#buzzquill

[buzzquill]

Due Process... or whatever

Read it on AO3!

Pairing: Sam Winchester/Gabriel

Word Count: 3602

Fic Summary:

Sam Winchester knew his divorce from Becky would be a mess. He didn’t expect the process server, Gabriel, to be a cocky, sugar-fiending lawyer with a smirk that spelled trouble. Hiring him was supposed to be strictly business. Turns out, getting served was just the beginning.

Fic Warnings: mlm SMUT

Author’s Note:

Y'all. I really wanted to call this "Served... cunt 💅" but my beta wouldn't let me... Anyhoo, this is my first time writing smut in YEARS. Be kind!

Sam had been expecting this.

Didn’t make it any less annoying.

He leaned against the doorframe, the late afternoon sun slanting through the trees behind him, painting long golden streaks across the porch. Arms crossed over his broad chest, he was a wall of muscle and barely contained irritation. The man standing before him, however, looked as if he had just won the damn lottery. There was a kind of insufferable delight in the way he stood: casual confidence and smug amusement, a bright red sucker swishing around in his mouth like this was the highlight of his day.

"Samuel Winchester?" The voice was honey-smooth, slow and deliberate, the kind that belonged in dimly lit bars, telling stories over glasses of top-shelf whiskey. Amusement curled at the edges like he was savoring the moment.

Sam clenched his jaw. "Yeah."

With a dramatic flourish, the man produced an envelope and smacked it against Sam’s chest. "Congratulations, kiddo. You’ve been served."

A scent clung to the air between them; old paper, something faintly spicy. Cinnamon? Cardamom? Warm and sharp. Sam scowled and yanked the envelope from the man’s grasp, the rustling paper cutting through the quiet hum of cicadas. He flipped it open, just to be sure, but there it was, in crisp, black ink: the official end of his ill-advised marriage to Becky Rosen.

The guy didn’t leave. If anything, he seemed even more pleased, eyes gleaming like he’d just found something particularly interesting to toy with. He tilted his head, and the light caught in his golden-brown hair, tousled just enough to look effortless.

"You’re taking this well," he mused, voice like silk wrapped around steel. "Usually, this is where I get a door slammed in my face. Maybe some shouting. Once, a guy threw a can of soup at me. Chicken noodle. Hurt like a bitch."

Sam exhaled sharply, trying to will away the growing tension in his shoulders. "I knew this was coming."

"Good for you, big guy. That’s called emotional maturity." The man leaned in slightly, his smirk deepening, the scent of something sweet lingering between them. Vanilla, maybe. Burnt sugar. "And hey, if you need legal representation, I happen to be a lawyer. Gabriel. At your service."

Sam eyed him warily. "You’re the process server and the lawyer?"

"A lawyer." Gabriel waggled his eyebrows. "You can’t serve the papers on your own case, but I gotta keep life interesting. Like I said, you would not believe the drama I witness while serving papers. Almost more delicious than winning a case."

Sam was about to shut the door in his face after all, but Gabriel was faster, stepping just a little closer, the heat of him palpable even in the thick summer air. "Just saying: you look like you could use someone who knows the ins and outs of messy divorces. And I’m very, very good at what I do."

That shouldn’t have sounded as suggestive as it did.

Sam hated that his brain immediately went there.

Gabriel definitely noticed, because his smirk turned downright wicked, eyes flickering over Sam like he was assessing something of great interest. "Tell you what, Champ, sleep on it. If you wanna talk shop, my number’s in the paperwork."

Sam exhaled sharply, already regretting everything about today. "Fine."

Gabriel winked and turned on his heel, sauntering down the porch steps with a lazy grace that seemed entirely too practiced. "Pleasure doing business with you, Sammy."

The door clicked shut. Sam groaned, pressing his forehead against the wood.

This was going to be a long fucking week.

He looked around his house. Boxed up and in shambles. He’d known this was coming, genuinely he had. When your wife comes home, missing clothes and reeking of sex after fucking some random-ass author at her publisher event, you kinda see the writing on the wall. Then, apparently, the fuck-face author already proposed. Then, HR found a string of inappropriate emails between Becky and other male authors going back years and she got fired. Then, she "always wanted to be a stay-at-home wife" anyway.

Whatever.

Sam went back to packing, trying not to think of Becky. Or Gabriel. But god, was he a pretty and pretty interesting guy. That’s it. Sucking on candy during a professional interaction. Ridiculous. Obscene.

And, shit. Kinda hot.

With a resigned sigh, he pulled out his phone. Hey. Got the papers. I’ll sign them once I have a chance to look them over. Sent.

----

Sam wasn’t going to call him.

And yet, less than twenty-four hours later, he sat at his kitchen table, Gabriel’s number glowing on his phone screen like it was mocking him. Becky had called. Twice. Her messages were a mess of contradictions - teary apologies laced with veiled threats about dragging this process out for as long as possible. The thought of dealing with it alone made Sam’s skull throb. With a frustrated sigh, he hit call.

Gabriel answered on the second ring. "Well, well. That was fast. Couldn’t resist me, huh?"

Sam rolled his eyes so hard it nearly hurt. "Don’t flatter yourself."

"Too late."

"I need a lawyer."

There was a pause. A shift in Gabriel’s tone. Subtle, but there. "Yeah, Sammy. I figured."

Sam rubbed his temple. "She’s making this complicated."

"They always do," Gabriel said, almost sympathetic. "Tell me everything."

And he did. He told Gabriel everything.

About Becky getting him drunk - literally dosing him with higher-proof alcohol without him noticing - then all but dragging him to a Vegas chapel. The cold shoulders. The fights. The way he’d woken up, not even remembering the damn wedding until Becky shoved the certificate in his face.

He talked so much, he fell asleep on the phone.

-----

It started with legal meetings. Tense. Professional.

But Sam quickly realized that nothing about Gabriel could remain strictly professional. The man had a way of invading his space; leaning too close over paperwork, fingers brushing against Sam’s as he pointed to clauses and fine print. His smell. It was intoxicating. Warm and heady, cloves and burnt sugar. It curled around Sam like an invisible net.

One late night, over whiskey and frustration, Sam let his guard slip. A glance too long. A touch that lingered. And then Gabriel was in his space, eyes dark, lips curling just enough to make Sam’s breath catch.

The kiss was inevitable. Desperate. A collision of hands and heat, all urgency and unspoken need. Gabriel tasted like bourbon and something sweet, caramel melting over fire, smoky and decadent. Sam’s fingers twisted in his jacket, pulling him closer, grounding himself in Gabriel’s warmth. For once, Gabriel didn’t have a quip, just a sharp inhale before he kissed back harder like he’d been waiting for this just as long.

It didn’t stop there.

Sam all but dragged Gabriel toward the bedroom. Slowly, deliberately, eyes locked. The unspoken question hanging between them. Gabriel answered in his own way, with a smirk and a firm push past the threshold, their bodies pressing together as the door clicked shut behind them.

Gabriel noticed Sam’s hardness before Sam even fully processed what they were doing, before he could overthink it. But Sam was too distracted by the heat of him, the way their breaths mingled, the press of skin against skin.

Gabriel’s grip tightened in Sam’s hair, tilting his head back just enough to force a breath between them. "You good?" he murmured, voice husky, barely holding himself back.

Sam nodded, breath hitching. “Yeah,” he gasped, voice rough. “I’m fuckin’ great. Do you… wanna stop?” His brows furrowed slightly, a flicker of concern beneath the need.

“No, no,” Gabriel reassured him, a slow grin spreading across his face as he finally released his grip, his hand moving to cradle Sam’s face instead. His thumb traced over Sam’s bottom lip, teasing. “I just wanna make sure you know this makes you fucking gay.”

Sam let out a breathless laugh, his chest shaking with it, his hands steadying Gabriel on top of him. “Yeah. I’ve been aware for a while. Becky was aware too. That’s when things -”

“Good,” Gabriel hummed, pushing Sam fully onto the mattress, his weight pressing down. “Because I’m not some dumpster baby on prom night that you can just pretend never happened.” He leaned in, voice a whisper against Sam’s lips. “If I let you fuck me,” his fingers worked at the button of Sam’s pants, his hips rolling just slightly, teasing, “then I need to make sure you remember fondly.”

“Yeah?” Sam swallowed. “Let me?”

“Oh, please, kiddo,” Gabriel smirked, leaning in just enough that their lips barely brushed. “I’d let you, but let’s be real: you’ve been dreaming about taking your frustrations out on me since the moment I walked through your door. Fucking the guy that delivered your wife’s divorce papers? Now, that’s poetic justice.”

Sam let out a low chuckle, the heat between them crackling like a live wire. With a sudden, fluid movement, he flipped them, pressing Gabriel into the mattress, relishing in the surprised sound that slipped from his lips. Sam’s palm flattened against Gabriel’s chest, just inches from his throat, keeping him pinned as he shimmied out of his jeans. His cock pressed hard against the fabric of his black boxers. The friction between them was unbearable, their bodies flush, heat pooling between them as Sam ground down, the hard press of Gabriel against him leaving no doubt about where this was headed.

“In there,” Sam whispered, nodding toward the bedside table just above Gabe’s head. Without taking his eyes off Sam, Gabriel barely shifted beneath his palm, reaching into the drawer with practiced ease. His fingers brushed against cool wood before closing around a crinkly, square foil packet and the smooth, rounded edge of a bottle. They quickly found their way into his hand.

Sam’s lips curled into a slow smile as Gabriel revealed the condom and lube. “Now,” Sam purred, voice thick with command, “put it on me.”

Gabriel couldn’t help the way his tongue flicked out to wet his lips, or the way his throat tightened as he swallowed… hard. He was downright embarrassed by the audible gulp that nearly escaped him when Sam slowly lifted his hand from his chest. And when only his fingertips remained, Sam pressed them down - just for a second - firm, deliberate, pushing Gabe into the bed, just enough to send a sharp thrill of anticipation down Gabriel’s spine, blurring the line between fear and excitement.

Now, Gabriel isn’t the kind to take orders. He either leads or does his own damn thing. The moment someone tries to command him, he finds a way to do the opposite. If he was honest, it was often just for the hell of it. But under Sam’s touch, his gaze, his voice wrapped in quiet authority, Gabriel was nothing if not a good and faithful servant.

Sam rose to his feet, standing with his knees pressed against the mattress. Silently, still frustratingly clothed, Gabriel crawled up to Sam - who was now shrugging off his shirt. Gabe sat in silence for a moment, memorizing every inch of his chest and torso as Gabriel tore open the condom a bit before biting onto the corner of the foil to free up his hands. 

With the condom pinned between teeth and lube laid haphazardly against his knee, he watched as Gabrial slowly lowered Sam’s boxers. Man was he in trouble, he couldn’t help but think as his cock sprung free. Gabriel glanced up at him, and fuck, that look. Like he had Sam all figured out, like he knew exactly how much restraint Sam was holding onto. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of Sam’s boxers and started to drag them down, inch by inch, until Sam’s cock was free, thick and flushed, standing hard against his stomach. Gabriel thought it was almost cartoonish; he laughed a bit.

“Woah, dude,” Sam fake gasped, “you can’t just laugh at a man with his pants down.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabe gasped, “you’re just.. So huge that it’s almost a joke.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but before he could say anything, Gabriel’s lips brushed against his hip, hot breath ghosting over sensitive skin, and just like that, all coherent thought left Sam’s head. Without a second thought, Gabriel dove in. The smell of Sam was intoxicating. “You smell so good.” He whispered, kissing circles around Sam’s cock, lapping momentarily at his flesh. He told himself it was to make sure the condom slid on smoothly.

Gabriel didn’t move fast. No, he lingered. Lips dragging, tongue flicking out to taste, slow and indulgent, like he was taking his time with something expensive. Something worth savoring.

Sam clenched his fists at his sides, trying to keep himself from just grabbing Gabriel, from guiding his mouth exactly where he wanted it.

"Relax, big guy," Gabriel murmured, voice full of amusement, like he could feel the tension rolling through Sam’s body. "You always this wound up?"

Sam’s jaw flexed. "Gabriel."

Gabriel grinned against his skin, then, finally, his mouth closed around the head of Sam’s cock, wet and warm, sucking just enough to make Sam’s breath hitch. His hands settled against Sam’s thighs, fingers pressing into firm muscle, holding him steady, keeping him right there so Sam could feel everything.

Gabriel took his time. Lips soft, tongue working slow circles, dragging out the anticipation until Sam’s head tipped back, fingers curling into Gabriel's hair, chest rising and falling in ragged breaths.

And Gabriel was into it. There was no question. The way he moaned, low and pleased, as he took more of Sam into his mouth, the way his hands gripped Sam’s thighs like he was anchoring himself there, like this was as good for him as it was for Sam.

It did something to him.

Sam cracked his eyes open, looking down just in time to see Gabriel glance up, pupils blown, lips wrapped around his cock, and fuck, that nearly did him in right then and there.

"Jesus, Gabe…"

Gabriel hummed in response, the vibration sending a sharp spike of pleasure through Sam’s spine. And then he pulled off, licking his lips like he was tasting something particularly decadent.

"Patience, Sammy," he teased, thumb tracing the sensitive vein along the underside of Sam’s cock. "We got all night."

Slowly Gabriel inched the condom on, eyes glued to Sam’s. “Good boy. Now, you just have way too many clothes on.”

Gabriel didn’t rush. He never rushed.

He lifted himself from the mattress with slow, deliberate movements, sitting back on his heels as he met Sam’s gaze, eyes dark with something wicked. Something knowing. The smirk that curled at the edges of his lips was downright sinful like he could feel the anticipation thrumming under Sam’s skin.

And Sam? Sam couldn’t look away.

Gabriel started with his tie, fingers toying with the knot, teasing it loose with a lazy kind of grace. He pulled it free inch by inch, letting the silk slide between his fingers before tossing it aside like it was nothing. His hands dropped to the first button of his shirt, popping it open with maddening slowness, then the next, and the next, baring inch after inch of golden skin.

Sam’s breath caught in his throat.

Gabriel knew exactly what he was doing. He pushed the fabric from his shoulders in one smooth motion, letting it slip down his arms, exposing sharp collarbones and the defined lines of his chest. The dim light cast soft shadows over the cut of his ribs, the faint trace of muscle beneath the lean frame. Sam’s eyes followed the movement, tracking the way Gabriel’s fingers drifted lower, grazing over his stomach, down to the waistband of his slacks.

Gabriel’s smirk deepened as he undid the button, slow enough to drive Sam insane, his knuckles brushing against his own stomach. The sound of the zipper dragging down filled the air, too loud in the thick silence between them. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband, pausing just long enough to make Sam wait before pushing the fabric down over his hips, exposing smooth, bare skin.

The breath Sam hadn’t realized he was holding left him in a sharp exhale.

Gabriel stepped out of his slacks, kicking them aside with practiced ease before standing there, completely bare, utterly unashamed, letting Sam look. And god, Sam looked.

Gabriel was all golden skin and sharp edges, compact muscle softened just enough to be enticing, his body lean and built for trouble. His cock was flushed, half-hard already, standing as proof that he wanted this just as much as Sam did. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way he stood: shoulders back, chin tilted, utterly confident in his own skin like he knew he was a sight worth looking at.

And Sam? He was fucked.

Gabriel’s voice was low when he finally spoke, thick with amusement. “Cat got your tongue, Sammy?”

Sam swallowed hard, dragging his gaze to Gabriel’s face, to the wicked gleam in his eyes, the smirk playing at his lips.

His own voice was rough when he answered. "Get on the fucking bed"

Gabriel stilled for a second. Just a second. And then his smirk returned, slow and sharp.

"Aye, aye, Captain."

He shifted, crawling onto the bed and dropping onto his chest, with his knees still planted on the bed so that he could arch his back enough to be a problem. Sam pressed a hand against the small of his back, steadying him, letting his fingers linger. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder, voice low, teasing.

"Fuck me, Sammy,” he purred, “I can take it."

Sam’s breath came out in a slow exhale.

"Yeah," he murmured, gripping Gabriel’s hip, his other hand trailing lower, fingers slipping between his thighs, teasing. "I figured."

And when Gabriel let out a sharp, shuddering breath, pressing back against Sam’s touch, Sam knew neither of them were getting any sleep tonight.

-----

Hours later, Sam woke to find Gabriel still there. Sam watches him through the open bedroom door, he’s lounging against the counter in nothing but a smirk and a half-buttoned shirt. “Told you I was good at what I do,” he called somehow sensing Sam now being awake, sipping from one of Sam’s coffee mugs.

Sam groaned, covering his face. “You’re insufferable.”

Gabriel grinned. “Yeah, but you like it.”

Sam didn’t answer. Because, damn it, he did.

The papers sat on the counter beside Gabriel, waiting.

Sam stared at them from across the room, still sprawled in bed, one arm draped over his eyes, the other resting on the empty space where Gabriel had been an hour ago. The sheets smelled like him now: clove, burnt sugar, something warm and sharp that lingered even in absence.

Gabriel made a noise in the kitchen, something between a hum and a chuckle, and Sam cracked an eye open again just in time to see him stretch, arching his back like a satisfied cat. His half-buttoned shirt did nothing to hide the marks Sam had left on his collarbone, nor the lazy way he carried himself like he had nowhere better to be.

"You gonna keep staring or are you gonna sign those damn papers?" Gabriel asked, lifting Sam’s coffee mug to his lips. “I know she said she was going to drag it out but those papers suggest that must be a new development because they offer a clean break. No dividing, nothing. Sign them before she gets a messier divorce written up.”

Sam groaned, dragging a hand through his hair before forcing himself upright. His body ached, in the best way possible, but his mind was already shifting, grounding back into reality. The divorce. That was the whole reason Gabriel had been in his life in the first place. The reason they met. The reason this happened.

Sam swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sighed. "You always this much of an asshole in the morning?"

Gabriel smirked, taking another slow sip of coffee before setting the mug down with a deliberate clink. "Nah, just with clients who fuck me before finalizing their legal affairs."

Sam scrubbed a hand over his eyes, forcing down a laugh, because he refused to give Gabriel the satisfaction. Instead, he stood, stretching out the soreness in his back with a series of satisfying pops, and made his way to the counter. The divorce papers sat beside Gabriel, who must’ve been reading over them again, but now they wait for his signature.

Gabriel leaned his head against Sam’s broad shoulder with a sigh.

"You know," he said, casual, "you sign these, you’re officially a free man."

Sam glanced down at him, raising an eyebrow. "You looking for a follow-up commitment?"

Gabriel’s smirk widened, but there was something else there, something flickering in his gaze. Quick, quiet, unreadable. "Nah," he said, too easily. "Just making sure you don’t get cold feet."

