Chapter Text
When they step through the crack in the world, the sky is black with wings. The thick cloud of winged creatures is even thicker now, and they block out everything above them. Their wings are so loud it is all that can be heard. The light is not gone, though the strange nightmare landscape is more of a chaotic impression than a material world. The creatures disperse and the sky, in brushstrokes of deep purple and burnt orange and inky black, swirls above them. Cas steps across the ground like stepping through paint and Dean follows, with the liquid-metal sand clinging to his legs as he goes.
When the push through, the dreamscape they wind up in is much more similar to the nightmare than the others have been. Cas extends his stride and takes a step, and with Dean’s stumble behind him they emerge onto a beach. The hole in the world is sewn up. Behind them is a thick sort of forest, but instead of the greenery at the tips of the trees and leading down to woody trunks, they’re tall, oil painted columns of muddied greens and earth-tone browns. The world is washed out and gray. Everything shimmers with a dark, pearl-lined cast: stormy and ominous. The atmosphere is not quite bleak, but it feels constantly, dangerously on the verge of tipping over towards bleakness. Instead of sand, the ground underneath their feet is glassy black stone. The water is a steely blue and it stretches on seemingly forever. The sky is a shifting swirl of sky and cloud, constantly being stirred together in an ever-moving, clockwise swirl. It’s thin and streaky, dingy bathwater circling a drain. Dean’s skin feels damp, but no rain is falling. Suddenly a sound like thunder splits the still air. A hum starts low and then grows and grows–the sound of flapping, a thousand wings, and the sky darkens under the cloud of the strange not-birds. Dean looks around and sees a cove, and that’s where the bat things from the nightmare worlds seem to be both coming from and heading towards.
There is a great rumbling, and then something out in the sea begins to rise. Two points first poke up above the water, one made of dark horn and the other the stark white of bone. Water drips slow and treacley from them as they rise. Slow, so slowly, they rise higher and higher, coming inevitably out of the sea. Dean watches and something like horror fills him.
These are eternal.
The gates that rise are something so old and so powerful that Dean feels humbled before them. He feels small and powerless. Because even though these do not radiate a strength, exactly, what they do have is inevitability. There is no escape. They will exist. Forever.
The dark one looks to be made of two large horns curling up, the points meeting at the apex, the highest point. The other is in stark contrast, a dull white that stands out against the gray of the sea. It is made of an ivory bone. It is thick, and unnervingly organic. The gentle curve upward is built like two spines trying to meet. It’s pieced together by what looks like vertebrae: big and thick at the bottom and narrowing as they go up, until they taper into something thin and delicate at the top.
Dean’s mouth is dry, and he isn’t sure if what he is feeling is horror or awe.
And above them, another swarm of those creatures screeches.
They follow the dark, undulating cloud of them as it moves across the sky.
“I think we’re getting close,” Cas says. “Those creatures look a little closer to the ground, and the crowd they’re traveling in is thicker.”
“So what does that mean?” Dean asks. “We’re almost to… wherever the hell we were going? And where the hell are we now ?”
“I think this is where dreams are born. And where dreams go to die.” He points up towards the formless wings above them. “These are… messengers. I think we’ve encountered the ones carrying nightmares.”
“This is where dreams come from?” Dean asks. He looks around, a feeling of unease crawling across his skin. It makes him itch and he shrugs his shoulders, trying to brush the feeling off. “Why’s it so fucking depressing then. Everything else was so… dreamy.”
“In many traditions, the ocean is the birthplace of creation. Before everything, even the gods, there was the primordial sea.” Dean’s gaze snaps to Cas, but the former angel is looking not at the sea, but the sky. His mouth twitches. “Not my father, of course,” he says. “Chuck didn’t believe that was true.”
Dean doesn’t say anything to that, and Cas continues to stare at the sky, his head ripped up and the line of his neck exposed. Dean traces the warm column of it with a heavy gaze. The moment grows thick and weighty between them.
Finally his eyes close and he looks over at Dean. His eyes are dark and blue and piercing. Dean’s mouth goes dry and he aches with something he still cannot put words to. Cas doesn’t smile. His gaze doesn’t waver. “We’re almost out now.”
Cas looks out into the ocean and it dawns on Dean what they have to do.
“We have to go out there, don’t we,” he asks, his voice quiet. “We have to go through.”
Cas’s voice is just as quiet. “Yes.”
Dean wants to take his hand. He wants to say something before they start to move. But he can’t. All he can do is nod and let his shoulder touch Cas’s, and together they start to walk with slow deliberate steps into the sea.
The water is cold. Dean knows this but he doesn’t feel this, and as he gets closer and closer to the gates the less strange it seems that he can’t feel anything. The water grows turbulent around them, but their little pocket where they are swimming stays manageable. Somehow, around them, the water stays calm. And though they keep walking, the water doesn’t get deeper.
