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The thing is, when Dean died, he kind of thought he’d see Cas.
It was a little thought, in there among the last gasps of life and rambling out as many things as he could and trying to make sure Sam didn’t kill himself coming after him. But it was there. Hanging on that rusty barn spike, a prayer did glow in his mind – maybe Cas was waiting for him on the other side. That he’d open his eyes and Cas would be standing there in that damn trenchcoat, eyes squinted, watching him. Waiting for him. He knew it didn’t make a damn lick of sense, that Cas was probably gone forever, disintegrated by the Empty into atoms and nothingness – but as he spent his last breaths with his brother holding him up, telling him it was going to be okay, he hoped.
And then there was nothing, until there wasn’t.
In that moment, hanging in the nothingness, Dean Winchester decidedly did not face the fact that ever since Cas – ever since the Empty had taken him – ever since what he’d… Well, since then, he’d been swallowing down just immense amounts of destructive feelings. He decidedly looked away from the fact that he’d been running cases on autopilot and that the only thing that had made him happy lately was a fucking dog. He refused to acknowledge the fact that maybe… maybe he’d been less careful than he could have, and maybe it wasn’t totally by accident. He thoroughly did not think about those things as his mind melted into the nothingness.
And then. And then. And then he was awake.
Waking up after dying, it wasn’t like waking up after sleep. Dean didn’t gasp awake, clutching his chest, mouth fish-gaping, some half-forgotten nightmare chasing itself out his throat. No, he simply wasn’t, until he was. And miracle of all miracles, there was Bobby, his Bobby. Dean swallowed down his disappointment that Cas was not there to meet him, but only briefly. The things Bobby told Dean made his dead breath catch in his throat. Did the dead still need to breathe?
It wasn’t just that Heaven had been reconstructed, reformed, that the people he’d lost along the way were around any corner, no – it was that Cas, somehow, miraculously, had helped Jack with the architecture. A smile cracked upward on Dean’s face at that. So Jack had pulled Cas out of the Empty after all. Still the thought echoed around his head as he pressed his lips to the cool bottle of beer – if Cas was alive again, and in Heaven thanks to Jack, why hadn’t he come to meet Dean? Maybe Dean had been right about Cas, that he couldn’t feel the way Dean felt, that his words, his final words that gave him happiness, couldn’t have been meant in the way they seemed. That thought tasted like ashes in Dean’s mouth, but he swallowed it down.
When Dean saw his Baby, nostalgic and almost new with her old plates on her, his fingers tingled. Bobby had said that time was different up here, and Dean could feel that, as he sat down in the car seat. It felt slow and fast at once, like molasses and lightning, combining and moving over his skin. He felt like he could spend a thousand years in a day up here, or speed through time in an instant. Instead of dwelling on either, he gunned the engine and just drove. Dean had always loved to drive. Something about this driving though – knowing that Cas was out there, in Heaven, had him feeling like it was seven years ago, fresh out of Purgatory, seeing Cas everywhere when he wasn’t anywhere until suddenly he was. Driving and driving, he desperately wanted to see Cas along the side of the road, for reasons that he still couldn’t quite name after nearly twelve years.
Yet, there was no sign. There was a ramshackle lodge, a rustic cabin, even a palatial manor along the side of the road, but mostly trees on trees on trees. Dean wasn’t going to go checking out every shanty in Heaven for Cas if he didn’t want to be found. Still, for a moment as he was driving, he couldn’t help but mumble something that could resemble a prayer.
“Cas, if you’re out there,” Dean said, his voice barely audible above the growl of the engine, “if you’re really out there and what Bobby said wasn’t some sorta…metaphor for your guidance of Jack or something…” He took a hand off the wheel and scratched the back of his neck, before running his palm over his cheek, his mouth, then back to the wheel. “I’d like to see you, buddy.” The buddy slipped out before he could rein it in. Oops. At this point he hadn’t thought of Cas as just a buddy in a long time. Well, he was a buddy. He was just more important than that, in ways Dean just couldn’t quantify. But calling him buddy had stuck around like the worst kind of nervous tic.
