Life with Cas was easy, once Dean let it be. In the bunker, without ghosts and wendigoes, life was alright, for a change. Cas made everything… soft, somehow.

It was his soft laughter, barely-there huffs of breath fleetingly gifted to him in the kitchen as Dean makes a bad joke about a ladle, accompanied by a sideways look and a small shake of his head.

Cas' soft hair tickling the side of Dean's neck as he falls asleep on Dean's shoulder partway through Indiana Jones, barely an hour after insisting he wasn't tired, he'd stay awake through the entire movie.

Soft sighs, small, treasured rewards given in return for Dean carrying him to bed, Dean's brush of lips across a sleeping Cas' forehead, accompanied by a small tightening of his hand curled into Dean's t-shirt, worn thin from years of washings.

Soft smiles as Dean wanders into the kitchen, grumbling at the very idea of mornings and wrapping his arms around Cas' waist to rest on his stomach, thunking his forehead on Cas' shoulder as he pours Dean a cup of coffee

Soft admonitions for bothering Sam while he was reading, saying it doesn't matter how bored Dean is, Sam needs off time, too.

Soft pet names, tried out in questions and tacked on to the end of requests. Some were in jest, added with a crooked grin and rejected immediately, like Dean would ever let someone call him buttercup, but others were begrudgingly allowed to stay. Dean became honey, love, and a litany of others. Cas was always Angel.

Of course, outside of the bunker, the hunting life itself was still just as sharp as ever. Cas couldn't change that. But he did blur the edges a bit, made them a bit easier to bear.

The hard, unforgiving motel mattresses were tempered by soft kisses, traded in golden early-morning sunlight, both Cas and Dean sleep-warm and still a little muzzy.

The sharp pain of the cuts and bruises, put out of focus by the soft look in Cas' eyes as he carefully bandaged every scrape.

The crushing, overpowering feeling of failure as he bandaged up Cas after a botched hunt, slowly wrapping the gauze around him, lessened by Cas' hand gently running through his hair and coming to rest on the back of his neck as he lightly kissed Dean's cheek over the gauze stuck there.

The panic of Sam thinking less of him for their relationship, unfounded and probably ridiculous, but unavoidable nonetheless, dispelled by Cas' hand, rough and calloused from angel blades and guns, entangled with his own in a loose, comforting grip.

Cas made everything soft. And Dean loved him for it.