day 1 of @thiscastielhasflown and i's follower celebration
prompt: diners/roadtrip
Twenty-four years ago in Mankato, Minnesota, Dean killed a wendigo with a bottle of Jack and a lighter. He told Cas this, how the flames lit the inside of the cave and his dad had to drag him out because he suddenly couldn’t move, how he stayed silent for a week even though his dad begged him to speak.
Seventeen years ago, in Monte Vista, Colorado, Dean burned the bones of a malevolent spirit that sliced a gash through his chest before he could swing an iron crowbar through her foggy figure. As he and Cas passed by the cemetery where he and his dad had dug up her remains, he could almost picture himself standing between the tombstones, his dad tossing him the lighter. Do the honors.
In Evanston, Wyoming, he and Cas stopped to eat at a diner that looked vaguely familiar. As they sat down at a booth in the back, waitress handing them their menus, it hit him.
“Pretty sure Sam and I went through here before.” He couldn’t remember what they'd been hunting. “Years ago. After dad. You know. Passed.”
And Cas was silent a moment before replying, "I wish I’d known you then."
Then he declared he wanted the French onion soup from the specials of the day, like he hadn’t just spoken Dean's thoughts aloud in his uncanny way of knowing exactly what Dean wished for before Dean knew it himself.
Sometimes, while passing semi-trailer trucks on the freeway, when the setting sun glinted off the metal partition between west and east-headed traffic, he wondered what life would’ve been like if he knew Cas when he was twenty-six. When he was so lonely, his chest felt like a vise at night, and he slipped out of mildewed motel rooms to gasp in chilly night air. When he sought out crowded bars because accidental nudges and jostles were substitutes for caresses.
What might’ve changed if he'd known Cas when he was twenty-two, when Sam left for college and Dad left with a cutting, Don't look for me. If, confronted with an angel then, he would’ve been able to believe in good things, if he would've kissed him to not feel so alone.
The radio played Dolly Parton at a diner in Des Moines, a young couple sat at the counter, Cas stacked small containers of strawberry jelly and orange marmalade into a tower, and Dean imagined sitting across from him when he was nineteen. But then Cas looked up at him triumphantly over perfectly balanced preserves, and the what-if's dissolved in a growing warmth in his chest. Cas had been right after all. Good things did happen.
They drove without a destination now that they didn’t need one, changing course frequently, turning off exits to follow signs for roadside attractions, homestyle meals, and scenic overlooks.
Prairie and forest, coast and desert. He'd traveled these roads before, but he was paying attention now. Everything looked different with Cas sitting by his side, when every glance to his right revealed Cas already looking at him.
Re-heated diner leftovers and slices of pie for breakfast, crumbs on the bed, brown bags in the backseat, lunch breaks at rest stops, sitting on the hood to unwrap grease-stained burger wrappers, kept warm from the sun coming through the car’s windows.
Baby had been his home for years. He'd learned her nooks, her curves, how best to settle on the benchseat and tuck his jacket against the door to wake without a crick in his neck.
Moving into the bunker, he'd claimed a room, made a space for every item he owned: a hook for every weapon, a box for every photo, a hanger for every jacket. The concrete walls and sterile bathrooms meant order, control.
He used to be afraid that if he let one item fall out of place, he'd lose his grip on the delicate thread which held him together.
Crackling radio in Omaha, searching for a station. Cassette-tapes pulled out of a box that he hadn’t rifled through since a time when angels were still a myth, god didn’t exist, and death was always close, but not someone they knew by name. Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Metallica. Then, out of Cas' pocket, his own “Top 13 Zepp Traxxs,” which he was surprised to learn Cas still kept, the words on the label faded.
“It was a gift,” Cas said, tucking the cassette into the deck and turning up the volume.
Busy diners where their food took ages to come to their table and Dean doodled on napkins to pass the time. Stuffed them into his pocket and forgot until he pulled them out while looking for change to pay for gas. A tiny Impala, a sun with dashes for rays, sigils, tiny flowers which Cas had added to the corners.
An argument on I-70 and sixty-two miles of tense silence. "If you don't speak to me, I can't understand," Cas said, voice quiet under the whir of tires on the road.
Dean changed lanes, watched a tarp flap over the bed of a pick-up truck. "I don't know how," he admitted.
Cas let out a breath that sounded like relief. "We'll learn."
He learned Cas liked brightly colored shirts labeled with the names of locations they visited, oversized because tight sleeves made him itch. He learned that the strangely named items on diner menus had backstories that owners behind counters were all too eager to share when Cas prompted them. He learned Cas hovered in doorways as if he was waiting to be invited inside, learned Cas knew every upbeat song playing over the radio in gas stations, had nightmares too, could stay silent for seventy miles then speak a thought aloud that left Dean stunned for seventy more.