Dean sighed and waited as he drove for the sound of feathers in the back seat, a familiar gravelly voice, something to make him want to swerve off the road. Time stretched out, treacly and long, and the road seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, finally, a familiar sound behind him. Dean couldn’t turn around, or even bring his eyes to the rear view mirror, in case it was an auditory hallucination. Did they have auditory hallucinations in Heaven? Dean was pretty sure those post-purgatory sightings were grief induced hallucinations but he’d never wanted to meaningfully address that, and if they’d continued into Heaven that just seemed unfair, and incredibly cruel, and he was going to have to find Jack and have words with him about that.
“Hello, Dean,” said the voice in the back of the car, and Dean, bless him, swerved off the road. The years stopped speeding by. Time was treacle. Molasses. Slow-melting caramel. The Impala parked, Dean stepped out, still not able to look behind him. The sound of the door opening and closing, though soft, made his neck tense and all the hairs on his body stand up.
“I was afraid you would not want to see me,” said the voice that Dean hoped was really Cas and not a trick. Maybe this was just one long Devil-induced hallucination. One last wish fulfillment before ripping the rug out from under him. The voice behind Dean sounded a little dejected in that particular Cas brand as it said, “I’m sorry, Dean, that I could not be there for you at the end.”
At that, Dean whipped around, jaw clenched tight. And there he was. Trench coat, rumpled hair, blue tie, blue eyes. Castiel. He looked the same, but different at the same time. Older, perhaps, yet ageless, and more empty. His shoulders sagged, looking at Dean, and his droopy eyes got that strange soft look in them.
“Why weren’t you there, then, Cas?” Dean choked out. “If you were alive – if Jack brought you back – then couldn’t you have…” He gestured with his hands, at a loss for words. A few come to him. “Couldn’t you have come home?” Cas shuffled, like he wanted to look away, but he didn’t tear his eyes away from Dean’s.
“I’m afraid that is no longer an option for me,” Cas admitted. Dean furrowed his brow. “When the Empty came for me and I died, I didn’t die as an angel.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, an uncharacteristically human gesture. “The nature of my essence had been changing for a long time – and when the Empty took me, it found that I had, against all logic, grown a human soul.” At that, Dean gulped. Was that even possible? Cas continued, “I died, Dean, for you, but the Empty spit me out up here. I’m not an angel anymore, though I haven’t lost all the qualities of one, exactly.”
“What are you saying, Cas?” Voice suddenly hoarse and weak, Dean could hardly bear to ask the question.
“I’m saying that I’m almost as human as you are,” Cas replied, moving his shoulders almost in a facsimile of a shrug. “I can’t come and go as I wish. I live here, with Jack when he chooses to be corporeal. I was…” He hesitated, and when he spoke again his voice was rougher than usual, almost quivering. “I was pained to see you die, so soon after you had averted the apocalypse. I was not eager to see you come so soon after me.”
Dean looked away from Cas, at a particularly interesting patch of grass. There was a dandelion growing in it.
“So you’re saying we’re both stuck here, huh?” It wasn’t really a question. “No more grand sacrifices to try and pull each other out of Hell or Purgatory or whatever?” Dean pulled his hands up from where they’d been hanging at his sides, crossing them over his chest. “Just this world you’re helping our kid build, forever?” Dean was not going to address what Cas was putting forth, that Dean had gotten himself killed so quickly after Cas had died for some stupid mourning reason. No way. That wasn’t something he could think about.
“I could show you my home, if you’d let me,” Cas offered. “For a little while. You don’t have to be alone on the road while you wait for Sam to live a long and happy life.” Dean hesitated, palms sweaty where they were tucked under his armpits. That dandelion in that patch of grass seemed real interesting, but he peeled his eyes away to look back at Cas.
“For a little while,” Dean repeated. If the dead needed to breathe, Dean was in real trouble. Heavenly air was catching in his throat like barbs. In the back of his head, a crying Castiel echoed the same three words over and over again, a record skipping on repeat. Dean had never seen Cas cry like that before. Maybe that meant something. “Sure,” he finally said. “Why the hell not? Sammy’s got all the time in the world and so do I.”
