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Cas traced his hands over a stack of books Sam had been reading before he had went to bed, reveling at the feeling of the sewn covers and uneven pages. It was just he and Dean in the big room, Dean sitting across the mahogany table, sipping a cup of coffee and looking somewhere far off that Cas couldn’t even see anymore. The angel-turned-human’s mind couldn’t break his focus on the world around him and how different it all felt. It was as if he finally had a center, as if his feet were touching the ground for once. He was so incredibly human. He noticed each breath, each twitch, and each little skip of his heartbeat when his and Dean’s eyes met.
Even so, it hurt inside. He’d never be more than this; all he could become was less. It all felt so dark, and Cas knew it wasn’t, but when you are all light it’s harder for the darkness to seep in. Now, though, it was harder to push these thoughts away, harder to pray to his absent father. Hell, God wasn’t even his father anymore.
He promised himself one thing- not to let Dean know until it was plainly obvious. He couldn’t let him feel even more guilt than he already did. That was the worst, the guilt. It pumped through him and he could feel it more than anything else. This task was going to be somewhat hard to accomplish, though, since his eyelids had begun to droop already. Humans slept, angels didn’t.
“You want me to find you some good books to read tonight, Cas? Sorry, but I need some sleep. It’s been a long week.”
“Yes, Dean. That would be excellent.” Dean shot Cas his half-faced grin that he couldn’t get enough of. When the man was out of Castiel’s sight, he buried his head in his hands, running them through his hair. He pulled them away and looked at his veins, admiring the color and the way they bounced up every second or so, pumping blood to his fingers. He thought they looked like branches to trees, bare ones, without leaves. Even so, they were alive, so alive that they kept his whole body alert. Humans were beautiful, complex, everything he had wanted to understand before he fell. He just wished he could feel his father with him, but Dean’s hand on his shoulder was enough.
-
Castiel had gotten to page twenty of a journal by a man named Daniel before falling asleep on the pages. His mind wandered so easily when he was asleep, and the images were so vivid. They flashed behind his eyes in bursts of painful light. He didn’t want to remember Hell, but he was forced to at this moment. From what Castiel had heard and seen, dreams were supposed to be pleasant… nothing like this.
His mind recounted him falling down to the pit of hell, dying so many times by the claws of those with black eyes, yellow eyes, white eyes. Flames had curled around his trenchcoat, around his feet, around his eyes. He’d screamed so loud at some moments, but his focus had never faltered from finding Dean Winchester.
In this nightmare, he never found Dean. He was stuck in place, Lucifer looking straight into his soul, the flames burning his skin from his bones, then his bones from his marrow.
Something shook the foundations of Hell suddenly, and Cas’s eyes snapped open to see Dean standing above him.
“What the…?” Dean’s voice echoed into Castiel’s opening ears.
“I, was, um, resting my eyes.”
“You were screaming.”
Cas sat up and rubbed his eyes, feeling the wetness of tears coat his fingers. “Dean…”
He tried to stop crying, he really did. He bit his tongue and clenched his jaw, but Dean had already seen so he just gave up.
“Cas, did you fall?”
He blinked away a few teardrops for just a second so he could look into those green eyes that he loved so much. “Yes, Dean. I’m sorry.”
“Cas, you have nothing to be sorry about.” The tears had begun to fall down his face at record speed. “Come here, come on.”
Dean grabbed Cas into his arms, rubbing his back, trying to comfort him in any way he could. He couldn’t stand the sound of the man’s sobbing, but he knew he had to let him get it out. He wouldn’t watch him bottle his feelings up anymore. “How about you come back with me, and if I hear you again, I’ll wake you up?”
Cas nodded, feeling too weak to thank him. Dean grabbed his hand and led him back to his room, tucking him into his bed before lying down on top of the covers. His head rested on one hand; his other was busy tracing circles on Castiel’s palm.
He watched him drift off to sleep, and when he was to the point where he wouldn’t pull away; Dean silently pulled the man to his chest and whispered into his ear.
As Cas dreamed of sweaty summer nights in the back of the Impala with Dean, he could’ve swore he heard something along the lines of, “You’re still an angel to me.”