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The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
-- John Boyle O’Reilly
Sam cannot bear the pain he brings to Dean; and this is why he does not tell him he loves him as much as he thinks he should. To tell him he loves him is to evoke that cruel, sharp edge of why they love so fiercely, for all the things they must love without. He cannot tell Dean that when he has a family of his own, Sam hopes he can be the sort of father to his future son that Dean was to him.
The raw wound remains -- they both know Dean will never be a father, or a husband, or anyone's beloved. And so it is only natural that after Sam graduates Stanford and moves into their perfect square of verdant lawn and white picket fence, he and Jess agree that Dean can live in the basement with them.
And this is how it is, only three months in with the black Chevy Impala parked outside in the driveway, like an insulting slash against the neutral tones of the build-to suit homes, that Sam wakes up to find Dean tending the roses.
#
Sam watches him through the curtain.
The roses came with the property. They were browned, abandoned sticks thrust up through the ground and were neglected long before Sam and Jess took over the property, and at first, there was nothing odd about it.
Dean parks his car and comes straight to the door on his daily arrivals home, but Sam begins to notice that Dean's walk from the Impala to the front door slows in pace. Gradual, over time, his walk is no longer a walk but a trailing, reluctant stroll. Amused, Sam attempts to puzzle out his brother's habits over the edge of the newspaper during the mornings. Dean is looking at the roses that line the fence, and then down the driveway, leading all the way up to the door.
His brow furrowed, he studies dead sticks with fixed green eyes, and Sam does not even hear the television or the sound of Jess moving in the kitchen as he recognizes the look on his brother's face -- an expression he has only ever seen when he spoke of Lisa, before that relationship fell apart, or the expression Dean wears when he works on the car.
Then comes the day when Dean does not have to go to work. He rises and pulls on his ragged pair of jeans with the holes blown out at the knees, shrugs himself into a black shirt, and by the time Sam has a steaming cup of coffee and his eyes are half-open, Dean is out in front, turning the earth with a spade and tending the roses.
"They're just sticks, hon. We should really have them removed," Jess suggests, breaking Sam's moment of silence.
He jumps, nearly spills his coffee and she pats him on the shoulder, her fingers warm and reassuring. There is something sad in their secret voyeurism, Sam thinks, to watch his lonely brother attempting to resurrect dead roses as though his life depends on it. He cannot remember the last time he saw his brother so earnest, so focused, on such a hopeless task. It scares Sam, for while he likes the idea of Dean finding a direction in his life other than what the mechanic shop can offer, it seems, in classic Dean fashion, he has chosen to invest himself in something that will never return.
Why does he do that? Set upon fixing the unfixable? He's going to hurt himself, Sam thinks.
"You're right, I'll call the landscaper tomorrow."
And Sam decides to think no more of it; he has to look up a court case on Lexis Nexis for a client and he promised Jess he would take her out later.
But from time to time, his eyes still wander past the top of the screen to study the strong silhouette of his brother through the white curtain. Dean moves his hands over broken shafts of roses the way he touches socket wrenches, spark plugs, carburetors -- with a reverence that strikes Sam as holy. He finds the intensity of his brother's focus frightening.
#
To Sam's dismay, there is a row when the landscaper arrives the next day.
"Dude, just get the fuck off the property!"
Sam's eyes snap open. He feels the soft weight of Jess beside him, who mumbles and turns back into her pillow, returning to her dreams, but Sam cannot ignore the cacophony occurring outside. He vaults from the edge of the bed, stubs his toe on the end table, while the alarm clock flirts with suicide by tumbling off the edge. He manages to save it at the last minute by yanking on the cord and falling on his ass. Determined, he tries waking up again and pounds down the steps in his boxers and nothing else.
This is how he comes to stand on the front porch, feeling undignified with his nipples hard in the chill morning air and his brother fighting with the landscaper over the roses. Only, his brother has a gun and the landscaper, Mr. Zachariah Elohim of Eden Landscaping, does not appear fazed in the slightest.
To Dean's credit, he doesn't aim the gun, but with his wild, unbrushed hair gone long with neglect and the dark circles under his eyes, he cuts an imposing, bruising figure of harsh angles and an unforgiving stare.
