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"You and Sam have each other. I think it's time for me to move on."
Dean doesn't say don't.
He doesn't say wait.
He doesn't say anything at all.
It feels like a razor cut, so thin and sharp that it doesn't really hurt until Dean starts poking at it, doesn't bleed until he looks at the empty spaces in the bunker, at all the places Cas carved out for himself over the years. A pile of books in the library; a jar of peanut butter in the kitchen, a coffee mug with a triangular chip in its handle, a ballpoint pen from a motor court in Cheyenne.
A bedroom across the hall from Dean’s, rarely used. The air inside is cold and stale, and a thin layer of dust is covering the dresser and desk.
Gone.
Gone.
Dean sucks in a breath, shuts the door so hard it rattles in its frame.
"You're an idiot," Sam says.
The library's lights are low; Dean's nine hours into a bottle of Jim Beam. He pours himself another shot and grunts, "And?"
"And—" Sam huffs and runs his hands through his hair. "I can't believe you just let him leave."
"Let him," Dean mutters. "Let him. Nobody lets Cas do anything. He just—he just—" He cuts off and puts the shot glass to his mouth, drains it after adding, "Dumb sonofabitch just does whatever the hell he wants."
"Right, and you had nothing to do with it."
Dean shrugs, smears a droplet of bourbon across the table with the pad of his thumb.
"He tell you where he's going?"
"I didn't ask."
Sam makes a rough, irritated noise. "Dean, come on."
Dean's chest aches. He says, "Fuck off," and reaches for the bottle.
Days pass: three, four, five, six. Dean sleeps late, drinks most of his meals, avoids Sam as much as he can.
He starts dialing Cas' number seven times.
On the eighth, he smashes his phone against the wall.
Sam ambushes Dean in the kitchen; Dean doesn't know if it's day or night. Sam's fully dressed, his hair shower-damp. He's holding his tablet like he's planning on using it as a weapon.
Silence silence silence. Then: "I found us a job."
Dean's head is pounding; he hunches closer to his coffee and asks, "Who said we're taking a job?"
"I said. It's been over a week, and I, I—" Sam heaves out a sigh. "I'm going to lose it if I just keep sitting here."
"So, I gotta saddle up just 'cuz you got prairie fever?"
Sam says, "No," and tosses the tablet on the table. It's open to a newspaper article; coffee slops over the side of Dean's mug. "You've got to saddle up because there are vampires in Des Moines."
They head out the next morning: north on US 281, northeast on I-80. Sam barely says five words between Lebanon and the Kansas-Nebraska line, spends most of the ride with his nose buried in a battered copy of The Stand.
The sun arcs in the sky; farmland blurs past the Impala's windows. Dean slips Hair of the Dog into the tape-deck, bites his cheek through "Love Hurts" so hard he tastes blood.
Beaverdale High School is on the north end of town, inside a quiet neighborhood full of Midwestern suburban dipshits reliving their glory days through their kids. Dean wants to punch every single one of them in the throat.
"A young lady is dead," Sam says slowly, "and you're worried about a football game?"
The PTA president—Susan, Sharon, Dean doesn't give a shit—jerk-steps back like she's been slapped. Then: "That's not—I wasn't—" She huffs and straightens her coat. "Around here, football is—"
"Maybe you didn't hear him," Dean cuts in. He's had so much to drink over the last week that his voice sounds like a rough patch of road. "A young lady is dead."
Susan/Sharon opens her mouth, closes it.
Dean just stares her down.
"What about the cheerleading coach?" Sam asks.
Dean spends a minute licking the burger grease off his fingers. Then: "What about her?"
"I think she might be the vampire." Sam shuffles through the stuff strewn across their crappy motel's crappier dinette—photos, witness statements, maps, newspaper clippings. "She was the last person to see Lindsay alive."
The bed creaks as Dean sits back against the headboard. He lobs his burger wrapper at the trashcan, grabs the remote and flips between the local news and a Seinfeld rerun.
"She gave Lindsay a ride after practice that night," Sam continues. "But Lindsay's parents said she never came home."
Dean isn't really listening. He says, "Yeah, I guess," and changes channels until he lands on Wheel of Fortune.
"Hey," Sam barks, turning in his chair. The dinette wobbles under the sudden weight of his elbow. "I know you're busy being all—" wisely, he waves a hand around instead of finishing that sentence "—but we're never going to solve this if you don't clock in."
"Maybe I don't wanna solve it."
Sam stares at him. "What?"
"Maybe I don't want to solve it." Dean could use a beer, but Sam's so far up his ass about his drinking that getting one now would probably start a fistfight. "Maybe I don't wanna do this piece-of-shit job now that Chuck ain't making me."
Sam sighs, rubs his hand over his face. "Dean—"
"No," Dean snaps. Wheel of Fortune cuts to a commercial; he kills the TV a few beats into a brassy dealership jingle. "I've been doing this since I was four years-old, and I'm, I'm tired. I'm fucking—"
"Dean," Sam says again, and Dean looks at him—really looks at him. His mouth is tight, and the circles under his eyes are the color of an old bruise. Rowena's death is wrapped around his shoulders. "You're acting like we've got tons of other options."
