Home was where you could take your shoes off.

Dean didn't like having his shoes off; it made him anxious. Since his first pair of steel-toed boots at the age of ten, he'd even slept in his shoes. Lisa had often teased him - "take your shoes off and stay awhile" - but even then, something deep within him, nestled within his spine, told him that he should be prepared to run. The shoes stayed on. He didn't want to run. He just wanted to be ready.

It was evident in his laces - stiff, kinked where the knot was, making the laces curl in strange ways in the rare moments they were untied. There was a decent amount of mud crusting up those laces. Blood, too - probably all manner of other unsavory things that a spray with a hose couldn't remove, and would remain until the shoes or the laces wore out - whichever came first.

Those shoes were by the door right now. They'd been by the door since just before dark last night - had had time to grow cold. They weredownstairs, and he was upstairs. With bare feet. He still wore jeans and a t-shirt - some habits were damn near impossible to break - but the foot that stuck out from under the sheets had nothing between it and the cool morning air wafting in through the window.

The other foot was lazily nudging against Castiel's calf. Not to wake him up, though he was beginning to stir, but more as reassurance that he was still there. One sleepy blue eye fluttered open and met Dean's in a groggy smile. Dean returned it, and shifted closer to feel Castiel's body heat radiate under the sheets. At the moment, he couldn't think of anything that could make him run away from this.

Home was where you could take your shoes off.