---- Part 1----------------------

---- Part 1 ----------------------

Cas makes his way into the kitchen after Dean hears him apologise and make an excuse to leave the table. His gaze flicks to Dean’s shoulder as he walks into the room, in a familiar gesture that’s so quick Dean’s sure he’s seen him do that before and just dismissed it.

“Dean?” Cas says with concern, eyebrows scrunching together endearingly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, but you mind telling me what’s up with this?” Dean gestures at where the handprint should be – which to him still looks like normal skin.

For a moment Cas says nothing. His eyebrows scrunch impossibly closer. He takes a longer look at Dean’s shoulder, then straightens up, clears his throat and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” in a stilted monotone that would fool absolutely nobody.

“Oh come on! You’re a terrible liar, I know that you can see there’s a handprint.”

Cas sighs. “Yes. There is.”

“What the hell, Cas? When were you going to tell me about the friggin’ mood ring on my shoulder?”

“Mood ring?”

“Patience said it was glowing brighter than ever and I guess I was feeling really happy and uh-”

The corners of Cas’s lips twitch up into a smile. “It was glowing that brightly?”

“Hey, nope, not the important thing right now,” Dean says, heat crawling up the back of his neck remembering why he’d been so happy. He gestures back at his incredibly normal looking skin. “Who else can see this?”

“Psychics like Patience…” Cas begins, a little hesitantly, “and other Angels.”

“Okay, this is starting to make sense ‘cause they’ve always looked at my shoulder funny.”

“And Demons,” Cas continues quietly.

“Wait, are you kidding?”

“And probably ghosts. Though I’ve never asked one.”

Dean takes a deep breath. “Okay. That’s great. Everyone but me can see my sparkly my little pony cutie mark-”

“I don’t understand what ponies have to do with any of this.”

Dean smiles before he can help it and Cas’s eyes flick back to his shoulder. Dean grabs at the skin there, but he still can’t see anything different. “Seriously? Just from you doing your,” he lowers his voice when he mimics, “‘I don’t understand that reference’ bit?”

Cas turns his head away, but Dean can see the crinkles at the corners of his eyes from the smile he’s trying to hide.

Dean sighs, knowing the warmth in his chest will only be making the mark glow even brighter. Damn it. “And it's always been like this?”

Cas turns back to him, the smile gone. “I healed the physical scar as soon as I could, but that mark was made on your soul. The glowing print it left behind can’t be healed away,” he says softly, “I’m sorry, Dean.”

“Figures.”

“When I made it… it was the only way I could bring your soul back with me.” Cas’s shoulders tense in that way that means there’s more, he just doesn’t want to say it.

Dean catches on. “Wait… it means something, doesn’t it? What does it mean?”

Cas holds his gaze but says nothing, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Cas? C’mon man, what does it mean?”

Cas closes the short distance between them (Dean hadn’t even noticed they’d been standing so close) and gently lays a hand onto the skin of his shoulder, over where the handprint would be if Dean could see it. He gasps when a hot jolt of something electric shoots straight through him and leaves his entire body tingling.

Cas finally says, “It means you’re mine.”

These lyrics right here. This whole song is Destiel coded.

Trees ll- McCafferty

My autistic ass should not be able to write fanfic bc then I'm usually forced to do research, and when I do, I do way more than necessary and go down the weirdest rabbit holes of random crap.

this has been said countless times already i know. but it still absolutely astounds me just how powerful, how phenomenal, how profoundly, breathtakingly, earth-shatteringly monumental the story of Dean and Castiel is. and a decent portion of it somehow wasn't even intentionally written as a romance. there are people out there to this day who still deny that it was a love story in the end.

i mean, look at it objectively. it's about a literal Angel of the Lord rescuing a human from the depths of Hell, accidentally developing emotions because of him, sacrificing everything he ever knew for him, willingly dying over and over and over again for him, and being fundamentally changed and ultimately saved in return by his own burning passion and unwavering devotion for that one human. Castiel fell for Dean in every sense of the word. what could be more tragically, heartbreakingly romantic than that?

I love watching shows with a main character who is so obviously autistic halfway through the 1st episode. I can tell Spencer Reid is gonna become a new favorite of mine, and this show is about to be a new hyperfixation.

Edit: Garth?!?!?! Hello????

After Cas confesses his love, but before he pushes Dean away, he pulls something out from his trench coat and slips it into Dean's pocket. Cas pushes him down and gets taken by the Empty, followed by Billie, leaving Dean alone on the bunker floor. As he cries, he feels something push into his chest, so he reaches his hand into his flannel pocket and pulls out the mixtape. The one he had given Cas as a gift and a secret sort of love confession of his own, thinking Cas wouldn't understand it. But as he stared down at the tape over top that read 'Dean's top 13 Zeppelin traxx', he knew that Cas understood. And he feels his heart break even more. Cas knew. Cas knew how he felt, yet he never said anything until it was too late. They were both too stupid to understand and just tell each other.

As Dean held the mixtape firmly in his hands, shoulders shaking with his sobs, he noticed that something felt off about it. The texture was different. He would know. He had flipped the cassette over and over and over in his hands before giving it to Cas, trying to decide on what to say to the angel.

Dean used his sleeve to wipe the blurriness from his eyes so he could see what was wrong with it. It still took a few seconds to adjust, and when he saw the large crack down the center of the tape, he gasped and brought it closer to his face. More tears spilled down his face. Cas' last move was to give this back to him, to show him that he understood their love and reassured Dean that, though he never said it, he knew how much he had meant to him. And Dean had broken it. The last thing Cas had ever given him besides the bloody handprint forever imprinted on his coat.

But as Dean's hands held on, finergrtips rubbing over the surface again and again, desperate to feel some kind of comfort in his hopeless situation, he noticed something attached to the back of it. He sniffled, wiped his eyes again, and flipped it over. On the backside, there was a piece of paper taped there with his name written on it. He quickly ripped it off, causing the cassette to re-split in half, obvious that the piece of tape being all that held it together, and opened the note.

Hello, Dean.

I just wanted to write you this before I give back your tape and apologize for breaking it. I'm really really sorry. I know I'm not super good at apologies, but writing makes it a lot easier, so I'm writing it for you. I hope you'll forgive me. I didn't mean to break it. I know you spent a lot of time picking the songs specifically for me because you knew I'd like them, though I had trouble understanding some of the parts. I'll never understand why humans love music so much. It's so much noise and there's so much going on, but I know it's important to you, so I will learn to like it. I'm very sorry for breaking it. I don't ever take it out of my trench coat, just in case I need to listen to it during an emergency, and I fell onto it. :( Please forgive me, Dean. I'm very sorry.

As Dean read, he watched tear drops stain the paper. He laughed a little as he continued to cry, noting how the letter was the most characteristic Cas letter he could think of. And he was happy. So happy that he didn't break it himself. It was already broken.

Cas knew how much the weight of handing over a mixtape was, especially a Zeppelin one for Dean, and he acknowledged it. Dean squeezed the letter to his chest as he leaned back against the wall and continued to cry silently.