dauntperplexity (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dauntperplexity) wrote2011-11-02 08:57 am
dauntperplexity) wrote2011-11-02 08:57 am
Fic: Something Inside Says it's Not Over
Title: Something Inside Says it’s Not Over
Author: DauntPerplexity
Rating: PG
Genre: Friendship, pre-slash
Characters and/or Pairing: Bobby, Castiel, Dean, Sam
Spoilers: 7x02
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2927
Summary: “You can leave whenever you want. I’m not strong enough to make you stay,” Castiel took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “All you have to do is wake up.”
Author’s Note: This was seriously supposed to be something short, but somehow it turned into almost 3000 words. I want Castiel back, and I don’t know how he’s returning, but I can imagine, right?
By the third knock on the door, the three hunters had their weapons in hand and aimed. Sam, being the closest, inched his way toward the door. “Who is it?” he yelled. He hoped it was one of the maids wanting to clean the room. The only response he received was another soft knock on the door.
“Sam?” Dean asked, aiming his gun right over Sam’s shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Sam said. He bent down to look through the peephole of the door. “What the hell?” he whispered.
“Well, what is it, boy?” Bobby asked.
“I…” Sam’s voice trailed off trying to find the right words to say about what he was looking at on the outside. With a shaky hand, he reached for the doorknob.
“Sam, what are you doing?” Dean asked. His aim changed from the space between his brother’s arm and his side.
Sam opened the door quickly, yanked the person on the other side of it into the room, and shut the door behind him. He pushed the person against the door and pointed the gun at his heart.
“This isn’t happening,” Dean whispered.
“What the hell?” Bobby added.
“Cas?” Sam asked.
“I found you?” Castiel looked up, water dripping down his face from his wet hair. There wasn’t any part of his body that was dry.
“Cas?” Bobby repeated.
Castiel swallowed hard. He looked at everyone in the room, making eye contact with them. Then he nodded twice. “Yes.”
Sam dropped his hand the pinned Castiel to the door, but he still kept the gun pointed at him. As much as the three of them wanted to trust that Castiel was somehow back, they knew that the Leviathans could easily be playing a trick on them. He stepped back, putting some space between them.
Castiel stepped forward, moving away from the door. He wanted to wipe his hands, and his first instincts were to wipe them on his suit, but he was soaked.
“How are you here?” Sam asked.
Castiel shook his head. He didn’t know. “I…”
Dean put the safety on his gun and tucked it back into his waistband. “Something’s not right about this,” he said. He was conflicted. He wanted to believe that Castiel was alive and standing right in front of him, but he knew that it wasn’t supposed to be that easy. He had to keep his walls up just a little longer.
“Well, what do you want to do?” Bobby asked.
Castiel’s gaze went from Dean to Bobby, then back to Dean as he waited for an answer. “You should—”
“I need some air,” Dean interrupted. He grabbed the spare motel room key and was ready to leave the room. But he stopped a few feet away from Castiel. He stared at him.
Without warning, Castiel reached up and pressed two fingers to Dean’s forehead. Before anyone knew what was happening, Dean and Castiel fell to the floor.
Bobby and Sam rushed forward, putting their weapons down. They each searched for a pulse on the unconscious bodies. They pulled their hands away when they found one.
“What the hell just happened?” Sam asked, staring at the two people crumpled on the floor. He looked to Bobby who could only shrug.
When Dean opened his eyes, he saw that he was in a white room. An empty white room. Those types of rooms that they have in psychiatric wards that just made people more insane. He spun around quickly and saw that he wasn’t alone. He wasn’t going to say anything, but he was glad someone was a round.
“Why did you do that?” he yelled. The words echoed in the empty room.
“To stop you from running away,” Castiel replied, swaying where he stood. He found it too exhausting to stay standing so he leaned against a wall and sank to the floor.
“I’m not running away,” Dean said, defensive. “Let me out of here.”
“I’m not keeping you here,” Castiel whispered.
“What?”
“You can leave whenever you want. I’m not strong enough to make you stay,” Castiel took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “All you have to do is wake up.”
“I’m dreaming?”
“We’re dreaming.”
“So, I wake up, you wake up too?” Dean asked. He stared at Castiel, waiting for a response.
