Chapter Text
Sam tosses a beer over his shoulder without even looking up when Dean walks into the kitchen. Dean catches it smoothly, a seamless transaction, the two of them like clockwork.
A few weeks have passed. The bulletin board over the table catches Dean’s eye; it was formerly used to tack up bits of arcane lore that Sam had dug up from the Men of Letters’ archives, pieces of information that might help them solve cases, white and off-white pieces of paper, news articles about unexplained deaths and bloody murders.
There’s a little more color to it now, and it catches Dean’s eye more often than it used to. His gaze used to pass right over it, unseeing. But they’ve started to add a few photos here and there, and Dean lets himself pause to look at the picture of Mary as he saunters over to the table and sits down opposite Sam.
Dean hopes she’d be happy if she saw the new shape his little family had taken on. He hopes she’d still want to be a part of it.
He doesn’t suppress or scoff at the part of himself that thinks she just might. That thinks, in fact, she probably would. Dean doesn’t push it down and tell himself he’s being foolish to think or even want that. He lets it out, gives it room to breathe.
Maybe in some unlikely twist of fate, his dad eventually might have, too. It would’ve been nice, Dean thinks, in the way that it has no bearing on his actual life now, that his life would go on just fine without it, and it’s no longer something he needs.
But Dean’s allowed to want things, even selfish things, even things that are no longer possible. He’s spent nearly his whole life thinking he couldn’t. There’s a kind of power in accepting that he feels the way he feels and wants what he wants; none of it makes him lesser. It’s just in acknowledging it.
And he doesn’t want to be Dad. He knows, now, he doesn’t have to be—and that’s the one that’s taken the longest to accept, to admit. That Dean does not have to embody John for Sammy to be safe, for their family to be safe, for the world itself to keep on turning. He doesn’t have to be even the least bit like John.
“So, I never got to ask about this much before,” Sam ventures, amusement in his eyes, “but you said that in your dream I moved into Eileen’s place?”
It’s a forward question, but Dean hasn’t exactly been hiding much lately. It’s been a few weeks of Dean acting unusually buoyant every morning while Sam shoots him and Cas knowing looks. There’s something unbearably tender in those otherwise smug looks when Sam thinks Dean can’t see him. There aren’t many things Sam would still be afraid to ask Dean at this point—not counting the graphic details of what exactly makes Dean uncharacteristically chipper in the mornings, obviously.
“Yeah,” Dean chuckles. “She got stuck with your needy ass.”
“What about you, do you think you’ll always want to stay in the bunker?”
Dean senses that his brother may be initiating the long process of gently preparing Dean for the eventuality of Sam moving out.
“It’s funny.” Dean swallows a mouthful of beer—then pulls a face. It’s been a while since he drank one. “When we first found this place I couldn’t have been happier, y’know? It was more like home than any place ever had been.” It was true, he’d been so excited, had fallen in love with the place and the novelty of having his own room. Sam had never been quite as enamored with it. “Guess I thought I’d probably just...live here. And that would be it.”
“And now?” Sam gently prods.
Dean gives Sam a look that says I see what you’re doing, you ain’t so crafty, bitch. But then Dean just answers the question without a fight.
“Well, I accepted it, because I couldn’t really imagine finding any other home.” He shrugs. Sam probably already knows what he’s gonna say. “Not so sure about that now,” Dean says shortly, taking another swig to avoid looking at Sam.
Because Dean doesn’t need to cling to the bunker as the only home he can ever have. It’s easier now that he knows a home doesn’t have to be a place so much as a person—and Dean has really gotta find a less Hallmark-y way of saying that if he ever decides to express it out loud.
“You think you’d ever want a house?”
“Mhmm.” Dean hums around the bottle as he takes another drink.
“Like in your dream,” Sam offers, a small smile pushing at his lips.
“Maybe.” Dean’s reply is deliberately short again, curt. He raises an eyebrow. “So what? You want me to send the djinn a damn fruit basket?”
