Archive of Our Own

Dean enters Heaven far too soon on his human timeline and tragically quickly on a celestial one. Cas senses his soul - burning brightly as ever behind the tarnish of his hard-won years on Earth - as soon as it ascends. 

Feeling uncomfortably like those months he spent conspiring with Crowley for the Purgatory souls, Cas lurks, invisible, just out of Dean’s eyesight. He watches as Dean looks around before joining Bobby on the Roadhouse porch.

Bobby says Cas’s name, and Cas zeroes in on Dean’s reaction like Miracle catching the scent of a squirrel. 

But Dean only half-smiles. He barely reacts at all.

Chastised, Cas retreats.

Eavesdroppers never hear any good about themselves, or so the human saying goes. But Cas is unsure if hearing nothing is better than the bad.

This is Dean’s reward for saving people, hunting things, the family business. He doesn’t need any more of the supernatural, reminding him of things that have no place in his heaven. Cas can respect that. He has to, now more than ever.

Cas flies back to the space he and Jack had designated as Dean’s prior to his arrival. It’s a long drive from his parents’ place, closer to Bobby and Karen’s residence. Charlie Bradbury’s apartment is nearby, as is Kevin’s townhouse.

Cas stands in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by woods on three sides and a lake on the other. He hadn’t really started building Dean’s heaven, assuming he had at least a few human decades left to perfect it. 

So much for best-laid plans - Sam and Dean taught him that human adage.

With a thought, Cas summons the bones of a sturdy two-story house. Every room has at least one window, since the lack of sunlight was the only real complaint Dean had about the Bunker.

A spare bedroom waits for Sam when he can visit. All the furniture prioritizes comfort over aesthetics. The complete works of Spielberg slide themselves beneath the television set in the living room, along with all fifteen seasons of Dr. Sexy. 

The kitchen is large enough for both the Singers and all the Winchesters, past and present, to stand around comfortably. It has an exhaustive list of appliances to assist Dean in cooking and baking.

For the Impala, Cas creates a luxurious garage. He includes a poster of the Mystery Machine and the Scooby Gang on one wall. A Led Zeppelin poster flies to the opposite side. She won't degrade or wear down in Heaven, but Cas provides all the tools for her maintenance anyway since Dean always has found fixing up the Impala one of the most relaxing and rewarding activities he can do with his hands. 

Cas surveys the surroundings critically, moving from room to room, trying to imagine Dean in this space. What other needs can he anticipate? 

He enlarges Dean’s bed from a queen to a king-size so Miracle can be comfortable when he sleeps next to Dean. 

As Cas leaves the back door to survey the back of the house, he adds a doggy door at knee-height. He can provide a doggy bed after Miracle actually arrives in Heaven.

He walks out onto the lake, the rickety planks of a dock springing up beneath his feet. Cas looks around - it is identical to Dean’s dream, down to the creaky board three paces from the end. 

Cas sighs, collapsing into a lawn chair he creates at the end of the dock. Dean’s soul is getting closer; he can feel it at the edge of his consciousness.

Without looking behind him, Cas clears out a basement and adds foosball, a dart board, and pool table. By his calculation, Dean should need at least four cues - one each for Dean, Sam, Mary, and John. As a last thought, Cas adds a cabinet full of the board games he played with Charlie in the Bunker. Plus, a fully stocked wet bar.

Jack appears as Cas gets to his feet. “Hello, Cas,” he says, his eyes widening as he walks back towards the house, taking in all Cas created. “You got started without me.”

Cas smiles wryly at him. “He’s on his way. It couldn’t wait.”

“I guess not,” Jack says as he pulls open the back door and steps inside. He trails a curious finger along the wall on the way to the living room near the front of the house. “This is great.”

Cas tries not to be too pleased with himself.

Jack takes a tentative seat on the couch, beaming up at Cas. “What do you want to do while we wait?” Jack asks, “Connect Four? Battleship? Reversi?”

Cas falters. “I actually hadn’t planned on staying.”

“What?” Jack asks, brow furrowing over the mancala board he just created. “Why? You put all this work in. Don’t you want to see how he likes it?”

Of course he does. But Cas bites that thought back, shaking his head. “He has Bobby to show him around, and John and Mary are already on their way. They can orient him to the new Heaven.”

“But,” Jack hesitates, clearly thinking over his words, “Why not you?”

“We always let family show newcomers around,” Cas reminds him carefully. “An angel would be an imposition.”

Jack blinks at him. “ You wouldn’t be an imposition to him.”

“But he would be uncomfortable in my presence,” Cas says heavily, “You have to know that.”

“I - yes, from what you told me, he would be uncomfortable,” Jack admits, “but it would only be temporary!”

“But why would I ruin his first few moments in Heaven?” Cas asks him reasonably. “He only gets acclimatized once.”

“I guess,” Jack says, skepticism lacing every word. He frowns, his face conflicted. “Do you think it would be bad if I stayed, though?”

“Of course not,” he says, reaching out to squeeze Jack’s shoulder. “He’d love to see you. But before he gets here, I don’t think I got the kitchen quite right. Should it have some of Sam’s favorites too? Their tastes are so different-” he breaks off as a prayer comes through.

“God, Cas, anyone who’s out there, please help me. I don’t think Jody’s gonna get here in time, and Alex has her first night off in two weeks. Crap, that’s a lot of blood.”

Without another thought, Cas flies down to Earth. 

Claire needs him.

He finds Claire in an abandoned farmhouse. She’s fading, slumped over and surrounded by two corpses of dead shapeshifters. One looks like Donna and the other looks like Claire herself.

A brief infusion of grace to her soul has Claire’s eyelids fluttering. Hazy blue eyes eventually settle on Cas.

“Dad?”

Cas freezes.

Claire’s mouth opens and closes, her gaze raking down Cas’s - Jimmy’s - face. Eons later, she concludes, her voice more surprised than anything else, “Castiel.”

“I am not your father,” Cas tells her, wincing at his poor choice of words as soon as they leave his mouth.

Claire snorts at the memory, a far better reaction than Cas anticipated. “Where is my dad, anyway?” she asks, looking around. “And why does the afterlife look like the creepy farmhouse I died in? Am I in limbo or something? Is that a thing?”

Cas shakes his head. “You’re not dead.”

“I’m not?” she asks, eyebrows rising. “But you’re here. And Dean said you died… or whatever,” she peters off.

“I did,” Cas says awkwardly, “but my son - Jack - resurrected me.”

“Oh,” Claire says faintly, her expression bemused. As she gets to her feet, she asks without looking at him, “You have a son?”

“He’s not mine biologically,” Cas explains, hurrying to help her up. “I sort of adopted him.”

“Huh,” Claire says as she walks over to inspect the dead bodies. She lightly kicks the one wearing her face. “I didn’t know angels did that.”

Cas follows. “It wasn’t exactly planned,” he tells her, perplexed by her reaction. “His mother died in childbirth, and his biological father was Lucifer.”

Claire whirls around to stare at him. “Lucifer?” she asks flatly. “Like, the devil, Lucifer?”

“He’s dead now,” Cas explains, “but he tried to kidnap Jack multiple times.”

Claire’s face pinches like she has no idea what to make of Cas’s last sentence. After a beat, she tries, “That sucks?”

Cas nods in agreement. “Jack was very traumatized by the experience.”

“Oh, well, then,” Claire says, biting her lip. “You can go back to him, now. I got it here.” She swallows and, without waiting for his response, takes off for the front door.

Cas follows her out of the farmhouse towards her car.

“What’re you doing?” Claire asks, exasperated, as she pops open the trunk and lugs out a gallon of kerosene.

“I thought I would help you,” Cas starts, feeling wrong-footed, “like you asked for, in your prayer to me.”

Claire rolls her eyes. “You did help. I’m good as new now.”

Cas tries to take the kerosene from her, but she keeps it in a firm grip.

She glares up at him. “I told you, I’m good,” she says, her voice hard and knuckles white on the handle. “You can go back to your kid.”

“Jack?”

Claire shoots him a flat look. “You got any more wayward orphans stashed under that ugly trench coat?”

Cas ignores the dig at his attire. “No?”

Claire turns on her heel and strides back inside the farmhouse. “I’m a big girl,” she calls over her shoulder. “I can handle the cleanup on my own.”

“But Jack doesn’t need me,” Cas says, hurrying after her. “You do.”

“I just said-” Claire starts angrily.

Cas cuts her off. “Please, let me help.”

Claire squints at him and whatever expression he wears on his face makes her pause. “Why?” she presses.

“I missed you.”

Claire looks utterly flabbergasted. “Why?” she repeats in a completely different tone.

“Why did I miss you while I was in the Empty?” Cas asks, now equally baffled. At Claire’s blank stare, he explains, “It’s the dimension where angels go when they die.”

Claire unscrews the cap of the kerosene jug and throws a few splashes haphazardly around the room. “I’m kind of an asshole.”

Cas can’t help his smile. “That seems to be my preferred choice of companion.” He stands off to the side as Claire makes sure to thoroughly douse the bodies. “And you’re not really an asshole.”

Claire makes a pfft sound as she trails kerosene back to where Cas waits in the entryway. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.”