Cas shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It took a lot of energy to do this,” Cas said. He sighed and hit the back of his head against the wall. “Your dreaming is on purpose. Mine isn’t. I didn’t think this through.”
“So, if I leave, you’re stuck in this room by yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel replied. He had no idea what would happen when Dean woke up. He assumed he’d just stay in this dream space that his mind created.
Dean walked over to Castiel and stood in front of him. He crossed his arms over his chest. “How do I know you’re not a Leviathan trying to trick me?”
“You don’t.”
“Are you?” He didn’t know why he asked. Whatever words came out of Castiel’s mouth could not be easily accepted as truth, even though Dean wanted them to be. Something in him knew that the person in front of him was Castiel.
“No.”
“How did you get away?””
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, wanting it to be enough to jog a memory. “I remember sending the souls back into Purgatory. And talking to you. Then nothing. Only waking up on a shoreline.”
“They let you go?”
“I don’t know.”
Dean rolled his eyes at Castiel’s repetition in answers. “What do you know, Cas?” He didn’t mean to sound so impatient. He just knew that the quicker he got his answers, the quicker he’d be able to feel like everything was going to be okay. Or at least better than it has been.
“Not much. They might come looking for me though. I may be the only being strong enough to contain the Leviathan Leige.” He looked up at Dean, searching for his eyes. “I don’t know if you trust me or not, Dean, but I don’t know if the Leviathan is still in me.”
“It’s not,” Dean said, adamant, and answering Castiel’s question.
Castiel broke eye contact with Dean, looking down at his lap. “How do you know?” he whispered, his voice small. He wanted to know how Dean knew when he didn’t even know himself.
“You would’ve eaten me instead of knocking me unconscious.”
“That’s enough evidence?”
“A lot have already tried. And not many have the chance of getting this close without taking a bite.”
“Sounds logical. “
Dean didn’t know how to carry on the conversation from there. He just knew that he didn’t like the silence that fell over them. Especially in that room where it felt like silence was magnified. He didn’t know what he was thinking, but he took a seat next to Castiel against the wall. “I kept your trench coat,” he said. He wanted to change the subject. It was bad enough that he had to deal with the Leviathans when he was awake; he didn’t them to bother his dreams too.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Castiel smile.
“Thank you,” he whispered. Some part of him was relieved. “I thought that it was lost. I seem to have become a bit attached to it.”
“A lot of other things too.”
Castiel turned his head to look at Dean. His gaze went back to the floor when he realized that Dean wasn’t going to make eye contact with him. “What do you mean?”
“I went through your pockets. Found a bunch of crap stuffed in them. Your hospital bracelet. A shot glass. A shotgun shell. My ring. The amulet. You kept the amulet?”
“Sam gave it back to me. He said he’d have no use for it in Hell. He thought that I could use it.” He sighed and brought his hands together. He wrung them, nervous at what he was about to tell Dean. “I had this hope that maybe my Father would have shown up when everything was beginning to fall apart.”
He wanted to reach out and comfort Castiel. But he held back. He wasn’t ready to reach out. Not yet. “Cas.”
“You should wake up soon, Dean,” Castiel said. He knew what Dean was trying to do.
“No. We’re talking.”
“We’ll have time to talk later. If that’s what you want.”
“What if I don’t want to wake up just yet?”
“Your body has been trying to wake up since I put you… us to sleep. You should be waking up soon.”
“Cas?” Dean whispered, looking at the ground. “You’re actually real, right?” He reached up, his hand shaking, and put it on Castiel’s cheek.
“Yes,” Castiel whispered as he leaned into Dean’s touch.
Dean shook his head, knowing that touching in him dream wasn’t real, but he needed that. The act of physically reaching out and feeling Cas. He knew that if he could do it in his dreams, he would be able to do it once he woke up.
He turned Cas’s head to face him. He stared for a long time. Everything was the same. The eyes. The nose. The lips.
He pulled Cas toward him as he leaned forward.
Dean woke up and saw the ceiling of the motel room. He sat up and saw Cas on the other side of the bed, facing him and still asleep. “Damnit, Sam,” Dean growled.