He taught Cas how to pass the time on roads that stretched to the horizon. Name a movie for every letter of the alphabet. Name three items you'd take to a deserted island. Name everyone we've lost along the way—he didn't mean to begin talking about them, but they seemed closer than ever before on the open road, under a vast, cloudless sky. The wind whisked their names from their mouths, and Dean liked the idea of them still existing, here, around them.
A map open on his lap, Cas circled every town they stopped at, traced their route with a red pen. Folded and unfolded the page until the creases made the snaking lines nearly illegible. "I want to remember," he told Dean, and Dean traced the creases to feel their route under his finger. The steering wheel was warm under his palms, the diner floors sticky under his boots, the motel sheets stiff when he pulled them back from the headboard, and he told Cas, "Pinch me," in the dark of an eighty-dollar-a-night room. Cas touched his face and kissed him instead.
The rocky coast off of Oregon delighted Cas. He rolled up his pant legs, clutched Dean's hand as they walked unsteadily over the slippery rocks to step into the Pacific Ocean. The wind whipped his hair over his face and he pushed back the strands, grinning back at Dean. Sometimes at night, when Cas slept curled into him, Dean looked at the photo he'd taken of him and wished he had a place of their own to frame it.
Long phone calls to family and friends who told them to take their time, do not disturb signs hung on motel doorknobs, winding backroads and detours. He grew out his hair and told Cas he needed a cut. Cas twisted his fingers through the strands, and mused, "I like it." Dean kept it and noticed the strands curled at the ends.
A sign on the highway in Ohio read, "Hell is Real." He still had nightmares. As cornfields passed, Cas recounted seeing his soul for the first time, and sometimes Dean imagined he remembered the safety of Cas' wings as he pulled him out of the depths of Hades.
Cas got sick in Idaho, complained, voice echoing in the toilet bowl, "I told you that diner was not sanitary." Dean rubbed his back and told him he'd write a scathing review. In West Virginia, over a pile of spilled salt and stale fries that were probably nuked behind the counter, Cas told him he loved him. It wasn't for the first time, but his breath still caught in his throat.
They ate fried okra in Oklahoma City, beignets in New Orleans, and Dean requested Earth Angel on a jukebox in a vinyl and chrome diner in Wisconsin. Slid into the booth to press against Cas' side and watch him fill out postcards. Did you know dinosaurs once roamed where the Rockies now stand? Don't know when we'll be back. We bought new cassettes to add to the collection and I convinced Dean to let me choose the music. Still so much we haven't seen.
The magic fingers bed at the King's Court Motel cost four quarters for fifteen minutes—three more than when he was younger, he griped to Cas. The vibrating massage didn't seem quite as relaxing as he remembered, but maybe he was just used to more magical fingers—this he accompanied with an exaggerated wink which made Cas roll his eyes.
The Impala broke down on Route 66, and the asphalt radiated heat as he ducked under the hood. Cas hovered at his side and he realized he didn't have the tools to fix her.
They ate lunch at a mom-and-pop’s restaurant as they waited for the mechanic to finish, and Cas gave him the pickle from his sandwich. "I'm sorry I never asked you to stay," Dean told him and wished he'd said it earlier. "I never wanted you to leave."
Cas gave him a sad smile. "It's in the past." He tapped his foot against Dean's under the table, and Dean hooked his ankle with his foot.
Cas parted the curtains in every motel they slept in, tilted his face to the sun beaming through the windshield, urged Dean to stop for a cardboard sign reading Fresh Strawberries $2. Reruns of The Three Stooges made Dean laugh until he wiped tears from the corners of his eyes, had to catch his breath. This happiness didn't seem so fragile, this time. When they turned on the TV tomorrow night three hundred miles away, The Three Stooges would play into the morning, and when he told Cas he loved him, Cas would say it back.
Crossing over rippling water or curving through wooded land, he and Cas spoke a cabin in the woods, a house on the coast, a home. Dean's head filled with the future instead of the past. Every mile that passed under their tires brought them closer to this dream—or so he thought, until he stopped at a red light, and Cas took his hand, and he realized home sat beside him now.
In a diner in Arkansas, Cas read from a menu, plastic corners curling, and commented, "No matter where we go, every place serves an iceberg wedge salad."
Dean replied, "I think I'm ready to stop driving."
He didn't know where they'd park the Impala for good, but he pictured somewhere with windows, patches of sunlight on the floor. The details didn't matter so much, though, not so long as he had Cas.
"For you to me are the only one," he sang over Robert Plant, glancing at Cas as he turned up the radio, wind whistling through the open windows, road humming under their feet. Happiness, no more be sad, happiness, I'm glad.