It occurs to Dean that if Cas was right in what he said, if this is where dreams go to die, then this could be the end of their dream, too. It’s hard to think, out there in the sea, but Dean’s reasonably sure this is a stupid fucking thought to have. Their dream hasn’t even started yet. It’s their dream because it’s just that–a dream. It’s not even real, not yet. They’d both had those moments of almost , with Cas and what he wanted from Dream-Dean in the forest, and Dean surrounded by those bubbles in the field. That was the whole shape of their relationship, wasn’t it. Almost.
One hand always reaching out, the other hand never there to take hold. One looking back just as the other has turned away. Dean’s not sure if it’s because of Chuck or if it’s just who they are, who they’d be regardless of any other influence. But there’s something in each of them, some broken reflection of what the other needs. And it would be so easy to keep repeating that vicious cycle. Dean knows that he’d be content to continue as they had been, that Cas would just let him, never asking for anything more. They could let their dream die.
But fuck, that’s not what Dean wants. He wants , he finally knows what he wants, knows what he needs to do to have, and if Cas is willing then Cas can have it, too. Dean will make sure he knows that the thing he wants? That thing he was so sure he couldn’t have? Well he can fucking have it.
Cas leads them further out into the water. Just before they reach the gate, Dean feels a tug. There’s an eddy in the water, a swirl concurrent to the unceasing forward motion. He shifts away for a moment before he thinks Wait. No. He had said to Cas, “we have to go through.” They had to find a way across, to make it to their world back on the other shore. And this might not be the same, they might be swimming in chaos, in primordial waters—but he knows the ocean has a bottom as surely as it has a shore. There is always an end.
Dean fights against the pull, treading water. “Cas. Look at me.” And Cas turns. His trenchcoat is dry but hair is plastered to the back of his neck, in little whorls on the side of his face. The waves push him gently to and fro, and his arms are spread like wings, his attention riveted to Dean. “We don’t have to go through.”
“Dean.”
“No, I… I know. I know, okay? But I’m not going to keep fighting this.” He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. He tastes salt. His heart is beating so hard in his chest it hurts. “We had a. We had a dream. We have a dream—of you and me, I mean. Together. And I’m not going to let this shithole be the place where that dream dies. I said before, man. You don’t know how much I need you. You don’t know what it does to me when you leave, when I have to see you get hurt or die or walk away.” He grits his teeth and his eyes sting and it’s the water pushing against him, the words fighting their way out of his mouth, tears threatening to fall and burn a trail down his cheeks. “I don’t know how to love normal, Cas. I don’t know how to hold on without that grip being too tight. And now I… I don’t know how I’m supposed to do it, how to love you, knowing that it’s not going to be the end of things. There was never any time, before. And it didn’t matter because we were fighting demons, we were fighting angels, we were stopping apocalypse after apocalypse and I was going to lose you anyway, I was going to ruin you, so if a piece of you was all I could have? If we were brothers in arms or friends or whatever the hell else I wanted to call us, then I was gonna take what I could get.”
Cas is closer now, and they’re drifting closer to the gate. The white of the bone is infinite when Dean glances at it. The shifting of the air against it seems to hum.
“I’m so fucking scared, Cas. I call you sunshine, you know, and sometimes I can’t even look at you. You’re so bright. You’re so much… more. I’m terrified of losing you and the b-side of that is I’m terrified of having you, too, so we’re stuck there in the middle and I thought that was better because at least then I didn’t have to decide, but.”
“But what, Dean?”
“You said it, back in the bunker. On that… that night. I’m more than daddy’s blunt instrument. Sometimes, though, I don’t know any other way to be. I know what I’m meant for. Shoot where I’m pointed. But I think—it’s. It’s not the same, when it’s you. I’m not just… I swear, fuck, this isn’t just a sex thing, Cas, but I like thinking about my body in your hands. I’ve seen how you use your blade. Think you’d know how to treat me right.”
“Dean.” Cas’s voice is as deep as the ocean around them, and just looking at him Dean thinks he might drown. He doesn’t know what Cas is going to say. He doesn’t want to hear what Cas is going to say because whatever it is he knows it’s going to ruin him. “I love you. I want you with a desire that is beyond all description. I want you in every way that it is possible to have you. I will cherish even the smallest part of you put into my hands. You make me feel hunger like I have never known. I could eat and eat and eat, Dean, and there would be more of you still to consume and I would never be satisfied. When I look at your body I don’t want to possess you, but I want to fit myself like a seal upon, to inhabit any space in you where you ever felt like you were not enough. I rebuilt you and I understood creation. I saw your soul and it was like I was seeing for the first time.”
“Cas,” Dean says again, and he’s crying hard now, unable to stop it. “Fuck, man. You can’t…”
“What, Dean?”
He laughs. Even the sound is wet. “We’re gonna get out of the ocean, yeah?”
“Yes, Dean. I promise.”
“Then once we get home, I’m gonna take you out. We’ll go on a real nice date and maybe I’ll even let you try to hold my hand.”
Cas smiles. “I’d like that.”
“Yeah.”
