Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

But the thumping just gets louder it’s a heartbeat and a thunder four closed walls surround them and the mistake, the worst mistake after all the others, was Dean’s and it’s what led them here and Cas is looking at him, is looking at him like he doesn’t even resent Dean for the fact that they’re about to die—and how could he not hate Dean, after everything he’s done and especially for this? Especially for this and for everything else hatred is the least that Dean deserves, he knows he hates himself and will hate himself for this, will hate himself for this forever. His thoughts are a mess and a more poisoned storm than ever, this is saying something, following the jagged pulse and rhythm of the drumming of human cries and barbed whips on skin which sounded all around in hell, cracked bones and Dean the one who cracked them. The thumping at the door keeps coming like the drums from that eternal furnace and beautiful blood starts pouring from Cas’s mouth and God, Dean wants to kiss it, even now Dean wants to kiss away the blood that’s so beautiful and beautiful because it’s Cas’s, he wants to kiss it not because it’s beautiful but because it’s Cas’s, it’s only beautiful because it’s Cas’s, and Cas is saying he’s giving it to Dean, all this blood, all this boiling burning bubbling blood he’s giving it to Dean, crimson as it leaves his body, so crimson that it’s black, giving it so that Dean might live, crimson as the spring of life. And Dean wants to kiss him aches to kiss him is drenched with the desire to kiss him but he can’t move, can’t move can’t speak and this is a silence which will rot at him forever.

Cas has said I love you and all Dean wants to reply is You think I could forgive you for that?

And Cas pushes him away and is swallowed by the dark into which Dean can’t follow, no matter how much he wants to and he wants to. A different darkness swallows him. His thoughts are ash against the sky he claws at the wall and shouts the words and the shadow of Alastair is behind him with a cut-mouth smile and a forked tongue and teeth which can, and do, rip skin like wet paper like paper wet with blood and the mark of a hand on Dean’s shoulder is burning, and burning with purity, but Alastair is laying a hand over the mark and poisoning it and everything and everything else and Dean can’t wrench himself free or even try to, and he’s shouting and crying and screaming and clawing rip-rawing his fingers against the brick of a closed up wall with an I’ll save you, I promise you I’ll save you, I promise you I’ll save you—because it’s what Cas did with him, right? A thousand times over, and saved him from Alastair, who stands behind him still and no Cas, here, now, to save him this time from the cutmouth smile and snaketongue, and drum-cries of hell, and the hell which is Dean alone and with his mind, no Cas here to save him no not this time no never again he’s gone now, and Dean shouts I promise you I’ll save you, because if he doesn’t save Cas, then who’s going to save Dean? I promise you, I’ll save you, I promise you I’ll save you—

And a new hand, old hand, pure hand—not Alastair’s hand—a hand he thinks now that he’s always known but when it first touched him, Dean must have been a lost and broken thing, is pressed hard to his shoulder, holds on tight, and a voice says Dean, and Dean cries I’m sorry I’m so sorry, I’m sorry and I swear I’ll save you—

And the voice rips at his throat but at least rips him into consciousness, into a new room, his room, a room which is real and not—a dream, or memory?

He blinks, heart a storm against the cage of his chest, breaking and battering at his ribs.

His hands are shaking. Cold water tracks down his skin.

And Cas is looking at him, leaning over him, hand pressed hard to his shoulder and Dean’s hands come immediately to cover it, he closes his eyes and draws in stabbing breaths and wills himself not to push Castiel away even though he wants to, and nearly does, out of fear, out of shame, and he begs to himself please, don’t push him away.

“Dean,” Castiel says softly but some fine ridges of his voice are raised with worry, and Dean swallows, a burning sensation after the rips of his own cries were stolen from his throat. He opens his eyes again, and Cas is there, still there. No Alastair. No blood. No angel-blade stung clean through Cas’s chest. No void of dark to swallow the love of his life and leave Dean’s life, loveless. “A nightmare,” Cas says, breathless, and squeezes at Dean’s shoulder. “It was just a nightmare.”

Dean shakes his head and looks away.

“Not just nightmare,” he blinks out tears hot to streak against his cold sweat. “Memory, too. It’s not just not real. It happened.”

Cas’s other hand slides to Dean’s cheek. Warm to counter the burn of tears and ice of sweat.

“What?”

“The day I lost you,” Dean says, and looks up, eyes stung. “It was the day I lost you, and couldn’t save you. But it got—got tangled—with other memories—hell memories, too—and—”

He looks away; the shame still burns him red and raw. He doesn’t want to think about it, about what he did because of Alastair, because of Dean and his own weakness, about how Cas saw and must have seen Dean doing it and must have thought, really? This is God’s favourite? This poison man, who traded an end to his sufferings for the agony of others, this is to be my brother’s sword and our deliverance?

Cas leans down to press his forehead against Dean’s. Dean wants to wrench away. Poison brain. Poison heart.

“You saw my soul at its worst,” he says, unable to stop the words. With Cas, every wall crumbled long ago, when Dean ripped his fingertips raw against a wall Cas had disappeared into, ripped himself into another world. “You saw it at its worst. How could you think I was worth saving, after that?”

Cas shakes his head.

“You ‘t don’t know what I saw, when I saw your soul. You know nothing of what I saw, every time I looked at it.”

“I can guess,” Dean shakes his head, bitterly.

“No you can’t,” Castiel shakes his head. “All my life felt like an asking,” he says, and curls his hand softly up to the curve of Dean’s neck. “You were the answer.”

“The hell does that even mean,” Dean’s lip curls, chest a hopeless tremor. His tears are making his vision shimmer. In the dark, he can make out Cas’s bloodshot eyes—fuck, the guy must be exhausted, and now he’s having to comfort a broken and irreparable Dean. A Dean, who like he always did, is lashing out because of the love and loss he feels, always, at every breath. He shrinks with guilt.

“That I saw it all: life, and the substance before it, come into being. I watched it strung up and hung about a void like a furnishing to fix God’s loneliness, I watched the universe in its expanse like a human chest as a breath is drawn, and all of it was without conclusion, until you. I’ve not loved you falteringly.”

Dean presses his head into Cas’s shoulder. He’s tired. He doesn’t understand. Cas seems to realise.

“You won’t believe me all at once,” he acknowledges softly. “But you were the man who wouldn’t even kill God, though you had every reason, and every means. When I looked at you in hell, I saw a soul which would come to do that. That final act of a new definition of Holiness. You were sacred. Not God. I didn’t know that’s what I was looking at. But it was.”

“I only did that because of you,” Dean points out hopelessly.

“And I only said those things to you, the night the Empty took me, because you changed me. And I only saw those things in you because they were there. Like I said,” Cas shakes his head softly in the dark, “when I looked at you in hell, I saw a soul which could overthrow God and yet spare him. When I looked at you in hell, I’d been lost. When I looked at you in hell, I was found.”

Dean can’t imagine it. Some great, sprawling, thousand-eyed, thousand-winged eldritch creature the size of the empire state, breaking through the lines of hell and seeing a man torturing the souls of others just to spare his own, and thinking yes, this is the man I was sent to save, and he is still worth saving. Even now. And then knowing that man, living with that man, seeing every piece of his anger and pain and brokenness and thinking not only was he worth saving, this and every other time, he’s worth loving, too.

How could anyone think that? How could Dean teach something so—so unfathomable, spectral, strange and different and beyond the scope of a human mind, let alone understanding—how could Dean have taught something, someone, like that, to love?

To love. And to love so well.

As if to underline these thoughts, Cas’s lips brush Dean’s forehead.

“As I said,” he says, softly, “you won’t believe me all at once. And, you know, I can’t blame you. I can still barely believe that it’s a love you return. But it is a love returned. A perfect circle.”

Dean cracks a smile.

“A halo.”

Cas smiles too, and sighs out, obviously amused at the thought,

“A halo.”

A halo, and one made of love. It sums Cas up well. Something golden as the light of the sun, but sweeter, sadder, older. Dean swallows. Cas’s arms slip strongly back around him. He curls his face into the angel’s—ex-angel’s—neck. Cas loving him, in spite of it all. That’s the meaning of grace. And Cas would have Dean believe all of it burnt out with his fall. Dean knows better. Cas brims with it, still. All grace. Pure grace. Silverblue and wispy as the light of the moon. Grace, and the very meaning of it.

The night swallows them again like the circle of Cas’s arms, another silverblue embrace, and Dean’s eyes are heavy even as his chest trembles with each step on this long journey he guesses he must call healing.

When he wakes again, it’s past midday, and Cas is still fast asleep, face pressed hard into the pillow so that it leaves little indentations on his dorky little face. Dean’s heart soars. He leans forward to kiss Cas’s messed-up hairline, and his skin smells of the electric soar of air after rainfall. He watches the slow tide of Cas’s breaths, inhale and exhale like waves against soft sand, for a time he loses trace of.

Eventually, he gets softly out of bed. He comes back with two coffees, but Cas is still out of it, so Dean sits down on the bed, quiet as possible, though the force at which Cas seems to be out of it, it should hardly matter. He pulls out a battered Lovecraft to read, and Miracle settles on the bed at his feet, better than any hot water bottle. About a half-hour in, Cas curls towards him, and wraps his arms around Dean’s waist as he reads. Dean runs a hand through that beautiful dark hair.

“You ready to face the day?” He asks, but there’s no answer. Only the unmistakable breath of sleep, deep and velvet. Everything inside Dean’s chest is raw. He finishes his coffee and even when he has nearly finished his book, Cas is still out of it. Slipping out of Cas’s arms, he makes his way to the kitchen, because he still hasn’t eaten and apparently Cas isn’t waking up any time, soon.

In the galley, Sam and Eileen sit over a couple of beers.

“Morning,” Dean smiles sheepishly, and Eileen snorts.

“Try afternoon,” she corrects. “It’s four thirty.”

Damn.

“No wonder I’m starved.” Maybe he’ll have everything, fried, for breakfast.

“Where’s Cas?” Sam asks with a frown, from the table, and Dean’s stomach clamps. “I haven’t seen him all day. Won’t he be hungry, too?”

“I’ll,” Dean flushes, and turns toward the fridge, “I’ll make him something. He’s—he’s probably still sleeping.”

“Probably?”

“Well, he was travelling for more than a day, Sammy,” Dean says, defensive and redfaced. “He’s got a lot of rest to catch up on.”

This is a pretty neat dodge of Sam’s question.

And if Sam spots it, he doesn’t say anything. Dean fries up bacon and eggs and makes waffles for Cas’s first breakfast—well, it’s breakfast if it’s the first thing you eat, after waking, right?—as a human. When he’s done, and plating up, Cas finally wanders in, rubbing his bleary eyes. Something in Dean’s chest settles. He sighs out, minutely, but Sam’s gaze flickers over to him all the same, and Sam’s lips twitch. Damn, what did Dean do in a past life, to earn himself a brother in this one who can see so clearly through his bullshit and pretence? Probably mass murder.

“Hey, buddy,” Dean smiles, and hands him a plate piled with what Dean would personally consider one of the best first-breakfasts as a fresh human, out there. “You’re awake.”

Cas blinks blearily.

“How long was I out for?” He asks. Dean smiles at the expression he wears: nose creased up, hair ruffled and sticking up at every angle—a tiny dark curl licks at the back of his head and Dean wants to twine his fingers around it and kiss Cas, deep, good morning. He doesn’t. Nerves thrum at him, uselessly. The only thing that calms them is Cas, himself.

“Thirteen hours,” he smiles. “At least. You feelin’ rested?”

“No,” Cas shakes his head, and looks so damn grumpy, lines creasing his features with sleepiness and indignance, Dean could kiss every inch of his face. “I want to go back to sleep…”

“Eat,” Dean huffs, flooded with love, and directs Cas to sit down at the table. “No more sleeping, or you won’t sleep at all tonight. And it’ll just be a cycle of either bad rest, or no rest.”

“Bossy…” Cas grumbles. Dean rolls his eyes and hands him a knife and fork.

“Enjoy,” Dean gestures to the food, picking up his own plate and sitting at the table with the others.

“So,” Sam smiles to Castiel, “first day as one of us, officially, forever. What do you wanna do? How d’you wanna spend it?”

“I was hoping more rest, but according to Dean, that’s unreasonable…”

Dean snorts into his food.

“Uh, movie?” Eileen suggests, glancing at Sam.

“Could do,” Dean nods. “Miracle needs a walk, though. Cas, you wanna join me? We gotta work off this breakfast, anyway,” he laughs, “in time for dinner in—”

“Two hours,” Sam smiles in answer. Dean snorts.

“Well? Thoughts on a dog walk?”

“Hm,” Cas seems to genuinely consider the question. “I think dogs wouldn’t need walking if you didn’t keep them as pets,” he says, seriously. “Wolves do just fine, in the wild.” Sam bites down on laughter. Dean rolls his eyes.

“How’s your breakfast, Cas?” He asks, instead of engaging. Cas glances down at his plate, and seems to soften.

“Yes,” he admits, “it’s good.”

“Maybe you were just hangry,” Dean chuckles as Cas takes another mouthful of food. “But I’m gonna make you a coffee, anyway.”

“Hangry?” Cas raises his eyebrows. Dean’s heart flutters. Even at this gesture. Even at things as small as this.

“Yeah, you know,” he says, “hungry and angry. You’re angry ‘cause you’re hungry.”

“Oh,” Cas nods, thoughtful. “You get hangry, a lot.”

Sam snorts. Dean rolls his eyes, and brings Cas’s coffee over.

“Alright, dude. What movie, tonight?”

“We should let Jack decide,” Eileen says, eyes warm. “He’s got a lot of childhood to catch up on.”

Dean twitches a smile, though it’s sad.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Don’t we all.”

The next day, they go to see Claire. Dean is thrummed with nerves, his hands clench tight around the wheel of the impala. When he went to see Claire, after Cas was gone, she was all rage, only rage, balled fists beating against Dean’s chest and face a smear of tears and dark makeup running with them. A cry, a flurry of why didn’t you save him?! Why don’t you care?! And Dean going home and drinking himself into oblivion and wishing he could forget it, forget all of it, because he didn’t answer Claire and couldn’t answer Claire, because he didn’t save Cas and he cared, maybe, too much to be healthy, but could never say so. And Claire hasn’t wanted to see him since.

She doesn’t want to see him, now. She ignores his texts and calls and Dean is given his updates from Jody, Donna, and Sam, who she’ll still happily talk to. Or, not happily. As happy as possible for a kid with a life as fucked up as Claire’s has been. And maybe it’s not all Claire’s fault. Maybe she wanted him to push, to persevere, to fight and prove that he thought she was worth it, where all her life she’d been abandoned by the people who seemed like they could be a dad to her. Jimmy. Cas. Then, Dean. Jimmy and Cas didn’t choose to go. Dean did. Will she forgive him for that?

At least he’s bringing Cas. Even if she won’t forgive Dean, she won’t yell at him either. She’ll want to spend this time with Cas, and really Dean is just a chauffeur. But at least Cas, alive, will be a shield to her rage. She’ll be distracted, maybe too distracted, to remember her anger at him. And Dean can move out of the way. Poor kid’s been through enough.

He called Jody ahead, said he was coming by. Didn’t say why. She sounded guarded over the phone, like she was pissed at Dean for his months of silence. But she was soft, too. She knows grief. And Dean has been drowned by it.

