cas, you don’t have to!” Sam insisted.

“No, no, I’m sure you should talk…” Cas trailed off, eyes flitting away. He tried to follow Bobby towards the front door, but was stopped by Sam grabbing onto his sleeve.

“C’mon, Cas, one more beer?” Sam asked. “You’ve been conked out half the night, we barely got to spend any time with you.”

“I’m sure you’ll want this to be family time…” Castiel offered as a final, weak excuse, but Dean scoffed.

“If you don’t think you’re one of us by now, I’ve got some bad news for you, buddy,” he said. Castiel stared wordlessly at them, blinking through the lingering sleep in his eyes, and as he then ducked his head, the ghost of a sad smile crossed his lips. He didn’t seem to have the words for an answer, and when Dean stood and gestured for Cas to take his seat, Castiel did.

“Thank you,” he said softly, as Dean began collecting the empty and half-empty bottles littered about the porch. Sam handed his own over as well.

Sam still had blood under his fingernails. Dean did, too. Sam had known that, yes, but he was trying to avoid looking at his own hands since he failed to scrub it out that afternoon. That wrong feeling pinged in his chest, and he promptly tucked his hand back into his lap, out of sight.

Bobby and Dean went inside, the creak-slap of the screen door blocking them out, leaving Sam and Castiel in the airy drone of wind and crickets through South Dakota’s backroads. Cas stayed quiet, though he’d roused somewhat during the exchange, and Sam watched him from the corner of his eye, waiting for him to start up a conversation and set a tone for it.

He wished he knew the tone to set, himself. Poor Cas probably felt more out of his emotional depth than any of them.

Giving up on the prospect of letting Cas choose, Sam instead settled back against the bench and looked back out across the junk yard.

“So,” he said, tentatively. “Sleep?”

Castiel nodded. “It’s disconcerting.”

“Do you think your batteries will recharge at some point, or do you think…”

Sam trailed off, not sure if there was a tactful way to discuss the recent clipping of Castiel’s wings, but Cas nodded again, understanding without Sam needing to finish.

“I have no idea,” Castiel said. “My hope is, of course, that this works and I can find a way to restore my grace and go home, but I suppose it’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it. It’s not a priority right now.”

“Mm,” Sam hummed. “If you can’t, you know Dean and Bobby’ll always have a place for you, right?”

Castiel didn’t answer.

“And, I don’t wanna ask you for anything, Cas, but…” Sam sighed, turning back to Cas. “I’d feel a lot better if Dean still had somebody keeping him from doing anything really stupid.”

Cas looked up at Sam, in turn. He was pensive, brows furrowed, examining Sam carefully.

“If I’m able,” he said, putting careful consideration into the pledge.

“Promise?” Sam asked with a nervous chuckle, poorly hiding his feelings.

Castiel’s gaze softened on him. He nodded once more. “If I’m able, Sam,” he said. “Yes. I promise.”

Sam opened his mouth, just about to thank Castiel when the screen door swung open again, and Dean reappeared with three bottles, perched between the fingers of one hand like he was a human glass rack.

“Okay,” he sighed, loudly. “One, two…” Dean distributed a beer each to Castiel and Sam, then threw himself into the camp chair Cas had been sleeping in earlier and took a good swig. “Three.”

Sam felt the intensity of his small, private conversation with Castiel fade, and once again they were just relaxing out on Bobby’s front porch like they’d been doing for years. He looked at Dean - something in him felt eased by Cas’ promise, as conditional as it was. He could trust Cas. Cas was family. Even if he couldn’t be by Dean’s side, Sam knew Cas wouldn’t let Dean self-destruct, not really.

It still hurt to know that Cas was going to have to watch out for that, though. Dean wasn’t as good at hiding his Achilles heel as he thought he was.

“Sam was just saying,” Castiel said, directing his attention to Dean as he revived to conversation. “That if I’m not able to go home, I could stay and help you. Perhaps we could keep hunting together - it’d be much safer than you hunting on your own.”

Dean’s good - or at least fine - mood vanished. He scrunched up his nose and suddenly became very fascinated by his beer.

“Dean?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know…” Dean almost mumbled. “I mean, am I gonna keep hunting after this? I think if you take out the devil, the surviving members of your crew earn early retirement, right?”

“You, retire?” Sam scoffed. He didn’t feel the joy of the chuckle in the word, but he felt as if maybe, if he kept joking with his brother, his brother might forget to stop joking.

“What would you even do with your life after that?”

Dean didn’t take the bait. He just shrugged, and looked out across the lot, averting his gaze from either of the other two men.

“What do most people do?” Castiel asked, quirking his head in that ‘confused puppy dog’ way he always did. “You could find a new career. Or a romantic partner.”

Dean did, in fact, laugh at that one.

