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Everyone can see them sometimes, but no one can see them all the time. It’s something that’s not really talked about, only explained to children when it first happens to them. Well, if it happens to them. It’s a whole other conversation if it doesn't.
Dean first sees it when he’s too young to understand. Sees a red string wrapped around his wrist, tethered to something in the sky. It shines brightly for a solid minute before it flickers out of existence, as though it was never there at all. He asks his mom about it, if it has anything to do with the angels that she always says are watching over him. She’s speechless, but manages to smile and nod that she’s sure it does.
It rarely happens for Dean. Sometimes when he’s sad or lonely, but certainly always when he’s alone. The red string will sparkle to life, pulled taut as it disappears up through the ceiling or the trees or the clouds. Always out of sight, always up.
He mentions it to Sam once. Only once, when he’s drunk. After Sam tells him about the first time he saw that he and Jess were connected, the thrill it gave him after years of mystery. Dean sees how sad his brother gets talking about her so he blurts out when he first saw his. How his string extended past the sky.
Sam chuckles but stops when he sees the seriousness his brother wears. He frowns in confusion, tells him his soulmate was probably just on a plane.
“Every time, Sammy? Every damn time?”
His brother doesn’t have an answer for that. So they let it go, never bring it up again.
Dean can’t remember hell, at least not the end. He remembers the decades preceding his little angel contrived jailbreak, but not the escape itself. Remembers, vaguely, how for once he didn’t feel out of place. Because yeah, his string went up and up, but so did everyone else’s. He wasn’t a freak. (Murderer torturer sadist all those other things his nightmares whisper to him, but not a freak.)
After he’s top side again, the first time he sees the string again, he feels a bitterness he’s long forgotten. The cruel joke that is his soulmate. It flashes once or twice as he leaves his abandoned grave (it makes him shiver just thinking about that), but each time it disappears before he really gets to see it.
That happens more and more when he’s back. He sees it flash, feels it pull taut, but it’s gone before he can get a good look. Like it was willed out of sight by some power.
And as smart as he is, he never gets the connection. His mind keeps separate the very real existence of angels and the very real (if not hidden, more often than not) red string floating up up up. Is too busy looking skyward those few times he feels or sees his string, hoping to see where it disappears into the sky above, to notice that Cas is often there. Wincing, or concentrating very hard, for the brief second it takes for it to dissolve into nothingness again.
Years go by and it’s more of the same. Occasionally his wrist will feel lighter, completely unburdened - as though the string’s been cut. He’s too busy in the middle of sort of Apocalypses to notice. Lilith and Ruby, Lucifer, Leviathan. Three times he feels unbound, but never for very long. It’s still unsettling.
Dean doesn’t feel the tug of his string the entire time he’s in Purgatory. Not like those times it felt disconnected, more like it’s obstructed. Like it’s something that doesn’t work in this place, even if it’s still there underneath the grime. Which is a shame, cuz it would’ve helped him find that portal back to Earth, right?
More years and nothing.
The Mark makes it impossible to feel. But it tends to make all the good or halfway decent things muted to the point they’re barely whispers in his subconscious. He doesn’t notice his string, when and if it appears, and doesn’t much care.
The transition to demon, although abrupt, takes some getting used to. He’s been out gallivanting with Crowley a week or so when he notices the red string. Notices that it doesn’t fizzle out into nothing, but stays. Apparently demons can see them all the time. Go figure. He’s waited how many years for the love of his life, and now that he’s no longer capable of feeling love he’s constantly reminded of it.
Even once he notices that it’s there, constantly, it doesn’t really draw his attention until one night when he realizes it doesn’t go up. It goes right out the door and across the parking lot and on and on. And he could follow it.
He ruminates over the idea for a while, always in the back of his mind. Should he care? Does he care? But then one night he’s bored of Crowley and the shit motel and he gets in his car and drives.
There’s a part of him - the part of him that’s still human, maybe, deep inside somewhere - that's disappointed when he drives through three states and ends up at a motel even shittier than the one he left. Because his soulmate’s as much of a loser as he is. Big surprise.
