Missing Pictures 2/?
Title: Missing Pictures 2/?
Rating: PG
Pairings and Characters: Dean/Castiel,
Spoilers/Warnings: none i can think of
Word Count: ~2,000 (this chapter)
Summary: A car accident leaves Dean and Castiel in bad shape, but when Castiel wakes up three months later with no memory of his life, Dean has to adjust and decide how much to tell Castiel and how much to leave him to learn again.
Previous
When Castiel woke up, he could smell fresh coffee and bacon cooking. He really didn’t want to get out of the most comfortable bed he’d gotten to sleep in, but his stomach growled loudly. With a heavy sigh, he sat up in bed and slowly made his way to the door.
Dean could hear Castiel shuffling into the kitchen. “Good morning.” He was cooking eggs and bacon.
“Morning.” He settled at the counter he had retreated to the night before. “That all smells really good.”
“Thanks.” Dean smiled and poured a cup of coffee for Castiel. He handed him the cup and a few packets of sugar and cream.
Castiel stared at the cup for a minute. Dean had handed him three little cups of cream and a stack of sugars. “Do I use all these for my coffee?”
Dean shrugged. “Figure it out.”
“Dean,” Castiel rolled his eyes, “I’m tired and not in the mood to play around.”
“I’m not telling you to remember,” Dean looked at him, “I’m telling you to try different things. You might find a different way that you like better.” He turned back to his food.
Castiel sipped the cup just black and choked on the bitter flavor. While Dean finished cooking and plated their food, Castiel added sugar and cream a little at a time. He found the right combination, Dean handed him a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. “Two sugars and one cream.”
Dean laughed. “Well, some things don’t change.” He sat beside Castiel with his black coffee.
“That’s how I made it before?”
Dean nodded. “So, what do you want to do today? It’s up to you.”
Castiel shrugged and bit off some bacon. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve got the weekend before I start working with my dad at Bobby’s shop, at least until I find a different job, so whatever you want.”
“I really don’t know, Dean. I’m okay with staying home today.” Dean nodded but looked a little disappointed. “If you want to do something, we can. It really doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t have anything planned. Just wanted to ask if you did.”
Castiel sighed. “Okay, I guess I’m staying in then.” To avoid a mopey Dean, he continued, “So, where do I work?”
“At the history museum in the city.” Dean couldn’t believe he had forgotten to tell Castiel about his work. It had always meant so much to him. “Actually, you were the curator there for a couple years.”
“What, really?” Castiel set his coffee down. “How did I manage that job at 30? Does that require a lot of schooling?”
“Yeah,” Dean nodded, “you have a master’s in history with a bachelor’s in classical studies and a bunch of other historical classes. You’ve worked at the museum since high school. You always were a huge nerd.” He laughed. “There were nights that we snuck into the museum after hours and you would drag me around the exhibits and tell me about them. I didn’t have the heart to tell you how little I cared.” He smiled and pushed his eggs around his plate. “Of course, watching you go on about something you loved was a good enough reason to encourage you to keep talking.”
Castiel smiled. “It sounds like I had my dream job.”
“You did.” Dean could recall countless days when Castiel told him just that. He remembered the day he got the job, and Dean had never seen him so happy.
“I can’t go back though,” Dean looked up, “can I? I don’t remember anything from school or about the job. All that work and time, for nothing.” Castiel was annoyed at himself for ruining what seemed like a perfect life, even though he didn’t have any control over what had happened.
“You still have a job there, if you want it.” Dean had talked to them when Castiel woke up. “Obviously, not the same job, but you can do what you did when you started in high school. Knowledge can always be relearned. One nice thing about history is: it never changes.”
“What if I don’t have the same passion for it anymore?”
Dean shrugged. “Then you can quit and find something else that makes you happy. You should never do anything that doesn’t make you happy. Just try it and if you hate it, it’s okay to leave.”
“We still talking about my job?” Dean had gotten strangely serious during that speech.
“I’m talking about everything.” He put his fork down and turned to face Castiel. “Whether it’s how you make your coffee, how you like your eggs,” he pointed to his plate, “what job interests you, what clothes you wear, or who makes you happy.”
