'Cas?'

For a three-lettered word, it takes an embarrassingly long time to type, fingers fumbling and clammy, hovering above the keyboard with all the best intentions of critical precision. Ambient sound drains beneath floorboards and door-jams; air seeping from his lungs. He is occupying true silence, the only sound the click clack of the keys resonating like stray bullets in the darkness; just as lethal.

'Yes, Dean?' and Dean can't help the ugly, wet sob that rips through his body, an emotional hurricane tearing him apart at an atomic level. A combination of relief and a rarely indulged selfishness melting the steel rods in his bones, a rigid metal skeleton that anchored him, paralysed by a creeping anxiety that this hare-brained scheme of Crowley's would, inevitably, explode in his face. He believes it because it is essential for him; his craving for closure keeps him ignorant.

The avatar that accompanies Cas' responses is achingly personal, one that had been taken on his phone; and Dean's left wondering if perhaps this is Crowley's idea of sending a message; a suggestion of forgotten things uncovered; inboxes, twitter feeds; private photos stashed within innocuous collections; a gallery of insipid flowers, pretentious photos of half-empty coffee cups and yellowing, water-stained pages. Or perhaps, and maybe it is the seeping, chemical concoction of grief and paranoia killing his common sense; the picture is a thinly veiled jab, a poisoned barb courtesy of Crowley; a photographic testament to a promising beginning, the honeymoon period succeeding the 'happily ever after', something that had eventually wilted beneath the constant strain of unaddressed emotional issues and mutual difficulties with dependency.

It's a selfie, for all intents and purposes, the long stretch of Dean's inner arm visible in the lower left corner. Pupils blown like green-hued supernovas, glassy-eyed and exhausted, a wide smile on his face nevertheless. His skin is washed-out and pale, freckles dotted across the bridge of his nose distinct against the grey pallor. Cas appears a little more shell-shocked, dark hair in it's usual state of dishevelment; his eyes are dark blue depths carved in his face, a masterpiece of modern architecture; only the suggestion of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. They're in bed, stark sheets and soft skin, Cas' pillow splayed beneath his head, a starched white halo to contrast the darker shades of his skin. His hand is curled around Dean's neck, fingers tangled in dirty blonde strands at his nape; the pad of his thumb resting in the hollow dip of Dean's throat, where he would often stroke his reassurance, tap Morse code 'I love you's' when his comedowns left him mute. Dean's cheek is pressed against the top of Cas' head; and he can recall, right down to the very words, the conversation that led them to this, the where's and why's that had them looking so thoroughly wrung-out. He remembers vividly, in that instance, an overwhelming neccessity to capture the evidence, proof that for one moment in time, these two people existed and they needed each other. This was how they'd survive now.

Overcome with a surge of nostalgia; a crushing, homesick sense of loss that inspires an inexplicable possessiveness, he's typing out his S.O.S.

'Do you still love me?'

Cas' response is instantaneous.

'Yes.'

Conversation gradually becomes tainted by a sentimentality that has a weak smile pulling uncomfortably against Dean's mouth. A symphony of sirens and howling from the street below tells him the bars are shut; patrons spilling out into the avenues, a single pulsing entity of pure focused energy that bleeds down alleyways, up fire escapes; drunken jubilation and off-key harmonies of long-forgotten songs from childhood movies tell him it's getting late. He is still not ready to say his goodbye's to Cas.

Cas who asks after Sam, the tacky postcards he insists on sending, asking, 'Have you convinced him to cut his hair yet?' with a familiarity that suggests he hasn't been anywhere but curled up on the sofa with a cigarette and some pretentious paperback he picked up on the reduced shelf, only pausing every now and again to loudly announce his utter disdain for the author's portrayal of an inevitable dystopian future, saying, 'It's always so general,' on an exaggerated sigh, an accompanying over-dramatic sweep of hands. 'The end of the world is a personal experience. Everyone's is different; a hang nail, your dog dying, the sun burning out,' his voice drifts as he once more sinks into the words on the page, silence reigning momentarily as Dean watches from the kitchenette; abstract thinking, an all encompassing realisation that maybe the end of the world has blue blue eyes and a penchant for bad porn and bargain bin books. When Cas talks again, he is cautious; wild words subdued by the downturn of his eyes, the slump of his shoulders, Dean's already captivated, caught vulnerable in a cage of soft suggestion and tired eyes, his voice is heavy bass thrumming through the floorboards, vibrations resonating through Dean's bones. 'The end of the world has a face,' Cas is saying, barely audible above the sound of the ticking clock above Dean's head. 'He has a face, and he is beautiful.'

