RIP Season 13 tape ball. 

A follow up to the bloody and wounded Castiel and Dean drawing, just something self indulgent and sweet. It’s the first drawing in a new sketchbook and to me that’s always an event on its own, hehe :)

Except it isn’t funny, thinks Dean, not funny at all. Cas warned him that Purgatory was a realm of terrors, but the angel didn’t know, couldn’t know, that the worst part of it all would be watching him sleep like this, broken in Dean’s lap, undeniable proof that God couldn’t make a damn thing without breaking it first.

Even if Cas does twitch his wings rather adorably in his sleep.

“You chasing squirrels or demons?” Dean shifts his legs to offer the sleeping angel better purchase. “Well, either way, give ‘em hell for me.”

That was a revelation too, that angels could dream; that they were even built with the capacity to make up something in their heads that wasn’t theirs to keep. Or maybe only Cas can. Cas is different, after all, more human than angel — though it’s hard to remember that now, with three purple-white heads drooling against Dean’s thighs.

Suddenly, Cas’s wings seize. He moans, a pitiful sound, like wind through bare branches. Without thinking, Dean cups the jaw of Cas’s mask face, stroking a thumb along its outer edge – which isn’t quite a cheekbone, but then again, this isn’t quite a caress, either.

The cataclysm etched on Cas’s face relaxes, and Dean allows himself a small, self-indulgent smirk. He did that, nobody else. Not God or Meg or Daphne. Just him. Months ago, he would have wondered what that meant. Now all he cares is that Cas sleeps a few minutes longer.

Dean palms Cas’s jaw and doesn’t even try to ignore how easily it fits into his hand, as if Cas were made for his touch—or maybe the other way around.

“Cas, you sly dog,” he murmurs.

The curious thing is, Dean isn’t tired – or, well, no more than usual. And Dean considers himself something of an expert on fatigue. He’s grappled with it ever since he was 27, since Dad and Sam and the psychic Hunger Games, when he finally realized he was an adult chasing after a life not made for old men.

Seeing your baby brother’s corpse does something to a man; it settles a certain kind of weariness into your joints and behind your eyes, a stupor no amount of liquor or resurrections or staring contests with angels can ever shake. God knows he’s tried. Especially that last one.

Dean wonders now how many baby brothers Cas saw stretched out before him during the War. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. He can’t imagine it. He’s thankful he can’t even dream it.

Dean looks down at Cas again, and shudders.

The movement jostles Cas, and he blinks awake, fixing that sky-pale gaze up at Dean in the rough approximation of a stare—which only makes Dean roll his own eyes in response.

“Sorry, dude,” says Dean with a smirk. “Puppy eyes don’t work when you’re skyscraper-sized.”