Now
Dean wakes up on Saturday morning to the beam of light shining through the blinds of his window. It burns his eyes and makes him think he's going to die right then and there from the intense feeling of his head pounding. It hurts to the extent that he imagines his brain is being split open on an operating table without being put under anesthesia.
Sam walks into the room a moment later holding a glass of water in one hand and a few tablets, probably aspirin, in the other.
"What the hell happened last night?" Dean's groggy tone asks, and Sam looks at him in a way that says, you don't want to know.
Dean considers this for a moment, asking himself what he could have done to get a response like that from the boy who doesn't have one single secretive bone in his body, as he swallows the tablets dry, chasing them down with a large gulp of water.
"So, it was really that bad, huh?" Dean inquires, setting the water glass on his bedside table and looking over at his brother, who's already half way out of the door.
"Seriously, Dean, you really don't want to go there." Sam warns him, brushing his lengthy hair out of his face, but Dean still can't help but wonder.
Dean's messing around with his phone during his shift at the bar on Sunday night when his thumb fumbles and accidently hits his call logs app. That's when he notices something… interesting, if not frightening. Typed out right there in black and white, it says he picked up a call from 'my baby Cas' on Friday night, or he guesses the proper term would be Saturday morning, from 2:18 am to 2:23 am.
Dean's mind automatically begins to whirl at the number of humiliating and horrible and downright inappropriate things that his drunken mouth could have muttered through the phone to Castiel in those six short minutes. It could have been Remember that time we decided to bake a pie, you know, because I love pie, and it melted? It melted, Cas! Do you rememeber that? I remember that or I hate you, you know that? No, I'm lying. I don't hate you. I hate me for telling you to leave. I love you. Or Hey, Cas, you were wearing the trench coat I bought you today. Did you know that? That made me so happy… and horny. Don't tell me I said that though. I might get jealous. He's not going to lie to himself and pretend they're things he doesn't want to say to Castiel, because they are, but it would help him to know what, if any of them, he actually did say. He doesn't know how he'll find out, because, truthfully, he doesn't have the guts to call Castiel and ask him right out, so he figures he'll have to coax it out of Sam. It shouldn't be too hard, he tells himself, After all, the dweeb did forget to delete the evidence.
Then
Dean doesn't see Castiel at all on Thursday. He's not in the library in the morning, as he has been every other day of the week. He's not at the table at lunch that has slowly started to become their own little oasis. He's not at his locker between second, fourth, fifth, and seventh periods, when Dean has been stopping by since fifth on Monday to blabber with Castiel about how Mrs. Johnson assigned way too much homework or how that stoner kid that's in their seventh period class, aka the only one they share throughout the day, finally got busted.
Castiel's absence upsets Dean more than he's willing to admit to himself, so after school he heads straight to Castiel's house as he waits for Sam to get out of one of the student council meetings he only attends to capture the attention of some girl named Jessica that he's been falling all over.
Dean cuts the Impala's engine and walks slowly up to the ornate house, standing there staring at the large wooden doors for a moment before lifting the golden knocker and dropping it once. He'd been expecting to wait there for a while but then the door opens to reveal a young girl, probably around thirteen or fourteen, with pale skin and long auburn hair twisted into a side braid. She looks up at Dean through her lashes, giving him a sweet smile.
"Why hello there, Dean Winchester." She greets as her hand waves him inside, so Dean obliges and pushes the door open farther to step through while taking his first look around the place.
He didn't know what expect of the inside of Castiel's house, but he probably wasn't expecting this. Aside from the ornate, ivory spiral staircase leading to the second floor of the large home, the place is homey; the walls are a shade of honey brown that matches the brick of the fireplace in the corner. It's neighbored by a large liquor cabinet with an L-shaped sofa directly across from it in the center of the room, a large plasma-screen television plastered to the wall in front of it. The girl watches him the whole time, and then he looks down at her and she speaks up again.
"I'm Anna, Castiel's sister." He takes her hand when she offers it, giving it one firm shake before releasing and he almost tells her his name until he realizes that she somehow already knows that.