Because, amazingly, they’ve come far enough that they can actually joke about this now.
“Uh, he’s kind of dead, Dean.” Sam looks surprised, then like he’s suppressing a laugh. “I checked. A lot.”
And it’s dumb, so not even funny, but Dean begins to chuckle, and he has no idea why. “Thanks for that. I guess you deserve the fruit basket, huh?”
This is the most unfunny exchange in the world, discussing how Sam killed a djinn that nearly killed Dean. Yet Dean just keeps chuckling, sparking with so much excitable energy that Sam gives into the urge and joins him. Like they’re the two teenagers they once were yet simultaneously never got to be, laughing across the kitchen table at a stupid joke.
Eileen walks through the door, giving them inquisitive eyebrows, and Dean turns to her.
“Fruit basket,” Dean wheezes, before collapsing into giggles again.
And Eileen has been so awesome lately, so delighted about Cas being back—to the point of occasionally joining Sam in making fun of Dean for constantly giving Cas heart eyes, proving she really is one of the family, sometimes signing back and forth too fast for Dean to follow. (Cas, however, has no trouble following.)
But something about their unhinged laughter at this moment must make him and Sam look so truly idiotic that Eileen turns on her heel and walks right back out again.
“You know what,” Eileen tells them as she disappears down the hall, possibly to go commiserate with Cas about what total idiots they’re in love with, “I don’t even want to know.”
It just makes them howl with laughter even more.
*
Dean switches on the radio in the kitchen, turning up the heat on the stove and whipping out a skillet, chasing the whim to rustle up some breakfast even though it’s closer to lunchtime.
But it’s still morning for some of them. Not everyone has eaten yet today. Not everyone is enough of a freak to get up, drink a glass of seaweed, and run twenty miles at the crack of dawn, Dean muses, Yeah, lookin’ at you, Sam.
Dean hears a rustle behind him, glances over his shoulder. A smile unfurls slowly on his face, spreading out like the pat of butter he just dropped into the skillet. “Hey stranger.”
Cas stumbles in drowsily, wearing a pair of Dean’s sleep pants and one of Dean’s faded band t-shirts, and his hair is insane.
Dean gestures at the stove. “What did you want? I’m making breakfast and lunch.”
“Yes. No.” Cas squints past him uncomprehendingly.
“That wasn’t even a yes or no question, buddy,” Dean says, lip caught between his teeth to keep from laughing, but still grinning in spite of that, irrepressible.
Cas has told them that he still isn’t sure if his powers are just weakened or going out for good, maybe damaged by the Empty or being cut off from Heaven for so long. Either way, Cas has to adjust, and it’s going to be a very long, tedious road for him, but Dean is up for that journey. And since cooking is one of the ways Dean has always best shown love to the people he cares about, right from the first night he ever fixed little Sammy instant macaroni and cheese, it’s a small bonus that Cas can actually taste things a little better now.
Dean may or may not have ordered a nauseatingly expensive grill from a late-night infomercial at three a.m. because the woman shilling it had said, in the middle of her nonstop sales pitch, that it was the perfect way to cook a summer meal for your family, especially if you happened to have a burger lover in that family.
Yeah, yeah, so sue him.
This thing is complicated sometimes. Every now and then it’ll just hit Dean, out of the blue, how needlessly hard he made it for Cas the first time he was genuinely human. And Dean doubts he’ll ever fully get over that sense of guilt, no matter how many ways Dean tries to make it up to him, no matter how much Cas claims he’s gotten past it. But they can move forward anyway.
It’s kind of what they do, these days. Move forward.
At some point, Dean’s probably going to admit to reading Cas’ books during that bleak time when Cas was gone. He’s not sure why, it’ll be really friggin’ embarrassing, but it’s just something Dean has a strange compulsion to do. He wants to hear Cas talk to him about them, the way Cas had tried to do before, once. He wants to listen.