Cas nodded, his face unreadable in such a quintessentially Cas way that it made Dean almost want to cry. Almost. He got back into the car, this time in the passenger seat instead of his customary spot in the back. Dean, after a moment’s pause, followed suit.
After a moment, sitting in the parked car, Dean asked, “So how’d you get in my car, if you’ve lost all your mojo?”
“I think you’ll find that in Heaven as it is now, Dean, many things are possible,” Cas answered drily. “Maybe someday you will learn to do as I do. I expect that the hints of grace which my soul grew from enhance my abilities.” Damn, Dean thought, even as a dead human soul, Cas was just as flat-affect and dry and weird as ever. Never one for self-censorship, he told Cas just that, immediately after he thought it. A weird pause stretched out between them like day-old chewing gum, and then snapped when Cas actually laughed.
“I suppose you’re right,” he admitted. “I have changed much, but I am still a former angel. My idiosyncracies may remain forever.” Dean white-knuckle gripped the steering wheel at the mention of Cas changing. He took three deep breaths. In for a count of seven, hold for a count of seven, out for a count of seven. Repeat. Repeat.
“So, your home,” Dean said, all cheer and no strain whatsoever, “where to, Cas?”
“You passed it on your way here,” Cas informed him. “The cottage with the green shingles.” Dean thought on that, racked his brain, before coming upon the right image. The little rustic cabin he’d passed earlier while he was simply hoping to see Cas along the road. Before he’d started praying. Not begging, just praying. Maybe Jack-God (wow, that was weird to think about still) had answered his unconscious wish by having him pass the cabin by, or something. If he’d gone and explored some Heaven houses, maybe he’d have had a dramatic moment with Cas or something, standing on his stoop looking down at him or up at him, like he had so long ago. Shit. The moment had passed him by.
“I saw your car drive by,” Cas added helpfully, “but again, I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see –”
“Just shut up, Cas, alright?” Dean interrupted. “Shut up about me not wanting to see you. We’ll have this conversation later, maybe at your little cabin or cottage or whatever, but know that I would never not want to see you. Okay?”
Not waiting for an answer, Dean pulled back out into the empty road carelessly and started heading back the way he’d come. The road was bare, he could drive as reckless as he wanted, so he gunned it in the direction of the place Cas was calling home.
In his peripheral vision, Dean could see Cas’s throat bobbing, like he had something more he wanted to say. At the moment, Dean wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear it. He was still turning the idea of Cas somehow growing a human soul over and over in his mouth, running his tongue over the inside of his teeth. That shouldn’t even be possible. Right?
The drive backward passed in silence. Dean was unsure about how time worked here – he had felt like he was moving forward years at a time when he was driving down the road, but going back to the cottage, was he going backward in time? Bobby had said time worked differently here, but he had been extremely unclear. Typical Heaven bullshit, he supposed. Huffing out a sigh, he pulled into the little dirt driveway that led up to the cottage. As he pulled the Impala in, he took a long look up at the cottage out the window.
Cas’s cottage. It had green shingles on the roof, like Cas had said, and it had beige-y yellow paneling on the sides. It looked a little sickly, if he was being honest, but it also looked very homey, in a sort of inexplicable way that made Dean’s chest feel like it was twisting. Dean parked the car and got out, absentmindedly noting Cas doing the same. He walked up to the porch stoop. There was a little loveseat out front, and a swinging bench. Somehow, though Cas couldn’t have been here that long, it was all careworn, like Cas had bought it all from some heavenly thrift store, which was an idea so absurd Dean almost snorted. He swallowed that instinct down, but as it was, he half smiled a little, skin crinkling around the edges of his eyes. It was really something, Cas having his own home up here in Heaven. Made him feel a certain type of way. All this time he’d been inviting Cas into or kicking Cas out of places he called home, and now Cas was leading him into what was essentially his final resting place.
“You can come in, Dean,” Cas intoned, and Dean spooked a little. Somehow, caught in his reverie, staring at the dusty pink loveseat, he had missed Cas walking past him and opening the door to the cottage. He was standing inside, now, expectantly. Dean felt like an idiot, just standing there.