They knock on the front door. Dean’s fists are balled. Cas glances down at them and jokingly comments that Dean looks like he’s expecting a fight. Dean swallows thickly.

“Honestly,” he says, riddled equal parts worry and guilt, “yeah.”

Claire opens the door. Jody obviously told her that Dean was coming, because it’s wrenched open with the sudden fierceness of a snake bite. But Dean didn’t tell Jody about Cas. Maybe it was selfish—but he’d wanted to see Claire, when she found out Cas was back. He had to look at her face when she found out Cas was gone. And he could use some more happy memories to fill out the bare edges of his life.

Claire’s face is a snarl to match the snakebite of the opening door. Heavy and sullen and probably ready to tear Dean a new one for taking so long to check up on her, when her father-figure effectively died to protect Dean, and she probably wants to ask, and for what, Dean? For you to drink and drown yourself in sorrow? Fuck that, you selfish bastard. Fuck that.

But her gaze lights on Cas, and crumples. And she crumples. Like she’s made of paper, her trembling hands come to find Cas’s arms and shake and don’t stop shaking, and she touches him with a feeling Dean recognises, the feeling of being caught in a vision and being terrified of the moment it dissipates. Wanting to hold on hard and tight but knowing that too much hardness will blow away the sight like ash in the wind. And the tear streaked face is back, the face Dean last saw slipped over Claire like a veil, but now the tears are pure and riddled in disbelief and joy and the prayer which hope is—let it be real, please, let it be real. Dean knows. Dean’s felt it too.

“You’re—you’re here—” Claire sobs out, and she’s leaving a tear-soaked patch on Cas’s shirt, and Dean is crying, too, only an observer and only at the fringes, which makes sense after everything. “I—I thought you’d gone—forever—forever, Cas—”

Cas’s hands falter on the back of Claire’s head.

“I—I know, Claire,” he says softly. “I’m sorry—”

“You’re here—you’re—how are you here? I thought I’d lost you,” Claire shudders out, and Dean watches a twitch in Cas’s jaws and a shimmering in his eyes, before the shimmering turns into a quiet stream onto his face.

“I know,” Cas repeats, and seems, of all things, surprised that him being gone left all of them so broken. How could he be surprised? He was a lonely candle in the cold darkness. To all of them. “I’m sorry. I’m back, I’m here, now—I promise—”

“How?” Claire asks. “How?”

“Um—” Cas starts, and half-laughs, awkwardly, glancing at Dean. “It’s a long story—”

Claire pulls back, and for the first time since she opened the door, looks at Dean.

Dean flinches.

And yeah, he should. She lunges at him.

And like a flashback to the day Dean told her the Terrible Thing, how Cas was gone forever and it was his fault, her balled fists are beating against his chest again and she’s sobbing again and so is Dean. Cas is about to heave Claire off of him but Dean doesn’t want to let him. He lets her anger rain down. He wraps his arms around her and shakes with his own tears and Claire’s rage swells like a wave before caving in on itself. And she’s not punching him anymore. She’s hugging him.

“It’s okay,” Dean shudders out, and then, because it’s what he needed to hear, the night Cas came back, “it’s real. He’s here, Claire. I’m sorry for everything. I’m so sorry. But he’s real.”

And Claire is sobbing against his chest.

Jody appears at the door, obviously drawn out by the yelling, and looks worried. Her expression changes so dramatically it’s almost funny, when she sees Castiel.

And so they have to gather round Jody’s kitchen table, after a lot of hugs and tears from a lot of different women, while Cas is forced to recount, again, how it is he came to be rescued from the empty, and again, fall from heaven.

But he glances nervously to Dean as he tells this. Because, even to Sam, Dean hasn’t made his relationship with Cas explicit, yet. And the story of how Cas came to be here, and human, makes their relationship pretty explicit.

Dean would honestly rather that Cas just speak it into being. He isn’t a brave man—not about this kind of thing. He lives in fear. But Cas mutes his words.

“The force of Dean’s prayers—and the fact that Jack had so weakened the Empty, when he was sent there, and—”

“—Exploded,” Dean provides, and Cas glances to him, again.

“—Yes—well, it meant that I was… easy to retrieve. But Dean didn’t know. Because I didn’t tell him,” he glances apologetically to Dean. “Because…” But he trails off. “But I’m back, now.”

“So you probably wanna spend the day—I dunno, catching up,” Dean glances at Claire. She’s sat next to Cas, and beside her, Kaia sits, her hand woven with Claire’s, soft and sure as a promise. Dean glances down at their hands a moment. His heart pangs inexplicably. His hand twitches and almost reaches for Cas’s. Funny. It’s not been forty-eight hours, and already, it’s this instinctive. Claire is watching him. “I kind of only came here as a—I don’t know—a ride, for Cas—and I wanted to see your face, I guess—”

“So what, half a year of absence, and then you won’t even hang out with me?” Claire asks. There’s no flexibility to her words, it’s all indignance. Dean nearly squirms.

“I’m—I’m just saying—I’m guess you wanna spend some time with Cas—”

“Yeah,” Claire rolls her eyes, “and you, too. Six months, dude.” Dean squirms, guiltily, and tries again to apologise, but Claire says, and seems almost vulnerable with the request, “Mini-golf?”

Dean twitches a smile. His nextwords are shaking and hopeful.

“Only if you’re ready to lose.”

Claire grins.

“You’re dead meat.”

“Kaia, are you—” Dean fumbles, a little awkward. Kaia flickers a look at Claire and shakes her head.

“I’ll leave you guys to it,” she says.

“You’d be welcome—”

“How long are you gonna be here?” Claire asks.

“Forever,” Cas answers. Claire snorts, and rolls her eyes.

“No, I mean, today. How long are you guys gonna be here, visiting?”

“Oh,” Dean laughs, “as long as you want. As long as you’ll have us. I mean—I have work tomorrow,” he admits. “But hey—Cas won’t have anything to do, for a few days—”

“Days?”

“Dean fights fires, now,” Castiel says. Claire smirks at his words. “And his shifts seem… unnecessarily long…”

“The thing about fire is that it’s not very polite,” Dean answers. “Doesn’t stand on ceremony.” Cas squints at him.

“Alright,” Claire gets up, and still seems a little shaky. “Let’s go. Maybe—maybe you can stay for dinner, too?” She asks. A smile presses at Dean’s lips.

“If it isn’t an imposition,” Cas answers.

Claire laughs.

“Half a year, man,” she shakes her head. “You owe it to me.”

Out the house, and back into the Impala. Dean’s quiet on the way there, unsure of what to say. Claire and Cas sit in the back seats, and Claire barrages Cas with questions Dean has mostly heard the answers to, and Cas asks stumbling questions to Claire, when he can, about life and what her favourite band is at the moment and how things are at Jody’s. His eyes keeps stinging with salt and he has to take a hard grip of the wheel and stop the sear of his own heart from clouding his thoughts with rebukes toward himself for how he failed Claire. Claire still starts crying at random intervals and forces Cas to ignore the tears and carry on talking, but occasionally she’ll take a tight terrified hold of his hand as though his palm against hers will steady the shuddering of her breaths. And, to be fair, it seems to.

Dean parks the car and wipes at his eyes again. Claire is watching him, but he brushes past it, pretends he’s fine. A whole life of hardening himself, and it’s ironically hard to stop.

Cas sucks at mini golf, it turns out. And yeah, it’s fucking hilarious, and yes he gives Dean the funniest looks every time Dean laughs at him. Claire watches them with a smile, and punches Dean’s arm enough times to ease him out of his fear and most of his shame. Dean lets her win. Claire knows.

“Alright, what else d’you wanna do, Claire?” Dean asks on their walk back to the Impala.

Claire bites her lip thoughtfully.

“Hmm,” she hums. “What do kids normally get to do with their dads?”

Dean’s stomach clamps up at the word.

She’s talking about Cas, of course she’s talking about Cas—but—but couldn’t Dean be implicit in this, too? Dads. As in, plural.

“Uh—” Dean stammers, “me and Cas have a couple of complexes, around fathers. Maybe we’re not the people to ask.”

“Me too, you aren’t special,” Claire rolls her eyes. Dean’s heart is a hammer against his ribcage. Dads? Is that what she said? And what she said after, and in spite of, everything?

“I’m hungry,” Cas presses a hand to his stomach and frowns. “Whether it’s what fathers do with their daughters, or not, I’d like to get food.”

“Dads have been known to eat with their kids. We can do that,” Claire smiles warmly at him, that bright star of amused affection Dean recognises and knows so well because he feels it, too. Brighter than any sun.

They go to a diner. Claire can eat more fries than Dean ever would have thought possible. And after the diner, it’s the mall, and Cas tells Claire he’ll buy her whatever she wants, but of course Cas doesn’t have any money because he’s only been human for a grand total of two days—well, four days, but two days with Dean. So obviously Dean is the one who has to pay for Cas’s extravagant parenting.

Maybe he should start running credit card scams again.

While Claire is browsing new ripped jeans—which, by the way, is fucking stupid, who buys damaged clothes?—Dean bumps his shoulder against Cas’s. Cas’s gaze turns on him, warm enough to send his heart soaring.

“We can’t make a habit of this,” Dean tells him. “Not unless you want to get a job, too.”

“Again with the job threats?”

“I’m just saying,” Dean laughs, “if you want to commit to spoiling the kid, you’ve gotta commit to employment, too.”

“I don’t want to go back to the Gas n’ Sip,” Cas says, and says it with so much meaning and sincerity that Dean loses it, pressing his forehead against his best friend’s shoulder.

“I wanna try these on!” Claire calls over to them, holding up an armful of jeans.

“Okay, but you’re only getting one pair,” Dean calls back, lifting his head.

“What happened to you can get whatever you want?!”

“I never said that,” Dean answers gruffly.

Claire huffs. She comes over.

“Fine. But you have to help me decide.”

She drags them over to the changing rooms, and they wait outside. Claire pulls back the curtain on her first pair, and asks them what they think.

“Maybe you can get a discount on them,” Cas says, sincerely, gesturing to the rips, and Claire squints at him. “They’re a bit—torn.”

“It’s called style, you dinosaur—”

“—Angel—”

“—Human,” Dean corrects. Cas squints at him. He looks like Claire. He also looks like, two days into their relationship, he’s already considering a break up. “I think they look great, Claire,” Dean looks back over to her. Cas glares at him. Dean laughs, but Claire rolls her eyes and goes back to the changing room. When she comes out again, she’s wearing pair of jeans that Cas works hard on not saying look exactly the same as the last ones, while Dean bites his tongue to stop himself from laughing.

The third pair, though, look pretty cool—and Claire settles on them. Maybe Dean gets the ripped jeans thing. He used to be a rebellious teen, once upon a time.

They get back to Jody’s late afternoon, in time to help out with dinner. While Dean’s about to start chopping onions, Claire approaches, and stands next to him. She picks up one of the onions casually, but too casually, and starts peeling its skin.

“Don’t think I’ve forgiven you,” she says, not suddenly, but abruptly enough to startle Dean. Not that he’s startled by the sentiment. He’d be an idiot to believe that he deserved forgiveness, at all, let alone so soon.

“I don’t,” he answers honestly, and glances at Claire, whose eyes are earnest if a little sullen. He swallows. “I get it,” he says, and his heart cracks. He isn’t good at these conversations. He knows he isn’t good at these conversations, and that, specifically, these conversations make him either shut off or lash out—or, devastatingly, in that it is devastating for his relationships—both of these. God. He wishes he had less anger crammed up inside of him. Sam manages to be kind. Cas manages it. Why can’t he? “I—I screwed up,” he says, chest tight and breath trembling. He looks down to an onion and starts peeling it, for something to do, because he’s afraid. “I screwed it up, and couldn’t face it—and it looked like I gave up on you. I swear I didn’t. I never could—I just—if I gave up on something, Claire—it was myself. And I thought you’d be better off without me.”

“Those are shitty excuses,” Claire says, frank as ever. Dean swallows thickly.

“I know.”

“As in, those aren’t excuses at all.”

Dean looks down, tries to swallow again, but can’t.

“I know.”

“And what, you’re not even sorry?!” Claire asks, exasperated, making obvious effort not to raise her voice and give away to Jody, a few metres away, that she’s in fact berating Dean, not helping him.

Dean turns, looks at Claire, can barely speak.

“Of course I’m sorry, Claire. I’m more sorry than anything. I didn’t—I don’t—know what to do, to make it right. You—you had every right to hate me at the time, and every right to hate me, now. Even when—back when you didn’t hate me, you had every right to hate me, considering everything. I guess the weight of that… I didn’t know what to do. I’m not good at this kind of thing,” Dean looks down. “Never have been. That’s on me.” He swallows. “Has—has Cas told you, what happened? What—what exactly happened?”

Claire shakes her head, and watches him seriously.

“I think he wanted to leave that up to you,” she says evenly.

Dean swallows.

Damn. It’d be easier if Cas had just told her. Now he has to be the one to—

He glances over to Kaia. She’s giggling with Castiel, showing him where they keep the herbs and spices. Cas knocks something over and it shatters and Kaia starts laughing harder. Dean’s heart twitches as he watches Cas fumble. Claire glances up at Kaia and grins, rolling her eyes.

Surely it should be easy, all things considered, to come out to a lesbian.

He takes a steadying breath.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that.

“Uh—Cas—Cas was taken by the empty, because, ‘cause—” the fuck is wrong with him? What, like Claire’s gonna judge him? Her girlfriend—or whatever the two of them are—is literally standing across the room. “’Cause he told me—everything.” Dean bites at his lip a little too hard, and draws blood. The taste blossoms, an iron flower in his mouth. “’Everything’ here means—” he looks down at the chopping board. Claire watches him steadily, expression neutral. She’s good at this. Dean isn’t. “Um—how do I—” His chest is tight. Is he actually about to have a panic attack while trying to come out to a fucking Zoomer?

“You know it’s okay, right, Dean?” Claire asks quietly, raising her eyebrows at him. At last, Dean manages to stagger in a breath. He staggers in several before speaking again.

“Everything means—everything. It meant everything, to me. And I—I felt the same. I felt everything, too. He didn’t think I could… He didn’t think I could,” Dean nearly laughs, nearly cries, and looks up at Cas, who’s sweeping up the glass he shattered and apologising profusely to a bemused Jody. “What I’m saying is, Claire—when he was gone—it’s like… like I was, too. I couldn’t find myself. My heart got taken with him. I was—I was in a real bad way. It’s not an excuse. You needed me there for you—but Cas only got taken because of me. It was all my fault. I screwed up, he wouldn’t have gotten taken if I hadn’t—and he wouldn’t have gotten taken if he didn’t love—didn’t love me,” Dean’s voice cracks. “But he did, and he did it, and it—all of it—it nearly killed me. The guilt. The grief. I could barely look at you, it hurt so much. So I gave up too easy. I’m so—I’m so sorry—”

Claire hands him her peeled onion.

“Hurry up,” she says, nodding to the pile, completely unchopped. Dean swallows, heart still pounding, and turns back to the chopping board. He cuts the first onion in half. Claire speaks. “I’m reserving the right to be pissed at you, by the way.” Her voice is hard and hurt. Dean nods.

