( It's like a slap in the face. He reels back a little on instinct, and gives Cas only a few seconds to do his studying before evacuating the tender moment to pace four or five feet away. To turn his back. To press his hand to his mouth while it just... sinks in. Get a good look from a better vantage point buddy, they're on full display at this angle.
A lifetime or a year. It's not that the alternate reality they suffered through together changes anything, they only got- what- a few months together there? Long enough that things got real, real enough that things got complicated, complicated enough to lead to the entire... everything they went through after they got back. Maybe he should be happy about it, that Cas can't remember those weeks of Dean being a total goddamn coward. The running, the processing, the almost-kiss in their living room.
He doesn't feel happy about it. It feels like he's... alone, somehow, in this regard. Not just their whole thing, but the entire rollercoaster of bullcrap that was New Amsterdam. All the struggle, all the bad, all the good, all their moments leading up to Dean doing what he just finally managed to do, gone for anyone but himself.
(Well, with Lance and that hippy, but who gives a crap about that right now?)
He drags his forefinger and thumb down his parting lips, and clears his throat as it drops away. It doesn't matter. It's not a big deal. It doesn't change anything. He takes instead to tiredly rubbing at one eyelid with two fingers, speaking with both of them closed, without turning around. )
We- uh. We were somewhere else before... here. For... a long time, I lost track. Nine, ten months? Give or take? It was practically Cyberpunk 2077, except it was more like 2577. ( A dumb, conceding shrug. Hoarse-voiced and absent. ) Just as stupid and disappointing.
( The longer Cas looks, the more he'll probably be able to tell they're not actually angelic. At least, not the same kind as his brothers and sisters. Technically speaking, they did come from a god, but lesser. Less unfathomable, less twenty-dimensional or whatever real angel wings are. No roaring lions hidden in there, no extra heads, just wings that look like Dean probably thinks they should -- but just on the other side of manifesting. Intangible, invisible to him, he can only really feel them in the form of a chill down his spine or a weird awareness in his brain.
Maybe he can see the shard attached to them, that not-currently-glowing blue fragment of something acting as a power source, evidently inseparably tangled with him as far as anyone knows. Bigger than what would be necessary to just slap a pair of wings on him. Not attached to his soul, but nestled somewhere beneath his ribs near his heart. Not malicious, not sapping anything from him, radiating something pure - that's his seed, after all. Purification. )
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A lifetime or a year. It's not that the alternate reality they suffered through together changes anything, they only got- what- a few months together there? Long enough that things got real, real enough that things got complicated, complicated enough to lead to the entire... everything they went through after they got back. Maybe he should be happy about it, that Cas can't remember those weeks of Dean being a total goddamn coward. The running, the processing, the almost-kiss in their living room.
He doesn't feel happy about it. It feels like he's... alone, somehow, in this regard. Not just their whole thing, but the entire rollercoaster of bullcrap that was New Amsterdam. All the struggle, all the bad, all the good, all their moments leading up to Dean doing what he just finally managed to do, gone for anyone but himself.
(Well, with Lance and that hippy, but who gives a crap about that right now?)
He drags his forefinger and thumb down his parting lips, and clears his throat as it drops away. It doesn't matter. It's not a big deal. It doesn't change anything. He takes instead to tiredly rubbing at one eyelid with two fingers, speaking with both of them closed, without turning around. )
We- uh. We were somewhere else before... here. For... a long time, I lost track. Nine, ten months? Give or take? It was practically Cyberpunk 2077, except it was more like 2577. ( A dumb, conceding shrug. Hoarse-voiced and absent. ) Just as stupid and disappointing.
( The longer Cas looks, the more he'll probably be able to tell they're not actually angelic. At least, not the same kind as his brothers and sisters. Technically speaking, they did come from a god, but lesser. Less unfathomable, less twenty-dimensional or whatever real angel wings are. No roaring lions hidden in there, no extra heads, just wings that look like Dean probably thinks they should -- but just on the other side of manifesting. Intangible, invisible to him, he can only really feel them in the form of a chill down his spine or a weird awareness in his brain.
Maybe he can see the shard attached to them, that not-currently-glowing blue fragment of something acting as a power source, evidently inseparably tangled with him as far as anyone knows. Bigger than what would be necessary to just slap a pair of wings on him. Not attached to his soul, but nestled somewhere beneath his ribs near his heart. Not malicious, not sapping anything from him, radiating something pure - that's his seed, after all. Purification. )