He gets out of the car and follows the thread all the way to a door and stops. There’s no plan here. Well, maybe there’s the plan on meeting the poor son of a bitch and then bathing in their blood so their existence can’t be used against him. But he drove all this way on a whim and he has no fucking clue who’s on the other side of this door and he’s not sure why it matters. If it matters. He thinks about leaving, about turning around and letting this stay a mystery. But that human part, not as hidden as he’d like it to be, nags at him to at least look.
Rolling his eyes, he moves to the window and tries to peak in the curtains.
His non-beating heart freezes in his chest when he makes out the figure passed out on the bed.
Dean’s numb, number than he’s been in his whole life. Because it can’t... he won’t let it be Cas. Because Jesus fucking Christ that’s just not fair. Cas doesn’t... He doesn’t deserve this.
He turns abruptly on his heels and drives away.
It takes a lot of alcohol to get a demon drunk, but Dean manages to find a way. Keeps himself on a liquid high because if he’s sober than he’ll think and if he thinks then he’ll yearn and fuck if he’s dragging Cas down with him.
What’s wrong with him? Demons aren’t supposed to feel this sort of shit. Why does he feel?
Back at he bunker, when Cas swoops in to save the day, Dean notices how he goes out of his way to stay out of sight or on the peripherals of his vision. And he’s gotta give him credit for it. Even knowing what he does, it’s impossible to see the thread linking them together.
As they cure him, burn out the parts that feel like they’re keeping him sane, he wants to taunt Cas. Fallen angel bound to a demon, that’s fucking rich. But as the blood sears the blackness out of him, his tongue gets heavier and heavier in his mouth.
Then of course the self-deprecation starts back up, five times as bad as before he turned to make up for lost time. Because Cas knew this whole time. Was probably sick to his stomach knowing his soulmate was a damn pathetic human piece of shit like him. Purposely hid it for years to keep Dean from figuring it out. Never felt he was good enough-
Cas smiles shyly and turns to walk out of his room, out of the bunker.
No. No no no no no-
“I know it’s you.” Cas turns to look at him with an eyebrow raised in question. Dean raises his wrist and tugs it meaningfully. Confusion turns into concern before Cas turns away.
“I- I thought I’d hidden it-”
“You did,” he interrupts. “I uh, I followed it. When I was a demon.”
Cas looks so fucking crestfallen it breaks his heart. “Dean, I’m sorry- I didn’t-”
And he sees, in that moment, all his own fears and doubts mirrored in Cas’ eyes. He crosses the space between them and wraps him in a hug. “Don’t be sorry, man. I understand. I mean, I just wish you’d told me sooner, but-”
“I hated it, for so long. From the moment you were born and I felt the string wrap itself around me, anchoring me to a human.” The confession should hurt but Dean lets it roll off him. Waits for the rest because he knows it’ll make up for it. “But then I got to know you, and I... I felt ashamed that I was taking you for myself. You deserved better than an angel, unfeeling and so different from yourself.”
Dean breaks the hug, but only so he can cup Cas’ cheek and caress his cheek with his thumb. “I think you got that backwards,” he jokes.
Cas ignores him and keeps going. “You didn’t like me in the beginning. For so long, you merely tolerated me. And it seemed a fitting punishment, for having stolen you from some worthy human who would have been able to understand you and give you what you need-”
“Stop,” he says firmly. Kisses the corner of Cas’ mouth because it’s the only way to shut him up. “I’m glad it’s you. I’m so fucking glad it’s you.”
He steps backward, dragging Cas with him until his legs hit the bed. Although he wants to lie down, to smother himself under Cas’ comfortable weight, he merely sits on the edge and makes Cas follow suit. He stares into Cas’ eyes, no longer worried about how he drowns in them. Knows his thread is a lifeline that will buoy him to safety if he gets lost in those depths.
“Promise be you’ll stay,” he whispers. As scary as it’s always been, watching Cas leave with the very real possibility of never coming back, it’s worse now that he knows. All his instincts tell him to protect, instincts that even as a demon he couldn’t fully suppress.
“You- You want me to stay?”
“Yes, you idiot-” He cuts himself off and shakes his head in disbelief. “Fuck, man, I always want you to stay. But now I know I’m in a position to demand it.”
Cas’ lips curl up into a half smile at that.
“Alright, Dean. I’ll stay.”