“What?” Sam asked, looking up from the laptop. “You’re awake?” He was genuinely surprised.
“You couldn’t put us on separate beds?”
“Your bed was closer.”
Dean couldn’t argue with that. He looked at Castiel and saw that he wasn’t wearing the same clothes he walked into the room with. “Why is he wearing my clothes?”
“He couldn’t stay in the clothes he was wearing, Dean,” Sam said, irritated. “He was soaked.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Dean rubbed his hand over his face a couple of times trying to wake himself up. “Where did Bobby go?”
“Probably extend our stay here. We didn’t know if you guys were going to wake up.”
Dean looked at his brother and saw that he was typing on the laptop. He knew that it meant he was doing research for something. “What are you looking up?”
“Me and Bobby are looking up ways to find out if this is really Cas or not. We already used the—”
“It’s him.”
“How do you know?” Sam asked.
“He told me.” Saying those words out loud made him question for a second if he should have believed dream-Castiel’s words or not. His doubt only lasted for a moment. He knew that he had spoken to Castiel; the real Castiel.
“When?”
Dean did not feel like talking to Sam. He wasn’t ready to answer all the questions he knew his brother was going to ask. He stood up and looked at Castiel who he knew wasn’t going to be moving for quite some time. “I’m going out for a walk,” he said, heading toward his brother. He grabbed his jacket, threw it on, and was out the door.
His walk wasn’t a far one. Dean looked around to make sure no one was around before he popped the trunk of the Impala. He moved around a couple of weapons and bags of salt before he found what he was looking for.
He stared at the familiar tan folded square that had sat in his trunk untouched for months. The last time it saw the outside of the trunk, Dean had decided to sleep in the car. He was fighting with Sam about something and he couldn’t take being around him without raising his voice. He was tired, and cold, and he had too much pride to go back into the motel room, even for a blanket.
So he popped the trunk, looking for a sleeping bag or an extra jacket. Instead, he found Castiel’s trench coat. He hadn’t thought about it since he pulled it out of the water. Some part of him told him not to use it, but he was cold and desperate.
He grabbed it and got into the Impala. He opened the trench coat and threw it over him. He was ready to fall asleep when he had to adjust to find a more comfortable position. He rolled over and the coat fell off of him with a soft thud.
Curiosity got the best of him. He picked up the coat and tried to search for the source of the sound. So, he went through Castiel’s pockets. He found a lot of random trinkets. He wondered what each of them meant to his friend.
He spent so much time thinking about it that he fell asleep when the sun came up.
When he woke up, he realized that he couldn’t look at it anymore. Not without feeling guilty. So, he folded it up as nicely as he could and tucked it into the trunk of the Impala. Even though it was out of sight, he never stopped thinking about it.
He grabbed it and slammed the trunk shut.
He opened the motel room door and saw his brother packing his duffel bag. “Where are you going?” Dean asked. He wondered if they had found something to hunt. Then he wondered if they were just going to leave him with Castiel.
“I’ll crash in Bobby’s room tonight,” Sam said as he zipped his bag closed.
“Sam, Cas is on my bed. I’ll—”
“Dean,” Sam whispered. It was enough to keep his brother from taking. “It’s Cas.” Those two words were enough for Sam to win the discussion.
“Thanks,” he replied.
“No problem.” He picked up his laptop and swung the case over his shoulder. “Hey, when he wakes up, tell him I’m glad he’s back.”
“I definitely won’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not a Hallmark card.”
“Right,” Sam said with a smile. “God forbid Dean Winchester shows some emotion.”
“I have emotions,” Dean said, offended.
“Whatever. I’ll call you if I find something.” Sam headed toward the door.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Sam?” he asked when he heard his brother grab the doorknob.
“What?” Sam turned around to face his brother.
“This is real, right? Cas is actually here, lying on my bed.” He squeezed the trench coat in his hands.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be seeing things, Dean. Not you.” Sam walked over to his brother. He grabbed his brother’s arm and pinched the skin.
“Ow,” Dean said, pulling his arm away and punching his brother in the shoulder. “Dude.”
“It’s real, Dean,” Sam replied. “Cas is back. If something happens, just call.”
“Yeah,” Dean said.
