NOTE: This is going to be sad, then it's going to be sadder, but I promise it'll have a happy ending.

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Keeper Of The Gloom

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Sam is deep, deep in sleep when a loud noise drags him back into consciousness. He comes around groggily, his brain fighting to keep his eyes closed, and grumbles as he scrapes a palm over his face. He squints blearily at the alarm clock on the bedside table and barely makes out that it's 2:17 in the morning. To his right, Eileen is snoring loudly, her arm thrown over her forehead.

"You're lucky you can't hear yourself," he mutters grumpily as he lets his head fall back onto the pillow.

A moment later, the noise repeats and Sam's eyes snap all the way open as he realizes Eileen's snoring isn't what woke him. He sits up immediately, pushing the blankets aside, and quickly leaves their bedroom.

Moonlight is thrown across the hallway, slatted through the window blinds. Sam's bare feet cross the carpeted floor to Dean's room. He pokes his head through the door and finds Dean starfished in his bed, illuminated by the Spongebob-shaped night light plugged into the wall, pajamas bottoms pushed halfway up his legs. Sam lets out a small breath of relief – Dean is fine. He closes the door quietly.

He barely has another second to wonder what the noise was when it happens again – a frantic pounding from the front door. Sam descends the staircase as the doorbell lights flicker in both the upstairs and downstairs halls. In the entryway he flips the switch for the porch light and opens the door.

Cas is standing there, rumpled and haloed by moths fluttering to the light hanging over his head. "Sam, I—" he starts, his tone almost desperate, but he stops short and looks over Sam from head to foot. "Did I wake you?"

"...It's 2:30am, Cas," Sam states flatly. This had better be an emergency, he wants to say. He has to be at work first thing in the morning.

Castiel blinks, then takes in his surroundings like he's noticing where he is for the first time. The moths swarming the porch light, the streetlamps along the quiet suburban street, Sam's pajamas and bare feet. "I…" Cas says in a heavy exhale, his shoulders falling. "I'm so sorry, Sam. I didn't realize what time it was."

Sam frowns, his gut twisting abruptly. Cas's eyes are reddened slightly, and past his shoulder the Impala sits crookedly at the end of the driveway behind Eileen's sedan.

"I'm sorry," Cas repeats, turning to go. "I'll come back. Tomorrow or something."

"Whoa, whoa, hey," Sam quickly stops him, stepping out onto the deck. He reaches for Cas's shoulder. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

Cas swallows, his cheeks flushing in embarrassment even in the moth-speckled light. He lifts his hands, and Sam realizes for the first time that he's holding something.

It's a cassette, the tape spilling from it in a tangled, kinked-up mess that crinkles in Cas's fingers. The label on it has faded from overuse, the Sharpie barely legible anymore, but Sam doesn't need to look closer to know it says Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx.

"I've been trying to fix it for hours," Cas says, and suddenly Sam doesn't care at all what time it is.

He sighs, nods once, and takes the tape and all its innards from Cas's hands. "Come on. I'll put on some coffee."

Cas ends up being the one to make the coffee instead while Sam sits at the kitchen table and begins to painstakingly untangle the tape bit by bit. He's retrieved a desk lamp from his office and angled it over the tape so that he can see better, peering at the jumble so closely that the backs of his eyes ache.

Cas slides a steaming mug over to him, then drops heavily into the chair opposite, his nose in his own cup. "I'm sorry," he says again, calmer now. "I know it's – silly."

"Don't worry about it, Cas," Sam replies, not looking up from his work. He blinks a few times and rubs at his eyes with a knuckle.

"You all right?" Cas asks. "Are your eyes bothering you?"

Sam makes a noncommittal sound in his throat as he untwines a particularly twisted stretch of tape. "Eileen's been after me to go to the optometrist," he answers. "She thinks I need glasses."

"Do you?"

"Mm, probably."

Cas takes a long, quiet sip from his cup. Then, "Thank you."

Sam pauses and looks up at that. Cas's eyes are still a bit red around the edges, and he definitely hasn't shaved in at least a couple of days. The flannel he threw on over his t-shirt is wrinkled, like it's been sitting in a laundry hamper for a while. Given how exhausted he looks, Sam supposes it's a miracle Cas made it the four-hour drive from Lebanon to Bonner Springs without crashing the Impala.

"Are you still seeing Mia Vallens?" Sam asks abruptly, though he tries to keep his voice gentle.

Cas blinks, blue eyes greyed in the light of the kitchen. "Yes. Once a month."

"And – is it helping?" Sam isn't sure if he should be asking Cas about therapy, or if Cas is comfortable discussing it with him, but showing up at 2:30am in a panic because of an unspooled mixtape isn't exactly a picture of perfect mental health. He hasn't seen Cas have a bad day like this in a long time.

Cas shifts in his seat, fingers tightening around his cup.

Sam refocuses his gaze on the mess in front of him. "You don't have to talk about it," he amends.

