These Lyrics Right Here. This Whole Song Is Destiel Coded.

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

Trees ll- McCafferty

Destiel Pride: Featherlight

There comes a time in the grieving process when you run out of things to destroy. There are only so many colourful curses that can be screamed and muffled into the fabric of a trench coat. There are only so many people to blame before it becomes obvious the culprit is the person staring at you in the mirror each morning — or night. Time loses all meaning but before and after. There are no true mornings when mourning. Without Cas, there is no sun rising, only setting. That was how Dean lived in the weeks after Cas was dragged into The Empty.

He still hadn't used the word 'death', not even in the sanctity of his head. 'Death' was a slippery word when it came to the Winchesters, and Cas — whether the bastard liked it or not, was a Winchester by default. He was family. Goddamn family, with all the shitty hang-ups that came with the title.

The word 'death' didn't seem to encompass the grief. Cas was absent from any place that Dean could find him. Even in death, Dean would find him. The lack of him throbbed like bruised knuckles. It only hurt when he moved or thought about it, or stayed too still.

When two months had passed and all options Dean could think of had been explored to get Cas out of The Empty, he was left in the wreckage that'd once been his bedroom. The only things left intact fell into two categories, things that'd been too tough to break, and things that belonged to Cas.

In the silence that followed the carnage, Dean was left with what he'd been avoiding, a moment to think. He wasn't struck by a revelation. 'Revelation' wasn't the right word. He was struck instead by a sense of recognition. A long-hidden truth had stilled his hand and hollowed what was left of his body.

Cas loved him, he knew that. He'd known from the second the angel was gone. He knew what kind of love Cas meant. What he hadn't realised until he was hunched over himself, holding the splintered remains of his nightstand was that he loved Cas back. His loss had brought a torrent of rage because where the hell was all his love meant to go? When Cas left, he'd taken Dean's love with him.

And goddamn wasn't that the cosmic kick in the balls to bookend what he'd deemed a tragic existence? He'd been thinking about death and how useless death would be if Cas wasn't on the other end of it. He was thinking of life in much the same light.

Dean hadn't been raised to know what to do with a grief so all-encompassing it ran in the background of his existence like a mixtape on a road trip. If he followed his father's example, all that was left to do was to become an obsessed bastard, and destroy himself and everyone he touched in slow motion. The Winchester rule for dealing with grief? Become the gangrene in the wound. Make everything so much worse.

When Cas arrived at the door of the bunker a month later, Dean didn't know what to do. Everything in him pushed towards anger, towards utter annihilation of all that was good in himself. However, upon seeing the look of uncertainty on the angel's face decades of rage disappeared. What he was left with was the familiar ring of tinnitus and the thick pit of dread that'd settled in his stomach. What the hell were they meant to do now?

"Hello, Dean," Cas spoke, like nothing had happened. Giving Dean an out, he knew he'd never be able to take.

There was too much left unsaid between them to go tumbling back into cowboy hats and coffee quips like their last run-in with death.

Dean knew he was meant to talk but he'd never been much of a talker when it counted. His hands trembled as they moved unbidden to hover over Cas' shoulder. He needed to touch the guy, to make sure he was real but to do so felt too definitive. If Cas was an illusion, Dean didn't care. He wanted him to stay put for once.

Dean's hands hovered ghostlike in the space between them, haunted as the rest of his body by the loss of the angel. His fingers flittered around Cas' body, nervous birds on hot, highway concrete. They'd land for a moment, featherlight, before taking off again. They explored Castiel's arms, his chest, his cheeks. All the while, Dean remained silent as the saint he wasn't.

In all his imaginings of their reunion, everything had been intense, whether he was throwing curses or kisses at Cas. He'd never expected his lips to lock and his body to betray him by shaking like a goddamn leaf in the breeze. He felt like he was a kid again, lost, silent and looking for someone or something to hold onto with all his fucking might.

He wanted to find his tongue, to say something to wipe the look of absolute bewilderment and trepidation from Cas' face but what the hell was there to say? No words would be enough.

He placed his hands on either side of Cas' face, watching the angel's eyes swell. He wanted a grand gesture. Cas deserved it, but Dean was still tied in knots trying to work out if this was a line they could cross and walk back from. Dean didn't know what he'd do if he screwed things up, terrified Cas would be another home he could never return to.

His lips found the scrape of Cas' cheek. The familiar five o'clock shadow on the unfamiliar territory of his mouth. It was so unlike Dean to be any kind of tender. There was no way the action could be misconstrued for anything other than what it was. A promise? A confession?

His hands had landed on the small of Cas' back and the curve of his hip. He opened his mouth to speak but the words came out garbled, sounding embarrassingly close to a sob.

Still, his mouth wouldn't shape the words. He closed his eyes and prayed, hoping Cas would hear.

Don't you ever do that to me again.

I have a deaf dog and I felt like Cas earlier with the way I stood over her, silently watching her sleep and admiring how adorable she was, and she never woke up because she couldn't hear me.

Dean: * walks in wearing a shirt saying ""I'm Dean fucking Winchester"" *

Sam: What are you wearing?

Dean: Wait for it.

* a blushing Castiel walks in wearing a shirt saying ""I'm fucking Dean Winchester"" *

Sam: Oh... That’s... cute?

---- 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.”

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?