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Every once in a while, Cas has to wash his clothes.
No, he didn’t sweat, but dirt from day-to-day life —and even the occasional hunt leftovers, like bloodstains, especially hard to remove once they dried— had to be dealt with using a conventional washing machine, just like everybody else.
And when he did, it’s not like he walked around naked.
So he’d borrow something from Dean or Sam, whoever was around, while the wash and dry cycles ran their course, until he could go back to the outfit he’d apparently been destined to wear forever.
As he loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, Castiel realized nothing was actually making him wear the same thing every day. He could switch from time to time if he wanted. Heck, he could change it everyday if he committed.
But somehow, change made him uneasy. Like he’d be losing part of his identity if he didn’t have his signature look.
Dean teased him about it sometimes. Said he looked like a cartoon character, always wearing the same thing. But Cas didn’t mind. It made him feel… himself. Whatever that meant.
Who was he, anyway? An entity occupying a vessel, who in its billion years of existence had never paid as much attention as recently to who he wanted to be. To who he hoped to become.
Besides a fallen angel or a half-hearted hunter, that is.
He placed the trench coat, shirt, tie, and pants into the washing machine. He’d learned the hard way that vests don’t go in there. He poured in some unmeasured amount of detergent and hit Start.
Left in just his trousers, he looked around the room they’d improvised into a laundry area. He picked up some still-unfolded clothes and pulled on a pair of joggers and a t-shirt.
He could tell the t-shirt was Dean’s because it fit okay. The joggers, though, dragged around his ankles. Sam’s.
He stood in front of the mirror, his reflection feeling almost out of place, as if he was wearing a costume. There was a certain security in the sharp lines of his usual attire that kept him grounded, safe.
But these clothes... these clothes were just borrowed pieces, fragments of someone else.
It was funny how, in the midst of it all, his trench coat was the one thing he could always count on. It was his armor, his consistency.
But today, something felt different. The fabric of the shirt against his skin was oddly... comforting. The looseness of Sam’s joggers made him feel almost human. Like he didn’t have to be perfect. Like he didn’t have to wear the weight of being a fallen angel, a warrior of Heaven, or even a hunter.
Dean’s words echoed in his mind. “You know we can, like, buy you more clothing, right?”
The thing was, Dean didn’t really understand. To Cas, it wasn’t about consistency for the sake of being stubborn or predictable. It was about finding a part of himself —even if it was just the clothes he wore. A sense of permanence in a world that had constantly shifted beneath his feet.
Cas looked around the bunker, reflecting on how the clothes he was wearing were a fitting metaphor for how both Sam and Dean had been so crucial in shaping him — and who he had become. If he were to become fragments of other people, at least it was reassuring to have made a good selection of said people.
Well, if he didn’t think highly of them, he wouldn’t have stayed around for this long on Earth, doing such mundane things as laundry.
“Cas? You alright?”
Cas snapped out of his thoughts as Sam walked into the laundry room with a basket of dirty clothes.
“Hello, Sam. I was just thinking. And I wanted to say thank you.”
“Uhh, sure. What for?”
“To you and Dean. For helping me find myself.”
Sam smiled slightly, unsure of what that meant, and Castiel felt a quiet certainty, the kind that comes when you realize you've finally found your place.