Disclaimer- Yeah, I wish.
Onesided Dean/Cas stream of consciousness fic. Spoilers for season 4, but no further.
Hope 'tis enjoyed.
He wasn't sure exactly when he'd lost it.
Hell, he wasn't sure exactly what it stood for anymore, be it his senses, his rationality or his very mind.
He thought it might have been the first time Cas kind-of smirked at him and glanced faux-innocently up to the night sky, tempting the wrath of Heaven to give Dean the information he thought might save his brother's life.
Or it might've been the first time he spread his wings, dark shadows against the sigil-covered wall of the warehouse they'd summoned him to, and stated in no uncertain terms that he'd been the one to save Dean from Hell and bring him back to life. His was the hand that fit perfectly to the raised scar on Dean's shoulder, the one that hadn't faded and disappeared like all his others after he was brought back.
It might even be the time when he was lying beaten in a hospital bed, and Cas still didn't try to lie to him. Sammy would have delayed his answer or withheld it altogether, but Castiel, in his gravelly voice that sounded almost as broken as Dean had felt, honestly said what every cell in Dean's body was begging to be a lie (he'd been the one, after everything his father had gone through; he was the one who broke and gave up everything to alleviate his own suffering).
And yet, didn't seem to hate him for it, regardless.
In the privacy of his mind, Dean debated what the greater sin was: whether that he'd broken the first seal and tortured countless souls in Hell, or that somewhere along the line, he'd apparently fallen in love with an angel of the Lord.
Praying helped, for a little while. So did the nameless women he took back to motel rooms for a night, only he'd find himself tracing the outlines of their shoulder blades and wondering why it felt like there should be something else there.
He knew what he was looking for, but Dean had always been an expert at deception- be it to himself, to his family or to the poor men and women he questioned relentlessly when hunting.
It was easiest to lie on the days right after Cas left. He could tell himself how much of a dick the angel was, how much all angels were, what with how they used humanity as their pawns and couldn't care less for the means so long as they secured the ends.
It got harder after the first week. That was when he began wondering when Cas would be back, if he was alright, if (with an internal shudder) he'd perished on the unknown battlefields just like he'd reported so many of his brothers and sisters doing.
After twelve days, Dean sometimes found himself listening to soft music on his Baby's stereo, when Sam was away or asleep. He'd hear the lyrics and the gentle chords, think about Castiel and wonder, did Cas think of him too? Or was he merely a tool to the angel, something used and then put away 'til the angel had need of him again?
He drove himself mad sometimes, just from the thinking. And then Castiel would return, and leave without a trace, and the cycle would start over and again.
When he knelt down in front of the heav'nly host and pledged his allegiance to their cause, it wasn't for anything noble, wasn't to protect the Earth or stop the apocalypse or any of that shit.
It was out of fear. Fear that someone else he'd come to care for would be taken from him, fear that the next time he saw Cas, he would be the one broken on the floor with those magnificent wings imprinted on the ground around him- if the angels bothered to inform him, that was, and didn't simply leave him hanging and wondering if Castiel would ever come see him again.
Only an angel could kill another angel. And at the end of the day, what was Lucifer but one fallen?
So Dean pledged, and he waited. He was 'called into service' and placed into a white room with garish furnishings and an angel that looked like Castiel but wasn't Cas. Wasn't the angel he'd got to know, and prayed to (and for, on occasion).
This angel acted like a chastised teenager and wouldn't meet Dean's eyes when he tried to catch his. He parroted the 'right' things to say and toed the 'company' line and seemed to forget every trace of a bond he might have ever forged with his charge.
(And Dean dared anyone to deny there was a bond between them. It might not be friendship and it certainly wasn't love on Castiel's side, but the angel defied Heaven for him. It was there.)
He'd shouted and he'd pleaded, hoping something would break through and the angel would figure it out; that they had to do something, that the others were wrong, and he shouldn't blindly follow them. Castiel had always been better using his own initiative. More feeling.
Dean preferred, like with everything else he sometimes couldn't avoid, not to think about how similar feeling sounded to falling.
Because while the latter was an immediate, final consequence, the former only seemed to be taking the long way around.