Reverse!verse Thursday! Angel!Dean popping up just to annoy Cas with his music and food, always eating pie or burgers even though he's human. He's always vocal when he comes in until one night, Cas is sleeping in a hotel and Dean comes in quiet and just watches him from the side of the bed, reaching out to pet his hair, and that's how Cas wakes up, to his loving angel soothing his night mare. ;u; Yeah, I guess that's a prompt, just dork Dean being gentle for the first time since Cas met him.
(this was so fun to write, gosh. i love reverse!verse so much but i’ve never actually written it. also sorry this took some time, i was out when you sent the ask! hope it’s what you wanted to see. c: )
Angels are not a subject Castiel had grown up unfamiliar with. His namesake was one, after all. Far beyond the concept of celestial guardians to perch on one’s shoulder and little cherubs flitting about bringing love, his parents (mother, in particular) had instilled a lasting knowledge of the heavenly beings. Their names and the histories that went with them. Their hierarchy and purpose. She had not painted an image of delicate, winged beings in shining white. Fierce warriors and leaders with wits as sharp as a razor blade, sources of enlightenment and guardians of Heaven and Earth. Something worth admiring.
Limited mortal knowledge of holy life forms whose very existence was dubious at best had not prepared him for Dean.
It’s a nickname, he’d said with wide inquisitive eyes and the sort of cheeky smirk that would never make its way onto a cathedral’s ceiling. After James Dean, he’d continued and those eyes had brightened, impossibly, with an almost childlike excitement. Castiel had noticed very quickly that, despite moments of unrivaled cockiness, Dean did not behave with the same haughty superiority as the other angels that had intruded in his life as well.
Dean had given him a nickname as well. It had been over a decade since anyone had shortened his name, and Gabriel had been the one to do it. “Cas” wasn’t nearly as bad as “Cassie”, so he had allowed it with no complaint. The angel had probably known the real Castiel anyway, granted there was a true divine being that shared his name.
His life had been quiet before, if he didn’t factor in the bloody, bump in the night sort of stuff he dealt with for a living or the demons on his ass or Gabriel’s questionable antics. Even with the apocalypse on the horizon, he thought things might have still been that way if not for Dean securing a position in his life. He was there when he needed him, yes, and Castiel was thankful for that. But he was also there when he didn’t, brimming with wonder at things he took for granted. Like pie and classic cars and Metallica tapes. He talked his ear off, teased him, shoved food at him insistently with a demand that he try it, and nearly scared him into a heart attack too many times to count with his tendency to appear out of the blue.
It’s not exactly peaceful tonight, but he is alone. Dean hadn’t shown up in several days now; he had found distraction in a particularly nasty salt-and-burn case involving a stuffed dinosaur, laundry detergent and a “he said, she said” couple that had been too busy blaming each other to provide much help to him. Now though, with nothing else to focus on, he can’t help but wonder where the angel’s gone off too. He vaguely remembers Dean mentioning something about being fairly busy upstairs, which doesn’t make the fact that he hasn’t seen him feel any less weird.
Dean is a constant in his life, and lord knows he didn’t have many of those. He’s not worried, but.
Yeah, he’s a little worried.
Somewhere between and listing off possible explanations for Dean’s absence (impossible, seeing as he doesn’t know nearly as much about angels as he’d thought) and idly watching some old western film, Castiel dozes off. Rarely does he sleep deep enough to dream, and as usual the images his dozing mind plays for him are unpleasant. Gabriel, dying. Hell. Pain. Tearing, ripping, cutting, burning, shattering. Blood soaked fingers and a metallic taste heavy on his tongue, the coppery scent strongly mixed with sulfur and making his stomach lurch, lungs burning so that he can’t help but take in another, desperately deep breath and…
Dewed grass on a crisp morning. The sweet tang of apples. A fresh summer breeze. He can almost feel it, shifting his hair and- oh. His eyes squint open to take in the lean shadow of Dean in the darkened room. The television is off, as are his shoes, and a blanket rests thin but warm over his shoulders. The hand in his hair does not draw back in an instant, or at all. Fingers calloused from whatever work the body Dean now wore had done and freckled at the knuckles brush his fringe from his forehead, slick with sweat.
“Hey Cas,” husky, rough, but Castiel thinks of sunshine when he hears it. Sunshine and playful winds and vast fields of crystalline green. The dream fades away, almost as if it hadn’t existed at all, and the relief that settles in bone-deep is astounding. A tired hand reaches for the one that isn’t in his hair, slotting their fingers and gripping so hard his knuckles ache. It’s usually Dean who initiates contact between them; the resulting surprise is so comical and so very Dean that he can’t help but to smile at the angel.
His angel, annoying as he may be. “Hello Dean.”
