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It's eleven at night before Dean can get outside, away from Sam and his hallucinations, Bobby and his pitying looks.
"I'm fucking fine, Bobby," Dean had said angrily only minutes before, stomping out of the house when the old man rolled his eyes. He's fine, he really is, or he would be if the two carebears inside would stop trying to get him to talk.
It's cool outside, a light breeze running through the air and chilling it just enough that Dean wishes he'd brought his jacket. He walks to the garage, feeling a little better at the sight of his baby, three-quarters finished and looking almost good as new. Glancing around quickly, trying to shake the feeling that someone's followed him out of the house, he opens the Impala's trunk and lifts up the lid of the compartment that the guns are usually stored in. Inside is a bloodstained, tan trenchcoat. Castiel's coat.
Dean grabs the coat, clutches it in his arms before closing the trunk and walking back outside, losing himself in the junkyard, trying to out pace the aching feeling in his chest. He isn't a teenage girl, and there's no reason to be all fucking heartbroken or whatever over losing Cas. The dude was whacked by the time he died, and if there's one thing Dean can't do, it's fix the crazies.
These arguments do nothing to stop the feeling that his chest is compressing. By the time he collapses by a red Nova that looks like it's been there for decades, Dean's taking shallow breaths, trying to ignore the damned lump in his throat, because he is not going to fucking cry over an ex-angel who tried to kill him and his family. Even if said angel had been his...friend before all that happened.
The wind picks up a little more, and Dean wraps the coat around his shoulders loosely, wondering why he's so comfortable wearing something that's stained with blood, Leviathan goo and who knows what else.
Well, he knows why, but he isn't going to think it. Dean Winchester is not the type of guy to start talking about how the coat represented safety, security, and most importantly Cas, not long ago. He just isn't.
So when hoarse words erupt from his mouth, he's too surprised to stop them.
"Hey Cas...I,uh, I really don't think you can hear me but...I just wanted you to know,um," he swallows painfully, humming past it until it doesn't burn to speak. "I get why you did it. The whole...soul eating thing. That don't make it right, or good, but...you were desperate, and...we - I wasn't there like I should've been."
Deep breath, eyes prickling at unwanted moisture, facing home truths that hurt so fucking much right now.
"Cas, you stupid son of a bitch, why didn't you listen to what I did say?" he breathes, and he's...he's crying, damn it, over an angel who-
Who did so much for him, and Sam, once upon a time. Who saved him from Hell, and fell for him, and did impossible, amazing things in return for shamingly little. He's still crying silently, shoulders jerking underneath the trenchcoat with sobs that feel like they've been ripped from somewhere deep inside him, hidden and vulnerable.
Fuck, but he misses Cas so fucking much.
When the last errant drop of moisture has been wiped away, Dean stands up, stumbling a little on legs that had fallen nearly asleep under him. He returns to the Impala, taking off Cas's coat, folding it neatly and tucking it back into the trunk...just in case.
On the journey from the garage to the house, he looks up at the sky, eyes picking out the brightest stars through the thin layer of clouds covering them. Dean's no astronomer, but it seems to him that there's a new star in the sky, bright and faintly blue, stuck between those two bear constellations.
He sighs, almost laughs at his own brief hope that maybe Cas has been turned into a star - really, where does he get these stupid ideas? - and walks back inside, but not before whispering a prayer to the night.
"I forgive you."