Chapter Text
Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we’ve got a week or two
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
What you’re gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
- “Come. And Be My Baby” by Maya Angelou
Dean left Averno for Lebanon, forgoing New Orleans. He missed Jack. He wanted to be near his family. After seeing Cas again, losing Cas again, it was too much to be on his own. He’d go back to Kansas, where he could be certain of what he’d find. Sam’s sad, sympathetic expression, and his promise that they’d trace out a new avenue for research. Eileen’s game attempts to keep Dean busy and distracted. Jack waiting to sense Cas’ return again.
Dean’s empty, lonely room.
Too impatient for the scenic side routes he took between hunts with Jack, he drove the dull, hypnotic interstate through Texas. Aiming to get out of Dallas before rush hour hit didn’t stop him from picking up his phone when he got a call from Emory.
“Sawyer’s had a vision about you,” he said.
“Hope it’s not that I die in a fiery crash for taking calls while I’m driving,” said Dean, looking over his shoulder to switch lanes and get ahead of the slowpoke in front of him.
“He says turn around,” said Emory. “Head back East.”
“What?”
“Bonaventure, South Carolina,” said Emory. “Some tiny coastal place. He says that’s where you want to be.”
Dean wove back to the right-most lane, searching for the next exit. “Is Cas there?”
“Not yet,” said Emory. “And Sawyer wants to say, the future isn’t always certain. But near as he can tell—”
“Put Sawyer on the phone, will you?” said Dean.
A moment’s exaggerated shuffling, then Sawyer huffed over the line. “Worst part of being a psychic,” he said, “is getting your head ripped off no matter what you try and say.”
“Sawyer. I gotta know,” said Dean.
“Go to Bonaventure like I told you,” he said. “That’s all the guidance I can give.”
“What did you see?”
Sawyer paused. After a moment he said, “There’s a bandstand on a grassy rise overlooking the beach, I saw that. Some inn with a little swinging sign called the Brass Lantern. Maybe you ought to check in there because I guess my psychic brain is giving Yelp reviews now. Look to the East and… and you’ll have your answer.”
“I’ll have my answer?”
“Future’s not set in stone, it never is,” said Sawyer. “Don’t shoot the goddam messenger, Winchester. You got no direction and no game plan and I’m telling you to head back East. I could stand to hear a ‘thank you’ for it.”
“Thank you,” Dean said. “I do— I mean it. Thank you.”
“And don’t switch lanes, there’s a semi swinging right in on your blind spot from the other side.”
Dean turned off his blinker. A fast-moving transport truck swooped into his line of vision directly beside the Impala, outpacing him in moments and moving so fast it created its own sense of drag.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, reeling from the close call.
“Thought you’d say that,” said Sawyer, and he hung up.
Dean arrived in the small, seaside town of Bonaventure as the blue of twilight fell. It was one of those unhurried, historic towns, strangely out-of-the-way, with an air of nearly more Southern hospitality than he could stand.
He found the swinging sign of the Brass Lantern Inn, surrounded by feathery pink muhly grass. Lacking in neon lights, cigarette butts, and dented front doors, suffice to say it was not his usual scene. Sawyer saw the place in his vision, though, so apparently Dean was supposed to be here. Inside, the inn was old-fashioned—classic—blessedly free of the overdone florals and froufrou accents Dean usually associated with places like this. Through the open windows at the back of a guest lounge, he heard the steady crush of waves rolling onto the shore. Dean tapped his fingertips against the mahogany check-in desk as the clerk ran his card. Look East. What the fuck did that mean? And when should he be looking? Was Cas here, or yet to turn up?
He felt stupid saying anything, but Flora, the tidy young desk clerk, remained obligingly polite as he asked after anyone with Cas’ name or description. She tried to suggest that a nice gentleman who checked in with his wife two days ago could be the man he was asking about. He was seated in the dining room right now. Dean might’ve dreaded another bout of angelic amnesia with Cas moonlighting as ‘Emmanuel’ again, but the guy she pointed out was three inches too short, balding, and distinctly not the angel Dean was looking for.
Dean took the key to his room, flicked on the lights to a place that smelled crisp and inviting and rich like amber. A second-floor balcony, a clean bathroom with a deep bath, a welcoming bed that looked soft as a cloud. If it was possible for him to sleep, he never would’ve had it so good. As it was he set his bag down on the king bed and looked at it for a moment, his stomach flipping with a complicated mix of anticipation and hopelessness, fear and fantasy. He had to get out of here.
He didn’t plan to have dinner, too antsy to eat, but the low-lit dining room was lined with windows that looked down to the shore. That was East, at least. As he sat, the last remaining group of people in the restaurant got up to leave. He ordered food just for something to do, filling the time while he watched the beach with more attention than he’d given any stakeout. The sole remaining waitress didn’t forget about him and provided perfectly good service, but she disappeared for regular lengths of time and left him dreadfully alone. Being alone was not among his skills.