Cas wakes with a start, frantic hands tearing at sheets and skin, a sheen of sweet glistening like salt and sugar dusting across the bridge of his nose. Dean doesn't remember him coming to bed. His spine is rigid, a lightning rod channelling a palpable electricity in the atmosphere, ghostly fingers trailing sharp little nails along the soft insides of Dean's arms, pushing fine needles beneath his skin, his eyes.

Dean's leaning up on one elbow and he cannot decipher Cas' expression in the darkness, saying, 'Hey, You're okay,' his voice abrasive through layers of metal splinters and broken glass; subconsciously reaching a hand across the no man's land stretched between them, but Cas is hunkered down for war in the opposite trenches, shoving the gesture aside with an aggressive snap of movement. He's pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes, elbows braced against his knees, his hair a tangled silhouette of inky black against the shades of deep blue ocean painted against his skin, he's saying to the tangled sheets between his thighs, 'I had a bad dream.'

Dean does not reach for him again; mirroring his posture, lungs burning to match his laboured breathing, he's asking, 'What happened?', quiet parts of himself eager to unravel Cas' cotton wool coat in these hours where he is not so careful to guard his words.

Cas moves to cradle himself, fingernails pressing half-moons into his forearms, the shift of his shoulder blades stunted wings in the dim light. Dean's counting the indents of his spine, fighting an intense urge to press his mouth to the rhythmical dip of hills and valleys where darkness pools, gathering on the surface of his skin. Cas' breath rattles through his body, fevered ache in his bones making his movements mechanical, 'You were there,' and Jesus, he is fucking beautiful in an alien way. His grief leaves him detached and Dean feels an itch along the fine spirals of his fingerprints, an overwhelming desire to press reassurance against delicate porcelain bones; his ribs, his jaw, the soft skin of lips and eyelids.

'You tore me open,' and Cas traces an invisible wound across his stomach with the tips of his fingers, eyes captivated by secrets spelled in the popcorn ceiling. He repeats the motion in a cycle, an endless loop of unfounded accusation with no basis in reality, and yet Dean finds himself annoyed at the idea; but Cas is speaking again, eyes finally tilting to examine himself, seek comfort in this tangible existence. His hands unfurling, calloused flowers of bone and tendon peeling open, he examines them with a strangers eyes, saying, 'And all these wires just ... fell out,' clenching his fists, experimenting, 'There were circuit boards and plastic pipes,' pressing his palms against his stomach, turning eyes to acknowledge Dean for the first time, 'I couldn't push them back in.'

His hands gathering dreams, clutching at a fevered memory, he's pressing those phantom electronic organs back inside a non-existent wound, eerie echoes of whatever visions frightened him awake. When he finally drags his eyes back up to Dean's face, there is liquid blue neon looping there, deeper shades of shadow collecting beneath them, his mouth a grim pressed line, lips bloodless and pale. There's a subtle tremble to his mouth, a suggestion of restrained anger, or tears or any number of self-expressive indulgences Cas is reluctant to exhibit; consequences of his red-carpet, gold-trimmed upbringing, Dean suspects.

He does not know how to offer him comfort, words always seem so fruitless when offered at the feet of a man who consumes them so excessively. And touch; mouths and hands and the long lines between, are often misconstrued, perverted by Cas and his near violent need to please him and Dean cannot face the idea of damaging him further.

'I wasn't real,' he's saying, voice soft and eyes glassy, searching Dean's expression for something not readily available; his brows creasing, eyes pinched tight at the corners, 'I wasn't a real person.'