“I get it.”

“’Cause—‘cause it hurt, you not coming round, just because I was angry at you. It felt like I was only worth your time, if I was this smiley, happy kid, absolving you from all your guilt.”

“That’s—that’s not how it was—”

“Isn’t it?” She raises her eyebrows. Dean can’t answer. He carries on chopping the onions. “All I’m saying is—because of that, I lost three dads. Isn’t that a bit excessive?”

Dean’s eyes burn.

“Th—three—”

Claire rolls her eyes.

“I’m berating you, that wasn’t supposed to be touching.”

Dean lets out a laugh, awkward, and it’s an unbinding, a burst of ropes around his chest. Tears come with it.

“The truth is, Claire—I always wanted a daughter. Not—not always consciously, and I guess I didn’t like letting myself dream about it. But I always wanted one. It’s not the same as it was, with you, and needing a dad. I always wanted a daughter. You always deserved a dad.”

He glances at her.

She’s crying, too.

Her lips twitch.

“Lucky for me, I’ve got two, now,” she answers. That’s it, that’s what breaks him, completely.

“Are these done?” Jody asks, coming over for the onions. She blinks, frowning, at their tears. “Are you—are you both crying?”

“It’s the onions,” Dean says quickly, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

“They’re really strong,” Claire nods, looking up in the hope to stem her tears.

Jody looks unconvinced.

“Right…”

But she takes the chopped onions and tosses them into the pan. Dean swallows, and turns back to Claire.

“So, you and Cas, huh?” She asks, and flashes a smile at Dean, through her tears. It catches him out.

“Uh—well—”

“I get it, I get it,” she smirks. Her words are gently spoken, if bemused. “You’re repressed. You don’t need to say it. And I won’t tell anybody. Or talk about it. Not until you’re ready.”

Dean nods.

“I appreciate it.”

Cas comes over. Dean looks down at his hand. His heart trills a little, with nerves and with joy, when he decides to reach out his own and tangle their finger’s together. It seems like Cas’s does the same thing.

*

Dean is like the unfurling of the fractal patterns of a fern. For days, he says nothing to Sam, Eileen, or Jack, about their relationship—whatever it is—and honestly, Castiel grows less clear every day. He loves more, is able to touch more, but it seems as though he can speak it into being, less.

But, like the slow unfurling of a fern to match the bright essential green of his eyes, Dean unravels slowly. When Castiel is stood over a pot with Sam, helping him with dinner, Dean approaches and presses a hand to Cas’s back, grazing his thumb in soft circles.

Smells good. Cas, you showerin’ tonight? Your towel’s in the wash.

Sam smiles and pretends to be busy with the pan.

When Castiel is sat with Eileen in the library, talking and drinking beer, Dean picks the beer bottle out of Cas’s hand and takes a long swig of it, grinning and ruffling Cas’s hair when he frowns up at him.

What? Looked like you were having a hard time finishing it.

When Castiel and Dean are visiting the girls at Jody’s, helping to repaint Alex’s bedroom, Dean dips his hand in the bucket and presses a messy handprint onto Castiel’s chest.

When Castiel glowers, Dean grins.

What? It’s my tee you’re wearing, anyway.

Castiel returns the favour—he dips his hand into the bucket and places a painted handprint onto Dean’s shoulder.

Only a second too late does he realise.

His heart freezes.

Dean looks down at the mark and smiles, eyes stung. He grazes his fingertips against the wet paint, careful not to smudge it.

He looks back up at Castiel with a smile.

You’re making a bit of a habit of this, buddy. His voice is warm as cracked soil. Claire and Kaia are in the room, painting the corners, and apparently distracted with this fiddly work. You got a shoulder kink, or somethin’?

Castiel laughs hoarsely. He wants to kiss Dean.

Only yours, apparently.

Dean grins.

Castiel wants to kiss him.

But Jody enters, and spotting the paint on both of them, rolls her eyes, telling Castiel that for a being older than the earth, he’s very childish. Dean grins at him, and winks. Claire turns, spots them, and rolls her eyes, too.

When Castiel is playing board games with Jack, Dean approaches, leans over, and whispers advice in Cas’s ear. His lips actually touch Castiel’s skin, but Dean doesn’t seem to notice, or if he notices, care. Castiel cares. Castiel’s head is reverberating with the same noise as the big bang. An echoing and bone-jarring trembling.

Dean grazes his hand against Castiel’s forearm when Castiel is sitting and Dean walks past, he bumps his shoulder with Cas’s when they stand next to each other, he even, one bright Saturday on a walk through the woods, trails the pad of his thumb against Castiel’s cheekbone.

Eyelash, he says, softly, as explanation. Sam blinks, only a few feet away. Got it, Dean grins. Make a wish!

Castiel can barely think what else he could want. The sun is blossoming in a pure blue sky, the trees waver around them in shimmers of green, and Dean, Dean is stood in front of him, easy smile slung across his lips and twisting his features like he isn’t even conscious of how he sends Castiel’s mind reeling into the beautiful oblivion of space.

What does he want? What more could he want?

Can his brother even hear his prayers? Have Michael and Amara reopened the lines to heaven?

This, always, he thinks. More of this, always. All of this, always.

And whether it’s to himself, to the ridiculous metaphysical magic of the eyelash, or to the place he used to call home in spite of the fact he couldn’t call it home, he sends out the wish. Perhaps it will come true. And half the joy is in the waiting, a kind of prayer in itself. Castiel has heard enough of them. He knows.

It’s answered.

He’s sat, eating breakfast with Sam and Eileen—Jack is still in bed, and acting more and more like a teenager, which is honestly something exciting. He and Sam and Eileen chatter and laugh together, and Dean enters, and, coming up behind him, puts his hands on either of Castiel’s shoulders and squeezes warmly, thumbs grazing back and forth. This would be enough to stun Castiel into stillness, in itself, but then Dean startles him even more.

“Mornin’ gorgeous,” he greets, voice rough with sleep and lazy with comfort and warm with—with love—and still Castiel can’t respond, he’s so taken aback, and isn’t even given the chance to recover from this attack. Because Dean bends and presses a kiss to Castiel’s cheek, threading one of his hands through Cas’s hair.

With his other, he steals a piece of bacon of Castiel’s plate.

“Thanks,” he grins, mouth full, and Sam sighs.

“You know we made you a plate, too, Dean?” He gestures over to the counter where it lies. Castiel had insisted on giving Dean extra bacon—it’s Sunday, he deserves it. “Cas actually made sure you got a couple extra slices. Can’t think why.”

Dean beams, mouth still full. Cas wrinkles his nose, but Dean’s hand is framing his jaw.

“Best boyfriend ever.”

Castiel’s heart shatters upwards into his throat in a movement the colour of crystal. All these shards of his joyful, disbelieving heart in his throat, he can barely breathe.

Dean takes a seat beside Castiel, but Cas can’t speak, can’t eat. His brain has whirred to a halt. He stares down at his plate, wide-eyed. Perhaps this is a dream. Perhaps all of these last few weeks have been a dream. Perhaps, as he feared, the night he returned to the bunker and Dean met him in the rain and laced ribbons of kisses up his neck and asked him to stay, perhaps as he feared then, he passed out on the road in the storm, and all of this is a dream.  The sprawl of a mind turned suddenly all to human.

“Are you gonna eat that?” Dean asks, gesturing to Castiel’s plate. He looks up at Dean. His friend. His first friend. His anchor to existence. The lens to clarify this mess of life. The language to articulate love, and loss. The crack across his very being through which some heavenly light might shine.

“You’re not stealing any more of his food,” Sam says, seriously. “You’ll starve him to death.”

Castiel manages to stagger out a laugh. He begins to eat.

*

When Sam announces he’s moving out, it sends the earth reeling from beneath Dean’s feet. Damn. Damn, the past few months had been good—too good—and Dean should’ve taken it as a warning, but, idiot that he is, he didn’t. He’s let his guard down—and this is what happens.

He doesn’t even know what to say, because beneath it all, it’s completely fair. Beyond completely fair—that Sam would want to move up and beyond the literal chasm of life in the bunker and life on the road, that he would want to actualise the dreams and gifts he possessed outside of what was landed on him by the whims of an abusive God—it’s all completely fair. And yet it flares a rage in Dean which threatens to scorch the earth of their relationship beyond the possibility of regrowth.

“Don’t pull that face, Dean—” Sam sighs, looking at once tired and afraid, and pleading, pleading, for Dean to accept this. They’re standing in the kitchen and Jack’s face flashes at the doorway, probably looking for a snack, but he skulks quickly away at the charged air of the room.

“I don’t get it,” Dean shakes his head. His jaw is tight, his nails dig into his palm. “I don’t—”

“You spent all those years talking about getting out of the game, and now when it looks like we’re finally getting out of it, you’re angry at me for trying to move on?”

“Yeah, ‘cause I meant get out of the game, not abandon your family—”

“You sound like dad.”

Dean glares. This one lands like a hammer at his chest. This one has the potential and velocity to make Dean lose it completely, send him off the rails, and Sam seems to sense it too, because he watches Dean with cautious, intentional eyes.

“Don’t ever say that,” Dean says, quiet and dangerous.

“No, I meant it,” Sam holds his ground. “That’s how you sound.”

“Well, fine—but he was the one who kept you alive for all those years, you have him to thank—”

“No, Dean!” Sam shouts. “He was the one who kept us in danger all those years! He chose that life, he wasn’t roped into it like we were. He had a choice—and now that I have a choice: change and grow, or stay clinging to a past I hated—you resent me?!”

“You hated it?!”

“Yes, it, not you—this isn’t about you, Dean—”

“You’re leaving, how is it not about—”

“Because it’s not!” Sam raises his voice, and Dean has trouble keeping his breath even. “This is what normal people do,” Sam pleas, desperate. “You really want me to live—literally—underground the rest of my life?” He shakes his head with a sigh. “I’d given up on the dream of living—living—by the time you were just realising yours. I couldn’t see a world where I got a normal life—one where I got to go steady with Eileen, go on dates, real dates, feel nervous about asking about us moving in together. I’d even made my peace with it. But now I can—now it’s possible, and you’re telling me I’m selfish for trying to move on—”

“People like us don’t get to move on,” Dean grinds out.

“You really thought, after we defeated Chuck, me and you would stay living in the bunker, like we always did? Some weird arrested development, no growth, no new beginnings? Just stasis, forever? You thought that?”

Dean grates his teeth, glaring at the floor.

Yes. Yes, he did.

“What happened to your dream of the beach?” Sam asks, desperate.

“As a vacation,” Dean replies, voice frayed. “We’d come back—” But no, everyone leaves, everyone leaves him, and everyone wants to. “You’d come back—”

“Just ‘cause you were bred with this weird need to protect me, all the time, doesn’t mean you have to—”

“The hell does that mean!”

“It means that sometimes, your need to keep me alive and with you, overrode your need to keep me happy—”

“—You’re selfish—”

“I’m not,” Sam’s eyes itch with tears. “And sometimes, it wasn’t even about keeping me alive—sometimes it wasn’t about keeping me alive, so I could be happy, so I could live—it was about keeping me alive, so you wouldn’t have to live without me, so you wouldn’t be lonely. The people who do that in the movies, Dean—they’re the villains. It’s fucked up—”

“Nothing about our lives has ever been anything other than fucked up—”

“Like that’s an excuse? And now we have the chance to change it, at least—”

“Why do you want to go! Why do you always want to go?! Ever since we were kids, you wanted to leave me.”

“That isn’t fair—and it isn’t fair how you equated me staying with you, to me loving you—you’ve done some fucked up shit, Dean, just to keep me alive—”

“Like what?”

“There have been times,” Sam balls his fist, and breathes deep, “where I’ve been ready to go. But you didn’t want to say goodbye—”

“If you’re talking about what happened with Gadreel—”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Sam looks back up at Dean, hard. “What you did then was wrong, Dean, but I was meant to feel grateful for it? No. No, that’s wrong.”

“It saved you—”

“And you never stopped to question the cost,” Sam’s struggling to keep his voice even.

“I did—”

“If you had questioned it, even once, you never would’ve done what you did. If you’d thought about it, if you thought about it outside of your fear of being alone, you never would’ve done it. And after what Lucifer did to me?” Sam’s eyes are wrung with tears, now. Dean can barely look at him. Shame itches at his face.

“I guess I was just—just taught, for so long—too long—to protect you, no matter the cost. That isn’t right,” he admits. “It isn’t right, especially because you didn’t want that.”

“It’s more than that,” Sam shakes his head. Dean glances up, brow knotted. Something rots at his gut. “It wasn’t just that you were taught to look out for me. Sometimes—sometimes, Dean, you didn’t seem to care about me—”

“—I always cared for you—”

“Cared for. Not About.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry for it, Sam—”

“—But I don’t know if you are. Part of me wonders, if we were in the same position again—would you just do the same thing?”

“—Don’t act as if I haven’t grown since then—”

“You’re telling me I’m selfish for trying to move out.”

Dean glares at the floor.

“This isn’t fair, you digging up shit from the past…”

“I’m still processing it, Dean, don’t you get it? I had to push it to one side, for so many years—because of our jobs, because of some fucked up imperative to look at the bigger picture, because I knew you thought you were doing the right thing, and because I knew you’d lash out if I tried to bring it up again. But I’m—it’s all connected. Azazel, Lucifer, Gadreel, Chuck—even you. I never got a choice in any of it. All of it was violating. In degrees, of course, and some of it more than others. Azazel made me a monster, I was a kid. Lucifer—”

He cuts off, his face is splintered with heat. Dean remembers. Remembers how Sam looked at every one of Lucifer’s returns, remembers how Sam looked when Lucifer was only metres from him, promising not to kill him, seeming to promise something worse, remembers how Sam looked when he struck the archangel blade clean through Lucifer’s chest, and how he looked afterward, when he was only just starting to understand it. He remembers Alastair. He remembers Lucifer, he remembers Alastair, he wants to stop remembering Alastair, he can’t stop remembering Alastair.

“Sammy—” He chokes out, but can’t do it, can’t even speak how sorry he is. “I can’t make up for that—”

“I’m not asking you to make up for it,” Sam shakes his head, “there is no making up for it. But you have to let me move on, Dean. I haven’t been allowed to, for sixteen years.”

Dean swallows.

“I’m sorry, Sam…”

“I know.”

Dean scrubs at his eyes. Silence, for a few moments.

“Where—where were you thinkin’ of moving?” He asks, looking back up. He tries to say it as gently as possible, a kind of positive inquisition. Sam snorts at the forced soft curiosity of his voice, but being Sam, and all things generous, answers as if they’re having an ordinary conversation again.

“Short term? We thought about going back to Lawrence. Long term, we were thinking Oregon, or Washington state. I’ve been thinking about going into archiving. And there’s the Talking Book and Braille Library in Seattle. Seemed a good fit, for me and Eileen.”

Dean nods.

“That’s… awesome…”

“You could make that sound more sincere,” Sam laughs.

“It is,” Dean says, and means it, just can’t get it across, because he’s hurting, too. “I’m bad at this, man. People leaving is always bad, in my head. But…”

“I get it.”