He kept his eyes on the dark shoreline. Occasionally a couple would stroll by the surf, or a gaggle of teenagers would amble down and show off to one another, playing chicken with the cold ocean water. He sipped from an after-dinner whiskey, better quality stuff than what he usually drank, and tried to savour it. The glass of the dining room’s windows curved at the top to meet the roof, which was supposed to give the impression of a sunroom or greenhouse but instead made him feel like he was in an aquarium. He glanced over at the swinging doors to the kitchen when the lights went off, the kitchen closed down. The rest of the tables had been set for breakfast service, with neatly tented napkins and fresh silverware. He suddenly felt like he was living in some depressing French indie movie: could nearly imagine the black and white film with some terrible subtitle that said «My life is an everlasting solitude. We are all strangers to ourselves.» Unable to stand it, he tipped back the last of his drink and stood.
He couldn’t stay still. Look East. Look East. He pulled on a fresh jacket and went out to the street, taking a sand-streaked walking path that followed along the shoreline from an upper vantage. He got as far as the path would take him before it culminated in a small lookout point. He stopped here and folded arms on the railing, gazing as far towards the deep black horizon of the ocean as he could see.
“Where are you, Cas?” he said.
In another interminable board meeting, Cas carefully unscrewed the tip of a click-pen and set it down on the table. In a straight line he continued with the other separate pieces. The spring, the ballpoint ink tube, the click mechanism, the casing. He always sat at a chair facing the window, looking out at Apeiron’s changing landscape that the other angels were too narrow-in-focus to notice. At one side of the meeting room, the five glass globes shimmered with the movement of their interior atmospheres, apart from the complete and unreflective blackness of the Empty. At the other side of the room, Naomi gestured to a series of bar graphs mapped on a five-dimensional chart. Cas had long since stopped believing that they were making any progress.
Outside the windows opposite him, the usually starry skies of Apeiron filled with swollen blue clouds. It began to rain. He hadn’t seen rain here before, but it was a nice change of scenery.
“...ready to move on from how our key performance indicators fit into the Hexagon of Aims,” said Naomi, voice briefly rising into Cas’ consciousness like a whale cresting from the depths of the ocean. “Which brings us to the matter of the new God.”
Cas looked up from his methodical deconstruction of the ballpoint pen. Naomi didn’t usually betray much in her face, but there was a slight pull to the side of one cheek. A barely-contained smile of satisfaction. “We’re nowhere near finalization, let alone deployment, but I think it’s important to establish early the responsibilities for the Almighty as well as—”
“I thought it would just be angels in Heaven,” said Cas. It had come up at an earlier meeting, he was sure, unless he missed something important. “A... a parliament for each respective realm. Something… democratic.”
Naomi looked around the table, making eye contact with all but Cas. “That was since dismissed, isn’t that correct?” she said. “We agreed that the cosmos was founded by an absolute sovereign ruler. We need to maintain certain hierarchies or everything turns to Chaos.”
“It was in the Minutes,” said Shem, sitting nearest to Naomi.
“We must’ve covered it during one of your little… absences,” said Naomi.
Cas kept his expression stone-cold. If storming out would gain him anything, he might’ve considered trying it. But there was no place for him to go, and certainly not the place he wanted to be.
Satisfied he wasn’t protesting, Naomi continued. “As I was saying, we want to set out the role and responsibilities of the Almighty, as well as discuss potential candidates. Or should I say: candidate.”
Cas narrowed his eyes. “I suppose you think that should be you?” he said.
“Not at all,” said Naomi. Her eyes flicked over him once, a disdainful, summary glance. “An angel can’t contain that level of power. We’ve seen first hand how poorly that turns out.”
Cas glanced away, hand pulling the pieces of his pen together into a jumbled pile. She dismissed it with no idea of what it was like to be torn apart by Leviathan souls, to immolate with the sheer, terrible power of godhood.
“Which is why I propose that, even though he’s the one who got us into this mess, we bestow this role upon the nephil, Jack.”
Cas’ attention jerked back. “No,” he said. He stood up, chair scraping across the floor. “No.”
“Now, Castiel,” said Naomi. “I admit he was poorly-prepared for the job the first time around—we know who to thank for that—but with a carefully-selected council of angels to manage him, I don’t foresee any further problems in that regard.”
“No,” said Cas. “He won’t be God again.”
“It goes without saying that there’s an open chair on the council for you,” said Naomi.
“I don’t care about that,” said Cas. It was a curse, a burden. “Find someone else.”
“He’s the child of a human and an archangel. He’s the only thing in the world strong enough,” said Naomi. “There isn’t another option.”