And later with the soft light of morning cutting through cracks in curtains and beneath doors, Cas is soft for lack of sleep, his mouth pink and swollen from butterfly kisses that grew insistent, Dean's thumb circling his lips in soothing swirls. Cas' hand has crept from hip, to stomach, to chest, to shoulder, to collar bone, settling to curl around the back of Dean's neck, touching skin like it sears his nerve endings, leaving trails of lightning, pin-pricks of pure light scorched into a stretch of pale, soft canvas; residual traces of whatever it is that flares up behind Cas' eyes in these scattered moments of vulnerability. Dean starts to ask, mouth slow to shape syllables, saying, 'Do you-' and Cas is nodding his response, lip catching against the rough skin of Dean's thumb, peeling back from teeth and gums and the inside of his mouth is soft and wet and sets aches in the pit of Dean's stomach. He's reaching behind him, palm groping out along the surface of the bedside cabinet, and it's not much, but it's enough to maybe set Cas' mind at ease, a statement that contradicts these night-time fears that keep him soaked in coffee and cigarette smoke. It says you're real and I need you. Dean says, holding his phone at arms length them, 'I should get a picture.'

Hannah's sitting across from him, Cas' books stacked tall and precarious all around her, the paper peaks to the Novak throne; his kingdom of printed words and disposable people, his fingerprints pressed in ash between the pages. Her face is a porcelain mask, untouched by tragedy; the stoic, practised cold of the Novak persona. It's her hands that betray her, a delicate folding unfolding repetition occurring across her knees; pale, delicate fingers fluttering and anxious, a conduit for whatever she clenches behind her teeth, a practised, tight grimace masquerading as an approachable smile stretching her mouth to bizarre proportions.

A folder thick with pristine pages rests by her thigh; she intentionally does not touch it, reluctant to draw his attention, but he is entirely too focused with studying her face; wondering aloud how he ever mistook her as anything but a Novak, 'Your eyes are similar, y'know,' he says, only realising after the fact, that in referring to Cas, he subconsciously gestures towards their shared bedroom. He folds his hands carefully into the pockets of his jeans, betrayed; carefully avoiding the melting ice of Hannah's stare, the curious tilt of her head; a knock-off mimicry of Cas and all his fascinating little habits, a bargain-bin imitation of masterpieces, renaissance oils of virgins and angels; a cathedral ceiling to a 10 cent postcard.

Hannah had dropped by that morning, hard board folders clutched to her chest, a plastic wrapped bowl resting against the jut of her hip; a creeping frown across her features, eyes a watercolour-wash tribute to Cas' own. She does not offer any context for her visit, eyes down-turned as she manoeuvres her way around him, filling the doorway with slumped shoulders and dragging knuckles. The harbinger of bad news wears comfortable shoes, thick bangs and a smile thinner than her patience.

'I'm sorry about this, Dean,' she's saying, delicately sifting through the sheets in her file, fingers fluttering pale and frantic, a moth's wings beating between the pages. Her voice does not suggest apology; rehearsed lines rolling from her tongue easily, and it's not intentionally unkind; she is, as always, a practised professional, familial concerns aside. He's watching her from across a barricade of scarred Formica, the tight press of her mouth, a single-minded dedication to the task at hand; Dean recognises her as beautiful, although he is pushed to decipher whether it is a merit earned independently, or due to her striking similarities to Castiel.

He sees the dish, abandoned by the drainage board, condensation gathering beneath in wide, wet circles, he's saying, 'What's with the bowl?', she only pauses a beat, glancing up from her work to eye him critically, 'I've been informed it is customary to bring food as a means of comfort,' she says simply, the bare bones of explanation, Hannah was not one to dress her words with decorative weight of implied emotional investment.

Pressing a wad of paper into his clumsy hands, against his chest, she's saying, 'Three bean surprise,' picking her way around stacked monuments of faded ink and wood pulp; taking her seat upon Castiel's throne, a crown of dust motes and stagnant air resting among her dark curls. She is statuesque, her posture a product of Swiss finishing schools and rapped knuckles, hands curling demure across her stomach and she cannot stake claim on this kingdom; she, a solid sculpt of glittering ice; ethereal and unfeeling, while Cas was liquid and seeping; mercury soaking between the cracks, making his home curled in the knots of wood, beading between the threadbare fabric of sofa's and bedsheets, the spaces between Dean's fingers.

