Okay, I felt bad about leaving you guys with such a cliffhanger, so here's another chapter the same day. Grazie mille to my latest reviewers: OverlordOkami, cherishiskisa, No pen names left, Molly-Myles, Akemi713, AshSpark, SilentHowler, ijustwatchthebees, and dylaila!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dean unlocked the door and tentatively pushed it open, pocketing his keys. "Cas? Don't be mad, I brought my brother home. Sam. He wants to meet you." The first thing he noticed was that the television was off, which caused a small, silly surge of pride to blossom in him. The guy was a fast learner. "Cas?" He wasn't in the main room, living room or kitchen area. Dean ducked down the hall, rapped gently on the bathroom door before pushing it open––empty––and peeked into both his own bedroom and the walk-in closet across the hall––both empty too.
With a mounting sense of panic, he returned to the main room to find Sam standing there waiting patiently for him instead of helping to search. For some reason that set off a spark of anger in Dean. "What the hell are you doing just standing there?" he barked. "The guy's missing!" A sudden thought struck him, and he pulled open the back door and stepped out onto the deck. Castiel didn't appear to be anywhere in the backyard, but Dean did a quick perimeter check anyway, even looking in the storage area under the deck. No sign of him. Dean was really starting to get agitated now. Back in the house, he found Sam still waiting, wearing a small sad frown that Dean had never seen before on his brother's face. "What's wrong with you, man?" he snapped. "Why aren't you saying anything?"
"Dean," Sam said gently. "There's nobody here."
"Yeah, obviously!" Dean growled. "Castiel is gone, and you're acting like you don't give a shit."
Sam took a deep breath. "Are you sure that he was here in the first place?"
Dean had been about to make another sharp remark, but these words cut him off short. "Wh––what?" he asked in disbelief. "You think––you think I'm making him up?"
Sam shrugged, that strange little frown still in place. "I'm not saying I don't believe you. Not necessarily. It's just... I know you've been working really hard lately, and... maybe you're stressing yourself out too much. Maybe you should take some time off, or, I don't know, just cut back a––"
"What the FUCK?!" Dean balled his fists in incredulous rage. "You actually think I'm going bonkers and imagining all this shit? You––" He cut himself off, an idea having just struck him. Without another word to Sam, he turned and headed down the hallway to his room, pulling open his closet door and beginning a feverish search through the old clothes piled on the floor at the back of the closet. He could hear Sam's footsteps reluctantly coming down the hall and pausing at the open door of his room.
"Dean? What are you doing?" His voice was very small.
Dean snorted, but didn't answer. He was looking for the clothes he'd given Castiel to wear. And sure enough, they weren't there. They were nowhere. He let out a shuddering breath and stayed crouched on the floor for a moment, his head in his hands. Then he stood up and turned to face Sam, using all his effort to keep his voice calm and steady. "One ripped Led Zep t-shirt, one pair of jeans, and one pair of green boxers."
Sam's eyebrows twitched minutely in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"Those are the clothes I gave Cas to wear. And they're not here. Still think I'm making it all up?"
Sam didn't look convinced. "Dean..." He let out a short sigh. "Just try to see things from my point of view for a minute. You call me up sounding totally freaked out, tell me a story about a guy who crashes into your backyard out of nowhere and starts doing magic and says he's an angel, and then you bring me here to see him and he's nowhere, and the only proof you have of his existence is the absence of the clothes you say you gave him? It's not..." He huffed out air in frustration. "I'm just saying, you're not exactly making a watertight case for yourself."
"Yeah, well, you're in law school! This is real life!" Dean snapped back. "This is real shit that's happening to me. It's not inside my head. It's out there, in the real world, and I gotta say I'm surprised that you find it so unlikely that the guy might have flown the coop!"
Now that he'd said it, the logic of these words struck him as well, but with a slightly more painful resonance. Why should Castiel want to stay with him at all? Dean had been pretty naive, expecting that the guy would just sit tight and wait for him. It wasn't like they were friends or anything. And Dean had even said to him last night 'Don't get too comfortable, you're not staying.' Was it then such a surprise that Castiel had up and left him? He'd probably thought that Dean had left first. Maybe he hadn't understood Dean's words after all, and had thought he'd been abandoned for good. A sick weight settled in Dean's stomach. He should never have left Castiel alone this morning. And he definitely shouldn't have called Sam. He had no idea why he'd thought that would be a good idea.
"You know what? I think it's time for you to leave," he said coldly, giving Sam a steady look. "If you're just gonna come here with your––your preconceived ideas that I must be batshit crazy, if you're not gonna give me even the slightest benefit of the doubt, well, there's no reason for me to put up with that."
Sam looked like he was about to argue, teetering nervously in the doorway to Dean's room, but then he bit his lip and turned to go without a word. Dean waited until he'd heard the front door swing shut behind his brother, and tried to ignore the pang of misery that hit him right in the chest as he heard the soft hum of that damn Prius starting up in the driveway.
The day passed with agonizing slowness. Dean couldn't settle into doing anything. He went to wash the dishes, but they were all clean. The pool cover had been fixed, of course, albeit in a rather creative manner, so there was nothing he had to do with it. For the heck of it––and obstinately refusing to acknowledge the possibility that he might be doubting himself––he dug through the hall closet, just in case the clothes he remembered giving Castiel might turn out to be in there. They weren't, of course. Dean took a long shaky breath, and suddenly felt very alone. He wished he could go back to the auto shop, just turn off his mind and spend the day doing hard physical work. But he'd called in sick and it would be too weird to show up now.
Eventually, he ended up doing what he always did: numbing his emotions with beer and bad daytime TV. By mid-afternoon he'd worked his way through most of a six-pack and was having trouble keeping his eyes focused on the screen. He had no idea what he was even watching anymore. Fuck it, he thought, I'm technically on a sick day anyway... And he gave up fighting off sleep, despite it only being half-past three.