“Then no God,” said Cas. How Naomi could think to expect that of his son... Cas’ fury made loose pages sweep from the table and circle the room. “Do it without one.” A light sparked out above his head, then another. The other angels—dutiful Ananias, Shem, and Bethany and the rest—looked between him and the wall of windows with troubled faces as Naomi’s carefully maintained boardroom began to erode.
“This is theatre,” said Naomi, hastily seeking to maintain control over the others. “This is boardroom bullying. This isn’t going in the Minutes.”
“Fuck your Minutes,” said Cas. “Fuck your Almighty autocrats.”
He looked down to the far end of the room. The world slowed.
He had a question for Todd. No sooner did he think this than he stood in another part of the world. The strangest place yet. A surreal ruin framed against the midnight sky. Close and narrow columns that reached up to support nothing but air, stone that mimicked rare orchids, staircases that led up and over to nowhere. A veritable jungle of gothic arches and swelling bridges and inviting labyrinthine paths.
No moon or nebulae or light-reflecting planetary bodies in the sky today. Just blue-black night and diamond-white stars. A single comet streaked across the firmament.
Cas navigated his path through the forgotten sculpture garden through an innate, unerring instinct: past pools and tunnels to a multi-level pavilion. Damaged stone steps veered left here, right there, until he reached the crumbling platform, open to the elements, where Todd sat on an antique throne. Weaving around the heavy stile and across the crest of one of the throne’s sides was a dark animal with the body of a snake and the head and mane of a lion. It seemed alive at first glance. When Cas blinked again it was still as stone.
Cas approached the dais to stand before Todd. A tug of wind pushed against the back of Cas’ coat, the fabric of his belt flapping around him and his hair swept into a dark mess. The hood of Todd’s ghostly cloak stirred but stayed in place, secured under the ring of a heavy crown.
“They want my child to be God in the new order of the world,” said Cas.
You know from experience that this is not a kindness, said Todd.
“I have a question for you.”
Perhaps several questions, said Todd, a canny echo of their first meeting.
“Does Earth need God in order to continue? Will people suffer if there isn’t one?”
No more than they suffered with one, said Todd. There was always suffering. Always an expiration date. The eventual heat death of the universe has always been inevitable. But to answer your question: No. It would do no harm to Earth or its creatures to be without.
“And the other cosmic realms,” said Cas. “Heaven and Hell and the rest. What about them?”
Do they require the existence of God to continue, you mean?
“No,” said Cas, looking down at the stone floor. “Does Earth require them? Does humanity?”
There would be no afterlife for the souls, said Todd. Without somewhere to go they would be, simply, ended. Total finality. But again: No. Earth does not require them.
“The souls that have been preserved in their current spheres would simply… die?”
For a second time. For the last time.
“And those stuck in the Veil on Earth—”
Those who have been stuck until now will move on to oblivion, said Todd. Is that everything, Cas? Have we accounted for all the treasured little souls?
“There’s one more,” said Cas, swallowing. “Mine. Even if I— Even if I haven’t felt it in some time, I still belong to Heaven. It’s my tether. If it were gone…”
You would have a choice, my friend, said Todd. To expire with it, or to recede to the last bastion of your remaining universe.
“Earth?”
Or Saturn or Kepler-452b or somewhere in Andromeda, said Todd, somehow conveying the fond tone of a joke in his expressionless face. But yes. Earth seems most practical to me.
“Then I know what to do,” said Cas.
Yes, said Todd. I believe you do.
Cas no longer stood before the throne. He’d returned to his place in the boardroom, where no time had passed but where desert sand now rose to meet the open windows and spilled slowly in. The ceiling above their heads cracked and faltered, vanishing in jagged-edged fragments to reveal the night sky.
“Castiel!” Naomi admonished.
Cas disappeared from his spot and reappeared next to the first of the glass spheres. He picked up the globe of solid black in one hand, lifted it above his head, and smashed it to the ground.
“Castiel, no!”
His arm swept the next three from their stands at once. Purgatory, Hell, and all the Lesser Realms. Wisps of orange, grey, and brackish green rose from the shattered glass and expired.
“Stop him! Somebody stop him!”
He lifted the blue-white-gold glowing Sphere of Heaven from its cradle. The others froze, caught between fear and disbelief. No one dared to interfere with him when he held such a delicate realm between his hands. Cas had come this far.
“Be reasonable about this, Castiel. You cannot undo what you’ve done!”
Over Naomi’s shoulder, Cas saw the grinning black skeleton. Todd, cloaked in pale starlight, moved with bittersweet expressiveness as he lifted his ebony hand in a fond wave goodbye.
Cas pitched the orb to the floor, scattering glass in a wide array. The gold-white mists of Heaven rose up around him, already thinning and dispersing. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the stars.
