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It’s loud here. The air tastes the same as the blood in his mouth.
There’s a flash and suddenly Cas is there, brushing past them, looking like divine wrath. Dean opens his mouth and ash coats his throat. "Cas," his first attempt a rasp. The second time is louder.
Sam is pulling, pinning him with one long arm across his chest. Sam is dragging him away but he digs in his heels and keeps shouting for Cas. He watches him close in on Lucifer, blade dropping into his hand.
For a second time Dean Winchester is pulled backwards through a portal, reaching for Cas and yelling his name.
--
Jack is sleeping, as far as Sam can tell. He watches from the doorway, feeling useless. He knows he couldn’t do anything to keep this strange new creature from doing whatever the hell it wanted.
His phone buzzes. He doesn’t check it. He knows who it won’t be.
On the last night they see each other, Sam walks her up to her car. On the cement steps outside she stops at the top and turns to him. Even standing on the step below, he has an inch on her. He keeps his hands in his pockets and shuffles his feet. He hasn’t been this shy since... since Jess.
Eileen had been quiet most of the drive to the bunker, face pulled down in a frown each time Sam glanced at her in the rearview. He doesn’t blame her. It never gets easier, being on either side of the gun.
Here, in the still crisp spring air, they finally take a breath. She smiles at him. The smile that had first brought on that flicker in his chest. Satisfying in the way of something hard won. Beautiful and honest, with a little touch of wicked. Like she’s daring you to keep up.
He stands perfectly still as she leans in to brush her nose against his, taking one cool breath before grazing her lips against his. He doesn’t resist, he chases. Catches her mouth only to lay on kisses soft and chaste. He lightly rests his hands on the dip of her waist. He tries to make it feel like comfort, to make it say “I’m so glad you’re still alive.”
They pull away just enough to rest their foreheads against each other. Breathing small giddy laughs into the small space between them. Their hands shaking from long faded adrenaline and something else.
As they finally separate, he dips his head. Just enough to take in the scent of her pale neck. There are familiar hunter smells of sweat and gun powder, but there is something sweet, flowery but not delicate. Like something that only grows wild.
“Text me,” she signs, still with that smile.
And he does. Questions about Ireland. Pictures of his farmer’s market haul. When it’s 3:00am and he can’t sleep for visions of chains and fire, he sends her random facts about himself. I hate mustard, he sends the first time. I had a dog named Bones for two weeks when I was fifteen, a few nights later. Sometimes she is awake too, and those are the best nights. He doesn’t stop to ask is this what normal people do? She’s about as far from normal as he is. It’s easy in a way nothing has ever been.
He texts. Everyday. Even after she stops replying.
Then Jody calls and the ground falls away beneath his feet. Again.
Sam’s phone buzzes. He heads back outside.
--
Cas is dead. It had felt like a vague concept to him as he had ran back into the house. It had rattled every step without settling. Cas is dead and it’s just us.
Again.
Dean is still on the ground between Cas’s side and his wing’s shadow. Sam nearly stumbles at the sight. It hasn’t really changed, but between trying to pull Mom away from Lucifer and the unknown behind the lights flickering in the windows, he hadn’t really taken it in.
Oh god, is his first thought. His wings. They had trampled all over his wings during the fight. There are ashes stuck to the soles of his boots, Sam realizes with a lurch. He’s left a trail of Castiel throughout the house. He sits down heavily in the dirt on Cas’s other side, swallowing as his stomach surges.
The wing on Dean’s side is more intact. They’ve seen wings like this in every dead angel since the fall, but somehow Sam had never associated it with Cas. He had only seen Cas’s wings once, a shadow large and dark enough to swallow buildings. These wings are near bare of feathers, ragged and splintered and still reaching to cover them.
With his last step, Cas had turned to face Dean. Now, even in death, his body cants toward him.
It’s easy to get pulled into Dean’s orbit. Sam’s got the gentle touch with widows but kids hone in on Dean like a beacon, tugging on his sleeve until he bends down where they can whisper to him about the thing their parents won’t believe them about.
Dean is magnetic north. You spin for awhile, but are always pointed back home.
Sam and Cas have both shifted and shaped themselves around Dean. Parts of them pulled out of shape from too much reaching, other parts stitched together as a means of reinforcement.
Right now Dean looks more lost than he ever has, one arm braced around his ribs. His other hand white knuckle tight around the lapel of Cas’s coat.
“Dean,” Sam tries.
There is no answer, he is looking at the sky again. Sam glances up too, but doesn’t know what he’s hoping to find. A shooting star? One that will land in a field to become a giant tree somewhere?
Maybe bees would build hives there. Cas would like that. he thinks.
It’s always been Sam and Dean against the world but the past few years had somehow found a group gathering around them. A sort of buffer to ease the way they were being rubbed raw, scoured down to the bone by the world they kept saving. That buffer is all but gone now. For the first time in a long time, Sam feels like they are truly alone. It’s so heavy it almost pulls him to lay down in the dirt.
There are no more deals to be made. No one to pray to. No one to bind.
No Crowley. No God. No Death.
Not even the Devil to take revenge on.
Sam grips the hand Dean’s got clenched in the coat. They sit quietly in the dark, the way they did when Sam was eight. Dad was gone, but Dean had shared the bed anyway, holding up the edge of the comforter before turning over with a grumble to splay out on his stomach. Sam had been too old to latch onto his brother the way he wanted, so instead he grabbed his hand. He had pulled it to his chest and curled his body around it, shaken by the still fresh knowledge that monsters were real, convinced that the shadows on the floor were going to swallow him up.
Sam’s phone buzzes. He doesn’t check it. He’s not ready to find out the world is ending somewhere besides here.