Hospital Beds {A Destiel AU}

Most Likely Not The Way To Handle It [Chapter Four]

Quiet Rivers Mental Health Facility

Dean Winchester

Dean was very ready to launch himself directly across the courtyard like a damn gazelle. No way in hell was he going to be stopped from reaching Castiel now, not when the man was standing so fucking close.

He would have done it too, had his brother not pinned him to the ground the second Dean was able to function properly.

"Dean you can't. He is engaged."

"No Sam you don't understand he loves me and I love him he just isn't thinking right I can fix my mistakes I can-"

Dean was cut off as Sam put a hand over his mouth. "Dean. You know this is your... disorder, talking. It's been a decade Dean. Cas has moved on, and it's damn time you do too. He doesn't love you, Dean."

The words were harsh, and Sam knew it. They were intended to cut through his brothers haze of bliss at the idea of being with Cas again. Dean was not so easily deterred, but Sam didn't need to know the plan his mind was frantically forming. He could play it like he believed everything Sam was saying, if it got him the hell back to his room so he could just think.

Dean sighed dramatically, turning his head to the side and allowing his green eyes to wander towards the trees that surrounded the facility. Sam warily removed his hand from Dean's mouth. Dean used this opportunity to speak, making sure his words sounded small and sad.

"You're right Sammy," Dean chucked darkly, "You're always right, aren't you? I'm being stupid. Can you just take me back to my room? I just—I need to be alone." Dean looked at his brother sadly, the bigger man still had Dean pinned to the ground, and his wife and child had been watching the exchange with looks of mild horror on their faces. Sam rose slowly, pulling Dean up by the hand and brushing him off.

"Alright Dean, lets go."

-

Dean had been silent throughout dinner, ignoring the other patients attempts at drawing him from his shell. He needed to think about Cas. Castiel hadn't been in the dining hall for dinner, but Dean had watched a nurse bringing a tray of food down the left wing, and he had a hunch that that was the ticket to finding his Castiel.

He waited up for hours. Squirming on his mattress as he tried and failed at reading, writing, and thinking. He finally gave up and took up his place looking out the window again, watching the sun disappear and stars starting to dot themselves across the sky. He rarely looked at the night sky. When he was in his teen years, it reminded him painfully of his mother, who would sit Dean on her lap and point out comets and sing quietly in his ear. Then later in life all he saw in the stars were the contellations Cas taught him over astonomy textbooks at midnight, sharing drinks and kisses until dawn, on the nights when Cas couldn't go to sleep, no matter how hard they tried.

Now Dean looked at the stars and felt an odd sense of contentment wash over him. Perhaps he was finally managing to feel old memories without the sting, as most people learned to do, or maybe it was the fact that his Cas was in the same building as him, for the first time in years.

Whatever it was, Dean welcomed the relief from his usual bitterness and self-pitying.

He stared at the stars for hours. He was finding it easy to lose himself in the infinity of the sky. The stars made him wonder about the multiverse theory, was there another version of himself somewhere, staring at the stars with Castiel by his side? Was there a universe where he hadn't made such horrific mistakes?

The clock clicked to midnight.

Dean pulled himself from his reverie, placing his feet on the cold, white tile. He shoved his pillows under the blankets so they somewhat resembled a person at first glance. The night staff was lazy, they almost never patrolled the halls to look for wandering patients, as Dean knew from his many nights in which he would stay up to read or fiddle with a sketch pad and pencil, writing down everything he could recall about quantum physics from memory, trying to keep himself sane in a hospital where he was anything but.