Dean picks up the pages, testing their weight in his palm. There aren't just a few. There are a lot.

He looks at the door, certain he shouldn't be here, but uncertain that he can bring himself to leave. It's an accidental find, really. He'd come into Cas's cabin expecting him to be stoned, or high. Instead, Cas was gone. Instead, on the floor, ripped and spread out like a deck of cards were the journal pages.

Gingerly, Dean separates one from the stack. One that had Dean's name written in cursive along the outer fold.

He skims the page realizing they aren't exactly journal entries, per se, but more a place for one sentence thoughts.

-What's a Vulcan? Dean called me one today.

Dean smiles.

-Dean asked me again if it's hot in my trenchcoat. I keep telling him angels don't feel cold. It's strange to me that he keeps forgetting.

-Sam is acting off. I'm suspicious of his activities and hope that he isn't drinking–

Dean lets that page fall away. He grabs another with the year 2013 at the top. He scans it, pushing down the guilty feeling in his stomach at prying.

-I broke my leg today. Dean said it'll probably heal up in a day or two. But I know. I'm human now.

2009:

-I flew back to the park bench again. Sometimes I like to look at the trees or the children playing. It reminds me Dean used to be a child once. Did he ever get to play at a park?

2013

-Dean's been gone for two days on a supply run. He might be dead or a croatoan now. I'm useless to help with my broken leg. I tried Vicodin for the first time. It almost made me forget how much I worry about him when he's gone.

2009:

-A Vulcan is an emotionally repressed, logical and stoic creature in the fictional world of Star Trek. I don't find the comparison particularly amusing.

2012

-Dean smiled today. I haven't seen that in a long time. He has a beautiful smile.

2011

-The world is coming apart at the seams, but I'm slowly finding understanding coming together for me. There is something different in Dean than the way I feel towards Sam. It leaves me feeling unsettled and raw. I want to look at Dean. To be near him. Instead, I'm reminded about "personal space." I wish I knew why I can't touch him. I wish I knew why I want to.

Dean's hands become slack as he realizes that his name found its way to almost every page of the entries. Sometimes it's Cas venting that he was pissed at Dean. Sometimes they are simply questions about things he didn't understand.

But then Dean thumbs to the handwritten pages at the back. Even without the confirmation of the dates, he can tell they are more recent by the way that Cas's handwriting has started to lose its neat quality over the years, morphing into the messy scrawls Dean recognizes now.

The entries in 2014 are simpler, too, some of them filled with only disjoined words:

-Freckles

-Green eyes

-Small patches of hair that stick up in the back

-His laugh

-His smile. Always his smile. Even if it's just in memories.

Dean squints, his mouth falling open slightly as he hears a sound behind him. He turns. Cas's face is surprisingly calm for someone who's caught another person rifling through his entries.

Cas walks over, his tiny limp that he still carries from his broken leg noticeable, if only to Dean. He lightly holds out a hand and Dean drops the papers in them with a guilty look.

Then, licking his lips, Cas begins to read.

"Caring. Stubborn. Beautiful."

Clearing his throat, Dean braves a look at Cas.

"You've been writing these a long time," he whispers.

Cas nods, smiling fondly as his thumb rubs across a passage he's found.

Dean glances at it:

-I told him once when he was sleeping. I know it's not the same, but I needed him to know.

Silence.

"I couldn't look at them anymore," says Cas, gripping the paper tightly as it starts to crumple from the pressure.

Very carefully, Dean pulls the papers from Cas, dropping them to the ground. He moves his hand to Cas's jaw, touching it with one finger, then his full hand as Cas closes his eyes, relaxing into it.

"So tell me now," Dean says. "I'm awake. Tell me now."

Cas's eyes open with a flutter.

"I love you," he says without hesitation.

Dean leans in, kissing Cas lightly on the lips, tasting the salt of his humanity on his tongue.

They stand on the pages of their past, kissing deeper, as if finding each other again after years of being lost.

Holding each other, Dean presses his ear against Cas's, relishing in the warmth he finds there.

"I love you, too," he says.