After Dean has had a particularly rough day, he always ends up stumbling drunkenly to Castiel's cabin. Wordlessly, they end up propped up against the back wall trying to make sense of the stars, with their fingers interlaced as if they have never been separate. Things are slightly easier to stomach this way.

When the weight of all that has happened becomes too much for Cas to bear, and the little pot of white pills aren't quite enough, it's always Dean he breaks down in front of. Because although Dean can only ever offer him empty words, he delivers them with fingers curled around his arm and warm breath in his hair that makes hope seem not so impossibly far out of reach.

When Castiel finally kisses Dean, Dean lets out something halfway between a laugh and a sob into Cas's neck, who squeezes his eyes closed and shivers a little bit, because its still cold out. They've been at the camp for about a month. Happiness is spread thin. Maybe thats what they're looking for in each other. If it is, there's nothing to find. But it still feels right and it makes the sharp edges of everything a little bit softer, so they do it anyway. It's disappointing, really. Dean has imagined and re-imagined this in a thousand different ways since they first met, but one thing always stays the same; its set in some unattainable utopian future where all of his sins have been forgiven and everything is okay. Instead, he has never felt more monstrous, and everything is pretty fucking far from okay. But whatever. He is no longer concerned with what he does and does not deserve. How could he be, when he has seen so many good men and women die? There is no longer any black and white, just unchanging shades of grey, never a right choice, just the least horrific one, and so Dean will be damned if he doesn't enjoy the tiny fragments of light wherever he can find them. And right now he is finding them in the ex-angels tired eyes and the smell of his skin and the way that he says his name, somewhere between a moan and a prayer. It only makes sense, really. Dean is wrecked. He needs somewhere to pour his despair, and of course it has to be into the empty shell of the angel who had once dragged him from hell, even if he's so pumped full of chemicals that its a wonder he can feel anything at all half the time. But he can feel Dean. And that's enough.

Everything is still horrific. It probably will be until long after they're dead, ripped apart by the croatoan, or worse, infected and put down like rabid dogs. Everything is still horrific. But for a while, they breathe a little easier.