“I’m sorry for everything,” Dean shakes his head, throat closing up. “You’re right. I fucked up—”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not—”

“Dean…”

“I always framed it like—like I didn’t deserve what dad put on me, what Chuck put on me. But you didn’t deserve what I put on you, because of all that stuff. Love shouldn’t be a burden. I shouldn’t have made it a burden. I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay.”

“What I put you through—” Dean shakes his head. “Listen, Sammy—when you go—I hope it’s good. I mean it. You deserve that. I hope it’s exciting, I hope it’s ordinary. That ordinary life you never got. You deserve that. Ordinary happiness, and the chance to have it.”

Sam smiles.

“Thanks, Dean.”

“We could—I don’t know—we could even do that beach thing. The vacation, I mean. That way, I wouldn’t miss you, so much.”

“That sounds good.”

“’Cause—you know me. I’m a sentimental son-of-a-bitch.”

Sam chuckles.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Shut up.”

“A family vacation sounds good,” Sam answers gently.

*

Each day, Dean is a blessing, where he had believed himself for years to be a burden, and where Castiel had believed his own love to be a curse. Every day, Dean unravels it—the barbed knot of doubt lodged between Castiel’s redraw lungs. Dean doesn’t even mean to. But every day, Dean is a blessing.

Cas lies over him, traces the pad of his forefinger over Dean’s lips. They’re soft and delicate as the petals of poppies. Castiel could marvel at them forever. If there was one thing his father made perfectly—however unintentional—it was this human. Balancing the dualities of that which is bruised, and holy. All the most sacred things are: peaches in summer, sacrificial lambs, the human heart. Most of all, Dean’s.

“How I have longed to touch…” He murmurs softly. Dean’s lashes flutter. With sleep, or love? Hours like these are sweeter than honey. He can remember how Dean’s soul looked, in moments of happiness. The colour of honey, itself: summer sunlight pouring through honey. Castiel can almost taste it on his tongue.

“Yeah?” Dean asks, voice a breath in the night. Castiel exhales. He kisses the lips he longed to kiss, traces the pads of his thumbs against the cheekbones he longed to touch. Removed from the void which was doubt—doubt that he could have this, deserve this—removed from that void, all of Castiel’s days have been expansion, his nights have been blossom, like jasmine, sweet on the air so that even ether seems to flower white gold.

“Yes,” he answers. It’s the ground. It’s the soil. It’s everything certain and pure. “Longed like it was a new religion, loving you was serving a new God.”

Dean swallows thickly, eyes bittersweet, and tilts his head up to kiss Castiel. He still finds it hard to accept the love Castiel has to give him. But he’s getting there.

Every day, he’s getting there.

One night Castiel asks Dean if he longed for this, too, the quiet perfect intimacy of these moments, the fear and joy of knowing and being known, loving and being loved. Dean laughs, seems giddy and drunk with either love or his answer, most likely a green-gold cocktail of both, and curls his arms around Castiel’s frame like roots.

“Yes, yes, I’ve hungered for it,” he says, and tastes Castiel’s lips as he says it, “bitten my skin raw in the night with longing,” his teeth graze Castiel’s neck, Castiel shivers silver, “you taught me how hungry love can be, Cas. Starving, angry with it. You taught me the hunger of love.” A smile presses against Castiel’s naked throat. “You taught me how tender it can be, too. How tender and how aching.” A smile-coiled kiss to Castiel’s throat, before Dean moves his mouth back up to his best friend’s lips and butterflies his own against them, a movement the mimics the fluttering of Castiel’s heart in answer.

Sometimes, when they lie in bed, Dean will play music and tell Castiel about it, eyes bright sparks of interest and excitement, hands drawing absent-minded patterns across the skin of Castiel’s chest as he talks. Sometimes, and increasingly if it’s a love song, Dean will jump up, pick up something as a makeshift microphone, and sing to Castiel, who sits through it, flushing furiously, but beaming with all the joy in the world. Sometimes Dean will tug at Castiel’s hand and force him into another dancing lesson—still, Castiel doesn’t think any of what they do could be called dancing; he’s watched human cultures practice for millennia and no, standing with their foreheads pressed together swaying slowly doesn’t nearly resemble what people have always seemed to consider the most impressive iterations of the form.

Castiel doesn’t mind. His newly rendered human heart is sent soaring against Dean’s chest as they stand and sway to tides of sound.

Sometimes, when Dean comes back from his shifts at work, he’ll collapse on the bed, sprawled on top of Castiel’s legs as he sits with his back against the bedframe, Dean refusing to move so that Castiel is trapped for the next few hours. Sometimes Castiel pretends to complain about this. Most of the time he forgets to. Sometimes Castiel will fall asleep, too, while he waits for Dean to restore his sense of energy, or gain enough physical contact, or closeness, or whatever it is that Dean wants out of these moments. Castiel can’t know for certain, because Dean is so many bursts of bright light that nothing about him is certain, but Castiel, uncertain, is certain he would give whatever Dean needs in each of these moments, and every moment beyond it. Most of the time he’ll graze his nails lightly against Dean’s scalp in the shape of Enochian letters of love as Dean’s thick lashes flutter in delicate bird-beat movements. Sometimes Dean will kiss him in the middle of this like he knows what Cas is doing and knows what it means.

Sometimes, when Castiel is dressing in the mornings, Dean will still his hands and insist that he be the one to pull Castiel’s tee over his head, the one to slip Castiel’s jacket over his shoulders, smoothing the fabric and the skin underneath as he does so. All the way down to Castiel’s socks: Dean will grin and insist that he be the one to put them on, himself.

You spent so many years wearing that tie all lopsided, and your damn trenchcoat all ruffled. I’m just makin’ sure you’re wearing your clothes right.

You’re very patronising.

You love me. You love me. You love me.

A kiss at each of these phrases pressed to a different part of Castiel’s body: the palm of his hand, the tip of his nose, the crown of his head.

It reminds Castiel of the raw ritual intricacies of their relationship before love blossomed into truth. Motions like the dancing Dean keeps trying to teach him: years, back and forth, a step forward so that the other might take a step back, the excuse of practicality to press fingers to a face, curl a hand around an arm.

But these were the realities of a hard and brittle life which was unforgiving to moments of tenderness; moments of tenderness had to twine delicately around it like ivy over stone. These were the hard and brittle realities of a life which, Castiel had thought, Dean would leave behind him. But like the ivy of ritual tenderness, Dean seems woven into the life his father carved him into.

One day, on a hunt, he cuts it fine. He refuses to stop going on them—hunts—frowning sullenly every time Castiel thinks to bring it up. He has the gall to complain and worry when Castiel says, in that case, he’ll join him on each hunt.

“You’re human, now,” Dean growls. “No angel mojo to keep you safe.”

“You don’t have any, either,” Castiel points out with a glare.

“I was raised doin’ this, man—”

“So you think I can’t handle it.”

“That’s not what I’m sayin’—”

“It’s exactly what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying,” Dean tries, clenching his fists and looking down, “I can’t handle it, if I lose you again. I can’t handle that. Don’t make me—”

“And what, you think I can handle losing you?”

They stand in the library of the bunker. Sam cleared out sharply the moment Dean and Cas stalked in after each other, words turning from something weighted to pointed.

“You’re not gonna have to,” Dean grumbles. “I’m good at what I do.”

Some strange distance lies between them, charged with static energy, and the words which strike next will be like the barb of lightning striking between the rift of heaven and earth.

“It was close today, Dean—too close—if I lost you—”

“It was only close, ‘cause I was looking out for you.”

 “That isn’t fair—”

“—If you didn’t go on hunts, I wouldn’t have to worry—”

“If you didn’t go on hunts, I wouldn’t have to worry.”

The last time the two of them got in a fight like this, Castiel ended up walking out of Dean’s life, for what he thought would be forever.

Forgiveness came, ironically, in a whispered prayer in purgatory, a place notorious for the atonement and perfection of the self—but which to Dean and Castiel has always instead meant rebuilding the space between you and the other you love. Now they have no way into purgatory. It’s a foolish thought, but does Dean have it in him to rebuild things on the broken earth, instead of the pure and raw of that lost limbo?

“Cas, this is what I’m good at—”

“It’s one thing that you’re good at, and you don’t have to be good at it, any more—”

“I know there’s less and less cases,” Dean sighs, “but as long as monsters are out there, killing people, I’m gonna be out there, saving people—”

“And who’s going to save you?” Castiel asks, desperate. “You won’t let me. Not anymore.”

Dean’s jaw tightens like a cog is being turned at his temple.

“I’m fine,” Dean shakes his head, the motion stiff.

“That Vetala nearly killed you, today,” Castiel says, hopeless, and gestures to the wound, deep, on Dean’s chest. His shirt is ripped through. He’d tried to dress the wound, but Dean had brushed away his worried hands with a frustrated and defensive resentment. “I don’t—I don’t have grace, to heal you, any more.” Dean looks away, eyes silver over the green. “If I lost you—“

“If I get killed by some run-of-the-mill creature, some mid-tier monster, that’s on me,” Dean says, earnest.

“You think that’d make my heart break, any less?” Castiel asks, staggered. Dean looks back up at him. He seems surprised. “I can’t say goodbye to you, Dean—not now—not after everything—I wanted you to live, and you won’t—”

“Without this, what am I?” Dean asks, hollow-eyed.

“How can you even say that?” His voice is cracked earth against his throat.

Dean stares at him.

“Cas—Cas, I get it. But please give me time.”

“You say that. But what if the next hunt is your last? What if you get unlucky? You’re getting older—”

“Gee, thanks—”

“—I only mean—”

“—That I’m infirm—”

Dean’s putting up defences, taking deliberate offense. It makes smoke billow in Castiel’s system.

“That I want to grow old with you,” he corrects, and hardens. “But you need to be alive for that.”

Dean looks up. His expression has shifted in an instant of disbelief, an echo of his face in the dungeon, when he looked up, and realised, and couldn’t let himself realise, the direction of Castiel’s words and the direction, ever, of the blood-love-flow of his heart.

“…You want to grow old with me,” he repeats. His voice is quiet. Castiel swallows. His skin is tight. His heart is pale red and raw.

“I do,” he admits. “…Is that—surprising?”

Dean twitches a smile.

“People—in my game—don’t often get to grow old with the people they love.” A beat of silence. “Person they love.”

“That’s why I want you to get out of the game,” Castiel answers, easily.

“It’s… hard to know what I am, without it,” Dean admits. He looks shaken by Castiel’s confession. As if he could be surprised by it? “All my life, Cas—I was raised for one thing. One purpose. I dreamt of leaving, last few years, but—it ain’t so easy as all that. It’s like the ground, for me.”

“How do you think I felt, when I rebelled against heaven?” Castiel asks. Dean quirks a smile and huffs out a breath that says, Right. Yeah. “I know what that’s like. We can talk about it—but I can’t stand to see you go on those hunts, and not go with you. I’m afraid, even of the thought, of waiting at home for you to return—or not return.”

“And if you come with me, I’ll spend the whole time worrying about you, and gettin’ in danger, too.”

Castiel bites his lip. His heart is like the tremor of rainfall.

“So what’s our answer?”

Dean swallows thickly, looking down.

“I don’t know,” he admits. He sighs. “It’s you, Cas, if you weren’t so damn loyal—”

“—I wasn’t aware that was a fault—"

“—With all your I’ll go with you, I could go with you’s—” Dean grips the edge of the table, hard, and looks angry again. “You think I’m worth all that?!”

“Of course I do—”

“It’s that kind of thinkin’, got you killed,” Dean glares, eyes pricked and watery.

“I’d do it a thousand times over.”

“And that’s why I can’t take you with me, on these hunts.”

“You’d die, and leave me here?”

“Apparently you’d do the same for me. You have before. Remember?”

Both of them glare at each other.

There’s at least half a minute of silence. But Dean’s glare softens into sorrow.

“I can’t lose you again.”

“Me neither.”

“Not after everything,” Dean shakes his head. “Not now.” Castiel swallows around something sharp. Dean lets out a breath which must equal an unbinding. “You said, just now, you wanted to grow old with me…”

Castiel raises his eyebrows.

“Are you surprised?”

“Growing old isn’t something a lot of angels think about.”

“Most angels don’t know what it’s like to kiss you good morning.”

Dean chokes out a noise like a laugh and a sob.

“Growing old, huh?” He asks. “With me?”

Castiel smiles, small. Dean looks breathless.

“We could, uh—I don’t know—move in some place. Near water. I could go fishing. I could—could fish with you. I could get you—get you a little garden—”

“—Little?”

“Alright, big,” Dean laughs, and surprisingly, isn’t even annoyed. “A big garden,” he’s breathless, a stammer of breath like a child’s after hours of crying. “With trees. And Claire could come stay. Jack could—could come with us.”

“Yes.”

“We could do that,” Dean’s words leave him slowly, the hope of a man in a prayer of petition.

“What’s stopping us?”

But Dean doesn’t seem to hear. The dream continues.

“Maybe—maybe we could even—even adopt. Some more—more kids. Little ones. Runnin’ around in the yard. Could help them with their homework. I’m not as smart as some—”

“—That isn’t true—”

“—But I got my GED. I could help ‘em. With homework, I mean. We could have a family,” Dean says, terrified as he looks back up to Castiel with glittering eyes. “And you—you could keep bees. And we—we could be happy…”

Castiel’s chest is tight.

“I’d like that,” he says, but can barely speak at all.

“Uh-huh?” Dean asks, in a sweeping breath.

“Uh-huh—”

“It’s hard to imagine a life outside of hunting,” Dean says, honest and vulnerable, “—But it’s easier to imagine it, with you.”

“Growing old, together.”

Dean swallows. A smile which is hope and disbelief lights his features.

“Kids,” he says. “Grandkids. Watching ‘em play in long grass. Sittin’ on the front porch, and watchin’ them play tag, or make believe games—us just talking, like we always do—your hand in my hand—my hand in yours—the sun all golden—”

“—I like that—”

“—It sounds good, right?” Dean asks, eyes bright.

“It sounds perfect,” a smile cracks at Castiel’s core. Light can’t help but pour through.

“I—I never thought I’d get that—get that kind of ending—”

“Well. Now it’s an appointment,” Castiel answers. Dean blinks with a huff of laughter. “Don’t miss it.”

Dean’s arms slip around Cas’s body. The blood from his wound from the hunt is sticky against Castiel’s chest, but he doesn’t care. He knows and loves all of Dean, wounds, raw flesh and crimson blood, bowlegs, curved smile, studs of freckles, and a soul made of nothing less than beaten golden sunlight.

“I won’t,” he promises. His voice crackles like rock shuddering into place. “I’ll see you there.”

*

Beach. Clouds made of ribbons in the sky. Dean’s hand in his. Some things are just good. Even with the uncertainty of living, even with their creator being something Bad, some things are just Good.

Dean is one of them.

The sand slips, soft beneath their feet, packed down with every step, slanting off to awkward sides and sending their footsteps in vague stumbling motions, setting their hands bound tighter around the other’s. The sun bleaches the blue. The sand is so bright they both squint; Dean shades his eyes with his free hand, and looks up ahead, where, just in front of the beach house, Claire has already run on.

She takes what she claims is the best room for herself and Kaia. Sam and Eileen, on account of Sam’s height, get the room with the biggest bed. Jody and Donna take the double furthest away from the living room—Jody says something about not wanting to get woken up at 3AM during scary movie nights. Jack gets the smallest room all to himself. Krissy and Josie share another double, and Alex and Patience have a bunk each in a small room they accept with good grace.