Dean grabs his fries off the nightstand, but they're limp and cold and his stomach doesn't want them. He drops them back in the bag and says, "You could go back to school."
"I, what—?
"School. Weren't you thinking about it, after I got back from Purgatory?"
An engine sputters to life in the parking lot. Sam asks, "How am I going to go back to school? With a fake name? A fake high school diploma? A fake social security number?" When Dean doesn't answer, he continues, "You're right, Chuck chose this life for us. But it's the life we've got, and now that he's gone, we're calling the shots. You, and me. And Cas, if we ever see him again."
Dean says, "Shut the fuck up about Cas," and turns the TV back on.
After Sam goes to sleep, Dean pulls out the photo of Cas he keeps in the front pocket of his journal. He runs his finger along the worn right edge, the crease at the bottom-left corner. He touches the faint dent in Cas' shoulder, an impression made by the anti-possession charm pinned to the journal's first page.
He remembers the job—a wraith—but not the town. It's somewhere boring and flat; Cas has his back to a rough ribbon of highway edged by towering cornfields. He's standing beside the Continental, looking windswept and irritable. The afternoon sun is flaring yellow-gold behind his head.
Warmth uncurls under Dean's ribs, the same warmth he's carried around for the last ten years. He knows what it is. He just doesn't know if it's his.
Sam's right. It's the cheerleading coach.
They stop for gas at the Love's outside Shelby, just shy of the Iowa-Nebraska line. Dean's tired; he has a bruise on his hip and side from getting vamp-thrown into a fence, and a headache is throbbing behind his eyes. The last thing he wants is Sam handing him this morning's Omaha World-Herald.
"Hey. Check this out."
Cattle mutilations and weather anomalies in Valentine, Nebraska. Dean tightens his grip on the gas nozzle, asks, "Demon omens?" through clenched teeth.
"Yeah, looks like."
Dean just nods and fits the nozzle back on the handle.
Valentine is seven hours on the road, three hours questioning idiot ranchers, and one hour hashing out jurisdictional shit with the Cherry County Sheriff's Office. After, they grab a motel on the ass-end of Highway 20 and head for the nearest bar.
It's a shitty place across from the co-op, all shiplap walls and bad lighting and sticky, smoke-stained tables. The crowd is thin, mostly guys with the dusty, tired look of drovers and hired hands. A flash of tan near the pool table catches Dean by the throat. He sucks in a breath, clenches both hands.
"Cas?"
Slowly, Cas turns around. A weird look passes over his face when he spots them—a look that feels like a knife between Dean's ribs. After a beat or two, he ducks away from the woman he'd been talking to and heads their direction.
"Hello," he says, mostly to Sam. A three-day beard is shadowing his jaw. "I assume you're here about the omens?"
"Yeah. We—"
"Wait," Dean cuts in, voice tight. "You're hunting?"
Johnny Cash rumbles from the jukebox: A bolt of fear went through him as he thundered through the sky / For he saw the riders coming hard and heard their mournful cry. Cas spares Dean half a glance before telling Sam, "It seemed safer than trying to return to Heaven."
"Safer?" Dean barks. "When your mojo's crapping out?"
"What do you care?"
You could get hurt. You could get killed. You—" Sam grabs Dean's arm—some of the barflies are starting to stare—so Dean clears his throat, lowers his voice. "You—"
"I should go," Cas cuts in, flat. "You two probably have a plan, and I'd hate to screw it up." And that—that catches Dean square in the gut. Before he recovers, Cas turns away. He claps Sam on the shoulder, says, "It was good to see you," and walks out the door.
Dean doesn't stop him
He doesn't go after him.
He doesn't do anything at all.
That night, he dreams of Hell for the first time in years.
Heat, sulfur, ash. A soul on his rack, blood on his hands.
A burst of light so bold and bright it hurt his eyes; a gust of wind that raged against the walls, howled like a hurricane.
"Exorcizamus te," Dean shouts. Behind him, wood splinters and Sam grunts in pain. "Omnis immundus spiritus."
A window shatters. The demon grabs Dean by the throat and hurls him into a wall.
Sam picks it up where he left off: "Omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio." It sounds garbled, like he's got a mouthful of blood. "Infernalis adversarii, omnis legio."
Groaning, Dean staggers to his feet. He ducks another shower of glass, reaches for the angel blade he dropped.
"Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica. Ergo draco maledicte…"
They head straight home: south on US 83, south and east on a jumble of state highways, south on US 281. The sun is rising by the time they reach Lebanon, flaring orange and bright as it bruises the horizon. Dew veils the prairie grass lining School Avenue, the stinkweed sprouting up along the frontage road that leads to the bunker.
Dean's knees pop as he climbs out of the Impala. Every muscle in his body aches; he hobbles up the garage stairs like an old man.
The bunker is quiet, mausoleum-still. He tosses his bag on the map table, heads right for the scotch.
Sam spends the next two days in his room. When he finally surfaces, he's hollow-eyed, white around the mouth. He hasn't showered, doesn't want to eat.