“Yeah, of course, Cas,” he said, swallowing down his shaking nerves to settle in his gut, because there was nothing else he could do. Was he supposed to still be nervous? He was in Heaven, after all. It was supposed to be perfect, right? Or was it just another life, full of confusion and missteps and shit? He couldn’t think about that. Instead, he shouldered past Cas, who was holding the door open, and walked into the little house.
“Is Jack here?” he asked, stepping into the cozy front room of the house. The walls were lined with unpainted shiplap, and there were two squashy chairs and a sofa with the seats sunk in deep. Stairs led to an unknown upstairs, and there were a couple doorways he could look into. It was a living space that could be described as cramped, but also comfortable.
“No, Dean,” Cas answered, walking past him. “And take your shoes off, you’ll get dirt on the rugs.” Dean’s gaze shot down to the floor, and sure enough, Cas’s shoes were off, and he was just plodding into his house with holey white socks on. He’d even hung his trench coat by the door. Dean wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen Cas with his shoes off before. Shit, what did that say about their relationship? He kicked off his boots and chewed on the inside of his cheek, mulling it over, before following Cas the rest of the way into the room, shutting the door behind him.
The shiplap walls kind of made him think of barns, which he had a bit of a notable history with. He’d met Cas in a barn. That whole deal with Anna, that had gone down in a barn. He’d, shit, he’d died in a barn. Was his body still cooling? How long had it been? Dean decided to stop thinking about barns. Instead, he flung himself down into one of the squashy chairs. It was…god, it was maybe the most comfortable chair he’d ever sat in.
“Where’d all this stuff come from anyway?” Dean called after Cas, who had gone into the next room. “Heavenly Ikea?” He grinned at his own words. “You build it yourself?” Cas poked his head through the doorway and then came back in, holding two mugs. One said Best Father Ever, except above Father the word Farter was crossed out, and the other had a picture of a bee on it. Cas kept the bee mug, and handed the other over to Dean. He chuckled a little at that. Had Jack made fun mugs for his dad, or something? The whole situation tickled Dean a little bit, but also made him feel kinda warm and glowy.
“No, Jack built all this for me.” Cas sat on the other armchair, which was angled just so that he was facing Dean, and had a little table next to it to put his mug on. Dean’s chair had no such little table. “Of course, it’s all based on what I imagined as a home.” He took a sip from the bee mug and then put it down. “That’s coffee, by the way.” Dean peered into the mug. It looked a little congealed, and maybe slightly burnt. Maybe Dean needed to get Cas a Heavenly Keurig.
“The house that Jack built, huh?” he said, leaning back and just warming his hands on the mug. “That’s kinda sweet. So he comes around?”
“Yes, Dean, he comes around.” Cas grimaced in a way that was so painfully Castiel, in a way Dean had missed without knowing he’d missed it, since Cas had been gone. “He is not always corporeal, but he chooses to be. He has a room upstairs. As do I.” Cas let a pregnant pause hang in the air. “As do you,” he finally added. Dean, who was trying to take a mouthful of the very bad coffee, choked on said mouthful at that. He swallowed it down roughly.
“For me?” Dean felt a little wet in the eyes, and his mouth was suddenly parched. He painfully gulped down another mouthful of the burnt coffee. It didn’t help, but Cas seemed pleased.
“If you’ll stay,” he replied. His eyes had that funny sad soft look in them again. Dean downed the rest of the coffee so he didn’t have to look at that expression, didn’t have to think about it. He drowned it in Cas’s terrible coffee.
“Yeah, Cas,” Dean said, looking at his socks. “I’ll stay.”