"Dean! What the fuck is wrong with you! Put the gun away!"
Sam strides forward, wincing as stray stones push up into his bare feet and Dean stares, pliant as he allows Sam to pull the gun from his grasp. Dean does not resist, but his eyes burn hot and piercing, accusatory while Zachariah leans against the truck with a chainsaw ripping sound into the air.
"Dude, are you responsible for this?" Dean hisses.
"Last time I checked, it was my house, first, and second, since when are you in the habit of pulling firearms on landscapers, and --"
Sam pauses. His words had been building heat while he and Dean faced off in what would no doubt be the neighborhood's Sunday morning entertainment for the year, but the sound of the chain saw, revving in Zachariah's hands while he quirks an amused grin, has become too intrusive to ignore.
"Um, I don't think a chainsaw is necessary for rose removal," Sam points out.
"I don't think rose removal is necessary to begin with, Sam," Dean hisses.
"Ain't for the roses," Zachariah provides helpfully, with a withering stare in Dean's direction.
His brother doesn't miss a beat; he shoots Zachariah the finger and Sam punches Dean on the shoulder before yanking Dean's wallet out of his back pocket.
"Hey!" he cries.
Sam moves past him, rifling through Dean's wallet -- a condom, a girly picture, one of Ben and Lisa, one of their mother -- that one nearly stops him in his tracks -- until he finds the twenties and tears two of them out, stuffing them into Zachariah's breast pocket.
"Sorry for the trouble," Sam mutters. "Call it day."
Once the landscaping truck is around the corner and spewing blackened exhaust into the air, Sam winces his way back to Dean's side, stepping on every sharp rock in existence. Dean falls silent, arms crossed over his chest and staring at the horizon, his jaw set.
"What's got into you?" Sam asks, his voice low.
Dean speaks, but his voice comes out in a low growl, and Sam steps closer to hear it, to catch it.
"What was that?"
"They're mine!" he cries out, fierce. There is a pull to his mouth that makes his brother look cruel, look lost, and Sam finds himself hurting for him, coupled with a sensation of a space between them he cannot reconcile. As though a shadow occupies it, a shadow he cannot name or recall, and the feeling chills him, frightens him more than his brother's sudden obsession with roses.
"They're dead, Dean, they're not coming back."
"Don't say that!"
"Dean, you're acting like a child, throwing a temper tantrum. What's really going on?"
"They're important, Sam. I don't expect you to get it."
Dean looks down at his feet, his expression softens, but there still remains a darkness that renders the green of his eyes darker than ever; tarnishes the gold that rings his pupil.
"I don't get it myself, Sam," he whispers, and return to the rose beds.
Sam turns to go, and then stops, his vision caught by a flash of color as Dean puts his back to him and kneels by the first of the rose bushes.
There is a green shoot emerging from one of the dead canes, an unfurling leaf.
#
Jess insists on a visit to the bookstore; Borders is going out of business and this is how Sam finds himself bored while Jess goes through clearance cook books, ordering a coffee from a snot-faced, sour-pussed barista with a English accent.
"That your flavor?"
"Just regular coffee, please," Sam says, pushing a five across the counter.
"No, I'm talking about the girl, lad," he says, pushing a coffee back toward Sam and motioning to Jess.
He snorts laughter. "That's my wife."
"She's a looker, eh? Tell you what, though, that's not where the good books are, where she's lookin'."
Sam laughs louder, this time. "Borders is generally not the place for that."
"Oh, but it is! See here, I got a lot of interestin' books you won't find this side of the Atlantic. I'm a dealer in hard to get items."
And with that, the man pulls a stack of books from beyond the counter. His apron presses against the surface as he leans over to show Sam, and he notices it is stained with cinnamon and something that looks like blood -- a random thought inspired by his late night viewing of Daybreakers with Jess, and returns his attention to the barista's books. It's not as though they're serving demon-blood coffee, he thinks with amusement.
Or was it just human blood coffee for vampires? Why did I think demon-blood?
