The Taste of Sulphur
The hunt tonight was fairly easy, as they tended to be these days. A straggler werewolf loose in a small town in Wisconsin that Dean had managed to take out quickly enough on his own. Castiel typically stands back on nights like this, because Dean looks himself when he's doing his job. Opportunities to save good people and hunt bad things have been few and far between since the closing of the gates of Hell, and he feels his best friend deserves whatever semblance of normality suits him. Castiel hasn't felt much volition to involve himself with bloodshed in a long time anyway.
They sit in the impala now. Dean tiredly, but happily, fumbles down the side of his door before grasping his calloused fingers around an audiotape and pushes it into the deck, and Castiel stares out of his passenger window and into the dark while more ambiguous classic rock creeps from the speakers. Dean talks about calling in on Sam on his way home. Castiel nods and gives a non-committal reply along the lines of Sam probably being happy to see his brother in one piece, and Dean pretends to ignore the slump in his best friends shoulders and his faraway gaze as he stares out into the dark rushing past them.
It's not always like this. Castiel is still his best friend; strong willed, essentially good hearted, and hopelessly ignorant to popular culture. He's still Dean's brother; content to abruptly visit him and keep him company on the occasional hunting trip, happy to sit in bars and drink beer with him while he himself eyes the bargirls, happier still to drop in on him and Sam and see Sam live the life he always wanted.
And then there are times, such as now, where a heavy weight seems to settle on the angel's shoulders and drags him down to depths that Dean can't pull him from. His face remains impassive, not betraying a thing, but Dean feels it rolling from him in waves. There's a suffering there that he knows Castiel pushes down and pretends doesn't exist, a pain that resurfaces like a fresh wound and claws away at the surface of his mind. He sees it in him whenever he catches Cas looking at the thorned roses growing at the bottom of Sam's driveway, or whenever they help a troubled nurse dressed in blue hospital scrubs; whenever they pass by smiling brunette girls on city streets. It's not the guilt Dean sees in himself daily or the anger he used to see etched in Sam's shaking hands.
Castiel's eyes are sad. There is an unspeakable grief in them so profound, so tender, that Dean is afraid that if he ever so much as mentions the reason for that sorrow, Cas will break into thousands of irreparable pieces.
So he drives on in an understanding silence. Tomorrow, Cas will drink a beer with him, will help him out with leads, will quirk that slight, almost human smile when they roll up to Sam's house and the three of them are in the one same place again. And for another while, he can be happy with his two brothers and not have to worry about either of them being killed anymore.
The copper of the werewolf's blood on Dean's jacket clings to the air inside the impala, and he has no way of knowing of the bitter taste it leaves in Castiel's mouth, and how achingly he misses the slight taste of sulphur on his tongue.
A/N: I'm gutted. I'm so gutted. Like no way.