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ONE AND A HALF YEARS LATER
Dean poured another drink of whiskey.
Tonight was the night – he knew that, even if he pretended that he didn’t. Sam was proposing.
It had been a year and a half since – since. Dean had tried to think of it like Sam did, or like Eileen did. “A year and a half since we defeated God.” … “A year or so since Jack became God.” … “More than a year since we won the freedom to make our own choices.” (Dean liked that one best.) “Almost two years since everything changed.” The phrases were thrown around sometimes at gatherings or late at night when they had been drinking.
For Dean, it would always be “a year and a half since Cas died.”
The hunting hadn’t changed immediately afterward. If anything, there had been more to hunt, various monsters that seemed hellbent on ruining the new status quo that Sam and Dean had worked so hard to build.
Still, eventually, the pool of monsters had dwindled. There would always be random vampires, werewolves, and djinn, of course. But they no longer seemed to have any inclination to mobilize, or create diabolical plans to end the world. To put it plainly, as he had pointed out to Sam a year ago, the monsters had become lazy.
Hell was under control, too, ruled by Rowena’s firm hand, and there hadn’t been a peep from Heaven since – since. Dean had even gone to the playground that used to be the entrance to Heaven, but there had been no answer. He had screamed for hours, jumped up and down in the sandbox, and, in a final fit of desperation, pissed in it. And still, there was nothing. (Plus, now he felt guilty for pissing in a child’s sandbox.)
Six months after – after, Sam had enrolled in school again. He had finished his Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, passed the bar exam, and was now attending law school through the University of Kansas. Most of his credits were online rather than in person, but Dean often wondered if that decision had been at least partially because Sam didn’t want to “abandon” him.
But it couldn’t continue.
He poured another glass. He was quickly getting to that point where he was relaxed but not quite drunk – the perfect combination to force himself to “talk”.
Miracle ambled through the door and walked up to Dean, leaning her snout on his thigh, and Dean sighed.
“I’m going out,” said Sam, suddenly bursting into the situation room. He was dressed in his fed suit, clean-shaven and fingering something in his pocket.
“Where ‘ya goin’, lookin’ like that at this hour?” Dean asked, feigning indifference.
Sam had been planning this for over a month now. “Don’t plan anything on the 20th, Dean.” … “We’ll be back by the 20th, right?”
Sam paused, looking furtively toward the door. He sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and apparently decided on the truth. “I’m gonna ask Eileen to marry me,” he said.
Dean’s face split into a grin that was less than half fake, standing up to clap Sam on the back. “Good for you, man!” he said. Miracle wagged her tail, circling around the brothers happily.
Sam’s face appeared to sag in relief, and Dean realized his brother had actually been nervous about telling him. He was suddenly ashamed for not having this conversation sooner.
“Hey Sam, hold on a sec,” he said, gesturing to the seat next to him at the map table.
Sam, who had been heading for the door to the garage, doubled back, checking his watch. He seemed to decide that he had more than enough time, because he didn’t even throw a bitch face. If anything, he seemed relieved to have something to do to fill the time until his scheduled date.
Miracle wagged her tail a few times before settling on the floor at Dean’s feet.
“I should’a told you sooner,” Dean said. “It’s time for you to leave, Sammy.”
Sam’s face registered a series of emotions – shock, pity, suspicion.
“What are you talking about?”
“You want kids, right? You and her.”
Sam looked cornered. “Dean, we’re not really ready to-…”
“You’re poppin’ the question, Sammy. You’re goin’ to law school. You’re gonna have two point five kids, and a picket fence, and all that.”
Sam had no response for a second. Suddenly he seemed to sag, and he reminded Dean of the four-year-old that had beat up a bully on the schoolyard and was certain he’d be in trouble for it. “It’s Eileen,” he said softly, defensively. “We’re never exactly gonna have a… conventional life.”
The memory of Sam as a 4-year-old made Dean smile. “Sam, you’re my baby brother. Does she make you happy?”