He stood at Castiel’s bedside for a couple of minutes just staring at Castiel. He felt like a creeper, but he justified it by saying that he was just returning the favor; the positions had been reversed enough times. He shook his head, bringing him back to reality.
He unfurled the coat and spread it out over the side of the bed he was lying on. He ran his hand down the front of it, futilely trying to smooth out the creases that had formed from being folded for so long.
He was ready to throw it over Castiel, but something stopped him. He knew that he had to do something first.
He reached into the pocket where he found his ring and amulet. He pulled both of them out. He held both of them in the palm of his hand. He could not believe that Castiel kept those things.
Dean let out a shaky breath and squeezed his hand shut. He could feel his throat tightening and tears forming in his eyes. All of the emotions that he tried to keep down while Castiel was gone were coming up to the surface. He wasn’t ready. He took in a deep breath and let it out. He forced most of the feelings back down. He wasn’t going to deal with those emotions. Not yet.
He opened his hand and saw the ring and amulet had made an impression in it. He set both of the pieces down on the trench coat. He leaned forward and cupped Castiel’s cheek, just like he did in their shared dream. He rubbed his cheekbone with his thumb.
He didn’t know how long he stayed in that position, and he didn’t care. Actually feeling Castiel under his fingers was enough for him to not care about anything else.
Dean pulled back and could not ignore how badly his hands were shaking. He picked up the ring and amulet again. He spent a few minutes trying to figure out of he wanted to wear his ring again, or if he wanted Castiel to. He decided to put it back into Castiel’s coat pocket.
He knew what he wanted to do with the amulet. He cradled Castiel’s head in his hand and lifted it up. His other hand slipped the amulet around his neck. He laid Castiel’s head back down on the pillow then tucked the amulet into his shirt.
He picked up the coat carefully, not wanting any of the trinkets to fall out and laid it over Castiel. He pulled it up to Castiel’s shoulders, covering as much of him as he could.
Dean smiled. Castiel looked comfortable. Now all he had to do was wait for him to wake up so they could talk.
“I’m glad you’re back, Cas.”
Author: DauntPerplexity
Rating: PG
Genre: Friendship, pre-slash
Characters and/or Pairing: Bobby, Castiel, Dean, Sam
Spoilers: 7x02
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2927
Summary: “You can leave whenever you want. I’m not strong enough to make you stay,” Castiel took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “All you have to do is wake up.”
Author’s Note: This was seriously supposed to be something short, but somehow it turned into almost 3000 words. I want Castiel back, and I don’t know how he’s returning, but I can imagine, right?
By the third knock on the door, the three hunters had their weapons in hand and aimed. Sam, being the closest, inched his way toward the door. “Who is it?” he yelled. He hoped it was one of the maids wanting to clean the room. The only response he received was another soft knock on the door.
“Sam?” Dean asked, aiming his gun right over Sam’s shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Sam said. He bent down to look through the peephole of the door. “What the hell?” he whispered.
“Well, what is it, boy?” Bobby asked.
“I…” Sam’s voice trailed off trying to find the right words to say about what he was looking at on the outside. With a shaky hand, he reached for the doorknob.
“Sam, what are you doing?” Dean asked. His aim changed from the space between his brother’s arm and his side.
Sam opened the door quickly, yanked the person on the other side of it into the room, and shut the door behind him. He pushed the person against the door and pointed the gun at his heart.
“This isn’t happening,” Dean whispered.
“What the hell?” Bobby added.
“Cas?” Sam asked.
“I found you?” Castiel looked up, water dripping down his face from his wet hair. There wasn’t any part of his body that was dry.
“Cas?” Bobby repeated.
Castiel swallowed hard. He looked at everyone in the room, making eye contact with them. Then he nodded twice. “Yes.”
Sam dropped his hand the pinned Castiel to the door, but he still kept the gun pointed at him. As much as the three of them wanted to trust that Castiel was somehow back, they knew that the Leviathans could easily be playing a trick on them. He stepped back, putting some space between them.
Castiel stepped forward, moving away from the door. He wanted to wipe his hands, and his first instincts were to wipe them on his suit, but he was soaked.
“How are you here?” Sam asked.