Dean had trekked in pointless circles around town for hours now, resisting the urge to fill the time with drinking. He didn’t want to be drunk for whatever happened next. If anything would even happen. “Fucking psychics,” he muttered, kicking at an empty soda can on the sidewalk as he walked along. “Fucking Sawyer.” He thought of calling him up, regardless of the fact that it was three in the morning. Sawyer fucking deserved it. Like, really? Couldn’t have been a little more specific about what exactly Dean was looking for? Where he should be?
Dean found the bandstand hours ago. Painted white with a red roof, on a little rise surrounded by dune grass, but it was a strange and solitary place. A part of the beach people didn’t come to of their own accord. Dean made his way back there now for the third time that evening.
At this godless time of night, everybody was in bed. In an hour or two, the earliest morning workers might start getting up. The first joggers would start their circuits in the pre-dawn. But it was dead quiet at the smallest, darkest hour. Bars closed, partiers retreated from the streets, leaving just one lovelorn man roaming the beach like some depressing figure from a folk legend.
He reached the bandstand once more, climbing its steps to stand within. The air had taken on a deeper chill as the night deepened around him, and the bandstand blocked the wind a little. Contained the heat under its conical roof.
There were benches around the outside walls. Dean took to one, stretching out to lie, rubbing at the bridge of his nose to ease away the sleepiness that pressed on him insistently. He sighed, tipping his head to gaze across the stretch of the wooden floor and through the gaps in the posts to look towards the sea.
Waves rolled in against the shore in a steady crush. Even, but deepening with each moment. One over the other. He closed his eyes. The black waves continued to rise, fall, and recede. Rocking back and forth inside his skull, like lying on the bottom of a boat at sea. He was warm and his body heavy and he fell asleep.
He opened his eyes and it was still night, but the ceiling of the bandstand had been strung with bands of patio lights, filling the place with a warm, even glow. In the centre of the floor stood Cas, dressed for dancing in one of Dean’s best flannels, buttoned and tucked into a pair of dark jeans. He smiled when Dean’s eyes landed on him. Old-fashioned music played from… Dean didn’t know where. It didn’t matter. Cas approached him and crouched.
This was a dream.
“Do you wanna dance?” Cas asked, tilting his head to one side.
A dream. He needed to savour it. Dean didn’t want to risk closing his eyes. Don’t let me wake up, he thought.
“I always thought I’d be a good dancer,” said Dean. Dreamlike, he was on his feet, his hand in Cas’. He tangled their fingers together, raising their hands while his other slid around Cas’ waist. How did he know? How did he just know this was how it would feel to hold Cas’ body so close to his own? He’d never allowed himself to think on it, but he must have memorized it in those rare embraces. He must have made such a thorough study of Cas that his arms had worked out the shape of him. Because this was how it would feel.
His cheek brushed against Cas’ as they moved in intuitively matched steps while a French singer crooned out, “Love me, please love me.”
“Cas,” he said, and it came as barely more than a whisper.
“You don’t have to say anything,” said Cas. “I heard your prayer.”
“I do, though,” said Dean, brow furrowing while Cas’ nose turned towards his hair. “You need to hear it. I never gave you that. And it’s not just in saying it. That’s not enough. I gotta have it. We’ve got to. We were meant for this.”
Cas pulled back enough to look at him. “Dean,” he said. He spoke with the breath of a waking breeze stirring Dean’s hair. It was the cry of a gull and the scent of the sea on the morning air.
“Cas wait,” said Dean, because he knew it was slipping away. “Not again.”
He tried to reach for him. He succeeded in unbalancing himself from the bench he slept on and crashing to the floor. He looked around rapidly, eyes squinting through the grey haze of civil twilight, but there was no sign of Cas. Not even to the East.
Pre-dawn, there was life in town again. Dean found the nearest open coffee place, catering to a mix of lively social seniors and tired-eyed shift workers. He came back out with a cup of coffee, something to keep him warm and keep him going as he returned down to the beach. He was too tired to roam. He took a spot on a bench not far from the bandstand, still quiet, and watched the slowly changing colour on the horizon. Grey, then pale blue, then finally a promising band of pink that stretched across the far edge of the world. How long since he’d last watched a sunrise, and at a beach no less? He took another sip of his coffee. A sunrise. He’d have that, at least.
The pink light of the horizon grew stronger, taking on a growing smudge of orange. Just when the sun should’ve kissed the horizon, something strange happened. As if the sun did not just appear, but refracted as a burst of yellow light straight across the top of the water as far as anyone could see. Dean had to raise his arm, shielding his face from that sudden, immense tide of brightness.
It was gone as suddenly as it came, and the orange-red sun peeked calmly above the water.
But there was something down on the once-empty shore. A body. Even from a distance, Dean’s heart knew it. He abandoned the coffee on the bench and raced an unsteady path through the dune grass, sloping down to the long stretch of beach ahead. His shoes churned up the sand and he almost stumbled more than once, catching himself and keeping going only through sheer power of momentum.