“Feels like summer camp!” Patience beams, and Dean grins.

“Yeah, but don’t expect me to teach you to tie ropes, or nothin’. I’m on vacation.”

This leaves Dean and Castiel with a small double bed, which overlooks the surf and the receding sun. The curtains are a threadbare and pale linen which drift like mist in the wind singing off the back of the sea. Castiel doesn’t mind the small space. He has discovered, these past few months, that heaven is in the small space between Dean’s arms. And eternity now stretches in the now brief fluttering of his life.

Dean only gives them time to drop their bags off before he’s dragging Castiel out of the beach house and down toward the surf. Off the sand banks are papery slopes of long and reedy grass, which, like the wispy clouds overhead, shimmer and ripple in the wind salt-fresh off the sea. Warm wind whips the air. And Dean is beautiful—always. Freckles turned into gold by the light of the sun, gold like the shimmer and glint of his soul. Castiel remembers it well. The sand shines bright beneath their loping, clumsy feet.

“Your first time in the sea!” Dean exclaims with a beam, pulling his tee over his head. His hair is roughened by the motion. Castiel could write hymns about the angles it curls out at. “I can’t believe it’s taken you so long!”

“We’re doing this—what—now?” Castiel stammers, tugging back, but Dean only grins, and keeps on pulling them forward.

“Yep!”

“But I’m not—”

Dean toes off his shoes, and kicks them aside in the sand, tossing down his tee. Castiel only has the time to kick off his own sneakers, before Dean has dragged him into the sea.

“Dean!” He shouts, but Dean reels him in, into his arms, and further into the waves. “I’m—in my clothes—I’m soaked—”

“It’s your first time in the sea!” Dean beams, and wears such a sunshine look that Castiel can’t be angry, can’t even try to be angry, because Dean is a crack in the sky letting paradise pour through.

“And I’m wearing clothes—”

“Yeah, mainly my clothes, so quit complainin’,” Dean grins, as waves beat against them in a steady soft-firm pulse. “At least you’re wearin’ shorts!”

“It’s cold,” Castiel glares.

“What, colder than the look you’re givin’ me, right now?” Dean raises his eyebrows. He’s infuriating. He’s perfect.

And before Castiel can think of a rebuttal, Dean is framing Cas’s jaw with his hands, and pulling him close amid the wash of waves, and kissing him.

“Hey, old men!” A voice, Claire’s voice, shouts from the shore. She dumps her towel and runs toward them in the uneven waters. “Quit being gross!”

Dean pulls back and weaves his fingers with Castiel’s.

“Quit being ageist.”

“Cry me a river.”

“Big talk from the kid who used to beg me to buy beers for her movie nights,” Dean shoots back. Claire kicks water at him. Castiel wrinkles his nose as he gets splashed. Dean and Claire’s laughter is like the sound of the surf, rough and liquid at once, and the sun in the broad embrace of the sky seems to set too quickly for the joy he feels, an eternal dawn, inside.

Castiel, who had never swum in the sea before, learns this week what the taste of it is on his tongue, when it starts clinging to Dean’s lips from warm unfurling hours cooling off in soft waters. Castiel, who had never had a family, before, no place to truly settle into like a plant dinging down into the soil, is now given a family bursting at the seams, sprawling out in every direction. A supernova more quiet and beautiful than any Castiel witnessed in his long yawn of eternity before finding the fleeting frayed fringes of Dean’s soul and deciding, without realising it, that this soul would be worth the insanity of freedom and bondage of rebellion.

Outside, beside the dim crackle of an amber fire which must reverberate with some of the hum of the first exploding stars, this new old sprawl of a family has settled. Dean has buried his toes in the warmed sand and the thick length of his lashes catch the gentle light. He watches the flames steadily, drawn out in thought like the sailing boats they sometimes see on the horizon during the day, but his hand is intentionally linked with Castiel’s. He seems conscious of the touch, conscious of Castiel, conscious of little else.

They’ve toasted smores over the flames—another first for Castiel, and this one he likes a lot, even though he does burn the roof of his mouth with his eagerness and inexperience.

All these little things, man, Dean had beamed in his ear, away from the ears of everyone else, on Castiel’s first bite. Sweetness had filled his senses and only half of it had been from the seep of marshmallow warm from the fire into his mouth. I told you, you had all these little things to look forward to.

Dean’s nose was at the shell of Castiel’s ear. When has something warm made someone shiver? Now.

This doesn’t feel like a little thing, Castiel had answered, without thinking. Being here, with you. That doesn’t feel like a little thing.

And in answer to this, Dean’s lips had graced Castiel’s cheekbone.

Which didn’t feel like a little thing, either.

Smiles beside the fire are made wistful for the moment they already inhabit. Life, Castiel realises, is made for the hours like this: when you dwell in a moment you know you will become nostalgic for. He doesn’t know much about humanity, but he thinks he knows this. Here on earth is the small space of heaven. And they have built it. He, and Dean, and the pieces, people, of their tapestry family.

The seating plan is nothing stable: over the course of the next few hours, and in his time feeding the fire, and fixing drinks, Dean ends up seated opposite Castiel, across the flames. Sam speaks to him, and Dean nods as though he’s listening, but his eyes are fixed on Castiel.

And all through the night, they remain fixed on Castiel. The night draws in and cools them, they all press closer together and closer towards the flames in response; but Dean’s eyes, two hearths of their own and yes, the very meaning and sense of hearth, are a steady stream, a string, a skein which knots Castiel’s sense of space and place to Dean, distracts him from everything else. From Jack’s questions, from Claire’s teasing, from Eileen’s quips. People who don’t know, people who don’t know Dean, would think his thoughts are far from present. But Castiel knows better. Dean is present, a new present, forging a new moment deeper in the present than anyone yet, anyone could. But what is he delving to the heart of?

The answer arrives in breath lacing over his ear, a hand threading in his hair. Castiel would jump, but Dean is the most natural thing in the world to him, now.

“Come with me,” Dean says, and murmurs the words into the underside of Castiel’s jaw.

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason?” Dean asks, with a laugh at once as rough and soft as sand. “You always come with me.”

Castiel rolls his eyes.

“I got somethin’ cool I wanna show you,” Dean says, in answer to this look. His hand slips under Castiel’s jaw.

“Is it important?”

Dean’s breath is staggered and soft against his lips.

“Most important thing I’ll have ever done.”

This leaves Castiel nonplussed, but he isn’t given the time to follow it up, because Krissy burns herself while trying to stoke the fire, and Dean panics and spends about a half hour fretting over a small raised mark on a very patronised Krissy’s hand.

And so the night returns to Dean’s cycle of staring, staring like a promise, across the crackling flames at Castiel. When he returns to Castiel’s side, the heat from his body sings off of him and his hands find Cas’s forearms.

“I’m bein’ serious, man,” he says, voice like the grazed and delicate skin Castiel used to be able to press his fingers to and heal, without even having to say that he willed it. “I mean it.”

“About what?”

Dean looks at him, everything earnest. The heartbeat at his fingertips matches the pulse of light from the stars.

“About you,” Dean says. “Everything I say about you. I mean it.”

Castiel swallows. Dean’s voice is quiet. The others are talking, all around the flicker and dance of flames, their faces shimmering mutedly. But Dean creates a new universe, a new space of love, between them and around them and between and around only them with his words, with the way he says his words, with the look in his eyes and press of his fingers against Castiel’s wrist as he says these words. Only these words. In all the world, there seems to be only them, and these words.

“And I’m tired of us delaying it, and not saying it, as if we didn’t wait long enough, as if twelve years wasn’t long enough.”

“Dean,” a frown closes at Castiel’s features, but his heart is open and raw. His pulse flickers at the tender vulnerable point of his neck, that place which once housed everything powerful and worthy in him, until Castiel became the house itself and the power and worthiness burnt out of him. But Dean believes him both of these things, and more, still.

“Aren’t you tired, Cas?” Dean asks, amused and sincere and broken with his sincerity. “Aren’t you tired of it?”

“I’m sure I’d be better at answering that if I knew what ‘it’ is.”

A smile slips at Dean’s features as his fingers slip up Castiel’s arms.

“All this waiting,” Dean says.

“I wasn’t aware we were waiting,” Castiel falters a frown. “And I have no idea what you mean we’re waiting for…”

“You said you wanted to grow old with me,” Dean says, and looks, hard, at Castiel, and for how close they are, it’s remarkable that they aren’t kissing, the tiny distance between them some strange sublime feat of physics. “Why are we waiting for that?”

“…The passage of time isn’t usually something you wait for,” Castiel points out. “Generally, it just happens—”

Dean rolls his eyes and grazes his knuckles under Castiel’s jaw.

“I mean it.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Maybe you don’t want it,” Dean says, and seems to steel himself to recoil. Intuitively, and without realising it until it’s done, Castiel doesn’t give him the chance.

“With you, I want everything.”

Dean looks back at him and swallows.

“Everything?” He repeats. Castiel blinks, once.

“When I watched you rake leaves, when I thought you’d settled into a new life… I wanted that.”

“You wanted to rake leaves?” Dean raises his eyebrows, but it’s clear he does so with seared nerves and the burnt vulnerability of this moment.

“I wanted that life, with you.”

“You didn’t want that life, with me,” Dean shakes his head.

“What makes you say that?”

“I didn’t want that life,” Dean laughs, peering at Castiel. “Or—I wanted to want it. But I couldn’t want it.”

“I don’t…”

The fire crackles and lets out raw red stars of glowing ash against the sky.

“And that life… that wasn’t everything.”

“What was it missing?”

Dean laughs again.

“Guess.”

“Um… a dog?”

Dean groans, with a smile, and leans his head forward to bump it against Castiel’s.

“Cas…”

His name is a plea, as well as an answer. Castiel swallows, but can’t swallow back the brimming of his heart. It sounds like the washing of the waves.

“It was missing love. It was missing you.”

“You have those things, now.”

“I want more.”

They tread around the edges of something vast.

“What?” Castiel asks. He can barely breathe.

“God, I want you, Cas,” Dean says, voice rough and rugged and raw with longing and frustration and the outward breath of love, “I want you, all of you—”

“You have me—”

“I want all of you—”

Castiel reddens.

“If you mean—”

“I don’t mean that,” Dean laughs, trembling, and bumps his forehead against Castiel’s again.

“Then…”

“What did you mean, when you said everything?”

Castiel swallows.

“I suppose…” He starts up, slowly, “I suppose,” he repeats with a breathless laugh, “that it’s easier wishing, than saying it out loud.”

“You said we speak happiness into being,” Dean points out. “You said that, once.”

Castiel swallows. He remembers. His heart flutters like deep and swirling waters. The moment is quiet and delicate as the heartbeat of a sparrow.

“With you—everything—I don’t know if you ever wanted it—I know that I have—and these last months—before I thought it worse than impossible, but now—I keep, I can’t stop—”

“I wanna marry you,” Dean interrupts, and blurts the words out, and still his forehead is pressed against Castiel’s. Castiel blinks, and can’t catch his breath, could never catch his breath, not after this, not with this confession sweeter and more miraculous than any prayer, than any answered prayer. “Sorry—” Dean stammers, but Castiel can’t let him do this, either, can’t let him apologise for this, the words which have set off a spark within him brighter than the final chorus of a dying star bursting light out into the far corners of a galaxy.

He kisses Dean, and kisses him, and both of them shiver in the night and the dark and the light of the fire, in spite of its warmth, in spite of the warmth of one another’s arms, in spite of the warmth of the other’s mouth against his own, in spite of it all because this is how they have loved one another, always: in spite of it all.

“I want that, too—” Castiel says, heart a trilling bird, against Dean’s lips. Dean’s mouth beams against his own.

“Yeah?” He asks, voice cracked, between kisses.

“More than anything,” Castiel confirms, and is struck by the radiating wonder of finding oneself at the precipice of a new and bright beyond. An angel settling into the quiet bright muted joy of domesticity, like the light through a fogged window; an angel wearing a delicate twine of metal around a finger to signify that this beast, this being older than breath has been bound to the earth and flesh and earth and flesh of the person he loves. Dean.

And Dean wants that too? Does he realise how absurd that is? Or how wonderful?

“More than anything,” he repeats, and repeats, and there are tears hot on his cheek, though whether they’re his or Dean’s, he cannot tell.

“Hey!” Claire shouts from the other side of the bonfire. “Old men! Quit it, or I’m gonna puke!”

“Quit interrupting my proposal!” Dean bites back.

“I don’t think this counts as a—”

But Castiel is interrupted.

“Proposal?!”

The exclamation comes from at least four separate people.

“Yeah,” Dean glares back. His hands are wrapped tight around Castiel’s. “Me and Cas just got engaged, motherfuckers—”

Castiel’s pulse flitters, joy and disbelief.

“D—did we?”

“Then where’s the fucking ring, Romeo?” Claire shoots back. Dean gives her a look, before fumbling in his pocket.

He—he actually has one.

“This is—this is what I wanted to show you earlier,” he confesses, nervous and sheepish.

“You said you had something cool to show me,” Castiel falters. Dean frowns defensively.

“Is this not cool?” He asks, indignant. Claire snorts. Castiel is acutely aware that the entirety of this performance is being observed by their family.

“Sorry, did Castiel actually say yes to any of this?”

Dean turns back to Castiel, blinking dumbly. Fear has struck clean through his eyes. He looks like he did the night they met, when he lanced the demon blade through Castiel’s heart as if cold steel could tear his soul from his sinew. That night, he lanced more than the demon blade through Castiel’s heart, and the more that he lanced—that was what caused the permanent change, permanent severing.

He looks like he did the night they parted, when Castiel cracked open his heart to let the light Dean set in it shine through. The night Castiel confessed his longing and the night the truth being spoken into being forgave him for his scared silence. Dean looks like he did the night Castiel told him he was worth the love he himself had caused to sear through Castiel’s frame, and the night Dean could not believe it because believing it meant saying goodbye to it, forever.

He looks like he did the night they returned to each other on the rain-carpeted road, when Castiel tracked a long and taxing journey from the barn of their first meeting to the bunker of their last, and Dean met him on the path to it. When hope and crushing joy crumbled through him and he held Castiel so close Castiel thought he must be dying somewhere on his journey and dreaming, in his last moments, of Dean’s arms wrapped around him like a love unintentional and unconditional, broken from the reins of God’s foresight.

“I don’t have a ring for you,” he says, looking at Dean. It strikes a strange sorrow in him. He wants to have a ring to slip onto Dean’s finger, too. If he’d been able to let himself believe that Dean would ever want this with him, he’d have one already. Why couldn’t he believe?! Why doesn’t he have one already?!

Dean flushes.

“If you—if you did have one for me—what would you say?”

Castiel laughs. He can’t help it. Just as he can’t help loving Dean.

“I’d say—with less of an audience,” his cheeks prickle in the firelight and dozen sets of eyes turned on him, “—I’d ask you to marry me, I suppose—”

Dean kisses him again, beaming against his mouth, and Claire groans, and Krissy makes a vomiting sound, and Castiel guesses that Dean raises a middle finger to them, but when he opens his eyes, Dean isn’t doing this. He’s holding a second ring in his hand.