Sam didn’t. He never would.

He picked up the pen, pressed it to the page, and signed his name in steady, deliberate strokes. The finality of it settled deep, but it wasn’t heavy. It was a release.

Gabriel whistled low. "Damn. Just like that, huh? No last-minute regrets?"

Sam exhaled, setting the pen down. "Just one."

Gabriel tilted his head, interest sparking in his eyes. "Oh?"

Sam turned, closing the space between them, resting a hand on the counter beside Gabriel’s hip. "That we haven’t met sooner."

Gabriel’s smirk twitched like he was really fighting not to grin. But he didn’t fight when Sam kissed him - deep, slow, something final and beginning all at once.

[buzzquill]

I once had an account of 15,000 followers. I was a god. My fics were sources of inspiration. Then college and mentle health attacked, but I love seeing comments roll through on my ancient fics on long abandoned blogs.

I don't need therapy I need rabid gay people freaking out in my inbox

[powerdragonmoon]

I read Buzzkill and the Chat part of me screamed Buzzquill in return. Thank you for existing

THANK YOU FOR EXISTING 😭😍😭😍😭😍😭!! AND THANK YOU FOR READING! and ALSO NO THANK YOU FOR THAT CHAT PUN!!! >:O! HOW DARE!

[ezool]

i love the idea of kay faraday and simon blackquill getting along, but like in a way that kay loves to bother him while simon would rather die than admit he appreciates her company. i also like the idea of kay giving him the nickname “buzzquill” whenever she deems him having a stick up his ass about something.

[soojoo]

promo 1/4

aradiae

norsegays

theonlyconsultingtimelord

ladyholmess

buzzquill

[buzzquill]

My best friend and I bond over loving the show supernatural, but then I brought up fandom and she was just

I always forget normal people also watched supernatural like what do you mean you saw ALL OF THAT and are normal about it?? It doesn't affect your every waking moment???

[buzzquill]

Milk, Gin, and NyQuil Masterlist

Castiel x Dean AU

There is satisfaction in the hunger. Comfort in the seared flesh. A moment of peace as bruises bubble up to the surface. That’s what Castiel tells himself while spooning reheated goulash into his father’s mouth, his thumb scraping absently over his cracked bottom lip. The sting keeps him grounded as he replays the endless loop of his days: wake up before Dad, grocery store, liquor store, care for his catatonic father until he’s in bed. Then it’s off to the bar, dodging comments about his gaunt frame and the weight of his brothers’ absence. Try not to think about the drunk driver. Try not to think about what life could’ve been. Sleep. Repeat. Day after day, Castiel feels like he’s stuck in place while the world rushes past, struggling just to stay afloat. Until a hellish cold brings him to the Walgreens Cold & Flu aisle, where he meets a man with wild freckles, unruly hair, and a kid brother who might just change everything.

About:

Tags: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Castiel (Supernatural), Gabriel (Supernatural), God | Chuck Shurley, Ellen Harvelle, Bobby Singer (Supernatural), Eating Disorders, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self-Harm, Alternate Universe, Chuck Shurley is a shit dad, John Winchester is a shit dad, castiel is a soldier, Dean winchester is trying to survive, Sam Winchester is a child Playlist

Read it on AO3!

Chapter 1 - Grief Is a Lonely Houseguest

Chapter 2 - Tenderness is a Bruising Thing

Chapter 3 - Burden Wears My Father’s Face

Chapter 4 - The Cost of Bearing Witness

Chapter 5 - Swallowing Galaxies

Chapter 6 - When You Crack, I Break

[buzzquill]

Milk, Gin, and NyQuil

Chapter 2: Tenderness is a Bruising Thing

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Read it on AO3!

Pairing: Castiel/Dean

Word Count: 3,457

Chapter Summary:

Castiel never expected a fever-fueled Walgreens run to turn into breakfast with a maddeningly handsome stranger and his sharp-eyed little brother. But Dean Winchester, all cocky grins and unexpected kindness, had a way of making things feel inevitable. As Castiel struggles to stay upright - too exhausted, too wary, too used to people who take instead of give - Dean simply hands him a warm cup of coffee and asks, “So, you come around here often?” And just like that, Castiel finds himself at the edge of something unfamiliar. Maybe even safe. Maybe.

Fic Warnings:

Eating Disorders, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self-Harm, Alternate Universe, Chuck Shurley is a shit dad, John Winchester is a shit dad, Castiel is a soldier, Dean winchester is trying to survive, Sam Winchester is a child

Author’s Note:

Yoooo! Here's chapter 2! Please don't expect a real posting schedule, but I will try to maintain weekly-ish updates! Love you. Bye <3

"So," Dean said with an infuriating crooked smile, sliding a credit card across to the young cashier before Castiel could protest, paying for both of their bounties, "you got a name?"

Castiel’s thoughts faltered, caught on that smile. It was the kind of grin straight out of a romcom or a coming-of-age show: crooked, with one side pulling higher than the other, accompanied by a subtle lift of an eyebrow. There was even the faint flash of a sharp canine tooth when he spoke. If life were a romcom, Castiel realized, he’d be in serious trouble.

Being rescued by a ridiculously handsome stranger from out of town? Check. Sweet younger brother in tow? Check. Freckles, green eyes, taller than him, and that maddeningly sharp smile? Every box, checked.

Yeah, he was doomed.

"Uh, yeah," Castiel stammered, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. It didn’t help. He coughed, a gross, wet hack, clearing it awkwardly. "Castiel. Uh - Shurley. Castiel Shurley."

The world outside Walgreens felt sharper than before. Sharper, colder, louder, and too damn bright. The neon glow of the streetlights buzzed in his fever-fogged brain, and for a moment, Castiel just stood there, unsteady on his feet. Dean paused with a glance, stitching his eyebrows together as he tutted, before reaching a hand out to Castiel. He found himself flinching away for half a second. He hoped that Dean didn’t notice. He prayed that Dean didn’t notice.

Dean’s grasp was thawing, solid and grounding. Not like Gabriel’s touch; always flighty, distant, and always halfway gone before it ever landed. Nor was it like Dad’s; heavy, crushing, and filled with expectations he never asked for.

Just steady. Just here. Just warm. Just.

“You good to walk?” Dean asked, his voice carrying the same casual confidence it had in the store, but now laced with something a bit softer. Just a bit.

To be completely honest, Castiel wasn’t sure. His limbs felt like they’d been hollowed out, filled with sand and lead in equal measure. But he nodded anyway. What was he supposed to do? Ask Dean to carry him? He couldn’t… Well, I mean?... No, that’s ridiculous. Dean didn’t let go, but he didn’t make a big deal of it either. He just kept pace with Castiel as they crossed the lot, like they were old friends heading somewhere familiar. It was strange. It was too easy. People weren’t supposed to be like this. Not without wanting something in return. And even if they didn’t want something in return, eventually they would just stop giving.

“Take your meds,” Dean chuckled, lightly tossing the bag of cold medicine back to Castiel, “don’t want’cha coughing up a lung while we eat. Not on my burger. ‘Just not kosher.”

“Don’t take all of that stuff,” Sam warned, whipping his hair and he turned around in the passenger seat, “just take the DayQuil and Mucinex. You don’t wanna OD.”

Castiel nodded with a groan as he tore into the savior -  no, liberator - that was his over-the-counter cold and flu medication. He gulped it down, sinking into the leather seats of Dean’s car.

The diner came into view, neon red letters flickering above the glass doors. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of coffee and grease, sickeningly warm in a way that made Castiel’s stomach twist and churn and bubble. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a meal that wasn’t hastily shoved down between responsibilities. He could remember all of the times that Dad had eaten a warm meal. He enjoyed warm meals at least twice a day, everyday. Shoveled into his useless mouth by Castiel or, at the very least, prepared by Castiel who then pulled the gruff man to the recliner and set it up on a tv tray. Then he would grump and mumble about how he could do it himself. Castiel gnawed at the flaking skin lining his lips as he thought about having to wake Dad up in a few hours, just to fight over a bowl of brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal.

The cold followed him inside. It clung to his skin like a second sickness, pressing against his spine, pooling in the hollows of his collarbones. His fingers still trembled, still ached with the remnants of fever and exhaustion as he curled them around the edge of the booth’s cracked vinyl seat. It should have been warm in here, safe in here, but his body didn’t believe it yet. It was still braced for impact.

The inside of the diner smelled of more grease but also of fatty butter, fried meats, and cherry pie. Like coffee burned too long on the hot plate, like a life happening around him that he wasn’t quite part of. A radio crackled somewhere behind the counter, playing an old country song that bled into the soft clatter of dishes and the murmur of conversation. Castiel thinks he used to like country music. He remembers dancing with Michael and Gabriel to Shania Twain and Reba McEntire hits while playing out in the yard before promptly changing it to George Strait when Dad came outside. Castiel lets the country song, its lyrics just out of reach, drift through the back of his mind as he refocuses on Dean and Sammy.

Dean slid into the seat across from Castiel with the ease of someone who’d never once wondered if he fit in a place like this. He didn’t seem to care either way. The worn vinyl whimpered and groaned as he stretched an arm across the back of the booth, fingers drumming absently against the cracked surface. The rhythm was offbeat to the slow country song that fizzled through the diner’s ancient speakers. It was a strange thing to notice, but Castiel couldn’t help it; the tempo of Dean’s drumming was too fast for the song, like it belonged to something harder, something faster. A pop-punk song, maybe, or a beat from a rap track, but that didn’t fit either. No, it was something older - something that didn't belong to him but lived deep in his mind. Dean’s rhythm didn’t just break the diner’s sleepy mood, it outgrew it, as if he'd spent too long living in places that made this little corner of the world feel too small for him.

Dean had that kind of presence: too mature for his years, too comfortable in his own skin, like he was always just a crumb ahead of the curve, a few steps past the rest of them. He looked like someone who’d lived more in his early twenties than most people would in their whole lives, and that gave him a weight, a gravitas, that Castiel just couldn’t place. It was the way he carried himself, effortlessly. Dean moved like the world had already made room for him, like it had always bent around his will, and would continue to do so as long as he kept walking in it. He didn’t question things. Things just were. And maybe that was just the way he had to move through the world, the only way to stay in control, to keep up with the game he was playing. Whatever that game was.

At his side, his younger brother, Sam. A tall and awkward boy, gracelessly leaning against the booth, he shoved his hoodie sleeves up to his elbows. Castiel noticed the slight tremble in Sam’s fingers as they fidgeted with the ketchup bottle, his gaze flicking between them, sharp and intense in a way that felt too mature for a kid that age. There was a curiosity there, something perceptive, something that made Castiel feel like Sam was studying him, trying to figure him out. But Sam wasn’t asking questions, wasn’t pushing for answers, he was just watching. Castiel felt uneasy under his gaze but then soothed into a melted pool under Dean’s. Sam’s eyes were just a bit too knowing for someone who should’ve still been learning how to navigate the world, and it struck Castiel that maybe Sam had learned how to pay attention to the details, the unspoken things, because the world had somehow taught him to see what was hidden beneath the surface, things most people never even thought to look for.

And maybe Castiel deserved to be scrutinized. He must look like hell, after all - gaunt, bruised and yellowed, barely upright. He could feel the sweat drying at the back of his neck, the fever still lurking just beneath the surface of his skin, like something waiting for the right moment to drag him under again. The diner’s fluorescent lighting was cruel, highlighting every shadow under his eyes, every sharp angle of his cheeks.

He curled his fingers tighter into his lap, as if he could physically hold himself together.

A mug of coffee slid across the table toward him. He hadn’t seen Dean gesture for it, hadn’t even noticed the waitress stop by at all, but there it was, steaming and black, the scent almost overwhelming in its bitterness. Dean empties two small portions of hazelnut creamer and a pink packet of sugar into the inky acidity. Holy, white tendrils leach up to the surface before Dean stirs it away with a small straw.

“Drink,” Dean said. Not unkind. Not a demand, but not a suggestion, either. No room for negotiation.

Castiel hesitated, then wrapped both hands around the beige ceramic mug. His thumb rubbed against a small chip on the outer lip. The coffee was warm, at least. Steadying.

Dean watched him, unreadable. “So, you live around here?”

Castiel nodded, swallowing against the rawness in his throat. “Not far.”

Dean hummed. Took a sip of his own coffee. Sam, still silent, was busy peeling the label off a ketchup bottle, pretending he wasn’t listening.

“Who’s at home?” Dean asked, and there was something too careful about the way he said it. Like he already had an idea of the answer.

Castiel’s fingers tightened around the mug. The heat bit harshly into his palms, grounding him, giving him something to focus on besides the way his stomach twisted. He could still smell it, even now, mixing with the overwhelming scent of the diner. The piss, the vomit, the sweat-soaked sheets clinging to Dad’s wasted frame, the sour stench of unwashed skin and half-dried alcohol. He could still hear the labored breathing, the muttered nonsense, the occasional sharp crack of a bottle against the wall when a hand too loose on its grip let it slip.

“Just my dad,” he said finally, voice quieter than he meant it to be. His shoulders pulled up to his ears as his leg began to shake. But Castiel didn’t really notice this within himself.

Dean nodded like that made sense, like he understood more than Castiel had said out loud. “He sick?”

The laugh that forced its way up Castiel’s throat was sharp and bitter. It was an ironic laugh, but it was the first time Castiel laughed in a long time. He wasn’t quite sure if he was doing it right. “Something like that.”

Dean’s gaze flickered over him, measuring, weighing, deciding something. Then he set his coffee down with a quiet clink. “Well, good news is, you don’t have to worry about that for the next hour or so.” He leaned back, easy, confident. “’Cause right now, you’re eating a goddamn good burger.”

And just like that, the waitress appeared, setting down three plates with a practiced sort of carelessness. Two with smash burgers with ‘all the works’ and one with a grilled chicken caesar salad. The smell hit Castiel immediately: grease, cheese, seared beef, something tangy and sharp. His stomach clenched, uncertain whether it wanted to lurch or growl.

“Go on, man. I promise it won’t kill you,” Dean pushed one of the burgers toward him, “and if it did, that’d be my chosen way to go. Full, fat, and happy.”

The weight of it was almost too much. Not the burger itself, but the act of taking it. Of letting himself have something. Letting someone else give him something. But Dean was waiting, and Sam was watching out of the corner of his eye as he forked a hunk of lettuce, and Castiel was just so goddamn tired.

So he picked it up. 

And he took a bite.

Have you ever taken a long, satisfying nap, and then swallow that first gulp of ice cold water? How it slides down your throat, cold and refreshing, settling into your stomach with a quiet sort of relief? That brief, fleeting moment where everything feels a little more right? That’s exactly how Castiel felt as he took his first bite. For the first time in what felt like forever, since he’d started caring for his dad, the food didn’t repulse him. And when he saw Dean, that sly, self-satisfied grin spread across his face as Castiel swallowed that bite - something softened inside him. For a second, he almost forgot the gnawing emptiness he had grown used to, the sharp sting of hunger he had learned to live with. He sighed, almost growling, as he dove into the side portion of battered fries, dunking two into the house-made ranch.

Dean leaned back in his seat, a light teasing glint in his eyes as he watched Castiel take another bite of the burger, his lips curling up into that easy grin that seemed to have its own gravity. Sam, for his part, pushed the ketchup bottle closer to Castiel, offering him a silent truce as he popped a crouton into his mouth. The tension that had been hovering in the air seemed to loosen, just a little, as he focused on making a mess of his fries with the bottle’s contents.

“So,” Dean said, with that smooth, confident drawl, picking at his own burger now and eyeing Castiel across the table, “you come around here often?”

Castiel glanced up, his eyes narrowed, trying to decide if Dean was joking or actually asking.

“No,” he responds, voice a little hoarse as he swallows another bite of the burger. It is greasy and surprisingly good, the taste settling in his stomach like something familiar, something almost normal. His body doesn’t trust it, but his brain is distracted by the strange pleasantness of it all. “First time.”

Sam snorts. “You sound like a tourist.”

“I’m not a tourist.” Castiel’s lips twitched slightly as he sets his half-eaten burger down, watching Dean carefully. “I’m just... busy.”

Dean smirks. “Ah, busy. The kind of guy who is too busy to eat ‘til he’s checked out in the Walgreens cold and flu aisle, huh?” He paused, raising an eyebrow in mock surprise. “What, no one told you this place has the best burgers in town?”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“Ah, man, you gotta trust me,” Dean snorts, wagging his finger like he’s lecturing Castiel on the proper way to live. “First lesson of hanging with me? Eat the burger. Sammy doesn’t listen to that rule so he doesn’t get to pick the music. Second lesson? Never trust the coffee. But, you know, we all make mistakes.” He takes another sip, as if the mention of bad coffee is just part of a carefully crafted narrative.

Sam chuckles quietly, his gaze flicking back and forth between Dean and Castiel, clearly sensing the lightness in the air. He pushes his plate aside, fiddling with his phone before glancing at Castiel. “Yeah, I guess it’s not all bad. I mean, it’s better than the stuff Mom used to make.”

Dean shoots him a look, exaggeratedly wide-eyed, like he’s just been betrayed by his younger brother. “Dude! You know she can’t cook for us anymore, right? We gotta hold on to those memories.”

“Yeah, but the memories aren’t the best,” Sam shoots back with a grin, crossing his arms. “You know, no one needs to know about those weird meatloafs.”

Dean mock-gasps, clutching his chest as he stuffs a fry into his mouth. “Hey! Don’t talk trash about Mom’s meatloaf.”

They share a laugh, easy and unhurried, as if the world outside didn’t exist for this moment. But even in the middle of their banter, Castiel can’t help but feel the weight of the conversation, the constant hum of his own anxiety. Dean’s playful teasing, Sam’s wit; it all made him feel like maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t entirely out of place here, with these strange people in his strange town. He wasn’t sure if it was the fever or the comfort of the burger settling in his stomach, but for once, his mind felt... quiet.

Dean’s eyes flickered over to Castiel again, his smile lingering just a little longer this time. “You know, you’ve got this... whole mysterious vibe going on. Like, serious brooding intensity. I’m all for it. But, hey, you should take it down a notch, maybe. Don’t want the whole town thinking you're some kind of loner vigilante or something.”

Castiel shoots him a dry look, though it was tempered by the slightest curve of his lips. “I’m not a vigilante.”

Dean raises both eyebrows, leaning forward slightly. “Well, you know, you might wanna start doing a little more vigilante-ing, ‘cause it looks like you're too busy taking care of your... dad, right? Real tough job for a guy who can’t even finish a burger.”

