Take Care of My Baby

Twenty-Five

Dean stares at his brother for a long moment, eyes narrowed. "Uh, yeah," he protests. "You were there, Sam. You saw it. He... he had head trauma and, and we saw him die."

"Wait, wait, wait," Sam says, shaking his head vigorously. "You've got it all wrong, man."

"Okay, what the hell're you talking about?"

"Look, okay," the younger Winchester says. "Lemme start over. Cas... Cas did die. Technically. He was gone for seven minutes. He cut it close, man; if he had been gone any longer, they said his brain would have started to die."

"Wait," Dean cuts in. He leans forward on the table, rubbing at his forehead. This whole damn thing is giving him a headache. He spent eight years mourning Cas's death, when in reality, the man was alive? "So... so Cas... made it?"

"Yeah. I mean, he was in the hospital for about a year, but he lived."

"What happened?" Dean's voice is barely a whisper.

"He was in a coma for a real long time. Just over six months, I think. When he came to, he had a little bit of amnesia, and I think it was gone in a few days. But he had to go through a lot of physical therapy just to walk again."

"Wow." The older man shakes his head in disbelief. With a weak laugh, he says, "This is a lot to take in."

"You really didn't know he was alive?" Sam asks softly.

"No. No, I... Sammy, I left because I thought he was dead. If I would have known he was still alive, I would have stuck around a lot longer."

Sam nods as he looks at his brother with sympathy. Then, a thought dawns on him, and he's digging his wallet out of his pocket again. "I have some pictures, if you want to see 'em."

"God, Sammy, I'd love to," Dean agrees. He leans forward eagerly. It feels a little bit like he's gonna hurt himself worse just by looking at these pictures, but he can't find it in himself to care, because even the slightest millimeter that lies between him and the sight of Cas after all these years is unacceptable.

Dean is still having trouble swallowing this new information. Every ounce of guilt that he built this new life on has been unfounded. He could have stayed in his home, could have been there for Cas as he was in his coma, could have helped the man regain his memory or walk, could have taken Cas home for the first time in a year and watched as the man became reacquainted with everyday life.

And now, a new, heavier layer of guilt falls over him, because he missed all of those things and more. He missed eight years of Cas's life, eight years that they could have been together.

But he doesn't think about it any more when Sam hands Dean a few pictures. "Here."

Dean takes them gingerly, as though he's afraid that if he grasps too hard, they'll disappear.

"The first one is at our wedding," Sam says by way of explanation. "He was only out of the hospital a month."

It's a photo of Sam, Jess, Cas, and Bobby. Everyone is beaming with joy, though Cas's smile is a little bit dimmed. And the man certainly does look as though he spent the year in the hospital. Cas was never very bulky by any means, but he was strong, and he did have muscle. But in this picture, almost none of that shows. He had dropped so much weight that he almost looked like a walking skeleton.

Still, he's the Cas that Dean knew. His short, wild hair was tamed, and he was wearing a suit as opposed to his usual attire, but goddammit, it's Cas.

Tears well up in Dean's eyes, but he blinks them back. Still, after all these years, he has a reputation to maintain.

Instead, he flips to the next picture.

This one shows Cas alone, waving to the camera with a half-smile on his face. He's surrounded by a few bags.

"He was out of the hospital a year then. It was when Cas moved," Sam interjects softly.

Dean looks up. "He moved? When? Where?"

"Yeah. He hitchhiked up to San Franciso in, oh, sometime in early in '58. He moved again a while after that, though. He's in New York now."

The older Winchester stares down at the picture again. Cas looks undoubtedly healthier than he did in the first picture, though there are some things about him that have changed. Cas's hair is longer in this one, and it's much messier, though that could just be the wind. He seems to have put on some muscle again, at least enough to make his journey a comfortable one.

"Hitchhiking, huh?" he asks with a soft huff of a laugh. He never would have thought Cas would be one to hitchhike.

"Yeah, he... when he was in the hospital, he read a lot. It was really one of the only things he could do. He got really into the beat generation, and-"

"What that?" Dean asks, wrinkling his nose. He thinks he's heard the term before, but he can't be sure.

"It's, uh, the name for this group of writers. You remember hearing about that obscenity trial in '57? The one for that poem called Howl, 'cause it talked about sex and drugs and, um, homosexuality?"

Dean nods. It was big news for a while. There was one guy at the factory who would wax poetic about how this Ginsberg guy had given a credible name to modern poets, but Dean can't say he's ever read the thing himself.

"Yeah, it was authors like that. Y'know, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs? Cas just... fell in love with Allen Ginsberg, and when he read On The Road for the first time, I guess he just got it in his head that he needed to travel to San Francisco."