Castiel nodded, searching Dean’s eyes. “Is that what’s bothering you, Dean?” He turned to face him. “Are you trying to get me out of the house and distract me so I don’t sit around and decide that maybe I don’t like you anymore?”
Dean shook his head, looking away from the stare. “I’m just trying to jog your memory, or to show you something that might be familiar.” Castiel continued his stare. “What do you want me to say, that I miss you, the you I knew and grew up with? Should I tell you that I want you to remember everything about us and our lives? It would be easier, but who knows? I might like you more now than I did before.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t worry about it so much. Neither one of us can control what my brain does, so let’s just calm down and see what happens.”
Dean stood. “That’s a lot easier for you to say and do.” He took a couple steps away from Castiel. “You don’t remember the years growing up together, the dances, summer nights in our tree house, your parent’s deaths, our first date, first kiss, our college parties, or all the fights and bad days. I do. I can’t just not see them when I look at you. You are everything to me. You’re my best friend, my family, and you always have been. Yet, if you told me that you never wanted to see me again, I would let you go, because I could never make you do anything that you didn’t want to do, no matter what it did to me.” Dean turned back to look at Castiel, surprised to find him with tears in his eyes. “So don’t tell me to calm down.”
Castiel blinked the tears away. He knew how much Dean cared about him and he didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t know what he should do. “I wish I could give that guy back to you, Dean. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me.” He stood to meet Dean. “So, let’s go out to lunch later and anything else you want to do.”
“You don’t have to do that, Cas. You already said you wanted to stay in.”
“And now I want to go out. I’ve been cooped up long enough. I should walk around and socialize a little.”
Dean knew he was just trying to make him feel better, but he was tired of arguing. “Fine. We’ll go to Harvelle’s for lunch. Maybe I’ll teach you how to drive again.”
Castiel nodded. “Okay.”
They went out around noon, Dean hesitantly letting Castiel drive. They took it slow and Castiel’s muscles at least seemed to remember how to drive. After eating and a nice chat with Jo, they went to an afternoon movie. Normally, they would have hit a bar after that, but they didn’t think that was a good idea for Castiel yet. It was around six when they got home and Castiel was already tired.
“I’m gonna take a nap.” He yawned as he shuffled to his room.
“Okay.” Dean took a beer from the fridge and turned on the TV. A few hours passed and Castiel had yet to reappear, making Dean nervous. He peaked into his room after knocking a couple times. “Cas, are you still sleeping?”
Castiel was sitting on his bed looking at his laptop screen. He looked up when Dean opened the door. “No, I was just reading through some of the articles and papers I’ve written. Just trying to get inside my own head I guess.”
Dean walked to the bed and looked over Castiel’s shoulder. “I don’t know how well you’ll do that with academic stuff.”
He furrowed his brows. “It is just mostly confusing me.”
“Here,” Dean reached over and opened the internet browser, “try this.” He opened the browsing history and opened a few different websites. “It at least shows you where you’ve been on the internet. Maybe you’ll find something about yourself.”
Castiel looked through the tabs. “It’s just Facebook, YouTube, and a couple academic sites.”
Dean shrugged. “It might give you something. Just try it out.” He walked back through the doorway. “I’ll let you look alone.” He closed the door behind him.
Castiel checked out the academic sites first, and deeming them useless, closed them. He looked at YouTube next and found that less helpful. He just had a few videos in his favorites: a couple music videos and cat videos.
Sighing, he opened Facebook. He didn’t make statuses very often and was mostly tagged in pictures with Sam and Dean. Sam had uploaded a bunch of pictures from when they were younger. Castiel smiled as he clicked through pictures of the brothers over the years. He would be in a few of them occasionally, usually with an arm around Dean. As they grew older, the pictures of just Dean and Castiel grew in number.
Dean looked up as Castiel came out of his room. “You find anything helpful?”
Castiel sat on the couch next to him. “Not too much. Apparently, I like cats.”
Dean laughed. “Yeah, that’s true. If I wasn’t allergic, we would probably have one.”