“Shut up, Dean,” Castiel mutters, though it wasn’t as sharp as he’d intended. The teasing wasn’t bad, not with Dean’s dopey grin and the warmth of the moment, but Castiel knew all too well how fragile it could be. How quickly that lightness could slip away.

Then, without thinking, Castiel pulls his phone out of his pocket, absently checking it for the time. His fingers froze as his eyes scanned the screen.

10:14 a.m.

Several missed calls from Harvelle’s Roadhouse, the name flashing in bold against the dark background. His heart skipped a beat.

And then, just below the calls, an unread text:

Ellen Harvelle 🍻 - 9:47am : “911” Ellen Harvelle 🍻 - 10:04am : “Its your Dad”

The world tilts, almost jolting to a stop. His throat runs dry, and the lightness he’s found with Dean and Sam - the moment that had felt so fleeting, so necessary - evaporated in an instant. It’s like a switch had flipped in a deafening second, and the quiet hum of the diner’s background noise suddenly seems too loud, too overwhelming.

“Excuse me.” Castiel slips out of the booth too quickly, the old leather squeaking and screeching beneath him. Dean and Sam both look up, surprise flickering in their eyes. “I -um- I have to go.”

“Hey, hey, hold on - what’s going on?” Dean doesn’t hesitate. He was out of his seat and moving toward him before Castiel could even reach for his coat. “Sammy, you stay here. Pay and I’ll meet you at the motel.”

But Castiel was already standing in the doorway, heart pounding, stomach twisting in knots. He doesn’t even look back at them as he pushes through the door.

He needs to get home.

Now.

“Yo!  Dude,” Dean’s gruff voice bellows from behind Castiel, “you can’t just bail on us.”

“I was only supposed to be gone for half an hour, tops. It’s been four-fucking-hours because you dragged me to some shit diner.” Castiel continues down the road, stomping back to the Walgreens, pulling his keys from his coat pocket.

“I dragged you out here? Man, we saved your life. You were barely standing when I found you.” Dean calls, running up beside Castiel, gently grabbing at his wrist.

“Found me?” Castiel yells, whipping around, the sudden movement dizzying him and making him sway. Dean grabbed Castiel's shoulders to steady him. “I wasn’t someone to be found! You absolute fucking insolent man. I was some dude with a cold, looking for meds.”

Castiel doesn’t notice tears welling up in his eyes as he picks at the sensitive hairs behind his right ear. A sob finally tears from his throat. “I don’t need to be saved. I need… I need to go take care of Dad.”

Dean’s a stranger to Castiel. He doesn’t know him from Adam. Dean has no tie to him, to his father, to this town. Hell, he’s only been to the diner twice since stopping at this town, he has no real ties to it either. But can’t help himself. He feels a tie to Castiel and unwavering pull.

Dean pulls Castiel into a hug, clasping a hand to the back of his head and wrapping the other around his small shoulders. “I got’cha,” Dean eases, letting his fingers get tangled in the small waves of his sable black hair, “Let me drive you. Sammy’s got the bill. Where are we headed?”

“Harvelle’s Roadhouse.”

[buzzquill]

This will be in all of my Gabriel fanfics now. Thankss

Omg before I started really watching SPN my friend was talking about Gabriel and would say “Gabe if ya nasty” and I genuinely thought that was a quote from the show 💀💀

You should draw him introducing himself and being like “The names Gabriel” and they he takes off sunglasses and says “Gabe if ya nasty” with a wink

his silliness is off the charts and charm irresistible

[buzzquill]

Milk, Gin, and NyQuil

Chapter 4: The Cost of Bearing Witness

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Read it on AO3!

Pairing: Castiel/Dean

Word Count: 3484

Fic Summary:

Castiel has spent years catching his father when he falls. This time, Dean is there to catch him. They met just over a day ago. It shouldn’t matter. But when the ambulance takes his father away and the house turns suffocatingly quiet, Dean stays. A conversation. A kiss. A moment of warmth before the silence swallows him whole. And when Dean leaves - just for a moment - Castiel is left with nothing but the hollow ache in his stomach. The one thing that never leaves.

Fic Warnings:

Eating Disorders, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self-Harm, Alternate Universe, Chuck Shurley is a shit dad, John Winchester is a shit dad, Castiel is a soldier, Dean winchester is trying to survive, Sam Winchester is a child

Author’s Note:

Hey folks! Thanks for reading, I've been hit with the depressi stick so I haven't been very active, but I'm back!

It’s well into the evening when Castiel stirs.

The fever has broken, leaving him drained, limbs heavy with lingering heat. But something else keeps him from sinking back into unconsciousness. Warmth. Solid and steady beside him.

His mind is still thick with sleep, sluggish as he shifts slightly. The press of another body registers, close enough that he can feel their steady, sighing breaths. The occasional deep, rumbling inhale. The warmth of someone near.

Something tightens in Castiel’s chest and then unfurls into something quiet and unfamiliar.

Dean.

Somewhere between Castiel knocking out for the afternoon and now, Dean must’ve fallen asleep beside him. He’s still in his jeans and flannel, half-propped against the headboard, one arm tucked behind his head, the other resting dangerously close beneath the blankets. His breathing is deep and even; the usual tension that clings to him is gone. In sleep, he looks softer.

Castiel should move. He should wake him.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he lies still, listening to Dean’s quiet, steady breaths. The house is silent except for this. Except for them.

Dean shifts slightly, exhaling, and his arm brushes against Castiel’s. It’s nothing. Just sleep-heavy movement. But the warmth lingers, spreading like something unspoken beneath Castiel’s skin.

And for the first time in what feels like years, he drifts back to sleep with something other than loneliness pressing against him.

-------- -------- --------

The smell of coffee is the next thing that pulls Castiel from sleep.

His body is nearly too warm, sweat clinging to his skin, and exhaustion still sits heavy in his bones. For a moment, he doesn’t remember where he is. 

Then, he remembers Dean. The last thing he recalls is his hand on Castiel's back, the steady rhythm of his touch, the quiet promise that he wouldn’t leave. He’s closer this time, tucked beside him. The way their arms had nearly touched beneath the blankets.

When he blinks his eyes open, the light is dim - just barely morning, golden rays stretching long shadows across the floor. The fever has loosened its grip, but his head still feels heavy, his throat dry and aching.

The mattress shifts beside him. The scent of old leather and something faintly metallic lingers in the air. Dean.

He’s not lying next to him anymore, but Dean’s still pressed right up against him. Heat radiates off of Dean’s body as he sits on the edge of the bed, one hand wrapped around a coffee mug, the other lazily scrolling through his phone. His boots sit beside Castiel’s dresser, his flannel tossed haphazardly in a bundle on top of it.

Dean has made himself comfortable in this small room.

“You snore like a dying cat,” Dean mutters without looking up, “and you’re a damn bed hog.”

Castiel exhales sharply through his nose, shifting slightly against the pillows. His muscles protest, sore from the weight of yesterday. “You’re still here.”

Dean snorts, turning to sit beside him again, crossing one leg in front of himself while the other steadies him on the floor. “Yeah, well. Figured you’d be pretty pissed if I left you to wake up alone, princess.”

The words settle in Castiel’s chest, pressing against something fragile, something already cracked. His gaze drifts to the nightstand, where a bottle of cold medicine sits beside a fresh glass of water - a quiet, careful gesture of care left behind by Sam.

His eyes flicker back to Dean to really look at him.

There’s a confidence about him, the kind that presents itself easily, naturally. But something in Castiel tells him it doesn’t settle deep. It clings to the surface, like the sheen of oil over water. A shield, not the foundation.

And beneath that carefully built surety, there’s something else. A wash of exhaustion, of uncertainty, of duty. Castiel sees it in the way Dean’s shoulders sit just a little too tense, as if bracing for something even in simple stillness. In the faint crease between his brows, the tightness around his mouth, the way his fingers twitch like they’re waiting to be put to use. He’s holding something together, and it’s not just for himself but for others.

Castiel recognizes it because he wears the same thing.

Dean catches him staring and smirks, passing him the bottle. “Take the damn medicine, Cas. Don’t fight me on this.”

Castiel rolls his eyes but obliges, tipping the bottle back and swallowing the sickly sweet syrup with a grimace and a gulp.

Dean smirks. “Good boy.”

Now, those words land low in Castiel’s stomach. It’s unexpected and far too warm. His fingers tighten around the bottle, breath hitching just slightly, so slight that maybe Dean wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t already watching him so damn closely.

Dean’s smirk deepens. Amused. Testing.

Castiel schools his expression too fast. Way too fast. His glare lacks its usual sharpness. “Shut up.”

Dean chuckles, shifting his weight. He saw it. The flicker of surprise. The way Castiel’s breath stuttered for just a second too long. He doesn’t push, doesn’t say anything else, but the grin lingering on his face makes it clear that he’s filing this moment away for later.

Then…

A thud. A sharp, sickening crash.

Dean is up in an instant, already moving for the door. “Stay here,” he orders, voice tight.

But Castiel is already forcing himself fully upright, legs barely cooperating. His skull feels full of heat and cotton, his body swaying before he catches himself against the nightstand.

“No,” he says, breathless but firm. “I’m coming with you.”

Dean curses under his breath but doesn’t argue. Together, they move toward the stairs, drawn by the ragged, uneven wheezing filtering up from below.

Then, they see him.

Dad. He’s slumped against the kitchen counter, struggling to hold himself upright. His fingers grip the edge so tightly his knuckles have gone bloodless, but his body shakes. Violently. Like a live wire short-circuiting. Sweat pours down his face, dampening the already-yellowed collar of his shirt.

Then, suddenly, the smell hits.

Ammonia. Stale sweat. Old liquor oozing from his pores. Vomit clinging to the edges of his shirt.

Castiel’s stomach twists. He pinches the skin of his forearm hard with his nails, leaving white crescent shapes in his paled skin. Dean catches this - a crease between his brows - but doesn’t have time to fully process it before Dad blinks at them slowly. Glassy. Unfocused.

His grip slips.

The coffee mug beside him tips, shattering against the tile.

His body goes with it.

Castiel barely lunges forward in time. His father slumps into his arms, dead weight. Fever-slick. Burning up.

Dean’s voice, sharp. Urgent. “Cas.”

But Castiel already knows. He’s seen this before, and he knows exactly how this ends. Castiel can’t answer. He can barely think past the heat pressing against his skull, past the fever-slick skin of his father sticking to his own.

Dean exhales sharply. “C’mon. Couch. Now.”

They drag Dad’s half-conscious body across the kitchen, his feet scraping limply against the floor. Every step is a struggle, his dead weight lurching between them. His breath shudders, thick with something mucus-heavy and wrong.

By the time they reach the couch, they don’t lower him. They drop him. He lands with a dull thud, a soft grunt escaping as his head lolls to the side. A wet strand of spit clings to his mouth, his throat working around nothing. Dean steps back, rolling out his shoulders, his breath uneven. His eyes are dark, unreadable.

Then Dad speaks. A croak, raw and half-spat. “What, you still here?”

Castiel goes still.

Dean’s jaw flexes, but his voice stays level. “Morning to you too, Chuck.”

Dad licks his dry lips, swallows thickly. “Don’t need some stranger playin’ house with my boy. Gettin’ all in his head. Confusin’ him.”

Dean tilts his head. His hands land on his hips, his voice measured, too even. “Yeah? Then maybe don’t make your kid clean up after you like it’s his job.”

Silence clogs the air, thick as smoke.

Dad breathes through his nose, slow and uneven, then lets out a rattling chuckle. “Big talk for some punk kid who doesn’t know a damn thing about this family.”

Dean huffs a breath, something close to laughter. “Yeah? Well, after your little brawl, I learned all I needed to know.”

Dad rubs a trembling hand over his face, his fingers twitching violently before curling into a loose fist. His breath stutters, catches.

Castiel frowns.

Something’s wrong. More than before.

Then Dad seizes. His whole body jerks, limbs locking, eyes rolling back.

Dean moves first. “Shit-”

Castiel is already there, pressing a firm hand to his father’s quaking shoulder. “I know.”

His mind clicks into place. Roll him onto his side and hold him still. Keep him from falling. Keep him breathing.

Dean braces a hand against Dad’s chest. “What does he need?”

Castiel swallows hard. A beer. A doctor. A miracle. Instead, he says, “Water. A cold cloth.” His eyes flick to an old, empty gin bottle on the floor. His hands curl into fists. “And… we wait.”

Dean doesn’t argue. Just nods and disappears into the kitchen.

Castiel stays. Kneels beside his father. Watches the shallow shudder of his breath. The air in the room is thick, humid, wrong.

How many more times?

How many more times does he drag his father back from the brink just so he can destroy himself again?

Dean returns, pressing a damp cloth into Castiel’s hands. Their fingers brush, but this time, Castiel barely feels it.

Dean watches him. Quiet. Steady. Present.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” he murmurs.

Castiel stares at the cloth in his hands, the weight of the moment settling over him like a suffocating shroud. He sits motionless beside his father, the damp fabric clenched in his fingers all but forgotten. The heaviness of it all - his father’s sickness, his own exhaustion, the relentless cycle of care and decline - presses down on him like a stone. The room stinks of alcohol and stale air, of sickness that clings to the walls like an unwelcome specter.

Dean doesn’t speak at first. He just watches, waiting for Castiel to say something. But what is there to say? This is his life. Has always been his life.

Finally, barely more than a whisper, Castiel exhales, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

It’s the first time he’s admitted it. Not just to Dean but to himself. The words feel like a confession, a crack in the dam he’s spent years reinforcing. He can’t keep pretending everything’s fine. Because it isn’t.

Dean’s gaze softens, his frustration giving way to something else. Something quieter, heavier. “Cas, let me help you.” His voice is steady, but there’s an edge to it, something pleading beneath the certainty.

Dean reaches out, his hand firm and warm on Castiel’s shoulder. Castiel doesn’t pull away. He just sits there, letting himself feel the weight of it, the solid grounding of Dean’s touch. The moment lingers as he lets himself lean into Dean’s touch, resting his cheek on Dean’s arm.

A slurred, half-conscious murmur stirs from the couch. Something sharp, something cruel, but it doesn’t even register anymore. Castiel doesn’t flinch, doesn’t react. He’s numb to it. And that’s what does it for Dean.

He kneels in front of Castiel, his voice gentle but firm. “We need to call someone. He needs a hospital.”

Castiel’s grip tightens on the cloth. “Dean…” His voice wavers. He doesn’t need to say the rest.

Dean shakes his head. “He’s seizing, Cas. He’s barely breathing right. You can’t fix this. You shouldn’t have to.”

But Castiel can’t let go. Not yet. Not after all the times he has dragged his father back from the edge with shaking hands and bitten-off prayers. His chest constricts. His fingers clench. “I… I don’t know what to do.” His voice cracks, raw, too close to breaking.

Dean steadies him with both hands, strong and unwavering. “You don’t have to fix everything. You can let someone help.”

Castiel swallows hard, the words pressing against something frayed and unraveling inside him. He knows Dean is right. Knows this fight was lost long before tonight.

Stiffly, he nods. Lets Dean make the call.

When Dean hangs up and finally turns back to Castiel, there’s something different about him. A quiet shift. A weight that settles into his shoulders, into his spine. Not hesitation. Not fear.

Duty.

Dean moves. Efficient. Unshaken. A man putting himself to work.

He crouches beside Chuck first, rolling him onto his side, keeping him from choking on his own spit. His movements are sure, practiced. He checks for anything in his pockets - IDs, pills, an old crumpled pack of cigarettes - before rolling his eyes and tossing them onto the coffee table. He strips off the soiled shirt, the fabric stiff with sweat, replacing it with an old one from a laundry pile. It won’t make a difference, but it’s something.

Then he stands. Keeps going.

He tosses a towel over the mess on the floor, the shattered remnants of the coffee mug, the puddle of something sharp-smelling and sour. He doesn’t clean it up yet; just covers it. A barrier between Castiel and the worst of it.

His gaze flickers back, checking on Castiel between movements. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to.

Castiel watches. Distant. Detached.

This is how it always goes. He has cleaned his father up so many times before, dragged his deadweight body to bed, covered the evidence, wiped the counters, washed the stink of it from his own skin.

But this time, he’s not the one doing it.

Dean is. With a certain familiarity, like he’s done this before. Like he’s used to cleaning up after people.

And that is what finally makes his breath catch.

The wail of sirens cuts through the morning quiet.

The sirens fade, swallowed by the pale light of morning.

Castiel stands in the doorway, arms wrapped tight around himself, watching but not really seeing.

The ambulance is gone. His father is gone. And the road stretches empty beyond the yard, only the thin scent of burnt rubber and diesel lingering in the cold air.

Dean hovers close, weight shifting between his feet, not touching but present. He’s waiting. Waiting for Castiel to move, to speak, to break apart or pull himself back together.

But Castiel does neither. He just stands there, staring at the dust unsettled by the wheels of the ambulance, his mind thick with something slow and unrelenting. The exhaustion sits like a stone in his chest. Heavy. Suffocating.

The house still reeks of sickness, of sweat-soaked sheets and liquor thick as oil. The air is dense with it, clogging his lungs, clinging to his skin.

Dean nudges him lightly, voice softer than before. “C’mon. Let’s go inside.”

The world moves around him in pieces. Castiel doesn’t remember stepping back into the house, but he’s at the kitchen table now.

The wood is cool beneath his forearms. A glass of water rests beside him, clear, untouched. Tiny droplets of condensation trail down the sides, soaking into the worn grain. He doesn’t pick it up.

Dean sits across from him, arms folded, watching. His flannel is still bunched at the cuffs, his jaw tight, but there’s no frustration in his face. No pity, either. Just that same quiet, waiting steadiness.

The silence stretches, thick as molasses.

Dean finally sighs. “You gonna drink that, or are we just gonna sit here staring at it?”

Castiel doesn’t move. “I don’t know.” His voice is hoarse.

Dean huffs, tipping his chair onto its back legs, balancing there. “Look, I know this isn’t exactly a banner morning for you, but you’re here, fever free, and breathing. That’s something.”

Castiel’s fingers twitch around the glass. “I don’t think that’s enough.”

Dean tilts his head. Examines him. “Says who?”

Castiel doesn’t answer. Because he knows the answer.

His father, slurring and cruel, even as he burned with fever. His mother, silent and gone long before she left. Himself, pressing the edges of hunger against his ribs until he felt something, anything.

Dean doesn’t press. Just leans forward, planting his chair back on all fours with a solid thunk. “You don’t have to do this alone, Cas.” His voice is quiet. “You know that, right?”