San Francisco. Dean can see the appeal; not only would Cas's favorite writers have been there, but it also happened to be one of the few places in the country where two men could be together with fewer people giving a shit.

Dean likes the picture he holds. Cas holds himself with the prospect of adventure even though his eyes still speak of sadness. Even though it hurts Dean to imagine Cas with anyone else, he hopes that the man found what he was looking for.

After inscribing each detail of the picture to memory, he moves on to the final picture.

"That's a newer one," the younger Winchester says as he peeks over to see what Dean holds. "Cas sent that last summer."

The first thing Dean notices is that Cas is smiling. It's not a full-on grin, but still, his lips are turned up, and his eyes are crinkled. He's standing next to two other men, both of whom Dean doesn't recognize. The first man in question is bald on top, but the rest of his head is occupied by shoulder-length hair. A long beard and thick-rimmed glasses cover most of his face. The second has slicked-back hair and is far shorter than both of the other two, and he has a smirk on his face that lets Dean know he's probably up to no good.

But it's Cas his eyes return to. The man's hair is even longer and a little messy, like it's been windblown for a while. He looks happy. Healthy.

"There's uh, there's a message on the back," Sam points out softly.

Dean flips the picture around, and, sure enough, there's Cas's messy handwriting.

We finally met Ginsberg! One of the most interesting men I've ever been blessed to make acquaintances with. Wish you and Jess could have accompanied me.
Best wishes,
Cas


"Huh," Dean smiles as he hands the pictures over to Sam once more. It's a sparse greeting, but he imagines that it came with a letter or something, somewhere that Cas could speak more openly. "Seems like you guys got close."

Sam shrugs as he puts away his photos. "Guess so. We were all kinda hurtin' after you left, so I it made sense for us to stick together."

It's just another bucket of guilt to pour over Dean's shoulders.

"What was it like?" he asks softly as Sam stuffs his wallet in his jeans once more.

"What? When you left?"

"Yeah."

Sam plops his hands in his lap and shrugs. "It was weird, Dean. You were this, this presence in town. People came there because of you. So when you left, it was just... it felt like something was missing. I know a lot of people took off after a while, looking for other stuff somewhere else." He just shrugs. "We all missed you, though. We all lost a friend. It just happened that I lost my brother, too."

"I'm sorry, Sammy."

"Hey, don't worry about it, Dean. We're here now."

Dean nods and tries to smile, but he can't find it within himself. Instead, he just asks, "What about Cas?"

Sam thinks back, and then, suddenly he gives a short laugh as he remembers something. "You know how we knew he got his memory back?" He looks over at Dean. "We came in to see him, and he was sittin' up in bed looking at us, and the first thing out of his mouth was, 'Where's Dean?' And then he looked down and saw all the casts and stuff, and he went, 'That dumbass'."

"Really?" Despite how he feels, that pulls a laugh from Dean, even if it is quite sad in some ways. He takes the opportunity to wipe his eyes and nose while Sam looks down at the table as he gets ready to continue.

"Yeah," Sam smiles. "He, uh... well, we didn't really know what to tell him. We told him you two got in an accident, since he wasn't really sure how he ended up in the hospital. He just kept askin' if you were okay, and if he could see you again."

Any speck of light-heartedness flies out the window as the younger Winchester moves on with the story. Neither man looks at the other. Neither man can handle the pain on the other's face.

"When we told him that you left, he just pursed his lips and looked out the window. We... well, what do you really say about that? We already told him it wasn't his fault, but he had tears in his eyes, Dean, and the nurses who worked nights used to say that when they'd check on him, he cried almost every night for weeks when he thought no one was around.

"He never talked about you after that. Not to us, anyway."

Dean, for his own part, is crying. Hearing that crushes him. He thought he was doing the right thing when he left town, but now he can see that he was impulsive and hasty. Hindsight is always 20/20, but Dean just wishes that he had at least stayed for a while longer. If he had stuck around for Cas's funeral, he would have found that there was no reason to bury the man after all, and he could have spared Cas so much heartache. God, if he had only called. He might not have wanted to grovel back into town and beg for forgiveness, but hell, he'd have had been there for Cas, and he wouldn't have wasted eight years of his life.

"What was he like?" Dean whispers; if he uses his vocal chords, he knows his voice will crack. "I mean, what did he...?"

"He read a lot, like I said," the younger man reiterates. "We brought him new books every few days. After a while, though, he started writing."

"Hot damn. Did he really?" At this, Dean looks up with a smile on his face. Cas had expressed his desire to write throughout their relationship, but he had always been hesitant for fear that his work wouldn't be perfect. His motto, much like Sam's, fell along the lines of 'you do it and do it right, or you don't do it at all'.

