Work Text:
After, when things settle down and there is no imminent threat in the horizon, Cas develops a fashion sense. Italicized, as it sounds in Dean’s head.
Cas rents a small apartment close enough to Lebanon that he can see the Winchesters whenever they please, and gets by on a teaching gig he seems overtly content with.
The trench coat lasts a few months, until the weather gets hot enough that he can’t bear to have it on. When the thing starts to smell, the brothers take him to a second hand store, and Cas goes to fucking town with it.
He shows up to his next class in a rumpled beige linen suit with elbow patches and a faded green shirt, hair sticking out in every direction and a paper cup of tepid coffee on his hand, and the students tease him that he looks like an actual teacher now.
He starts favouring pants in light, desaturated colors with stray patches and high cuffs, soft sweaters in greys and blues and old, colorful shirts discovered in thrift shops, well worn and faded at the elbows. He collects striped ties in bold colors, and handkerchiefs he sometimes ties around his head when his hair gets too long and the heat a bit less than bearable. His shoes are almost always a thread from breaking apart, but lovingly cared for, and he wears them with socks that don’t ever match.
He matches his colors with the weather, rich, earthy colors for the drier months, greens and reds for the days when the breeze is chilly but the sun shines on. In the summer he finds a pair of shades for cheap, and a blue jacket that brings out his eyes. he wears it every time he makes the trip to lebanon, for he sees the way dean’s eye get bright, just so, when he wears mostly blue.
He grows a massive beard for the winter, and buys himself an expensive chocolate scarf that is long enough that it can go three times around his neck. It’s comfortable and warm and lovely, and he ends up giving it to a lonely girl who lives in the nearby park. His students call it the Allen Ginsberg stage, and he threatens to go back to it, mostly as a joke, every other winter.
He grows older, grows a belly, gets a cat. His hair has white in it, his colors gets bolder, weirder, but he loves it. Fashion changes and he finds a certain pleasure in being able to choose how he presents himself, what he looks like. Dean teases him, says he never outgrows his crazy professor look. His students all agree. Sam makes it his yearly mission to find the shirts with the most outrageous floral pattern to give him for Christmas.
A few years down the road the winchesters move into town, and the three of them become neighbours. Cas’ colors settle in old age: greys, blues, light browns.
His favourite clothes, tho? A pair of fuchsia slippers, and a long, charcoal robe that keeps him warm.