Castiel scoffs. “You don’t even know me.”

Dean doesn’t flinch. “And yet, here I am.”

Castiel exhales sharply. The weight of everything sits so heavy. “I don’t even know you.”

“And yet, you haven’t kicked me out.”

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The way they’re sitting across from each other like this, the way Dean is looking at him like he’s someone worth holding onto. They met barely over a day ago. Dean should have been nothing more than a passing face, a stranger seen once and forgotten.

But now he’s here, in Castiel’s home, in Castiel’s life. And it doesn’t feel sudden. It feels inevitable.

Castiel looks down at the water glass, watching the condensation bead along the rim.

“What happens when it gets worse?” His voice is quieter now.

Dean’s brow furrows. “What the hell do you mean?”

Castiel exhales through his nose, looking away. What happens when his father comes back? When he spirals again? When Castiel himself does?

Dean’s fingers drum against the table. “Cas, I’m not-” He stops. Swipes a hand down his face. “I don’t know what you’ve got built up in your head about this, but I’m not going anywhere.”

Castiel scoffs. “You say that now.”

Dean leans forward, arms bracing against the table. His voice drops lower but there’s a certain softness that blankets it. “Then make me understand.”

Castiel’s breath catches. Dean holds his gaze, steady and unshaken. There’s something intense in his eyes, something that refuses to be ignored. “I…” Castiel attempts.

The room is so goddamn small.

The space between them feels thinner than a breath.

And then, suddenly, inevitably, Dean moves.

A shift. A breath. A pull toward something unnamed.

And then Dean’s lips are there.

Soft. Steady.

Not desperate. Not demanding. Just enough.

Dean exhales into the kiss, his breath warm, a slow tremor running through his fingers where they rest against the table. Castiel doesn’t overthink it. Doesn’t think at all. He just lets it happen. Lets himself have this, for one moment, for one breath.

When they pull apart, Dean doesn’t go far. Their foreheads press together, the warmth of his skin bleeding into Castiel’s. Their breath mingles in the space between them, close and quiet.

Dean’s thumb moves absentmindedly along the back of Castiel’s hand, a slow, deliberate motion. A promise.

Neither of them speaks.

There is nothing to say.

The weight of everything still lingers, thick and unshakable. The exhaustion, the uncertainty, the ache in Castiel’s chest that never seems to fade.

But for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s carrying it alone.

Dean exhales, a soft huff of breath, before leaning back slightly. His gaze flickers toward the counter.

“That was the last of the coffee,” he mutters, dragging a hand down his face.

The words hit like a splash of cold water. It’s too mundane, too ordinary in contrast to the rawness sitting between them. Castiel blinks at him, the slow crawl of reality creeping back in.

Dean pushes off the table, rolling his shoulders, already reaching for his jacket. “I’ll go grab some more,” he says, voice lighter now, like he’s pulling them both toward normalcy, toward something solid. “Oh! And bacon. You got eggs? I’ll get some eggs.”

Castiel stiffens. The warmth from moments before vanishes at the thought of being left alone in this house, in this morning, in the aftermath.

Dean hesitates, catching it. He pauses in the doorway, half-turned, watching Castiel carefully. Then, softer this time, “I’ll be right back. Stay put.”

Castiel swallows, nodding once.

Dean lingers a moment longer, waiting; giving Castiel a chance to ask him to stay. But Castiel doesn’t.

And then he’s gone.

The door swings shut, the lock clicking into place.

And suddenly, Castiel is alone.

The house is quiet.

Too quiet.

The absence is instant, pressing, thick. His father is gone. Dean is gone. There is no one here but him, and the silence left behind feels cavernous, swallowing him whole.

Castiel exhales slowly. The weight of everything settles over him again, pressing into his ribs, curling around his lungs.

And then, he feels it.

A sharp, empty ache, curling hot and deep in his stomach.

It has been there all along, a dull throbbing in the background, ignored beneath exhaustion, beneath movement, beneath touch. But now, alone in the stillness, he feels it fully.

The hunger pulls at him, deep and insistent, digging like nails into his insides.

And he lets it.

Lets it anchor him.

Lets himself disappear into the ache, but not before he catches a glance of a stray shard of the forgotten coffee mug.

[buzzquill]

Milk, Gin, and NyQuil

Chapter 6: When You Crack, I Break

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Read it on AO3!

Pairing: Castiel/Dean

Word Count: 5922 (loooooong)

Fic Summary:

In the aftermath of trauma, Castiel retreats into silence, his grief weighing heavily as Dean takes him and Sam to a hidden lake, hoping for some kind of peace. But the past doesn't let go so easily, as Castiel’s brothers, Luce and Gabriel, arrive with their own unresolved tensions. Amid the quiet weight of their presence, another small, unexpected moment of tenderness between Castiel and Dean unfolds - a kiss, soft and unexpected, that unsettles Dean in ways he can’t quite understand. Buried emotions rise to the surface, and Dean is left wondering what it all means as the lines between duty and desire blur in the quiet aftermath. (trying out a new format for chapter summaries, lmk what you think)

Fic Warnings:

Eating Disorders, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self-Harm, Alternate Universe, Chuck Shurley is a shit dad, John Winchester is a shit dad, Castiel is a soldier, Dean winchester is trying to survive, Sam Winchester is a child

He doesn’t remember getting dressed.

Somewhere between sitting on the toilet lid while Dean shaved him and now - standing in the aisle of the church, suit stiff on his body, hair slicked back like it’s 1982 - he must’ve done it. Must’ve tied his shoes, buttoned his cuffs, maybe even looked in the mirror and pretended the reflection belonged to someone with a face and a future.

But he doesn’t remember any of it.

Time has come undone. A reel of film run backward, then skipping forward so fast it burns. One second he’s brushing his teeth with Dean’s toothbrush because he can’t find his own, the next he’s in this too-cold, too-white chapel, air thick with lilies and the stench of old wood and grief.

He’s not breathing.

Or maybe he is. Maybe he’s still going through the motions: lungs inflating, chest rising, blood pumping like it matters. It doesn’t feel like living. It feels like pretending. Like puppetry. Like wearing a human costume he never asked for.

His hands are clasped in front of him. That’s what people do in churches, isn’t it? Fold your hands. Look solemn. Pretend to pray. Even if the last time you spoke to God, you told Him to go to hell.

He should feel something. Grief, maybe. Anger. Sadness. But all he feels is static. A dull, thrumming ache in his chest where a person used to be. There is no great wave of emotion. Just silence. The kind that waits.

There’s a coffin.

Closed. Thank God.

Too many lilies. Their smell has teeth. It coils in his lungs like rot, like memory. Like the hospital.

Chuck is dead.

And Castiel doesn’t know how to mourn a man he already buried in his heart years ago. Doesn’t know how to untangle grief from relief, or how to explain the shame curling in his gut like something unholy. He spent so long taking care of a ghost, watching his father’s body rot while the man disappeared from behind his eyes.

They all left. Gabriel - gone. Michael - dead. Raphael - dead. Luce - disappeared. Mom… Stop.

His vision tunnels. The scent of flowers chokes him. The air is thick with memory and hypocrisy: people crying for a man they abandoned, mourning a fantasy, weeping into tissues and each other like they have a right.

He stands, still and silent. Because that’s what people expect of him. Don’t cry. Don’t talk. Don’t scream.

Stop.

He wants to claw off the suit, rip it from his skin like it doesn’t belong to him. Like none of this does.

The priest is speaking. Words, probably. But they slip off Castiel like water on stone. Every syllable smooths the edges of his father’s life, rounds off the ruin, turns a drunken tyrant into a man worth mourning.

It’s a lie. All of it.

And still, Castiel lets them believe it.

Because what else is there to do?

His legs won’t move. His mouth is dry. His heartbeat a frantic, useless rhythm in his ears.

He is not breathing.

The casket looms like a wound. The lilies reek. The room tilts, and his knees are locked too long. He’s going to fall. He can feel it. The moment approaching, rising up in him like a scream.

Stop.

And then…

“Cas.”

One word. Quiet. Steady. Real.

Dean.

It cuts through the noise like smoke through glass. Warm. Familiar. Castiel blinks. The edges of his vision blur but there’s something tethering him now. A breath. Dean’s scent - soap and earth and safety.

A hand touches his elbow. Anchors him.

“Come on,” Dean murmurs, soft enough not to carry. “Let’s get out of here.”

For a moment, Castiel doesn’t move. The silence presses against his ribs like it’s trying to shatter him from the inside out.

Then, slowly, he breathes.

A flicker. A shift. His fingers twitch like they’re reaching for something he can’t name. Someone.

Behind them, Sam’s eyes track the exchange. There’s something in his expression. Understanding, maybe. Recognition. The quiet ache of someone who knows what it’s like to grieve someone who never really existed the way you needed them to.

Sam glances at Dean, searching, asking without asking.

Dean doesn’t answer. He just leans in closer, his voice a lifeline. “Cas.”

And this time, Castiel moves.

Because if he stays, he’ll drown.

Because Dean is here.

Because Dean is real.

Castiel’s fingers twitch. His throat works around a swallow. His breath still stutters in and out, shallow and uneven, skin pale and waxen like the air’s been leached from his blood. But his hands - once clenched so tight they’d turned bone-white - have gone still. No more trembling. Just silence.

Dean waits.

Sam waits.

They don’t speak. Don’t move. Don’t reach. They just exist beside him, steady and present, like twin anchors in the undertow.

And then, finally, haltingly, Castiel moves.

It’s not graceful. It’s not brave. It’s a slow, uneven thing like something rusted breaking loose, something long-buried clawing its way to the surface. He moves. Shoulders hunched. Head bowed.

Sam moves with him, careful not to crowd. He moves like Castiel might break if the air shifts wrong. Dean mirrors him, too close but not touching. His hand hovering just behind Castiel’s back, ready to catch, to steady. Just in case.

No one in the church turns. No one stops them.

Dean’s jaw ticks. Of course not.

Outside, the light slaps them hard - too bright, too clean, too alive. The air tastes wrong. Cold. Sharp. Like breathing in glass. But it’s air. It’s space. It’s not that room. That coffin. Those lilies.

Castiel stands motionless on the steps, spine locked tight, chin tucked low like he’s waiting for something to hit him. His hands dangle at his sides, fingers twitching with static.

Dean watches him. Every breath Castiel takes is a fight. Every second he stays upright feels borrowed.

Sam stands just behind his other shoulder, quiet, watching, weighing. Dean can feel his brother’s hesitation, that inward question: does he need space, or does he need to be held together?

Dean doesn’t hesitate.

He steps in. Places a hand between Castiel’s shoulder blades; firm, warm, real. A touch that says I’m here. That says I see you. That says you’re not alone.

Castiel shudders like the contact jars something loose in his chest. Like his body doesn’t know what to do with kindness that doesn’t demand something in return.

Dean doesn’t pull away. He lets his hand linger. Lets Castiel feel it.

They stand like that for a while, breathing unevenly in the cold. The silence isn’t empty, it’s thick with everything they haven’t said. With everything Castiel can’t.

Sam exhales, voice soft as frost. “Let’s go.”

Dean nods. Squeezes Castiel’s shoulder once before letting his hand drop.

And Castiel - barely, but surely - nods back.

They don’t talk about the relief that ripples through them like a quiet tide. They just move.

The drive out of town is wordless.

Not awkward. Not heavy like the church had been. Just quiet. The kind of quiet that seeps into the bones, heavy with thought. Heavy with all the things that don’t have names.

Dean keeps his hands steady on the wheel, the Impala gliding smooth over the backroads. Trees press in from either side, their branches thinning, gold and red clinging stubbornly to life even as October winds strip them bare. The sun is cold, pale and low. The light cuts sideways through the windshield.

Sam slouches in the backseat, head tilted against the window, his breath fogging up the glass in soft, ghosting bursts. His eyes are open, watching the world slide by like he’s not really seeing it.

Castiel rides passenger.

His hands sit still in his lap. Palms up. Empty.

He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t look at either of them. But his posture is different now: still taut, still uncertain, but not collapsing in on itself. Like he’s not drowning anymore. Just… treading water. Just breathing.

Dean doesn’t tell them where he’s going.

He just drives.

He and Sam had found the place a few weeks back, right after they rolled into town and maybe a day or two before Castiel entered the picture. It had looked different then, swallowed in shadow, the surface of the lake so still and black it could’ve been a tear in the world. Sam had said it reminded him of a poem, something aching and lyrical. Dean hadn’t said much at the time, just stared out at the water and liked the way it didn’t move.

Now, pulling off the road, tires crunching against gravel and frostbitten grass, Dean feels something loosen in his chest. It’s exactly how he remembers.

The lake stretches out before them, wide and quiet. Steam curls from its surface where the cold air meets the last reluctant warmth clinging to the water. Off to the side, the remains of an old brick bathhouse slump toward the shoreline - half-swallowed by time, mostly rubble. Only fragments of it are still standing, crooked and weathered, the ground slowly reclaiming what’s left.

Dean opens the car door and steps out, stretching, the stiffness in his shoulders cracking loose. The cold bites instantly, sharp and bracing, sliding under his layers like a second skin. He breathes it in anyway. The air tastes like damp leaves and pine, a hint of woodsmoke threading in from somewhere out of sight. It reminds him of fall mornings on training that started too early: quiet woods, adrenaline still hours away.

Sam is already moving toward the water. “This used to be a public swimming area,” he says, voice low, hands stuffed in his coat pockets. “Probably back in the fifties or sixties.”

Dean scoffs, half-grinning. “Yeah, what gave it away? The ancient ruins?”

Sam snorts, nudging a stone into the shallows. Dean starts rolling up his sleeves, then bends to cuff his jeans, grinning to himself.

Before he can step in, Sam catches his elbow. “Are you actually serious?”

Dean shrugs him off with a lopsided grin. “Come on, Sammy. Live a little.”

There’s a pause, the kind that usually means Sam’s debating something dumb with himself,  before he sighs and gives in, mirroring Dean's movements. “This is stupid.”

Dean steps into the water with a hiss of breath he doesn’t let himself show. It’s freezing, the kind of cold that bites into your bones and tries to hollow you out, but he keeps his face calm. “Saw some guy on TV say cold water resets your brain. Like restarting a crashed computer.”

Sam gives him a flat look, then winces as he steps in. “This better be the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

Dean kicks a wave at him. Sam glares. Dean smirks. Sam retaliates. Within seconds, they’re laughing  - full-bodied and unfiltered - flinging icy water at each other like they’re ten years old again and nothing bad has ever happened. It’s ridiculous. It’s dumb. It’s perfect.

Castiel stays on the shore.

Dean looks back, shivering, calves soaked, hair damp from a poorly aimed splash. “What, too good to freeze your ass off with us?”

For a second, Cas looks like he might. There’s a flicker of something behind his eyes, consideration, maybe curiosity, but then it’s gone. His expression folds inward, guarded. He shakes his head and steps back.

Dean wants to tease him for it, push him just enough to see that dry eye roll he’s come to like, but Sam catches his gaze. The look is subtle, but firm: Don’t.

Dean exhales, jaw tight, and turns back to the lake. He wades out a little farther, arms spread slightly, letting the cold settle in deep. The kind of cold that clears out the noise for a while.

Eventually, he sloshes back to shore, jeans dripping, skin numb. He rubs his arms for warmth, gaze drifting toward the broken silhouette of the bathhouse. “Gonna check that out,” he mutters, more to himself than anyone else.

Sam lifts a hand in acknowledgment as he trudges out of the lake. Dean pulls his boots back on, half-heartedly tying the laces, and makes his way toward the ruins.

The bathhouse is a skeleton. Chunks of foundation jut from the frozen earth, scattered bricks and stubborn bits of tile clinging to what little history remains. The roof’s long gone, and what’s left of the walls barely hold their shape. Dean steps over the rubble, hands shoved deep in his pockets, the chill clinging to him now in a quieter way.

He lets his fingers trail across the crumbling brick, the texture catching against his skin. There’s graffiti scrawled along the inside of one wall:

Max was here - 1989 and a crude drawing of a dick carved just beneath it. Dean huffs out a breath, not quite a laugh, “Nice.”

This place feels like something forgotten. A pocket of the world time didn’t bother to finish breaking down.

And maybe that’s why he likes it.

Then… voices. Soft. Distant. Drifting in through the broken frame of the bathhouse. At first, Dean doesn’t pay attention - just Sam, probably talking about rocks or trees or whatever philosophical shit Sam tends to lean into whenever anyone gives him an opening. With Castiel not talking, there’s now always an opening.

But then Dean hears something in Sam’s tone. Quieter, careful. And that’s enough to draw him in.

He steps closer to the window, instinctively keeping quiet, leaning just enough to see them through the opening. Sam sits beside Castiel, resting his wait back on his palms which where planted on the ground behind him, lanky legs stretched out in front of him. Dean makes note of how big he’s getting. Castiel watches him, patient.

“You ever get tired of it?” Sam asks.

Dean stills.

There’s a pause, Castiel doesn’t answer, only tilts his head.

“The waiting,” Sam clarifies. “Waiting for something to change. Or get better. Or tell you what happens next.”

Dean swallows. His fingers press harder into the crumbling wall. He doesn’t mean to listen. But he does.

“I just want a home,” Sam says. “A dog. A steady school. Maybe a normal life. I don’t care where. I just…”

He pauses.

“I love my brother. I do. I’d never leave him. But sometimes I think I’d rather be back with Dad, training for a war that’ll never happen, than keep running like this.”

Dean’s stomach twists. His chest goes tight, breath catching before it can even rise.

Does he know?

Does Sam know why Dean ran?

And if he does… what the hell does he think of him for it?

Dean backs away slowly. Every step feels too loud, like the ground itself is accusing him. He stares out at the lake, trying to breathe, trying to shake off the weight clawing at his ribs.

The lake is still. Quiet. Endless.

He doesn’t look back through the window.

Instead, he calls out,  loud enough to cut through whatever moment they were having. “Well,” he says, forcing the grin, the lightness, “what do ya think?”

Castiel glances at him and gives a small smile. The kind that says I’ll play along.

The moment breaks. Or maybe it bends just enough not to shatter.

They stay longer than they mean to. The cold doesn’t ease up, not really, but something in them adjusts. They breathe easier. They move slower. The edges of the day soften.

Sam wanders the shoreline, collecting rocks like a kid in a museum. Castiel follows after him eventually, brushing his fingers over smooth stones before tucking one carefully into his coat pocket.

Dean lingers near the bathhouse, hands on the brick, shoulders hunched. He doesn’t revisit what he overheard. Doesn’t prod the ache. Not now. Not here.

