#this one fought me vanessa and it got way longer than intended

[helianthus21]

heli pls omg for the prompts, number 1 ily

And also pls 32, because i LOVE your writing and all those prompts are so great i can’t choose only one!         

💜I combined them, hope you enjoy💜  ~1,4k

Even as a chained-up, shivering mess, Cas is still adamant about helping them. No matter how often Dean tells him to just concentrate on not dying from the attack dog spell, he won’t accept the confinement to bed Dean wants to impose on him. The fact that this renders Dean a distracted, worrying mess be damned. Out of the corners of his eyes, he keeps checking Cas for any signs of the curse worsening every now and again. 

Sam’s already gone out to follow a lead half an hour ago while Dean insisted on staying in the Bunker to keep an eye on their patient. If something happened to Cas and he wasn’t there, he would never forgive himself. 

Cas has been staring at nothing for such a long time that a jolt goes through Dean almost the same time as Cas startles out of his seat. 

“Hey, buddy, you alright?” Dean asks, momentarily stuck to his chair by the shock, fingers freezing in place over the keyboard of his laptop. 

But Cas doesn’t answer. Instead, his body jerks again once, twice, until Dean realizes what he’s doing.

He’s fighting against the hold of his handcuffs. 

They’re angel-proof. So it comes as a shock to Dean when the angel actually succeeds.

Metal of the cuffs broken in half, Cas stands hunched over his side of the table, as Dean regains his marbles and approaches him carefully.

“Cas, hey,” he says in the most non-threatening voice he can manage. “It’s alright. Let me-”

But Cas looks up then, the usual deep blue of his eyes giving way to blood red, and veins standing out prominently on his face. Shit, he looks terrible.

“Are you in there, bud?” Slowly, Dean reaches out a hand.

A dreadful mistake.

The moment his hand nears Cas’ shoulder, the angel launches at him, hissing like an angered predator and throws Dean over the table. 

Dean protects his head during the fall, but his back still gets the brunt of it, and it takes him precious few seconds to put himself up again with a grunt, muscles aching. It gives Cas enough time to go after him. 

Dragging a chair between them as a weak barrier, Dean tries to reach his friend. “Cas, please,” he begs. “I know you’re in there. It’s the curse. Fight this!” 

Eyes crazed and red, Cas tilts his head at him as though trying to understand. As though Dean was speaking in a language that needed deciphering.

The confusion only holds him back for a moment. In the next, the chair between them goes flying, and Cas is up in Dean’s face again, fist twisting the fabric of Dean’s shirt. 

“Cas, look at me!” Dean almost yells. “It’s me. Dean. I’m your best friend. I’m-”

His heart misses a beat as Cas actually pauses mid-strike. 

“Yeah, that’s it,” Dean whispers. With a shaking hand he reaches out to lower Cas’ fist away from his face. “There you are. Come back to me, Cas. Please.”

Cas blinks, and a hint of blue shines through the angry redness in his eyes. His grip on Dean loosens, and the more he comes back to his senses, the more Cas seems to crumble.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says, gaze dropping to the ground in shame.

“Nothin’ to be sorry for,” insists Dean. He holds out a hand to Cas’ forearm to keep him upright. “That wasn’t you, it was the curse.”

“I hurt you,” Cas rejects Dean’s easy absolution. “I could have killed you.”

“I almost killed you too!” Dean says, voice too loud with emotion. “Don’t think I can just forget that, though you seem to have. I wanted to kill you. You would’ve died by my hands and I wouldn’t even have cared.” 

“But you didn’t,” Cas argues. “Even at your worst, you still didn’t submit to the dark inside you that was tempting you. That takes true strength, Dean.”

“God, even when I try to kill you, you praise me as some kind of national hero.” Putting his arms around Cas, he half-carries him to the little armchair in the corner, a far more comfortable place for him to rest. 

“You have to chain me up again,” Cas urges.

“Cas!” Dean’s irritation is audible in his voice now. “How? You ripped right through the only cuffs that could hold you.” 

Cas swallows, gaze faraway as though he’s already given up. “Take me to the dungeon.”