Cas lay in the surf with water dampening his hair and soaking the same clothes Dean last saw him wearing, hideous sweater and all. Sand mixed with stubble on his cheek and traced the edges of his dark, wet hair. Dean slid to his knees beside him. Cas looked pale and half-dead, but he couldn’t be, he couldn’t, not after all this. Dean reached a hand out for his cheek, turning his face away from the rising swell of each new wave.
“Cas,” he said. “Cas wake up.” He looked him over while his hand dipped down to Cas’ neck to check for a pulse. The sweater had been rucked halfway up Cas’ body, exposing a hipbone that Dean’s gaze got stuck on, even as he felt the intake of breath below his hands. He wet his lips, and when he lifted his eyes again, Cas’ were just beginning to open. Dark, damp lashes framing a shade of blue even the ocean envied.
“Cas?” said Dean, a helpless laugh escaping, a smile that wouldn’t leave coming to his mouth.
Cas read over Dean’s face, not saying anything for a moment. He tipped his head back again and closed his eyes and said, “It worked.”
“Cas, you okay? Sit up, here. Sit up.” Dean offered Cas more help than he probably needed, an arm circling around behind him to make him sit. “You remember this time, right? You know who I am.”
Cas’ hand rested on Dean’s arm for support as he sat up. At the question, he shook his head faintly, out of disbelief rather than denial. Then he slumped forward— it was a hug. Total and trusting, the two of them holding one another up. “Dean, of course I remember,” said Cas. His deep voice was half lost against the shoulder of Dean’s shirt. Dean held him tighter for that.
“Tell me you’re here for good this time,” said Dean. Half admonishment and half a desperate plea. “I won’t let you leave again, Cas. I won’t.”
“It’s over,” said Cas. “Dean, I—” He pulled back, but they remained a closed circle. Cas’ hands on Dean’s sides, Dean’s on Cas’ shoulders, one hand rising to comb through his damp, sandy hair. “Dean, I destroyed everything. I—” He laughed, helpless and hysterical. His forehead bowed down to Dean’s shoulder. “I annihilated Heaven.”
Dean was prepared to say that it hadn’t mattered what Cas had done, that the only thing that mattered was him being here. He’d assumed it was some complicated loophole, some cosmic deal. Something that Todd would’ve said was beyond Dean’s comprehension. Instead, it was perfectly clear. Cas changed every rule of the game.
It didn’t change Dean’s response, even if he was trying to wrap his head around what it all implied. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, a hand rubbing up Cas’ back. “You’re okay, right? You just uh… You destroyed Heaven.”
“And Hell,” said Cas, sitting up again, the moment of existential giddiness trained away. He didn’t look away from Dean’s eyes. “And the Empty, and everything else that isn’t part of this plane of reality.”
No Empty. No Hell.
It was a mercy. For all of them.
“And you’re okay?” said Dean.
“They wanted to make Jack God. Dean, I couldn’t let them.”
“Cas.”
“And what kind of poor consolation was even the best afterlife? Sitting and spinning reiterations for eternity. Like Sisyphus. It was… it was refined torture. Chuck made it that way, of course he did.”
“Cas,” said Dean, more emphatically. “I don’t care. I mean, I do, but whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. There’s no Heaven, no Hell, no God up in the sky. That’s great fucking news, actually. But you. There won’t be consequences for you? You aren’t hurt or in trouble?”
Cas stopped long enough to consider that. Finally he shook his head. “No, Dean,” he said. His eyes narrowed, giving consideration. “There are no angels or demons to hunt me down and have vengeance. There…” He looked down at himself, huffed a sorry laugh. “There are no angels at all.”
Dean tipped his head a bit, sure he couldn’t understand that right. But he did. He knew. He gave a careful nod of his head. “You’re human, now.”
“Near enough to count,” Cas said, lifting his eyes to look at Dean again. Tired, but clear-eyed. For a moment they just stared between each other. God, Dean never wanted to look away.
“I love you, Cas,” he said.
It was supposed to come at the end of a big speech. Dean had thought so much about it and taken so long to put words around it in his head. Because it wasn’t as simple as loving Cas: there was their whole history to review, there were all the times he practically said it, but not in so many words, that he needed to account for. There were speeches he had to give about the way he grew up wrong, or the times he fucked up and had to apologize for, or how he hadn’t been prepared when Cas said it to him first. He wasn’t supposed to say it until he made absolutely sure Cas wasn’t going to reconsider, and Dean was fully-prepared with the list of reasons why Cas would be smarter not to want Dean at all.
Instead, it was that simple. That unconditional.
“Dean.”