Time drags in the way it always does in places like this. A little warped. A little sacred.

At one point, Castiel pauses at the water’s edge, staring out like he sees something none of them can. Sam notices, moves closer. “You okay?”

Castiel blinks, like surfacing from somewhere far away. He offers a smile. It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t quite true either.

Dean lets it go.

The sun starts to fall. The light bleeds gold across the lake, catching in the trees, stretching long shadows across the ground. The air turns sharper again, a whisper of winter threading in around them.

Dean glances between them. “Alright. We calling it?” Sam stretches, nodding. “Yeah, probably.” He looks at Castiel. “You ready to go?” It takes Castiel a moment to answer, his gaze still distant, lost in the water. But then he nods.

They walk back to the car in silence. Sam leading the way, Castiel a few steps behind him, and Dean trailing slowly, his eyes fixed on Castiel’s back.

Then Castiel stops suddenly, forcing the brothers to halt. He doesn’t notice Sam looking at him, just stares ahead, his attention focused somewhere off in the distance. His gaze eventually shifts, locking with Dean’s. The furrow in Dean’s brow deepens, confused, but Castiel doesn’t speak.

Instead, Castiel reaches into his pocket and pulls out the stone from earlier. Without a word, he hands it to Dean and turns away, walking off like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Dean stares down at the stone in his hand, flipping it over between his fingers. It’s dolomite or something; smooth, solid, with a slightly rough grain that feels familiar. Nice.

And then he sees it. A small, naturally worn divot in the shape of a heart, nestled into the stone’s surface. It’s subtle, like time itself had decided to carve the little shape. Dean’s chest tightens, the realization making something twist inside him. Did Castiel choose this rock because of that? Because of the heart-shaped mark?

He’s not sure, but the warmth spreading in his chest, the light flutter in his stomach, makes him think it’s more than coincidence. He slips the stone into his pocket, tucking it away as if it’s something worth keeping.

When he slides into the driver’s seat, his hands grip the wheel a little tighter than necessary. His heart still hasn’t slowed.

The quiet stretches between them, thick and heavy with unspoken things.

Then, Sam rolls down the window for one last gasp of the chilled forest air, breathing deep. “I like it here.”

Castiel exhales, resting his forehead against the cold glass. He hums in agreement.

Dean huffs out a laugh. “Yeah?”

Sam nods, wistfully rolling up the window. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t explain.

Dean doesn’t ask.

He shifts the car into gear, and they leave the lake behind.

The drive home is quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that settles but the kind that clings. That seeps into the cracks between them like fog through rotted wood. It isn’t grief, not exactly. Not anymore. It’s the silence that comes after: after the funeral, after the lake, after everything is said that shouldn’t have been.

The radio fizzes in and out with static from some half-dead classic rock station. No one moves to change it. No one moves at all.

Dean keeps the impala steady on the road, but his thoughts keep sliding sideways. Back to the way Sam’s voice had fractured at the water’s edge. Back to the brittle silence that had followed Castiel’s muted sounds; or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was the way he looked at the lake like he wanted to become part of it. Like he liked the stillness. The nothing.

Sam is curled in the backseat, cheek resting against the cold window, breath fogging faintly against the glass. His fingers work at a loose thread in his jeans like it’s the only thing anchoring him here. Castiel sits beside Dean, statue-still. Hands folded in his lap. Eyes not on the road, not on anything, but open. Like he’s bracing for a wreck that never comes.

By the time they pull into the driveway, dusk has slipped past golden and into bruised blue. The light bleeds through the trees like the last gasp of something dying. The house waits for them in shadow - hollow and still. Not empty. Just... watching.

Dean steps inside first. Boots off. Shoulders rolled. Movements automatic. He doesn’t feel tired, but something in him drags like it’s been soaked in lakewater and left to rot.

He heads to the kitchen without a word. Opens the cabinet. Starts pulling out cans with all the gentleness of a man gutting a deer. The dull thunk of metal on countertop. The clock ticking like it’s counting down to something inevitable.

Castiel appears next. Silent. Hollow-eyed. His steps are soundless, too soft, like even the floorboards have forgotten how to respond to him. He opens the fridge. The dim bulb spills light across his face - sallow, beautiful, wrong.

He grabs the milk. Whole. Drinks straight from the carton. Long pulls. Controlled. Dean watches. Says nothing.

There’s something ritualistic about it; the tilt of the carton, the curl of Castiel’s fingers around the cardboard. Like this is what he came back for. Like this is the only thing he trusts to touch his insides.

When the fridge door closes, the cold sticks to the air between them.

Dean clears his throat. “Soup night it is.”

Sam groans from the doorway, voice dry and cracked. “We’ve had soup three times this week.”

Dean doesn’t look up. Just pops the top on the can. “And yet, you still live.”

A breath escapes Castiel, not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh. But enough. Dean counts it as a win.

The soup heats fast. They don’t bother with the table. Just scatter like ghosts to the living room, bowls in hand, the soft clink of spoons against ceramic the only real conversation.

An old movie plays on the TV; some flickering black-and-white thing with too many shadows and too few answers. No one watches it. It just plays, the sound low, the screen casting shapes across their faces.

Sam stretches out across the couch like he’s been there for years. Castiel curls into the recliner like he hasn’t. His bowl rests loose in his hands, steam curling toward his face but never quite reaching him.

Dean watches him from the couch’s edge. Watches how even now, even here, Castiel looks like he’s fading out. Like if Dean blinked, he’d miss the moment he stopped being solid.

By the time the credits roll, Sam’s eyes are half-lidded. He won’t admit it, but he’s done for the night.

Dean stands, arms stretching above his head until his back cracks. “Alright, Sammy. Bedtime.”

Sam mumbles something that might be a curse or might just be breath. He tugs the blanket off the back of the couch and sinks in deeper. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t move.

Dean turns - finds Castiel already halfway to the hall, sweater peeled off, steps slow and dreamlike. Dean follows.

The bedroom is still. Dim. Not dark, not yet, but close.

Castiel moves without urgency, but there’s a weight to him. His shirt joins the sweater on the chair. Dean’s breath catches.

Castiel is thinner than he should be. Not delicate, not slight. Hollowed. Like something carved out of him and never filled it back in. His ribs are shadows beneath skin. His arms too tense in all the wrong places.

Dean knew. Of course he did. The untouched dinners. The way Castiel’s fingers always twitched like they were waiting to break. The bruises, faded and fresh, like apologies inked into his skin by hands that didn’t know gentleness.

But seeing it. All of it. Bare and unhidden. It slams into Dean like a punch to the ribs.

Castiel doesn’t look ashamed. Doesn’t hide. He just moves like this is his normal. Like the ache is part of the costume now. And maybe it is.

Dean forces himself to look away. Pulls off his flannel. Doesn’t speak.

Then..

The door crashes open.

A voice rings out. Too loud, too alive.

“Whose old-ass car is that in the driveway?”

Dean goes still. He can hear Sam stir on the couch downstairs.

Another voice, gruffer. “You can’t just walk into someone’s house.”

“It’s our house. We grew up here.” The first voice counters before calling out: “Didn’t we, Cassie?”

Castiel freezes. Sweater in hand. Expression shuttered.

Dean is already moving when Castiel pushes past him, pulling his sweater back over his head.

By the time they reach the kitchen, two strangers stand where silence used to.

Not strangers.

Dean knows them.

Gabriel, the shorter one, all sarcasm and sharp edges. Luce, taller, worn down like the edge of a blade used too many times and never cleaned.

Dean’s seen them before. Not in person. But in photos. In Castiel.

Gabriel grins, but it’s teeth and no joy. “Well, you look like shit.”

Castiel doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t respond. Just watches. Hands loose at his sides.

Gabriel scans the room. His eyes land on Sam, then Dean. Brow furrows.

“Okay. Not to be an asshole-”

Luce mutters, “Since when?”

“-but who the hell are they?”

Dean crosses his arms. “I could ask you the same question.”

Gabriel blinks. Not used to pushback. Not from strangers. His mouth parts to reply-

Castiel huffs, the smallest hint of panic in his eyes. He bobs his mouth open and closed, looking between his brothers and Dean as he struggles to find mental footing.

Dean speaks for him. “We’ve been staying. Helping. I’m Dean. That’s my little brother, Sam.”

Luce huffs. “No shit.”

Gabriel laughs. Mean and hollow. “You didn’t even call.”

Castiel stiffens.

“He died, and you couldn’t even call,” Gabriel goes on, voice cutting. “Had your fucking bitch boy do it for you. Left a real touching voicemail, by the way.”

Dean watches Castiel carefully. Watches the way his jaw tightens, the twitch of his fingers.

“I handled it,” Dean says, low, “because I knew from the look of your texts, you wouldn’t have answered anyway.”

“Bullshit,” Gabriel snaps. “He was hiding. Just like always. Just like when Mom dipped. Just like when Dad beat Luce within an inch of his life.”

Luce exhales like he’s been holding it in for years. “You don’t get to be pissed someone shuts down when grief hits, Gabe, not when you only show up to scream about it after the fact.”

“Yeah? Well, someone has to,” Gabriel bites out. “Because he never says anything. Not a damn fucking thing.”

Gabriel drops into a chair. His elbow knocks a long forgotten bottle against the table.

The clink is sharp. Glass against wood.

Gin.

Half-empty. Dust-coated. Familiar.

Silence.

No one moves.

Gabriel nudges it away. Doesn’t look at it. Doesn’t see it.

“Well, Cassie, place is a wreck. You waiting on me to do the hard labor again?”

A sound escapes Castiel - low, nearly a cough. A humorless huff of air. Dean watches him carefully. Watches the way something in him flickers. Not anger. Not grief.

Resignation.

“You look like shit,” Luce says, quieter now. Not cruel. Just true.

And Castiel, to his credit, doesn’t try to deny it.

Dean exhales slowly, rubs at his temple, then gestures toward the door off the living room. “You can sleep in the guest room. I guess you guys used to share it anyway.”

Gabriel raises an eyebrow like he wants to say something else, but Luce is already moving, stepping toward the couch without another word.

Gabriel sighs, dragging a hand through his hair before following.

Sam still hasn’t spoken.

Dean glances at him. His expression is unreadable, but there’s something in his eyes - something dark. Something knowing.

A quiet understanding that runs deeper than it should.

The house settles, but the weight of the evening doesn’t.

Gabriel and Luce take the guest room - their old room. Sam claims the couch without argument, stretching out with the ease of someone bone-tired, tugging a blanket over his shoulders before turning on his side. The television still flickers, the last remnants of the movie playing to no one, the hum of dialogue filling the silence they don’t know how to break.

Dean watches Castiel linger at the hallway’s edge, caught somewhere between where he is and where he was. The ghosts of his brothers are still thick in the air - in the sound of Gabriel’s voice down the hall, in the way Luce had barely looked at him, in the dull, worn-out tension clinging to every word they exchanged.

It’s been weeks since Chuck died. And it took them this long to show up.

Dean doesn’t ask how that makes Castiel feel.

He doesn’t have to.

Instead, he reaches out, presses a hand between Castiel’s shoulder blades, and gives a small nudge. “Come on.”

Castiel exhales through his nose, but he moves.

They make their way to the bedroom in silence, the floorboards creaking beneath their steps. The door closes with a soft snick, sealing them away from the rest of the house, the voices down the hall, the weight of everything that still lingers.

Castiel stands in the dim light, rubbing a hand down his face, as if he could wipe the past few hours away with it. Dean watches him carefully - but not too carefully. Like if he stares too long, Castiel might start unraveling again.

Dean moves first.

He toes off his boots by the door, shrugs out of his flannel, and plops his bag down by the nightstand, fishing out a clean shirt. When he turns, Castiel is already tugging his sweater over his head. His movements are slow, deliberate.

Dean watches.

His fingers twitch at his sides.

He wants to reach out. To press his palm to Castiel’s shoulder, his ribs, the jut of his hip that his beginning to show.

To ground him.

To say something he won’t believe - not yet. Maybe not ever.

He wants to kiss him again.

The thought is selfish. But so is the other thing twisting low in his gut: the restless urge to grab Sammy and get the hell out of here before they get tangled in something too big, too messy, too real.

Because being with Castiel is nice.

But it’s not simple.

And that’s all Sam wants. A simple life. A home. A dog.

Running isn’t simple either. But at least they’re good at it.

Dean doesn’t know how to fix this. Doesn’t know how to make it easier. But he knows they can’t keep going like this - caught in a loop, waiting for something to break.

Still.

God. He wants to kiss Castiel again.

Instead, he clears his throat, turns, and reaches for his bag, shoving a few things into it just to keep his hands busy. When he straightens, his eyes catch on something on the nightstand.

A bottle of NyQuil. The label is half-peeled, its condensation ring staining the wood beneath it. Left out from the first night Dean stayed over. It doesn’t mean anything. Still, Dean wipes the wet ring away with his sleeve before turning back.

The air between them shifts. Thick with something he can’t name.

Then, without a word, Dean pulls back the blankets and climbs in. Not an invitation. Not an expectation. Just… habit.

Castiel hesitates only a moment before following. He moves like he’s wading through molasses, exhaustion pressing into every limb. The mattress dips beneath his weight. The warmth of him seeps into the narrow space between them.

They’ve done this before.

It started the night Chuck died. Castiel had frozen up, locked inside himself, silent for so long that Dean had reached for him without thinking. Just held him. And Castiel had let him.

Now, it’s second nature.

Dean shifts closer.

His arm drapes loosely over Castiel’s waist. Just enough to say, I’m here. Just enough to mean something.

Castiel exhales; a soft, barely-there sound. And then, after a long pause, he speaks. Quiet. Hesitant. Like he’s only just remembering how.

“I like having you here.”

Dean stills. Not because of the words themselves. But because Castiel is speaking. The first thing he’s said in weeks that wasn’t just a nod, or a shake of his head, or some small, wordless sound of acknowledgement.

Dean doesn’t care what it means. Doesn’t care if Castiel is talking about him specifically, or just the fact that he’s not alone.

He just cares that Castiel said something.

Dean swallows, his grip tightening just slightly. Just enough to say, I hear you. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Me too.”

There’s a pause. And then, without warning, Castiel turns in the bed to face him, slow and steady, like the world might fall away if it moves too fast. His lips meet Dean’s in a kiss - soft, sleepy, a little messy at the edges. It’s not urgent, not charged with the same hunger that usually makes Dean’s heart race, the kind of kiss that often drags him into something bigger, deeper.

This one doesn’t ask for anything. It doesn’t need to.

Dean feels it first in his chest: this warmth spreading, a flutter of something unfamiliar. He’s used to chasing, to moving quickly, to performing. There’s always an expectation, a pull toward the next step; sex, touch, whatever it takes to keep the world from closing in. It’s what’s been expected of him, what he’s needed to do.

He’s good at it, being the one who gives, who protects, who provides. He knows how to be hard, to be rough. Grabbing, pulling, touching, initiating; being whatever was needed of him. He knows how to figure out what’s needed and how to give it. He’s never been given the space to question whether that’s really what he wants, whether that sex was enough. 

So when it’s not immediate, when Castiel doesn’t push for more, doesn’t make him go beyond what’s already there, it’s unsettling.

The kiss isn’t a demand. It’s just a quiet, unspoken thing that doesn’t require him to give anything. Not his body, not his protection, not his heart.

And that’s where the fear sneaks in: what happens if I don’t give more? The thought is a quick sting, sharp and raw, like a leftover scar he’s never allowed to heal. If he doesn’t do something, give something, what does that make him? Does it mean he’s not enough?

He wants to pull back, to turn this into something more: something familiar, something a little unwanted, something safe. But instead, he lets it sit there, lets the softness of the kiss fill the space between them. He doesn’t have to chase anything. He doesn’t have to prove anything.

Castiel doesn’t push. Doesn’t move. He just lets it linger, like it doesn’t need to be anything else.

Dean swallows again, heart still racing, but for a different reason this time. He stays there, eyes closing, letting the feeling settle in. He doesn’t need to chase. He doesn’t need to do anything. It’s just enough, the softness, the quiet of it.

Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s enough.

Castiel’s lips pull away slowly, and for a brief moment, Dean feels a strange tug of regret; like he should’ve let it go further, like he should’ve given more. But Castiel doesn’t seem to expect it, doesn’t seem to even want it, and that makes something inside Dean unfurl, just a little.

Dean lets his hand rest on Castiel’s waist, the contact gentle, almost uncertain, like he’s still unsure what to do with himself. The quiet stretches, but this time, it’s different - calm, not a silence full of tension.

Dean keeps his eyes closed for a moment longer.

The house is quiet.

The world is quiet.

[buzzquill]

Milk, Gin, and NyQuil

Chapter 1: Grief Is a Lonely Houseguest

Read it on AO3!

Next Chapter

Pairing: Castiel/Dean

Word Count: 3,857

Fic Summary:

Castiel finds a strange comfort in his routine: caring for his catatonic father, skipping meals, and sinking deeper into isolation. His days are consumed by monotony - grocery store, liquor store, bar - until a cold leads him to a Walgreens, where he meets a man with wild freckles and a kid brother who might just change everything.

Fic Warnings:

Eating Disorders, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self-Harm, Alternate Universe, Chuck Shurley is a shit dad, John Winchester is a shit dad, Castiel is a soldier, Dean winchester is trying to survive, Sam Winchester is a child

Author’s Note:

Inspired by the first chaper of Empty Spaces by schmerzerling. The whole thing is 10/10 😙🤌 but the first chapter is what got the brain juices flowing. This is the first story I've written in 6 years, since going to college. I graduated in December and I can feel the creativity coming back! Back in the day I posted to Tumblr, that was just before they stolen porn away from us. Now I think I'm going to be posting both AO3 and Tumblr (I can't quit you). Let me know what you think!

Food loses its appeal when you're busy caring for a perfectly healthy man. Somewhere between cleaning up alcohol stiffened vomit, changing piss soaked clothes, and carrying a drunkard to and from the toilet, a delectably cheesy smash burger from a dive bar down the road sits on the old wooden table in the kitchen that is  stuck in the seventies. Castiel picks at the perfectly toasted bun that has gone stale since being brought home from Harvelle's Roadhouse the night before. He squashes the congealed cheese into the patty that is somehow colder than the poorly insulated room. He smells the meat, the cheese, the onion, the piss, the shit, and the vomit. For the first time in Castiel’s twenty-three years on this earth, he tossed the burger to the pigeons and seagulls outside. He goes to check on Dad.

Dad is healthy, for the most part. A drunkard who is doing a number on his liver, yes, but he has yet to reap what he’s been sowing for the last five years. He's just gone. Checked out. Taking a brain-cation. Whatever you want to call it, Castiel has been taking care of Dad, because he just won't do it himself anymore.

