Dean got out of Purgatory, thanks to Benny. Cas let go, but Dean has never liked thinking about that. So now he's laying in some crappy motel, just like the old times, a twin bed away from his brother. Sam's snoring lightly, and he keeps murmuring something about that damn dog that he put in Dean's car. Dean seethes about it all over again. You don't take joints from a guy named Don, and there's no dogs in the car! He lays there, just staring at the ceiling, every instinct telling him Look around, stay alert! You fall asleep, you die! He wonders how long it will take him to re-acclimate to not being in Purgatory, not being in a 360 degree warzone. Despite his wishes, he slowly drifts off into troubled sleep.

Where's the angel?

The same question, the only question, asked over and over. Nothing else mattered. His angel was missing. So Dean kept hunting, kept demanding.

Then one day, one of those monsters actually knew. And you know what? Dean believed him. A day's journey, and Dean saw his angel. His crouched and defeated angel. He told Cas that they were getting out. Something in Dean, something he pushed back and ignored, knew that Cas was hiding something, some ulterior motive.

So Benny opened up the escape hatch. Started to pull himself and Dean out, with Dean holding on to his angel. Unfortunately for Dean, Cas let go. As he was left alone at the beginning of their journey in Purgatory, his angel was leaving him again at the end. Castiel was doing it -all of it- for Dean, just to keep the monsters away from his human, the charge that he had grown too close to.

Dean dreamed of those moments every night, woke up every morning after hearing Castiel scream his name.

One morning, Dean was walking out of their motel room, about to go investigate their latest lead. He made sure the door was locked, and turned to walk towards his Baby. Instead, standing in his way, was Castiel, his angel.

Castiel looked confused, and immediately started apologizing.

"Dean, I am sorry. I was only trying to keep the monsters away from you. The Leviathan-"

Castiel was cut off by an uppercut from Dean. Startled, and of course unharmed, the angel just stared as Dean cradled his hand.

"You child," he growled. "Don't you understand? We killed Leviathan together in this world, do you think that we couldn't have handled it together in Purgatory?"

"Dean, I-"
"No, Cas. You don't know what it was like. You don't know how it felt when you let go of me. You may have thought that you were protecting me, but all I saw was another person walking out. I was losing one of the best friends I've ever had, yet again. Damn it, Cas, I spent months worrying about you. Plagued with the thought that you were stuck there, and I couldn't open the door to get you out. And now you just.. You just..."

Dean's eyes fill, and he lunges forward, catching his angel into a bone-breaking hug. Castiel doesn't know how to respond, but instincts tell him that this is different from the time Dean hugged him in Purgatory, so Castiel's hands tentatively wrap around Dean's back.

Dean burrows his face into the shoulder of his angel's trenchcoat, trying and failing to hold back tears of relief.

"Cas, you bastard. Don't you ever do that to me again, you understand me?"
"I understand, Dean."