Castiel shook his head. He didn’t know. “I…”
Dean put the safety on his gun and tucked it back into his waistband. “Something’s not right about this,” he said. He was conflicted. He wanted to believe that Castiel was alive and standing right in front of him, but he knew that it wasn’t supposed to be that easy. He had to keep his walls up just a little longer.
“Well, what do you want to do?” Bobby asked.
Castiel’s gaze went from Dean to Bobby, then back to Dean as he waited for an answer. “You should—”
“I need some air,” Dean interrupted. He grabbed the spare motel room key and was ready to leave the room. But he stopped a few feet away from Castiel. He stared at him.
Without warning, Castiel reached up and pressed two fingers to Dean’s forehead. Before anyone knew what was happening, Dean and Castiel fell to the floor.
Bobby and Sam rushed forward, putting their weapons down. They each searched for a pulse on the unconscious bodies. They pulled their hands away when they found one.
“What the hell just happened?” Sam asked, staring at the two people crumpled on the floor. He looked to Bobby who could only shrug.
LRLRLRLRLRLRLRLR
When Dean opened his eyes, he saw that he was in a white room. An empty white room. Those types of rooms that they have in psychiatric wards that just made people more insane. He spun around quickly and saw that he wasn’t alone. He wasn’t going to say anything, but he was glad someone was a round.
“Why did you do that?” he yelled. The words echoed in the empty room.
“To stop you from running away,” Castiel replied, swaying where he stood. He found it too exhausting to stay standing so he leaned against a wall and sank to the floor.
“I’m not running away,” Dean said, defensive. “Let me out of here.”
“I’m not keeping you here,” Castiel whispered.
“What?”
“You can leave whenever you want. I’m not strong enough to make you stay,” Castiel took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “All you have to do is wake up.”
“I’m dreaming?”
“We’re dreaming.”
“So, I wake up, you wake up too?” Dean asked. He stared at Castiel, waiting for a response.
Cas shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It took a lot of energy to do this,” Cas said. He sighed and hit the back of his head against the wall. “Your dreaming is on purpose. Mine isn’t. I didn’t think this through.”
“So, if I leave, you’re stuck in this room by yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel replied. He had no idea what would happen when Dean woke up. He assumed he’d just stay in this dream space that his mind created.
Dean walked over to Castiel and stood in front of him. He crossed his arms over his chest. “How do I know you’re not a Leviathan trying to trick me?”
“You don’t.”
“Are you?” He didn’t know why he asked. Whatever words came out of Castiel’s mouth could not be easily accepted as truth, even though Dean wanted them to be. Something in him knew that the person in front of him was Castiel.
“No.”
“How did you get away?””
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, wanting it to be enough to jog a memory. “I remember sending the souls back into Purgatory. And talking to you. Then nothing. Only waking up on a shoreline.”
“They let you go?”
“I don’t know.”
Dean rolled his eyes at Castiel’s repetition in answers. “What do you know, Cas?” He didn’t mean to sound so impatient. He just knew that the quicker he got his answers, the quicker he’d be able to feel like everything was going to be okay. Or at least better than it has been.
“Not much. They might come looking for me though. I may be the only being strong enough to contain the Leviathan Leige.” He looked up at Dean, searching for his eyes. “I don’t know if you trust me or not, Dean, but I don’t know if the Leviathan is still in me.”
“It’s not,” Dean said, adamant, and answering Castiel’s question.
Castiel broke eye contact with Dean, looking down at his lap. “How do you know?” he whispered, his voice small. He wanted to know how Dean knew when he didn’t even know himself.
“You would’ve eaten me instead of knocking me unconscious.”
“That’s enough evidence?”
“A lot have already tried. And not many have the chance of getting this close without taking a bite.”
“Sounds logical. “
Dean didn’t know how to carry on the conversation from there. He just knew that he didn’t like the silence that fell over them. Especially in that room where it felt like silence was magnified. He didn’t know what he was thinking, but he took a seat next to Castiel against the wall. “I kept your trench coat,” he said. He wanted to change the subject. It was bad enough that he had to deal with the Leviathans when he was awake; he didn’t them to bother his dreams too.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Castiel smile.
“Thank you,” he whispered. Some part of him was relieved. “I thought that it was lost. I seem to have become a bit attached to it.”
