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The day Dean died, the odometer on the Impala read 1204586.
Once, he’d looked up the records for car mileage and figured she had to be somewhere in the top 100, maybe even top 50 — being driven nonstop back and forth across the country for decades will do that to you. He told Sam once that they should write a letter to Chevrolet about it, see if they got some kind of recognition; Sam had laughed at him (“Yeah, Dean, and when they say ‘Wow, what kind of work do you do that racked up that many miles’ what exactly are you going to tell them?”).
A while back, he’d been obsessive about checking for when they crossed the one million mile mark, and then one day in the middle of the first apocalypse — Lucifer breathing down Sam’s neck and Dean desperate, all the time, Hell memories close under his skin — he’d looked down and saw he’d passed it a couple hundred miles back without noticing.
On the list of things he’s pissed about Heaven and Hell taking from him, it’s probably not in the top ten but it’s definitely on the list.
When he gets in the Impala in Heaven, the odometer is at 1000000 precisely. And it doesn’t budge, even as Dean opens her up on the highway. There are no hands on her dashboard clock. The sun does change position in the sky, so there’s some passage of time, but when Dean tries to think about it too closely his thoughts slide away from the idea.
Heaven’s like a casino, he figures, doesn’t want anyone really knowing how long they’ve been there. Or maybe time’s just a little more complicated here than it was on earth — he doesn’t feel like he’s been driving for that long and he definitely hasn’t gone through more than an hour’s worth of music — when he gets that feeling like something’s settling into place, and he pulls over on the bridge.
It’s just unfiltered joy, seeing Sam again. Physically, Sam looks just like he did when they said their goodbyes, but there’s something different in his face. Dean has to ask: “How long has it been?”
Sam smiles. “Made it 53 years without you, Dean.”
Dean whistles lowly. He’d worried, as he was dying, about whether Sam would really be able to let go. Thought about Sam taking his grief and running headfirst into danger with it, or fighting sloppy like Dean had done more times than he could count. (Dean doesn’t think that’s what got him killed, knows that every single hunt, no matter how basic, is a high-risk activity. But after Cas, well. Knowing that it had been Cas’s choice had helped him handle it a lot better this time than the last few times — he had, quite literally, killed himself the last time Cas had been dead — but it’s not like a lifetime of self destructive tendencies just goes away.)
But Sam — Sam’s always been more independent, better able to manage. He gave up the life once before, when Dean was in purgatory. The happiness Dean feels at him getting a whole long life is honest, straightforward.
On earth he thinks he’d have been a lot more bitter — and some of that is there, when he looks for it, the resentment that he’d only ever gotten the life Dad had branded him for when he was four years old, the whole path of his life reduced to look out for your brother, Dean, just enough of the sour taste at the back of his throat that he doesn’t feel like some brainwashed Stepford clone. It’s just easier to focus on the happiness here. He guesses that’s Jack’s doing — that they get the full range of human emotion here maybe just with the volume cranked up a bit more on the positive side.
“Do you want to come back with me?” Sam’s asking, and Dean’s confused.
“Back? To earth?”
Sam huffs a laugh. “No, Dean. I’m pretty sure our resurrection days are over.” Dean sees it again, in his face, and realizes what it is: he’s seeing Sam as he knew him, sure, but this is actual Sam. The Sam who lived to be an old man. This Sam’s got decades on him. Dean feels wrong footed, suddenly, like he doesn’t know the man standing in front of him — a feeling that only gets stronger as Sam continues: “Back to the house. Eileen passed 7 years ago, so she got here first.”
And — right. Dean’s not the first person Sam saw when he got here, because Dean isn’t the only person in Sam’s life anymore, and it’s everything he ever wanted for him, isn’t it? To have a family of his own, someone other than just his deadbeat older brother? There’s a lump in Dean’s throat but it’s not quite bitterness, he thinks. It’s something closer to jealousy, and tastes a little like regret. The feeling that he just missed the last freeway exit with a gas station for a hundred miles. The what could have been, the almost.
“Dean?” Sam asks. The feelings must have been all over his face, because Sam looks concerned.