She's eyeing the clock hanging useless and mute above the kitchen table, 'A gag order,' she says, nodding briefly at the papers he clutches to his chest. 'Your clock has stopped.'

Hannah occupied a role Dean would dubiously describe as 'publicist', her specialities in damage control; smothered stories and big-name journalists suddenly and suspiciously finding themselves without employment. Many a Saturday morning, in the beginning, would see her haunting their doorstep, glossy magazines and huge, crinkled newspaper spreads clutched in her tight, white-knuckled grip, a pen twisted in the dark, slick ribbons of her hair.

While Hannah's face of carved marble often made it difficult to deduce the nuances of emotional expression, her eyes were ethanol fire, a brilliant blue flare; her voice riddled with earthquake tremors, aftershocks rumbling through her joints, she's saying, 'Really?' peeling some gossip tabloid from her arsenal and thrusting it in his face, asking, 'Do you not listen?' And the cover is always familiar, so strange to see himself from these voyeuristic angles, an out-of-body experience heralded by a symphony of clicking camera shutters, Cas whispering low in his ear saying, 'Make it count,' wet mouth on his pulse, hands frantic on the zipper of his jeans.

'A gag order,' Dean's repeating, testing the shape of the words in his mouth, eyes sent in spirals by the intricate loops and curls of Naomi Novak's signature, his fingers are damp against the paper, leave wrinkled prints pressed into the surface. 'Naomi feels, in wake of this recent tragedy, it would be-,' and she pauses, searching for an accurate word, formal and robotic, Naomi's words through a reluctant mouthpiece, '-best, if you were to refrain from discussing with anyone the nature of your relationship with Castiel.'

Dean's pinning the documents to the fridge, a battered plastic replica of Wile E. Coyote's face holding them in place; an ironic, jovial contrast to Naomi's love letter, an excess of legal jargon and aggressive insistence. Hannah is tracing a manicured nail along the water-curled edges of a Jack Kerouac pried from beneath the sofa cushions; it's cheap, paper cover long stripped from it's mildewed pages by Cas' persistent, nervous fingers. 'It's quiet here,' she says, addressing Cas' signature, a mess of spiders' legs and prom queen lashes, delicately etched along the cracked spine.

Hannah had served as witness to many an argument barely contained by these four walls. Her black and white stripes serving as her blindfold; A Themis overlooking their affairs from the metaphorical high-road. Lady Justice and her double-edged blade, an agent of law and vengeance, serving from beneath the tyrannical press of Naomi Novak's thumb. Pursuing Castiel through the book shelves and melting clocks, down the rabbit hole, further still beyond the crystal-riddled club-boys, shimmering skin and pitfalls for eyes, rotting teeth of yellow and brown, popcorn kernels framing a jumble of indirect answers and tired riddles; The trophy wives and divorcées, hiding away in towering palaces sprawling beyond the Hollywood hills, velvet and Chanel, croquet and white rose gardens, their mock turtle's song of a boy with dreamy eyes and a penchant for the melancholy.

The caterpillar says his name is 'Ash', perched cross-legged atop of field of soft green felt and the blooms of beer stain poppies. The whites of his eyes pink-flecked marble beneath the flickering lights, saying, 'You're looking for Dean Winchester's place,' scratching an address onto the back of an old match-book, the logo for 'Harvelle's Roadhouse' a faded red thumbprint smear on the cover. A dime-store Alice climbs from beneath the bar, a glass bottle lament rattling in her wake; no primrose garden to sing her praises. Torn denim and dishwater stained apron, blonde hair piled atop her head in golden-thread bundles; her face is creased in agitation, dirty rag curled tight in a rubber sunshine-coloured fist. She makes her approach under the guise of gathering Ash's vast collection of empty bottles, crowding around him like an eager audience. 'You looking for Cas?' she asks in the tones of someone striving for off-handed and casual, clockwork ticking loudly in her head; doesn't bother with eye contact; subtle as a car crash. Ash is snorting into a bottle, a sly grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. 'Attached at the hip, those two,' he says, by way of explanation, a vague gesture with the butt of a bottle, 'A regular Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dom'.

