potterswinchesters:

Something Profound

Benny had been expecting her to be beautiful.

She had to be, he’d thought, for Dean to be this hung up on her.

Benny had noticed that Dean didn’t talk about her much. Of course, when he had interrogated the other vampires and werewolves, and any other being he could get his hands on, he’d snarl, always with the ferocity of twenty monsters, “Where’s the angel?”

But he didn’t talk about his angel much otherwise.

There were only a few things that Benny knew about her from what Dean had said, or divulged through the way he prayed to her every night without fail.

One: her name was Castiel, but Dean called her Cas. And when he said it, it felt different. The look he got in his eyes was different from when he was slicing heads from vampires. The tone of his voice was different from when he spoke with Benny about their plan to escape Purgatory. Benny knew that even the most gruff of men could soften for the one they loved, and Castiel was that person for Dean.

Two: Dean refused to leave Purgatory without her. He tore up the whole place day after day, searching for her, even after she had fled and left him alone. He didn’t rest if he could help it. From time to time, Benny even overheard Dean praying to her. Sometimes he was angry, accusing Castiel of abandoning him. Sometimes he was desperate, demanding of Castiel to return to him. Sometimes he was tender, telling Castiel that he needed her; that he forgave her for everything. One way or another, the prayers always left Benny feeling like he was intruding on a private moment, and he regretted having listened at all.

Three: there was something profound between them. Whatever they had gone through together had to have been earth-shattering… but it was more than that. Benny recognized the way a man acted when he was in love. It was precisely the way he had acted after falling for his beloved Andrea.

That was why, when he and Dean found this Castiel, Benny did a double take and hung back to survey the scene.

Before them was a man in a dirty trench coat. He had a full, dark beard and blue eyes that pierced through even the gloom of the wretched, Hell-adjacent Purgatory. He was covered in grime and knelt beside a bed of water, washing his hands and face in it. However, when he heard Dean call his name, he straightened up. Benny watched Dean surge forward and yank the angel into his arms, and he frowned, confusion and curiosity pulling at his features.

Perhaps Dean had dropped the occasional pronoun when referring to Castiel, but Benny hadn’t been paying much attention to it. He had been too caught up with the way Dean prayed to Castiel, or the lengths at which Dean went to find Castiel. He had assumed Castiel was female.

The hunter and the angel exchanged soulful gazes, and Benny realized that it didn’t matter. When he’d been blind—or simply oblivious—to the gender of Castiel’s vessel, he had known anyway.

He had known Dean was in love.