"Yeah, man. He even has a few books published, and the critics think he's got somethin'."

Dean lets out a huff of a laugh, even through his tears, and he looks down at the table. "Well, I'll be damned." He scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm, making note to look up those books later. "Did he finish school? I was so worried that being in the hospital would ruin that for him..."

"Mhm. When he got out of the hospital, he ended up just staying with Jess and me, so I took him every day."

"But what about when he... when he left?"

"Yeah, he transferred his credits to a university in Frisco. We went up for his graduation."

Dean smiles to himself. It's a comfort to know that Cas could at least function, could continue on with a normal life even though Dean left his life in ruins and didn't stick around to get him back on his feet. And he's eternally grateful for his little brother, who, in so many ways, is the man Dean never could be.

"You should go see him."

Five words. Five simple words, and Dean's mind goes into a panicked overdrive. It's unthinkable for him, so he tries to compartmentalize and shove it into some dark corner.

"No."

"Dean," Sam states firmly, "you owe it to him to let him know you didn't just abandon him because you didn't love him."

"But what am I supposed to tell him?" the older man counters. His voice raises almost unconsciously, but this is a matter that puts him on the defense. It's like rubbing salt into an open wound. "That I left him for dead because I couldn't clean up my messes? Because, because I couldn't handle the way people would look at me?"

Sam looks at him like he's crazy, and he nods. "Well... yeah. That'd be a start."

"No. I can't do it. That's fucking crazy, and you know it." The older Winchester crosses his arms in front of his chest and leans back in his chair. He doesn't even give Sam the benefit of eye contact. It's the universal signal for shutting down, and he's letting Sam know straight-off that this is not something he wants to discuss.

"Why? Why is that so crazy, Dean?" Sam counters, just as loud. "You obviously still care for him, and it's not like you've got anything to lose here."

"Yeah? And what if he has someone else now? What if he moved on? Or, or if he hates me?"

"Because it'll give at least one of you peace of mind," the younger man exclaims. "He'll know the truth, and you'll know that he's happy. And then, if you want, you can come back here and live some miserable fucking life, alone, because you just run away whenever something happens, and you never let anyone help!"

Dean is taken aback my Sam's proclamation. It's obviously a confession that he didn't plan to let loose, because the man looks guilty almost immediately and starts to retract his statement.

"Look, Sam, I get that you're pissed at me. Okay? You have a right to be" he says with a softer tone. "But I can't just show up at his doorstep. That, that's creepy, for one, and he'd probably slam the door in my face or something."

But Sam just goes right on looking at him. The man's expression morphs into something new, something that Dean hasn't seen since their youth.

"I know that look," Dean points out. "Somethin's stewin' in that brain of yours."

"I might have a thing or two planned out," Sam shrugs nonchalantly with a little smile curling onto his lips.

"Well, spill. Lemme hear it."

"Okay, so. You know how I told you Cas has books published, right?" Sam asks, alternating between shooting Dean meaningful looks and digging through his backpack.

"I remember."

"Well, get this: he's doing a book signing down in New York tomorrow." Sam's whole face just keeps brightening, like he's expecting a reaction.

But Dean doesn't get it. New York is at least a day's drive away, and besides. He doesn't own a copy of Cas's book, he doesn't know where the signing is, and he probably won't be able to get in if Cas is popular enough to even have signings.

"So?" he shrugs.

"So, I just happen to have a wristband to get in, a copy of his book, and a plane ticket to New York that leaves later tonight."

Now, Dean understands why Sam is acting like a concentrated ball of sunshine. The younger man sets a hardcover book on the table, brand new. He slides it over to Dean, flips open the cover to reveal the ticket and wristband, and then closes it again.

"Sam," Dean sighs, shaking his head. "I can't fly."

"Yes you can."

"Sammy, those are giant hunks of metal that are somehow flyin' through a place where no giant hunk of metal should be," the older man protests seriously. "I'm sorry, but I've fucked with fate enough already, don't you think?"

"Oh, give it a rest, Dean," Sam groans, rolling his eyes. "I've flown plenty of times before, and I'm still here. You're just trying to find a way out of this."

"So let's say I do go - not that I'm saying I will! - but...if I did... what the hell would I even start with?"

Sam shrugs. "You'll think of something."

"W-what?" Dean gapes. "Are you kidding me? You're not even gonna help me out on this?"

"I've done enough, haven't I?"

"Well, yeah, but come on," Dean groans. "And why can't I just drive there?"

"Because you'll have time to read Cas's book on the plane and make sure you're well-rested from not having to drive all night," Sam tells him.

"Oh, sure. You just want to make sure I can't back out halfway there."

The younger man smirks. "That, too."