“A lot of other things too.”
Castiel turned his head to look at Dean. His gaze went back to the floor when he realized that Dean wasn’t going to make eye contact with him. “What do you mean?”
“I went through your pockets. Found a bunch of crap stuffed in them. Your hospital bracelet. A shot glass. A shotgun shell. My ring. The amulet. You kept the amulet?”
“Sam gave it back to me. He said he’d have no use for it in Hell. He thought that I could use it.” He sighed and brought his hands together. He wrung them, nervous at what he was about to tell Dean. “I had this hope that maybe my Father would have shown up when everything was beginning to fall apart.”
He wanted to reach out and comfort Castiel. But he held back. He wasn’t ready to reach out. Not yet. “Cas.”
“You should wake up soon, Dean,” Castiel said. He knew what Dean was trying to do.
“No. We’re talking.”
“We’ll have time to talk later. If that’s what you want.”
“What if I don’t want to wake up just yet?”
“Your body has been trying to wake up since I put you… us to sleep. You should be waking up soon.”
“Cas?” Dean whispered, looking at the ground. “You’re actually real, right?” He reached up, his hand shaking, and put it on Castiel’s cheek.
“Yes,” Castiel whispered as he leaned into Dean’s touch.
Dean shook his head, knowing that touching in him dream wasn’t real, but he needed that. The act of physically reaching out and feeling Cas. He knew that if he could do it in his dreams, he would be able to do it once he woke up.
He turned Cas’s head to face him. He stared for a long time. Everything was the same. The eyes. The nose. The lips.
He pulled Cas toward him as he leaned forward.
LRLRLRLRLRLRLR
Dean woke up and saw the ceiling of the motel room. He sat up and saw Cas on the other side of the bed, facing him and still asleep. “Damnit, Sam,” Dean growled.
“What?” Sam asked, looking up from the laptop. “You’re awake?” He was genuinely surprised.
“You couldn’t put us on separate beds?”
“Your bed was closer.”
Dean couldn’t argue with that. He looked at Castiel and saw that he wasn’t wearing the same clothes he walked into the room with. “Why is he wearing my clothes?”
“He couldn’t stay in the clothes he was wearing, Dean,” Sam said, irritated. “He was soaked.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Dean rubbed his hand over his face a couple of times trying to wake himself up. “Where did Bobby go?”
“Probably extend our stay here. We didn’t know if you guys were going to wake up.”
Dean looked at his brother and saw that he was typing on the laptop. He knew that it meant he was doing research for something. “What are you looking up?”
“Me and Bobby are looking up ways to find out if this is really Cas or not. We already used the—”
“It’s him.”
“How do you know?” Sam asked.
“He told me.” Saying those words out loud made him question for a second if he should have believed dream-Castiel’s words or not. His doubt only lasted for a moment. He knew that he had spoken to Castiel; the real Castiel.
“When?”
Dean did not feel like talking to Sam. He wasn’t ready to answer all the questions he knew his brother was going to ask. He stood up and looked at Castiel who he knew wasn’t going to be moving for quite some time. “I’m going out for a walk,” he said, heading toward his brother. He grabbed his jacket, threw it on, and was out the door.
LRLRLRLRLRLRLR
His walk wasn’t a far one. Dean looked around to make sure no one was around before he popped the trunk of the Impala. He moved around a couple of weapons and bags of salt before he found what he was looking for.
He stared at the familiar tan folded square that had sat in his trunk untouched for months. The last time it saw the outside of the trunk, Dean had decided to sleep in the car. He was fighting with Sam about something and he couldn’t take being around him without raising his voice. He was tired, and cold, and he had too much pride to go back into the motel room, even for a blanket.
So he popped the trunk, looking for a sleeping bag or an extra jacket. Instead, he found Castiel’s trench coat. He hadn’t thought about it since he pulled it out of the water. Some part of him told him not to use it, but he was cold and desperate.
He grabbed it and got into the Impala. He opened the trench coat and threw it over him. He was ready to fall asleep when he had to adjust to find a more comfortable position. He rolled over and the coat fell off of him with a soft thud.