“Yes,” Sam said, his eyes lighting up in his overly tall frame.
“Then get outta here,” Dean said. “This is no life for a kid.”
Sam smiled slightly, then said, almost petulantly, “I still wanna hunt. On the weekends, or whatever.”
Dean grinned. “You’d damn well better.”
TWO AND A HALF YEARS AFTER THAT
Dean checked his pistol, then checked his sawed-off, glancing out the front window of the impala.
Tomorrow was the four-year anniversary of – of when Jack became God, Dean thought determinedly. Bobby, Dean, and about seventy other hunters were celebrating by wiping out the entirety of the five major monster families in Chicago, a happy discovery that Bobby had made about a month prior. Dean was the happiest he had been in a long time – this was by far the most interesting thing that had happened since – since Jack became God. (It was getting easier each day, though it would never be truly easy.) The second-most-interesting thing that had happened in the past four years had been a nest of six vampires in Missouri. And that had only been interesting because Dean wiped them out all by himself, something he had still neglected to discuss with Sam.
Honestly, the hunting had been so sparse that Dean had been forced to get a part-time job as a mechanic just to keep things interesting. In all honesty, it was… not as bad as he had anticipated.
He was happy, as happy as he could be without-
Beside him, his giant of a brother hung up his phone, finally ending an entirely-too-long conversation with his boss and interrupting Dean’s train of thought.
“Are you done, your honor?” Dean asked.
“Shut up jerk,” said Sam, grinning as he tucked the phone back into his jacket. “And yes. Sorry about that.”
Dean smilled. “Your honor” had been a new nickname bestowed upon Sam after he had helped his boss at his internship win a major case, making himself invaluable to the firm. He wouldn’t officially graduate law school for another few months, but the firm had already made Sam an offer of employment afterward.
The brothers were silent for a few more minutes as they waited for signs of life coming from the big house on the hill, a supposed djinn stronghold.
“It’s a boy,” said Sam suddenly.
Dean looked over at Sam in surprise. “I thought you were waiting to find out?”
Sam shrugged. “At the last ultrasound, the doctors forgot Eileen can read lips.”
“That’s bullshit!” Dean said, though he was grinning. “Are you switching doctors?”
“Nah,” said Sam. “It was one of the techs. It was an accident.”
“Well, congratulations, man,” Dean said, clapping his brother on the back as best he could in the impala.
“Thanks,” Sam said, his eyes dancing. “We’re gonna name him Dean.”
“You - what? Why?” Dean’s arm dropped in surprise, his brain whirring with shock.
“After you, jerk,” said Sam.
“Bitch,” Dean responded instinctively. Then, “Why not after Dad?’”
“’Cause Dad didn’t raise me,” Sam responded immediately. “His middle name will be after Eileen’s foster father.”
Dean stared at Sam, pausing somewhere between shock and pride.
“Look, we can change it if you don’t agree,” said Sam. “But it’s really gonna suck. She’s due in three weeks, and I spent Wednesday evening stenciling ‘Dean’ on the nursery door in blue letters.”
Dean laughed, then pretended to shudder. “Ugh. Domestic life.”
Sam laughed at his antics. “Plus, you know, it makes sense. There’s a Little Cas, and a Little Sam… and now there will be a Little Dean.”
“Sammy, I… I don’t know what to say,” Dean said finally.
Sam smiled at him, and the moment veered dangerously toward awkward.
Suddenly Dean had a horrible thought. “If the ultrasound was wrong, you’re not gonna call the baby ‘Deanna’ are you?”
Sam laughed, a real laugh, with his head thrown back and carefree. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Dean,” he said. “When we asked them to make sure, the doctor said it was… pretty obvious.”
Dean grinned. “Hell yeah it was!” he whooped.
He settled back into the front seat of the impala, eyeing the supposed djinn stronghold. He was feeling good. Maybe he would even hit a bar after this, and try to score. It had been a really long time.
And, after all, if the girl had blue eyes and black hair again, nobody had to know but him.
