#if i want to help it continue growing and not sit there stagnantly

[goon]

there's a young maple tree in my yard and last year during some feisty winds i watched the top half of it just break off. fast forward and it's actually alive. it only has one branch but it grows leaves

[5typesoftrash]

Hope So Sharp

@misha-moose-dean-burger-lover wrote a horrible amazing angsty thing for me that made me very sad and angry so now I’m getting her back by writing this. It didn’t end up as fluffy as I wanted but I still wrote 1k in like half an hour so take that.

Dean sits at the table, staring at the wall with deadened eyes, a beer he opened forty minutes ago that he hasn’t drank a sip of resting loosely in his grip. He’s been inanimate since he sat down. When Sam found him in the dungeon he was curled up in a ball, face stained with tears and his jacket bearing a suspicious bloody handprint. His phone was discarded a few feet away from him and most jarringly, he was alone.

Dean hasn’t told them what happened. They managed to pull him to his feet and he stumbled along beside them into the war room, like a car in neutral being towed, not truly directing himself anywhere. Sam had set the beer bottle next to him wordlessly because he knew Dean wouldn’t get through anything without it and Dean had twisted it open, dropped the cap on the table, and put one foot on the chair next to him. So now he’s just sitting there, right arm resting on his elevated knee, beer in hand, looking tragically beautiful as always. And Sam thinks, even in this empty grieving bitterness, the unmatched anger Dean exhibits when they lose Cas, he’s still gorgeous that way.

And Sam knows, deep in the rational part of himself that keeps rapid switching with the hopeless and terrified part, that Cas is gone. No amount of Sam’s reasoning or Jack’s wishing or Dean’s yelling will bring him back this time. They’ve lost him again, like they lost him countless times before, because Sam and Dean Winchester unfailingly let down their friends.

Dean doesn’t speak. He doesn’t speak a single word, not even when spoken to. When he turns his head toward Sam and Jack his gaze is hollow, like he’s looking through them. Eventually they stop asking.

Life continues as normal, somewhat. After a couple of days of allowing Dean to drown in his grief they enlist his help in trying to find yet another new way to kill Chuck. (And fuck’s sake it seems like they’ve gone through forty of those already this year.) Sam notices the way Dean never really seems to go to his bed anymore; he has nightmares. That’s normal. He doesn’t sleep anymore. Sam can’t blame him. The stack of discarded books in the ‘Not Helpful Vis A Vis How To Destroy Literal God’ pile next to his seat grows, and the ‘Might Contain An Actual Solution’ pile remains suspiciously and stagnantly slim.

Sam sees how Dean plays with his knife as he reads in a way he never used to and he can’t help but think that it’s only a stone’s throw from Sam’s own old self-harm habits. He left those behind with Stanford, but Dean is a whole other ball game.

And then a very familiar blue-eyed, messy-haired, trenchcoated angel quite literally stumbles back into their lives. He appears from an inky black hole in the ceiling and looks around like he can’t quite believe it. He seems disoriented, but the first thing he does once he gets his bearings is look at Dean and smile.

Goddammit, that smile. That smile could power a million Bunkers.

Dean’s head comes up, his face still stuck in that blank haze it’s been in for weeks, just tossing a disinterested glance at his latest distracting intrusion before he heads back to work, but instead of going back to the page his eyes freeze. The way his face cycles through fifteen emotions in the span of a few seconds gives Sam the impression that Dean.exe is rebooting… and then Dean is Dean again, animated and lively and cheerful and he springs from his seat in a true gesture of energy.

He bounds down the two stairs and he’s at Cas’s side in a moment, one hand on the side of Cas’s face and the other on his elbow and their eyes are locked together as piercing green search ocean blue for some sign that this is real, that this is true, Cas came back to him. Sam and Jack exchange a look that tells Sam all he needs to know. Neither of them have missed the way Dean and Cas stand far too close to each other.

“Cas,” Dean chokes out, and his first utterance in how many weeks is hoarse and torn but packed with joy, so much that it seems to be exploding out of him at every turn. “I’m sorry,” he finishes, and Cas just nods, leans forward, and rests his forehead against Dean’s.

“I don’t want you to be,” he replies. “I didn’t even do it for you, Dean, I did it for me. I did it because knowing that you knew was the only thing that could make me that happy.”

Sam leans back against the wall, watching intently. Dean seems filled with a hope so sharp it shatters his skin and Sam is intrigued and entranced by it, confounded as he tries to determine what it is they could be discussing.

“Did you really—” Dean cuts himself off, glancing down before he meets Cas’s eyes again and continues. “Did you really think you couldn’t have me?”

Cas nods so slightly Sam’s eyes can barely register it. Dean shakes his head in fond exasperation and tilts his head back, his chin sliding forward and his lips slotting up against Cas’s.

Oh, Sam thinks. That’s what they were talking about.

When they pull away, Dean murmurs, just for Cas and for no one else, “you’ve had me for the last ten years.” His eyes are filled with tears, but for once in their lives Sam is certain these are happy ones. Castiel’s eyes brim as well, and Sam reaches for Jack, pulling him toward the happy couple in the center of the room.

Dean and Cas welcome them easily, with no semblance of argument, and the four of them stand there holding each other for a long time.

There’s still Chuck to defeat, but now they have a shot.