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Do you know where angels go when they die, Dean?" The question bounces around the room before settling itself heavy on the table. Dean looks up, confused, at the angel curiously posing the question in front of him.
"No, Cas. Do you?" Dean replies in a small voice.
"I have an idea." It's barely a whisper coming from his lips. He holds out his hand and Dean looks at it wearily. Castiel cocks his head slightly to the left, hand still out, waiting for the hunter to do something.
Dean stares at Cas' hand, it's definitely softer than his, and it's begging for Dean to take it. Truth be told, he's frightened. Cas has never asked him to take his hand before, what happens if he does now?
A small voice tugs at the back of Dean's head, reminding him that this is Cas, this is a man, no, angel you would give your life for. You need him and he needs you now.
Dean takes another look at Cas and grabs his hand.
There's the sensation that he's falling and then being thrown into a tunnel and then falling through nothing again. But this time, Dean's not uncomfortably clutching to the reality of two fingers pressing on his head, no, now there is a whole hand for him to hold, and he feels kind of like he's flying.
However it's over as soon as it started, and he and Cas are no longer in a dim, orange colored motel room. They're standing together in the dark at the front of an old, abandoned white church, clutching each other's hands. Dean doesn't mind the new intimacy, and neither does Cas, he isn't pulling away.
"Where are we?" Dean asks without pulling his eyes away from the peeling paint of the exterior of the church.
"New Orleans" comes the answer.
"Angels die here."
"More or less."
Dean finally pulls his eyes away from the details in the church to look over at Cas. He's staring carefully at the church.
"Cas are you dying?" Dean asks, panic apparent.
"No," Cas pulls his eyes away from the church and fixes them on Dean, they flicker quickly down to the curve of his lips and then settle on his green eyes, "I have something to show you."
They quietly walk up to the door together, hand-in-hand, rotting wooden stairs creaking beneath their feet. Cas pushes open the door effortlessly, leading Dean into the old church.
Nothing seems off to Dean, he doesn't even feel any sense of looming danger. He's strangely calm holding Cas' hand in this old church. It looks like the sort of place you'd see in the beginning of a horror movie, but Dean has never been calmer. And he knows, oh he knows the calm should set him on edge, but it doesn't, he's comfortable.
Cas leads him through the rotting wood hallway and through another set of doors, then he stops in a room that holds nothing but a bench and another door on the opposite wall. Dean hears Cas breathe in sharply and then they take a few steps closer to the wall.
"Cas-" Dean starts to say.
"What do you see?" Cas whispers like they're not the only ones there.
Dean looks carefully at the wall and decides by the way Cas is looking at it, that they aren't seeing the same things. He squeezes Cas' hand;
"I see a wall. It's the same wood as the rest of the church, but there's a door, right in the center. It looks better than everything else."
"Interesting." Cas says, almost awestruck.
"Why?" Dean asks, "What do you see?"
"Everything."
"Cas..." Dean breathes, "What's behind that door?"
"The universe, the stars, the moon, everything that was or is or will be, every atom of everything."
Dean sucks in a breath and holds Cas' hand tighter, "Woah," he says.
"Woah is right." Cas replies.
They stand there staring at the same spot, for moments, hours, days, they don't know. Dean only knows the next thing that happens is that Cas is pulling him over to sit on the lone bench in the room. Once they're seated, Dean pulls his eyes away from the wall and looks at Cas, studies him for the first time in a long time.
He looks at his lashes when he blinks, the way his eyes dart from place to place trying to take it all in, the curve of his lips, the discoloration in his cheeks. Dean finds it beautiful. And he doesn't care how girly that sounds. When Cas starts to speak it startles him, and he watches how Cas smiles when he laughs.
"Do you remember how God made man, Dean?" The angel chuckled.
"Yeah, he formed man out of the dust on the ground, right?"
"How do you think angels were created?"
"Sugar and spice and everything mildly terrifying."
Cas laughs again, rubbing circles into Dean's hand with his thumb, "You were close... We were created from stardust."
Dean feels his jaw slide open, he doesn't mean it to but, holy shit.