"Crowley, by the way," he offers, but Sam barely hears him; instead, there is a book beneath the first, whose corner peeks out of line from the others, brown stained and old leather. As Sam teases it out of the pile, he sends the others cascading to the ground and Crowley curses robustly, losing pages in dabs of chocolate powder on the floor.
From what Sam can make out, it is an older book on the care of roses, and it occurs to him that this is something Dean would like; something to make up for the landscaping incident with Zachariah and perhaps mend their odd, decaying bridge of a relationship. Sam reflects on Dean's exhaustion of late, his haggard face, his hard-bitten features. His brother is in his thirties now -- he wasn't the young buck he used to be, and though he is far from an old man, Sam feels the stab of guilt when he considers that his brother is aged before his time. And who wouldn't be, to raise a younger brother like a son in the face of their father's abandonment?
He doesn't even blink when Crowley demands a fifty for the tattered copy of How A Righteous Man Raises A Rose by Castiel.
#
But Sam does not give the book to Dean right away.
He waits until Jess is asleep and when he finds that his down pillows and his 600 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets aren't enough to lull him into unconsciousness, he rises, pulls on his shirt, fishes the book from his nightstand and pads his way downstairs.
In the basement, Dean sleeps, and Sam is not worried about interruptions. They haven't properly spoken since the landscaping incident, and Sam knows it's not personal. Dean likes his space, has always been clear when he needs to blow off steam and be by himself, and this is one of those times. It won't be the last, and in a way, even those rifts in their relationship form a comfortable routine they can depend on, that makes them unique, an indivisible unit. Brothers.
For the first time, they have the luxury of space and separate rooms, and Sam will never be able to take his good fortune for granted; he need only look into Dean's eyes and remember every sacrifice that makes his new life possible, or to look at the humble, lean lines of the '67 Impala in the driveway and be reminded of where they both come from. He likes that just fine.
He sits down at the kitchen table, and when the coffee finishes brewing, he pours himself a cup and opens the book to the first page.
#
How A Righteous Man Raises A Rose
by Castiel
It is never too late to take up tending roses; my only regret is that I did not do so sooner.
There are two kinds of gardeners in the world. There are ones that strip and burn and fertilize and prune until all the mystery and wildness is killed out of a rose. They resent the thorns. This gardener will fall for the splashy advertisements for hybrid teas built on weak rootstocks from poorly bred roses. He will fall in love with the illusion of the perfect rose.
The other ones know there is no perfect rose. The perfect rose is the one you tend, despite your sliced and bleeding hands. That rose will bleed with you. The perfect rose is the one that suffers and yet, despite its errant canes, its browned dead heads, you bear it out; you will not unearth it and throw it out like so much trash. The perfect rose is the one you do not cut back and prune and shorten and reduce and make little. You will let it grow and bloom to its heart's content, like a Metallica song played at full volume.
#
Sam blinks, and then turns the page. He expected something more how-to than philosophical, and while he enjoys it well enough, he has doubts Dean will appreciate it.
Curious, he continues reading, hardly noticing the passage of time and the dawn chasing the moon down the horizon.
#
Roses do not come to be easily. Their existence is a harsh one. In the case of the Righteous Man . . .
Forgive me. It's hard for me to write about this.
In the case of the Righteous Man, he will not recognize the rose right away. He will walk past it, seeing only what he must to survive. But as these concerns become more distant, his life more settled, he will see the rose.
He will not understand why he is driven to tend it; it calls like a song to his heart. He may have never had an interest in gardening before, beyond a functional purpose. Indeed, his whole life has been function over form, utility over beauty. But in the dark hours when the night passes slow, and he thinks of all he has sacrificed that leaves him empty and limping and broken, he craves beauty, above all else.
He could find beauty in anything he chooses. He found it in a car, a brother, a laundry list of lovers. He does not have to find it in a rose, but he finds himself drawn there, still; and there is a reason for this.
He does not remember the reason.
He should never remember it.
I forbid him to.
There was a time I never knew sorrow, or love, and pain was a distant agony I watched humans suffer. It seemed transient and fleeting and barely worth mention, not of import. It was the Righteous Man who taught me these human things, one slow, torturous lesson at a time.