“And, Sam posts a lot of pictures on Facebook.”
“He does.” Dean laughed again. “He has slowed down a little after graduating though.”
“It was nice to see how close we all really were. Not that I thought you guys were lying to me, but now I can see it more.”
Dean smiled. “Good.”
“And, I have decided that I will go back to work at the museum. It seemed really important to me and I loved it and I have to give that a chance, right?” Castiel looked at Dean.
He hoped that Castiel meant that as a statement that wasn’t just about work. Given the look he gave him, Dean thought so. He shrugged. “If that’s what you want to do.”
“It is.”
“Okay, I’ll give you the number to call tomorrow. You’ll be able to start whenever you want to.” He started flipping through the channels when his show ended. “I’ll be going back to the shop with my dad on Monday until I can find something else.”
“What kind of job are you looking for? An office job like before or something you actually want to do?”
“Oh wow,” Dean laughed, “it was that obvious?”
“You did tell me that you hated that job when I woke up.”
“Yeah,” Dean finally settled on a channel, “I did. I don’t know what job I’d be looking for. I just need something with a steady paycheck and insurance. We need both of those right now.”
Castiel couldn’t imagine how high their hospital bills were. “Sure, but shouldn’t your job make you happy, or shouldn’t you at least like it?”
“Ideally.”
“What did you study?”
Dean sighed. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do there either. I was an undecided and general studies major for a while. Then I took an engineering course and really liked it. It felt like something I could see myself doing.”
“Is that what you majored in then?”
“No, by the time I figured it out it would have taken a lot longer and I never was very good at the whole school thing with homework and tests.”
“What, you just gave up?”
“I knew my limits, with money and school. I’ll find a job soon enough. I’ll be fine.”
“Right.” Castiel could see Dean withdrawing from the conversation. He had seen him do it before with Sam. He didn’t want to talk about it and Castiel wouldn’t push. Dean stood and moved toward the bathroom. “Hey, for the record,” Dean stopped and looked at him, “I do like you. Obviously not to the level I did before, not yet, but I do. I’m not going anywhere.”
Dean nodded and smiled.
Next
Rating: PG
Pairings and Characters: Dean/Castiel,
Spoilers/Warnings: none i can think of
Word Count: ~2,000 (this chapter)
Summary: A car accident leaves Dean and Castiel in bad shape, but when Castiel wakes up three months later with no memory of his life, Dean has to adjust and decide how much to tell Castiel and how much to leave him to learn again.
Previous
When Castiel woke up, he could smell fresh coffee and bacon cooking. He really didn’t want to get out of the most comfortable bed he’d gotten to sleep in, but his stomach growled loudly. With a heavy sigh, he sat up in bed and slowly made his way to the door.
Dean could hear Castiel shuffling into the kitchen. “Good morning.” He was cooking eggs and bacon.
“Morning.” He settled at the counter he had retreated to the night before. “That all smells really good.”
“Thanks.” Dean smiled and poured a cup of coffee for Castiel. He handed him the cup and a few packets of sugar and cream.
Castiel stared at the cup for a minute. Dean had handed him three little cups of cream and a stack of sugars. “Do I use all these for my coffee?”
Dean shrugged. “Figure it out.”
“Dean,” Castiel rolled his eyes, “I’m tired and not in the mood to play around.”
“I’m not telling you to remember,” Dean looked at him, “I’m telling you to try different things. You might find a different way that you like better.” He turned back to his food.
Castiel sipped the cup just black and choked on the bitter flavor. While Dean finished cooking and plated their food, Castiel added sugar and cream a little at a time. He found the right combination, Dean handed him a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. “Two sugars and one cream.”
Dean laughed. “Well, some things don’t change.” He sat beside Castiel with his black coffee.
“That’s how I made it before?”
Dean nodded. “So, what do you want to do today? It’s up to you.”
Castiel shrugged and bit off some bacon. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve got the weekend before I start working with my dad at Bobby’s shop, at least until I find a different job, so whatever you want.”
“I really don’t know, Dean. I’m okay with staying home today.” Dean nodded but looked a little disappointed. “If you want to do something, we can. It really doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t have anything planned. Just wanted to ask if you did.”