“What about now?” Dean asks, quietly.

All the world is holding its breath.

Castiel’s fingers tremor as they take a hold, cautious with disbelief, of the second ring.

He looks down at it. Dean watches him.

“Recognise it?” He asks.

“Well, it’s a ring,” Castiel falters a frown.

Dean laughs, can’t seem to contain it, and sighs, exasperated.

“They’re made—I made them, both of them—out of the demon blade. You remember that?”

“Do I remember when you stabbed me?” Castiel raises his eyebrows.

“So it wasn’t your typical meet-cute,” Dean rolls his eyes, but Castiel has taken the second ring from him.

“Will you marry me?” He asks, can hardly believe that he asks. The blood rushing in his ears mingles with the sound of the surf nearby, a washing of waves to match the steady piercing pacing of his heart.

A smile that must match identically the tear in Castiel’s chassis cracks at Dean’s features.

“Only if you marry me,” Dean grins back.

“I think that’s—kind of how it works—”

But Dean is kissing him, and his tears are seeds on his face that flower into the smile both of them wear against each other’s mouths, and Dean slips the ring onto Castiel’s finger, the ring that is made out of the metal which marked a new wound to Castiel, a wound of love. The fierce point of that blade has been melted and rounded into the shape of eternity, the shape of love, a circle; just as Castiel was melted and rounded in the presence of Dean from something sharp, a warrior of a God he didn’t know, into a shield and the very shape of love, for a man he couldn’t know better, and can’t wait to know better.

When they pull back Castiel slips the other ring onto Dean’s finger, but he’s nervous and Dean snorts and with his free hand holds tight onto Castiel’s arm and says,

“Asshole, wrong finger—” And redirects him as Sam and Eileen lose themselves to laughter. “—I mean, it’s called a fucking ring finger, Cas—”

“—My trueform had six of what you would call hands—”

“—Sexy. And anyway, surely the downgrade simplifies things?”

Castiel can’t answer, can’t even say that he would never consider the promise of a life with Dean any kind of downgrade, because Claire has barrelled over to him and is crying, is actually crying at all of this, and hugs them both tight, tears dampening their shoulders.

“Your kids aren’t gonna be bastards, anymore!” She exclaims, predictably ruining the vulnerability of this, and Dean grins and shoves her and ruffles her hair, and Castiel aches with the pure wave-wash of bliss around him.

“Don’t worry Claire, to me, you’re a bastard no matter what.”

She shoves Dean back.

Castiel gets the chance to look at the ring properly. It’s a strange liquid-like dark silver. Unearthly as an angel falling and falling in love simultaneously.

He remembers the look in Dean’s eyes when Castiel was struck with the blade and removed it as easily as a splinter in his palm. Not so easily removed was the love this blade must have been laced with. That made its way into his blood, his air, his ether, is grace, and everything in-between so that everything Castiel, and everything in-between, was lost to it. To Dean.

Dean made this. Fashioned something beautiful out of the weaponised life laid out for him, crafted something kind from the harsh bite of fate which God himself had written, but which Castiel rejected without thinking, and which Dean rejected without conceit.

Isn’t this the definition of free will? Taking what is grave and making it good?

In the midst of the excitement Dean leans close to Castiel, so that his lips again graze Cas’s ear, and whispers.

“Let’s do it now.”

Castiel blinks.

“What?”

“Now. Let’s get married, now. Here. Like this.” Dean pulls back and looks at him earnestly. “Now.”

“But—”

“I’m tired of waiting.”

Castiel’s chest is swept clean of air.

“Okay, but—”

“All our family is here,” Dean says, and takes a hold of Castiel’s hands, and squeezes. “Everyone who matters. Let’s get married here. It’s beautiful—it’s perfect. And we’d get a honeymoon right away, see?” He grins, breathless, and hopeful in spite of his obviously spurious reasoning. “I’m tired of waiting. We should get married.”

“We don’t have any wedding rings.”

“We have our engagement rings. Isn’t that enough?”

“We don’t have anyone to conduct the ceremony—”

“Take your pick of this lot,” Dean grins. “Why would we need a pastor? We have the kid who, until a few months ago, was technically God.”

“It won’t be legal—”

“It wouldn’t, anyway,” Dean reasons. “Legally, Dean Winchester is dead, remember? And in the eyes of the law, you don’t even exist.” Castiel pulls an unconvinced face. Dean has a fake identity now, out in the real world, and Castiel has for Claire’s sake pretended to be Jimmy on several occasions. Wouldn’t they just get married under those names? “We can do that later,” Dean squeezes Castiel’s hands again, sensing his thoughts. “But I wanna get married now. I’ve loved you thirteen years. How many more?”

Castiel kisses him. He can speak for himself: a thousand years, and a thousand more, he’d love Dean. To the gates of eternity, and beyond.

“We’re not getting our son to officiate,” he says, pulling back, and Dean beams, because Castiel apparently has a giveaway for when Dean has won an argument, and it must show, now.

“Okay,” Dean beams. “What about Jody?”

This is a good suggestion, because if Jody says no, it’ll be sign that they really are being ridiculous.

“What about me?” Jody frowns, overhearing her name.

Dean turns to her, eyes bright.

“Wanna marry me and Cas?”

“I’m actually very happy with Donna,” Jody shakes her head, and Dean kicks sand at her.

“I mean marry us to each other,” Dean rolls his eyes. “And now.”

Jody, taken aback, blinks.

“Huh?”

“Y’know. Like officiating.”

“We’re talking a backstreet wedding?”

“We’re talking a beachside wedding,” Dean grins. His hand is still bound tightly around Castiel’s. “What d’ya say?”

“I’d call this impulsive, if you weren’t so repressed,” Jody sighs.

“So that’s a yes!”

Jody groans. But apparently this, too, is a tell that Dean has won.

Kaia makes crowns out of the wispy wildflowers that grow along the sandbanks, beebalm and coleus and lavender, and she and Krissy make bouquets out of these while, out of old driftwood, Jody, Eileen and Claire fashion an arbor and braid it with more flora. Sam and Donna light dozens of candles down a makeshift sandy aisle which finishes just beyond the embrace of the bonfire. And the night air is soft and warm when Dean and Castiel tangle their hands beneath the wedding arch and a thousand stars come out to greet them and before Jody has the chance to open things, Dean slips his hand over Cas’s jaw and kisses him like starlight kisses darkness every night.

“You’re not supposed to do that, yet!” Krissy shouts, and Alex and Josie break into bright laughter on either side of her.

“Never had you down as a homophobe, Krissy—” Dean bites back, but Jody coughs loudly over him, and Dean falls dutifully silent. This quiet muted smile like the glimmering of the stars through cloud cover keeps flickering at his lips, his hand is tangled with Castiel’s and he squeezes it without seeming to realise, thumb grazing against Castiel’s knuckles. No god, no ruler could contain or quell the soar of Castiel’s heart.

“I’m not experienced in officiating weddings,” she starts out, “surprisingly, that’s not one of my duties as a sheriff. So don’t hold it against me if I miss anything out, or slip up on my lines… It’s not like this counts for anything, anyway—”

“Most people start out with dearly beloved,” Cas interjects, seriously, and Dean beams in his peripheries and squeezes his hands tighter.

“Most people would give me a little more notice,” Jody mutters, rolling her eyes. But then, speaking up, “We’re gathered here in the—in the sight of a kid who was apparently God for a few months,” she gestures to Jack and seems acutely aware of the ridiculousness of their own existence, “and in the sight of everyone else here, to join this man and this—” she struggles with her words, “—recent convert to humanity,” she gestures to Castiel, “in holy matrimony.” She fumbles signing these words for Eileen, because the phrase holy matrimony isn’t in most people’s everyday ASL vocabulary. “Or whatever you can call holy after you find out God is evil and short and that the adopted toddler of two men—one angel—took over and was ruling heaven for a half a year.” Dean bites his lip to stifle laughter, but Castiel thinks Jody raises a good theological point. “And whatever you can call holy—I know this is one of them,” Jody smiles, finally, brown eyes glittering. “I know this is one of them. Ridiculous,” she shakes her head, “but holy. So we’re gathered here today to join them in ridiculous, holy and definitely-not-legal matrimony, because one of them is legally dead, and the other legally never existed. Match made in heaven. A match who met in hell. Now, we were gathered here today to sing some campfire songs and eat toasted marshmallows, but there’s probably a limit on how many times I can mention that, and I’m approaching it. Um,” Jody struggles for her words a moment, and pulls out her phone, white light gleaming on her features. She scrolls through a webpage, rolling her eyes, “Marriage is serious, solemn, blah blah blah, okay!” She looks back up, and stuffs her phone back into her pocket. “Marriage is sacred!—That’s what the script says, and I agree. One thing the past few years have taught me is that we create what’s sacred—holy rituals and rites and words. When heaven lets you down, you have to build it on earth. I got to build one with Donna,” she beams, “and now the two of you—after a lot of hope, and a hell of a lot of hurt—are doing the same. God—the first God—the bad God—wouldn’t have agreed with it, it wouldn’t have fit into his vision of earth—but I can’t think of anything more sacred or divine. So… If anyone has a problem with that, speak now…?”

There’s a silence, which starts out awkward, and becomes by stages a strangled hysteria of giggling.

“Okay,” Jody grins over the laughter, “I guess that’s unanimous. So now—did—did you guys want to do your own vows, or…?”

“Sure,” Dean beams widely, green eyes flashing gold in the firelight.

“Have you prepared any?” She raises her knotted brow.

Dean looks over to Castiel.

“We’ll make it up as we go.”

His voice is the sound of flames playing over wood. The very definition of a holy fire.

“Okay, well,” Jody sighs, “go ahead.”

Dean takes a steadying breath.

“Cas,” he says, and looks hard at Castiel, a devastating-healing-rebuilding green-gold gaze which leaves Castiel’s body war-torn, skeletal frames of houses and ash left at doorsteps in some backwards reworking of the Passover. “Castiel,” he says, and Castiel’s heart sparks greengold up into his throat. If Dean is lost for words, this is to say nothing of what hearing his name on Dean’s lips does to Castiel. “You taught me a lot about that word. That word Jody should have opened with. Beloved. Be,” he takes a breath, eyes green glass, “loved. All my life I’d been searching for it—being known, and being loved. All my life I’d feared it, too. All my life I’d run from it. Beloved. That instruction—be loved. I couldn’t let anyone do it, and I couldn’t let myself—but you did it, anyway. Loving you was easy. You made being loved easy. I don’t know which came first,” he admits with a small, breathless laugh, and looks down, and a few tears like pearls fall onto the silvery sand beneath their feet. “I know it came, like a promise, and shattered everything. Everything before and after. Being loved. Another one of your promises—every I’ll watch over you. Every I’ll go with you. It was always part of that bigger promise. I was so afraid of that bigger promise. And I wanted it more than air.” Dean swallows. His hands, a knotted tapestry of need with Castiel’s, squeeze gently. “But now the love is out loud. So are all those promises. Because of you.” He laughs again, the impossibility of faithful disbelief. “So,” he says, “will you watch over me?”

Castiel’s chest caves in. Dean must make out the fresh and frantic rate of his newborn heart beneath his fingertips.

“I will.”

Dean’s mouth lifts, a prayer rising to heaven in hope.

“Will you go with me?”

“I will. Always.”

Dean lets out a frayed silk breath and is about to step forward to kiss Castiel, hard, but Jody shouts,

“Not yet!”

And presses her hands between them.

“Cas?” She asks pointedly. “Do you have anything to say?”

“Um—” Castiel fumbles, “I’m sure I do—”

But his head is still reeling violent vibrant technicolour. When did he dream that he deserved this? But the way Dean’s looking at him, he’s really believing he does.

“Um,” he fumbles, and Dean squeezes his hands and nervously says,

“You, uh, you wanna back out? It’s okay if you do—”

Castiel’s laugh cuts him short.

“Never,” he answers, the certainty of soil. “There’s just so much—so much to say. And you know me. I’m not especially talkative.” Dean cracks a smile again, the smile which has become the lines and fissures of Castiel’s soul, and Claire laughs where she sits. “I didn’t realise. When I found you, I was lost. I had been searching for a long time. Lost with how long I had searched. I didn’t know that I’d been searching. But I had been searching for a long time. I’m actually very old,” he says, seriously, and Dean sputters into inexplicable laughter, “so when I say a long time it really does mean something.” Dean, from the tips of his toes to the fingers bound around Castiel’s, sings with the itching need to step closer to Castiel. A burr like the hum of a bee or crackle of electricity. “When I found you, I thought the longing would be unanswered. I didn’t think I’d come back with the rain to a love returned. But I did. You, and being lost, and a love returned in full. And now you, and you loving me, and the future of you and me. You, love, and the future. I do not think that I can name a more holy trinity.”

Dean untangles one of his hands with Castiel’s to scrub roughly at his eyes.

“Do you love me?” Cas asks, heart one hand clenched around another.

“I do,” Dean shivers the words out.

“You want me to stay with you?”

“I do—through everything—”

Even the words are healing.

“Didn’t see that coming,” Jody rolls her eyes. “Okay,” she pulls out her phone again, and scrolls through for her next lines. “Those who G—fuck that—free will has joined together, let no man—person!—separate.” And with her phone back in her pocket, she looks from Dean to Castiel. “You don’t have rings to exchange, because this was—” she cuts herself off, obviously remembering her earlier promise not to complain about the short notice of this, again. “So, um—I now, with no legal or spiritual standing to do so whatsoever, pronounce you husband and husband.” Dean beams, bouncing on the balls of his feet, as though in anticipation of something. “Now you can kiss,” Jody says, and Castiel realises in a split second what it was Dean was waiting for in that bright electric-charged coil of excitement. You may kiss. And they do. And they do.

Dean’s fingers trailing the line of Castiel’s jaw, Castiel’s threaded through Dean’s hair, remembering, remembering everything: waiting for Dean, staying with Dean, going with Dean, watching over Dean, leaving Dean, coming back to him. All of it, every moment like the moment of a heartbeat. Expelling doubt and drawing in love, being loved, the instruction implicit in beloved, the power of belief implicit in amen, the hope which prayer is predicated on.

He has been given this moment, and the next, and every moment after this. There is no greater gift.

Shoulder to shoulder in the hours that follow, they watch the creep of morning strangle the stars with light until the dawn has seeped into day. Dean’s lips are curled, perpetually, in a fine bright line, and it doesn’t matter how many times Claire will tease him for his constant glowing: nothing seems able to stifle it.

Castiel’s eyes flicker with sleepiness, reminiscent of the night he returned and in Dean’s constant simmer and singing of love, he couldn’t let Castiel sleep, not for hours and hours. And then when they did, their bodies pressed and woven so tightly together Castiel thought he’d been knitted into the fabric of the universe, a universe repaired, everything repaired-returned-restored. It’s happening again, of course—one more beer, Dean has insisted at least three times, one more dance, he’s grinned, at least four. Is this what all those lessons were for? Castiel had hummed against his shoulder during their second ‘last’ dance. Dean had shivered out a breath and trailed a hand which would not singing love through Castiel’s sea-tattered hair, smile a ghost against the shell of Castiel’s ear. Am I that obvious?