Claire jerks her head towards the door, and Cas leads the way back out. Claire fishes around in her pocket for a box of matches, and they both watch as the flame catches in the oil and spreads to the house.

“Jack is God now,” Cas says, apropos of nothing as fire consumes the whole left side of the house, crackling and popping as it devours. 

“Your life is so weird,” Claire mutters.

“He doesn’t need anything from me anymore,” Cas continues. “Nothing that any other angel couldn’t provide.”

After a beat, Claire says, “I’m sure that’s not true.”

Cas shakes his head.

“If you’re his dad,” Claire says slowly like she’s thinking over every word before saying it aloud, “he’s always going to need you. That’s how dads work.”

Guilt drags Cas down like a riptide. He shoves his hands in his coat pockets. “With Jack running Heaven, my powers are fully restored. I could carry a message from you to your father or vice-versa.”

Claire purses her lips. Shakes her head. “It’s fine.”

“I’m sure there are things you’d like to say to him,” Cas presses.

“I said, it’s fine,” Claire says, throwing up her hands. “You really are the biggest doof.”

“Sorry?”

Claire’s grimaces. “Look, I know you see me as your ward or charity case or something, but, we used to text, and then we couldn’t, and I didn’t… like that.” She shudders. “I hate that you’re making me talk about this.”

“But I’m not mak-”

Claire holds up a finger. “Not done,” she says shortly. “Anyway, you’re not my dad, no matter how much you look like him. But, I guess, I do need you. Sometimes. And not only ’cause you can save my ass on a hunt.”

“Really?” Cas asks, a strange, funny warmth exploding in his chest like Fourth of July fireworks. 

Claire nods. “Do you have a new number now you’re all back from the dead? I, uh, wouldn’t mind if I could text you again.”

“I will get a new one,” Cas assures her. 

Claire crosses her arms over her chest, turning so she faces the still-smoldering farmhouse instead of him. “I guess you having a kid threw me a little.”

“Sorry?”

Claire sighs. “I didn’t know angels could, I dunno, do that with kids. But maybe it’s different with half-devil babies.”

Cas waits, but when Claire doesn’t continue speaking, he replies quietly, “It’s not different.”

“Oh.”

He stares out at the burning house too. Dean told him countless times prolonged eye contact made people uncomfortable, and Claire already looks significantly uncomfortable speaking about this. He starts, “You said I probably think of you as a charity case. That is absolutely not how I see you.”

Claire kicks at a piece of dirt. “Yeah?”

“Of course,” Cas says. “You are a very smart, accomplished young woman.”

“I almost died tonight.”

“I can’t count the number of times I saved Sam and Dean,” Cas points out. “Occasionally needing help doesn’t detract from your strengths.”

Blushing, Claire ducks her head. “I didn’t think of it like that.”

“You’re young.”

Claire chuckles. 

“If you ever need me,” Cas tells her seriously, “pray. I’ll hear you, and I’ll come. No matter what.”

Claire grimaces. “Don’t you have to watch your spawn of Satan?”

“Please don’t call him that,” Cas says, frowning. “And, no, I don’t. He’s fully equipped to mind himself.”

“The all-knowing toddler God?”

“Physically, he’s about twenty-two,” Cas says as Claire’s mouth drops open in surprise.

“So weird,” she repeats.

They are standing by Claire’s car, warmed by the flames and not talking about much of anything, when Cas hears voices in the far distance. “Jody will be here in about five minutes,” he says, raising his voice as the roof of the still-burning farmhouse caves in. 

“Jody?” Claire repeats. “She got my message?”

Cas pauses, listening. “She’s just finished talking to a man from AAA. When she tried to get to you, her car wouldn’t start.”

Claire hums to herself. “I’ll text her, let her know everything’s fine.” She fishes out her phone from her jeans and the screen lights up with Jody’s name and a stream of text bubbles. “Crap,” Claire mutters as she taps out a reply to Jody. “She’s coming by anyway, just to check.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

Claire texts Jody one more message before she pockets her phone. “D’you think I could meet God?”

“Maybe later,” Cas says. “He’s busy right now showing around Dean to Heaven.”

“Dean?” Claire repeats. “Jody said he died, but Sam didn’t even want us swinging by with food and stuff. We lit a candle and Jody pulled out the good whiskey, though. Dean’s where my parents are, right? A better place?” she asks, frowning as the human cliché slips out.

“It’s debatable - I personally think he’d prefer to be on Earth with Sam - but he is at peace.”

Claire glances up at him, her eyes shrewd. “Hey, how come you aren’t showing him around? I thought God would have had better things to do.”

Cas shifts his weight to his other foot. “Jack wanted to greet him.”

“And you didn’t?”

Cas inhales a slow breath he doesn’t need to buy time. Eventually, he has to admit, “I did,” he says, his voice measured, “but I’m fairly certain Dean wouldn’t want me around.”

“Why not?”

Cas runs a weary hand down his face. “Before I died, I said some things to him that he didn’t want to hear.”

“Did you tell him he doesn’t pull off plaid as well as he thinks he does?” Claire snarks, rolling her eyes. “Look, I bet whatever you said wasn’t that bad. You’ve been best friends for years. One fuck-up won’t fuck that up.”

“I told him I loved him.”

Claire chokes on her own spit. “You like dudes?”

“I like Dean,” Cas clarifies, unsure why she chose that line of questioning first.

Claire blinks at him before she turns to study the dark farmhouse before them, the fire having mostly burned itself out. Hair falling in front of her face, she says, her voice low, “I, uh, I’m happy to hear it.”

“Really?” Cas asks, stunned. He, of course, had been overjoyed to just say it to Dean, but he hadn’t expected Dean - or anyone else - to react the same way. It was Cas’s true moment of happiness, and his alone. But to hear that Claire also was happy about it... that wasn’t something Cas had even contemplated happening - not because Claire wouldn’t approve, but he thought she wouldn’t care. 

But apparently she does, and Cas doesn’t have words for how that makes him feel.

“May I hug you?” he blurts. At Claire’s tentative nod, Cas wraps his arms around her, and her soul pulses that much brighter in his embrace.

“’Cause I like Kaia like that,” Claire mutters into his shoulder, finishing a thought Cas hadn’t realized was unfinished.

Cas reluctantly pulls away. “Have you told her?”

Claire tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “No. She’s still… recovering from the Bad Place.”

“Do you want my advice?”

“Not really,” Claire says, “but shoot. Not like we have anything else to talk about.”

“Don’t wait,” Cas says as Claire makes a contemplative scoffing noise - a contradiction in one sound. “I waited too long. Too much had built up between us, and I have no idea how to get back to where we were before.”

Claire nudges him in the side with her elbow. “You’ll figure it out.”

“How do you know that?”

“You’re old as balls. With age comes wisdom, blah, blah, blah.”

That is objectively true. 

“Thank you,” Cas tells her.

Claire grins up at him. “Don’t mention it.” Quick as lightning, she wraps her arms around him again. Before he can react, she bounds away, calling to the approaching car, “Hey, Jody! Look who I found!”

Jody, of course, insists on doing a thorough check-up on Claire, despite Claire’s protests that Cas mojoed her good as new. Cas offers to get Claire’s car back to Jody’s house so Jody and Claire can talk privately. This earns him a glare from Claire and a grateful smile from Jody.

Cas flies Claire’s car to Jody’s in less time than it takes to blink. He rockets up to Heaven for a quick update on Dean.

He finds Jack still showing him around, eagerly pointing out all the little things Cas designed or created to make Dean’s stay in the afterlife as comfortable as possible. Judging by the way Jack’s sentence falters as Cas lands, invisible, in the driveway, Jack feels his presence, but has the sense not to say anything to Dean.

“So this is my Heaven?” Dean asks, slapping a hand on the sturdy railing leading to the upstairs floor with his bedroom.

“Yes,” Jack says, “If you need anything at all, pray, and an angel will hear you and assist. It’s a lot more work for angels than when humans were stuck in their favorite memories, but Cas says angels like having something to do.”

Dean’s expression closes off at the mention of Cas’s name. “Do they?” he asks neutrally.

Cas searches Dean’s face hungrily for any sign, any clue, but he finds nothing. It’s like any regard or disregard Dean has for him is barely enough to register in his voice or on his face.

“Apparently,” Jack says, shrugging. “The last time they had nothing to do, they started the apocalypse.”

Dean snorts. “I remember, kid.”

“But under this system, no apocalypses yet!” Jack says, pleased. “So we’re considering it a success.”

Dean laughs, and Cas can’t bear to stay a moment longer.

Jody insists Cas stay for Claire’s midnight dinner. She reheats leftover lasagna, and, a few minutes later, Alex comes in smelling strongly of alcohol and unsteady on her feet.

The combined noises of Claire regaling the group with her hunt, Alex pouring herself a new glass of water every fifteen minutes like clockwork, Jody doing the dishes, and Donna on speakerphone, all draw out a sleep-deprived Kaia and a sleepy looking Patience.

Cas is only allowed to leave once Claire finishes her story and Alex passes out on the table. Jody pokes Alex reluctantly, and she mumbles a few unintelligible syllables. “I could carry her,” Cas offers quietly.

“No funny business,” Jody warns as Cas gently lifts Alex into his arms. “Angel or not, I can kick your ass.”