Castiel sighed. “Okay, I guess I’m staying in then.” To avoid a mopey Dean, he continued, “So, where do I work?”
“At the history museum in the city.” Dean couldn’t believe he had forgotten to tell Castiel about his work. It had always meant so much to him. “Actually, you were the curator there for a couple years.”
“What, really?” Castiel set his coffee down. “How did I manage that job at 30? Does that require a lot of schooling?”
“Yeah,” Dean nodded, “you have a master’s in history with a bachelor’s in classical studies and a bunch of other historical classes. You’ve worked at the museum since high school. You always were a huge nerd.” He laughed. “There were nights that we snuck into the museum after hours and you would drag me around the exhibits and tell me about them. I didn’t have the heart to tell you how little I cared.” He smiled and pushed his eggs around his plate. “Of course, watching you go on about something you loved was a good enough reason to encourage you to keep talking.”
Castiel smiled. “It sounds like I had my dream job.”
“You did.” Dean could recall countless days when Castiel told him just that. He remembered the day he got the job, and Dean had never seen him so happy.
“I can’t go back though,” Dean looked up, “can I? I don’t remember anything from school or about the job. All that work and time, for nothing.” Castiel was annoyed at himself for ruining what seemed like a perfect life, even though he didn’t have any control over what had happened.
“You still have a job there, if you want it.” Dean had talked to them when Castiel woke up. “Obviously, not the same job, but you can do what you did when you started in high school. Knowledge can always be relearned. One nice thing about history is: it never changes.”
“What if I don’t have the same passion for it anymore?”
Dean shrugged. “Then you can quit and find something else that makes you happy. You should never do anything that doesn’t make you happy. Just try it and if you hate it, it’s okay to leave.”
“We still talking about my job?” Dean had gotten strangely serious during that speech.
“I’m talking about everything.” He put his fork down and turned to face Castiel. “Whether it’s how you make your coffee, how you like your eggs,” he pointed to his plate, “what job interests you, what clothes you wear, or who makes you happy.”
Castiel nodded, searching Dean’s eyes. “Is that what’s bothering you, Dean?” He turned to face him. “Are you trying to get me out of the house and distract me so I don’t sit around and decide that maybe I don’t like you anymore?”
Dean shook his head, looking away from the stare. “I’m just trying to jog your memory, or to show you something that might be familiar.” Castiel continued his stare. “What do you want me to say, that I miss you, the you I knew and grew up with? Should I tell you that I want you to remember everything about us and our lives? It would be easier, but who knows? I might like you more now than I did before.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t worry about it so much. Neither one of us can control what my brain does, so let’s just calm down and see what happens.”
Dean stood. “That’s a lot easier for you to say and do.” He took a couple steps away from Castiel. “You don’t remember the years growing up together, the dances, summer nights in our tree house, your parent’s deaths, our first date, first kiss, our college parties, or all the fights and bad days. I do. I can’t just not see them when I look at you. You are everything to me. You’re my best friend, my family, and you always have been. Yet, if you told me that you never wanted to see me again, I would let you go, because I could never make you do anything that you didn’t want to do, no matter what it did to me.” Dean turned back to look at Castiel, surprised to find him with tears in his eyes. “So don’t tell me to calm down.”
Castiel blinked the tears away. He knew how much Dean cared about him and he didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t know what he should do. “I wish I could give that guy back to you, Dean. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me.” He stood to meet Dean. “So, let’s go out to lunch later and anything else you want to do.”
“You don’t have to do that, Cas. You already said you wanted to stay in.”
“And now I want to go out. I’ve been cooped up long enough. I should walk around and socialize a little.”
Dean knew he was just trying to make him feel better, but he was tired of arguing. “Fine. We’ll go to Harvelle’s for lunch. Maybe I’ll teach you how to drive again.”
Castiel nodded. “Okay.”
They went out around noon, Dean hesitantly letting Castiel drive. They took it slow and Castiel’s muscles at least seemed to remember how to drive. After eating and a nice chat with Jo, they went to an afternoon movie. Normally, they would have hit a bar after that, but they didn’t think that was a good idea for Castiel yet. It was around six when they got home and Castiel was already tired.