“Cas—” He could’ve said more. Intended to. But he did a far better thing: he leaned forward and kissed Cas. Careless of the sand and salt of seawater on their lips, his thumb brushing through Cas’ damp hair, Cas’ hand gripped in Dean’s shirt to keep their bodies from ever drawing apart.
Cas’ mouth was soft. His kiss was searching and tender. His love was… cosmic.
Dean rested his forehead against Cas’. “Cas, I love you,” he said again. He wasn’t going to miss another opportunity to say it. He’d repeat it till Cas was sick of hearing it, and then a few times more. “I love—”
Cas interrupted him. “I love you, Dean.”
“Oh good,” Dean said with a laugh, heart racing in his chest. “Good. It would really suck if you’d changed your mind.”
“I don’t think it’s possible.”
“You’re still here,” said Dean, hands tracing down Cas’ damp sweater. He swallowed hard. Cas was still here. He wasn’t dying. Wasn’t being taken out of Dean’s hands. His grip tightened in Cas’ sweater. “Can you say it again?” he asked. Just to be sure.
“I love you,” said Cas.
Dean nodded his head. He was going to draw away, but he didn’t. He kissed Cas once more, just for good measure. Not a first kiss. Not a last kiss.
By god, not a last kiss.
Dean helped Cas up from the sand, the rising sun at their backs as they returned to town and passed the swinging sign of the Brass Lantern. Cas took to the shower, washing away the sand and cold damp of the ocean from his skin, while Dean texted Sam: Got him.
When Cas emerged, warm and enticing with towel-tousled hair, Dean lost any veneer of respectability. This was a romantic fucking inn, a far cry from his usual sorry haunts, and he was going to take advantage of every moment of it. It was easy to undress Cas, scarcely clothed after his shower. More of a process to divest Dean of all his layers, but he’d never wanted to be naked with somebody so bad in his life.
Some might, rightfully, accuse Dean of easy virtue, but that’s not what it was with Cas. It was a kind of intimacy he felt for the first time. Every touch was deeper, headier. Reverent. His body hadn’t mattered until Cas pressed his lips to each new place and made it sacred. Dean couldn’t look away from Cas, ever in awe, treasuring the fact like he could with no one else that Cas was still here. That was best of all; that they had time, the rest of their days ahead of them. No one was allowed to take this from him. No one was going to.
Not to say he had the wherewithal just then to overthink it. Sex had always been mankind’s first taste of oblivion. Never was it more true than here, now, with Cas. It struck him like drowning: that a dark tide rising buried him unawares and left him finding air only in shared breaths with Cas, in the hot slide of their tongues. Their bodies surged against one another, taut as bowstrings and pressing closer, harder.
It overcame him finally that he didn’t have to be Dean anymore. Whatever that was. He could be Cas’; he could be whatever he wanted and owe no explanation or apology. It was a relief. It was a homecoming. And oh, yes, it was a sweet release.
Later, lying side by side, Dean’s fingertips trailing up and down the inside of Cas’ forearm he said, “You said what you did to the other realities didn’t change anything about life down here.” His eyes focused on the even pulse below the thin skin of Cas’ wrist. He shook his head faintly, lips parting in a brief anticipation. His chest rose, words leaving on a sigh. “But I dunno. It's like the whole world feels new.”
“So,” said Cas, studying him intently, and Dean turned his head, clear green eyes dipping over Cas’ face. “It was good for you?”
Dean burst into laughter. He draped an arm over his eyes. He hadn’t laughed like this in ages. Could’ve believed he lost the knack for it. But damn, if Cas didn’t know the trick of it.
“Alright, Casanova,” he said. “I’m trying to be philosophical here and you’re just saucy.” Like he didn’t love it.
Cas rolled in his lower lip for a thoughtful moment, running his tongue along it before looking back at Dean in a decided manner. Devilishly searching for a reaction. “I bring the ‘physical,’” said Cas with deadpan delivery, “to ‘metaphysical.’”
Dean laughed again, and this time Cas cracked too.
“Okay, okay,” said Dean. “My turn. Serious, though. I gotta ask. Did it hurt?” Poor, sweet Cas just looked at him with a tilt of his head against the pillow, waiting to understand. Dean grinned. “When you fell from Heaven?”
Cas retaliated by rolling over to pin Dean down. Oh, that worked. He would definitely be provoking Cas like that again. Dean rasped out a laugh, leaving off only because Cas was kissing him again and that was infinitely better.
“Eileen’s driving, they’ll be making good time,” Dean said to Cas, who paced back and forth at the curb while Dean looked up at him from a bench. Jack, Eileen, and Sam left for South Carolina not long after Dean did. “It’s barely eight a.m.”
Cas wore another god-awful sweater he picked up in a thrift shop yesterday when they got around to leaving their room at the inn. Its presumed design was of three large stripes, blue, lighter blue, and white, and was intended for someone two sizes wider than Cas. The day would be too hot for it soon, and Cas would come to realise that depending on the month and state it wasn’t always sweater weather, but Dean hadn’t been able to stop him. Wouldn’t have had the heart to try.