“No!” Dean protests firmly. “No way I’m putting you there.”

“Dean-”

“I said no, and that’s final!” Dean says. Then, in a much softer tone, he adds, “You’ve broken through the curse just now, you can do it again. Listen, Sam will find Rowena and she’ll lift the curse from you if it’s the last thing she does. Meanwhile you just breathe and look at me.” 

Cas doesn’t react.

“No drifting away, man. Eyes on me,” Dean orders, because that’s a language Cas understands. “You hear me, Cas? Keep your eyes on me.”

Finally, Cas lifts his head again, enough to return Dean’s steady gaze. 

They stare at each other, the only way for Dean to make sure Cas stays with him. Stays himself. 

After a stretch of time Dean cannot measure, Cas falters. “I killed hundreds of you once.” He licks his dry lips. “Thousands.”

Dean frowns. “What?”

“When Naomi tried to condition me,” explains Cas. “She made me kill thousand versions of you to break me. They were very realistic.”

If Cas thought the confession would make Dean turn tail, he missed by a mile. Saddened by the thought of how much Cas had to go through without Dean even knowing, he surges forward to capture Cas in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Cas’ shoulder. 

“Why do you apologize?” Cas sounds incredulous. “I almost killed you, for real, after that.”

Pulling back far enough to look him in the eyes again, Dean strokes a thumb over his sweaty cheek. “You’d never.” He drops his hand, swamped by unbidden memories. “I asked Death to get rid of you. I never even thought about looking for a way to get you back.”

“I drove your brother insane.”

“I never listened to you,” Dean says. “Took you for granted.”

“I lied to you for a whole year.” 

“I only called you when I needed help. I made you into a hammer.”

“I’m the reason you lost Lisa and Ben.”

The mention of their names is like a punch to Dean’s gut. He’d buried this little taste of the apple pie life that was granted to him, this unreachable dream, so deep inside the box with the label Do Not Touch. He never dared to look back. It feels so far away now, after all these years. Like from another lifetime.

Shaking his head, Dean tries to clear away the dark clouds inside his head. “No,” he rasps. “You’re not the reason. I fucked that up all on my own.”

“You deserved a happy life,” Cas says regretfully. “That’s why I didn’t turn to you for help, back then. You seemed so… content. I didn’t want to ruin that for you.” Cas laughs dryly, a sad, ugly sound. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t happy,” Dean admits, for the first time to anyone other than himself. “I wasn’t even really content, I…” He shrugs. “Fuck, I’d have jumped at the first chance of getting back into the life. If you’d come to me, I’d-” 

He’d have been so goddamn thrilled. Not happy, not so fresh in mourning for Sam as he had been. But relieved, at the very least.

He can’t say it, but Cas seems to get the meaning of the unspoken words regardless. 

“Me too,” he says, tentatively reaching out to take Dean’s hand in his, as if testing how much he’s allowed. “If… If you had asked me to stay, I would’ve.”

Dean’s head jolts up, the regret of a past ridden with wasted opportunities shining in his eyes. The regret, but also the hope for that something different he’s always been craving, more and more strongly as the years passed.

“When?” Dean asks, breath held in fear and hope and anticipation. “If I had asked you when?”

“After Stull.” Cas shakes his head sadly, as if resigned at his own pitifulness. “Anytime.”

It might be wishful thinking. It might be a trick of the light, but Cas’ eyes seem to clear of the angry redness of the curse, making way for that wonderful, wonderful blue. 

Distantly, he hears the ringing of his phone announcing an incoming call. None of them pays it any mind as they keep staring into each other’s eyes.

“Stay,” Dean asks.

The most beautiful smile lights up Cas’ face, like the sun shining through a clouded sky. 

It’s answer enough, but he still says it aloud. 

“Of course.”

#replies #destiel #prompts #ficlet #spn #heli tries to write #long post #cas says it aloud bc he's not a coward like certain other ppl from other fictional universes👀 #this one fought me vanessa and it got way longer than intended #hope you like it<3 #bend-me-shape-me