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Dean feels scratches against his fingertips as he runs them over the corner of the big fancy fountain he sits on. It’s on a little square around the corner from a small airway. The kind of small airway that Cas could pay for in cash.
When he starts to feel blood drip from his fingers, his hands flinch away and shift to his luggage, rubbing back and forth until his palms rub raw as well.
Cas should be here by now, is all that runs through his head.
He should be here. They caught him. They caught us. He should be here. Cas should be here. The plane leaves in forty minutes. Forty minutes.
He catches himself holding his breath, digging his nails into his suitcase handle, when he hears Cas’ voice.
Breathe, Dean, Cas says, and Dean can see his smile in the back of his mind, It’ll be okay. I’ll be there soon.
Dean smiles in return to the Cas in his memory, and he listens. He sucks in a breath, counting with his fingers.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
He feels his heartbeat slow, and he smiles.
Thanks, Cas, he thinks, breathing normally again.
He thinks on that as he waits.
He’s known Cas for two years. It was a chance meeting, at a fucking coffee shop no less (this has always been to Charlie’s great amusement), and, well, what followed was much less chance.
Cas spent the rest of his week visiting the town in Dean’s apartment. Dean told Charlie they hardly left the bedroom, but that was because she’d been sitting on his couch at the time.
Cas then left, but only to his side of Kansas. He’d given Dean his number (well, his business card), but told him never to visit.
Freak family, Dean’d assumed.
Boy had he underestimated them. They’d done everything short of a full lobotomy on Cas, who was apparently the rebellious child. Who would have known, stick in the mud that he is. Well, was. Dean’d mostly fixed that.
In return for helping Cas get out of that mud, Cad had helped Dean too.
On the nights they could sneak away and meet each other, Cas would hold Dean through his nightmares (though he didn’t have many when he was with Cas). Cas had given Dean breathing exercises and grounding techniques. He’d helped Dean better understand himself.
“I may not understand myself any better than I understand you, Dean Winchester,” Cas says in his memory, and Dean remembers being terrified of the fact that he wasn’t terrified of that.
Dean catches himself nearly grinning, wistful as he glances around. His eyes catch on something orange, taped to the inside of the fountain and lightly splattered with water from it.
It says his name.
It says, “DEAN,” in Cas’ big, slanted, fancy-ass handwriting.
Dean’s heart drops into his stomach, marinating in the acid as he reaches for the letter, taking the tape off before grabbing it.
His hands shake as he holds it in his lap, but he tries breathing again.
Breathing the way Cas taught him.
Fuck.
The envelope is heavy, heavier than it should be, and the wet corner of it is turning his jeans into a darker blue.
Dean’s inhales grow shaky, his exhales shakier.
He opens the envelope, expecting to find a soaked and ruined paper.
No, that shit is laminated.
Dean huffs out a quiet laugh, but he doesn’t close his eyes, willing the tears within them to stay tucked inside.
He looks down and yeah, Cas’ sprawled cursive writing covers the whole page, and the back side. So he starts reading.
My beloved Dean,
By the time you read this, it’ll have been three days since my family intercepted me. It’ll have been two days since I’ve snuck out and taped this envelope to the inside of this fountain. (By the way, if anyone is reading this, please don’t. I know that won’t stop pretty much anyone, but I personally beg for your mercy in this matter. Hell, my name is Castiel Novak. Yes, those Novaks. If you see this and need money to keep you from stealing it, just ask. I’ll pay.)
Anyways, Dean, my family, I believe, found out about our plans. As you know, they’ve known about us for the past year, but they were fine with their microaggressions as long as it stayed private and I remained, in your own words, their little bitch.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I can’t. And Dean, I love you more than anything. But they would have followed us. They would have made our lives hell. They threatened your brother. And I couldn’t do that to you.
I won’t.
So, Dean, I won’t be there today. Or the next day. I’m not going to get to meet you at that fountain.
But I want you to know something.
Dean, you are and you always will be the love of my life. I think back and memories come rushing to my head like they never have before. Vivid in the way that I forced memory upon them.
I remember the way your hair gets tousled after but an hour of sleep. The way your face nuzzled into my thigh when you fell asleep during the movie that you made me watch. I remember your laugh, and I remember the first time I saw you cry. That was so hard for you, to cry in front of me. And I was so proud of you. Do you remember?
I’m getting off track. Dean, you’ve been my everything for two years. Not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about you. And that won’t change.
But if you stay, it’ll kill the both of us.
If I see you on the street, or at a bakery, or out the window of a business conference, I’ll never be able to go back. I’ll kill myself before the day that I see you, have a chance, and then lose you again. And Dean, this conflict has done nothing but hurt you too. I’ve watched it tear you apart, tear us apart, and I can’t do that to you.
You’ll heal from this, I know it.
You’re the strongest man I’ve ever met, even when you shouldn’t be. You’re soft on the inside, too. You’re loving, you’re caring, and Dean, you shine so brightly. Don’t let me be the one to ruin that. Please.
There’s 20,000 dollars in cash in this envelope (that’s why it’s so damn heavy), as well as one of my credit cards. Michael won’t be too pleased, of course, but I care so fucking little that I may even punch him back this time.
Start your new life, Dean. Get your shiny new job, and live in a pretty apartment. Find yourself a girl, or maybe another man. Or no one, if that’s your preference.
Dean, move on. Please. I’ll try to promise the same, but not a day will go by, I believe, that I won’t think of you. Of your skin on mine. Of the way it felt when we were together.
I’m sorry,
Castiel.
BONUS:
Three years later, the lovers haven’t forgotten each other. Of course they haven’t.
Cas’ dreams of freckled shoulders and sleepy green eyes. Dean’s dreams too subside to electrifying blue eyes and messy black hair.
So when those eyes meet again, it’s like it hasn’t been more than a day.