At night he dreams of blue eyes.
He dreams of blue eyes, cheeks lined with stubble, and a dirty trenchcoat, far too large for the frame it's wrapped awkwardly around.
It's getting to be an issue.
He works at his dad's shop, fixing cars with his uncle Bobby, and his dad watches over everything and makes sure that the shipments of parts come in on time and his mom waits at home for all of them, every Friday, for a family dinner. Sam comes home from college every couple of weeks, brings his girl Jessica with him.
Jessica is sweet, and sexy, and a lovely person, with a great smile.
But he doesn't dream of her.
It's not her that he sees when he falls asleep, and from his bed in a small house in Siox Falls, he dreams of a man with intense blue eyes, wide and focused on him.
That intensity sometimes gets translated into a different kind of dream, but more often he dreams of them fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, a gun in his hands, a blade of some kind in his.
But in the morning, Dean rolls over and there's no angel watching over him from a chair. There's no chair pulled up next to him, and his back isn't sore from spending his entire life on Motel beds.
When he arrives, the next Friday, at his mom's house, She pulls him off to the side to talk to him. She rests a hand on his cheek, smiles softly at him, and asks what's wrong.
She always knows that something is wrong with him before he breaks down and tells anyone.
He sighs, grabs a beer from the fridge and sits down when she drags him to a chair. It's either sit when she tells you to, or be pushed into a chair and held onto like a squirming baby.
"I've been having weird dreams lately."
He meets her eyes, remembering for a second the dreams he had where she had died.
"And they've kind of been...Beyond strange. Friggen' Angels and Demons and you and dad were dead. Sammy dropped out of college to hunt monsters with me, because I asked him to, and Jess died."
She looks at him with wide eyes, just for a second, then gesturing for him to continue.
He tells her the whole story. All the crap that he went through in his dreams, everything that had happened to him in them.
"Well..." she smiled, then started making coffee. "Sounds like something you might want to write, maybe publish a book."
He chuckled, nearly getting beer in his sinuses.
"One question, Honey."
He nodded, wiping at his mouth, wiping away a few droplets of beer.
"What was the Angel's name?"
He looked at his hands, twirling the beer bottle between them, then looked at the floor. "I called him Cas. Short for Castiel."
She smiled. "See if you can find him. Can't be too many Castiel's in any phonebook in the U.S. Try finding him and talking to him. It might just be God tryin' to talk to you."
X
His Uncle Bobby, had a few connections that stretched fairly far. Bobby's partner, Richard, had ones that stretched even further.
They'd found one Castiel E. Potestas, living and working in Illinois.
It had taken them both, together, a week, and he took a few days off. Packed up his stuff, shoved it all in the Impala his dad had passed over to him when he turned fifteen. When he opened the trunk, there was a disoriented moment where his brain tried to fill in the blank space with guns, and crosses and knives. Holy water jugs and bits of other things, jammed in around containers of gasoline and a box of lighters. He blinked, and it went away.
He shook his head, then started driving.
There was a chance that it wasn't him. Castiel had been an Angel in a human vessel, it was likely that he wasn't actually real.
Just that thought, that the man didn't exist, made his entire gut clench up and he felt like someone was ripping through it with claws.
He had to.
"Might go friggen' crazy if he doesn't." he muttered to himself.
X
He was wandering around the city, and there was no way he was going to find the guy. He didn't know work schedule, he didn't know if the buildings he was hanging around were the right ones.
He bumped into someone, and the manners his mom had smacked into his head reacted before he could even really think. He grabbed the other person, feeling them start to fall and he righted them before they could.
Next thing was, he grabbed the box from the man and made sure that nothing fell out of it.
An arm still around the guys arm and the other hand helping to steady the box he was just about to drop, he noticed a jacket, fluttering around the guy's shoulders.
And then he saw his face.
Well, actually, the first thing he saw was the eyes. The man had amazing blue eyes and they looked startled, surprised, and strangely pleased to see him.
His human bundle is still slouched over, still in his arms, and he knows the face that's looking at him.
He smiles, pulling him into a standing position and making sure that he's alright.
His mouth is moving, and he hears himself asking if this man is Castiel, but he doesn't need to be told that. Everything in this man is familiar to him, from the messy hair that wouldn't lay flat even under the force of water and gel, to the coat flapping softly and loose around his shoulders.
And then he hears what Castiel is saying, hears the words 'You're Dean.' coming from between the beautiful lips, and he nods.
"Winchester."
Castiel, his Castiel, his Angel and the one who saved him, tells him that he has a last name here, that beyond the world of dreams, there's something that ties him to this world.
"It sounds so friggen' weird for you to have a last name."
And then they're laughing and Dean can't help but cling to the man still standing in his arms and he isn't going to let go. He can't, not unless he wants to wake up and find out that this isn't the real world and all he's really doing now is dreaming.
He doesn't want to wake up and find that the world he lives in is the dream, and the monsters and Demons and Angels are real.
"I should probably..."
Castiel looks down, seemingly noticing for the first time that they're still holding each other and he blushes, the color spreading to the tips of his ears and making him look brightly colored and even more beautiful.
Dean steps back, only enough to put an inch between them and allow the other man to have a bubble and allow him to breathe.
"I just quit my job, I think it was so I could go find you."
Dean's eyebrows rose to his hairline. "I feel special. You quit your job so you could find me?"
Castiel blushed even more, breath coming out hitched and Dean thinks for half a second of the other kinds of dreams he has had of this man.
"I've been...Dreaming about you for a long time now. A couple of years have me at your mercy."
He covered his mouth, eyes wide.
Dean laughed and took the box from him. "How about we go get some food? Talk there, get to know each other."
Castiel nodded, still blushing. "I think I'd like that."
The smaller man pulled his trenchcoat around himself tighter, walking at Dean's side.
Dean couldn't help but smile and grab the sleeve that was hanging closest to him.