Cas is still listening to him, after all, as if there was ever any doubt. Listening to everything that makes Dean what he is. More nights than not, Cas gets to Dean’s Walkman first, commandeering it, and then Dean pretends to be annoyed by this as he gets ready for bed, before eventually coming back over to get Cas’ verdict on whatever tape it is—like the night Cas listened to the one labeled, in Dean’s handwriting, The ’60s—
Dean found Cas sitting in bed and staring down at the Walkman with an unreadable look on his face.
“This is a very sad tape,” Cas had finally said. And then, “It’s—confusing. The music is upbeat. Cheerful, even. There was another appropriate word you once used—‘catchy’?” Air quotes. “But the lyrics, Dean… Are these songs meant to be deliberately misleading?”
Dean had reached over to snatch the headphones off Cas’ head, hearing the plucky little strains of “Last Kiss” still playing from the earpieces: Where oh where can my baby be?
“Yeah, well, no one’s forcing you to listen to it, Cas.”
“I never said I didn’t like it.”
If it ever occurs to either of them to buy a second Walkman so they don’t have to share, neither of them mentions it.
“Get over here, you weirdo.” Dean reaches out now, tugs on the hem of Cas’ borrowed shirt and kisses him. Cas seems almost suspiciously more awake when Dean does that, kissing back immediately. Dean draws it out, dragging his lips over Cas’ scruffy cheek before pulling away.
“Did you see Sam out in the hallway?” Dean asks. “He’s not coming back in here is he? You know how too much PDA first thing in the morning always makes him lose his appetite.” Dean chuckles wickedly, because this is one of those things he’s fully comfortable joking about now, the concept of making out in the kitchen where Sam could walk in on them, and where Sam occasionally has. “Sammy’s such a hypocrite. Eileen knows.”
“PDA?” Cas scrubs a fist over his eyes, valiantly struggling to transform into a morning person, futile as it is. “I assume ‘PDA’ stands for something?” A groan of protest as he wipes his eyes again. “It’s too early in the morning for a new acronym.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Dean fondly raises a hand as if to smooth down Cas’ nest of hair, but it’s a trap, and instead Dean deliberately musses it up even more until it practically spikes. Dean is endlessly entertained by this. His own hair is nowhere near thick enough to stand up on its own, so he does it to Cas at every opportunity. It’s something he’s always wanted to do, probably for about twelve years.
Dean snickers at the sight, giving one of those unselfconscious, toothy grins that Cas has told him he likes so much. “Just trust me, it’s a good thing.”
Nose wrinkling in consternation, Cas glances up and reaches to pat his hair back down, failing to make much of a difference. “Dean,” he sighs. The movement of his arm lifts the edge of his t-shirt just slightly above his hipbones, and the sliver of exposed skin still does strange things to Dean, like making all his innards flip over backwards. Or giving him the urge to nuzzle his nose against it.
The kitchen radio is now playing an old song by the Everly Brothers which would fit right in on Dean ’60s tape, a song about dreams, which, thank fuck, in no way resembles Dean’s life anymore.
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Dream,
Dream, dream, dream…
Dean sings along to a couple of lines under his breath. He finds himself singing a lot these days. It’s kinda weird. Before, Dean always had to be driving to feel buoyant enough to attempt that. Now, it happens everywhere. But he thinks he kinda likes it. And Cas really seems to like it.
Cas puts his arms around Dean from behind, tiredly resting his chin on Dean’s shoulder as he cooks. Dean is a little relieved; at least this position will prevent him from acting on his strange compulsion to drop to his knees in the middle of the kitchen just to nuzzle against Cas’ stomach like an insane person.
“What do you think?” Dean pokes his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in thought. “Bacon? A sandwich? Maybe a bacon sandwich?”
And Dean can just feel Cas’ eyebrow raise, even if he can’t see it. “Is that a thing?” Cas grumbles into Dean’s shoulder.
Dean shrugs. “It is now.” He throws some bacon on the skillet and grabs another pan, easily throwing a cheese sandwich together with Cas just kind of there and attached to him. Tossing the uncooked grilled cheese into the pan with some butter and pressing it down with a spatula.