Dean’s room, he was pleased to find, was the room he’d left behind in the bunker. All his things were there – his clothes, his desk drawers full of crap, his messy sheets. There were some new things, as well, and new old things. His jewelry he used to wear before he got tired of it getting caught on things on hunts. The leather jacket he’d lost, which looked like it might actually fit him properly now. Cassettes full of music that he’d lost years ago and maybe some new ones too, and a cassette player to go with them. Gifts from Jack maybe. It was all familiar, which made it a little eerie, but also made his throat close up with emotion. Jack had cared that much, after all they’d been through, even though he was, well, he was God now. Dean still couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Dean sat heavily on his bed, the taste of Cas’s terrible coffee still lingering in his mouth, sticky on the back of his tongue and throat. It was all a lot to process, and Dean was not a big fan of deep introspection, had never been. He ran his fingers over the bedspread. It felt as real as anything. Could Heaven be some sort of…second chance? Another life, a new adventure? His mother had read him a book once, a barely remembered memory, about two brothers who died in one world and woke up in the next, and had a new, exciting adventure. Was that what the afterlife was, now? A new journey? Dean sighed deeply and flopped backwards onto the bed.
At the sound of Cas clearing his throat, Dean turned his head toward the door, but didn’t sit up. Cas hovered awkwardly in the doorway. His suit jacket was off, now, his sleeves rolled up, and his tie was loose. He looked, for lack of a better word, like a person. Something about Heaven took years of stress of Cas’s face, Dean thought, looking at him sideways. He looked lighter, somehow, in the warm light of his home.
“You died, Dean,” Cas said, and at that Dean sat bolt upright. “Can we talk about it?”
“No.” Dean’s hands gripped at his knees. Cas didn’t wait for an invitation to enter the room, he just came in and placed a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Same shoulder, same hand. Dean couldn’t look at Cas.
“I wanted you to live, Dean,” and Cas’s voice was so soft, Dean had to whip his head up to meet his eyes. “You came to me so early. I was prepared to wait for you, Dean, for as long as time allowed.” Cas had that same soft sad look in his eyes, and Dean just couldn’t bear it.
“Yeah, well, maybe my life sucked without you in it,” he snapped, voice hard. “Maybe I was going through the motions, okay?” He stood, and Cas’s hand slipped off his shoulder. “I tried, Cas, okay? I tried to have a life. I adopted a damn dog. I applied for jobs. I hunted with Sam. I tried. But you know what? When it came down to it, you were gone.” His voice rang out in the room, hollow, sore sounding. Cas didn’t flinch at his anger.
“Dean…” he said instead, his voice lingering over the sounds in the way only Cas’s voice could. Dean shook his head and pushed through.
“I couldn’t even…” Dean continued, and then his voice choked in his throat. He balled his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms, and forced the words out, aware of how anguished they sounded and hating it. “I couldn’t even save you, not even once. You’re always dying for me, Cas. Every time, it’s you for me, and I can’t ever do anything about it. I’m good for fuckin’ nothing if I can’t save you.” He drew in a harsh, shuddering breath. “So yeah, maybe I didn’t fight as careful as I could have that night with Sammy in the barn. Maybe I didn’t try to move out of the way when Death came calling. Because all I could hear in my head, for days, Cas, was you telling me…” The words dried up in his mouth, and he looked down.
“So you think my death was your fault?” Cas said, his voice inquiring. Dean met his intense gaze. “Dean, I chose to do that. I made that deal for Jack’s life, and I fulfilled it for yours. You taught me that love was the only holy thing, Dean, and I was happy to die for love.” The word love was like two gunshots in Dean’s chest.
“Well, maybe I wish you’d lived for love, okay?” Dean shot back. “The things you said, I. I didn’t know you felt that way, alright? You break my heart sometimes, you know that?” He shifted his jaw, pressing forward. There were things he didn’t want to know, and things he did, and they were all tangled up in each other. “Saying you want something you can’t have? Man, I don’t… I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Cas replied, matter-of-factly. “I don’t expect anything out of you that you can’t give me.” His voice quavered on the last few words. “I told you, what I want, I can’t have. And that’s alright. The love that I have for you, Dean, it doesn’t need an answer.” Another wound ripping through Dean’s core.
“Cas, you dumb sonovabitch, would you listen to me?” Dean’s voice was harsh. It was the only way he knew. “I’m trying to tell you that what you want… you can have it.” The words hung between them in the air. Cas blinked. “You could’ve had me a long time ago,” Dean tacked on, voice melting.
