So Much Tangled Thread by imogenbynight
Summary: In 2008, Dean takes over his late grandfather’s tailor shop in Normal, Illinois, and discovers an old leather flight jacket in the attic. A hand-painted set of wings on the back, the name Novak, and a three-quarters sewn circle of red cotton are the only clues he has to the jacket’s origins, and he enlists his historian brother to help him find the owner.
It doesn’t take long for Sam to trace the jacket to Lieutenant Castiel Novak–a pilot who lived in Dean’s apartment until his mysterious disappearance a few years after WWII–and what little information they find about him is fascinating. The guy was a stone cold badass. A stone cold fox, too, if the grainy old newspaper photo is anything to go by.
It’s to be expected that Dean idly wishes he could have known the man as he closes the annoyingly unfinished circle of thread on the jacket.
Less expected, however, is that wish coming true.
Comments: 10/10. This is adorable and sweet, and even though it feels like a happy ending is impossible there is a happy ending. Cas writes the most romantic and poetic letter I have ever read, and Dean repeats Cas’s words later on, it’s so adorable. It’s too short to be seriously angsty, but my god did the author try. They both suffer from PTSD, and they help each other. TIME TRAVEL!