Since every word has come out of Cas’ mouth sounding like he thinks being awake right now is an abomination, it’s completely unexpected when Cas says, in the same rough voice, “You’re so beautiful.”
The spatula slips out of Dean’s fingers, plastic handle clattering against the edge of the stove and almost dropping to the floor before Dean split-second catches it. He exhales, trying not to look so startled. “You can’t just say shit like that when I’m cooking, man.”
Cas mumbles something almost unintelligible into Dean’s shirt. It sounds dubiously close to “Of course I can.”
Carefully setting the spatula aside, Dean twists around in Cas’ hold until they’re facing each other. Slipping their arms around each other. Just resting against each other. Fuck, Dean thinks, with a strange, breathless jolt of excitement, they could dance like this. Just like this. It would be so easy.
It wasn’t even that long ago that Dean finally started permitting himself physical touches other than ridiculous macho pats on the back. Now that gentle touches are a thing, he could really get used to this. He has.
But then that slow, dreamlike melody on the radio ends, and obnoxious commercials come on, so Dean rotates back the other way and changes the station, searching for a favorite. He knows he’s landed on it when it cuts on in the middle of a Led Zeppelin song. A classic.
—It only goes to show
That you will be mine
By takin' our time…
And it’s wandering into that part with the meandering guitar solo, slowing down, a perfect make out song. Nice, Dean thinks, swiveling around to grab Cas by the shirt again and tug him in. Catching himself unthinkingly mouthing along to the lyrics when they gently kick back in. As Dean always seems to do.
Sometimes Dean feels like all his words are borrowed from someone else, his entire lexicon made out of lyrics and pop culture references and esoteric quotes. Like a ransom note pasted together with cut-out letters from magazines and newspapers, all mismatched, nothing authentically handwritten. Or else they’re words Dean feels dishonest about—soft and unreachable, untouchable words like mine and ours that feel false when applied to himself.
Sometimes, Dean just feels like his words don’t belong to him.
Cas has assured him that this is not true, that Dean’s voice is all his own, and that all his words are well-earned.
Hand still fisted in Cas’ t-shirt, Dean surprises himself by blurting out, “Do you wanna go somewhere?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.” Cas blinks at him the way he does when Dean’s just woken him up in bed. “Do you mean literally, or metaphorically? Now, or later? And where?”
“Uh—” Dean drags the word out as he thinks. “Literally—no, hypothetically? Later. And I don’t know.”
The world starts to feel like a smaller place when you’ve saved it a few times over. Especially that last time, when they’d briefly been the only people left on the face of the earth, wholly responsible for its fate.
And yet Dean’s barely seen any of it.
Sure, he’s seen more of the continental U.S. than a lot of people see in their lifetimes, and he doesn’t take that for granted. Everything he’s seen through Baby’s windows is a gift, even on the days when he feels a little jaded from the constant road trips and hunts.
For all that, there are a lot of major American cities and landmarks they’ve never even been remotely near.
The beach, for one. Any nice beach. Because that would be indicative of a vacation, and the Winchesters categorically don’t do that.
And then there’s the rest of the world.
He and Sam have an equal level of experience there (or lack thereof), but sometimes Dean thinks of all the places Cas must have seen over the entire history of creation, and he starts to wonder.
Because Dean doesn’t want Cas’ life to shrink down to the drudgery of the American Midwest just because he’s saddled himself to a human from Kansas.
Of course, Cas doesn’t see it that way. He’s implied as much. Still, though, Dean thinks about it.
For all that Cas has seen over many millennia of existence, Dean’s not sure that Cas, as an angel obeying the word of God and commanding armies in His name, etcetera etcetera amen, really got to enjoy any of it. Angels categorically don’t take vacations, either.
For all that Dean hates planes, they can’t be much worse than the apocalypse or Hell, right? Or the fucking Empty.