"You know who I am?" he asks the girl as he comes back into his mind and she laughs like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"Of course I do. The whole school is abuzz about you and how you 'had so much promise' until you decided to 'shack up' with my brother." She says the last part with a note of disgust and that earns her a few brownie-points in Dean's book, because he's never much cared for the labels and the cliques that come along with high school and he appreciates others who share that belief.
"Uh, so… is Cas here? He wasn't at school today so I just figured I'd stop by to check up on him." He asks
"Yeah, he's upstairs. Said something pretty emo-ish about wanting to be left alone to die because, and I quote, 'The world is a lonely dark abyss that will eat us all alive anyway'." She tells him, rolling her eyes dramatically, but then she sees Dean's worried expression and throws him a comforting smile.
"He'll be fine, really. It's no big deal; just something he does every few weeks." She pauses and then begins to whisper as if she's not supposed to know the rest: "His therapist says it's due to emotional trauma." And she looks down to the floor, pausing once again and then spurting out one last bit.
"…but I won't tell you that part. It's not really my story to tell." Anna then nods to the stair well, telling him to listen for the 'depressing music' before ducking into another room.
Dean hears Coldplay seeping out from the left hallway as soon as he takes the last step of the staircase. …because I'm gonna buy this place and see it burn, do back the things it did to you in return… He follows the beat all the way to the last door of the wide hall, and takes a deep breath before knocking loudly. The door doesn't open after he stands there for a good two minutes, so he knocks twice more, just as loudly. He's lucky that this time it was on the decrescendo because it's obvious that he's heard by the "I thought I told you that I want to be alo-" that begins, coming closer to the door, before it stops as the door is pulled open to reveal a disheveled looking Castiel standing there.
"-Oh. Dean." He reads Castiel's lips, because he can't hear him over the stereo's volume. Castiel leaves the door ajar to pick up a remote and turn down the song that's blasting, so that all that's left is a quiet said I'm gonna buy this place and see it go, stand here beside me, baby, watch the orange glow… encompassing the air inside the room. Castiel comes back to open the door fully and Dean walks in, his ears still ringing. The clutter and chaos that he sees seems so unlike the boy he's gotten to know over the last few days that he has to ask Castiel if this is his room. He only realizes that that may have been rude when he sees a blush arise on Castiel's cheeks.
"I-I didn't mean it like that." He defends, and gazes at his friend, who looks like he probably hasn't slept since the last time Dean saw him, which worries Dean even more than he already is despite Anna's attempt to lessen it.
"It is… I am fine." Castiel says, but Dean can tell by the way he lets his eyes fall to the hard wood of his bedroom floor that he doesn't mean it, so he grabs the shorter boy's shoulders and walks him to take a seat on the foot of his bed and pulls out the black computer chair from it's place at Castiel's desk, sitting in it before scooting himself over until he's right in front of his friend.
"Cas, don't take this the wrong way, but… no you're not. I can see that much with my own two eyes." Dean pauses, grabbing Castiel's hand and holding onto it.
So I'm gonna buy a gun and start a war, if you can tell me something worth fighting for…
"Look, I know I haven't known you for long, but you're the best friend I have and I care about you, okay? I do, so I'm here for you if you want to talk about… whatever. I'm here if you don't want to talk, too. We can just sit here together and drown our thoughts with Coldplay if you want. Just as long as you know you're not alone." Castiel looks up at him then and Dean sees a tear roll down his cheek. They sit there in silence like that for a long moment and Castiel tugs Dean over to sit next to him on the bed, snuggling himself in as Dean pulls the smaller boy into his chest.
Honey, all the movements you're starting to make, see me crumble and fall on my face…
"Thank you, Dean. I am really grateful to have you, but… I do not think that I am ready to talk about this yet." Castiel whispers, sniffling between every other word as his tears fall into Dean's black ACDC t-shirt.
"-but I think I could take you up on your offer of drowning out our thoughts with Coldplay." He says after a beat with the smallest hint of a smile.
So that's what they do; Dean holds Castiel and they sit there together, letting A Rush of Blood to the Head entrance them until Dean watches his friend fall asleep with tear-stained cheeks in his embrace.