He goes still. The water laps at his body, waves stretching like wet hands to his face. They pull him gently, inexorably down. There’s no fight before surrendering to the inevitable. And though the water is cold and gray, though light fades fast under the ocean, Dean feels… comforted. He is drowning, he thinks, he must be, but he is not afraid. He is not in pain. Instead, he falls into the embrace of the water like it’s the comfort of arms he has always known.
He hears his name, bubbly and garbled, and he knows Cas is there. Beside him. With him, just as he always should be. Dean closes his eyes and slowly
Slowly
Slowly
Lets himself go.
#
Dean wakes up on the ground, in front of the same lake where the first dream began.
“What the hell?” Dean spits out a mouthful of salty water. “We did all that just to wind up right back where we started?”
“Dean.” Cas speaks to him in a gentle, even voice and lays a hand on his arm. It’s a touch that’s meant to soothe and Dean hates a little that it’s working. “We’re dreaming now. Not just in a dream.”
Would it kill him to be a little less cryptic, Jesus Christ. “What the hell does that mean?”
“We’re dreaming, Dean,” Cas says again. “Which means we can wake up.”
There is no real exit, even the cabin is gone, but Cas takes his hand and closes his eyes. Together, they step one final time towards the water.
#
“Dean. Dean!” Someone’s hand is clamped on his shoulder, heavy and invasive. He wants to go back to his dream, to some cabin by a lake where he and Cas were about to go skinny dipping–but he’s being pulled with a firm grip towards consciousness.
Dean grunts and bats at the person shaking him. “Get off,” he mumbles. “Fuck’s sake. I’m awake.”
“Dean,” the voice says again, and it’s full of relief. Familiar. Sam . Dean rubs at his face and shakes his head, clearing away the last cobwebs of sleep. He’s leaning against the counter at the Good Fellow’s shop, where apparently he’d decided to take a little nap. Some time is missing and he groans, scrabbling for the fragments of memory. “Are you okay? Talk to me, man.”
“Sam,” he says, pushing his brother further away. “I’m fine.”
His eyes blink open a couple of times and he looks around. Everyone is gathered in a clump around him: Sam and Jack, looking bright-eyed and attentive; and Cas, steady beside him. Dean remembers where they went. He remembers what they said.
He coughs and says, his voice low and creaky, “You asshole. Good dreams? I’ll show you good dreams.”
The proprietor, still behind the counter, starts to laugh. The sharp points of his teeth glint in the light.
“Oh! We solved the case, Dean,” Jack says, raising his hand like he’s waiting to be called on. “It was this shop. Their magic. You and Cas got enspelled! The owner’s Robin Goodfellow.”
Dean squints, still trying to wake up. Whatever whammy they’d put on him was taking a hell of a toll. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“He’s a fairy,” Sam says, sounding exasperated. “Robin Goodfellow.” As though repeating it will help Dean get it. “Puck?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Dean says. “If you know me and Cas got got, then why are—”
“Be very careful what you say, Winchester,” Robin says. He winks at Dean, wearing a smirk. It’s friendly–and somehow that only makes it more intimidating.
“He’s good, Dean!” Jack says. And if their cosmic god-child says it’s okay, then… Well, that’s probably fine, right? “It was never meant to harm. They were just little tricks, dreams to pass the time. To make the people happy. And you were in there with Cas! Wasn’t it a good dream?”
Robin huffs. “Should have been a good dream. But that damned angel broke ‘em out of it.”
“Hmm.” Cas does what Dean assumes is his effort at looking contrite. “We didn’t realize.”
They hadn’t been asleep for very long, only a few hours, which was more than enough time for Jack and Sam to take care of things in the real world. It was only a bit of fun, Robin had said, and he’d given them his assurances that–at least for awhile–they wouldn’t do it again.
“They?” Dean asks. “Oh, you mean that guy in the rocker? He’s a fairy, too?”
“Hypnos, actually!” Jack says. “God of sleep.”
“I thought I recognized you,” Cas says, frowning. He’s studying the sleeping man intently. “But the power is… muffled somehow.”
Hypnos snores, and doesn’t answer.
Sam herds them all out of the shop after another reassurance from Robin, and they make their way back to the motel.
“So what did you dream about?” Sam asks over dinner. “With all the other dreams we heard, kind of like wish fulfillment for the other victims, I’m curious what the two of you might have seen.”
It’s a big question, and Dean doesn’t know how to answer–or how much he’s willing to share. He and Cas went through something that finally carved out a space for them to be together–and they were definitely going to fuck about it later–but he’s not sure how to explain that to Sam.
“Uh.” He looks over at Cas.
Cas just gives Sam a blank look. “The ocean,” he says.
Sam’s nose wrinkles. “Just. The ocean?”
Dean thinks of jumping into a lake together. A beach trip he’s always dreamed of taking. The endless, endless expanse of water where they finally laid themselves bare. “Yeah,” he said, digging into his container of pad thai. He has to suppress a grin. “The ocean.”