Instead of swallowing them down, the words come up easy, something about the warmth of Heaven’s sun making him content and open and unafraid.
“I’m good, Sam. I’m happy for you. It’s just a lot to take in, y’know. For me it feels like I just died this morning, but for you— I’m a memory for you, aren’t I.”
Sam pauses, considering. “I guess it should feel like that, but it’s like my life’s compressed somehow, you know? Like it’s really just the highlight reel. When I woke up and saw Eileen it was like it was our wedding day but looking at you know I feel like I’m right back in the bunker and everything’s just as fresh. I think it’s like we’re all our old selves at once, or all the happiest parts.”
Dean shrugs a bit. He thinks he just feels like himself on a really good day, like it’s a sunny day and he’s got an open road in front of him, and Cas and Sam are waiting for him back at the bunker, and he knows that his whole family are all alive and well — not just his parents but Bobby, Charlie, Jody, Kevin, Ellen and Jo…
For a guy who always thought of he’d never get a family of his own, he realizes he wound up with a pretty big one after all.
He thinks about getting to see them all again, some of them already here and some of them coming along later — getting to introduce Jo to Claire (hell, maybe not — they’d get along like a house on fire and it could only spell disaster for Dean).
Thinks about the knowledge that’s been steadily turning over and over again in the back of his brain since Bobby gave him that too-knowing look. Thinks that maybe, even if he didn’t get it on earth like Sam, maybe he’s got another chance here.
And it’s easy to let the twist of jealousy dissolve, easy to give Sam a wide grin. “I’m not trying to understand how it all works here. Jack and Cas set it up right, that’s enough for me.”
Sam’s eyes light up. “So Cas made it! I’d hoped, after Jack… you know… that he would have rescued him. Even though he didn’t bring him back like the rest. Where is he? Can we see Jack, or is he off being one with the universe?”
“You know as much as me, man,” Dean laughs. “I’ve just been taking it in, til you got here.”
Sam honest-to-god rolls his eyes. “Jeez, Dean, you didn’t even see Cas yet?”
And — it’s not like he hasn’t been thinking about the possibilities, letting them slowly unwind inch-by-inch in the back of his mind. All the things he never thought could happen, the thoughts that he stamped down but came out in dreams of blue eyes anyway. Everything that became suddenly possible and impossible in the same heartstopping moment, Death beating down the door and Cas, eyes shining, turning his whole life inside out without a second thought.
But then he was gone, and then the world ended, and then it didn’t end, and Dean overcompensated so hard on Getting Back To Normal that it killed him, and now.
Now, Sam says see Cas and it’s all Dean can think about. That it’s actually possible. That he can— more than that, he’s going to have an actual, face to face conversation with Cas. He thinks, maybe, that’s where he was driving all along, just waiting for Sam to make it (look out for Sammy) but that he had another destination in mind.
“You know,” he says, slowly. “I’ll be along to see you and Eileen in a bit. Got something to take care of first.”
Sam’s openly laughing at him. Dean thinks yeah, he probably deserves it.
It’s been another drive of indeterminate length, lost in the music and the rumble of Baby’s engine, when he starts to wonder. Cas is already here — it’s not like he’s waiting for him to show up, like with Sam. Why hasn’t Dean already seen him? He’s not exactly sure how all this works but if he saw Bobby first off, like some kind of soul-GPS for the important people in his life, then it doesn’t make much sense that he wouldn’t have seen Cas straight away.
Right, he thinks. Angels probably play by their own rules. Probably off running this place with Jack, and the thought brings a smile to his face.
There’s a lake on his right, glinting golden in the low sunlight, and Dean stops the engine. The sound of water lapping against the dock is loud in the sudden quiet, and he steps around to sit back against the Impala’s hood. He’s almost shy, now. He’s never been good at asking for things for himself — not things that matter, anyway. And now, here he is, with everything he wants — everything he’s wanted for so long — maybe just one prayer away.
The air rustles beside him.
“Hello, Dean.”
Dean’s entire body just — relaxes.
“You’re early, man, I hadn’t even started praying.”
