I want to live. I want to love. I think I am ready.

you can hear it in the silence

D E A N

When darkness fell outside the bunker that night, Sam and Eileen retreated to their bedroom, leaving Dean and Cas sitting alone in the living room that Sam had cleaned up and almost finished furnishings. Only yesterday, or really it was almost a week since he'd sat in the library alone, Dean had felt the silence as a strangling pain around him. Sucking the air from the room, his mind so far away he couldn't even remember which one of the days alone in the bunker, his head had truly become lost.

He had told his brother that the time alone and the silence would do him good. Told him that he didn't have to worry about him, Dean was fine. He hadn't really talked to him at all after everything that had happened, he'd been too focused on finding a way to get Cas back. Sam didn't know what Cas had told him that night. Hadn't told him how Dean's regret was slowly killing him. He couldn't say it out loud. If he told his brother what Cas had told him, he would break. Dean would break. So he had welcomed the silence, as Sam and Eileen left him to his own thoughts. But it only made everything worse. This silence was an unbearable silence that filled the absence of the one thing he never was able to let go of. The silence left by him.

Dean had never hated a silence the way he hated the one Cas's absence had left in his life.

But this silence.

This silence made up for it.

The silence in the room was so calming and soothing that Dean didn't want to break it. Only take it in. Breathe easier than before. Smile truer than ever before.

Cas sat beside him on the couch, not close enough that they were touching, but not too far away either. Dean could feel Cas's presence at his left side as if they were. He only had to reach out his hand towards Cas to touch him.

That's all he had wanted to do since he got him back. Hold him close. Never letting go. He'd finally said the words that had been eating him up the past months, but it all still felt so new and raw. This thing between them. They had to learn each other all over again, figure out what this was.

When the two of them were left alone together, cleaning the kitchen after dinner he'd had to force every cell in his body not to tackle the angel, pulling him as close as he could. Kiss his lips. Hold his face in his hands, hold his whole world between his fingers. Just. Hold the angel. While cleaning the kitchen, they'd danced around each other, both of them wearing this stupidly cute smile on their face. And when they were done, Dean had finally laid his hand against the angel's chest. Moving it up to cup his face. He'd leaned in and given Cas a light, warm, gentle kiss. They both put on that stupidly cute smile again before joining the others in the living room. Sitting close to each other, but not close enough for Dean. He was suddenly kind of unsure of how to act in front of the others. He hadn't talked to Sam after they got back. He'd talked to Jack before he went to the empty, and Jack knew what had happened between him and Cas. But he still hadn't said a word about it to Sam. He felt he needed to say something, but he didn't know what. Or how. Feelings and words weren't really his specialty...

Cas was watching some movie on the tv, but his eyelids got heavier and heavier. Studying his beautiful face, Dean smiled as he just sat there and observed how the angel was slowly falling asleep. He didn't know anyone could get this much happiness from watching another slowly falling asleep. But he did. And he couldn't stop smiling, feeling his own eyelids slowly wandering downwards.

The silence was broken when Miracle stood up from his place at Cas's feet to nudge his knee with his head. Cas was instantly awake, smiling down at the dog. He leans forward to scratch Mir behind the ears, the dog clearly pleased by the attention. Then he turns on his pawns and goes running out of the room.