TWELVE YEARS AFTER THAT
“Little Castiel” was not so little anymore. He stood almost as tall as Dean at age seventeen, and was lithe but muscley with blue eyes like his mother and green hair. He reminded Dean most of Jack – if Jack had been permanently pissed off with a death wish.
Garth’s family mandate that he eat only animals was probably the only rule Little Cas hadn’t broken, and Dean was fairly certain he knew why. At the age of 10, Garth’s family had been attacked by a pack of “normal” werewolves that resented them for their creed. It had been an offshoot of Garth’s wife’s step-mother’s Maw of Fenris cult. They had killed Garth’s wife Bess and managed to seriously injure his brother Little Sam before Dean and had arrived and helped Garth mow them down for good. Little Cas had stolen the last kill for himself - the brutish, snarling man that had killed his mother.
Dean knew Little Cas had been irrevocably changed by the incident. Since that time, Little Cas had viewed the human-eating werewolves as “uncivilized”, referred to them as “savages”, and decided it was his mission in life to end the lives of as many of them as possible. Toward that end, he attempted to drop out of school to hunt at 16, only to re-enroll when both Garth and Dean, as Little Cas put it, “had a fucking coronary.” Shortly before his 17th birthday, he had managed to cause enough trouble to get himself expelled.
At that point, and with Sam’s prodding, and Garth’s blessing, Dean had agreed to take the boy in. Little Cas would go to school in Lawrence, and he could accompany Dean on hunts so long as it worked around his school schedule. The hunting was slower than ever, Miracle had died recently, and Dean was more than ready for a new challenge. Sam had another reason for pushing this arrangement, though his brother would never admit it – Dean was over 50 now, and beginning to get creaky. Dean knew that Little Cas provided him as much protection on hunts as he provided the boy.
On this particular day in September, the shrill noise of Dean’s phone cut into his daily scan of the tabloids.
“What’s up, Garth,” said Dean, recognizing the number.
“Castiel isn’t back yet, is he?” Garth said, seemingly out of breath.
“No, why-…” Dean started, ignoring the pang of stinging nostalgia at Castiel’s full name.
“Good, I caught you,” said Garth.
“What’s he done now?” asked Dean. Little Cas had been doing very well lately. He’d been back at Garth’s for the weekend, and, Dean knew, should be arriving at the bunker any minute.
“Nothing much, really,” said Garth, friendly as usual. “It’s nothing bad. I just wanted to give you a bit of a friendly heads up. He’s gone and died his hair.”
“Good,” said Dean, only mildly interested. “That green stood out like a beacon. Damn near got us killed with that wendigo.”
“That’s what he said,” replied Garth. “But now it’s brown, almost black, and it makes him look even more like his namesake.”
Dean’s hand slipped on the phone. “Just, between that and that ugly coat he bought last month-…” Garth continued.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Dean said, his voice coming out clipped. “Thanks – thanks for the heads up, Garth. I’ve gotta go. I can hear him coming down.” Dean couldn’t hear anything.
“No problem Dean,” said Garth. “I’m giving you a virtual hug through the phone, buddy.”
“Okay, sure, Garth.”
Dean headed toward the liquor cabinet, because apparently it was going to be that kind of night.
He had just downed a glass of whiskey when he heard the tell-tale roar of Little Cas’ classic car. He’d helped him restore a 1971 Pontiac over the past year, and admitted that the boy would make a good mechanic, if an impulsive driver.
Little Cas didn’t look like Castiel – not to Dean, anyway. He was a hair too thin, an inch too short, his hair was too long, and his trench coat was more olive green than tan. Most of all, he was much, much too young. Still, it was enough to make Dean shiver, and something twisted inside of him.
Water trailed off of Little Cas’ trench coat and puddled on the floor. “Damn it, Cas!” Dean exclaimed. “Wipe it up!”
Little Cas rolled his eyes. “Good to see you too, D,” he said sarcastically. “Whatever, I brought you a bacon cheeseburger.”