“What are you trying to say?” Cas’s voice was stiff, like this was unfamiliar territory. Like he hadn’t been the one spilling his guts to Dean in a dumb sacrificial act, like he hadn’t been the one condemning himself to either oblivion or life as a miserable bastard without love with that deal, like he was a stranger to emotional speeches. Like he hadn’t told Dean he loved him, yes, those were the three words rattling around inside his head for ages now, that Cas loved him, unconditionally.
“What you didn’t give me a chance to say before you shoved me into a wall and got absorbed in some dumb sacrificial act I would have pulled.” Dean shuffled his socked feet on the floor of his room. “I’m trying to tell you that I…” He choked on the words one last time, dug his nails further into his palms, and spat them out. “That I love you too, man.”
Time was like honey, and in the dripping moments that lingered after Dean said those words, words he’d barely said to anyone ever in his whole life, Cas just looked at him. That soft sad look faded and was replaced by another look, equally soft. And finally, finally, long overdue, Cas swept Dean into a hug. His body felt right against Dean’s, two puzzle pieces interlocking. Dean raised his arms and wrapped them around Cas. He could feel Cas’s warm skin under his thin button down. Christ, now this was what felt like coming home.
Cas pulled back, but didn’t unwrap himself from Dean. He looked into his eyes, blue to green, as they stood hip to hip.
“Thank you,” Cas said. He looked teary. Dean’s own eyes felt wet. Maybe they’d been wet this whole conversation. Maybe he’d been crying. Huh. His cheeks felt funny. His throat felt tight.
“Hey, no problem, Cas,” he replied, voice hoarse, trying to crack a smile. “I only wish I’d said it sooner, y’know? Before we both got old and snuffed it.”
Cas’s mouth melted into a smile, and then he pressed in, pushing his mouth against Dean’s. Fuck. He was kissing Dean. They were kissing. Oh god. Dean froze momentarily in the blind panic of the moment, before leaning into it, into Cas’s soft mouth. Wow, that felt good. If the dead needed to breathe, he was screwed, because he was losing all his breath against Cas’s mouth. It seemed to go on for hours and yet only an instant when Cas pulled away.
“It’s okay, Dean.” Cas raised one hand to stroke a thumb against Dean’s wet cheek. “We have all of eternity to talk, and unravel how we got so tied up that we couldn’t talk about it.” He kissed Dean again, brief and chaste, and yeah, Dean was definitely crying.
“You only gonna kiss me when I’m crying, Cas?” he whispered against Cas’s mouth. Cas pulled back.
“Dean Winchester, I will kiss you whenever you like.” And god, he looked so serious that Dean couldn’t help but laugh. He released Cas and fell back against the bed and laughed like he hadn’t in a long time. And after a moment, Cas cracked a smile too, and sat down on the bed.
The thing about time in Heaven was that it moved funny. Sometimes it was slow, sometimes it was fast, and sometimes it stood still. Dean, on one level, wanted to rush ahead until he could see his brother again. Sam was an important part of his life and he wanted to be there to meet him when he died. He knew one day he’d get back in his Impala and speed down the road to welcome his brother to the next great adventure. But on another level, now, laying in his bed next to Castiel, the angel who had dragged him back to life more times than he cared to think about, and was now sitting next to him with the broadest smile he’d ever seen, Dean wanted time to slow to a crawl. He wanted to wait for Jack to go corporeal and come home, he wanted to tour the rest of the little home that Jack had built, he wanted to explore the renovated Heaven, new and improved. He wanted to kiss Cas a thousand times, and then a thousand more for good measure. Could he fuck in Heaven? Would that be weird? That wasn’t the point. What was the point? Dean had all of eternity with Cas to figure out the point.
Maybe that was the point. Dean had all of eternity left, to spend with Cas, to see the people he’d lost and found and lost again. To have a new adventure. Not like there were any monsters up here to destroy himself fighting. Might as well put that energy toward something constructive.
Cas laid down in the bed beside him. Dean wanted to say I love you again, but honestly, maybe he wasn’t the kind of guy to say it all the time. Plus, he was kind of afraid that he might call Cas “buddy” again. Instead, he just kissed Cas again. They had all the time in the world.