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He'd left his cheap toothbrush in Dean's bathroom. It probably came from the homeless shelter and Castiel left it without a second thought. It was easy to carelessly leave things around believing he came home again. And then Dean kicked him out of the bunker.
Jaw clenched in frustration, regret, and a hundred of other jumbled emotions, Dean silently put Castiel's forgotten toothbrush in the cup next to his own. He couldn't bring himself to throw it away. Part of him needed the daily punishment of looking at it and feeling the remorse with the wicked hole in his chest for kicking out his best friend. Then again, he'd stopped thinking of Castiel as his best friend a long time ago. A new seed planted in him. Something deeper.
It made him thrust the angel blade into the reaper woman without a second thought. It made his world spiral out of control as he grabbed Castiel and begged him not to die. It made him choke uncomfortably and then cover it over with sarcasm and atta boy elbowing when Castiel casually announced he'd had sex with her. It made Dean realize that it was probably never going to be him. Not after Castiel inevitably discovered all the lies originating with Ezekiel's possession of Sam.
The reality was Dean stood to lose both his brother and his angel once they realized what he'd done. So, fuck it, he could keep Castiel's forgotten toothbrush and remember happier times until the shit hit the fan.
"Dean?" echoed Sam's voice in the hallway.
"What?" he barked.
The bathroom door popped open and Sam's head poked in, along with a page scribbled in crayon. "Crowley wrote down more demon names."
"Yeah, okay."
"What's with you?"
Dean shook his head. "Nothing."
"Bullshit." With a glance into the hall, presumably to see if Kevin wandered around out there, Sam slid into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He gave Dean that face. "Look, I know you're not sleeping. You're drinking too much again. Come on, you think I don't notice the dead whiskey bottles in the trash? You only drink like this when something's eating at you."
"I wouldn't be me if something wasn't eating at me," he scoffed.
"What the hell's going on?"
"Dude, nothing. Leave it alone." Dean couldn't begin to lie again, to cover over Sam's possession or sending Castiel away on Ezekiel's orders. Anything he said to Sam, that angel in him heard it too.
The way Sam looked at Dean said more than any verbal assault he could have offered. He squirted toothpaste on his brush and jammed it into his mouth just so he wouldn't have to keep seeing that expression of pity and confusion on his brother's face. A fistfight would feel so much better than pity at that point. Briefly, he considered punching Sam just to derail the suspicion, but he knew Ezekiel would put a stop to that in a millisecond.
Realization came over Sam's features. "You're upset Cas left."
Dean glanced at him as he brushed his teeth much longer than necessary. Instead of acknowledging him, Dean bent over and spit into the sink. He just wanted everything to go away.
"He's just protecting you," Sam added. "You said it yourself. He left because he thinks he's dangerous to us right now."
"Yeah, sure." Just shut up. Make it stop. "I gotta go."
"Where?"
"Out!"
Without giving Sam an opportunity to talk him out of it, Dean stalked through the bunker and burst outside for his car. Baby always made things better but, as he drove, not even the familiar rumble of her engine soothed his mood. Each time he thought of what happened, the memory of pain in Castiel's eyes killed him. Maybe if he saw him one more time and made sure things were square between them, he could stomach things for a while.
Dean had no idea what he was doing as he steered the Impala to the first of three homeless shelters in the area. He knew Castiel couldn't have gotten too far, yet none of the shelters had ever seen him. He wasted an hour and a half searching those places. Four ignored calls from Sam left him even more irritated.
In a last ditch effort, Dean swung by the bus station. He had no idea where Castiel would have gone, but if he was the one being hunted by an assload of pissed off angels, he'd sure the hell stay on the move and under the radar. So he walked through the terminal first, searching for any sign of the red hoodie or the green t-shirt. Two greasy prostitutes propositioned him and a guy tried to sell him some pot, which he considered for a split-second just to relax later, but there was no sign of Castiel.
Dean passed through the nastiest men's bathroom he'd ever encountered before he intended to leave. There, he found a familiar lean body bend over the sink, scooping handfuls of water over his face. Stunned, he only stared for a long moment as if seeing a ghost. And then blue eyes crossed the room and met his face.
"Cas..."
"Hello, Dean." His tone wasn't the same. He was guarded. "What are you doing here?"
Shrugging, Dean fiddled with the car keys in his hands and dropped his eyes. "I dunno. I wanted to make sure you're, you know, you're okay."
"I'm fine, Dean." He broke eye contact, retreating further behind his wall, and grabbed his bag from the floor. "Go back to the bunker. Watch over your brother. You need each other more than you need me. As you said, I can only bring danger to both of you now."
As he brushed past Dean, he wouldn't even look at him. And Dean knew that, as reasonable and logical as Castiel was, his new human condition meant he couldn't hide being hurt either.
"Stop," he said, grabbing a fistful of the red hoodie.
Castiel obeyed but he still wouldn't look Dean in the eye. "My bus is going to leave without me."
"You don't wanna do this," Dean whispered hoarsely.
"Want is an irrelevant sentiment," Castiel replied in a robotic tone.
Dean couldn't stand the coldness in those words. He spun Castiel against the freezing, grimy tiled wall and tossed the duffle bag to the floor again. Gripping his face, Dean forced Castiel to hold eye contact because he knew he could only say it once. Maybe he couldn't get through it at all, but he couldn't let go yet either.