The first time she encounters Dean Winchester, she is quick to reconsider Ash's previous jab. Nothing vaguely reminiscent of the bumbling slapstick she had been expecting; they are more a lion and a unicorn; knights across a chessboard battlefield; Castiel in graceful white, Dean in violent red. A relationship built on ego and a twisted sense of mutual worship. Castiel is gin-soaked and agitated, white-knuckled after five-rounds of ruthless verbal back and forth. Dean's got tired eyes and an angry stretch of red burning across his cheekbone, and if it's hand-shaped, she pretends not to notice.

Cas is quick to associate her sudden reappearance with Naomi's omnipresent influence, distancing himself through his preferred methods of self-inflicted isolation; the slamming of the bedroom door a barrier of reassurance between himself and a past life.

Priding herself on her observational prowess, it is no easy feat to ignore the defeated slump of Dean's posture, the smears of coal beneath bloodshot eyes, the hesitant way he opens his mouth to address the empty space left in Cas' wake; a world-weary tolerance in which she uncovers traces of that devotion, beneath the layers of amateur dramatics; passionate nights chased by violent mornings, the bruise coloured fingerprints they leave, compulsive evidence on throats and wrists, at the corners of mouths; she thinks maybe there's threads of something genuine holding this wreck together.

The first words Dean Winchester ever says to her, head bowed in remorse, fingernails picking anxiously at a patch of flaking skin behind his ear, 'I'm sorry.' And she does not know whether it is an offering on his own behalf or an attempted coverall for Cas' temper; but curiosity has a tendency to force aside any observation of social etiquette.

She does not look at him, prompting, 'for what?', her fingertip tracing spirals into the worn, old hardback bible Cas preferred to use as a coaster; it's ancient covering looped with perfect circles of wine reds and tequila sunsets. And Dean sees in her traces of Cas, the things he's drawn too, a collection of words unspoken but meanings heavily implied. 'For, you'know ..' and she looks up, face a stoic portrait of ice chips and storm clouds, a suspicious scrunch to her brow that demands explanation. 'For us,' he shrugs, eyes drifting to the butter-yellow slice of light leaking beneath the bedroom floor, cutting geometry into the carpets. 'I'm sorry for us.'

And now she thinks she truly is sorry for him; wearing echoes of Castiel's own dishevelment; adaptive camouflage, coffee stains and grease spots, denim a tapestry of fraying threads and black oil flecks. He's hunched over a battered kettle, waiting with a single minded devotion for water to boil. She does not have the heart to point out that he has yet to plug it in. His fingers tap a violent pulse against the worktops, his t-shirt unravelling along the bottom hem, Ariadne's thread trailing behind him, spiralling around their labyrinth apartment. He has not quite found it's exit.

In the hallway their bedroom door hangs open, curtains half pulled from the rail; late-night episodes of aggression and loss manifesting in shattered ashtrays and torn upholstery. And she cannot discern whether the poltergeist makes it's home within these four walls, or deeper still, within Dean Winchester's head.

He touches his fingers to the pages tacked to the refrigerator, a reminder to himself, or perhaps a gesture of disbelief in their intention; but he's smirking into an empty coffee cup and carding his fingers through a dirty blonde bird's nest, red thread unfurling behind him as he stalks the enclosed space; the trailing tail of comet on a collision course.

'I'm sorry,' she says, voiced raised like she's arguing back against an unrelenting silence, something vacuous bleeding from his pores and flooding the space around them. He's asking, 'Coffee?' by way of response, and maybe his eyes soften slightly, maybe his shoulders relax, lines of rigid tension melting from the muscles in his neck. 'Sure,' stashing her files and documents away from sight, guilty for their presence here, tucking them beneath the folds of her coat; a rare display of remorse for the reminder of formal organisation and the stone-faced business they represent; Hannah herself a personification of such, facing off against Dean Winchester's destructive display of loss; a disassociation with the here and now. An emotional tempest and the mountain it's trying to move.

He moves slow and lumbering, shifting around the kitchenette like he's entirely unfamiliar; misjudging the distance between objects, miscounting steps from sink to cupboard, clumsy and uncoordinated; uncomfortable, suddenly, in this space alone, at a loss without Cas to balance him.