“No, seriously,” Sam said. “I just… I’d really like to know what you’ll be doing. I wanna know that you’re moving on. That you’re happy.”

Dean took another sip, seemingly mulling it over. He was quiet another long minute.

“I’ll figure it out, Sam,” Dean said, and he sounded so confident that Sam almost believed him. “I always do, don’t I?”

He didn’t elaborate.

They chatted about very little of substance after that, and Sam let the inanity of the conversation lull him into a false sense of security, turning off his own memory for a few short minutes. The mood, however, was unrecoverable. Not painful, not really, but solemn. Reverent. It became a bit harder for Sam to forget that he was attending his wake.

It felt like entirely too short a time before Castiel threw his head back and tipped the last of his beer into his mouth, making a face as he swallowed it. “Alright,” he said, after a breath. “I think my night is over.”

“You sure?” Sam asked, as Castiel stood. “You really don’t have to go, Cas, if you don’t want to.”

“I know,” Cas said. “But apparently I sleep now, and… and Bobby wasn’t wrong. It’s your last night together - you should talk between yourselves. I understand. I take no offence.”

Sam stood, not to stop Cas, but to embrace him. Wrapping him up, Sam put his chin on Cas’ shoulder and squeezed. “If you’re sure,” he said.

Rather than hugging back, Castiel stiffly brought one arm up and patted the back of Sam’s opposite shoulder, painfully awkwardly. Sam wasn’t any more offended by Cas’ lack of social grace than Cas had been at the need for Sam to spend time with his brother - it wasn’t like Cas knew any better. It wasn’t like Cas wasn’t deeply invested, regardless of struggle to return physical affection.

“I’m sure,” Castiel said. “But thank you.”

Sam pulled away. “We’ll see you in the morning?”

“Of course,” Cas said with a little nod. Though his gaze lingered, eyes soft and sad, he didn’t speak it. Cas then turned to Dean and gave him the same nod. Dean raised his bottle in a parting gesture, and then Castiel left, into the house, into the darkness.

Instead of sitting back down on the bench, Sam moved over to the other camp chair - the one beside where Dean now sat, the one that had begun the night as Bobby’s. He let out an ‘oof’ as he sat, the chair lower and saggier than he’d truly been expecting, and he sunk, curled, into the space it provided. His right foot sprawled over and rested against Dean’s.

Sam took a sip of beer, now watching his brother in profile as Dean did, too.

He hated to break the quiet, terrified of ruining the night by prompting, in any small, unintentional way, Dean to start arguing his case for why Sam shouldn’t go through with it tomorrow. With maybe twelve to sixteen hours left on Earth, twelve to sixteen hours left with his brother, he didn’t want to spend it fighting.

Maybe Dean didn’t either. Maybe that’s why he was so quiet.

“You getting tired yet?” Sam asked, in lieu of more dangerous questions.

“Not really,” Dean said. “Might not bother getting to bed at all, honestly. What about you?”

Sam nodded, though he knew Dean wasn’t watching. “Yeah, I’m thinking the same.”

I’ll sleep when I’m dead, Sam thought. If only.

“Then at least we’ve got each other for company, then, huh?” Dean asked.

“Yeah.”

Sam settled back into the chair, allowing himself to relax, and let his head fall back against the railing. He let his gaze wander, eyes unfocused, over the dark not-quite-horizon framed between the roof and rail of the porch. It was a warm spring night, just as South Dakota was finally thawing out, and though they were still bundled up to be out at night, it was as pleasant as it could have been. The stars were out, and the crickets were chirping. The little bit of pressure where his foot touched Dean’s, lightly, through the boot, was grounding to him.

Sam told himself that Cas would stay, and Dean would heal, and they would live with Bobby in peace, and they’d remember him. He tried not to think about the devil. He tried to think about how nice it was going to be to know his family was alright without him.

“Dean?” Sam asked.

“Yeah?”

“You know I love you, right?”

Dean turned to him, concerned. “Yeah,” he said. “And you know I love you, too, right?”

Sam smiled, in spite of himself, and nodded. He took a sip. “Just wanted to be sure you’d remember.”

“Trust me, Sammy,” Dean said, slumping in his chair much as Sam had, carefully keeping their delicate point of contact. “That’s one thing you won’t have to worry about.”

Sam shut his eyes, and realized they were stinging. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to swallow his fear - he hadn’t cried since making up his mind about their plan, and he hated to start now. Not now.

“Sam?” Dean asked.

“I’m okay,” Sam lied. “I’m okay.”

Dean didn’t seem convinced, but he’d never been the type to argue about that sort of thing. He watched Sam with concern, his own emotions seeming to be boiling just under the surface.

“Okay,” Dean said slowly.

Sam shut his eyes again. Warm spring air. Crickets. Dean.

He’d be okay. For his family. For everyone.

He didn’t really have a choice.