"This is me you're talking to here," he said. "I'm sorry, okay?"
"There's nothing to be sorry for. I'm a danger to you," Castiel replied without emotion.
"Damn it! Stop saying that!"
Castiel tilted his head. "Why? They're your words, Dean."
"Yeah, well, I was wrong."
Eyeing him in silence, the former angel's lips pursed together just slightly, barely perceptible. An internal debate bled through his countenance and it seemed that he drifted back and forth between believing Dean and breaking away from him.
Dean's hands went limp. He straightened and decided he couldn't force Castiel to stay if he had better plans. Of course, he knew there weren't better plans, but that seemed irrelevant all at once.
"I was wrong, Cas," he restated, quieter that time. "Stay or don't stay - it's your choice, I guess, but I was wrong. We're stronger together than we are apart. We went through Purgatory together and made it out. I know we can handle all these asshole angels because we handled a shit ton of monsters in Purgatory. Nobody knows what you and me got together except us."
In time, Castiel's eyes finally lifted to his but he didn't seem very forgiving. His mouth remained tense, even when he spoke. "I can't rely on your kindness. I'm a man now. Men make their own way in the world," he replied evenly. "I'm not your duty either."
That was what he thought of Dean? He threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. "Hell, Cas, you're not a duty. Why would you even go there?"
"You never once made me feel like you wanted me to stay even when I told you how much I enjoy our talks and our time together." Castiel folded his arms over his chest. Even as an angel, he'd done that whenever Dean aggravated him. "I was useful to you as an angel. Perhaps you talked yourself into caring about me as we worked together. Now I'm human and I have no powers. I am of no use to you anymore, so I should find a new place to be useful as a man. Am I right?"
"No," replied Dean emphatically. "No, you're so wrong, Cas."
"Am I? Then why couldn't you speak of our alleged bond? You merely sat on the table and told me I couldn't stay."
A heavy, strained breath passed through Dean's body as he rubbed the tension from his forehead. Castiel had no clue how to read him anymore. He didn't know how to explain himself either. So he closed his eyes and forced it out, like a man explaining a horrible crime he committed.
"It was the hardest thing to say that to you. I had to shut off everything else just to get the words out. I thought I was doing the right thing for all of us but I knew as soon as you walked out that it was a mistake." His mind flashed on Ezekiel's threats should Castiel be allowed to stay, but Dean internally vowed not to let his brother or his best friend get hurt anymore. "I don't say anything about ... us ... anymore because it's different now, Cas. I dunno how to explain it."
The former angel's posture loosened a bit and his head tilted, offering Dean his full attention.
"I ... I didn't know for sure, I guess, until you said you had, you know, sex with that reaper..." Tripping over his words made him sound like a fumbling kid and pissed him off.
Castiel let a moment settle between them and then he said, "I didn't know her. I couldn't care about a person - or apparently a reaper - that I don't know, Dean."
"Then why did you do it?" Dean hissed, eyes narrowed.
Those blue eyes narrowed at him in return. "I was tired of being alone day in and day out, sleeping under bridges, in abandoned cars, in the rain, looking for food in dumpsters... Loneliness is one of the most painful human emotions I have experienced to date."
"Yeah..." Dean spun around, rubbing the back of his neck. "I know." He huffed a renewed breath, spun again, and forced himself to keep eye contact. "I didn't like it. It made me jealous, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I was fucking jealous! And if I had known when I found you, I woulda taken my time torturing her instead of stabbing her that quick! You happy now?"
Castiel pushed off the wall and tilted toward Dean with an accusatory scowl. "Why would you be jealous?"
"Jesus, Cas! Do I really have to spell it out?"
The way Castiel visibly struggled to put the pieces together felt like a kick in the chest. Dean turned his back and leaned on the row of sinks stretching from one wall to another. He kept his eyes averted from the mirror, unwilling to look at himself for even a second. The two of them stood in painfully dark silence for close to two minutes, neither moving an inch. Castiel could have certainly gone to catch his bus but he didn't. He stayed and he waited for Dean to pull himself together, whether that former angel understood the roots of jealousy or not.
The only words Dean could muster only carried a pair of syllables but enough emotional weight that Castiel couldn't miss his meaning. "Please stay," he murmured to the sink.
"As long as you want me, Dean," he murmured back.
The hunter let out a subtle puff of an exhale, relief uncoiling the boulder in his chest. A pair of hands slid across the width of his shoulders and loosely settled near his neck. It seemed Castiel finally understood why Dean hadn't been able to speak of their bond lately. It had reached a point of no return and if Castiel had rejected him....
"You ... you get it, right?" He turned just enough to look at Castiel.
He nodded. "Yes, Dean."
Dean nodded too, feeling rather exhausted all of the sudden. "No more reaper chicks, okay?"
"No more guessing what you want," he added.
"I want you," said Dean. It rolled off his tongue easily. He deliberately avoided thinking too hard about that or he'd freeze up again. "I mean ... uh ... you know--"
"--Dean."
"What?"
Castiel pulled Dean's face in the palms of his hands and kissed him, silencing any words that might have surfaced to confuse things even more. The defining moment of their relationship since they met happened in a grungy motel bathroom, which, if Dean really thought about it, seemed fitting somehow.
But whenever they told the story in the years to come, it happened in the bus lot just in the nick of time before Castiel boarded. People may or may not have applauded.
Castiel, as it turned out, was a great storyteller.