Stronger Than Us Both

Breaks & Battles

●Dean●

It'd been a few days since Cas visited his family, and he had yet to talk about the fight that he mentioned that night. Whatever happened was eating him up, but he wouldn't talk to me. I asked him about it, only to have him quickly change the subject. Gabe wouldn't answer any of my calls or texts either. Something big had happened with the Novaks; no one was filling me in, though. I tried to tell myself that Cas would come to me eventually, but as the days passed, that seemed less and less likely. All he was doing was staring off into space and not speaking for hours. I tried my best to bring him out of whatever darkness he was in, but I was at a loss.

It didn't help that I had been on edge lately too. I decided to tell Cas about my dreams, then he came back from Claydon upset by something so bad, he would start crying in his sleep. I didn't want to add on to whatever stress he was under, so I kept my problems to myself.

Unfortunately, my problems were growing and growing as every dream turned into a nightmare. Each night, I watched myself murder Cas in every way possible: strangling him, setting him on fire, drowning him. It seemed like, if I was sleeping, I was dreaming of the boy I loved dying by my own hands. Needless to say, I wasn't sleeping much.

I felt like both Cas and I needed a distraction. That's why, when our four month anniversary rolled around, I proposed taking a trip. Cas had told me plenty of times that he wanted to visit debilis Washington D.C. and spend the day at the Smithsonian. He wanted to go to the science museum, and I wanted to go to the history one. I planned on taking him Sunday so we could make an entire day out of it, but Cas shot the idea down.

"The Valentine's dance is the day before, and you have a meet that night."

I'd actually forgotten about wrestling, but I wasn't too concerned about it. We could always come back early, or I could just not worry about the meet. Cas was much more important to me than wrestling.

When I suggested both options, Cas told me no, maybe some other time, and changed the topic, something he was getting good at doing. I decided to let the idea go, but not being able to forget the sudden awareness of how closed off Cas was becoming. I had to stop this, whatever was pushing us apart.

It took me almost a week to get anything out of him.

•••

Everything was tense on Saturday before the dance. Cas and I went to dinner with Benny, Meg, Jo, Zayn, Charlie, and Dorothy, but it wasn't a great idea. I still wasn't really talking to my sister or Meg; Dorothy seemed overall pissed off; Cas stayed silent throughout the whole meal. And to make matters worse, our waitress asked if Charlie was my girlfriend since she was sitting across from me, then started flirting with me before I could say anything about Cas. That only made Cas press his lips into a thin line and not respond when I tried to talk to him.

Benny leaned over to me at one point when our table wasn't as uncomfortable and actually talking. "What the hell is going on?"

"Honestly, I have no clue." I looked at Cas out of the corner of my eye. "He hasn't been talking to me recently. There's something going on with him."

He must have heard me, which only could be expected with our quiet table that was already walking on eggshells. Cas slammed down his fork so hard that it crashed into his other silverware with a metallic cling and shook the rest of the table. He didn't say anything and walked away.

Everyone looked at me, but I ignored them and went after Cas. I caught up to him as he went outside, leaning on the side of the building and crossing his arms. He only glared at me for a while.