Dean says, "Rowena knew what she was getting into." It’s a familiar lie, one he's told too many times. Eileen. Bobby. Gabriel. Pamela. Ellen and Jo. "She knew what needed to be done."
"Doesn't make it any easier."
"I know."
Silence. Sam sips his coffee; the refrigerator hums. Dean puts more veggie bacon in his mouth so he doesn't have to find something else to say.
A moment later, Sam gets up and heads for the coffee pot. As he's refilling his cup, he says, "You should call Cas."
Something horrible twists into Dean's gut. He asks, "What makes you think I'd wanna do that?"
"The look on your face when he left the bar the other night."
Dean puts a shrug in his shoulder, says, "He's the one who walked away."
"Dean, come on. I heard you guys fighting the night he took off." Sam sits back down and takes a long swallow of coffee. Then: "Was it because of mom?"
"Yeah," Dean admits. He sighs and leans his elbows on the table. "That, and him going off script with Belphegor."
"From what he told me, Belpheghor's the one who went off script."
"We woulda handled it."
"Yeah," Sam says, snorting. "Because we handled it so well last time someone swallowed a bunch of souls and tried to play God."
Dean thinks about Cas walking into that river, of his coat floating to the bank. He grunts, "Whatever," into his coffee cup, breathes around the lump burning in his throat.
Cas' phone goes straight to voicemail.
Three times.
Four times.
Five.
"Cas," Dean mumbles. He's face-down on his bed, breathing four shots of whiskey into his pillow. "I didn't want you to go."
Except that he had. He hadn't trusted his own feelings, hadn't known what was him and what was Chuck.
"Cas." The bed creaks as Dean rolls onto his side. "I want, I want…"
He doesn't know what he wants.
"You up for a job?" Sam asks.
Dean's hungover, still has a demon-bruise on his ribs. But Sam is up and dressed, so he nods and asks, "What've you got?"
East on US 24, east on I-70, lunch on the outskirts of St. Louis. They find a boxcar job with an early-bird special; Dean fills up on coffee and onion rings before getting back on the road. East on I-64, south on I-165. They cross into Kentucky at dusk, Creedence on the radio and the last wash of sunlight glinting off the Ohio River.
By the time they roll into Bowling Green, everything's closed up for the night. Dean pulls into a beige, double-decker dump called the Glen Capri Inn, finds Stevie in the parking lot, loading a pair of sawed-off shotguns into her trunk.
"You here about the desecrated graves?" she asks. She has dirt smudged on her cheek.
"Yeah," Dean replies. "Ghouls?"
Stevie shakes her head, waits out the train whistle howling to the south. Then: "Just a kitchen witch looking to up her game. I took care of it."
Sam says, "Great," like they didn't just drive twelve hours for nothing. "Are you hungry? We were thinking of grabbing dinner."
"No way," she says, snorting. "You assholes are bad luck."
"Cas," Dean says, his voice echoing around the motel's tiny bathroom. He's sitting on the floor, his back against the bathtub and a bottle of Maker's Mark in his lap. "I know you're gone, and probably gonna stay gone, but I, I wanna tell you I'm sorry."
Dean puts the bottle to his mouth, knocks back a shot. It burns all the way down.
"It scared me sometimes, how much I'd think about you. How much I wanted—uh. Then Chuck told me he'd been pulling my strings all these years, and I, I just—"
The plumbing rattles behind the walls. Dean sighs and stretches his legs.
"Chuck really did a number on us, huh? Got Jack to kill my Mom, almost got me to kill Jack. Sam's shoulder ain't healing right, and you—fuck."
Dean sighs again and reaches for the bottle.
When they get back to the bunker, an unfamiliar car is parked just past the garage. A boat tail Riviera—dark blue, Tennessee plates.
Dean nearly pulls his gun. But the shadows along the retaining wall shift and—
"Cas?"
Dean says, "Not gonna lie," and leans his hip against the map table. "I didn't think I'd see you again."
Cas gives Dean a long, narrow look before saying, "Initially, that was the plan. But you—" he huffs out a soft, irritable noise. "I'm going to ask you a question, and for once in your life I want you to tell the truth."
"Okay."
"What do you want from me?"
Heat crawls up the line of Dean's jaw. He says, "You heard me the other night. I don't—is this why you came back? To get me to make an ass of myself?"
"You don't need my help with that."
Dean stares at him. "You--?"
"Dean." Cas takes a careful step closer. "I felt you praying. I felt your… longing. Your regret. But my grace is so depleted, I couldn't hear what you were saying."
"I was saying that you—that I want—" Dean looks away, rubs his hand over his face. "You. I want you. I'm just—"
"Just what?"
"What if it isn't me?" Dean asks. He grabs the back of a chair, grips it until his knuckles turn white. "What if Chuck—what if he—"
Cas takes another step closer, He says, "Dean," and touches Dean's arm. "I rescued your ravaged soul from depths of Perdition. I healed you piece by piece. Chuck may have nudged us onto this path, but he has little bearing on what we feel right now."
Dean closes his eyes. "You sure?"
"No," Cas admits. "But now that he's gone, we can figure it out together."
Dean pulls Cas close, lets his mouth brush Cas' temple.