wordsinhaled:

“my name’s sam,” he says; regrets it when his voice echoes brashly through the tunnel of machines, loud over their monotonous whirr-click, whirr-click. there’s gotta be something desperate about introducing himself to three a.m. strangers at a coin laundry, but sam’s sleeplessness brought him here, and sleeplessness makes him brave—or stupid. he doesn’t know what he’s hoping for: the man’s white shirt was covered in blood before it disappeared into the bowels of a washer. he looks haunted. hunted. maybe both. sam can relate to that. 

he’s obviously surprised to have been spoken to, more than a little startled, eyes sharp and assessing as they find sam’s across the room. sam feels odd, then, too large for his uncomfortable plastic chair, awkward in just a dress shirt and boxers, the tile floor leaching warmth from the bottoms of his feet. he tries a smile, and the man’s face smooths out. 

“ca—” he starts, then stops; swallows. “clarence. i’m clarence. i’m… doing my laundry.” it doesn’t sound like a leave me alone.

“yeah, i figured. hey—are you okay? sorry if i’m overstepping a boundary here. you don’t have to answer. you just seem lost.”

clarence sighs, the kind of soul-deep sigh sam is all too familiar with. “i’m… off course,” he says. “i have been for a very long time.”

or, the AU in which castiel & [civilian] sam are strangers who meet by chance at a laundromat after cas falls from heaven. that night, sam discovers there is more to the world than he ever thought possible: angels exist. being with a graceless castiel will mean showing him the essence of what it is to be truly human.