The boy didn’t see the affectionate grin Dean shot him, nor the nostalgic frown that followed it.
(*)
Dean was nursing his second glass of whiskey when Little Cas emerged from his room, freshly showered. “I’m going out, D,” he said. “I’ll be back by 11.”
“Kay,” said Dean. “Got big plans?”
“Actually, yeah,” said Little Cas, grinning. “I got a boyfriend. Milo, from school.”
Dean’s brain seemed to have stopped. “You’ve – got - …” His shock must’ve shown on his face.
Little Cas puffed up his chest, his eyes narrowing and his mouth forming a tight line. “I like guys. Is that a problem?”
“No!” Dean exclaimed, because that, he knew the answer to.
“Good,” said Little Cas, visibly relaxing. He stared at Dean, who quickly surmised that the boy was expecting him to say something else. What did he want? A blessing? A fight?
“So did Cas - Castiel,” said Dean, his voice breaking on Castiel’s name. “Your – your namesake.” He realized as his stomach plummeted that it was the first time he’d said Castiel’s name since – since.
“I know,” said Little Cas, finally putting on his ugly green trench coat. “Dad told me. Sam told me, too.”
Stunned, Dean had no response to this. He had never talked to Little Cas about his namesake, and the boy had given up asking long before he’d moved in with Dean.
Little Cas seemed to sense that it was best to leave Dean alone with his thoughts. “Well, I’ll be home by 11,” said Little Cas again, and then he was gone, leaving Dean to ponder the bombshell he’d just dropped.
How long had Sam known? Jesus, how long had Garth known? He had never told either of them about Castiel’s death.
That evening, with Little Cas out of the house and an entire bottle of whiskey, Dean cried.
FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER THAT
“Your hair looks stupid,” Dean said, glancing Sam’s direction as he looked toward the passenger side mirror.
“I know, dude,” said Sam. “Dean told me so this morning, too.” Sam had stopped calling the boys “Little Dean” and “Little Cas” several years ago, relying on context clues to differentiate exactly who they meant. Reluctantly, Dean had followed Sam’s example.
“Well, he was right!” exclaimed Dean. He looked out the impala window as the dark sky flew by. It had been a long time since he’d felt this good. The hip replacement had been a bitch and a half, to be honest.
“It’s an awkward phase,” Sam protested. “We’re almost seventy, after all. I can’t keep pretending my hair’s still brown, but I hate how it looks when it’s a different color only at the roots.”
“God forbid you cut it like a normal person,” Dean grumbled. After a pause, he added, “It looks like a Party City wig. It serves you right for letting Dean’s dumb girlfriend do your hair.”
“They broke up,” said Sam, his eyes belying how relieved he was about the subject.
“Good,” said Dean. “I know you didn’t like her much.”
“No,” Sam agreed. “But he spent two years with her. I thought he was settling down. But now I get the feeling he’s back to one-nighters and flings for a while.”
Dean laughed. “What gives you that feeling?”
“The woman’s voice that answered the phone when I called last Saturday morning,” said Sam.
“That’s my boy!” said Dean, laughing.
Sam chuckled along with him. “I blame you for this, you know.”
Dean threw up his hands in mock surrender. “It’s not my fault,” he said. “Cas got married years ago!”
Happily, to a man. Which Dean might’ve had, if he hadn’t been such a-
“Whatever,” said Sam, interrupting Dean’s train of thought. “We’re almost there, man. Make a right up here.”
They parked the car behind some bushes and crept around to the trunk. Dean’s right knee popped from an injury fifteen years prior, and he winced as he twisted too quickly, jostling his still-tender hip.
“I’m too old for this shit,” Dean commented, scubbing his hand down his face as he began choosing guns from the trunk. “I mean, I thought I was gonna go out fighting God, man. In a blaze of glory.”
“You still might,” said Sam. “A blaze of glory and a barely healed hip.”
