"Dude, my soulmate is an astronaut"

"I..." Dean was honestly at loss of words. If he had to speak egoistically, he didn't want Castiel to keep his distances. He was always kind of on edge when he was MIA. But on the other side... he needed to digest that. And he didn't want to seem like he was giving his friend any hopes, or whatever, really. "I won't lie, Cas. I will... need time to process this", he said, carefully picking his words. "If you'll wish to stay away from me in the meanwhile, I won't blame you. Just, if you do, uh... remember to pick up the phone", he blurted out, before he could help himself.

Dean tried to swallow the lump in his throat. It was useless. "Just..." He cleared his throat. "Just don't disappear. And watch yourself, alright?" He forced out a smile at him, while his heart thundered loudly in his ears.

"You know I am bad at keeping myself out of trouble. But I'll try." Dean managed a sincere smile himself, although just as small. "Bye, Cas", he said, his voice sounding weirdly steady.

Dean joined Sam back, feeling like his stomach had dropped to his feet, but putting on his usual take-no-shit façade that told a long story of just how much he did not want to talk about what was troubling him.
He unfortunately always forgot that his brother was, indeed, not stupid. And a pretty good detective too.

Dean blinked at him, twice. Then shrugged. "Well, it... went alright, I guess. We just had to solve something. No big deal." Yeah, not at all. "So, the case. Where do we start from?"

Dean decided to play the card of forgetfulness. "Alright, my fault. We got too deep into the conversation, not really ended on the best terms and then he had to go. I completely forgot to ask him anything at all about the case", he muttered managing to keep his cool.

Dean froze, surprised by the sudden words of his brother, carefully thrown at him. He avoided Sam's gaze, his jaw visibly tense now; he couldn't even manage a decent answer to come up with. Apparently, the ambush had been successful.

"Yeah. That'd be better", Dean muttered, just straight up avoiding to even look in the general direction of Sam, let alone answer clearly any of his probing questions.

Dean was really grateful he had been given the time to at least steel himself a bit. At least he had been able to swipe away all the... stuff he was feeling right now under the usual rug, and to bring back his usual strong, unfeeling self. He sprinted up. "Great! Where do we have to start?"

Dean shoved said 'another bottle of whiskey' aside, to join the numerous others. "I told you a thousand times already, Sam. I am fine. I don't want to talk about it", he grumbled, not even looking at him. The tension had been eating at him for seven whole days now, though, and it showed clearly in his tense jaw and shoulders, not to say the deep shadows under his eyes.

Dean finally looked at him, trying to muster a pissed off expression he was entirely too tired to pull off. "Well, what now. Do you want a medal?", he half snapped. "He is my best friend. That's about the entire problem summed up", he added, nervously pinching the bridge of his nose.

... well. That was new to him. "What do you mean, they don't have to have a physical relationship?", he asked, trying desperately not to sound dumb. Let's be honest, not researching that up was pretty dumb of him.