Cas sounds every bit the smug asshole he was on earth as he says, “Longing is the same as prayer. The rest is just formalities.”
Dean turns to face him and, god, meeting those blue eyes sparks something warm through his whole body. He looks warm, happy, lit up at the edges by the golden light like his grace is almost visible here. His hair is still as impossible as ever, wearing the same dorky trenchcoat Jimmy Novak grabbed in the middle of the night all those years ago, and Dean loves him so much he thinks he might burst with it. He has to look away for a second, squinting off at the lake, just to compose himself.
“Cas,” he starts. Pauses.
“Dean—”
“Okay, wait, I gotta say this. Maybe you picked it up from the, I guess ‘longing’ but,” he meets Cas’s gaze squarely, “I love you.”
Cas looks — maybe not surprised, but startled. Definitely pleased. Dean doesn’t let him interrupt, though. Now he’s got that out it’s easy to keep going: “What you said. You told me you couldn’t have what you want. Cas, man, you stole my line.” He takes a deep breath. “You told me you know how I see myself. Or saw myself, on earth — I guess you guys put something in the air here because it’s all a lot simpler — but that’s the point, Cas. I never thought I could have anything with you because what would an angel, what would you ever want with a guy like me. Didn’t realize it was even in the cards until. Well.”
Cas leans forward. “Dean, you’re one of the most brilliant humans I’ve ever met. But also, you’re an idiot.” The warmth in his eyes takes the sting out of the insult, and he adds, “I think maybe I am an idiot too.”
“Well. Guess we’re just a coupla idiots in love,” Dean tells him, and the look on Cas’s face is so blinding that Dean has to reel him in by the tie and kiss him before his heart bursts at the sight of it. It’s clumsy, at first; they’re both smiling too much. But Dean raises his hand to the side of Cas’s face, strokes his thumb across his cheekbone, and Cas shivers, and — okay, yes, Dean thinks, here we go.
They kiss for a long moment. Even if they weren’t in Heaven, Dean thinks he’d have no idea how long it lasts — it could be a minute or it could be a year. He’s lost in it, in the feel of Cas moving against him, of the way Cas’s breath catches on a gasp when Dean catches his bottom lip between his teeth. “Oh,” Cas murmurs, and then — “Oh. Wait.” He pulls back. “I forgot. I’m annoyed at you.”
His hands stay fisted in Dean’s flannel, and his breathing is uneven, so Dean thinks he’s not too annoyed. “Dean Winchester. How long after I sacrificed my life for you did it take for you to die doing something stupid and reckless?”
It’s… a fair point.
Dean can’t do much but give him his best shit-eating grin, weaving his hand into the hair at the back of Cas’s head and tugging a bit just to see his eyes go dark. “Come on, baby, that was a lifetime ago.”
“You are infuriating,” Cas tells him.
“You love me,” Dean counters, and it’s true, and he feels lighter than air, happiness so warm in his chest he could float away on it. This is heaven.
“Bad taste, clearly,” but Cas is already pulling him back in by the shirt, kissing him hard and hungry. If Dean had any assumptions about Cas being shy, inexperienced, they’re out the window now. Cas kisses him like he’s claiming him, unabashed, possessive, like he’s marking Dean’s soul as his. Dean thinks Cas, I’ve been yours all along, and he knows his prayer is heard by the way Cas shudders against him.
Dean could do this forever. He thinks he’s going to.
His ability to think coherently is deteriorating quickly but in the back of his mind his heavenly to-do list is forming like he’s lining up the next steps on a case. First, make out with Cas for a while on the hood of the Impala. Maybe in the backseat, too. Then they’re gonna find Sam and Eileen, and he’ll ask Cas if Jack’s around. Then he’s got a whole list of folks he’s gotta see. (He thinks, Dad’s gonna meet Cas and yeah, that’s a thought for another time.)
Then he’ll get in his baby with Cas riding shotgun, windows open, good music playing, hand on his angel’s knee. He knows with a calm certainty that there’s a place out there at the end of the road waiting for them where together, they’ll get started making up for lost time.
It’s a lot to make up for but they’ve got eternity, now — that just may be enough time.