Need You More Than You Know

-5-

Takes place somewhere after 8x20 ("Pac Man Fever").

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It had been a while since Cas had zipped his feathery ass down to check in with him and Sam, and it had been annoying him more the longer it went on. He didn't want to be all needy and keep calling to him, but... And he didn't want to bring it up with Sam, who definitely had more things to worry about at the moment, but it was impossible to resist after a while.

Finally, he absolutely couldn't take it any longer. "You hear from Cas lately?" he asked Sam one night in the bunker.

Sam was on his laptop, searching for cases. Not that Dean was about to let him go off on any. But the damn kid couldn't sit still and rest, even with the trials chipping away at his health. So Dean had resigned himself to letting Sam research, as long as he made sure to get some sleep and eat in the process. "Who?" he asked, glancing up.

"Cas," Dean repeated, biting the inside of his lip.

"...Are you talking about Cassie?" Sam frowned. "No, I—No. Why would I? It's been so l—"

"No, not Cassie." Dean shook his head. "Cas. Castiel? Short guy, kinda weird—" –kinda sexy, his oh-so-helpful brain fills in, "—trenchcoat like he thinks he's Constantine?" When Sam looked even more confused, Dean's stomach suddenly felt heavy. "Guy who raised me from Hell?"

"You were brought back by Anna, Dean, and we haven't seen or heard from her in years." Sam narrowed his eyes. "You feeling all right?"

Dean glared. "Castiel. You never heard of..." At Sam's concerned frown, Dean let the rest of his sentence trail off. Fuck.

He couldn't have imagined him and all those years, could he? Could his brain really have come up with that shade of blue in Cas's eyes all on its own?

Shit. Sam was waiting on a response. "A-Anna?" Dean managed, the name struggling out through a dry mouth.

Sam nodded, pushing his computer to the side a little. "What's going on?" He coughed and reached for his glass of water, eyes still on Dean.

And Sam's health was failing, but it was physical at this point – so far, anyway – all coughing up blood and sleep problems and weakness and dizziness. Unless his memory had been tampered with from outside.

Or unless Dean was going crazy here?

No. No, Cas did exist. He did. He had to. Dean was good at making things up when he needed to, but there was no way he could have made up five totally detailed years of someone who didn't exist.

Here, anyway.

Something was going on. Dean had a flicker of memory, a recollection of Crowley opening Purgatory and releasing the Leviathan. But it was fuzzy, like peering through a dirty window when you'd looked through the cleaned glass before and known what it was supposed to be.

Standing in Stull Cemetery, where... Bobby? had thrown a Molotov Cocktail at Michael-Adam, not Cas. Again, the edges blurred, a sight unfocused when you knew otherwise clear vision.

Dean lifted his head, meeting Sam's gaze. "I'm not sure," he said slowly. Whatever had happened, or hadn't, or existed or didn't, the tightness in Dean's chest was certainly real.