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Dean slid down the side of his bed to land sitting on the floor, elbows propped on his knees and face buried in his hands. He could practically feel his blood pumping under his skin and it only made him want to rip it off, to claw at his body until he’s able to escape it and never look back.
Tears of frustration prickled at his eyes, which only served to make him more angry. It’s not even that big of a deal, he tells himself. Why the fuck are you crying over this?
“Why the fuck is it so fucking–” Dean cuts himself off with a yell of frustration, and his voice is thick with anger and tears. He doesn’t finish the question he began asking himself, instead just throws his phone across the room since he feels useless to do much else right now. He knows he’ll probably regret that later, but damn if it didn’t feel good in the moment.
Emotions still bubbled dangerously hot under Dean’s skin; he grabbed his only two pillows off his bed and threw them across the room too even though he knew it wouldn’t do him any good.
His head found its way back into his hands again and he heaved a sob, too exhausted to continue to be angry. Too exhausted from roaming around the bunker for the last half hour, too exhausted from constantly being in pain that no one could fix, too exhausted from how fucking draining it is to feel like you’re losing yourself some days. He tries to remind himself that it could be worse, but it doesn’t help much, especially since it has been worse, especially since most days are worse than this. He’s just at his limit for now. His battery is just about drained for the day.
A light knock on his doorframe rouses Dean from his thoughts, and he lifts his head from his hands to see who gets the great honour of seeing Dean Winchester sobbing on his bedroom floor.
“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says. “Are you alright?”
“I’m, uh, I’m great, man, what’s up?” he says, hastily wiping his face clean and putting on his best “everything is fine” face.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alright, I heard some loud noises coming from your room and you appear to be upset. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Dean smiles at his friend’s concern; it’s small, but still genuine, and the first one he’s had on his face for most of today. “It’s– it’s nothing, really, I just– I lost my phone charger, and I know it’s not a big deal, I can get a new one, but I just– I can’t remember where it is. I just had it yesterday, I know I did, but I can’t find it now, and I’ve searched the bunker and Baby top to bottom, and I keep wracking my mind trying to figure out where I had it last, but I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything.”
Dean’s eyebrows are scrunched up in frustration, and his eyes begin to water again as he stares down at his hands helplessly.
Castiel thinks he’s beginning to understand. “This isn’t just about the phone charger, I’m guessing,” he says, walking towards Dean cautiously and sitting down across from him.
Dean huffs a laugh, dry and humourless. “Yeah, I guess not.”
“Is there a reason you’re finding yourself unable to recall these things?”
Dean hesitates, trying to think of the best way to explain it. “Yeah, it’s like, you know that pain disorder I told you about, the one that makes me all achey and tired all the time?” When Castiel nods, Dean continues, “sometimes– or, a lot of the time, it gives me what people call ‘brain fog,’ and it’s just what it sounds like. Everything up here,” he gestures to his head, “gets fuzzy. Everything kinda blends together and I don’t always remember things I did, or when I did them. Stuff like that.”
“And you are… foggy, today then?” Cas asks, tilting his head to the side minutely.
Dean nods. “Yep. And it’s just– it’s scary, not being able to remember stuff like that, not to mention it just makes me feel like I’m not a person. So, you know… stuff like this happens and I lose my head a little,” he says with a chuckle.
Castiel gets an idea. “Dean, what if you could help me find it for you?”
“I’m not sure I follow.” The slight head tilt that accompanies his statement bears a striking resemblance to Cas’s.
“I could, only if you want me to of course, read your mind and sift through your memories to find where you last had your phone charger.”
“But I don’t even remember the memories,” Dean says. “How will you be able to see them?”
“That’s the great thing about human brains,” Castiel answers. “Even if you can’t remember something you did or saw yesterday, it’s still stored in your brain’s long term memory. So I should still be able to see what I need to even if you currently can’t see it yourself.”
Cas thinks the smile on Dean’s face is worth making the offer, even if it doesn’t work out the way he hopes. “Then yeah, go for it, dude!” Dean says excitedly.
Castiel leans over and places his hand on the side of Dean’s head, closing his eyes in concentration. He looks only into the most recent of Dean’s memories, not wanting to accidentally see something Dean wouldn’t want him to; he skims through his memories of the previous day, watching them like a movie (if that movie were twenty-four hours of footage sped up to such a degree that no human could ever make sense of it unless they were sharing headspace with an angel) until he finds what he’s looking for.
He removes his hand from Dean’s head, and Dean looks at him with a glimmer of hope in his eyes even as his face only shows cautious optimism. “One moment,” Castiel says, and he’s gone from the room with a flap of his wings.
He returns less than a minute later, back in his original spot seated across from Dean, phone charger in hand and a small smile of accomplishment on his face.
Dean laughs in excitement. “Dude! Where was it?”
“Under a blanket in your Dean-Cave. You had moved the blanket to look for it on the couch, but the charger had gotten tangled within the blanket, so you didn’t see it even then. Easy mistake to make,” he says, passing the cord to Dean.
Dean marvels at the charger in his hands for a moment, feeling a little less out of his mind than he had earlier. “Thanks, Cas, really. This is… thanks.” He only hopes Castiel knows he’s not just saying thank you for finding his phone charger.
Even with his difficulties communicating with most humans, Castiel still picks up on the sincere gratitude in Dean’s words and the way he looks more relaxed now than he has in a while.
He knows.