Without any forethought, Dean’s broaching the subject to Cas: going somewhere exotic and unfamiliar, hypothetically, sometime. Because it’s one thing for Cas to lose the use of his wings, but to never go anywhere at all, ever?
“So, uh—you think that’s a good idea?”
“Of course,” says Cas. “But don’t do it for my sake.”
“I’m not. I’m doing it for mine.” Dean’s been trying out this thing where he doesn’t have to be selfless and self-sacrificing all the time, at Sam’s and Cas’ insistence. “But I want you to be there.” Dean hesitates, strangely bashful. “Y’know, that is, if you want.”
There’s a long pause wherein Cas doesn’t seem to realize that the socially expected thing to do right now is respond. Dean, squirming and internally freaking out, prompts, “Do you?” Even though he should really know the answer by now.
“Yeah.” Cas smiles up at Dean. Looking so human, at ease, sincere. “I do.”
The tension once again leaves Dean’s shoulders, feeling what can only be described as just thoroughly and stupidly fucking in love.
“And Sam, of course,” Cas adds.
“Sam too,” Dean agrees. At least the first time they go, anyway.
“And Eileen.”
Dean grins. “Definitely Eileen.”
Then Dean smells what is unmistakably bacon on the verge of burning, and he turns back to fuss with the stove before all the food is ruined. Rescuing the bacon and sandwich, grabbing some clean plates from the drying rack.
“Hey.” As he holds the plates, Dean nudges Cas with his shoulder, speaking quietly. Waits for Cas to meet his eyes, then holds his gaze for a second. “I love you.”
Cas sways in to kiss him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I love you, too,” he avows against Dean’s mouth. Dean threads the fingers of one hand into Cas’ hair as they exchange a few more kisses, stubble rasping together, before Dean returns to the counter to finish dealing with their breakfast-or-lunch.
Led Zeppelin is still playing. Cas basically drapes himself back over Dean, sleepily leans on him again. All is right in the world.
“So,” comes Cas’ voice right next to his ear, “when were you thinking of taking this literal-slash-hypothetical trip.”
Dean shrugs again, frowning down at the bacon. It’s a little crunchier than he likes it, but he guesses he’ll survive. “Next year?” he suggests. Then pauses. “In a few months?” Pauses, then grins again. “Fuck, tomorrow?”
And, well, why not?
“Impulsive,” Cas murmurs, somewhere in the vicinity of Dean’s neck, somewhere between approving and amused.
“You bet I am. Any of those work for you?”
“Yes. Any of them. All of them,” Cas promises, as the radio plays on, the song ramping back up from its quiet interlude.
After all, what’s to stop them?
Some new hypothetical apocalypse that may or may not happen in the future? That ever-present contract every hunter unwittingly writes themselves into when they enter the life, ultimately just as bad as standing at a crossroads and signing over your soul, a contract that can only end bloody?
Fuck that. They’re writing their own story now. No one else gets to decide what is and what isn’t, what they do or don’t get to have. They get to choose everything that is, and everything that will be.
The future is unwritten.
Dean twists around to face Cas once more, letting his hands drift down to rest comfortably, familiarly at Cas’ waist, fingers tapping unconsciously to the rhythm of Led Zeppelin.
“Yeah? You don’t have to go check your busy social calendar first?” Dean teases. “Even tomorrow? Think you’ll be free then?”
It’s funny, but these days, Dean doesn’t remember that djinn dream so much anymore. For all that it had pointed towards the things Dean hadn’t admitted he wanted, the shape of things he never thought he’d have—
The life he’s living is still so much better, because it’s real.
Cas looks up at him, eyes like the sky, a clear and cloudless blue, and he nods. “I’m free.”
“Good,” Dean tells him, before he leans in to meet Cas in the middle. Grinning into the kiss, both of them. “Yeah. Me too.”
Because they are.
And if you say to me tomorrow
Oh what fun it all would be
Then what's to stop us, pretty baby,
But what is and what should never be?