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The door to the bunker looms over Dean, huge and heavy, and he wants to lie down so bad, but his fingers stopped sending signals to his brain about half an hour ago and even grabbing the right key and putting it in the door is well above his motor control skills right now.
“Let me,” Cas says, taking the keys from his hand gently, opening the door and pushing it open with one hand as if it’s the door of a bathroom stall and not twelve foot tall and solid iron. Cas lets Dean go in first, resting one hand on his shoulder to steer him unsubtly down the stairs, right past the war room and the library and through to the door of Dean’s bedroom.
"Sit," says Cas firmly, pushing down on the shoulder he still hasn't let go of, and Dean sits.
“Cas,” Dean mutters, “Don’t-”
Cas ignores him, pressing a gentle finger to the cut on his cheekbone, so light it may as well be a breath of air. Cas’ fingers are normally cold to the touch - Jimmy Novak had poor circulation - but when he reaches out to heal Dean, his hands are always warm with grace.
Dean doesn’t normally let Cas heal him. It’s not pride and it’s not always guilt; it’s that feeling, at the top of his spine, in the corners of his eyes, calm and tense all at once, Cas’ grace worming its way under his skin as if it belongs nowhere else. Once - a long time ago, before Cas knew what to say and what to skirt around, Dean had asked what his soul looked like. Cas had looked right at him and told him, solemn as anything.
Cas is the thread in the needle that had sewn him together. Go figure.
Dean closes his eyes as the hands move down, trailing over a particularly nasty bruise on his jaw, and then up to his ear, where he knew his eardrum had been burst, healing him all the way, a faint warm tingle settling under his skin. Cas keeps going, long fingers reaching around the back of his neck, where a knife had barely brushed him, a thin cut from his third vertebrae up to his hairline.
Dean feels more than hears the wince as he trails over it. “You should be more careful, Dean,” he says, voice as soft as his touch. “That knife could have injured your spine.”
Dean hums, relief making him drowsy, and doesn’t open his eyes. “M’fine, Cas. Don’t waste your grace.”
Cas doesn't answer, healing the cut instead, and the hands disappear and then reappear, one fingertip on the bridge of his nose.
“Dean,” Cas says. “Your nose is broken.”
It’s hard to speak. “Uh, yeah,” he mumbles, “guess so.”
“What happened?”
“Wall,” his eyelids feel like they’re glued shut, but he pries them open to see Cas’ face, closer than usual, blue eyes narrow with concern. “Or boot, can’t remember.”
“You’re normally more careful than this.”
“Dunno.” His eyes slip closed again. “‘M tired.”
“You should get some rest.” He takes his hand away without healing Dean, and Dean’s about to complain, but then it’s replaced with a pair of lips, and Cas’ grace flows through them, healing sinew and bone and skin, and the rush of relief is so strong that tears prick in his eyes and throat.
“Cas,” he says, meaning a warning, but his voice cracks instead and it sounds like a plea; it sounds like a prayer.
“Shh,” Cas says instead, quiet against his skin, and he pulls away, tilting Dean’s head back gently and catching his split lip between both of his own, arms framing Dean’s sides, and the feeling of liquid warmth goes right through him, healing his split lip and his bruised rib, the pain in his hip where he walked into the kitchen counter last week, his bad knee, and then stays there a while, barely moving, just staying close, kissing him a second time even though Dean’s too tired to do anything but clutch Cas’s sleeve to make sure he stays there.
They don’t do this a lot, and Dean remembers why when he lets Cas do it, remembers how it makes something burn so hot and bright inside him he’s sure it will kill them both.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve healed your knee,” Cas grumbles, pulling away. “You need to stretch it out regularly.”
“Okay, Mom,” Dean grumbles right back, and looks up.
Cas is leaning over him still, his sleeve still loosely clutched in Dean’s hand, eyes bright and blue and staring straight at him with an expression Dean couldn’t name for the life of him, and Dean lets himself wonder for a fraction of a second what might happen if he pulls Cas down beside him.
He barely thinks it before Cas is blinking and stepping towards the door.
“Cas?”
“Yes?”
Don’t leave, he wants to say, the words settling on the tip of his tongue and refusing to budge any further.
“Good night,” he says instead, watching the slump of Cas’ back, the silhouette of him against the doorframe through half-closed eyes.
“Night, Dean.”
“You’ll be back in a few days, right?” Dean says, hating the neediness in his tone, and then rephrasing, trying to inject some lightness into his voice, “I mean, we need someone to water the plants ‘round here, yeah?”
He doesn’t miss the way Cas’ shoulders set, and he knows he’s fucked up, but he doesn’t know how. “Maybe.”
“Okay.” That prickling in his throat is back, the ache in his arms, like maybe if he screams loud enough Cas would stay right here in this room and never go anywhere again. Or maybe he’d leave for good, and Dean would never have to watch the way his shoulders slump when he’s disappointed or how the lines etching themselves into his face are from worry and not from smiling. Maybe Cas will leave and Dean will never have to see the way he’s ruined him.
He sees him now, stock still in the half-light, body angled perpetually away from Dean.
"It would never be a waste," the shadow in the door says then, "my grace. Not on you."
Then it turns and walks away.