“I’m gonna take a nap.” He yawned as he shuffled to his room.
“Okay.” Dean took a beer from the fridge and turned on the TV. A few hours passed and Castiel had yet to reappear, making Dean nervous. He peaked into his room after knocking a couple times. “Cas, are you still sleeping?”
Castiel was sitting on his bed looking at his laptop screen. He looked up when Dean opened the door. “No, I was just reading through some of the articles and papers I’ve written. Just trying to get inside my own head I guess.”
Dean walked to the bed and looked over Castiel’s shoulder. “I don’t know how well you’ll do that with academic stuff.”
He furrowed his brows. “It is just mostly confusing me.”
“Here,” Dean reached over and opened the internet browser, “try this.” He opened the browsing history and opened a few different websites. “It at least shows you where you’ve been on the internet. Maybe you’ll find something about yourself.”
Castiel looked through the tabs. “It’s just Facebook, YouTube, and a couple academic sites.”
Dean shrugged. “It might give you something. Just try it out.” He walked back through the doorway. “I’ll let you look alone.” He closed the door behind him.
Castiel checked out the academic sites first, and deeming them useless, closed them. He looked at YouTube next and found that less helpful. He just had a few videos in his favorites: a couple music videos and cat videos.
Sighing, he opened Facebook. He didn’t make statuses very often and was mostly tagged in pictures with Sam and Dean. Sam had uploaded a bunch of pictures from when they were younger. Castiel smiled as he clicked through pictures of the brothers over the years. He would be in a few of them occasionally, usually with an arm around Dean. As they grew older, the pictures of just Dean and Castiel grew in number.
Dean looked up as Castiel came out of his room. “You find anything helpful?”
Castiel sat on the couch next to him. “Not too much. Apparently, I like cats.”
Dean laughed. “Yeah, that’s true. If I wasn’t allergic, we would probably have one.”
“And, Sam posts a lot of pictures on Facebook.”
“He does.” Dean laughed again. “He has slowed down a little after graduating though.”
“It was nice to see how close we all really were. Not that I thought you guys were lying to me, but now I can see it more.”
Dean smiled. “Good.”
“And, I have decided that I will go back to work at the museum. It seemed really important to me and I loved it and I have to give that a chance, right?” Castiel looked at Dean.
He hoped that Castiel meant that as a statement that wasn’t just about work. Given the look he gave him, Dean thought so. He shrugged. “If that’s what you want to do.”
“It is.”
“Okay, I’ll give you the number to call tomorrow. You’ll be able to start whenever you want to.” He started flipping through the channels when his show ended. “I’ll be going back to the shop with my dad on Monday until I can find something else.”
“What kind of job are you looking for? An office job like before or something you actually want to do?”
“Oh wow,” Dean laughed, “it was that obvious?”
“You did tell me that you hated that job when I woke up.”
“Yeah,” Dean finally settled on a channel, “I did. I don’t know what job I’d be looking for. I just need something with a steady paycheck and insurance. We need both of those right now.”
Castiel couldn’t imagine how high their hospital bills were. “Sure, but shouldn’t your job make you happy, or shouldn’t you at least like it?”
“Ideally.”
“What did you study?”
Dean sighed. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do there either. I was an undecided and general studies major for a while. Then I took an engineering course and really liked it. It felt like something I could see myself doing.”
“Is that what you majored in then?”
“No, by the time I figured it out it would have taken a lot longer and I never was very good at the whole school thing with homework and tests.”
“What, you just gave up?”
“I knew my limits, with money and school. I’ll find a job soon enough. I’ll be fine.”
“Right.” Castiel could see Dean withdrawing from the conversation. He had seen him do it before with Sam. He didn’t want to talk about it and Castiel wouldn’t push. Dean stood and moved toward the bathroom. “Hey, for the record,” Dean stopped and looked at him, “I do like you. Obviously not to the level I did before, not yet, but I do. I’m not going anywhere.”
Dean nodded and smiled.
Next