She watches him take two tumblers from a top shelf, distractedly curling his hand into his sleeve and swiping the fabric around the rim. 'Did you kill him?' he says, his tone entirely too flat and disinterested for the question, doesn't even deign to look at her, rummaging through bottom cupboards, the clink of glassware and half-empty bottles a chorus of crickets to the silence that unfolds messily between them.

'Of course not,' it's a conscious effort not to wring her knuckles, pressing half moons into her palms, fists curled deep in the pockets of her coat, 'How could you even think-,' but he's cutting her off, pressing a glass of liquid gold against her chest under some unspoken threat that he has every intention of ruining her Dior should she not consent to take white-knuckled fists from her side and join him in his misery.

'Then what are you sorry for?' entirely rhetorical, but her analytical mind can't help but formulate responses.

I'm sorry for the legal ramifications of the Novak family losing an heir.

I'm sorry Cas was unable to untangle himself from his issues and disappoint Naomi by reinventing himself.

I'm sorry that he met you.

I'm sorry that you fell into this awful routine and called it 'love'.

I'm sorry he's gone.

Instead, what she says, fingers delicately tracing the lip of her glass, 'There's a chip in this,' doesn't bother to remind him of her distaste for alcohol, fails to point out that this is not, in fact, the coffee she had requested.

He moves mechanically, an absentee to his own existence, taking her glass to pour the glittering contents down the drain, barely rinsing it out before once again placing it on the shelf above him.

'Why don't you just throw it out?' she asks, and in an apartment full of hand me downs and second hand experiences, bargain-bin books and broken clocks, smashed ashtrays gathering like a lethal snowfall on carpets the colour of the 70s, she cannot fathom why he fails to throw out a chipped glass, or why she finds herself fixated by the object or the red flags it raises. He shrugs, his own glass empty, 'Call me sentimental,' and if he's being sarcastic, it's hard to know; wrapped up in an Oscar-worthy brand of perverse irony he's been practising since the accident, flexing his newfound acerbic wit in verbally hazardous encounters with concerned family members and well-wishing strangers alike. 'But I just can't throw anything away.'

And whether it's a glass or a lover, she recognises an honestly in his statement; gathering up her paperwork and straightening out her hair, moving to leave, to flee and condemn him to his self-made seventh circle, glancing once over her shoulder to see him silhouetted by the afternoon beating against the blinds, a hero and his sunset.

'I'm not sorry,' she re-evaluates, shifting her stack of records and reports to her hip. Her eyes pinched at the corners, a frown not dissimilar to one Dean found himself often inspiring across Cas' features. 'I pity you, Dean Winchester.'

A haphazard tower of paperbacks topples across the rug with the force of the door slamming in her wake.

'Hannah called by earlier,' he types, sprawled across the sofa, a stack of yellowing pages propped beneath his head. He's fighting back the butterflies and hurricanes beating inside his chest at the simple sight of the ellipsis indicating Cas' typing on the opposite end.

Cas and Hannah had shared a sibling-like relationship, corrupted as it was by their tumultuous upbringing; describing each other as such in numerous magazine interviews. Media darlings in their teens with their similar features; the practised polite etiquette of the white-upper-class; rigid and detached; a high-fashion lack of emotional involvement, and they both modelled it so beautifully. A photographer's wet dream.

But as with most siblings, they proved utterly devoted in their efforts to sabotage each other at any given opportunity; Cas with a bruised mouth and torn shirt at Hannah's wedding after luring her husband-to-be to the back room and dutifully falling to his knees; while her bridesmaids fussed about the flowers woven through her curls, the fall of chiffon by her ankles.

Hannah's retaliation had been vicious; subtle, in that Cas had discovered her revenge in the much same way as the general population; a 'breaking news' banner on TMZ boasting a copy of the psych evaluation that ultimately saw Castiel Novak discharged from his very brief stint serving in the military. The Novak's did nothing by halves.