“Jesus, Jody,” Claire groans. “He doesn’t swing that way. He’s in love with Dean.”

“Claire,” Cas says in a strangled voice, looking haplessly at Jody.

Jody looks shell-shocked.

Patience giggles as Kaia casts both him and Claire curious looks.

“What?” Claire demands, crossing her arms over her chest. “You said you waited too long to tell people!”

“Too long to tell Dean,” Cas corrects through gritted teeth, “Not the general populace.”

“Are you ashamed of it?” Claire demands, a hint of a challenge in her tone. “You shouldn’t be. Except for your taste in men. You should be ashamed of that.”

Cas frowns, and he truly regrets having an unconscious young woman in his arms. She makes leaving so much more difficult. “I’m not ashamed,” he says firmly, “but I would like to keep my private life private.”

“It is private!” Claire protests. “We won’t tell.”

“All five of you,” Cas says dryly.

“Well shoot, I’m no blabbermouth neither!”

“Six,” Jody jerks her head towards her cell, still face-up on the table. Her mouth twitches. “Donna’s still on speakerphone.”

Cas sighs.

“Hey,” Jody says, her expression softening, “We all miss him. I know we don’t know you so well - except Claire - but we’re here if you ever want to talk about it.”

Cas briefly contemplates praying to Jack to get him out of this situation.

“I dunno if Cas is missing him,” Claire says before Cas can come up with a response, “Dean’s in Heaven, apparently. Cas can go there whenever he wants to.”

“He is?” Jody sags against the counter in relief. “He’s really up there?”

“I briefly saw him before I had to rescue Claire,” Cas assures her. “He is at peace.”

Jody nods with her whole body, her eyes bright. “Good,” she mutters as she turns back to the dishes, “that’s good. He deserves it.”

Patience walks over and hugs her from behind.

“But Cas here is too chickenshit to do anything about it,” Claire continues.

Cas frowns. Maybe he was too quick to judge her as ‘not an asshole.’

Kaia asks, “What do you mean?”

If Cas was human, his arms would have been aching. But alas. Cautiously, he says, “I haven’t spoken to him since I was last on Earth,” he says.

“Why the heck not?” Donna demands.

Mild panic at the inevitable direction of the conversation knocks around the pit of his stomach, but Cas stands his ground. Claire supports him, and perhaps Kaia. He looks around, his gaze catching on Jody.

Jody loves Dean; she has been his friend for years. She might not have reacted badly at hearing that Cas has romantic feelings for him, but perhaps hearing that Cas pursued them (futilely, as he knew the whole time) would change her mind. 

On the other hand, Jody also loves Claire, and Claire supports him, so it is possible Jody could approve of Cas's affections.

It’s all so confusing. Human relationships will never cease to baffle him.

“I told him I loved him right before I died,” Cas says quietly.

“Ah,” Jody says first, her expression softening to understanding, “And what’d he say?”

“Nothing,” Cas says.

To his surprise, Jody snorts. “Figures.”

“Excuse me?”

“That man needs at least five business days to process emotions that aren’t happy, sad, mad, and hungry.” She sends him a sharp look. “And, let me guess, Claire is right, and you’re too afraid to confront him about what he’s feeling.”

“Mom-Mode strikes again,” Claire mutters to Patience, who at least hides her laugh behind her hand.

Jody ignores them. She raises her eyebrows at Cas, making an expectant humming noise in the back of his throat.

The silence drags on until Cas volunteers reluctantly, “I suppose that is correct.”

“Holy moly. Am I hearing right? You’re a fudging angel - buck up!”

Jody grins. “Donna’s right.”

“Darn tootin’.”

“Talk to him,” Jody says, “just rip off the bandaid. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

Cas adjusts Alex, now quietly snoring in his arms, so she doesn’t drool on his coat. “You don’t?”

“Nope,” Jody says. “But, on the slim, we’re talking nanoscopic, chance he is a jerk about it, come back here. None of the girls have boy troubles,” she says, looking fondly at Claire and Kaia, “so I’m overdue for ice cream and bitching about men.”

“I do not ‘bitch,’” Cas says stiffly, but the tension that has strung him tight since Claire brought up Dean’s name is already starting to ease.

“Sure you don’t,” Claire mutters.

“Let me know how it goes too,” Donna says cheerfully, “Quality Jody time and ice cream? Sign me up!”

“Gross,” Claire says in an undertone. She dances away as Kaia aims an elbow at her side.

“Bedtime!” Jody announces quickly, scooping up her phone. “Talk to you soon, Donna, bye!” She hangs up before Donna can say another word.

Alex noses her face into his shoulder, mumbling, “You smell good.”

Cas flies to Heaven, a brand new phone with several new contacts in his pocket.

He doesn’t immediately confront Dean. The strategist in him tells him to scope out the situation first. Gather intel. Form a plan.

Cas lurks, invisible, at the edges of Dean’s Heaven. He hears Dean first before he sees him, puttering around his kitchen. John and Mary are getting in their car to leave, already talking about visiting a mutual hunter friend.

“Shit,” Dean mutters to himself as he stares at the dirty dishes piled high from having his parents over for lunch and making a blueberry pie from scratch. “If this is paradise,” he grumbles, bending down to pull out rubber gloves from the space beneath the sink, “I shouldn’t have to keep doing the damn dishes.”

Unseen, Cas waves his hand.

Dean straightens up to find the dishes gone.

Cas smiles to himself as Dean lets out a confused, “What the hell?” Dean opens the closest cabinet, and discovers clean, stacked plates and sparkling glassware. He touches the tops of his knives now gleaming in their knife block and yanks open the cutlery drawer to find all his utensils neatly put away.

“Huh,” Dean says as he closes the cabinet and pushes the drawer back in. He scratches the back of his head, looking at a loss as to what to do next.

Before Cas can act, Dean lets out a huge yawn.

He leaves the kitchen and troops upstairs towards his bedroom. Once he starts unbuttoning his flannel, Cas looks away. Another time, clearly, when Dean isn’t exhausted from social interactions.

Cas stretches his wings out, trying to figure out where he is second-most needed, when he hears Dean say, “So no porn in Heaven? Guess they really are junkless.”

Cas turns back around. With a thought, a few of Dean’s favorite issues of Busty Asian Beauties slide themselves into the top drawer of his nightstand.

“Yahtzee!”

Cas doesn’t stay for the rest.

Cas occupies himself rebuilding parts of Heaven far away from Dean’s. Jack pops in every few days to remind him Dean is waiting, but Cas already checks in on Dean periodically so he knows for himself that is not true.

Dean settles in well, not that Cas had expected any differently. Dean has always been extremely adaptive to any environment he finds himself in.

Over the next few weeks, Dean sets up lunches with his parents, game night with Charlie, Jo, and Kevin, and regular dinners with Bobby and Karen. On Sunday mornings, he spends at least an hour fishing with Jack when Jack can make it.

He keeps busy, which Cas can appreciate since he is doing the same thing.

When Jack brings up the placement of a few questionable souls, Cas volunteers to discuss the matter with Rowena before Jack can tell him not to.

“Cas!” Rowena says joyfully as the guards let him through to her throne room. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought it’d be Babyface.”

“Jack was busy,” Cas lies as he takes a seat.

Rowena shrugs. “Maybe next time, then.” She leans forward, her eyes gleaming. “But, meanwhile, I get you all to myself, hm?”

Cas glances around the empty room. He tucks his coat closer around himself, but, judging by Rowena’s hungry stare, she can see right through it. “I came to discuss the souls of Ellie Garcia and Max Banes.”

“Boring,” Rowena declares. “Business talk later, don’t you know the rules?”

“Er, no?”

“Right,” Rowena lets out a lilting laugh, “It has been a while, hasn’t it, Tweety Pie?”

“I suppose,” Cas says. He hasn’t seen Rowena since before he and Dean went to Purgatory to find the Leviathan blossom.

“Now, tell Auntie Rowena all that’s happened since you’ve graced this fiery pit of despair.” She sips at her drink, looking perfectly at ease. “I’ve heard quite the rumors flying around.”

Cas frowns. “I died?” he tries. 

Rowena waves her hand dismissively. “Everybody dies, darlin’,” she says with a wink, “but if you’re worth your weight in salt, it’s usually a couple times before it sticks, isn’t that right?”

“Jack resurrected me.”

Rowena rolls her eyes. “I put that one together for myself, thank you.”

Cas glares at her. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”

Rowena levels him a hard look, tipping back her glass. “Something juicy,” she says, her lips curling around the words to make them sound like pornography. “All these demons are so dreadfully dull with nothing worth gossiping about. Well, maybe they have something , but they fear me too much to ever be bosom buddies.”

“And you would like to be… bosom buddies with me?” Cas asks cautiously.

Rowena laughs, delighted. “You flirt, you.”

“That wasn’t a flirtation.”

“Oh, you’re too much fun,” Rowena says as she reaches over to pat him condescendingly on the hand. “So tell me,” she starts, and Cas last saw that look in her eye as she tried to goad Charlie Bradbury into transferring a few million pounds from the English Treasury to her personal bank account. “A little birdie told me that Dean Winchester finally died for good.”

“He did,” Cas says, a horrible foreboding settling over his shoulders.

“Since he’s not with me, and clearly not on Earth, I assume he won the golden ticket upstairs?”

