4;1. 5K words of complete and total angst. Established relationship.
(serious suicidal thoughts and tendencies in here, so please don't read if you're not in the right mind to do so.)
1.
As the years went on, Dean Winchester became more and more reckless, and the people around him were forced to watch as he slowly self-destructed.
The weight of the world became too much for him to bear on his aging shoulders, and he still fought like hell, but it was a known fact that he was getting tired. Of fighting, of living, Dean was tired of it all. And Castiel had to stand by and watch the man he loved waste away, helpless and afraid. He tried to intervene when he could, but Dean was famous for pushing people away, and even Sam couldn't get a word in.
He hurt himself in more ways than one, most notably his self-sacrificing nature, his compulsion to throw himself into the line of fire, to save anyone and everyone.
To an outsider, it was noble, and incredibly brave, and even Sam had sort of gotten used to it, but to Castiel? It was the absolute worst thing. To see the man that he loved, throwing his life away so effortlessly, it caused an ache so deep in his chest that demanded to be addressed.
--
"Cas? We need you down here right now, Dean's in trouble, you have to help him." Normally, Sam or Dean called Cas for help on a case, or to heal minor injuries, often even just to hang out and grab a beer, but it was becoming increasingly common for Sam to call out to the angel, his voice tinged with desperation, as Dean lay at his feet.
And even though Castiel always made it on time, it still caused his vessel's heart to leap into his throat whenever he heard that sentence, because there was bound to be a time when the hunter's wounds were too extensive for his grace to heal, and if he kept it up, death was just one misstep away. It scared him more than he cared to admit, so he always made sure to be there within a second of Sam's call.
"Oh, thank god you showed up, you're going to have to hurry, I don't know how much longer he's got." Sam grabs Castiel's arm with a strong sense of urgency and drags him to what seems to be the office of the small house they're in. The short run there is full of Castiel trying to prepare himself for what state Dean will be in, and gather up his grace for any major wounds.
But when he sees the hunter's form lying motionless on the ground, he freezes.
Choking, gasping for breath, Dean is barely holding on. Two bullet holes are lodged in his chest, another one in his stomach. Iron is flooding the angel's nose from the large pool of blood surrounding Dean, which is only growing larger with every wasted second. Dean's chest is heaving, his lungs scrambling for air that isn't there, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. He's got minutes, at most, but Castiel is so struck with the familiarity of it that he can't move.
He still finds himself plagued by the images of the hundreds of copies he had killed of Dean under Naomi's mind control. And seeing Dean like this? It was so similar that he could almost feel the blood on his hands.
"It's not too bad, right? You can fix him up?" Brought out of his trance, Castiel looks up to see Sam wringing his hands, scared and trying to hold himself together. The angel scolds himself for taking so long, for getting caught up in his own guilt that he worries the younger Winchester, and puts Dean in even more pain than necessary. This could have been the deciding second between life or death, and Castiel was just caught hesitating.