“Nah, seriously, dude. We took down Lucifer. God. Now you spend your days banging a gavel in a Party City wig and the most interesting case we’ve had in a decade is… vampire mimes.”
“So what, you’re ready to throw in the towel?” Sam asked, cocking his shotgun.
“Nah, man, I’m just saying we’ve passed our prime,” said Dean. “That’s all. C’mon. We’ve got vampire mimes to kill, and work to do.” And he shut the trunk.
(*)
Vampire mimes. After defeating Lucifer and God, he was taken down by fucking vampire mimes and a piece of rebar.
A loud, happy barking met his ears.
“Miracle!” Dean exclaimed as the dog bounded up to him, demanding attention.
“Well, at least I made it to Heaven,” he said aloud.
“Yep,” said a voice to his right. “That’s the good news.”
It was Bobby, sitting on a chair in front of Harvelle’s Roadhouse. Dean felt something warm tug at his insides. Bobby and Harvelle’s… well, Heaven was definitely good so far. But surely they were only memories. Bobby was in Heaven’s prison for assisting Castiel in Metatron’s escape years before.
“What memory is this?” Dean asked as Miracle nuzzled against his hand, demanding to be petted.
“It ain't, ya idjit,” said Bobby.
“Yeah, it is,” Dean said. “'Cause the last I heard, you were in Heaven's lock-up.”
“Was,” said Bobby. “Now I’m not. That kid of yours, before he went... wherever, made some changes here. Busted my ass out. And then he... Well, he set some things right. Tore down all the walls up here. Heaven ain't just reliving your golden oldies anymore.
“It's what it always should have been,” Bobby continued as Dean sat down. “Everyone happy. Everyone together. Well. Most of the time.”
Before Dean could ask what that meant, Bobby added, “Rufus lives about 5 miles that way... With Aretha. Thought she'd have better taste. And your mom and dad... they got a place over yonder.”
Dean smiled, thinking of finally seeing his mother and father together again. Miracle sat next to him, nudging his hand until he began petting him.
“It ain't just Heaven, Dean,” Bobby said. “It's the Heaven you deserve. And we've been waiting for you.”
Bobby opened a cooler between their chairs and took out two beers, handing one to Dean.
“So, Jack did all that?” Dean asked, love bubbling inside him.
“Well... Cas helped,” Bobby said, a knowing smile on his face.
Dean felt his heart rise to somewhere in his throat. He grinned, and he could feel the grin stretching his entire face.
Castiel…
“It's a big, new world out there,” said Bobby. “You'll see.”
Dean took a sip of beer. “Oh, wow,” he said. “This tastes like the first drink I ever shared with my dad.”
“Quality stuff?” asked Bobby.
“No, it's crap,” said Dean, light-hearted. “But it was fantastic.”
“Just like this,” said Bobby. “Or… well, most of the time.”
“What do you mean most of the time?” asked Dean, feeling a bubble pop somewhere inside him. “You said there was bad news?”
There was always bad news.
“Well, Heaven’s new, and all that. Relatively, anyway. And sometimes it gets a bit… glitchy.” Bobby moved uncomfortably.
“Glitchy?”
“Well, yeah, a bit,” said Bobby. “The way Cas explained it-…”
Again, Dean’s heart soared.
“-… A year or so ago, for some reason, Heaven started trying to revert to the way it was before, when everybody had their own separate quarters.”
“So… we’re all… what… quarantined?” asked Dean, frowning as he tried to keep up.
“Kinda, yeah. Only, Heaven wasn’t ready for Charlie, and Ash of course. Cas worked together with them to make it so we can video-chat anybody else up here, any time we want.”
“Huh,” Dean said, thinking hard. It wasn’t great, but it was… if he was honest, better than he’d expected. An actual Bobby, and his actual parents, not just memories. And Cas… Cas was here somewhere. Something opened in his heart, a tornado of churning in a place that had been long silent.
“So how come you’re in my Heaven?” asked Dean.