Curiosity got the best of him. He picked up the coat and tried to search for the source of the sound. So, he went through Castiel’s pockets. He found a lot of random trinkets. He wondered what each of them meant to his friend.
He spent so much time thinking about it that he fell asleep when the sun came up.
When he woke up, he realized that he couldn’t look at it anymore. Not without feeling guilty. So, he folded it up as nicely as he could and tucked it into the trunk of the Impala. Even though it was out of sight, he never stopped thinking about it.
He grabbed it and slammed the trunk shut.
He opened the motel room door and saw his brother packing his duffel bag. “Where are you going?” Dean asked. He wondered if they had found something to hunt. Then he wondered if they were just going to leave him with Castiel.
“I’ll crash in Bobby’s room tonight,” Sam said as he zipped his bag closed.
“Sam, Cas is on my bed. I’ll—”
“Dean,” Sam whispered. It was enough to keep his brother from taking. “It’s Cas.” Those two words were enough for Sam to win the discussion.
“Thanks,” he replied.
“No problem.” He picked up his laptop and swung the case over his shoulder. “Hey, when he wakes up, tell him I’m glad he’s back.”
“I definitely won’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not a Hallmark card.”
“Right,” Sam said with a smile. “God forbid Dean Winchester shows some emotion.”
“I have emotions,” Dean said, offended.
“Whatever. I’ll call you if I find something.” Sam headed toward the door.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Sam?” he asked when he heard his brother grab the doorknob.
“What?” Sam turned around to face his brother.
“This is real, right? Cas is actually here, lying on my bed.” He squeezed the trench coat in his hands.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be seeing things, Dean. Not you.” Sam walked over to his brother. He grabbed his brother’s arm and pinched the skin.
“Ow,” Dean said, pulling his arm away and punching his brother in the shoulder. “Dude.”
“It’s real, Dean,” Sam replied. “Cas is back. If something happens, just call.”
“Yeah,” Dean said.
He stood at Castiel’s bedside for a couple of minutes just staring at Castiel. He felt like a creeper, but he justified it by saying that he was just returning the favor; the positions had been reversed enough times. He shook his head, bringing him back to reality.
He unfurled the coat and spread it out over the side of the bed he was lying on. He ran his hand down the front of it, futilely trying to smooth out the creases that had formed from being folded for so long.
He was ready to throw it over Castiel, but something stopped him. He knew that he had to do something first.
He reached into the pocket where he found his ring and amulet. He pulled both of them out. He held both of them in the palm of his hand. He could not believe that Castiel kept those things.
Dean let out a shaky breath and squeezed his hand shut. He could feel his throat tightening and tears forming in his eyes. All of the emotions that he tried to keep down while Castiel was gone were coming up to the surface. He wasn’t ready. He took in a deep breath and let it out. He forced most of the feelings back down. He wasn’t going to deal with those emotions. Not yet.
He opened his hand and saw the ring and amulet had made an impression in it. He set both of the pieces down on the trench coat. He leaned forward and cupped Castiel’s cheek, just like he did in their shared dream. He rubbed his cheekbone with his thumb.
He didn’t know how long he stayed in that position, and he didn’t care. Actually feeling Castiel under his fingers was enough for him to not care about anything else.
Dean pulled back and could not ignore how badly his hands were shaking. He picked up the ring and amulet again. He spent a few minutes trying to figure out of he wanted to wear his ring again, or if he wanted Castiel to. He decided to put it back into Castiel’s coat pocket.
He knew what he wanted to do with the amulet. He cradled Castiel’s head in his hand and lifted it up. His other hand slipped the amulet around his neck. He laid Castiel’s head back down on the pillow then tucked the amulet into his shirt.
He picked up the coat carefully, not wanting any of the trinkets to fall out and laid it over Castiel. He pulled it up to Castiel’s shoulders, covering as much of him as he could.
Dean smiled. Castiel looked comfortable. Now all he had to do was wait for him to wake up so they could talk.
“I’m glad you’re back, Cas.”
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I love how Dean just knows this is Cas just by taking to him.
I miss Cas. ;________;
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I feel like Dean knows Cas as much Cas knows Dean. It's their profound bond.
I miss him too. He needs to come back like yesterday. :(
Thank you for reading!