"Yeah, but... I have to work tomorrow. Rufus needs me at the-"

"Bullshit," Sam cuts Dean off. "I already got you the week off work. Called Rufus myself and told him to make something up to keep you away. And I figured that I'd be up here in time to explain this so that your boss down at the Ford plant wouldn't have to be in on it, too."

"That..." he tilts his head in confusion, "that was you?"

Sam nods.

"Unbelievable," Dean groans, dropping his head on the table.

Sam reaches over and pats Dean sympathetically on the arm. "If it's any consolation, I think you'll really like the book."

"It's not."

The younger man chuckles, and Dean can hear the sound of a chair sliding back. He lifts his head just enough to see Sam standing up to sling on his backpack.

"You're leaving already?" he asks. He had been hoping Sam would stay longer, at least long enough to see him off to New York. If he decided to go, that is.

"Yeah. I gotta be back in LA by Monday to meet with a client. And you only have until seven to catch your flight, so I thought I'd let you have a few hours to do your whole wallowing thing," the man says as though it's the most simple thing in the whole world. The words do sting, though; there's definitely some hostility between them that Dean needs to mend.

He stands up, too. Sam purses his lips and gives a sad smile before finally giving in and hugging his brother. It's another long one, as if they're trying to make up for lost time. It just feels so damn good to give his little brother a hug again after so long.

"Good seein' you, Sammy," Dean mumbles, his voice gruff with emotion.

"You, too, Dean." He pats his brother on the back once and pulls away. There are tears in both of their eyes, but neither of them will allow any to be shed until their meeting is over. "You'll come see us soon?"

"Yeah, definitely," Dean agrees with a heartfelt nod. He jams his hands in his pockets and looks down at the floor. "Guess I'm gonna have to get used to flyin', huh?"

Sam chuckles quietly. "Yeah. Guess so."

They stand there for a moment before Dean jumps up. "So, I'll see you out, then."

He leads Sam to the door and opens it for his brother. Sam heads out, but once he's in the hall, he turns around to Dean. He gives another tearful smile and gives a little salute that Dean reciprocates immediately. It was something they used to do all the time as kids, and it dredges up a lot of emotions in Dean.

And then, a moment later, Sam turns and heads down the hall. Dean watches him until he reaches the stairwell before he brings himself to close the door and retreat back into the kitchen. He just stops in the doorway when he gets there. He eyes the book on the table like it's a formidable enemy.

Deans is terrified. His heart thumps in tiny little flutters whenever he thinks about Cas. About how he's alive, and how he published books, and about how he's doing a signing, and about how Dean has the means to get there and see Cas again.

He wants to. Oh God, he really, really wants to. Nothing would make him happier than to see Cas live, in person. He can get up, and he can meet Cas again face-to-face. He's wished with all of his heart for the past eight years that he could just have one chance to tell Cas how sorry he is, but never in his wildest dreams would he have thought it a legitimate possibility.

But at the same time, Dean dreads it. He doesn't want to go all the way to New York to find out that Cas hates him with every fiber of his being. Dean can't imagine anything worse than arriving only to have Cas kick him out.

Eight years. It's still so hard to wrap his head around. He lost eight fucking years of his life. Eight years that could have been spent with Cas, and they were wasted doing mindless labor in a self imposed solitary confinement. He doesn't know if he's pissed, depressed, or just plain baffled.

"Goddammit," he mutters to himself as he makes to grab a beer out of the fridge. However, he thinks better of it, and grabs some of the whiskey off of the shelf. This is a whiskey kind of problem. He pours himself a glass, and then he walks over to the table.

The book is there, like a villain waiting to be conquered. It's called Chained to a Comet, written in harsh but somehow refined script at the top of the cover. Dean drags his fingers over it. Below is a black and white picture of a man and the blurs of cars as they race past him. It strikes a familiar chord within Dean; he's seen this picture before. It's one that Cas took at one of his races so many years ago.

Did Cas write a book about racing?

But he will admit that it's nice to see the words 'Castiel Novak' printed at the bottom of the cover.

That's it for him. There's no question in his mind when he looks at nothing but that damn cover. It's as impulsive as his decision to leave California all those years ago, because if he thinks about it for any period of time, he'll back out, and he'll spend the rest of his days wallowing in the chances he never had. He's wasted eight years; he won't waste any more.

He practically runs off into his bedroom to hunt down his duffel bag.

He's going to New York.
♠ ♠ ♠
I'm flying across the country on Monday, so there won't be any updates until next Thursday. I'm sorry for the inconvenience! But on the bright side, if you've never read any Ginsberg, you could check out some of his work!

I do want to thank all of you who have been reading, though. It means a lot to me, especially knowing that you guys are interested in the turnout!