He worries about Cas sometimes. It's been a few years, and most of the time Cas seems okay. He seems happy, even. He shows up for all the family events – birthdays and anniversaries, and he even drove over for Dean's first day of preschool last month – but Sam still wonders if Cas continuing to live in the bunker was the best idea. As frequent as their visits might be, and however often he might see Jody and Donna and a whole host of other hunters, Sam can't imagine that Cas doesn't get lonely.

When Dean was killed, it made Sam almost immediately want to put hunting and everything that goes along with it behind him. But Cas sank deeper into it, throwing himself full force into case after case after case. And for nearly two years Sam went along with it because it was the only thing Cas was truly interested in doing. Then when Eileen got pregnant, Sam finally made the choice to leave hunting entirely, and Cas declined his invitation to do the same.

Sam wonders if Cas ever wants to take him up on it now.

"I had an appointment with Mia last week," Cas finally says softly, his gaze staring somewhere over Sam's shoulder. "I drove up to meet with her in person."

"Okay." Sam takes a sip from his mug, waiting for Cas to elaborate. There's a nearly ten-hour commute between the bunker and Mia's practice, so Sam knows Cas usually has these appointments through videochat.

Then, realization strikes him deep. Oh.

"She shifted for you."

Cas clears his throat, scratching at the back of his head. "Yeah," he says. "We'd been working up to it for a while, so I brought some of Dean's clothes and…" He trails off with a slight shake of his head. "I don't know. I thought I was ready."

Sam swallows, cold settling into the pit of his stomach. "It was always bound to hurt, Cas."

Cas's mouth twitches to the side. "Honestly, I think it might have hurt more because I knew it wasn't real." He takes a deep breath and leans back in his chair, draping one leg over the other and staring into the contents of his cup like he can't quite bear to meet Sam's eye. "In any case, I've been kind of off-kilter since then. And then this happened—" He gestures to the pile of tape. "—and I suppose I lost my mind a little."

Sam gives Cas what he hopes is a sympathetic smile as he works out a knot in the tape. "Well, I'll do my best."

"Thanks. I didn't wake Eileen or Dean, did I?"

"Nah," Sam waves off his concern. "We don't have the doorbell lights in our bedroom. And as for Dean, the kid sleeps through everything."

Cas snorts. "That is true."

"Last week, I went to pick him up from pre-school and they told me he didn't wake up from his nap even though the fire alarm went off."

That coaxes a genuine laugh from Cas's chest, and relief settles over Sam's shoulders. Despite the exhaustion still pressed into the corners of Cas's face, he's starting to look a bit more like himself.

A moment later, there's a crinkly pop. The tape snaps.

"Shit," says Sam.

Cas doesn't move for a moment, just stares resignedly at the broken ends of the tape in Sam's hands. He lets out a slow breath, then rakes his fingers through his hair and sets his coffee cup on the table.

"I'm sorry, Cas. I mean, cassettes were outdated thirty years before Dean even made this for you. I—" Sam pauses, swallows. "I don't think we can replicate it."

"That's okay," Cas replies, his voice only slightly above a whisper. "I knew it was a long shot anyway."

Sam scrambles for a solution. "Look, um. Maybe if you write down what songs were on the tape and in what order, I can download the same playlist to a flash drive for you. You can put it on your laptop."

He knows Cas definitely doesn't have Spotify or Apple Music, and he doubts Cas even has a CD player at the bunker. Dean's resistance to new technologies was one of the many characteristics Cas had adopted as his own as he slowly began to prefer the company of humans to angels, all those years ago, and he's never quite grown out of it. Hell, it's a miracle he has an up-to-date smartphone.

But Cas nods in agreement, and states, "A flash drive would be nice," in a way that makes Sam think he's trying very hard to speak without letting his voice waver.

By the time Sam hands Cas a small USB loaded with the Zeppelin songs from his list, the sun is coming up, spilling rosy orange through the kitchen window.

"I know this won't be the same," Sam says as Cas tucks the USB into his shirt pocket, "but I hope it helps."

Cas smiles. "Thank you, Sam. I'm sure it will."

Before Cas has the opportunity to say goodbye and head back to the Impala, Sam invites him to stay for breakfast. "I'll make pancakes," he promises, "and Dean would love it if you drove him to school later."

His car keys are already in hand, but Cas brightens at the invite. Color finds him again in the sunrise filling the kitchen.

"Yeah," he nods, "I'd like that. Let me go move the car before your neighbor yells at me again, though."

"Good call."

Cas ducks out of the house to re-park the Impala, and Sam cleans the cassette tape mess up as best he can, locating a small paper bag in a cupboard so that Cas can take it home with him. It's irreparable, but Sam has a feeling it's still worth quite a lot to Cas.

Squinting in the newly blinding sunlight, Sam yawns and sets another pot of coffee to brew, then begins to prepare breakfast for his family.