Bobby laughed. “Happy accident,” he said. “When Jack broke me out or prison, he had to give me some sort of admin rights that allow me to move around the place. But I’m the only one, unfortunately. Even Cas has limitations. It’s… kinda weird to tell you the truth. But Charlie and Cas are fixing it. In about six months, we should be able to move around freely again.”
Dean looked at Bobby curiously. “So, if I try to drive down that road that leads to Mom and Dad’s place…”
“You’ll just keep driving and driving,” said Bobby. “It’s been like this for a year, and it should last only another six months. A few people have been broken out already. There’s some kind of formula for who’s broken out first… Cas can tell you.
“Mind you, every time anybody asks him or Charlie or Ash about it, everything turns into technical jargon that sounds like part astrophysics and part Enochian. But they seem awfully sure of themselves.
“But meanwhile, Dean, you can make your Heaven be anything you want. If you want a beach, or a forest, or a little cabin, it’ll make it for you. It even made the impala, look!”
Sure enough, there was the impala, gleaming and proud in the path he came from.
“You got everything you could ever want... or need or... dream,” Bobby said. “So, I guess the question is... what are you gonna do now, Dean?”
(*)
Dean spent some time taking a drive in the impala. He was excited to find out that there was a sort of “viewing station” on a bridge nearby where he could look in on how Sam was doing amongst the still living.
God his hair looked stupid.
He wondered into the Roadhouse, which was perfect, an odd amalgamation of the false Heaven that Michael had created and the Roadhouse as it had stood years ago. Next to the bar was a huge TV screen, which was on and playing Led Zeppelin’s “Ramblin’ On” in the background. In giant letters, the screen said, “Please speak, sign, or think the name of the person you would like to contact.”
“Mom and Dad,” Dean said without thinking.
Over the following hour, Mary Winchester expressed her pride and love for Dean and her happiness that she had gotten to know him in “the living world”. She begged him to forgive Jack; she admitted that though she’d been happy for the additional years she’d had with him and Sam, she had never truly felt like she belonged.
Dean found that he had already forgiven Jack a long time ago, which surprised him.
Mary left to speak with someone else, only to be replaced by John. His father told him he was proud of him, and asked him to recount in detail his adventures over the past several years. By the time he hung up with his father, he was crying.
Sometime during the time he had been speaking with John, a “Heaven chat waiting” light had appeared at the bottom of the screen, and it hadn’t stopped flashing red since that time. Once Dean had collected himself, he checked the “Heaven chat waiting” list and was astonished to find almost twenty people waiting to talk to him! Apparently, his mother and Bobby had spread the word.
Castiel was not on the list.
It was several additional hours before Dean got to the bottom of the list.
Charlie excitedly gushed technobabble as she discussed her “quest” to restore Heaven back to a state in which spirits could travel freely. As Bobby had warned him, it sounded like part astrophysics and part Enochian, and Dean understood less than half of it.
“And Cas says that because of the work Ash and I did, in six months, the ethereal plane will open up closest to Jupiter, and there’s a loophole for the last few souls divided by a power of five!” she finished excitedly.
“That’s… great?” Dean said. He had been lost twenty minutes ago.
Charlie rolled her eyes. “You are so NOT a nerd,” she said. “Have you talked to Cas?”
Dean knew he looked like a deer in headlights. “Uhh…”
“Ugh!” she exclaimed. “How long have you been in Heaven? Nut up, dude!” She set her lips determinedly and added, “Go get your angel, Dean! And don’t call me again until you’ve called him!” And she hung up on him.
But Dean still had a long list of people under the “Heaven chat waiting” button.
Kevin’s Heaven was peaceful, and he expressed his thanks to Dean for all of the times the brothers had helped him. He said that his mother was grateful as well, and they were in constant contact.
Rufus expressed his regret that Dean had died, but his excitement that Dean had died by vampires, because it meant he had won a bet against Bobby, who now owed him a drink.
“It’s Heaven,” said Dean. “Can’t you just get the drink yourself?”
“It’s the principle of the thing!” exclaimed Rufus.