The Righteous Man will not remember, because I forbid him to. But if he could remember, he would remember that his mother did not only die in a fire -- she died in a fire before a yellow eyed demon. That one event spiraled into another and like a garden path grown wild, we all lost our way. One brother gone down the road of demon blood, and the relationship sours as he learns to love demons and their darkness. And how could he not, when he learned to love Dean, who held so much darkness in himself?
#
What the fuck?
Sam turns the page, his heart quickening.
#
I could share blame from one brother to another; it would be easy to blame Sam, but it wouldn't be fair. One brother jumpstarts the apocalypse, and the other helps it along.
I spent many a long hour puzzling that out; as though time were an engine, and I could detect the moment of combustion, determine what part was vital to its smooth operation and remove it, allowing the machine to break down entirely. And maybe then, there would be no pain, no apocalypse.
Everything fell apart, and not in the way I had planned. I jumbled futures and pasts and presents; I time-hopped between one world and another, playing out alternate worlds that were born without Sam; I tried ones where Dean was never born. I even killed John, and that only brought the apocalypse faster. Even after my ill-fated attempt to walk in God's shoes, it seemed every road led to Michael and Lucifer and their overwhelming desire to destroy the world, salt the earth, and scorch it.
And maybe if I had not learned something about the nature of love --
Maybe if I had never met the Righteous Man --
I would not be sorry at all to watch the world burn.
But that is not what happened.
In the end, I exhausted all the possibilities, and while my flesh was still creeping and crawling with my last failed effort -- the consumption of fifty million souls in an attempt to wield the power of God himself, to be God -- it occurred to me there was an answer to this problem I had never considered.
And so I went to Dean one last time.
#
Sam's hands shake as he turns the page; the book was not finished yet, and dawn had come, crept upon him and soon, Jess would awaken and make coffee. She would leave to be a nurse at the local hospital, and he was due in at the office, but Sam can not bring himself to move. He turns the cover of the book, but the front is non-de-script. It gives no clue to its origins, or its purpose, or why Dean and himself are even mentioned at all.
This alone would be frightening enough -- Twilight Zone frightening. But the strange, supernatural element at play in the text only deepens his sense of terror, and Sam has to remind himself that he is at his kitchen table, in his clean, luxurious home that he bought with his intelligence and his cleverness, a cleverness financed by his brother's hard work and deep, indefatigable loyalty.
It's just a manual. A gardening manual on roses that happens to have the names Sam and Dean in it. If nothing else, the name of Castiel doesn't ring a bell at all, and when a shadow moves beside Sam, his hand jerks out, upsetting the cup of coffee and he slams the book cover closed, turning to stare at a sleepy-eyed Dean, who regards him with an amused smile.
"Well, good morning to you, too, Mr. Rogers."
"Jesus," Sam mutters, mopping up the spilled coffee with a napkin and resolutely spreading his hand across the book so Dean can not read the title, "could you give me a chance to wake up?"
Dean snorts. "Looks like you've been up for hours. Aren't you going to be late for work?"
"Called out," Sam lies, but it won't be a lie for long. He intends to do just that, and he watches as Dean pours himself a cup of coffee, the frayed hem of his jeans trailing along the floor over his boots, and makes his way outside.
Sam watches him, moving his ponderous way past the roses. He is beginning to think that the roses grow even under the force of the moon; he can see from the window that several have begun to sprout under Dean's odd brand of tough-love tenderness. Sam swallows with a sense of pride, to see his brother take something destroyed and beyond repair and give it new life. He'll never make enough money to be middle class, he'll always have grease stains under his finger nails and wear ratty shirts and hand me down jeans and thrift store castaways, but beneath all this, there is no replacement for his heart of gold.
"The Righteous Man," Sam whispers, staring at his brother, and for an instant, Dean looks up, meets his eyes through the window, cup of coffee in one hand. He raises his other, briefly flashes a blinding smile, and Sam is pleased to see that for this instant, his brother looks ten years younger.
The roses make him happy.
Sam returns to the book, finds his place, and delves in again.
