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The door to the cabin falls shut behind him. Cas stands in the middle of the room, lets his gaze wander over his meager belongings. Fishings rods and bait, a book about the local wildlife open on the drawer, a duffel with a few more books inside and a spare set of clothes.
He looks down on his blood-spattered shirt.
Wash it? Clean it with his grace?
It’s a question he has to answer a thousand times a day. The healing of the boy’s ankle and his own wounds took a lot out of him. He sighs, defeated. Washing it is, but not today. Today he changes into the spare shirt (still stiff and smelling of bleach, he hasn’t washed is yet and his skin begins to itch where the fabric touches it).
While he looks around he can imagine being here with Dean. Sitting next to each other on the tattered armchairs by the fire, a glass of cheap whiskey on the side table with the broken leg, conversations like they used to have: movies, cases, the fate of the world.
Dean would fit in this cabin like the checkered bedspread and the oil painting of a hunting scene on the far wall, his mere presence would make it a home instead of a place to stay. Cas, on the other hand, feels like an imposter. The peace he felt while fishing back then, he realizes now, that peace was created by Dean being right next to him, not the act of fishing.
Cas sits on the bed and lets the silence envelope him. He breathes slowly, in-out, the old air of the cabin soothing in its lack of life.
The buzz in the back of his head gets more pronounced. Dean thinks of him, not with intend, but Cas is tuned to him, has been for such a long time it’s impossible to quell it (even if he wanted to). Dean’s despair, Dean’s lack of hope, Dean’s loneliness are a constant backdrop of his own thoughts.
Dean misses him, fervently. But Cas knows, has learned the hard way, that emotions are nothing when you don’t act on them, don’t want them, shut them out.
Have you checked your messages, Dean asked.
Cas has not, doesn’t need to. Because he’d know when the only message worth reading would reach him. Cas wouldn’t need technology to receive it, he’d feel it, a disruption of the waves hitting his skull every second every day.
He pictures Dean writing the message out on his phone, deleting it letter by letter. Typing again. Until Dean hits send, Cas will have to face the world without him and bear the holes that open in the spaces where Dean would fit into his life (he won’t sit in the left chair by the fire).
Cas, I’m sorry, please come home.