“Dean’s soul is in Heaven,” Cas confirms cautiously.

Rowena taps a perfectly manicured fingernail against her glass. “Did you two ever kiss and make up, like I told you to?”

That foreboding crashes headlong into resignation.

“Yes,” he says shortly. They did. And then Cas screwed it all up again, as he does.

Rowena’s eyes narrow with suspicion. She clearly did not live to be several hundred years old by letting things slip by her. “I’m sensing something else,” she says in a knowing voice.

Cas clasps his hands in his lap.

Perhaps confronting Dean would be less painful than this. 

Why does everyone insist on talking about Dean Winchester? Cas lived for millennia before he encountered a Winchester. He witnessed grand feats of celestial armies, led battles of thousands to victory, and carried out God’s will (or so he had thought at the time) to wreck divine retribution on Heaven’s enemies.

But, in another sense entirely, Cas hadn’t lived until he met Dean Winchester’s soul in Hell.

“Dean did forgive me,” Cas says reluctantly, “but we had another… disagreement.”

“What about?” Rowena asks, intrigued. “Did you tell him to work on that wee temper of his?”

“No.”

Annoyed at his one-word answer, she says snippily, “I take it back. You’re no fun at all.” Rowena snaps her fingers. “I’ll make you a deal, how do you like that?”

“Deals with Rulers of Hell haven’t gone well for me in the past,” Cas says dryly.

“I’m different,” Rowena declares with a toss of her hair over her shoulder. “I’m a mother, you know. That changes a person.”

“Crowley had a son,” Cas points out.

Rowena ignores him. “I’ll let you have your two souls - and I hope you know how much I’m giving up by letting that handsome natural witch go - if you tell me what really happened between you and Dean.”

Cas resists the urge to sigh. He doesn’t need to breathe, but all his time with humanity has apparently affected him in ways big and small. “A few years ago,” he starts again, “to save Jack’s life, I made a bargain with the Empty. When I experienced a moment of true happiness, the Empty would take me.”

Rowena frowns. 

“Billie had cornered Dean and me in the basement of the Bunker,” Cas explains, his voice inexplicably heavy despite his best attempts to stay detached. “But she was mortally wounded, and if the Empty could be summoned to Earth, I knew it would take her too.”

Rowena leans forward in her seat, listening with rapt attention.

“So I told Dean what I had been keeping to myself for years. I told him that I -” Cas stumbles over the phrase, “I loved him.”

“Oh,” she claps her hands together, startling him, “I do love a good love story.”

“I thought you said love was a weakness,” Cas argues.

Rowena waves his comment away. “Love stories about other people, you goose.” But she doesn’t meet his eyes as she speaks, instead raising her forgotten glass of Glencraig to her lips. “And, anyway, I was right. Your love got you killed.”

“But Jack’s love brought me back,” Cas points out.

Rowena softens. “Yes, it can do that too,” she says staring down into her drink. “I suppose I didn’t love Fergus enough. Oh,” she adds as Cas opens his mouth, “in the end maybe I did, but only after centuries.” She sighs. “Too little, too late, I suppose.”

“You could try now.”

Rowena lets out a tinkling laugh like shards of glass breaking. “With all the powers of Hell at my disposal, I could resurrect him. But I won’t, and you know why? Because Fergus would take all of this back,” she gestures to the empty throne room, “if he ever returns. I do love him, but not enough to give this up.”

Silence falls between them, and, for once, Cas doesn’t pick up on any lingering awkwardness.

“Look at us,” Rowena says as she drains her glass, “both shattered at the altar of Winchester in the end, weren’t we? I for Samuel, you for Dean.”

Cas frowns. “You and Sam?”

Rowena adopts a matching frown. “You didn’t know?”

“I-” Cas breaks off. He had suspected. Rowena had clung onto her human life like Dean fought for the last slice of pizza - tenaciously and ferociously. It figures love would be the only force powerful enough to sway her priorities. “You never said anything.”

“It was fruitless.” She smiles wryly, snapping her fingers twice.

A demon appears at her elbow, a bottle of scotch in hand. She tops up Rowena’s glass, lingering and staring at Cas unabashedly.

“Yes, go on.” Rowena flicks her wrist in Cas’s direction. “Do you want a drink? All this talk of love gives me the willies.”

Before Cas can answer, the demon hands him a glass.

“Sláinte,” Rowena says sardonically.

Cas raises his drink, a similar smile tugging at his lips. The Queen of Hell and the most powerful Seraph in Heaven toasting to each other’s health is unobjectively funny.

Once a quarter of his drink and the demon attendant are gone, Cas ventures, “You never said anything to Sam.”

“No,” Rowena says, and he can’t detect a hint of regret in her words. “He would have pitied me, and if there is something I hate worse than being powerless, it’s pity.” She knocks back her glass.

“I’m not sure if Dean pities me,” Cas says, turning his drink contemplatively in his hands.

Rowena’s eyes narrow. “Why would he pity you?” she asks, her accent growing more pronounced in her irritation. “You’re an angel of heaven, and he’s a dead man in tartan,” she sniffs.

“I think he’s more angry,” Cas says quietly.

“That makes even less sense,” Rowena declares.

“I told him I loved him, Rowena,” Cas reminds her sharply.

“And then I assume you two slept together in that wretched basement. I have to say, your true happiness is so very 90s.”

Cas’s mouth falls open.

“Very Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” Rowena says nonsensically. At his continued blank look, she explains waspishly, “After Lucifer destroyed my body, I had a considerable amount of time on my hands. I exhausted all the higher art forms by my third month of recuperation, or else I would have never - the plot was drivel, and its depiction of witches was appalling, but at least that Spike-”

“We did not have sex,” Cas forces out.

“Excuse me?”

Cas downs the rest of his scotch in one go. “Immediately after I told him, the Empty took me.”

“That was all it took?” Rowena gasps. She leans back on her throne. “This is far more tragic than I ever gave you credit for.”

“My happiness was in the being.”

“What in Circe’s name does that mean?” Rowena demands.

“It means,” Cas says, staring down into his empty glass, “That I didn’t expect reciprocation when I said it. I think it is very similar to you and Sam.”

“It bloody well is not!” Rowena screeches. 

Cas straightens, his eyes narrowing. 

A knock sounds on the door. “Is all well, your Majesty?”

Rowena glares daggers at her. “It’s all fine, except for this knuckle-headed angel mucking everything up.”

“Rowena-” Cas starts to protest.

“My affection for Samuel was deep but fleeting. It passed,” Rowena says loudly. “While I bet Dean has been the lone object of your affection since he was a wee hunter and you carried him out of this place. You are a bloody angel. Act like it.”

“I can’t force him to love me back,” Cas says through gritted teeth.

Rowena leans forward so they’re almost nose-to-nose. “Why force something that’s already there, darlin’?”

Cas frowns. “Dean doesn’t love me.”

Rowena rolls her eyes as she settles back on her throne. “I may be dead, but I’m not blind. That man loves you. I’ve had thirty one fiancés; I know what love looks like.”

“But he-”

“No buts,” she says, waggling a finger in his face like he’s a wayward toddler, “You got what you came for. Heaven will claim those souls. Now, go talk with Dean Winchester, and don’t come back until you do. Guards!”

Cas gets to his feet as the doors open.

“And, Feathers,” Rowena’s voice makes him turn, “Make sure you get that real moment of true happiness too.” She winks. “Nudity included, of course.”

Cas doesn’t deign to respond before leaving.

Cas is no fool. He doesn’t trust Rowena’s word, like he shouldn’t have trusted Crowley’s before her. He returns to Dean’s Heaven, ready for more reconnaissance.

He finds Dean out by the lake, fishing with a beer in one hand and a pole in another.

Once Cas became Dean’s friend, he always felt guilty intruding into the dream that took place at an identical dock in Maine, frozen in time from the summer of ‘91. John had been slowly decimating a local vampire nest, beheading one bloodsucker at a time. Dean and Sam, for once, hadn’t been entirely left up to their own devices. John had a job in town and was home by nightfall every day.

This was the dream Dean used to have when he felt relaxed and safe. Dean would fish for hours of dream time, thinking about nothing, worrying about nothing. And Cas would barrel in, full of ominous warnings, dragging him back into the fight against the supernatural.

Cas can’t do it again. He hangs back, watching as Dean slowly sips his beer down to the dregs. Every so often the line twitches, but Dean only half-heartedly tries to reel the other end in.

If Cas intruded, Dean’s peaceful day would be ruined. 

Cas can see it play out in Heaven like it had a dozen times on Earth. Dean’s anger would blaze hot enough to scald. There would be yelling, a warning not to see him again. So why should Cas talk to Dean at all if he will just tell him to leave?

It’s better this way. Dean finally gets to rest, and Cas gets to watch over him. As he always has done.

Cas summons a bucket of iced El Sol and places it silently at Dean’s feet. He flies away before Dean notices it.

Sam nearly swerves off the road as Cas appears in the passenger seat of the Impala.

“Cas?” Sam yelps, his eyes widening as they flick back and forth from the dimly-lit highway to Cas’s face and back again.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Okay, wait-” Sam jerks the Impala’s wheel to the right, pulling over on the side of the highway.