“I’m not worried,” said Cas, although Dean hadn’t accused him of it in so many words. He paced again, then sighed and crossed over to Dean, lifting his arm by the sleeve and pushing it back to look at the time on Dean’s wristwatch. “What if they hit bad traffic?” said Cas, letting Dean’s compliant arm fall again. “What if there’s a road accident? Eileen’s overtired.”
This, thought Dean, was why you didn’t take grace away from an angel. It gave them anxiety. Or maybe that was just the nature of parenthood.
“They’ll be here,” said Dean, sitting back and stretching an arm out across the back of the bench, crossing one ankle over his knee. He looked up at Cas, and Cas looked at the empty spot next to Dean like he was seriously considering the invitation. He couldn’t be still, though. He looked once more up the street, then back to Dean.
“What if I’ve deserted him too many times?” he said.
“Baby,” said Dean, and the word was still new, thrilling on his tongue. “Not to mention the fact Jack’s forgiven me for way worse crimes, but all he’s wanted is to have you back.”
Cas lowered his gaze, knowing the truth and doubting it at the same time. Dean caught sight of a red car turning onto the street and he stood up. “That’s them,” he said, at Cas’ side when Eileen pulled up.
Whatever uncertainty Cas harboured, Jack eliminated it. The back door opened before the engine was off and he got out of the car awkwardly on his crutches, still hobbling as he made it up onto the sidewalk. Both crutches fell to the ground, though, as soon as Cas met him at the curb and wrapped him in a tight hug.
Sam came to Dean’s side, clapping a brotherly hand on his shoulder. Dean gave a smile and a faint nod of greeting, but he couldn’t look away from Cas and Jack. Couldn’t explain the good it did his heart to see the both of them like this.
With Cas at a total loss for words, Jack spoke first. “I missed you so much,” said Jack. “So, so, so much.”
“I missed you too,” said Cas, not letting go. “So much happened to you.”
“I tried to save you, but I—”
“You did, Jack,” said Cas. “You did. I love you.”
Jack had tears in his eyes, nodding his head, bottom lip trembling. It came out garbled and sincere, but without a shred of hesitation: “I love you.”
And still, no one died. No one had to say goodbye. Dean was done with those.
They went for breakfast at a cosy diner, taking a booth. Dean’s arm slung along the back of the seat to stay near Cas, always near. With Jack on the end, keeping them all hip to hip, Dean felt the rise and fall of his own breaths against Cas’ side. And that itself, that simple act, felt revolutionary too.
For his part, Sam raised his coffee cup in a toast ‘to having Cas back.’ Dean would’ve accused him of sappiness, but truthfully his world had never felt so in balance as it did while the five of them laughed and bantered over a table full of food. Eileen, with her spirited smile and signed asides to Jack; Cas catching Sam up on the epic events of his time in Apeiron. Dean had a stack of waffles, smothered with whipped cream, and didn’t even gripe about Cas trying some of them. (He saw that bitchy look of surprise, Sam, thanks.) Jack, still too young for sarcasm or irony and doomed to grow up as hopeless as his dad, brought up that he genuinely loved Cas’ sweater, and Cas promised he could borrow it any time. If this was Dean’s life going forward, he was okay with it.
Eileen, who’d covered the last leg of the drive, went to the inn to sleep after breakfast, while the rest of them meandered down towards the pier. Dean walked in step with Sam, slow so that they didn’t get too far ahead of Cas and Jack who were nigh inseparable.
“You seem really good, Dean,” said Sam. Dean waited a beat for where Sam was going with that, expecting some teasing barb about ending up with Cas. He didn’t think he could stand to hear it. A joke about how long they’d been dancing around it or how many bets had been placed; a veiled remark about Dean’s sexuality not being all he pretended for years; a disparaging crack of any kind that would tarnish the delicate spark of their new relationship.
It didn’t come. Dean nodded his head. “Uh-huh,” he said.
“It’s nice to see,” said Sam, and Dean nodded again. Let that be as much as they said on the topic.
“Sam, I’m quitting hunting,” said Dean.
Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at Jack and Cas. Jack hopped along with a smile on his face like he didn’t notice the crutches, too caught up in talking to his dad. Cas caught Dean’s gaze, a warm return in his look that was all Dean needed. “It’s no way to raise a kid,” said Dean, looking back at Sam. “I put him in danger too much already.”
Sam looked thoughtful. “Well, there’s no demons left to sow chaos,” he said. “Or angels to trigger the end-times. That takes a lot off our plates.”
“I’m not gonna pretend that if I hear about a monster in my neck of the woods I won’t still do something about it,” said Dean. “But I’m not going to seek it out. I’m not going to make it a living.”
