katikat | Fic rec: Supernatural (Reply)

"Asunder" by rageprufrock. Dean/Castiel, Sam/Ruby. Summary: AU. Dean has to attend his brother's wedding, but he hasn't seen Sam in years - since he left because Sam refused to go to rehab for drug addiction - and so he takes his friend Castiel with him as a moral support. Stuff happens. Words: ~23.000.

Dean glances at him out of the corner of his eyes and wants to admit all of it, babble the whole ugly history of it. Cas isn't exactly Dean's friend (except where he is, and where Dean thinks Castiel might be his best friend), but Dean finds himself telling Castiel things — like his flight and seat number and where he likes to go for lunch and his allergies and that he's going to be more fucked up than any of the hospital's little cancer kids when Bunny has to go to that big kennel in the sky. If Dean were to say, "My brother was a drug addict, for years and years," and "He might still be, for all I know," and "I'm too afraid to find out, I can't do that anymore, Cas," he thinks that Cas might nod at him like he understands and let it be — the way no one else who's known the truth of the thing has ever been able to do before.

My favorite Dean/Castiel story, hands down. I think this is the fic that made me actually fall in love with this pairing \o/