A car horn blares behind them. “You didn’t have to do that,” Cas says. He cranes his neck to watch the offended Honda Civic speed past.

Sam just stares at him.

“I’m sure you have somewhere you need to be,” Cas says into the silence ballooning rapidly between them.

Sam inhales sharply. “It can wait,” he says as he leans closer, eyes narrowing. “Is it really you?”

Cas blinks. “It is.”

“Dean-” Sam breaks off, swallowing, “Dean said he saw you die. Like for good.”

“Jack resurrected me from the Empty.” Cas folds his hands in his lap. “He needed help in rebuilding Heaven.”

Sam presses his lips together, his mouth quivering. Once he’s got a hold of himself, he asks, “Is Dean…?”

“Dean is in Heaven,” Cas assures him.

“Good,” Sam says, sagging in his seat like a marionette with its strings cut. “He’s - that’s good.”

Cas monitors Sam’s reaction closely as he says, “Dean has his own house, next to your parents, Bobby and Karen Singer, and the Roadhouse. Charlie Bradbury, Kevin Tran, and Pamela Barnes visit regularly.”

With every added description of Dean’s afterlife, Sam’s tears well up further until he’s forced to surreptitiously wipe beneath his eyes. “That’s... good.”

“Would you like me to drive?” Cas asks politely.

“What?”

“I assume you were going somewhere important,” Cas tilts his head towards the highway, “before I interrupted you.”

Sam sniffs loudly. “I was heading over to Eileen’s,” he explains, “She needed some lore for a hunt, so I was bringing over a few books from the Bunker.” He drops his gaze down to his lap, sniffling again. “I kind of moved in with her,” he admits like it’s a shameful secret. “I couldn’t be in the Bunker alone. I couldn’t take it.”

“I’ll drive you,” Cas says firmly, and before Sam can object, he gets out of the Impala and walks around to the driver’s side.

Sam doesn’t immediately get out of the Impala so Cas leans against the side of the hood to wait. He watches the cars drive past, each one containing a separate soul with their own complex ambitions, fears, routines, heartaches, and joys. They flit by in a blur of inter-dimensional light, off on their own adventures. 

Dean would roll his eyes and tell him to knock off his invasive angel version of people-watching.

Cas keeps watching anyway.

When Sam eventually opens the door and stands to his considerable full height, he envelops Cas in a hug. 

“I - oh,” Cas says as he hugs back, like Sam instructed him so long ago. 

Sam’s breath hitches as the hug carries on longer than Dean once told Cas was socially acceptable. Sam exhales, shaky and stuttering, and Cas tastes tears in the air. “It’s going to be okay, Sam,” he says because grieving humans appreciate platitudes.

Sam lets out a watery chuckle by his left ear. “I know, dude. You just being here tells me it’s going to be okay.” He gives Cas one last squeeze that would have made Jimmy’s human ribs creak. Sam jerks his head towards the driver’s seat. “You sure?” he asks. “I think I’m good to drive now. It was just a shock seeing you.”

“I know you’re more comfortable in the passenger side.”

“Yeah, but so are you.”

“If we’re judging by sheer time spent in this car, I am most comfortable in the back seat. But if I sat there,” Cas says, brow furrowing, “neither of us would drive, and you would never get to Eileen’s.”

Sam hands over the keys, a tentative smile on his lips. “Not like I can beat that logic.”

Cas gets in the Impala and waits until Sam is fully seated, lap belt buckled, before he turns on the engine. Biting his lip, he pulls out and merges into traffic.

“Have you ever driven her before?” Sam asks, breaking Cas’s concentration.

“No.”

Sam says after a beat, “You seem tense. Like the first time Dean let me behind the wheel tense.”

“I am tense.” Cas presses down a little harder on the gas as the third car passes them. “She’s Dean’s car. He even has a version of the Impala in Heaven.” He eyes a suspiciously close Kia Sorento in his side mirror.

Sam lets out a startled laugh. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“Heaven no longer traps people in their favorite memories,” Cas explains, keeping his gaze firmly on the road, “Jack and I tore down the walls so souls can roam freely - or drive freely, in Dean’s case.”

“Seems like a much better system,” Sam says quietly to his lap.

“We still received a record number of complaints,” Cas says mildly as they cruise past a Toyota Camry. “But I think that was because this was the first time Heaven ever solicited feedback.”

Sam taps his fingers on his thigh. “I’m sure Dean had a lot of thoughts about that.”

Cas stiffens. His grip tightens on the steering wheel. “Not that I’m aware of.” 

Sam frowns. “Really?”

“I - ah, haven’t actually spoken to him,” Cas says, stumbling over his words. “But I assume Jack would have told me if Dean has any reservations with the new system.”

Sam’s frown deepens, and Cas’s stomach sinks. “You haven’t talked? Even after…?”

Cas checks his rearview mirror. “I didn’t think it was necessary.” He chances a glance at Sam, whose face is incredulous. “I’m still watching over him.”

“You’re spying on him.”

“Observing,” Cas corrects testily.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Why are you spying on him instead of actually talking to him?”

“He doesn’t want to see me,” Cas says evenly, flipping on the blinker before merging into the exit lane.

“And how do you know that if you won’t talk to him?” Sam asks, eyebrows rising.

“I - I just do.”

Sam doesn’t respond, but his dubious expression says everything his mouth doesn’t.

Cas sighs, waiting at their first red light off the highway. “Did Dean tell you the circumstances of how I died?”

An interminable age later, after the light has changed to green, Sam starts speaking. “No, he wouldn’t tell me.”

Cas nods once. Sam is only confirming what he had suspected. Dean was either too mortified or livid after hearing Cas’s confession. Probably both and more.

Cas presses down on the gas pedal until the Impala reaches exactly thirty-five miles an hour - an appropriate speed for a pedestrian-heavy area. 

“What happened?” Sam prompts into the silence. “I tried to get it out of him, but he wouldn’t budge.”

Cas opens his mouth, waits for a single word to come to mind, and closes it again when no miraculous epiphany bursts forth.

“That bad?” Sam asks.

Cas shakes his head, lips pressed tight together to keep in the real truth from threatening to come out. Telling Claire, Jody, and Rowena was one thing. But Sam is Dean’s brother. The one he loves most on Earth, Heaven, and everywhere in between. If Sam condemns Cas for his one moment of true happiness, he will as good as banish Cas from the Winchesters’ lives forever. 

“I seriously tried everything,” Sam says, “I gave him space. I let him drink. Hell, I let him pick stupid fights about how to clean the kitchen and how much daily bacon the Bunker really needs.”

“Then maybe,” Cas says through gritted teeth, “he didn’t want you to know.”

“But that’s the thing,” Sam says, a strange urgency to his voice, “if he didn’t want me to know, he would have hidden it better. It’s almost like he wanted to talk about it but didn’t know how to.” His words take on a distinctly wry tone. “I don’t know if you’ve picked up on this, but we’re really bad at communicating. Like, the worst .”

“Yes, that fact has come to my attention,” Cas says, his voice stilted.

“I think, if he had more time, he would have told me.” He sobers. “But he didn’t.”

Cas steers the Impala down a few more streets, ever-aware of the impending cut-off point of their conversation. Eileen’s house is only a few minutes away, and Cas can already sense her soul, bright and churning with anticipation for another evening researching with Sam.

“I just-” Cas breaks off as he slows the Impala to a dead stop at the next red light. “I just don’t want you to hate me too.”

“Cas…”

Cas keeps his eyes firmly on the road. He’s still driving Dean’s Baby with Sam in the passenger seat. He can’t let any distractions keep him from his duty to Dean’s most prized possession.

Sam reaches over and hesitantly pats him once on the shoulder. “It’s alright, man.”

Cas grunts a non-answer. The Jeep behind them is far too close for his liking. Cas steps on the gas.

“Whatever you did…” Sam continues, “Dean said it saved his life. He was grateful.”

Cas nods begrudgingly.

“He missed you, after you were gone,” Sam says, his eyes downcast. “I - it was rough. For both of us.”

Cas turns to him, surprised.

Sam gestures between them. “Come on, dude. I know you and Dean had that more profound bond and stuff, but we’re family too. When you didn’t come back - and after Dean died...” he drifts off, his expression going hard. “It was rough.”

Cas almost misses Eileen’s house. He slams down on the brake.

Sam’s hand shoots out to brace himself on the dash.

“My apologies,” Cas says sheepishly.

“She’s been through worse,” Sam says, shrugging.

Cas turns to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t see you sooner.”

“It’s fine,” Sam mutters, running a weary hand through his hair. “Look, Dean was ready for it. He always said he wanted to go down swinging, and he did. But you,” he stares out the windshield at Eileen’s perfectly boring suburban street, “he made it sound like you didn’t want that for yourself.”

Cas taps his fingers against the stationary wheel, debating his answer. “No, I didn’t,” he says in a low voice, “But ever since I pulled Dean out of Hell, I thought there was a very strong possibility.”

Sam taps his fingers against his thigh nervously. “I kept thinking, you’d come back from the Empty before. Of course you’d do it again. I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting.”

“I’m sorry-”

“It’s fine,” Sam repeats even though his face says it clearly isn’t. He waves Cas’s protests away. “You had more important things to do, like fixing up Hea-”

Cas inhales a sharp breath. “I told him I loved him.”