"Where do you think angels go when they die, Dean? Not heaven, not hell, not purgatory."
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
Cas nods and looks back at the wall, still absentmindedly rubbing circles into Dean's hand. Dean swallows and joins him in staring.
"Why are you telling me this?" Dean asks quietly.
Cas smiles, "Some angels say there's a man who guards the universe. It might be God, it might be Death, it might be some lonely old man who got lost and stumbled into this church. When an angel dies, he meets them here and he asks them a question, one question, it's always the same. And depending on what you answer, he decides to either send you back, or to dissolve you into stardust."
"I didn't think angels had folklore." Dean says, looking at his angel again.
"We don't," Cas turns to Dean, eyes dark, "The man is real. I've seen him. I've answered the question three times."
Dean swallows, meeting Cas' grim eyes, reliving the memories of each of Cas' deaths.
"You see when most angels die," Cas continues, "They meet the man here and they have no answer to the question. So they're left to the stars. But every now and then an angel answers, and they're sent back, bright, shiny, and new. No memory of the man or the question.
"Then how come you remember?"
"Because the third time, I asked a question."
Dean's mind was reeling, the calm he had felt walking in was slowly draining, begging to be replaced by something Dean recognized as excitement.
"Cas?" Dean breathes.
"The first time I died I met him here and he asked me, 'What do you want?' To which I replied, freewill. He sent me back."
Dean inhales, watching Cas' face intently as he told the story, no longer caring what might be happening behind the door.
"The second time I died, we stopped the apocalypse and I thought for sure I wasn't going to come back. Yet he still asked me, 'What do you want?' This time I replied, a chance to make it right. He didn't question and I was back to heal you and Bobby and bring Sam back, although a little soulless... Sorry about that, again."
Dean chuckles, bringing the hand not holding Cas', up to cup the angel's face, "It's okay, man" Dean smiles, "We fixed it up."
Cas smiles in return before continuing with his story, he takes a shaky breath and moves Dean's hand off his face, "The third time I deserved to die for good, I had laid waste to heaven and set the leviathans loose on the world, I wanted nothing more than to return to stardust. And I told him that." Cas' voice wavers and Dean moves closer to comfort him, "He looked at me and told me I was lying, that there was something I wanted more than anything I had previously asked for. And I asked him what it was." Cas stops and looks up, smiling at Dean. The hunter almost explodes.
"So? What did he say?" Dean demands.
Cas smiles wider, the lines around his eyes crinkling to complement the adorable smile that matches the glint in his eyes.
"You." Cas breathes, "I want you, Dean Winchester." Cas closes the gap between himself and Dean, muffling Dean's surprised gasp at the lips suddenly pressing against his.
Trying (and failing) not to act too giddy, Dean scoots himself closer to Castiel, licking his way into Cas' mouth in the process. Cas' tongue slides against his own and Dean thinks it's probably one of the most euphoric things he's ever experienced. As Dean's hands run up Castiel's sides and under his shirt, running over hot skin, Cas moans into Dean's mouth, twisting in his seat at the touch of his hands.
Soon Dean has to pull away, he's too hot and he can't breathe but he also can't keep his hands and lips off his angel.
"You... Brought me... All the way here... Just to say you want to get with me?" Dean breathes into Cas' neck between kissing and sucking bruises into the soft skin there.
"I brought you here to tell you that you were the one who kept bringing me back." Cas tilts Dean's chin up with his hand so he can kiss him hard but quickly, "Not God," another kiss, "Not Lucifer," another, "You."
Dean laughs heartily into Cas' mouth, pulling him closer and running his tongue along his bottom lip, when Cas shivers and moves closer, kissing him harder, Dean pulls away and chuckles;
"Anything else?"
Cas smiles and kisses him again, "Also that I love you," Cas moves to kiss his cheek, "you're insufferable" he kisses the tip of Dean's nose, "and I'm made out of stardust."
Dean throws his leg across Cas so he's sitting on top of the angel now, he grabs Cas' face and tilts his head up so he has a better angle to kiss him.
Dean is mere centimeters away from Cas when he breathes "I love you too," into the space between their lips.