Castiel keeps expecting his appetite to come back. He craves the craving of his favorite burger. Or a slightly too icy milkshake. Hell, he’d take wanting a damn PB&J. Instead, he eats when he feels weak, or when the cramping in his stomach grows so loud and angry that Dad would grunt and grumble for him to shut up. Even then it's the much too left-over left-overs at the back of the fridge or half a jar of pickles or a gulp of the whole milk that Dad insists on because he “won't have none of that sissy skim milk bullshit” in his house. Things that kept him able to carry Dad from room to room and pull him out of his green La-Z-Boy recliner, but still left him with the comforting cramping in the hollow of his stomach. Castiel picks at the hair behind his ear when he thinks about the many things that Dad deemed ‘sissy.’

It happens slowly. The first week of his selective eating, Castiel finds a sleepy comfort in the ache that sat deep in his belly. He quaffs his whole milk, chews craters into his fingertips, and walks down to the grocery and liquor store. He snatches a liter bottle of gin and brandy each off of the shelf, fills the hand basket with frozen meals, white bread, and sandwich meat. Staples of Dad’s diet. Whatever was easiest to get him to eat or shovel into his sharp smelling mouth on the bad days. Well, they were all bad days, but the especially bad days Dad would be locked inside himself. On those days, Castiel nibbles at his cuticles, pulling long shreds of pink flesh down to his knuckles. Sometimes beads of blood will bubble up and Castiel will find himself enraptured at the red color. He’ll rub his finger over the minuscule wounds, stinging under his touch, the red smearing across the chewed pad of his thumb. He stamps his finger onto a napkin. He thinks about keeping the napkin; stashing it away in his bedroom somewhere, but he doesn’t.

Dr. Richardson called it “Catatonic Depression brought on by overwhelming grief;” why Dad goes in and out of abusive consciousness. Castiel calls it his duty to his father. But the Shurley family has never been that smart about those things. Feelings. Mental health. Except for Gabriel, Castiel's youngest big brother, who left after two years of trying to bring Dad back to the waking world. Gabriel had a heart attack brought on by the stress of caring for a man who was the equivalent of an emotional diuretic, who hissed with passive aggression. A “go pick out your switch” ass-whooping Christian, turned helpless alcoholic who was swing happy and verbally an upper-middle-class teen girl who lost her vape; who needed his pissed soaked pants changed at least once a day and his vomit tainted screams subdued by a glass of brandy.

It was a wakeup call for Gabriel and a prison sentence for Castiel when Gabriel was found by the local sheriff hunched over his steering wheel, hand clutching his chest, and Dad yelling slurred nonsense from the backseat and smelling of booze. He called Castiel the next day from the hospital, asking him to help care for Dad while he recovered. Gabriel discharged himself early and turned off his read receipts.

That was three years ago. Castiel hears updates from friends at bars and old one night stands that Gabriel is doing well. At twenty-five old Gabriel enrolled in a community college downstate and was engaged to some hippie vegan chick. Castiel assumes Gabriel would be weirded out by his new craving for whole milk. Castiel finds himself gnawing on the pink raw skin of his lip when he thinks about Gabriel's new vegan life.

Sometimes, when Castiel buys another bottle of gin, he wonders how much pain his brother was in. Not Gabriel, it's easy to Google what a heart attack feels like, but Michael. The beloved eldest brother of the Shurley family. Five years ago, just before Dad checked out, Michael died in a drunk driving incident. Michael was on his way home from a late night at the garage he worked at. The guy went around a sharp corner too fast and flipped his car. Flipped it right into Michael. The guy - a boy from the local highschool named Jack-something - walked away with only a broken nose and a bruised rib. They say that the drunk driver normally lives because the booze relaxes their muscles and slows their reactions enough to prevent much damage. Castiel is pretty sure the kid is still in jail, but he doesn't look into it. If he thinks about it for too long…  He just doesn’t look into it.

For a while, Castiel still goes to Harvelle's Roadhouse after Dad falls asleep. He sits with Bobby, sipping crimson-red Shirley Temples, letting the older man’s rambling fill the silence he can’t bear alone. Ellen Harvelle often joins them, her daughter Jo sometimes tagging along. Years ago, after Ellen lost her husband, Bobby and the Shurley boys helped her pick up the pieces. They grieved with her, stood by her, and worked to set her and Jo back on their feet.

Ellen tried to return the favor when Dad fell apart. She stocked their freezer with lasagnas, venison stews, and casseroles, anything to ease the burden. But Dad stayed locked inside his anger and grief. One day, Jo, trying to help her mom during a busy moment, accidentally spilled his brandy. He hit her. Castiel still feels the ache in his stomach when he remembers Jo’s tears, Ellen’s fury, and the way he just stood there, frozen.

Now, as the summer days drag on, Castiel goes to the bar only for Ellen and Jo. Sometimes, when she feels up to it, Ellen presses a stack of freezer meals into his arms. “You’re wastin’ away,” she says one night, wrapping her fingers around his thin wrist. “You takin’ care’a yourself, pumpkin?”

Castiel forces a smile, slipping out of her grasp as Bobby adds, “I saw your pants saggin’. Thought maybe you was followin’ the young’ins trend. Don’t really suit ya’.”

“No - and yes,” Castiel says, retreating toward the door. “Gabriel’s vegan now. Thought I’d give it a try, but I think I need the protein to keep plump like you like me.”

Later, alone in the kitchen, Castiel loads the freezer with Ellen’s meals. He downs a gulp of milk, but her words linger, digging at him. He presses a hand against his stomach, tracing the hollowness beneath his hoodie. It’s not enough. He balls his fist and hits the tender spot, a sharp jolt of pain echoing through him. He does it again. And again.

He hates the way his bumpy shoulders jut out under a T-shirt, hates how small he’s become. These days, he’s always cold. Always empty. He’s a lot of things now that he wasn’t before and he’s no longer a lot of the things that he used to be.

Castiel goes to MacLeod’s Grocery and Liquor every morning. He gets the booze Dad demands, any groceries required for the day, and a pack of caffeine gum. The caffeine gum is new. It keeps Castiel awake when his energy dips in the afternoon, and lets him go longer with the familiar burn in his belly. Now he only needs to scrounge for food when he wakes up and once more in the evening, with gulps of whole milk in between. Castiel wants to want to eat. He wants to feel discomfort with the pain in his stomach, not the sickly-sweet contentment that settled inside the ache.

When Dad first retreated inward just after Michael's death, two years after the second oldest, the gifted kid turned drug addicted burn-out, Luce, ran off to secretly rehab away from “that abusive piece of shit,” four years after middle-child Rapheal died in the line of service, and ten or so years after their mother ran away with some bleeding heart social worker who got a little too social with their mother during an abuse investigation, friends around town cared. They brought casseroles, offered to watch Dad so that Castiel could get a break, pooled money to get him an appointment with a psychiatrist out of town. Though after a while, the town stopped excusing Dad’s abusive protests as a man grieving a lifetime of pain, and started steering clear of the dangerous, abusive drunkard who pushed all of his remaining family away. Well, all but the poor bastard that was too young to move out, too naive to run away, and too scared to ask for help. All but Castiel.

It’s early October when Castiel wakes up trembling, his body drenched in a thick, sticky layer of sweat that glues him to the flannel sheets. The air is bitterly cold, unnaturally still, yet the chill does nothing to soothe the fever clawing at his skin. His stomach churns violently, a sharp ache radiating from his abdomen to his chest in relentless, jagged pulses. His throat is raw, and his head pounds with the deep, throbbing ache of sickness.

He tries to sit up, but the effort sends the world tilting violently. His vision swims, the room spinning in hazy, nauseating circles. Weak hands shove the damp blanket off his legs, and his sweatpants cling uncomfortably to his clammy skin as he stumbles toward the kitchen. Each step feels heavier than the last, his legs trembling under the weight of nausea and lightheadedness.

At the counter, he grips the edge for support, his shaking fingers leaving damp smudges on the surface. A wave of dizziness overtakes him, his stomach heaving as the sour taste of bile burns at the back of his throat. Adjusting his sweatpants against his boney hips, Castiel flinches at his reflection in the microwave’s glass door, wincing. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, and pale as a ghost.

The thought of food makes his stomach turn, but he grabs the milk carton anyway, desperate for something to settle the roiling nausea. The milk coats his tongue, sour and unpleasant - not rancid, but thick and cloying, mixing with the saliva pooling in his mouth. He gasps, gags, and spits it out, sputtering as the taste lingers. The glass slips from his grip, shattering in the sink with a sharp crack, and a stabbing pain knifes through his side, folding him in half.

Still gasping, he forces himself to try some cold tater tot casserole from the fridge, but the greasy leftovers only make it worse. The moment it touches his tongue, his stomach revolts. He barely makes it to the sink before he’s retching, the acid burning his throat and splattering down the drain.

This isn’t just hunger. This is something worse.

Panting, he slumps against the counter, sweat dripping from his temples. His phone buzzes weakly on the table, a string of unread messages lighting up the screen. He glances at the time, 5:56 a.m., and then back at the glowing notification

Ellen Harvelle 🍻 - 9:04pm : “How’re you doing sweetie? You seemed tired today. Why

don’t you come to dinner tomorrow…”

Beekeeper Soci… - 10:00pm : “Your subscription to Beekeeper Society of the Midwest expires in 30 days. To keep your subsc…” Gabriel😒 - 12:00am : “Lil bro! Hope you and Dad are doing well. Me and Lauren have been traveling…” Gabriel😒 - 12:13am : “Lauren’s been working on spiritually healing the bs that Dad put us through. You should…”

Reading the word ‘spiritual,’ Castiel decides it’s better for his soul and spirit not to open the messages.

He pushes himself off of the counter, grabbing Dad’s coat and his own keys. Castiel's legs are unsteady beneath him, but he forces himself out the door. He stumbles into the rusted door of his beautiful tan ‘78 Lincoln Continental Mark V. Gabriel gifted it to Castiel on his sixteenth birthday. It was already old with little bits of rust and dents and dimples from little dings over the car's lifetime but it was beautiful and stupid, and Castiel always loved that car. 

Castiel collapses into the driver’s seat of the Lincoln, gripping the worn leather steering wheel as though it might anchor him to this plane. As if he were at risk of floating off into the next. Gabriel’s old car smells faintly of mildew, gasoline, and of those gross Ooze candy gel tubes. Gabriel was obsessed with those for most of his life. The oozy, gooey smell glueing memories of their childhood together, trapping them in the creases of its upholstery.  Castiel’s fingers trace the faint crescent-shaped marks left by Gabriel’s ring on the steering wheel, once a creamy tan but now faded to a weary, worn grey-brown. Castiel wonders if the Ooze candy is vegan.

Castiel doesn’t hesitate, his destination clear, “Walgreens,” he growls. The drive is a blur of tail lights and fog coated streets, his vision tunneling as the heater in his ancient car coughs weakly against the cold. The headlights cut through the darkness, casting fleeting shadows on the empty road ahead. His hands grip the worn steering wheel as his stomach twists violently, a roiling wave that surges upward. His mouth floods with slick, bitter saliva, the metallic tang making him gag. His throat clenches tight, a sharp burn rising into his chest, and for a moment, he’s suspended in the sickening anticipation. His chest tightens with a tangle of exhaustion and dread. Cold air slips through the cracked window, stinging his skin as he swallows back whatever had trickled its way into his throat. 

Somewhere inside, he thinks about the car flipping, hitting a tree and then tumbling down an embankment. He wonders what that would feel like - how quickly it would kill him. He wonders how many people might go to his funeral. If there would even be a funeral. Castiel thinks about Dad being in the passenger seat. He thinks about that Jack kid being on the sidewalk, in the way and how big his funeral would be and all the weeping people. The hugs, the tears, the promises to improve their lives in honor of his being cut short. Castiel’s trembling hand lurches forward, fingers twitching as he claws at what Dad called the cigarette lighter jutting from the dashboard with his raw fingers. The tiny metal cap feels unnaturally warm under his clammy touch. Yanking it free with a faint, sickening click, he doesn’t even glance at the glowing red coil inside, a wicked halo of heat. Without hesitation, he presses the searing circle against the pink tender flesh of his thumb. The pungent stench of burning skin fills the air, mingling with a faint sizzle, and pain blooms, sharp, nauseating, and near blissful, clawing up his arm like wildfire.

When Castiel finally careens into the Walgreens parking lot, the tires screech against the pavement, the jolt rattling his spine and his nerves alike. His wide, bloodshot eyes lock onto the glowing red 'W,' its neon haze bleeding through the fogged windshield like a lifeline. The light flickers faintly, almost mocking him. His trembling hands fumble with the gearshift, shoving the car into park without precision. He doesn’t bother to kill the engine; the keys dangle in the ignition, jangling softly, forgotten. His breath comes in ragged gasps as he claws at the seatbelt, his fingers clumsy and slick with sweat. He all but spills out of the car, the door swinging shut behind him with a hollow thud. The cool night air hits him like a slap, but it does nothing to cut through the feverish panic clawing at his chest. 

He sloshes through the automatic doors of the Walgreen, the ones that never seem to open quite fast enough and always triggering the other automatic door beside it. The fluorescent glare inside feels like stepping into another world, sharp and sterile, a cruel contrast to the gritty desperation clinging to him like a second skin. A bored teenager of ambiguous gender stationed at the front counter glances up, their expression as drained as the coffee cup beside them. Their cropped brown hair is tipped with faded lilac, the messy edges brushing against chunky round glasses framed in thick black plastic. An eyebrow piercing glints in the harsh light, matched by a septum ring that gives them an edge far sharper than their monotone greeting: "Good morning."

Their red Walgreens vest is made almost unrecognizable by the fishnet sleeves poking out from underneath and a chaotic constellation of pins and patches clinging to their lanyard. Castiel barely spares them a glance, muttering what might have been a response, though it escapes as a guttural half-snarl before puking out “NyQuill.” The teen groans, taking a step back from patient zero. They pointed to the back left of the building. Without really breaking stride, he veers sharply toward the Cold and Flu aisle, his boots leaving faint wet prints across the pristine linoleum.

He barely notices the aisles or the few patrons bustling around him. His mind was a haze, his eyes blurring the shelves in front of him, replaying snippets of the past: Michael's dumb smile, Gabriel's laugh, Dad's belt snapping against the air. Somewhere deep inside, a flicker of anger burns, but the overwhelming fatigue smothers it. He squeezes his eyes shut, just for a moment, steadying himself.

When he opens them, he sees him.

A boy - no, a man, maybe a year or two older than him. Freckles are dusted across his sun-tanned cheeks, green eyes that seemed to glow under the harsh store lights, and a mop of messy, honey-brown hair that curled around his ears. He is standing in the frozen food aisle, holding a box of ham and cheese Hot Pockets and grinning like he just won the lottery. His flannel shirt was rolled up to his elbows, revealing strong forearms, and he had a carefree energy about him that seemed to defy the weight of the world.

Castiel blinks, certain his fevered mind was playing tricks on him. But no, this boy… this boy was real. Solid. He watches as the boy turns to someone, a younger man, a brother maybe. “That’s disgusting, man,” the teen boy groans as he snatches a small veggie pizza from the freezer for himself.

The man with the dumb green eyes glances down the aisle in Castiel’s direction, catching him staring. For a moment, their eyes locked. Castiel’s breath hitched. The man then tilts his head slightly, his grin softening into something curious, something kind, almost puppy-like. Castiel's first instinct is to look away, but he couldn’t. He feels rooted to the spot, as if the man's gaze had snaked up the aisle and grabbed hold of him.

“Hey, man, you okay?” The man’s voice carries over, warm and steady. He approaches a bit, concern knitting his brows, so that he doesn't have to yell down the aisle.

Castiel opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His throat feels dry, his body sluggish. He is acutely aware of the faint tremble in his hands, the sweat slicking his back despite the chill of the store.

“Dean, you coming or what?” the boy calls from further down the aisle, a pile of Strawberry Daiquiri SoBe’s cradled in his arms.

“Yeah, hang on,” Dean replies, not taking his eyes off Castiel. He hesitates, adding, “You need help with that?” gesturing to the dual pack of DayQuil and NyQuil, Emergen-C tablets, Vicks VapoRub, lavender and menthol shower steamers, and 3 bottles of blue gatorade in Castiel’s hands.

Castiel shakes his head mutely, as he pulls a thermometer from the shelf, his voice still refusing to cooperate. But his body betrays him, swaying slightly on its own accord. Dean then takes another step forward, reaching out as if to steady him, his brows and nose scrunching together deeper now.

“Dude, you look like you’re about to keel over,” Dean gasps, his voice laced with genuine concern. “C’mon, let me help you.”

Before Castiel can protest, or even process what was happening, Dean gently takes the items from his hands, dumping them into his own basket. The sudden release of weight made Castiel stumble forward, and Dean’s free hand shot out to catch his arm. His grip is firm but careful, like he was afraid Castiel might utterly shatter under too much pressure.

“You okay?” Dean asks again, his green eyes searching Castiel’s face. Up close, Castiel could see the faint freckles scattered across his nose, the slight stubble along his jaw, and the soft pink curve of his lips. An evil, demonic itch in the back of Castiel’s skull lifted his hand to Dean’s face, poking at one of the larger freckles, “Woah, cowboy. Easy there.” He laughs, gently pushing Castiel's hand away from his face.

“I…” Castiel finally manages, his voice raspy and weak. “I’m fine.”

Dean doesn’t look convinced. “Yeah, you don’t sound fine. You look like you haven’t eaten in a week.” His tone islight, teasing, but his grip on Castiel’s arm remained steady. “C’mon, there’s a diner a block down. I’ll buy you a burger.”

Castiel opened his mouth to protest, to explain that he couldn’t possibly accept, that he had to get home to Dad, that he wasn’t sure how long it took him to get to the Walgreens, let alone how long he zombied out in that aisle before Dean rescued him, so he really had to check on Dad. He really tried to reason with the man, but the words caught in his throat. For the first time in years, someone was offering to take care of him, and the weight of that realization threatened to break him.

He swallows hard, nodding before he could second-guess himself. Dean’s grin returns, bright and disarming, and for a moment, Castiel feels a little more like he could breathe.