Sam stops mid-sentence. “You what?”

“I told Dean I loved him,” Cas says in a carefully measured voice. “Before I died. That’s how I left things off with your brother.”

Sam gapes at him before he finally says, “Like, romantically?”

“Yes, romantically,” Cas forces out, the words bitter on his tongue.

Sam’s hazel eyes are wide, raking up and down Cas’s face. “You’re serious.”

Cas glares daggers. “I would not joke about something like this.”

Sam runs a hand through his hair, stunned. “No, you wouldn’t,” he agrees quietly.

Silence crashes down between them: impossible to ignore and too awkward even for Cas. 

“Right,” Cas says, his whole body thrumming as if for flight. He lays a hand on the door handle of the Impala. “Now you know why Dean acted like he did. If you’ll excuse me, Heaven-”

“When you didn’t come back,” Sam says loudly over Cas’s, admittedly pathetic, excuse to leave, “I thought it made some sort of sick sense. Neither of you ever wanted to live without the other.”

Cas frowns. He shakes his head. “No - that’s how he felt about you.”

“Yeah, but not in the same way,” Sam says, shuddering. “Jesus Christ, no, not in the same way.” He turns to Cas, his face deadly serious. “You’ve never been around him after he loses you - the way he acts, it’s not how you mourn a friend. God knows we burned and buried enough of them to know.”

“Sam,” Cas says slowly, feeling like a small fish venturing out into the vast ocean, just waiting for the drop-off, “He always said I was like a brother to him.”

Sam smiles wryly at him. “I’m pretty sure Dean always said something else too: people lie.” 

Cas can almost feel Dean’s phantom fingers at his throat, adjusting his tie, as he says, “When humans want something really, really bad, we lie.”

Dean usually lied as easily as he breathed, but never to family. Whenever Dean had to hide things from Sam, it came at great moral cost. And although Cas would never presume that Dean holds him in as high esteem as his brother, he imagines Dean would have a lesser but similar reaction to lying to Cas.

Dean wouldn’t do what Sam is implying. He wouldn’t put himself into such a state of a moral conflict again and again because of Cas.

Dean is a man of action. When he wants to drink, he drinks. When he wants to have sex, he goes and gets it. When he wants a romantic relationship, he pursues one. He drives up to Lisa Braden’s doorstep with all his worldly possessions in the back trunk of the Impala and asks her if she will take him, traumas and all.

And the fact remains, Dean has never done any of that for Cas.

Cas has learned many lessons from the Winchesters over the years. Don’t take a joint from a man named Don. Don’t smell the dead guy. Don’t watch porn in a room full of dudes.

While hunting, of course, the most important rule is nonsensically called Occam’s Razor: the simplest solution is usually the right one.

And the simplest solution is: Dean never lied to him. 

If Cas accepts that, he doesn’t need to twist his logic into circles to understand the hidden reasons behind Dean’s lies because those hidden reasons are figments of his imagination. 

The simplest solution is right there, in Dean’s words about Cas. Or, lately, in the lack thereof.

Sam exhales a weighty sigh. “When you do see him, let him know I’m doing alright, okay? I’m living, like he asked me to. I’m not taking stupid risks or making demon deals. Eileen’s watching out for me.”

Cas nods, casting a curious look at Sam before letting his gaze drop to his lap. He barely hesitates before he says, “Or I could bring him back.”

Sam presses his lips together. He pushes his hair back from his face, clearly wrestling with himself. Eventually, he asks, “You could do that?”

“Of course,” Cas says, almost offended. “I’ve brought countless souls back from the dead over the millennia. I’m an Angel of the Lord.”

“Yeah, but this just anyone; it’s Dean.” Sam shoots Cas a long, calculating look. “You’re watching over him in Heaven, right?”

“Yes, I am,” Cas says cautiously.

“And he’s at peace?”

“Yes.”

Straightening in his seat, Sam shakes his head. “Then thanks, but no thanks. His last night - when he was - he said he was done, and I’m choosing to believe him,” he says, his voice firm as he shoves the passenger door open. “But you should still talk to him.”

Cas stays in the Impala long enough to watch Sam ring Eileen’s doorbell. She answers, casting a curious look at Cas, still in the driver’s seat. But before she can take a step in his direction, Sam ushers them both inside.

Cas stretches his wings.

When Cas next visits Dean’s Heaven, Dean is singing along loudly to Taylor Swift’s 2014 album, 1989 (Deluxe Edition). He’s putting far more effort in shaking his hips, as the chorus demands, than maneuvering the vacuum around the living room.

Cas retreats, his heart aching with a strange mix of joy and wistfulness.

Dean has always been at his most endearing, most charming, most beautiful, when he frees himself from expectation. When he is simply himself.

“Enough, Cas,” Jack says as he flits down to land beside Cas in the Heaven of an autistic man who died in a bathtub in 1953. Unlike all the times before Cas had visited to clear his head, a narrow stone path now leads up to another house a half a mile away that belongs to the man’s mother. The man still spends hours out in his garden, though, flying his kite.

“You can’t keep avoiding him forever.”

A small, petty part of Cas almost starts to say, Watch me, but he wrestles it back. “No, I can’t,” he says instead, “but it’s not time yet.”

Jack throws his hands in the air. “When will it be? He loves his house-”

Cas violently squashes the weak, fluttering pride beneath his ribcage.

“-he has reunited with all the friends he had on Earth, his family. He understands the rules of Heaven. What are you waiting for?”

Cas shakes his head, at a loss for words.

“Cas,” Jack starts again, “He wants to see you.”

“Does he?” Cas asks bitterly because he can’t help it. “Everyone has said I should confront him, that he will be receptive. But I haven’t found a single shred of evidence that Dean has thought about me once since he arrived.”

Jack tilts his head, studying Cas curiously. “But you know that Dean doesn’t like talking about the things most important to him.”

Cas opens his mouth and closes it again. Finally, he can only say, “That is an astute observation.”

“I read the Winchester Gospels,” Jack says proudly. “Charlie showed me how to find them on the internet. They are surprisingly informative even though Dean doesn’t like them.”

“He considers them an invasion of his privacy,” Cas says absently, shoving his hands in his pocket and staring at the line of fir trees in the distance, blocking the far-off view of Eau Claire. 

“Chuck was much more hands-on than I had intended to be,” Jack says as he summons a pair of lawn chairs and sinks into one of them, gesturing for Cas to do the same. They’re of the same make as the chair at the end of Dean’s dock, and Cas doesn’t know what to make of that. There are more comfortable chairs in existence, of course, and Jack could have chosen any of them. But instead of explaining, Jack continues, “He meddled where he shouldn’t have, Dean told me, and he didn’t change what he should have.”

Cas purses his lips. “What did he mean by that?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Jack admits. “I was hoping you’d know.”

Cas shakes his head. “You could always ask Dean.”

“Or you could.”

Cas turns to stare out at the tree line again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I just don’t understand why,” Jack complains. “You’ve been so great in helping me understand angels, and Dean has so much knowledge about people on Earth. Together-”

Cas cuts him off with a sharp look. “You’ve been doing very well so far with your powers.”

“I guess,” Jack says, his gaze falling to his hands clasped in his lap. “But I think it could still be better.”

“A good attitude to have,” Cas assures. “One of Chuck’s main problems was that he got complacent. He never tried to improve.”

“But there’s so much out there,” Jack says eagerly, “so much to learn and experience. How could he ignore it all?”

“That’s something you’d have to ask him,” Cas says, adding severely, “which I do not advise.”

Jack smiles. “I wasn’t going to.” He bites his lip, fidgeting in his chair. “You’ll talk to him eventually, right?”

Cas stiffens. By his tone, Jack isn’t talking about Chuck anymore. “I don’t know.”

Jack nods once. “I think you should. For the good of the universe.”

But no pressure or anything, echoes in Cas’s mind in Dean’s voice, as clear and as loud as if Dean was standing right behind him.

Jack leans back, snapping his fingers almost lazily. The wispy clouds overhead part, allowing the sun to shine down directly on the pair of them.

“But this is really nice for now, isn’t it?” Jack asks. “Dean says it’s important to relax sometimes. He says they didn’t do that enough on Earth.”

Cas turns to his son before looking out over Heaven, past their small enclave, to the vast majesty of interconnected paradises Jack created and Cas shaped. The old barriers lay buried several dimensions deep like a soil horizon on Earth, gone but not forgotten.

“It is,” Cas replies.

Cas lands silently in the middle of the driveway of Dean’s house. He tentatively edges forward, sensing Dean’s soul in the garage. The door is folded along the ceiling, letting Dean work under the sunlight streaming in from the perpetually sunny day outside.

He’s waxing the Impala, working over a spot on the trunk.

Cas averts his eyes before he can focus too deeply on the cutoff jean shorts Dean swore he didn’t own and only wore when Sam was asleep or away on a hunt.

An old fashioned boombox - a pristine version of the one Dean found dumpster diving when he was fourteen and fixed up with Electronics for Dummies he had checked out of the local library - sits on a table next to a AAA kit. Dean’s tastes have veered back to classic rock instead of Top 40 Pop; The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” is currently playing.