'Does she miss me?' comes the response, and Dean stifles a laugh, almost hearing the deadpan execution with which Cas would have asked the question had he been sitting beside him; the roll of eyes, the curl at the corner of his mouth. 'It's hard to tell,' he answers, barely pausing to attempt puzzling out Hannah's frequently cryptic statements, her often unaffected delivery making it difficult to determine.

'And Jo?' Cas is asking, and Dean revels in these small inquiries, finds himself more invested in the lie for it's seemingly genuine responses.

'She calls sometimes. She knows what it meant,'. And 'it', in this context, could mean a multitude of things, but Dean his hoping that clarity is not beyond the comprehension of the machine indulging him. 'It' means them; Cas, the accident, a growing list of characters and concepts listed under 'the things I love' a Venn diagram overlapping 'the things that ruined my life'.

Cas had only encountered Jo once or twice; way back in the honeymoon era, just after the happily ever after, a few months before the beginning of the end; a point at which inviting close friends into their personal space didn't seem like an open invitation for silent judgement and callous critique on the suspect nature of their relationship.

Cas had been perched in his usual spot, legs curled beneath him, his eyes bleary with alcohol, a faint red tinge across the bridge of his nose, an unguarded smile spreading out across his whiskey-stained mouth. Jo had been sprawled across the sofa, bare feet balanced on Cas' knee, her toenails a myriad of rainbow colours, Cas' old bible resting upright on her chest, a line of empty shot glasses overturned on the coffee table in front of them. She would dramatically flick through the pages, her eyes squeezed shut, her head tilted to the ceiling in a melodramatic display of over-exaggeration, before suddenly stopping, jabbing her finger between the pages, nail tapping beneath a wall of text, eyes squinted half closed in the effort of reading the passage, dictated aloud to Cas. And while they never bothered to invite Dean in on their little game, nor explain the convoluted rules they seem to have created; from what he could gather, if Cas could recite the verse from memory quicker than Jo could read from the page, she would have to take a shot, otherwise, Cas was the one knocking back whatever it was, exactly, they were drinking. It had been, what Cas would later define as, 'a moment'. He had been fond of her ever since.

Cas' text box is blinking once more. 'Have you spoken to Balthazar?'

And Dean can't recall ever encountering someone by that name, aware that if he had, it certainly wouldn't be a name he would have so easily forgotten. Cas had rarely, if ever, spoken out about his brief stint in the military; a period of his life Dean had attempted to puzzle out, following a trail of breadcrumbs; cob-web covered photos forgotten in attics, a string of cryptic comments and ambiguous statements in interviews, a sweat-soaked verbal outpouring following the latest vivid nightmare, the distinctive limp Cas developed as a result of his unexplained injury, the cross-hatch of scar tissue shining intricate white lace against the tan skin of his calf, the same TMZ report Hannah had staged as a means of revenge against her 'sibling'.

He is quick to presume the name a relic of that point in Cas' confused past, a phantom brought to life by whatever Crowley was able to extract from old e-mails and blurry phone photography. A memory reanimated by a reanimated memory.

'Who's Balthazar?'

And maybe this is an opportunity for learning, to unravel more of Cas' history, but as his flesh-and-blood counterpart often would, this cyber recreation also seems reluctant to divulge any more information, his line remaining silent for an unusual amount of time.

When he does respond, it is to inquire as to just how much Dean misses him. And Dean can't formulate the depth of his feelings, not specific to loss which does not seem an accurate descriptor in this context. How can he experience and overcome his so-called grief with Cas still so accessible, more so now than while he was a tangible thing; sex and physicality no longer an obstacle to communication. He does not miss him, he is still a presence, still occupying his life. But he does need him, still craves something lacking; an eerie echo of their life from before. The concept of loving a ghost.

'I need you,' he summarises, frustrated with his inability to formulate the things that keep him awake at night; urges that convince him to hang Cas' old trench-coat over the back of the sofa where he would spend his waking hours wrapped in a fictional dream world. The same itch that possesses him to build and rebuild Cas' paper towers; monuments erected in his honour, books stacked like gravestones, his name carved into their spines. He's rubbing at his eyes, the chapped skin of his lips, the two-day growth of coarse hair across his jawline. So distracted by Hurricane Cas, he almost misses the response.

'There is a way we can be together again.'