[buzzquill]

Someone needs to make a supernatural wall calendar with all of the stupid/arbitrary/beautiful holidays the supernatural fandom has.

every day i discover lore terms i don't know. WHAT on earth is bisexual easter.

it's when misha was bi for a few days before coming out as straight

[buzzquill]

New fanfiction piece in the works, besties

A sneak peek at the newest piece I'm working on between the chapters of Milk, Gin, and Nyquil (read that here)

The Ferryman’s Bargain (working title, might be changed) Dean woke to the sound of water. Not the roar of waves nor the murmur of a stream. This was a slow, viscous sound, like the breath of something vast and dying. Primeval and somnolent. It lapped against the shore in sluggish heaves, black and thick as ink, stretching into an unbroken horizon of nothing. The air clung to him, damp and tepid, not with the chill of death, but something worse: the certainty of it. The weight of eternity settled in his bones. He sat up, pulse thrumming, bracing for pain that never came. No wounds, no bruises. Just absence, hollow as a mouth missing its tongue. He looked into the river. Faces stirred beneath the surface, their whispers rising like mist: anguished, confused, sorrowful. Almost not there. They emerged in fleeting glimpses before the current dragged them back down, a tide of the lost, propelling the river forward. The shore stretched endlessly in either direction, neither earth nor mud but something in between, a liminal place, untouched and untouchable. And at its edge, standing still as a carving in some ancient tomb, was a figure almost swallowed by the rising mist. Not a man.

Let me know what you think!

[buzzquill]

Milk, Gin, and NyQuil

Chapter 5: Swallowing Galaxies

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Read it on AO3!

Pairing: Castiel/Dean

Word Count: 3209

Fic Summary:

Castiel erodes under pressure, guilt dragging him back home. He lingers in the wreckage of his choices until Dean. It's easy, familiar, disrupting the silence with coffee and quiet understanding. Over peanut butter sandwiches, Dean unspools his own past, a childhood spent preparing for a war that never came. The distance between them thins until Castiel asks him to stay.

Fic Warnings:

Eating Disorders, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self-Harm, Alternate Universe, Chuck Shurley is a shit dad, John Winchester is a shit dad, Castiel is a soldier, Dean winchester is trying to survive, Sam Winchester is a child

There has always been something inside Castiel that buckles under pressure. Not in the obvious way; not in the screaming, breaking, setting-fire-to-bridges way. No, Castiel is quieter than that. He doesn’t explode. He erodes. Change has never sat well with him. Not because he fears it, exactly, but because it always seems to come with a cost. For every step forward, something pulls him back. For every moment of freedom, a tether tightens around his ribs.

It started with school. He had been bright. Sharp. Clever enough to escape his high school halls early, trading in overcrowded classrooms for quiet libraries and college lecture halls. A way out. A future carved from textbooks and well-worn pens instead of gin bottles and slammed doors.

His teachers were proud. His guidance counselor hopeful.

And then, a letter in the mail - early admission. A university several hours away. A chance to leave.

Gabriel had smiled when Castiel told him. Proud, but wary, like he already knew what was coming. “Guess that means I’m stuck on Dad duty, huh?” he had joked.

But then Castiel left, and Gabriel’s jokes became something else.

"Man, you have no idea how much he’s getting on my ass over here.""I swear to God, if I have to clean up after him one more time-""I could kill him."

Castiel should have been relieved to be gone. To be out.

The guilt took root, winding through his ribs like barbed wire, tightening with every unanswered call, every weary sigh that seeped through the speaker before he could bring himself to hang up. It wasn’t fair. Gabriel had always been the one to run, to shove the weight of responsibility into someone else’s hands. And now that someone else was him. Even from miles away, Castiel felt the burden like a phantom limb, aching, insistent. So he stopped picking up. Let the phone ring. Let the silence settle in its place.

Then he stopped going to class.

Then he stopped trying.

He walked into the semester with something like hope clutched between his teeth and walked out without even taking his finals. Because if he failed, he had an excuse. A reason to go home. A way to surrender without saying the words.

That was when he started picking at the skin behind his ear. At first, absentminded, just something to keep his fingers busy. Then deliberate. A nervous habit turned ritual. When the world pressed in too hard, he pressed back with his nails, scratching until the skin burned, until raw, stinging pain cut through the numbness. Until he could feel something.

A month later, he looked in the mirror and found the first bald spot. A patch of missing hair, stark against his scalp, as if his body itself was eroding under the weight of it all. The university sent a letter stamped with his failure. He could have tried again. There was still time. A second semester before probation, before he’d have to explain himself.

Instead, he packed his things and left.

And that was the first time. The first of many. Because Castiel wasn’t built for change. Because leaving meant guilt, and staying meant duty. Because every time he tried to carve out something for himself, the weight of expectation dragged him back under. A semester abandoned. A job quit. A relationship severed before it could take root.

Now, he’s holding a shard of ceramic between his fingers, pressing the jagged edge into the pad of his thumb, watching the skin go white before easing off. Occasionally watching little pricks of red to seep out. Again. Again. He doesn’t even remember picking it up.

The door swings open.

Castiel doesn’t move.

Dean steps inside, dragging the cold morning air in with him. A brown paper bag in one hand of ground coffee, a steaming to-go cup just for Dean in the other. His jacket is dusted with frost, his nose flushed pink from the chill, hair tousled from the wind. The first snow of the season. His eyes catch on the shard of ceramic. A flicker of something crosses his face. Understanding. Calculation. But he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he steps further inside, nudges the door shut with his boot. "You look like hell."

Castiel exhales through his nose. “Thanks.”

Dean huffs out something close to a laugh and drops the bag on the counter. "Bought some coffee, but if you tell me you take yours black, I might have to reconsider our… friendship."

He moves easily around the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves, setting things out like he belongs there. Castiel watches, still holding the shard, still pressing.

Dean leans against the counter, tearing the paper off a sugar packet. “You got any food in this place, or are we running on coffee and sheer willpower?”

Castiel exhales through his nose, something close to amusement. “There’s bread.”

Dean lifts an eyebrow. “And?”

“Just… bread,” Castiel half jokes, “oh, and milk.”

Dean lets out an exasperated noise and pushes himself up from the table. “Unbelievable, I would’ve gotten us some food too if I knew you were out. Sit tight. I got this.”

He moves with an ease that shouldn’t belong to a man who’s only been here for a handful of hours. He rummages through the cabinets, muttering under his breath about “living like a goddamn Victorian orphan,” before pulling out a sad-looking jar of peanut butter. Then, in the deepest recesses of the fridge, Dean pulls out a questionable bottle of strawberry jelly and a tub of butter.

“Alright, we got protein and some fruit,” He announces, holding them up triumphantly, “but the trick is a smear of butter on each slice. Adds extra calories and flava’. Makes it less sad.”

Castiel watches, bemused, as Dean sets to work like this is some five-star operation. He slaps the butter, jelly, and peanut butter onto slices of bread, layering them onto a plate with the kind of confidence usually reserved for people who actually know how to cook.

Dean catches Castiel looking.

“What?” he says, mouth twitching.

Castiel tilts his head, considering him. “You seem oddly at home here.”

Dean shrugs, licking peanut butter off his thumb. “Been in a lot of kitchens.”

Something about that answer settles strangely in Castiel’s chest. A lot of kitchens. Never one that was his.

Dean sets the plate down in front of him and slides into the chair across the table, pushing the one with a little more of everything towards Castiel. “Eat.”

Castiel hesitates, but Dean doesn’t push. Just picks up his own sandwich and takes a huge bite, chewing dramatically like a child trying to prove a point.

Castiel sighs, picking up a piece, but the act of eating feels distant. He turns it over in his hands instead, feeling the slight give of the bread beneath his fingers.

Dean notices. He always notices. But, again, he doesn’t say anything. Just keeps eating like nothing is wrong. Instead, he says, “So, what’s the plan? You just gonna wait around for your dad to get back?”

Castiel’s jaw tightens slightly. He sets the sandwich down. “I don’t know.”

Dean hums. “That’s a popular answer with you.”

Castiel exhales. “It’s easier than the alternative.”

Dean tilts his head. “Which is?”

“Dealing.”

Dean studies him as he takes another sip of coffee. Like he’s trying to piece something together. Like he’s trying to understand the shape of Castiel without him having to say anything.

The silence stretches, but it’s softer now.

Then, finally, Castiel speaks. “About this morning.”

Dean stills, fingers tightening slightly around his coffee cup. Castiel watches him carefully. Dean is never still. He’s always shifting, moving, fidgeting. But now, he’s waiting.

Castiel swallows. “We haven’t talked about it.”

Dean lets out a short breath that’s almost a laugh. “Yeah, no kidding.”

“Do you regret it?” Castiel presses his lips together, then, “the kiss, I mean.”

Dean blinks then looks at him. Really, truly looks at him. Then he leans back in his chair, teetering as he attempts to balance. Thinking. Measuring his words.

“No,” he says finally, voice steady. “I don’t.”

Castiel hadn’t realized he was bracing himself for something worse. Something dismissive. Something easy, like ‘it didn’t mean anything.’

Dean isn’t giving him an easy answer. Instead, Dean’s fingers drum against the table. He exhales, glancing at Castiel through his lashes. “Do you?”

Castiel looks down at his hands. The weight of exhaustion presses heavy against his ribs, but somewhere beneath it, there’s something else. A warmth. A quiet, steadying thing. He shakes his head. “No.”

Dean watches him for a long moment, then a grin tugs at the corner of his mouth. Not teasing, not cocky. Just small. Real. “Well, that’s something,” he mutters, picking up his sandwich again.

Dean leans his elbows against the edge of the table, tearing the crust from the bread. “You ever been to Utah?”

Castiel blinks at him. "No."

Dean shrugs, taking another bite. Then, mid-chew: "Good. It’s a shithole."

The corner of Castiel’s mouth twitches. Dean keeps talking. Light. Easy. Like he’s just filling the space, giving Castiel something to hold onto.

And then, after a sip of coffee, like it’s nothing, like it’s not a bomb being dropped onto the table, Dean says:

“Our dad was part of a doomsday cult.”

Castiel stills.

Dean doesn’t look at him when he says it, just picks at the crust lying on his plate. "Real classic stuff. The world’s ending, the righteous few will survive, everyone else is doomed. That kinda thing."

Castiel sets his cup down carefully on the table, listening.

Dean keeps going, voice even, casual, like he’s telling a campfire story.

“He made us prepare for war. We learned how to survive. How to fight. How to kill. We were kids, but that didn’t matter. He had it all figured out: who the enemy was, what we had to do. He trained us for it. For years, man. Years.”

There’s a beat of silence before Dean chuckles, low and humorless. "Thing is, he wasn’t waiting for aliens or some goddamn biblical reckoning."

He glances at Castiel, eyes glinting with something sharp.

“It was the Russians.”

Castiel stares. "Those damn Russians."

Dean grins, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. "Yep. Communists. New world order. Some real Cold War shit. Guess nobody told him it wasn’t 1963 anymore."

Castiel doesn’t laugh.

Dean’s grin fades. His fingers tap against the coffee cup. He exhales, running a hand through his hair.

“Sam never bought into it,” he continues. “Not for a second. I did. For a long time.”

Castiel doesn’t press. He doesn’t have to. Dean presses on anyway.

“There was a night” He stops. Starts again. “Dad asked me to do something. Something I just... I told him no.” His jaw tightens. "So I grabbed Sammy, and we ran."

Dean exhales like the conversation is something heavy that needs to be shaken off. He doesn’t look at Castiel right away. Instead, he pushes back from the table, rubbing his hands onto his jeans before reaching for their empty plates. “Well. Now that I’ve successfully killed the mood,” he mutters, voice lighter than before, too light, like something fragile hidden beneath a joke.

He moves easily, naturally, like cleaning up a kitchen that isn’t his is something he’s done a thousand times before, hands working on instinct, body restless in the silence. It’s a distraction. A deflection. He rinses their plates, wipes down the counter, tosses the empty peanut butter jar back into the cabinet with a muttered complaint about the sad state of Castiel’s kitchen. His fingers drum against the edge of the sink, a restless staccato that never quite settles, never quite stills. Dean needs something to do with his hands. Always. And Castiel watches.

He watches the way Dean moves, the way his shoulders stay a little too tense, the way he never fully stops. He watches the way Dean fills the space; not like he belongs here, but like he’s trying not to notice that he doesn’t. It isn’t until Dean turns, until their eyes meet and something flickers across his face, something quick and unreadable, that Castiel realizes how long he’s been staring.

Dean notices. And then something shifts.

The silence stretches, vast and soundless, like the vacuum between stars. It should be easy now, softened by coffee and peanut butter, by the weight of what’s already been said. But it isn’t. It thickens, pressing at the edges of the room, as if the walls themselves are contracting inward, gravity bending space, condensing the air between them until something has to break.

Dean’s face flickers, just for a moment, his carefully worn ease cracking like the surface of a dying sun before he smooths it over again, forging something artificial in its place but it becomes something too casual, too weightless. He stands there, still in a way that feels unnatural, like the Earth knocked slightly off its axis, before his fingers twitch and he reaches for his jacket.

He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t think. He just moves, like he’s done it a hundred times before. He does that a lot. Castiel wonders if he’s lived this life before.

“I should probably get going.”

The words are too light, too easy, slipping past his lips as if spoken from orbit, too far away to be real. The shrug that follows is an afterthought, the gesture of a man whose momentum is already carrying him elsewhere, whose body is already in motion long before his mind has decided where to land. Like walking away is an inevitability, more force of nature than choice.

Something inside Castiel tightens, a pull in his chest, a gravitational force curling in on itself.

Going where? The words are right there, caught in his throat, but what escapes instead is something steadier, quieter. A measured observation, clinical but broken in its delivery. “You’ve been here since yesterday.”

It isn’t an accusation. But it isn’t nothing.

Dean falters, just for a second. Just long enough for Castiel to notice. And for some reason, that’s enough.

Dean doesn’t have an answer. Not really. Just another shrug, looser this time, his hand tightening around the worn leather of his jacket. The kitchen suddenly feels smaller, like the walls are pressing in, like the air itself is stretching too thin between them.

Castiel doesn’t know what makes him do it. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s the weight of the last twenty-four hours pressing into his ribs. Maybe it’s the quiet, aching certainty that if Dean walks out the door right now, he won’t come back. That Castiel can never come back. Whatever it is, he doesn’t think. He just moves.

His fingers grasp at Dean’s wrist. A light touch, a passing comet, the briefest flicker of connection against the vastness of the space between them.

Not to stop him. Not to hold him back.

Just contact.

Just to anchor him.

Just to ask, without asking, why?

Dean stills.

The shift is immediate, a force neither of them can see, but both can feel. A cosmic shift, a celestial body trapped in the pull of another’s gravity. Castiel can feel the quick, stuttering pulse beneath his fingers, the tension in Dean’s muscles locking beneath his skin, the unspoken war raging in the space between them.

It’s barely anything. A touch, a hesitation. But it’s enough.

Dean doesn’t move away. But he doesn’t move closer either.

Castiel doesn’t let go.

For a moment, the silence stretches, something unspoken pressing at its edges. There is a decision being made in real time, fragile and electric, trembling in the event horizon between them.

Dean looks at him and there’s something in his expression, something raw, something uncertain, something like the edge of a choice he hasn’t made yet.

Like if Castiel asked him to stay, he might actually listen.

Castiel’s breath shudders in his throat, something breaking loose inside his chest, something collapsing inward like a dying star. The weight of it, the sheer, unbearable gravity of it, presses against his ribs, and before he can stop himself, before he can swallow it down like he always does, he exhales the word.

“Stay.”

It isn’t sharp. It isn’t demanding. It’s soft. Fractured. A raw thing pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. A surrender. A confession.

And it’s all it takes.

Dean moves first.

It isn’t careful this time. It isn’t hesitant. It’s instinct, reaction, a collision of forces too strong to resist.

They crash together. A star collapsing inward, a cosmic collision of heat and gravity and inevitability.

It’s too fast, too hard, too much.

It’s want and need tangled in something raw, something unraveling at the edges, something on the verge of collapse. A supernova in its final breath, burning too bright, too fiercely - on the brink of destruction, teetering at the edge before it caves inward, swallowed by its own gravity, becoming a black hole. A moment on the fringe of becoming.

Dean’s hands find Castiel’s face, orbiting along the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his cheek, tilting his head like he needs to feel him, to drink in the heat, to chase the gravity of this moment before it consumes them both.

Castiel doesn’t hold back. He leans into it, lets himself fall. The warmth, the weight, the sharp press of Dean’s fingers against his skin, the way his breath shudders like he’s trying to hold something in and failing. It’s too much and not enough and exactly what he’s been waiting for.

Dean kisses like he fights, like he survives: all instinct and muscle memory, all quiet, burning desperation.

Castiel doesn’t know how to be wanted like this, but he learns fast.

His hands curl into Dean’s shirt, gripping tight, like if he lets go, it’ll be over, like this moment will collapse beneath them and he’ll wake up to find it gone. But Dean is still here. Still pressed against him. Still kissing him like he needs it, like he’s starving for it.

The world narrows down to this.

To them.

To the dizzying heat of it, to the slow, aching realization that they have both been running from something for too long.

But neither of them are running now.

For the first time in a long time, they let themselves feel.

And they don’t stop.

And.

And…

And then…

The phone rings.

The sound shatters the moment, splitting the air between them like a crack of lightning across an endless sky.

Castiel’s breath hitches, fingers still tangled in Dean’s shirt, heart hammering like a collapsing star.

Dean doesn’t move. His forehead stays pressed against Castiel’s, his breath warm, his fingers still curled against the back of his neck. He exhales, slow, unsteady, like he’s trying to pull himself back from wherever they just went.

But the phone keeps ringing. “You should probably answer that,” Dean huffs.

Castiel swallows, pulling back just enough to glance at the screen.

The hospital. For a moment, he doesn’t move. The warmth still lingers; Dean’s body close, the taste of him still on Castiel’s lips, the echo of his hands still pressed against his skin.

Then, slowly, stiffly, he answers.

“Hello?”

[buzzquill]

Milk, Gin, and NyQuil

Chapter 3: Burden Wears My Father’s Face

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Read it on AO3!

Pairing: Castiel/Dean

Word Count: 3,721

Chapter Summary:

Castiel has grown too tired to keep fighting, too fever-warmed to keep pretending he doesn’t want to be held together by something other than duty, grief, and some pretty shitty duct tape. The weight of the day presses down on him, like a thumb on a garden bug, thick and suffocating. But Dean is there; solid, steady, close enough to touch. A rough voice murmuring quiet reassurances. The scrape of calloused fingertips against his skin. The slow, deliberate pull of exhaustion dragging him under. Castiel has spent his whole life bracing for impact. He doesn’t know what to do with softness. With someone who stays.