Cas places a copy of Dean’s Top 13 Zep Traxx cassette on top of the left-hand speaker and leaves as Dean sings about his love, a vengeance that’s never free.

Cas -

Cas looks up from Claire’s most recent text. Her emoji use has gotten impossibly even more confusing since he came back from the dead a fifth time.

He listens, his heart in his throat, but the prayer cuts off before Dean thinks another word.

Disappointed, Cas rereads Claire’s text for a third time. 

Cas, I - 

Cas freezes. He listens, every sense he has attuning like antennae for the rest of Dean’s prayer. But all he gets is an undercurrent of frustration and longing.

Well, Dean’s not the only one.

Cas - shit.

Cas shoves his phone in his pocket and flexes his wings. Claire will have to wait. He once “left her on read” for a week, and she was very angry at him, but in all fairness, he’d been travelling cross-country with Kelly Kline to save the world, and Claire’s message had been asking a hypothetical question about neanderthals and astronauts, so it took him a while to understand his texting blunder.

Cas lands on Dean’s doorstep.

He can’t bring himself to knock or ring the doorbell. Silently, he flaps his wings once, bypassing the walls of the house he created for Dean. He summons a bag of black licorice to his hand so his visit won’t be a total waste. 

Inside, Dean sits, a little lethargic, on the couch in the living room with a bowl of popcorn in one hand. On the television screen, Harry and Sally are bickering over their respective dark sides in a car.

Cas stands next to Dean, frowning as Harry explains to Sally why two people can’t be real friends if sexual tension is involved.

“What bullshit,” Dean announces out of nowhere, nearly startling Cas into visibility. But Dean doesn’t give any indication he knows he’s not alone, so Cas stays where he is. He watches until Harry and Sally arrive in New York before he decides to go.

Cas sets down the licorice on Dean’s other side, wings already fluttering to take off.

Dean shifts, scratching at a spot near his hip. 

The bag crinkles.

Dean’s head jerks up, staring right into Cas’s face.

Cas freezes.

Dean glances down at the licorice and back up again. He swallows, breathing a tentative, “Cas?”

Sheer panic courses through his veins. Cas double-checks he’s still concealed, even though it’s one of the simplest powers for an angel to control. But apparently all it takes is one flash of green eyes to make Cas question his most basic instincts.

Dean’s face hardens as the seconds tick on with no response. “I know you’re there,” he says to the room, looking around. He pauses, hands tightening on the telltale bag of licorice. It crumples, loud as a gunshot.

Dean gets to his feet and walks around the coffee table to stand in the middle of the room. “’Cause I’ve been talking to Charlie, Kevin, and everyone else in this place, and you know how they get things in Heaven? They have to ask an angel for them.” He spins in a slow circle, eyes clearly peeled for any sign. “But I told them, that’s not how it works for me. I don’t have to ask for anything. It just appears, poof, like magic!”

Dean sucks in a breath, and his hand not holding the licorice is balled into a fist at his side. “But it’s not magic or any old halo, is it? It’s you - who else would know what kind of beer I like or my favorite skin mag?”

A lump forms in the back of Cas’s throat.

“Hell,” Dean continues, driving the knife of guilt in deeper, “who else would leave a copy of the mixtape I made you?”

Cas doesn’t know if it’s the right time. But this is the first time Dean has asked for him, so it has to mean something.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean turns around, his jaw dropping open. It’s a ridiculous expression, since, by his own account, Dean has been talking to Cas the whole time. “Cas,” he says after an interminably long pause. “You’re here.”

Cas tilts his head. “You prayed to me.”

“I’m pretty sure it was more of a rant,” Dean says, going a bit red in the face.

“No,” Cas falters, “before that.”

“I did?”

At a loss as to what to do with his hands under the scrutiny of Dean’s stare, Cas shoves them in his coat pockets. “It was several unfinished prayers, actually,” he says, and he’s never had this much trouble meeting Dean’s gaze before. “I thought I would check in and make sure everything is alright.”

Dean’s expression darkens. “Like you’ve been doing this whole time?”

Cas can’t bring himself to respond, but Dean must read the answer all over his face anyway.

“Right,” Dean says, mostly to himself. He paces a few times, glaring at the floor. When he raises his head to meet Cas’s eyes, his face hardens further. “I need a drink.”

He stalks towards the kitchen. Cas follows because he never has any choice when it comes to Dean.

Dean yanks open the door to the refrigerator and pulls out a beer Cas restocked for him a few days ago. He unscrews the cap, tosses it vaguely in the direction of the counter, and takes a resentful pull from the bottle.

Cas waits for Dean to speak. 

“So you’ve got nothin’ to say?”

For God’s sake.

“I -” Cas falters, unsure of what would appease Dean the most. 

Dean hadn’t gotten the chance to say anything before Cas was taken. Only Cas had the opportunity to say what had been weighing on his chest so long he sometimes forgot it was there. Now, Dean deserves that much, the chance to say his piece. 

“Figures you’re finally out of words,” Dean scoffs. 

Cas swallows, but still the right words won’t come. So he stands where he is, bracing himself for Dean’s onslaught. The inevitability of Dean’s final rejection has loomed like a blade over his neck ever since Dean entered Heaven. Now that they are finally in the same room together, it slips a few inches further. 

“So that’s it then.” Dean tips the beer back, his eyes darting everywhere but at Cas. “You’re all mojoed up again, and back on the Heavenly soul train.”

“Jack restored my full powers as a Seraph of Heaven when he pulled me back out of the Empty,” he says cautiously.

Dean glowers. “Right,” he says, almost to himself, “Great. Why are you here then?”

Cas flinches before he can stop the reaction. “Because you prayed to me,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Well, that’s not a mistake I’ll make again,” Dean says, finishing off his beer in record time. He turns to get another, and at least Cas doesn’t have to fight to hide the devastation from splashing all over his face.

“If that’s what you want,” Cas says stiffly as Dean faces him again.

“Doesn’t matter what I want, does it?” Dean sneers, violently twisting at the bottle cap. He lets it fall to the floor with a light clatter.

Cas pauses, his wings itching to carry him away from Dean and this conversation. But Dean’s words don’t make any sense. Feeling a little stupid he has to say this out loud, he says, “What you want has always mattered.”

“Ha!”

Cas narrows his eyes. “Your well-being has always been my highest priority.”

“See, you say shit like that,” Dean says angrily, “and it makes me think you really care.”

“Of course I care,” Cas says, slightly baffled and mostly insulted.

“Then why did it take you so long to see me?”

“Why did it take you so long to pray to me?” Cas counters before he can stop himself. 

Dean stares at him.

Cas stares back, undeterred.

“So you regretted it,” Dean says out of nowhere. “Fine. I’ve been there myself, said shit I didn’t mean to because I was at death’s door or the world was ending.”

Cas blinks. “Regretted what?” he asks as he tries to follow Dean’s abrupt turn of conversation.

Dean doesn’t answer. He tips back his bottle, his eyes flinty.

He must be talking about the confession. The only thing lurking in the back of Cas’s mind since he said the words aloud. It only figures it had been weighing similarly on Dean.

“I regret that it caused a divide between us,” Cas says slowly, his gaze raking up and down Dean’s face, trying to take in every twitch, every flinch. “But I don’t regret what I said. How could I?”

“Pretty fucking easily,” Dean mutters as he takes another long drag from his beer.

“I don’t,” Cas says honestly.

Dean’s fingers tighten around the bottle in his hand. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why… any of it,” Dean says, looking a bit lost. “If you did mean to say it, if you don’t wanna take it back, why’d you stay away?”

“I thought you didn’t want to see me,” Cas says, flayed open and raw with the words out in the open.

Dean starts angrily, “I just told you-”

“But I didn’t know that,” Cas interrupts before Dean can build up steam. “And I still don’t understand how you can still want me to be around you. Did you forgive me?” He swallows, watching Dean’s face slip into a mask of incomprehension. “I know that forgiveness doesn’t come easily to you,” Cas continues, hanging his head, “and sometimes it can take time, or not happen at all. Still, I would like to know where you stand.”

“Forgive you?” Dean croaks.

Cas nods. “For burdening you with the knowledge of how I truly feel.”

The bottle slips from Dean’s slack grasp to shatter on the floor.

“Shit!” Dean jumps forward to grab the dustpan and brush near where Cas stands by the doorway, but Cas waves his hand and the mess disappears.

“Handy,” Dean murmurs as he straightens up, much closer than he was before.

Cas resists the urge to take a step back, to replace the distance between them. He’s an angel, as Rowena and Donna so kindly reminded him. He can stand his ground, even in the face of Dean Winchester.

“Look,” Dean says, his voice firm, and Cas tenses for the worst. “I don’t know where the hell you got the idea that you need forgiveness-”

Cas’s wings quiver with impending flight. Nothing is stopping him from leaving, nothing but himself.

“-but that’s bullshit. You’re not a fucking burden, Cas.” He swallows. “After we took out Chuck, I thought you’d come back. You’d always come back before. After Raphael - after Lucifer - after the Leviathan. Every time. But you didn’t,” Dean says, his voice cracking, “and then I get here, and Bobby says that you did come back. Just not to me.” 

Dean takes a stumbling step forward, and Cas, frozen to the spot, lets Dean grip the lapels of his coat. But there’s no violence in his hands, only a need for reassurance. 