Castiel had wanted to press himself closer, even closer, closer still at Dean’s words and the sound of his voice speaking them. But he’s anchored to the confusion of the concrete now, and the physical world is frustratingly bounded. The beings of him and Dean can’t tangle into one like he’d like, unless you count fingers slotting together as they walk side by side, or legs and arms slipping around the other’s frame in sleep. There’s some grace and graciousness in this—Castiel has never known a greater gift than loving another. Once he loved from afar, so far, but now it’s closer, now it’s beside, side by side.

Side by side as they sit now, on a sandbank looking out at the stretch of sky and infinity of ocean. Shoulder to shoulder, hands resting back against the shifting sand and heads tilted to watch the washing colours of sunrise rinse out the dark. Claire is asleep, her head on Castiel’s knee with the beautiful and trembling trust of a daughter; Kaia’s head is on Claire’s knee as she lies perpendicular to Claire. Sam and Eileen are showing Jack how to build a sandcastle, but they’re all so tired that their hands won’t stop slipping and crumbling their efforts away, and their laughter runs out giddy with joy and exhaustion over the sloping sands. Jody’s playing with Donna’s hair and Castiel thinks he hears an affectionate hum of I can’t believe they got there before us before Donna leans up and is kissing Jody. Krissy and her girlfriend Josie are playing in the cold surf, dancing and laughing and kicking up water and shouting, distant, about how cold it is. But still everything is quiet. Happiness isn’t in having, Castiel had realised, that night he was taken away, it’s just in being—so what would you call this? Castiel has, and is, and has more than he ever imagined, and exists and exists now not only as himself but also as a self who is married, now, he is in the broadest sense and he is Dean’s husband. Having and being, is there a word for that?

It’s bliss. Better than the infinite meadows of heaven.

Paradise in the perfect imperfection of this life on this earth, a life he lives now with Dean.

This life, this earth, and Dean. He does not think that he can name a more holy trinity.

*

“I don’t understand,” Dean frowns at the wall of his bedroom, sat on his bed. His feet are planted on the floor but still this can’t afford him any assurance of stability.

“I’m retiring,” Sonny repeats.

“So you’re calling me to let me know that I can’t stay there, anymore? Well, I’ve got good news for you, man, I’m not sixteen, and I actually own my own place—”

“Good for you,” Sonny’s response is dry, cutting through Dean bullshit and even the coil of homesick hurt Dean feels at the prospect of the first safe place he knew in his adolescent life being closed down. “And the Home’s still up and running,” Sonny says. “I want it to stay that way.”

“Huh?”

“You think I’d retire if it meant seeing all my boys out on the street?”

“I don’t know,” Dean frowns. “Would you?”

“I’m callin’ ‘cause I couldn’t think of a better man for it, than you.”

Dean blinks at the wall. His heart stills.

“What?”

“You get it. You’ve been there. I saw you with kids—even when you were a kid yourself. You know what you’re doing. You talk to them better than anyone. I’m offering you a job.”

“I have a job,” Dean’s fingers curl into his jeans.

“Ghostbustin’?”

“I got out of that game,” Dean shakes his head.

“Good.”

Dean’s jaw clenches.

“Well, I’m glad it’s got your seal of approval.”

He can’t explain his hostility. His heart is a curled and fast-punching fist.

“I mean it, kid. I think you’d be good at this. I know you’d be good at it.”

“You met my father,” Dean answers, and can’t finish the sentence, and doesn’t want to finish the thought, and lets the words hang there, lets those words be enough.

“And I met you, and knew you better.”

Dean snorts. Still, his pulse bruises his skin.

“You’re a grown man, now, Dean—older than I was when I met you, even. What makes you think you can’t handle it?”

“What makes you think I can?”

“Come and visit. Meet the boys. I think you’d like them. Love them. Then you can make a decision.”

“I don’t know, man,” Dean rubs the back of his neck, inexplicably nervous. Would he take Cas? What would Sonny think of Cas? Would—would Sonny like that Cas lives with Dean, that Cas is married to—“I’m kinda busy…”

“Well, I’m not gonna force you.” Again, Dean wants to say, he’s past forty. He couldn’t be forced in the first place, actually, thank-you-very-fucking-much. “Don’t think you’d make a particularly positive force for these boys if you felt you had no choice in the matter.”

Dean swallows, biting down on a sigh.

“When would work?” He asks.

“Huh?”

“For a visit,” Dean does sigh, this time. “When would work?”

He pictures Sonny’s soft southern smile. He pictures the man, and place, which welcomed him for what felt like the first time in his life. He pictures himself aged sixteen, needing a place to welcome him and warm him. He pictures himself now, age forty-three, giving that to someone else.

*

SONNY’S HOME FOR BOYS.

The sign is big and a little more faded than it was the last time Dean saw it. But still it expresses that same wonder and assurance it did when Dean was a frightened teenager. That impossible promise. Sanctuary. For some of the kids here, it must seem like an insane undertaking. But Sonny always delivers on it. Could Dean ever do the same?

Cas is in the passenger seat. At least his presence is like earth beneath Dean’s feet, steady and constant and assuring as he nervously pulls up in front of the house.

Sonny’s waiting on the front porch. Dean and Cas get out of the Impala. The day’s overcast, and the trees around them are a darker and richer green because of it, the air is heavy and cool, occasional a cold wind drifts by. Up in the house, a boy peers out of his window with a frown, which Dean attempts to counter with a smile—but the kid pulls away from sight. Dean’s insides twist.

Sonny smiles, though, gets up, and makes his way down the front porch steps towards them.

“Dean Winchester,” he says affectionately as he approaches them. He holds out his hand, but when Dean takes it, he’s tugged forward into a hug, with warm claps which straighten out his posture pressed against his back. “And,” Sonny pulls away, looking to Castiel, which makes Dean’s stomach jerk with fear, “I don’t think we’ve met…”

“This is—” Dean stammers, gesturing to Castiel as Sonny pulls back completely. “This is Castiel,” he says, and swallows.

“Castiel,” Sonny smiles, and holds out his hand, which Castiel takes awkwardly. “Unusual name, that.”

“It means Shield of God,” Castiel says, all things earnest, and Dean cringes.

“Oh…” Sonny falters.

“In Hebrew.”

“Oh,” Sonny says, and nods. “So you’re here to—keep Dean company, I guess?”

Castiel glances at Dean.

It’s a question.

Sonny catches the look.

“Am I missing something?” He asks.

Dean coughs into a closed fist.

“Sonny…” He starts up, nervous. Well, there’s no use revealing the truth and getting rejected later, after he’s gotten attached to the place and the boys and the idea of staying here. Better to bite the bullet now and get it over with. “This is Cas,” he licks his lips, and speaks slowly, and his hand drifts from Cas’s upper arm down to his fingertips, through which he weaves his own. His heart is going so fast it’s practically ripping his chest open. “My—uh—my—my husband,” he manages, finally. “We’re husbands.”

Sonny raises his eyebrows, mouth open.

Dean’s about to be sick.

“Husbands?” He repeats, like he can’t quite believe it, and Dean’s close to making like a teen girl at a friend’s birthday party, one who’s about to swear as she wipes the corner of her mouth and her friend holds back her hair that she’s never drinking vodka again, and he scours for the nearest bush to hurl up into, bile souring the back of his throat and heart jackhammering fear through his system, and Sonny raises a hand to him and Dean really really is about to be sick. And Sonny clips him sharp around the ear, which stuns Dean out of puking, at least for a split second.

“Ow!” Dean exclaims, recoiling. “What the hell!” He hadn’t expected to be hatecrimed this violently—and surely Sonny must’ve had some boys come out to him in his time running the home, right? Just, like, statistically, it must have happened?!

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me!” Sonny exclaims with an angry glare. “Letting me greet your husband with a fucking handshake,” he grumbles, and Dean straightens up, surprised. His brain ticks as he tries to process the direction of Sonny’s anger—which doesn’t seem to be at Dean’s queerness. “And where the hell was my invite? What, you thought I wouldn’t care, or something?!”

“It was pretty spontaneous,” Dean answers defensively, and rubs his ear, which pulses a light dull pain from Sonny’s batting. “And I didn’t realise you’d be pissed enough about missing the ceremony that you’d beat me up—”

“Shit, kid—”

“—I’m forty three,” Dean grumbles. “And married—”

“—You could’ve called me, sent a letter, a postcard. Didn’t you go on a honeymoon? You could’ve sent me one, from there. You never thought to tell me?”

“I’m tellin’ you now,” Dean grumbles, still rubbing his ear.

“Not enough—how did you guys meet? When? And where?”

“Uh—that’s a long story.”

“I was plannin’ on having us catch up, anyway,” Sonny says with an exaggerated sigh. “I didn’t think there’d be this much, but… I’ve got some beers on the porch. Care to join me?”

Dean nods nervously. Cas’s hand in his own is helping to soothe his own numb shock and nervousness.

“Sure thing.”

Sonny huffs and gives him another look before hugging Castiel.

“There. There’s the greeting you deserved. Anyone dear to this kid is gonna be dear to me, too—”

“—I’m forty three,” Dean repeats with a grown.

“—And apparently you still haven’t figured out how to use a phone to update folk on big life events,” Sonny bites back. “C’mon,” he rolls his eyes, and leads them up the front porch steps toward some seats laid in a neat circle. “You two can take that one,” he gestures to a pale wood loveseat, and Dean flushes. “And fill me in on everything you left me out of.”

Dean sighs, but sits, and Cas takes his place beside him. Sonny cracks each of them a beer as Dean describes the wedding—heavily emphasising the spontaneity of it. Unconsciously, as they speak, his hand drifts to Cas’s leg. Sonny glances down at it with a gentle smile—and Dean, flushing, is about to snatch it back, but Sonny leans forward and asks,

“So is that your wedding ring?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean confirms, lifting his hand and twisting the ring nervously around his finger. “We had the wedding rings made with some of the driftwood from the wedding arch. So that’s gold, and driftwood inlay,” Dean gestures to the ring.

Sonny’s lips are curved gently upward.

“And the one beneath it? That’s the engagement ring?”

“Yeah,” Dean nods.

“What metal’s that?”

“Oh,” Dean twists at the engagement ring, this time, “I made this from the knife I stabbed Cas with.”

Sonny pulls back.

“You what?”

“The night we met,” Dean says, but Sonny’s eyes are still wide with shock.

“Was he okay? The fuck is wrong with you?!”

“I thought he was a monster—a demon, or something,” Dean shrugs.

“I wasn’t,” Castiel reassures in his signature gruff earnestness.

“Well,” Dean says, unconvinced, “maybe not monster, but you weren’t like anything I’d ever met before.”

“That’s sweet—I think,” Sonny frowns slowly.

“No, I mean it,” Dean nods. “Cas is an angel.”

“I never had you down as such a romantic,” Sonny laughs affectionately.

“No, I mean,” Dean rolls his eyes, “Cas is an angel. Halo, wings, little harp—”

“—Actually, the image portrayed through popular culture is very inaccurate,” Castiel shakes his head seriously. “I don’t think that any of my brothers played a musical instrument—”

“You’re… you’re losing me,” Sonny’s brow is knotted.

“Angels are real. Cas is one,” Dean gestures to his husband. “Was one,” he amends. “He’s human now.”

“Is that—is that normal?” Sonny asks. “I mean, does that happen often? In your line of work?”

“It doesn’t happen often in any line of work,” Dean breaks into a laugh. “But Cas isn’t the traditional type. You wouldn’t know it by lookin’ at him—but he’s kind of a rebel.”

“Which is what made you love him, I guess,” Sonny quirks a smile.

“One of the things. But… Yeah.”

“So you were okay with him stabbing you?” Sonny asks, turning to Castiel. “That’s uh—not your usual meet-cute.”

“On the contrary,” Castiel shakes his head sincerely, “I thought Dean was very cute when I met him.”

Dean breaks out into laughter and presses his head into his hands. His heart flowers within him.

“That’s not…” Dean tries, but can’t find the words.

“He’s pretty literal, this husband of yours,” Sonny laughs above him. Dean nods, smile curled across his face.

“Yeah,” he sits back up, and slings his arm over Cas’s shoulder. “Pretty wonderful, too.”

“But very good with children,” Castiel assures, seriously. “I actually have a four year old of my own.”

“Oh,” Sonny says. “I didn’t—didn’t know angels could have children. Didn’t know they existed until two minutes ago, but…”

“He’s not technically mine,” Castiel admits. “He’s the son of my brother, Lucifer—”

“The Lucifer?” Sonny falters. “As in—”

“—But he’s very well-behaved,” Castiel reassures. “Good as gold. With a big heart.”

“The biggest,” Dean agrees warmly, enjoying this maybe too much.

“That’s nice…” Sonny’s been thrown in the deep end, and yeah, it’s kinda funny. “So he’s a uh, kindergartener, I guess?”

“He’s just entering senior year at high school.”

“Huh?”

“He’s hoping to go to college,” Cas says, warm with affection and excitement. “He thinks he wants to major in philosophy, or theology.”

“He’s—he’s smart, then?” Sonny’s barely being given a chance to breathe.

“Oh, yeah,” Dean nods emphatically.

“He has quite a lot of experience in that arena, you see,” Cas continues, conversationally.

“In theology?” Sonny laughs. “What—don’t tell me your four year old’s a priest in his spare time, on top of everything else.”

“Oh, no,” Castiel shakes his head, wrinkling his nose as though the suggestion is ridiculous. “He was God, for a few months, though.”

“What?”

“Six months.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Sonny says, defeated.

“I’m—My hands are—right here,” Castiel twists a frown, lifting his hands up to demonstrate his innocence on this front. Dean’s nearly shaking with silent laughter.

“That’s a hell of a work-experience…” Sonny mutters.

“Yes, we’re very proud of him,” Cas smiles. Dean beams and tips his head onto Cas’s shoulder.

“So—you guys have any other kids?” Sonny asks, as though he’s going to regret the answer.

“Kind of,” Dean answers with a shrug.

“Kind of?”

“A girl called Claire—”

“And she’s what, six years old, and working in the Pentagon, and used to be a mermaid?” Sonny asks weakly.

“No,” Dean laughs, “She’s turning twenty-five, working in a bar, and moving in with her girlfriend.”

Sonny seems to slump with relief.

“Okay…” He nods to himself. “And any others?”

“I mean—”

“Kind of,” Sonny finishes for him, and rolls his eyes, leaning back. “Go on then, fill me in.”

“Another girl, called Krissy. She’s Claire’s age—and she doesn’t live far from here—”

“She’s welcome to stay any time,” Sonny smiles. “All of them are. Obviously—your uh, four year old going on college student will be living with you, for now. But the others, I mean—assuming you say yes to all of this.”

“Right,” Dean smiles.

“So they’re all—y’know—adults? Sort of—I’m not sure what to make of—”

“—Jack—”

“—Right, Jack.”

“Yeah. No babies.”

“Don’t you want any?”

Dean flickers a look over to Castiel.

“I mean… We’ve only been married for… I mean…”

Sonny raises his hands.

“I don’t wanna butt in on a conversation I can tell hasn’t even taken place yet,” he chuckles. “Anyway. How about that tour?”

