Castiel sat in a square room with sterile white walls, and small uncomfortable chairs, and listened to the beeping of the machines hooked up to the boy in the hospital bed. The wallpaper and the ceiling and the floors were mocking him. Laughing. His pain was just the slightest of many to pass through their company. He clutched to Dean's discarded shirt and buried his face into it. They were constant. This whole place was mocking him. He had pulled his seat as close to Dean as he could. Every now and then he would get up, and lean over him, and check his color, and tuck in the blankets a little tighter around his body, a heavy storm behind his cloudy eyes. The laughter of the room was not enough to push him out.
Disheveled, hair tossed, dark smudges under his eyes, Cas sank back into the chair with his eyes intent on Dean's face. He had been doing this for three days – siting, and letting sadness swallow him up, and waiting. On top of a bruised bone in his arm from protecting Castiel, and severe bruising, the diagnosis was that Dean had a very bad concussion. His brain was recovering, healing itself, and was not particularly damaged - but it was working hard to repair what was hurt, and his body had not taken the crash well. It would be surprising if he didn't slip into a coma for who knows how long. The doctors told him there was about an 80% chance Dean would wake up tired and hungry in a week or so, and a 20% chance that he'd wake up next year or not at all. Why? If he was fine, couldn't they just pull him out of the coma? Why did he have to lay there if he was all right? They were not helpful. Busy, they waved off his questions and glided off like ghosts down the narrow hall, eager to get to more interesting patients. So, Cas would retreat back to the room, his feet still sore from the walk from the college, and sink into a chair for hours.
The waiting was the worst part. The mocking walls glaring down on him. The cold air made him shiver and shudder. Reaching into the small wardrobe in the room, he would retrieve Dean's tattered clothing and press the folded stack of it to his chest. He would sit down and crush it to his heart, letting the smell of blood and sweat and Dean sink into him as if osmosis would bring him closer to him, and then Dean closer to waking… But mostly it just crushed his heart. Sometimes Cas felt awful enough to spill tears all over the clothes… but he did not. He was not going to be helpless in front of Dean. He needed strength. Support. Then he'd feel well enough to wake up.
Cas came in every day, and the nurses always told him Sam had come by. Sam popped in right after classes and seemed to leave just before Cas arrived – every time. He was even more devastated than Cas was. Difference was, Sam knew Dean would be furious if he didn't do his schoolwork, so he forced himself to leave and do homework into the early hours of the morning.
Cas had tried to go to class, and bolted after twenty minutes and run to the hospital in half the time it normally took. He just felt as if Dean needed him – needed someone to pull him in from the other side, where he was dreaming of him, waiting for a hand to reach down and yank him out. He had taken a leave of absence granted by the school and his teachers to be with Dean. So he went and he sat and he stared at the walls and at Dean's handsome face and felt that creature clawing its way up his throat again, and tried - and failed - to be strong.
Deep, heavy darkness came with the clawing hands, and he did not fight it this time. He couldn't. It sank into his chest and swam in his eyes and settled in his heart and made its home with echoing malicious laughter, its effects becoming clearer and clearer. There was a darkness to Cas's gaze. His lips were pressed into a thin line. Unshed tears shone there every moment he looked at his sleeping lover. His shoulders were slouched, his back bent as if a great burden had broken it. He never brushed his hair anymore. It lay in soft spikes on his head untamed and ignored. His hands were weak, pale, and they shook when he reached for things. His whole body racked with throbbing sadness he could not contain.
All for a boy who should wake but wouldn't.
The nurses also said Dean was doing very well, still breathing on his own and stirring occasionally as if he were dreaming. Those were signs he hadn't receded into a coma yet. But after they had gone, taking their comforting smiles with them, the bleak in the room had sunk into Cas. He'd slunk over to the white wardrobe and fumbled for the shirt in the drawer. And now he was cradling it as he watched Dean's peaceful face, so, so pale, but at least not grey anymore - his own heart felt constant stakes shoved deeper and deeper through it.
Castiel's parents had come by once. Sam, he had not yet seen in person. The nurses were fleeting, the doctors walking through walls, unreachable. Besides that Cas had been alone. His whole life, someone had been there: his sister, a comforting whisper in the dark, whether it be during a thunderstorm on vacation when their parents were dead asleep or just an embrace on nights he couldn't sleep; Martius when he broke down over being different, even though he was poison; his parents when his whole life had been turned upside down; and then Dean.
Humming with life, his eyes winking with mischief, a damaged soul in a fetching vessel. He was perfect. His arms were perfect, and they gave perfect hugs; warm and sincere. His lips were perfect. Their touch was like a sedative and an energy shot at the same time. His heart was hurt. His head was damaged – and not just physically. Losing a father, being without a defined purpose… that had done something to him. But Cas had been fixing it. Repairing him. It was all going so well, he'd been so happy, both of them had, and now…
Thick tears threatened to snarl his lashes and blur his eyes. He sniffed and rubbed them viciously on his sleeve, the wrenching sobs rolling out of his heart and tripping passed his lips as he tried to subdue it. There was no stopping it now. He wept. Not a sound besides the heartbeat read by the machines had filled the air in so long. Tears spilled off his long-unshaven cheeks, slipping and grabbing at his stubble, and sank into his sleeve and his knees, his whole body bent over until his forehead almost touched them, arms wrapped around the shirt, and in turn himself. His echoing sadness filled the room with sound; audible heartbreak.
The air was clogged with the feel of defeat and hopeless pining. He couldn't stand it. He scrubbed at his cheeks and rose from his chair. The shirt he held fell onto the seat he left open. All the tubes were in Dean's left hand, so Castiel slid to his other side and pushed down the guard gate on the bed. He lifted himself clumsily and settled in beside the warm body that once held the vivacious life of the gruff, brooding, warm boy he had fallen hard for, the sheets cold against his bare arms and neck. His nose pressed into Dean's neck, his arm reaching to rest on his chest, a hand over his beating heart, and pressed himself as flush with the boy as best he could. He sniffed, tears soaking the pillow, and let the steady sound of Dean's pulse in his neck sooth him until his chest had loosened from the tightness of tears and he had drifted off, peace finally finding him in this lonely place.
Footsteps did not reach his ears. The shimmer of longer brunette hair and soft dark eyes flashed in the window briefly before hovering back. A figure loomed in the misty glass, peering with curious intent at the double figures on the bed. He pushed open the door silently and stopped in the doorway in shock. Cas asleep beside his brother.
Sam rubbed his head, confused, and couldn't decide between owing himself 20 bucks for figuring out Cas was gay with his brother, or being angry he was too close to him when he was hurt. Only he should ever be that close – and even then, not so physically. He felt a twinge of jealousy and winced. Cas was obviously having just as bad a time as he was, how could he be angry? Shutting the door quietly behind him, he went to the chair and lifted Dean's shirt from it, clutching it in his fist. He glanced at Cas sadly and sank into the chair, the shirt in his lap. He missed Dean just as much as Sam did. Sighing, the brother sat back, gazing at the shirt, then at Dean's still face, and finally at Castiel, the rumpled kid sharing warmth with his big brother.