“And I figured,” Dean says with a watery, self-deprecating laugh, “hey, I might not have read the cards right before, but I can sure as shit read the signs now. So, I didn’t pray. I didn’t ask you to fly your feathery ass over here and tell me you’d made a mistake in that basement.”

“I didn’t make a mistake.”

Dean musters a weak smile. “I know that now, dumbass.”

Cas tentatively raises a hand to place over Dean’s. “I would never say anything I didn’t mean to you, Dean.”

“Yeah, ’cause that’s my signature move,” he says bitterly. But he doesn’t let go of Cas’s trench coat.

“I know your anger sometimes gets the better of you,” Cas says slowly, “but I love you anyway.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean says as he rests his forehead against Cas’s shoulder, hiding his face from view. “You really meant it.”

“I did.” He turns his head slightly, resting his cheek against Dean’s temple. “But I didn’t think you wanted to hear it.”

“I did,” Dean echoes faintly, his warm breath ghosting the space between Cas’s neck and the collar of his button-down. “’Course I did.” He inhales, deep and slow, before drawing back. His green eyes flit over Cas’s face, and heat curls deep in Cas’s belly at the look on Dean’s face.

Finally, Dean closes the distance between them. Still clutching onto the trench coat, one hand wraps around Cas’s waist to pull them almost flush together. His mouth tastes like hoppy beer and human saliva, but Dean’s soul is thrumming beneath the surface with a kind of manic joy Cas has never felt before. 

Every electronic in the kitchen blows out.

Eventually, they find themselves back on the couch. Dean grabs the abandoned bag of licorice, offers Cas a piece, and, when he declines, shoves half the contents in his mouth. He reaches for the remote, frowning as pressing the buttons fails to elicit any change.

“I think it short circuited,” Cas says sheepishly as he snaps his fingers.

As Dean half chews, half smiles, the credits of When Harry Met Sally start up. He flicks through the channels to some innocuous sitcom.

Cas eyes him speculatively before raising his arm and resting it on Dean’s shoulders, clearly telegraphing his movements so Dean can pull away if he wishes.

But Dean doesn’t pull away. He bursts into laughter instead.

Stung, Cas starts to withdraw his arm, but Dean grabs onto his hand and tugs it back into place. “Sorry,” Dean mutters. Face pink, he wiggles further into Cas’s side. “It’s just - we’re not teenagers going steady in the back of a movie theater. I thought I was past this lovey-dovey cuddly crap, but it’s… nice.” He coughs. “I guess.”

Mostly mollified, Cas says, “Many of the couples in Metatron’s pop culture transfer did this. I wasn’t sure if this was what you were expecting.”

Dean chuckles. “’S all good with me. I’m always happy to be your pop culture guinea pig.”

Guinea pig? That reminds him-

Cas turns to him. “Sam says he is doing well, considering the circumstances, and is not looking for a way to bring you back from the dead.”

Dean’s head whips around. Wincing, he rubs at his neck, asking, “Did he pray to you or something?”

After a split-second hesitation, Cas lies, “Yes.” 

Dean thankfully doesn’t notice, probably because he’s caught up in thoughts about his brother. “I’ve been wondering about him.” He scrubs a hand down his face, his eyes downcast. “But he’s okay?”

“He has been spending a lot of time with Eileen.”

“Hell yeah, he has,” Dean jokes, but he doesn’t sound like his heart is in it at all.

They watch the sitcom for a few more minutes, but Dean’s eyes are glazed-over and a loud laugh track makes him jump.

“I could resurrect you.”

Dean’s face spasms as he jerks around to stare at Cas. “What?”

“I could restore your soul to Earth,” Cas says seriously. He removes his arm from behind Dean and instead takes both of Dean’s hands in his. “I thought you were happy here, but apparently I’ve been wrong about many things since your soul came to Heaven. If you aren’t at peace here, that option is always open.”

“I mean, it’s peaceful,”  Dean says, frowning, “except when Charlie busts out the Monopoly board since she’s a goddamn shark. But I dunno if I’m at peace. I have a lot of regrets, Cas, you gotta know that.”

Cas nods. “Sam.”

Dean drops his gaze to his hands. “Not just him. You too.”

“Me?” Cas says, puzzled. “But I’m right here - with you.”

“Yeah, here. In Heaven,” Dean says with a slight edge of annoyance, “But there was a bunch of shit I wanted to do with you on Earth.”

“There was?” Cas asks, almost unbearably curious at what Dean had pictured them doing together.

Dean shrugs. “But I figured I was meant to be here.”

Cas narrows his eyes. “I would have thought you, more than anyone else, would know there is no longer any ‘grand plan’ for any of us. You can be wherever you want to be.”

“I - I can go back?” 

“If you’d like,” Cas says, resolutely not looking anywhere at the Heaven he carefully crafted for Dean, focusing only on Dean’s face. “I rebuilt your body once. I can do it again.”

Dean snorts. “Oh, so it’s no big.”

Cas purses his lips. “It’s very much a big, but given your contributions to humanity and to Jack, I don’t think he’d object to restoring you to Earth and your brother - provided you don’t make a habit of it, like you’ve done in the past. And don’t spread around the news of your return, as that might cause a panic.” He pauses, thinking the scenarios over. “Or a new religion.”

Dean’s expression turns contemplative. “Didn’t a trumped-up angel come back from the dead and do just that?” He even has the gall to tap his finger against his chin as if lost in thought. 

Cas glares. “While striking down homophobic churches and white supremacists was infinitely satisfying,” he says as pride and shame surge through him in equal measure, “my actions did not go unpunished.”

“True,” Dean acknowledges with a nod and, once again, all of Cas’s past sins are forgotten. “So that’s it, then?” He bangs his fist lightly on his thigh, his face screwing up as he thinks his options over. “Stay with you in Heaven or go back to Sam on Earth? That’s my choice?”

“I would go with you, of course,” Cas says matter-of-factly.

“You can go to Earth?”

Cas pulls his cell phone out of his pocket as proof. “I check in with Claire regularly. I’d hardly be able to help her if I was confined to Heaven.”

Dean takes the phone with shaking fingers, reading over Claire’s most recent text message. He snorts. “Why is she saying you need to get laid?”

“She’s what?” Cas snatches the phone back.

“The praying hands? The eggplant?”

“I thought she was clapping for her recent consumption of an actual vegetable,” Cas says faintly.

Dean tugs him closer for a quick, smacking kiss. “Don’t ever change.” He hands Cas’s phone back, his face turning serious. “You’re serious? You could come back with me?”

Cas nods. “If that’s what you want.”

“What do you want?” Dean swallows. “This whole time, you’ve been asking what I want, what you can do for me. But what do you want, man? It can’t be all about me.”

It already is, but Dean wouldn’t react well to hearing that, so Cas says, “I want to be with you. Wherever your soul is. Jack can reach me in Heaven or on Earth, that doesn’t matter.”

“So how does this work?” Dean asks. “Do we hop in the nearest USS Enterprise? Beam me down, Scotty?”

“Don’t you wish to say goodbye to your friends and family here?” Cas asks.

“I -” Dean falters, “shit, yeah I should.”

Cas leans forward to press a tentative kiss to Dean’s mouth. As he pulls away, Dean’s hand cups his jaw, keeping him in place for a moment longer. When he finally lets Cas go, he sighs. 

Cas smiles. “Take as long as you need.”

Dean meets him at the edge of the parking lot outside of Charlie’s condo. Charlie had chosen a large apartment building as her final resting place - with enough apartments for Lance, Ed, and all the rest of her deceased online friends. The last soul on his list to visit before he leaves Heaven for, hopefully, a few more decades, Charlie insisted on throwing Dean a goodbye party, a day full of board games, LARPing, and pool.

Cas is leaning against the sturdy hood of the Impala, enjoying the dimming twilight settling around him. He had bowed out for the LARPing portion of the day, saying he needed to speak one more time with Jack and Death. This was Dean’s soul he was transporting across planes - he needed to get this right.

As Dean approaches, Cas takes his hand in his and gives it a light squeeze. “Ready?”

“See you on the flip side,” Dean says with a wink. He carries the faintest smell of silver polish from the chainmail, and he missed a spot of Moondor red face paint by his left ear.

“It shouldn’t feel like any time has passed at all,” Cas assures him.

“Right,” Dean says, shifting his weight to this other foot nervously.

“I love you,” Cas says seriously.

Dean grins. “I know.”

Cas rolls his eyes. “Han Solo, really?”

“Ha! I would’ve been really disappointed if you didn’t get that one.”

Cas pinches the bridge of his nose between his two fingers, mentally rehearsing the Enochian as he gathers his grace to his fingertips. “Dean - shut up. I have to concentrate to do this. Despite what you might think, it isn’t easy to restore souls from the dead.”

Dean makes a show of closing his mouth with a snap.

Cas shuts his eyes, reaching out for Dean’s soul.

“But Cas-”

Cas opens his eyes into slits. “If you keep interrupting me, I’ll never-”

“Me too,” Dean says in a rush. “To what you said earlier. Me too, man.”

Touched, Cas can only reach out to grasp Dean’s shoulder reassuringly. “Are you ready?”

Dean nods resolutely. “Let’s do this.”