Dean’s seen it all before, so this one’s more for Cas than him, but it’s good to get reacquainted with the place. And with every room, with every kid, he gets more and more sure about his decision. He glances at Cas, a wordless question, when they’re down in the kitchen and Sonny is fixing them up some more drinks. Cas looks back, bright blues glinting, and his wordless answer sends Dean’s heart soaring, his wordless answer is yes.

So that’s how it happens. No fanfare—Dean moves out of the bunker and into the boy’s home, and he moves there with Cas. He closes off the lights to the bunker one last time and, looking back with a hurt full of hurt, senses Jack draw up beside him.

“You’re not abandoning anything,” he reassures. “Chuck’s not around to send in any more monsters for you to fight for his own entertainment. They’re all fading away. Most of them have faded.”

“Yeah…” Dean says, slowly.

“But moving on is hard,” Sam says, in that voice of signature understanding. He and Eileen moved out months and months ago, and now he’s come down to help Dean do the same. Life is a constant act of holding onto some important things and relinquishing others. Dean never knows which is which. Sam’s better at this stuff than him. Most people are better at this stuff than him.

“Yeah,” Dean sighs.

“Easier when the thing you’re moving into is so good,” his brother says softly. Dean glances to Cas, who balances the final box in his arms, and is about to drop the car keys as he fumblingly tries to hand them to Dean.

His heart twists with longing. Strange, that even now, even after all the kisses and touches and late nights they’ve shared together, it still does this. Strange, that he doesn’t think it’ll ever stop. Strange, that this doesn’t surprise him.

“Yeah,” he says again, and catches Cas’s phone as it slips out of his other hand, and takes the keys to the Impala off of his husband, and presses a kiss to the high and beautiful ridge of Castiel’s cheekbone. “Yeah,” he repeats, drawing in a deep breath. “Time for a new chapter.”

*

Dean leaves his job as a firefighter, but keeps his friends, who he sees often and who invite Dean and Castiel for dinner in their respective homes. Dean plays with the children of his coworkers during these visits and Castiel will watch while stabbed with longing to see Dean with more kids of his own. They take over Sonny’s Home and Dean teaches the boys to fish and play ball and cook and play guitar and takes them on long walks and slowly but surely breaks down the walls of even the surliest, even the angriest, even those who carry bitterness in their hearts like it’s their last lifeline. The home is owned, technically, by Jimmy Novak, who Castiel poses as to get them around every knot legality and bureaucracy would present them with.

Castiel keeps bees and teaches the boys about keeping them when each of them is ready for the responsibility. Jack goes to college and Sam and Eileen visit as often as they can and every night Dean tucks his nose behind Castiel’s ear, or beneath his jaw, or into the curve of his neck, or against the plane of his chest.

And one day, a boy who’s taken in with a story which bears remarkable similarity to the one that saw Dean entering Sonny’s Home, three decades ago, carries two children in tow, two children he refuses to the point of violence to be parted from.

The sheriff who brings him in explains to Castiel, or Jimmy, as he pretends to be, that the boy has been looking after his younger brother and sister and evading the law and social services Christ-knows-how, and for Christ-knows-how-long.

And Castiel knows what’s going to happen before Dean even opens his mouth on the matter.

They take in all three kids—the boy, sixteen, angry and worn out by life already; his younger brother, quiet, thoughtful, and much too sad for a four-year-old; and their younger sister, only one year old, fascinated with the world, surprisingly fast for a creature who can so far only crawl, and very, very naughty.

Isaac, Ezra, and a little girl called Charlie. The name makes Dean’s eyes glassy as soon as he hears it. Maybe this is part of why he’s so determined to take the kids in.

Taking in means fostering, and then, eventually, once the walls of Isaac’s heart have been collapsed and he’s no longer glaring but actually smiling, and then laughing, and then beaming like the definition of ‘guileless’, adopting these three children. He likes standing beside Castiel in silence listening to the brass hum of the bees as Castiel works with them, watching dutifully and carefully. He likes picking up Dean’s guitar and running his fingers nervously across its strings before Dean notices and offers to teach him. He doesn’t like relinquishing the rights and responsibilities of parents to Dean and Castiel, and returning to being a teenager—but he gets there, eventually.

Ezra, only four years old and far too young to carry the sorrow he seemed to when they first met him, becomes more gently happy, it would seem, every time Dean picks him up and puts him on his shoulders and runs about the vast expanse of the yard pretending to be an aeroplane. He makes all the noises for it, and Ezra beams and holds out his arms like wings and Castiel watches, leaning against the doorframe with a heart born anew in his chest.

And Charlie grows up with a sheepish smile fixed almost constantly to her face. Neither Claire nor Krissy help stem her love of mischief whenever they visit, and the strongest reassurance is that though she’s provided new definition for the word cheeky, she’s also kind, and hilarious.

So they’re fathers, and really fathers, and now there can be no doubt in it. Krissy, Claire, Jack, Isaac, Ezra, and Charlie. It’s a family, a big family. And all the boys in Sonny’s Home, and Jody and Donna and their girls, and their girls’ romantic partners, and Sam and Eileen and, two years after moving out of the bunker, their children: twins, Dean and Jo.

A family. A big family. New and old, forged and reforged in hope and faith and disbelief in perfect equilibrium. Loving and being loved. A new opportunity for happiness, a happiness in having and in being and in being told that he deserves to have both.

Watching stars collapse; listening to the very first poets stumble over new lines of thought, thought which made language which made a music out of speech; smelling forest fires devouring continents and reforging great plates of land into the new and twisted and fresh, germinating seeds to breathe the possibility of renewal and well as the new; these are nothing on watching Dean teach Isaac how to play the guitar, on showing Ezra how to turn their cuttings of apple trees into saplings, on listening to Charlie burr happily as she splashes in the bath, smelling bread in the oven ready for Krissy’s visit home.

Perspective is a funny thing.

Happiness is in the being, in the is; Castiel doesn’t have a family because he dwells in one, exists, he is in a family, a family which is against the odds and is repaired-restored-bruised-battered-renewed, made new, like paradise, all things made new but all things still innately and inherently themselves.

“I am that I am.” This is how the Divine introduced himself to Moses in the book of Genesis, in the Genesis of faith. “I am that I am”, an eternal present tense and existence within it, an eternal future tense and promise to burn bright at reaching it, and this was it: happiness is in being and not possessing; Castiel’s being is held by Dean’s at night and hugged by Isaac on bad days when he doesn’t want to speak, but does want comfort, and clapped on the shoulder by Sam when he visits, and tugged on at the fingertips by Charlie when she wants attention, and squeezed tight by Claire in greeting when she stays for the weekend. Castiel is and he is happy.

Dwelling and being in time which means lying on the couch with Dean, half-asleep, as their children chatter and play around them, and Ezra and Charlie take out their art supplies and colour in the simple black and white tattoos Dean has amassed over the years while Dean’s eyelids grow heavier and heavier and Castiel draws vague patterns of his own across Dean’s scalp with his fingertips.

Over the years these tattoos have grown in number; his anti-possession tattoo and a couple of music tattoos Castiel doesn’t understand; a tattoo to match the names he carved into the bunker table, Castiel’s name, when he thought Cas was dead; a tattoo of one of the last things Cas said to him, knowing you has changed me—and still Castiel remembers how he felt when he first saw it, stunned with disbelief; a tattoo of the place Castiel seared into his skin when he was returning Dean’s soul to his form and wedding them together, knitting them back into being and carving Enochian blessings onto Dean’s ribcage on an impulse of protection he didn’t understand then, but does, now.

Dean has given Castiel tattoos, too, on a stick and poke pen which made Castiel wince at a new physical pain he isn’t surprised he associated immediately with love. Castiel’s tattoos include Dean’s strange impulses of protection, anti-possession tattoos and blessings of his own inked across his skin, though Castiel hardly needs ink on flesh to remind him he is blessed. He knows it every day, even in the small moments of Charlie using felt tip pens to fill in the black lines Dean has used to map his life across his forearms and calves, and Castiel is barely given the chance to dwell on the great profound symbolism of this because Charlie will grin up at him in the next moment and say, Papa, I’m colouring in yours next! And Castiel will have to stay static, no matter how much it tickles, as Charlie colours in the sunflowers Dean inked him with, himself, one night shortly after they were married, and a little drunker than one ought to be when giving or getting a tattoo.

Castiel is given a surer sense of belonging than he’d ever thought possible, or himself worthy of—it’s hard to doubt your place when a precocious four year old shouts at you to stay absolutely still, that you’re moving your arm as she tries to colour in the honeycomb patterns inked onto your wrist. Iit’s hard to doubt your place when angry boys are soothed by your suggestions to do some digging outside, grow something good from their sorrows, plant deep and build well; it’s hard to doubt your place when these boys slip into a sense of belonging, too, and a belonging, in part, because of you. It’s hard to doubt your place when your oldest daughter comes home and seems swept with relief and joy that you’re right where she left you, as she tugs her girlfriend up the steps of the porch and asks, with all the presumption in the world, what’s for dinner.

And Castiel cannot doubt his place, not at all—perhaps for the first time, not at all—at each instant Dean reaches across the space of their bed in the night and presses himself close, kissing across Castiel’s collarbones and kissing through time so that every moment he and Dean were not kissing seems redeemed. And every moment they were kissing, and every moment they were not kissing, and every moment in between, is made beautiful.

Bereft of it all his life, belonging becomes the new pulse of this redeemed life. He feels it at the strangest moments and it seeps and melts into everything: it’s there when they revisit the beach they married at, and mingled here with joy and gratitude; it’s there when Jack comes home and sits, cross-legged and strange-wonderful as ever, on the living room floor talking to their other children; it’s there when Krissy slips up one day and calls him dad, which she does with Dean all the time, but has never done with Castiel, before. And it’s there, it’s there, when Castiel leans against the doorframe of Charlie’s bedroom, while Ezra and Isaac sit on the foot of her bed, and Dean sits snuggled up beside her, singing lullabies of Hey Jude or Carry On or Amazing Grace or best of all, Faithfully, and always, always, at singing this, he’ll glance up from Charlie, stroking her hair, up to the doorway and at Castiel, with enough longing to rip open heaven.

Which, actually, is something Dean’s done, in loving Cas.

*

Dean had thought he knew how his story was gonna end. He thought it was at the edge of a blade, at the barrel of a gun. He’d thought he was beyond saving. He’d thought he knew how his story was gonna end; at the edge of a blade, not in a house by a lake. He thought it was at the barrel of a gun, not with his toes dipping into soft sand. He thought it was at the barrel of a gun, not in the lock of a lover’s arms. He thought it was at the edge of a blade, and not with a blade used to stab his now-lover, a blade wrapped neat around his finger in a haloed promise of forever. He thought he was beyond saving. Now, and for years now, he believes he’s worthy of being saved.

He also never thought he’d get to retire from a job, a normal job, let alone hunting. But here he is: old, and dull-joint-aching, and grey, and even retired from Sonny’s Home, with enough boys he considers adoptive-sons to populate a small village. He hasn’t felt the prick of metal against his skin in years, apart from the tattoos he’s amassed for the sake of memory as much as for the colouring entertainment of his youngest. He hasn’t felt the blow of a fist connecting with his face; the closest he’s come to it is when he was wrestling with Isaac and Ezra ten years ago and Ezra’s balled hand slipped from Dean’s restraining grip and nearly collided with his jaw. Cas gave Dean a heavy look that made Dean feel like laughing as much as it made him feel like skulking sheepishly away.

You know I’m not an angel any more. I can’t just heal you every time you get in a stupid fight—

With our six-year-old son? I think I’d live.

Cas had glared. Dean had grinned. Dean had kissed him. Cas had kissed back. Dean hasn’t felt shame in this, or wanting this, for two decades.

All his old wounds are starting to heal.

It’s evidenced in this: the house they live in is at the lake where it all ended. Sites of trauma can be reclaimed, like Dean driving his dad’s car, like Sam falling in love again, like Cas repairing heaven which was the place which first rejected and then mutilated him—and he repaired and reworked it because he loved Dean, which is why he was rejected from that space, and mutilated by it, in the first place. Sites of trauma can be reclaimed, just like Dean driving Cas for several long hours in the car the father who hurt Dean, but who Dean can’t help loving, used to own. Just like Dean driving Cas for several hours in this car to the place where the father who could never control the impossibility of Cas and therefore could never understand him was defeated. Just like Dean driving Cas for several hours in this car to this place where Dean defeated a God only because Cas, in the heartbreak of his being ripped from this world, filled his last moments with love so that Dean would live, and live to enact this same love, over and over. And over. And now he’s written out his life as a love letter to Cas.

So, he drives Cas for hours in a car of reclaimed trauma to a place of reclaimed trauma that could only be reclaimed because of Cas’s stubborn reworking, restructuring, reclamation of himself and Dean and every trauma they have faced. And in this place is a new place for them to live, to retire into: a house by a beach—well, a sort of beach—like Dean always dreamed about. And a family who are living who are safe who are loved. Once upon a time, Dean would’ve given anything for it—if, for a second, he’d been able to convince himself that he was worthy of all of this. But it turns out he could get all of this for free. They only trade was telling the truth:

He’s in love with Cas.

Always has been.

A trade of truth for this kind of joy? Damn, Dean wishes he could speak to the frightened, repressed 30-year-old he used to be and tell him even a tenth of all of this. And also warn him that one day in the future Claire, her wife and kids, are gonna be visiting with a cake Claire made especially for the day, that this cake will contain strong bread flour instead of plain flour, and that Claire will be a little too generous on the ‘salt’ element of the salted caramel it’s supposed to taste like.

Charitably, Dean thanks her anyway. And somehow Cas, the weirdo that he is, eats an entire slice and tells her with maybe too much convincing sincerity that it’s delicious. It’s been decades but sometimes Dean still wonders what remnants are left in Castiel of that strange grand sprawl of ethereal mass who, anchored to a human body, would once taste particles and nuclei where Dean would taste a PB&J.

So this is it, and this is how it ends: Dean trying to wash out the taste of salty, bready cake made by his beautiful but culinarily incapable daughter from his mouth with an ice-cold beer. He finishes it but the taste still laces his mouth like a good bad joke. He couldn’t think of a better way to spend a birthday: his brother, his sister-in-law, his nephew and niece, his kids and grandkids, all visiting and giving him a blessed migraine. His grandchildren playing in long dappled grass as he sits on the front porch with Sam and Eileen, and talks about the old days with a bittersweet combination of relief that they’re over, and nostalgia at the joy they somehow still managed to spin out of their rough life as heaven’s playthings. And wonder at the ordinary, extraordinary life they’ve had since. And Cas coming out of the house with an iced tea for each of them, the sun setting and golden, sitting beside Dean and weaving his hand in Dean’s hand, Dean’s hand in his hand.

“I thought you might want this,” Cas says, gentle and with a prick of humour to his words, giving Dean the iced tea so that Dean knows Cas really did taste the salt in the cake, and has just perfected his acting skills over the years. No more fires in Dean’s head, he’s constantly given the love he feared he’d never deserve. Love in the form of promises forged, and kept. Love in the form of iced tea on his birthday. Love in the form of someone knowing he still needs to rinse the taste of salt out of his mouth, and that he’s just finished his last beer.

“That’s pretty nice timing, Cas,” Dean says, and his husband’s eyes are brighter and more wonderous than grace itself.

“We had an appointment.”