#
I first met Dean in Hell. In fact, it was one of the first points of time I tried to change. Would things have been different if I had never pulled him out?
So I let him languish there, past forty years. Fifty, sixty, seventy, and infinity measured in slices and lacerations and rusty blades and screams that toughen the throat and split the skin. And all his agony was still for nothing, even after he broke and went demon, eyes black as engine oil gone a lifetime without treatment.
Nothing ever seemed to change the course of this inevitable apocalypse. But at long last, I had one thing, one final thing I could try. But I needed Dean's help.
I found him at Bobby's, sleeping troubled beneath the shadows of angel sigils designed to keep me out. He couldn't know -- none of them could -- that a thousand and one timelines with and without them were running their course and they were only caught in one among many, and in this one, I just happened to be their nemesis, a flawed anti-hero gone corrupt with power.
Dean had vowed he could fix it for me; and I told him that it wasn't broken. From where he is, he is incapable of understanding there are many Deans, many Sams, many Castiels; no matter how far we may drift in any given timeline, our hearts are always bent on saving what we cherish in the world. But of them all, I am the most selfish. Dean and Sam would save the world for its own sake. I want to save it for theirs.
I want to save it for Dean.
"Dean," I murmured, and woke him with a touch to his forehead. He was angry, and I anticipated this, stepping away as he found his feet. It cut somewhere indefinable inside me to see him so hurt, his loyalty in shreds as he attempted to force it into uncomfortable shapes, to find me and accept me there.
"Don't try so hard," I told him. "I need you to listen to me now."
"There's nothing you can say to make me trust you, Cas."
His voice, so dark, so low. I ran a thumb over the dingy edge of my trench coat's lapel, considering the roughness of the fabric before I spoke.
"This is the last night," I explained. "I'm leaving."
"Oh? And I should care?"
"I'm going away. Far away. I will trouble no one, anymore. And all this pain, this apocalypse, even your forty years in Hell -- it will be something you'll dream, time and again at night. And you'll forget it in the morning."
Dean opened his mouth to speak, but I moved forward. The light coming in from the moon highlighted the profile of his face in silver; all I could think was that I was dying and I was dying for him. I should be used to it by now, practiced. But in no timeline I have seen, does it hurt any less to exist without him.
I pressed my thumb across his lip; it felt ripe, like a peach feels, juicy beneath the skin. He startled, and then went still, his eyes wide, and I could see suspicion and distrust there, but he did not move.
He did not move.
"I want you to tend your roses, Dean."
He turned his face away. My thumb skirted over his lip, catching the moisture there, spreading over his cheek.
"What does that mean?"
"Listen. There are going to be roses. You'll find them. Tend to them, Dean. Those roses love you. You need to water them, because this earthly life is brutal. Just as Hell is to a human, so earth is to an angel -- it hurts us more than you will ever know to spend a second here. You think forty years is an eternity in Hell? Oh Dean, I am about to trade in a thousand more of those for you."
And what shame, to hear my voice break when I could shatter glass, when I could burst his eardrums and bleed him from the inside out with my voice.
But it broke, all the same. And Dean's eyes softened, the hardness vanishing as he realized there was no guile behind the words. There is only this inviting touch poised against his cheek, my long fingers trailing over the pulse of his throat. He did not resist. He listened.
"I am about to give all my days over to the mercy of nature. And she is unforgiving, Dean. Remember that I ferreted you out of Hell, that there was mercy in your darkest moment. I don't expect your forgiveness. Tend the roses, Dean. It's all I ask. Look on the small things that populate this earth and realize they have life, they look to you to fill their days, to save them from the mire of the mud. Their blooms will nod as you pass and they will burst open in your wake. They will grow at your will, your touch, your word."
"Cas --"
"Listen! Listen," and I stepped in close. He allowed me this, one shoe tip touching his boot, and I became brave, pressed my hip to his and set a bold hand to thin fabric of his shirt, felt the jut of his ribs beneath. Heat pulsed through him.
"For them -- in their darkness -- you will be their sun."