“Call that semi-retirement,” said Sam. Then, “Your neck of the woods? You know where that’s going to be?”
Dean lifted his eyebrows in consideration, tilting his head back. He shook his head. “Dunno,” he said. “Not the bunker.” He looked at Sam. “You understand. I’d get sucked back in.” Sam nodded.
“It’s been a while since I’ve thought about our lives,” said Sam. He squinted at the street ahead as they neared the ocean walk. “But things are different. There’s a lot that’s changed. Maybe it’s right to take some time and reassess.”
Dean nodded. They’d never had the chance before to slow down, to ask themselves what they were here for, and what they wanted. “If you’re reassessing and you pick… you pick somewhere close by. Well. That’d be alright.”
Sam laughed. “Oh? You’re giving me that permission?”
Dean rolled his eyes. He wasn’t saying what he meant. It was harder with Sam than it had been trying it out with Claire, with Jack, even with Cas. He had a longer habit of suppressing his weak points around his brother. John had trained them in how to keep from saying things, and Dean had been a star pupil. “You’ve been a parent to Jack too. Always were. Better than me. He wouldn’t want you far away.” John would call it frailty. Dean would call it honesty. He took a breath and said, “I don’t either. You’re my brother, Sammy. And that’s… whether you decide to quit the business or stay at it, we don’t need to hunt together to be family.”
Sam frowned, the fundamental principle of his lifetime cast in a different light. “When you say it like that it sounds so obvious,” said Sam.
Dean gave a nod. “Took me, what, fifteen years to figure that out?” He looked over his shoulder at Cas. “What can I say? I’m a slow learner.”
“You know more than you pretend. You always wanted this,” said Sam. He nodded his head at the water lapping at the sandy shore ahead, then included Cas and Jack in a glance over his shoulder. “The four of us on a beach. ‘Toes in the sand,’ you said.”
Dean smiled, head bowed. He gave a huff of a laugh. He’d forgotten he said that. “Yeah,” he said. Now he imagined more than that. Not a one-off vacation. Instead, a house over the bay with a porch ceiling and shutters painted in haint blue. Honest work and a well-earned beer at the end of it. A porch swing facing the rising sun, to watch a new world born every day. The rich smell of morning coffee, first light turning the water into burnished bronze, and that person tucked against his side, rib to rib, almost overlapping, sharing each breath so it only felt like one. “Yeah, that sounds about right,” he said.
Sam parted not long after to join Eileen. Dean backtracked to where Cas and Jack leaned against the railing of the pier, Jack’s crutches rested beside him. They hadn’t stopped talking for as much as a minute, and didn’t slow even as Dean came into hearing.
“... actually let me drive more than you’d think. And he let me choose out three tapes at the hock shop in Maryland.”
“No,” said Cas, playacting shock.
“Really,” said Jack with an earnest nod. “I missed you, but it was also nice spending time with Dean. I learned a lot from him.”
“About hunting?”
“No,” said Jack. Dean slowed. “About family. And helping people. And saying the things that are important out loud so that people know what matters.”
Dean lifted his eyebrows. Jack got all that from him? He came in range to clap his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “That wasn’t me,” he said. He let go to come around Cas’ side, leaning on the railing and covertly slipping a hand underneath Cas’ sweater to rest on the small of his back. He just needed to touch him. “Cas started that.”
“I used it as a tactical manoeuvre,” said Cas. “You’re the one who turned it into a worldview.”
Dean had never been given so much credit in his life. And it had never counted for so much.
Cas looked from Dean back to Jack. He’d never worn that expression of calm serenity before. Like he’d found peace and no longer needed to hunt for it. In response to Dean’s touch, Cas put an arm around Dean’s waist and let his hand rest over Dean’s on the railing. Dean was distracted for a moment by Cas’ profile, so handsome and so close that it would be easy to lean in for another kiss—
“Should I go?” Jack asked, and he was trying to be polite but he looked absolutely tortured by the prospect.
“No way,” said Dean, dragging his eyes away from Cas, unable to refrain from smiling. “Not much of a family without our kid, now, are we?” He looked at Jack, at that expression full of open-hearted hope, but he could feel from beside him an intense rise in mutual adoration from Cas. Cas’ hand squeezing against his own. Dean’s relationship to Jack had been complicated when the Empty took Cas from this world, but so much had changed since then.
“I promised, didn’t I?” said Dean. “That we were gonna be a real proper family one day. I hope you know I meant it.”
Dean reacted quick, hunter’s instincts put to better use when Jack all but fell forward to hug them both. He lifted a hand to the back of Jack’s head with no restraints to his fondness. This was his kid. This was his family. They would never need to question the limits of his love, the conditions of it. There were none to speak of, and they’d hear it.