Hey... so. I wrote a thing. New fandom and all that. Yeah. And I've only been gone for like... a long time. So... hi.

Disclaimer: Oh, the things I would do if I owned this show...

It's really no surprise to Dean that Cas can draw. Really, it's not. He's a friggin' Angel of the Lord. He was probably around when God Himself decided to spend a week crafting humanity and all the twists and turnpikes that went along with that. Cas has seen it all. He knows what every bit of the universe looks like, he probably has it all committed to memory. So, of course he can draw it.

And he does.

Still, Dean is often astounded by the things that Cas can draw. Swirling vortexes, stormy clouds, intricate feathers. There is nothing that man cannot depict with scary accuracy when handed a pencil and paper. It's often helpful in their line of work when Cas is trying to describe something they need to find and/or kill. Castiel can work wonders of his own on the back of a receipt or on the corner of a napkin.

It's the other things that Cas can draw that worry Dean. After his Fall, Cas was unhappy to find that he needed to sleep after a long day. This was no trouble to Dean, he was only too happy to pull Cas up against him in bed and let his arm drape heavily over the angel's side and lose consciousness for a few hours. But for Cas, with the appearance of the need to sleep, came dreams as well. And with his dreams, all the guilt and hardship he had endured over the millennia came crashing down into his subconscious, disturbing his sleep.

Sometimes Dean would awake to find Cas hunched over a piece of paper at the desk in the motel room, pencil skittering across the page, his face set in concentration. Dean would pad over to the desk and lean over his lover's shoulder and scrape his stubbled cheek across Cas's. Tonight's picture was different. Twistedly beautiful faces greeted him from the paper. Horns and claws and teeth everywhere, darkness unbound. Dean felt his mouth twist into a worried line as he gazed at the picture. He glanced sideways at Cas who was refusing to look at him.

"Whatcha drawin' there, Cas?" The fallen angel worked his jaw for a few seconds, weighing what to say. Dean already knew what the picture depicted. He had seen it himself. He was curious as to why is was plaguing Cas.

"Lucifer." He answered quietly. Never meekly, Cas and "meek" should never be synonymous. But his voice held a quiet sort of weariness that tugged at Dean's heart. Dean nodded and patted Cas's shoulder, jerking his thumb in the direction of the shared bed. Cas didn't need direction and switched off the desk light before following Dean to bed. As he slid in next to the hunter, Cas spoke,

"I apologize if I woke you with the light." Dean shrugged, turning on his side to face Cas.

"You out of bed, that's what woke me." Cas turned up the corner of his mouth and inched a bit closer on the bed. "You still havin' nightmares, Cas?" The fallen angel nodded solemnly after a brief hesitation. Dean gazed at him for a second before reaching out and pulling Cas towards him with a hand gripping his t-shirt. "What are they about?" Cas looked away at a point over Dean's shoulder.

"When I… came to fetch you out of Hell-" Dean smirks slightly, "It was not a… particularly easy journey… Hell was bound and determined to keep you." Dean nodded slightly, urging him to continue. "The demons tried everything they could to keep you from me and they were… ruthless in their attempts. There's a reason my wings are black, Dean. They tortured me every bit as much as they tortured you. I never had a problem with it before because I did not sleep. I had no time to consider what would have happened were I… unsuccessful in my venture."

"You mean… if you hadn't yanked me out." Cas nodded. "What, you… have nightmares about having to leave me there?" Cas flinched and Dean runs his hand up Cas's side to soothe him.

"Not only that, but fighting through every single one of those bastards only to find that you are… already gone."

"They don't let you die in Hell, Cas. You know that."

"Not in my dreams, I don't." Cas pulls away to lie on his back. Dean stares at his profile before shifting to hover over him. Propped up on his forearms, Dean stares down at Cas.

"Hey. I'm here. Okay? It's alright, everything's okay. I promise." He leans down to kiss Cas and the angel responds by gently rolling him over and pressing him into the mattress.

The other things Cas draws don't nearly make Dean want to kill something demonic as Cas's visions of Lucifer do. Sometimes Dean will roll over to see Cas sitting in an armchair that has been pulled up next to the bed. Cas will have the pencil he always seems to carry and whatever scrap of paper he could find. Napkins, receipts, and take out bags have all been turned into Cas's sketch pad. Often, Cas will give Dean a small smile before going back to his sketch, leaving Dean to sit up and lean over to get a glimpse of what has Cas so enraptured. Very seldom, it's a bird or something not-Dean. Cas has drawn Dean many times asleep, awake, from memory and sometimes from life, laughing with Sam, bent over the Impala. Most of the time, Cas will get distracted with something else and leave his drawings. Dean makes sure to pick up every single one and slots them in a random page of the journal that makes the trip to every motel room and every hunt he's ever been on. They might be disposable to Cas, but Dean likes the fact that Cas can capture a spare moment of peace when he finds one.

So he keeps them.

Dean has no idea where Cas found a marker. Unless he mojo'd one out of thin air, which he seriously doubts, Sam and Dean don't carry Sharpies around. Still, it's undeniably a marker he feels against his skin one morning, dragging him out of sleep. He swipes at his face with his other hand, careful not to disturb Cas's work. He mumbles sleepily at the angel.

"Cas… what are you doing?" The angel looks up, slightly startled.

"Have a look." Dean raises his arm. Decorating his wrist is a mind-bendingly intricate pattern of things that definitely don't go together but work all the same. Thorns and devil's traps. Enochian sigils and Latin chants. All twisting around and around his arm in a beautiful spiral.

"I… wow." Cas smiles his stupidly adorable lopsided grin.

"I thought you might look attractive covered in ink. I was correct." Dean is still lost, tracing the symbols with his eyes, but he still smirks at Cas.

"Covered in ink? Someone got a tattoo fetish they wanna tell me about?" Cas's smile grows wider and he caps the marker, tossing it over his shoulder. He clambers back onto the bed and huddles into Dean's side, watching the hunter turn his wrist over and over.

"Hardly. Any tattoo you could get, I could think of a hundred better images for your body." Dean turns his head.

"Maybe I should get someone to draw some designs for me." Cas shrugs and Dean chuckles and everything is silent again.

This would be a good time to review. Riiiiiiiiiight... now.