Dean’s chat with Ash was similar to his chat with Charlie, except that Ash did a lot more drinking. He talked less excitedly but his words were equally indecipherable, and he didn’t mention Castiel.
Both Ellen and Jo expressed to Dean that they were proud to have known him, and had no regrets about dying the way they did.
There was a long list of survivors of various monsters that asked to speak with Dean to give him their thanks and praise for the rest of their lives, however long that had been.
Pam was last. Both eyes were in tact, and she expressed that she loved Heaven. “But Dean,” she said. “Stop fooling me. You don’t really want to talk to me. You’re just putting off talking to someone else.”
Damn psychics.
(*)
Dean had been in Heaven for more than two days before he finally used the television to call Castiel. He had talked to his parents twice more, as well as Kevin and Bobby.
All of them had asked if he had talked to Castiel since he’d been to Heaven. Finally, on the second day, Bobby asked, “Now, Dean, I don’t want to be in your business or anything, but did you and Cas have a bad end or something? He won’t say much, but it seems awful strange to me that you haven’t talked to him.”
“Son of a bitch!” Dean exclaimed. “Fine, I’ll talk to Cas already!”
“Well, now, don’t get smart with me, boy-…”
But Dean turned off the TV.
He turned it back on again and looked hopefully at the “Heaven chat waiting” button, but it was dormant.
Dean sighed, closed his eyes, and whispered, “Castiel.”
He came onto the screen immediately, looking exactly the same as he always had and wearing a fond smile.
Something behind Dean’s heart lurched. It was like skydiving and having an orgasm all at once, as though all of the pieces of his life became whole right as he began the world’s most horrifying roller-coaster ride.
“Cas-…” he stammered.
“Is your Heaven to your liking?” Castiel asked.
Behind Castiel, there was a whole board of red “Heaven call waiting” buttons, and Castiel was ignoring them all.
“Yes, Cas, it’s-…” Dean choked out.
“You were able to talk to your parents, Charlie said,” Castiel continued. “I know there were tons of people wanting to talk to you.”
How could Castiel not realize that he was the one person Dean had wanted to talk to the most? That he had been dreading it, dreading finding out that he couldn’t, that it wasn’t real…
“Sorry about the quarantine,” Castiel continued. “Jack’s busy trying to bring back all the other worlds that Chuck killed, so he’s still not available to come help. And it wasn’t his fault, none of us could’ve predicted that Heaven would try to revert back to the way it was before. But at least-…”
“Cas!” Dean yelled.
“Yes, Dean?”
“What did you want that you couldn’t have?”
Castiel glanced away from Dean, his face suddenly drawing together. It was as though shutters closed behind his eyes. “It doesn’t matter, Dean.”
“Cas,” Dean said, moving closer to the television as though he could reach through it. “What did you want that you couldn’t have?”
Castiel closed his eyes and took a breath. His voice was quiet as he answered softly, “You must know, Dean.”
It was Dean’s turn to take a breath. “I want-… that,” he said.
Shock registered on Castiel’s face, but only for a second. Castiel steeled himself, his mouth aligning into a straight line. “No, you don’t,” Castiel said, looking away again. “Don’t concern yourself, Dean.”
“I never knew!” Dean exclaimed at the television, the anxiety finally giving way to rage. “I never allowed myself to even think about it, because we were always fixing one Apocalypse after the next, and you – you never said anything! We could’ve had-…”
They could’ve had what, exactly? Dean didn’t know.
Castiel sat frozen, shock registering on his face. A sea of “Heaven call waiting” buttons blinked insistently behind him. Dean took another breath, and let it out slowly.
“I missed you, Cas,” he said. “And I love you.”
(*)
Two days later was Castiel’s day off, because apparently, he was in charge of Heaven in Jack’s stead, and he had insisted that angels have those.
Dean and Castiel took a ride in the impala. Cas smiled in the passenger seat, and it was so similar to so many years ago that it might have been a memory…
Except now they held hands.