Fic Warnings:

Eating Disorders, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self-Harm, Alternate Universe, Chuck Shurley is a shit dad, John Winchester is a shit dad, Castiel is a soldier, Dean winchester is trying to survive, Sam Winchester is a child

The bell over the door gives a feeble jingle, swallowed instantly by the sharp crack of glass exploding against the wall. Castiel barely has time to step over the fresh shards before another bottle hurtles past, shattering somewhere behind him. The whole room stinks of whiskey and sweat, something sour beneath it all, like the air itself has been left to rot.

Dad is a wreck. He staggers behind the bar, hair wild, eyes alight. Not with clarity, not with presence, but with the blinding glow of someone lost inside a memory. He isn’t looking at anyone as he rants, just screaming into the dim air, voice slurred, hands twitching, desperate for the next thing to throw. His fury teeters on a knife’s edge, swinging between self-pity and righteous wrath. And the worst part? Castiel has heard it all before.

“I gave up everything for you!” His father roars, words scraping raw against Castiel’s ears. “Everything! And where are you, huh? Off doing whatever the hell you want while I- ” He gags mid-sentence, gasping like he’s drowning on his own breath, one unsteady hand gripping the counter. “While I keep this family together.”

Behind Castiel, Dean is a solid presence, tense but unwavering, a single anchor in a storm of chaos. His voice is quiet but edged. “Yeah. Real family man.”

Another crash. More glass. Castiel flinches, but the deeper hit comes first. That twisting, crushing, writhing thing in his chest. It always does.

Jo is curled up in a booth, her breath shuddering in uneven gasps. One hand clutches her face, blood seeping between her fingers, dark and thick. Her split lip gleams, red and raw, and her nose is already swelling, bruising deep. Her free hand trembles, fingers curled tight, hovering between lashing out and holding herself together. The ice water in front of her has long since melted to little chips, indistinguishable from the jagged shards of glass from the cup that once housed it.

Moving toward her feels like wading through honey, thick and sickly sweet, clinging to his limbs. His throat aches. His stomach knots.

“Jo…” His voice is wrong, hoarse and uncertain.

She blinks slowly, unfocused, then lets out a breathless, fractured laugh that crumbles apart into something too shaky to be real. “Took you long enough.”

He swallows hard. “Jo, what-”

“What do you think?” Her voice is low, rough with pain, but sharp with something else. Anger. Not just at their father, but at him. Castiel is used to his father’s anger. But this? This is different. This is new. And it lands like a punch to the ribs.

From across the bar, Ellen’s voice cuts through the air, cold and firm. “This is what happens when you just disappear.”

She stands with her arms crossed, blocking the backroom from Chuck’s line of sight, keeping her distance. She isn’t yelling. Yelling would be easier. It’s the quiet anger, the way she won’t quite look at him, that burns the worst.

Castiel’s lungs tighten. “I didn’t- ”

“Didn’t what?” she snaps. “Didn’t think? Didn’t care? You know how he gets.” As if this is his fault. As if it’s on him to keep his father from unraveling. As if he hasn’t spent his whole life picking up broken glass.

Dad scoffs, dragging a hand down his face. His voice is soaked in scorn. “Yeah, yeah, blame me. Like I didn’t do everything for my ungrateful brats. Like I didn’t spend years breaking my back.” His arm jerks in a wild gesture, face twisting, rage crumbling into something small and lost. “And for what? So they could all leave me here? So you could sit there and judge me?”

Jo shifts, sucking in a sharp breath. Castiel instinctively reaches for her before hesitating. She lets out a humorless huff. “You know what’s funny? I almost feel bad for him.” Her voice cracks. “Almost.”

Dean steps forward, hands raised slightly, careful but firm. “Alright, that’s enough. We’re all pissed. Let’s just -”

“Let’s just what?” Dad’s voice slices through his words, venomous and raw. He slams a hand against the bar, wild gaze locking onto Castiel. “Let’s just pretend my son actually gives a damn about his own family?” His expression twists, sneer pulling at the edges. “You think you can just waltz back in here after everything? Like you’re some kind of savior?”

Castiel stiffens. “Dad…”

“Don’t you ‘Dad’ me.” His voice is pure acid now, but his face is something else. Something collapsing inward. “You weren’t here, boy. You left me.”

Something inside Castiel’s ribs splits wide open, raw and bleeding. “I was only gone for a few… I had to -”

“Had to what?” His father staggers forward, words slurring into a growl. His movements are jerky, unfocused. Then suddenly, violently, he lunges.

A blur of motion. A furious, drunken snarl. Fingers grasping for Castiel’s collar.

Then a sickening crack.

Dean’s fist connects with Chuck’s jaw.

The impact sends him sprawling. His body hits the floor with a heavy, ragdoll thud. Arms limp. Breath coming in ragged bursts.

Silence.

For a moment, no one moves. No one breathes. No one dares to stir, as if the wrong movement might wake the beast.

Once certain that Dad is down for the count, Castiel’s pulse slams against his skull, a white-hot fury rising so fast it knocks the air from his lungs. “What the hell is wrong with you?” The words rip from him, sharp and furious, as he shoves Dean back, his palms smacking hard aginst Dean's chest, before he even realizes he’s doing it. “That wasn’t your call!”

Dean is still braced like he’s expecting another fight, chest heaving, fist twitching from where it had just met bone. “Cas, he was gonna -”

“He’s my responsibility!” Castiel’s voice cracks. His breath is too fast, his vision blurring at the edges as he pushes Dean back again. “Not yours!”

Dean’s mouth opens, then closes. His jaw tightens, something wounded flickering across his face before it hardens into something unreadable.

The room is too quiet now.

Dad groans on the floor. Jo sniffs sharply, blood still smeared across her face.

And Castiel stands there, shaking, nails biting into his palms, breath coming too fast.

He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t think. All Castiel can think of is his mother. She must have known. She must have seen the way their father’s anger coiled like a serpent, tightening around everything it touched, squeezing until there was nothing left but broken glass and empty bottles. She left before she was forced to watch him consumed. Before she could see him become this.

He thinks of Raphael, the brother he barely had time to know. He had always been steady, unwavering, a force of nature wrapped in quiet discipline. The kind of man who believed in duty above all else. Castiel wonders if Raphael would have stood here in his place, if he would have faced their father with that same steel-spined resolve he carried into war. But Raphael was gone before the battle even began, lost to a war overseas before he could fight the one at home.

He thinks of Luce, who chose survival over obligation. They had always been the reckless one, fierce and wild, the first to tell Castiel that running was sometimes the bravest thing a person could do. When he disappeared into rehab without a word, Castiel had been furious. But now, standing here in the wreckage of their childhood, he wonders if they had the right idea all along.

Then Michael. The golden son. The one their father had pinned all his hopes on, only to watch them shatter against the cold steel of a wrecked car. His death had been the final fracture, the thing that finally broke their father’s mind beyond repair. If Michael had lived, would he have done what Dean just did? Would he have thrown the punch before Castiel could hesitate? Or would he have stood beside their father, trying to keep the ruins of their family from collapsing completely?

And Gabriel. The last one to leave, the one who tried to stay. The one who fought to hold their father together until it nearly killed him. Until his heart gave out beneath the weight of it. Castiel remembers the moment he realized Gabriel was gone for good. The silence on the other end of the phone. The unanswered messages. The bitter, crushing understanding that he was alone. Gabriel had done what Castiel never could: he had walked away.

But now, standing over their father’s crumpled form, Castiel can’t shake the thought: Any one of them could have been here instead. Any one of them could have taken this burden from him. But they didn’t. They left and he stayed. He always stayed.

Castiel’s fists are clenched, breath coming too fast, head pounding like it’s full of rushing water. His father groans on the floor, shifting slightly but not getting up. No one else moves.

Then Dean exhales sharply, like he’s trying to shake something off. “I was trying to help you.” His voice is quiet but firm, carrying the weight of something deeper than just this moment.

Castiel blinks at him, still shaking. “What?”

“You do not get to push me,” Dean snaps, stepping back like he’s putting a wall between them. “You don’t get to put your hands on me, Cas. I don’t care how messed up this is, I don’t care what’s going on in your head right now. You don’t get to do that.”

The words land like a slap. The white-hot fury in Castiel’s chest flickers, dulling into something weaker, something raw and ugly. He tries to speak, but his throat locks up.

Dean shakes his head. “You wanna drown in this? Fine. But you don’t take it out on me. I don’t even fucking know you, dude. I was just trying to help.” He turns on his heel, shoving the bar door open so hard it nearly slams against the wall. Then he’s gone.

Castiel just stands there, cold all over, pulse still hammering.

Jo lets out a soft, bitter laugh. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” She dabs at the blood on her lip and shakes her head. “You always act like you don’t have a choice. But you do, Cas. You always do.”

She doesn’t wait for a response. She just gets up and walks past him, brushing glass from her jeans, heading toward Ellen. Ellen, who hasn’t said a word since before the fight. “He can’t keep doing this. You, bud, you can’t keep up at this pace. Something needs to change.”

His father shifts again, muttering something incoherent as Ellen follows behind Jo. And Castiel? Castiel does what he’s always done.

He picks up the pieces.

His father is heavier than he remembers. Or maybe Castiel is just too exhausted, too hollowed out to carry him properly. His arms shake with the effort, burning from strain as he half-lifts, half-drags him out of Harvelle’s Roadhouse. His father’s dead weight presses into him, slumping against his shoulder, reeking of whiskey, sweat, and something worse. Something acrid. Something rank. Vomit clings to the front of his dad’s shirt, half-dried, mixing with the piss that stains his jeans. The stench curls in Castiel’s throat, but he swallows it down. He has no strength left to gag.

He stumbles over loose gravel, knees buckling with every step. His stomach twists, not just from the smell, but from the sharp reminder of how weak he’s become. One meal wasn’t enough to undo months of starvation. His body is brittle, a thing barely held together by sheer force of will, and it’s unraveling with every step down the stretch of highway.

And it’s barely even afternoon.

The sun glares overhead, too bright, too exposing. Castiel forces himself to look forward, to feel every set of eyes that pass him by, pitying glances from behind windshields, the slight hesitation of a driver’s foot hovering over the brake before pressing forward, choosing not to stop, not to see. He lets them watch. Let them witness this. The sight of a sickly young man dragging his unwashed, piss-stained father down the road like a broken animal.

It’s pathetic.

The thought cracks something open inside him. The tears start slow, just heat gathering at the edges of his vision, but then his breath stutters, his chest locks tight, and suddenly he’s gasping between sobs, choking on them. His legs are giving out. Dad is slipping from his grip, and for a moment, Castiel doesn’t care. He could just sink to the ground, curl in on himself right here in the dirt, and let the world move on without him.

But no.

His arms scream as he tightens his grip, digging his fingers into the filthy fabric of his father’s coat. The pain is grounding. Familiar. A tether to keep him upright. He sways but stays standing, teeth clenched, breath hitching in ragged bursts. He doesn’t know where he ends and Dad begins. He doesn’t really know where he begins at all within the universe, but he grips the fabric of his dad’s jacket, fists curling into it like he can somehow hold everything together through sheer force of will.

He can’t do this.

He can’t do this.

But he has to. Because no one else will. He squeezes his eyes shut, his body shaking, sucking in breath after breath that won’t quite come.

Then, suddenly, hands grab Dad’s other arm. Castiel startles, looking up through blurry vision. Dean? Dean.

Dean

Dean, matching pace beside him, jaw tight, expression unreadable. He doesn’t say anything. He just adjusts his grip, taking on some of the weight.

Castiel chokes on another sob, blinking hard, trying to swallow down the emotion clawing at his throat. His knees give out for a second, not enough to drop him to the ground. No. Just enough for Dean to scoop up a little more of Chuck’s weight. Dean sighs. “You gonna stand there crying, or you gonna help me get this bastard home?” It’s not cruel. It’s not mocking. It’s just Dean.

Castiel exhales shakily, nodding. He shifts his grip, and together, they start walking.

By the time they reach the house, his arms are shaking from exertion. Dean helps maneuver Dad through the doorway, neither of them speaking as they drag him toward his room. The house is dim, the air thick with the stale remnants of spilled liquor and old resentment. Dad is barely conscious, groaning as they half-drop him onto his bed. He stirs slightly, mumbling something, but doesn’t wake. 

And finally the house is still. Castiel stands there for a moment, staring at the quiet chaos around him. It feels like it’s all too much, like the weight of everything he’s been carrying has finally caught up to him. Without any real notice, Castiel brings the pad of his thumb to his teeth, chewing a crater along the side.

Dean watches him for a beat, his expression unreadable. “You good?”

Castiel nods, though he feels anything but. “Yeah.” His voice is rough, but it cracks at the edges, like he's holding something back, like if he opens his mouth too wide, he'll spill over.

“Alright,” Dean says quietly, stepping closer. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

Castiel hesitates, glancing back at his father, but Dean’s already grabbing his arm gently, guiding him toward the stairs. “But it’s barely noon… I think.”

“Yeah, well…” Dean sighs while nudging Castiel away from Dad’s room, “you’re sick. You’re doctor calls for rest. Then I’ll get you some meds and a nice dinner for when you wake up.”

It’s still bright outside, the afternoon sun hanging low in the sky, but everything feels muted, as if the world has been drained of its color. Castiel feels like he could sleep for days, but when he reaches his room, it hits him all at once. His body’s exhaustion, the dizziness, the queasy ache in his stomach, the burning fatigue that’s been creeping up on him all afternoon.

“I don’t…” Castiel starts, voice shaky. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Dean pauses in the doorway, studying him. “You’re exhausted. And you’re sick. This day’s been too much, Cas. You don’t have to do anything right now. I promise. Just rest.”

Without another word, Dean stands just a bit too close, his presence a steadying force that pulls Castiel out of his racing thoughts. He doesn’t wait for Castiel to speak, doesn’t wait for his self-loathing protests - he simply moves, gently guiding Castiel to sit on the edge of the bed. The softness of his touch, the way he adjusts Castiel’s position so carefully, feels almost too intimate, too tender.

Castiel watches Dean as he moves around the room, grabbing Castiel’s pajamas from the drawer with a quiet efficiency. When Dean turns back to him, he doesn’t rush; his gaze softens, a silent invitation for Castiel to lean into the comfort he’s offering.

There’s something in the way Dean helps him change: slow, deliberate movements as he undoes Castiel’s jacket and pulls off his shirt, fingers brushing lightly against his skin. The air feels thick, charged, but soft, like everything else is fading away, leaving just the two of them. Dean’s hands are steady, gentle as he pulls Castiel’s sleeves off, and Castiel’s breath catches, a fluttering warmth spreading across his chest.

Dean’s touch isn’t invasive, but there’s an undeniable intimacy in it. His hands linger just a second too long as he adjusts Castiel’s pajama top over his head. When their eyes meet for the briefest of moments, Castiel can see the care in Dean’s expression, but there’s something more. Something unspoken happening between them. Dean’s fingers trace the curve of Castiel’s shoulder, and a shiver runs through Castiel, both from the cool air and the subtle, lingering sensation of Dean’s touch.

Castiel swallows hard, his throat tight. The simple act of being cared for, being treated like something to be protected, is enough to choke him up. Castiel can’t remember when he last took the time to change into pajama’s before bed. He hasn’t felt this vulnerable in years, and the weight of it settles deep in his chest, making his pulse quicken.

Dean pulls the blanket up over Castiel carefully, tucking it in around his shoulders, the movement a silent promise. He doesn’t let go right away, his hand resting for a moment against Castiel’s shoulder, his thumb brushing ever so lightly across his skin and his eyes searching Castiel’s for just a moment. It’s a fleeting touch, but it leaves a warmth that lingers.

When Dean moves to sit on the edge of the bed, close enough that Castiel can feel the faintest press of his leg, the air between them seems to shift. They were both charged with something quiet, something unspoken.

As Castiel turns onto his side, Dean’s fingers slip beneath the loose fabric of his shirt, his touch feather-light at first, barely there. A whisper of warmth against his skin. Then, slowly, deliberately, Dean begins to scratch, dragging his fingertips in soft, careful strokes along Castiel’s back. The motion is steady, rhythmic, soothing. Something so simple, so kind, that Castiel can’t stop the soft exhale that escapes him, his body already giving in to the comfort.

Dean’s voice is quiet, almost an afterthought. “Sammy was an insomniac as a kid. Scratching his back used to help him fall asleep.”

Each stroke of Dean’s fingers is a little more comforting, a little more intimate. There’s no rush, just the steady rhythm of his hand moving, working its way up and down Castiel’s back with such care that Castiel can’t help but feel like he’s being held together by Dean’s touch, piece by piece.

As the gentle scratching continues, Castiel feels his muscles begin to loosen, his eyelids growing heavier, the exhaustion creeping in, but there’s something more than just physical relaxation here. It’s like Dean’s touch is unspooling something inside him, unraveling the tightly wound knots that have held him in place for too long.

Dean’s voice is soft, almost a whisper. “Just let go, Cas.”

It’s almost too much. The weight of everything, the way his body responds to Dean’s presence, to his care. Castiel feels his chest tighten, but it’s different this time. More like the release of something that’s been pent up for far too long.

Dean’s hand pauses for a moment, then continues, fingers brushing just a little lower, soothing, grounding. Castiel’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t want to. He feels too safe, too cared for, to let that distance grow.

Dean’s voice breaks the silence again, calm and quiet, like a promise. “I’ll be right here. You don’t have to do anything.”

Castiel barely hears the words over the pounding in his chest, but he feels them. He feels them deep in his bones, and the soft heat of Dean’s hand on his back, the way Dean sits so close, his warmth bleeding into Castiel’s skin.

Dean takes out his phone, his tone still gentle as he talks to Sammy. “Hey, Sammy. Yeah, can you grab the car from the bar? Oh, a few blocks won’t hurt’cha. And bring me those cold meds for the poor guy? Cas is running a fever. I’ll stay with him.”

When he hangs up, Dean doesn’t move immediately. He just stays there, hand still resting on Castiel’s back, his fingertips grazing lightly over the fabric of the pajamas. The silence stretches, but it doesn’t feel awkward. It feels like the calm before something else, something inevitable.

Castiel feels a twinge in his chest as Dean leans closer, the soft weight of his voice and his body a comforting pressure. “You just need to rest,” Dean says quietly, and for the first time in a long while, Castiel feels like it’s okay to just let go.

With a soft breath, Castiel closes his eyes, letting the exhaustion sweep over him, the gentle pressure of Dean’s hand grounding him to the moment. The warmth of Dean’s care settles deep inside, pulling him into sleep, and for the first time, he allows himself to drift without worry, making little note of what may happen next.