And I swayed backward, breaking away, turning from him. I gathered my will for flight, but he surprised me, launching forward and sinking hands into the folds of my retreating trench coat. He pulled me back and I reeled back to face him, frustrated and irritated. Did he not understand how hard this was?
"Don't go, Cas!" he hissed, and he released the trench coat, clapping his hands over my cheek in a rough pull, drawing me to him and sucking the breath from my mouth, my lips. His tongue worked the flesh open and broke through a gasp of heated air as my lips yielded.
"Dean," I whispered.
He pulled back. He was breathing hard and his cheek was turning red where the raw scrub of my five-o-clock shadow had burned the skin. His eyes glittered and his lips buzzed and swelled in the after effects of the lingering kiss. I studied his green eyes; I could make out the reflection of myself in their dark centers, my face of stone, now crumbling like a child's, a facade that had withstood demons and their legion, faced off creatures of every unearthly origin -- and I watched it disintegrate now under the feather-light weight of love.
Is this not always the way of tragedy? That it gives before the softest of things, when all else has been conquered. It is this last thing I cannot leave behind.
And I must.
"Remember none of this, Dean," I whispered, and he fought. He fought hard to resist it, to pull away, to escape, but to keep me there at the same time. I was tempted; tempted to stay. To fashion a place where we could continue on forever while the world burned around us, but Dean would never be satisfied with that.
And so I compromised; I sent him to sleep and took a seat in Bobby's office, and wrote out all the things I knew Dean would need to know about the tending of roses. I used the old, Royal typewriter Bobby had picked up in his travels. I think it might have been Chuck's.
He won't remember any of this, anyway. Because when I'm finished, everything changes. The timeline back tracks, erases; folds in on itself and picks up through a seamless rift. All this time, I had been interchanging and switching and killing off the brothers as though they were dolls I could toy with.
How many years did I spend, toying with the fragments of time? It may have been thousands. It took me that long to realize that one element out of place -- the one thing that always resulted in the apocalypse -- was me.
It was me, all along.
All I needed to do was take myself out of the equation. Like a man who watches his footprints wash away beneath the tide line. But the problem I encounter is that energy is neither created nor destroyed. I cannot simply cease to exist.
I must become something else.
Take care of the roses, Dean.
They live for you, now.
#
Beyond this, there are brief common sense instructions on basic care for roses. Water. Sun, nitrogen, companion plants. Sam folds the book shut and walks outside, the sun slanting through the trees and Dean bent over a row of roses. Sam blinks and tries to remember the last time he saw them. He thought they were only just beginning to leaf out, but he sees they are topped with ripe buds, ready to burst into blossom.
He stands beside Dean until his brother notices. A long sweat stain down his back testifies to how hard he has been pulling at the weeds beside the roses, and he stops to brush his hands free of loose dirt and turn to face Sam.
"Dean," Sam begins nervously, and Dean goes still, staring at him. He knows that tone of voice; it makes Sam sound twelve again. And he feels it -- the odd, silent shadow that always fills that space between them, ever present but out of sight.
The book burns in his hand. He breathes deep, and discovers his throat is closing tight around the words, and he cannot seem to give the book over. It feels like a betrayal. The roses nod minutely in the wind, arching to listen and hear him.
"Does the name 'Castiel' sound familiar to you?"
To Dean's right, a single bud winks open, a sliver of white through the green.
Dean stares blankly.
"Not ringing a bell. Should it?"
"No, no. Take care of the roses, Dean," he chokes out.
He flees back into the house where he breathes hard and sobs helplessly, out of sight by the closet, the book crushed to his chest. Eventually, he composes himself, and Dean will never know his moment of broken weeping; he would tease him mercilessly.
He takes the book and slots it in between his law journals, where it will stay, collecting dust and yellowing with age.
And through the window, he watches as bloom after bloom begins to open, like hands unfolding, like wings and feathers outstretched. Dean passes down their rows, the fingers of his hand splayed and trailing over their petals with a lingering, sensuous touch, and the sound of his delighted laughter is robust and happy. The blooms nod in his wake.
They turn and track him like he is the sun.
~fin~
Aug. 10th, 2011 | 08:29 pm