Archive of Our Own

“You’re nobody’s doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”

― Seanan McGuire

*

“There’ll be peace when you are done,” the song says.

But Dean wasn’t done. He’d barely even begun.

Dead and gone just two weeks after saving the world for the umpteenth time, after losing his best friend and their kid, after hearing everything he ever wanted from the person he wanted it from: that he was more than a weapon, that he was worthy, that he was loved—

All of it cut off mid-sentence like some kind of sick cosmic joke.

He wore a brave face for the last time to tell Sam what he’d always felt but never could put into words—the love and the pride and the unwavering faith he had in him, his baby brother, the first and last real thing in his life. When he had nothing, he had Sam. It was always them.

What he didn’t say—what he couldn’t—was that he was scared. That he wasn’t ready. That it wasn’t fair.

Because for all that he was the one dying, the moment wasn’t about him.

His head fell heavy on Sam’s shoulder, fingers slackening in their cradle against his heart. He felt the heaving of his brother’s chest as he sobbed, the sound echoing through him like a funeral toll, and then he felt nothing at all. Death swept him into cold oblivion like a tide to sea; all that he was or could have been, swallowed up and buried by the drowning deep.

Heaven isn’t a gilded cage anymore, it’s another form of living: an open sandbox of the best and worst things freedom has to offer. Full cast, new episodes, no reruns. Dean never expected to make it to the pearly gates, even with a line to the man up top. He can’t tell if he’s committing some cardinal sin by being spitting mad about it, choking on the almosts and might-have-beens of his sorry little life.

It’s why he drives for what feels like forever, even after finding Sam on that bridge; no destination in mind, just the burn of Baby’s tires on the open road. Dean wants to burn too. He’s restless—got gasoline for blood, body itching for that one spark to light it all up.

But it doesn’t matter how fast or far he goes, the flame won’t catch.

It feels like the final nail in his coffin, more insidious even than the one that buried itself in his back, because Heaven is supposed to give you what you need, what you deserve, and above all Dean deserves better.

It’s like flicking a switch, in the end. Stone to spark light to open flame.

Easy as blinking.

He has just enough time to pull onto the side of the road before he self-destructs, the hum of the Impala’s engine swallowed by his desperate, keening sobs. He can’t think, can barely breathe—there’s nothing he can do but feel everything, all at once. Every emotion he keeps barricaded in the panic room of his heart, every wish and every fear and every want and every regret. Anger has been his crutch for so long but it crumbles now, burnt to ash, unable to bear the weight of his devastation.

He wanted to live. To experience things, people, feelings differently than he had before and maybe even for the first time. His forty-some years on Earth amounting to one fraught jump after another, out of the frying pan and into the fire of a larger deadlier threat, on and on and on until they were staring down the barrel of a gun aimed at God himself. The only happiness he’d known was in stolen moments, few and far between as they were, bittersweet with the knowledge that it wouldn't last. That it never did.

And at his heart’s center, a half-conceived dream: a small and silly and futile hope never realised, of the three of them on a beach somewhere, toes in the sand, finally free. If the world was safe, he’d told Sam, then he would give it up. Because they earned it.

In the barest of ways, he got his wish. Earth is safe, Chuck’s control over the narrative broken, but freedom isn’t the victory Dean thought it would be. Sam’s here, but he’s lived a lifetime and he’s tired, he’s earned his rest, whereas Dean… hasn’t. He drives and drives and drives in a fruitless attempt to numb the exposed nerve of his emotions. And Cas—

Cas.

Dean bites down on instinct, a desperate ploy to distract himself from one wound by inflicting another. Copper bursts on his tongue as the skin breaks, but the sting has nothing on the pain that cleaves his chest just thinking that name.

Behind his eyes, instant and unbidden, a double-exposed memory spools to life: one, his best friend’s smile as he is subsumed in inky darkness, leaving nothing behind but dead air static; two, his reflection in the bedroom mirror hours later, a handprint etched in blood on his shoulder and bile, hot and acrid, filling his mouth at the sight. He chokes it down like he always does—in all these years, it’s never once swallowed easy—and peels off his jacket. Throws it over the chair to hide the stain. Picks up the bottle. Drinks.

A dance learned by rote to obfuscate the taste of his own self-loathing.

It hurts.

God, does it hurt.

Even now, on heaven’s roadside—in literal fucking paradise—he can’t find a way to turn it off. The inferno strips him bare, heat drilling to the marrow of his bones, scalding inside and out.

Is it minutes or decades before he pulls himself back together? Dean doesn’t know, but as he raises his head to stare miserably out the cab at the narrow road on either side of him, flanked by endless rows of perfect trees, he knows there’s no hiding behind the wheel this time.

So he does the only thing he can think to do, a staple in every hunter’s routine. He takes inventory.

The body can’t differentiate self-inflicted agony from an external attack; it feels pain and locks up tight all the same. Dean’s hands shake on the Impala’s steering wheel, nails biting blunt crescents into the supple leather. He flexes his fingers and regrets it instantly. Swears softly under his breath as the muscles ache in protest, an unforgiving throb from wrist to shoulder. Blood trickles down his chin from the cut on his lip, which doesn’t seem to heal any faster in Heaven than it would on Earth. His head is pounding, from stress or crying or both.

He’s hollowed out and empty. The thought should scare him. It doesn’t.

He feels lighter than he has in years, coming out the other end of that fire. Like for once it was enough to simply be, without fearing the consequences of letting himself burn. To lower his guard. To grieve.

All his life, Dean’s had to remain vigilant—a lapse on his part could be the difference between life and death: his, Sam’s, anyone they’ve ever loved. Now there are endless roads stretched out before him, teeming with potential. A world where the only monsters left to fight are the ones in his chest. Where he finally has time to look inward, and space to mourn what might have been.

His vigil has been his purpose, his burden, his terrible privilege for so long, Dean doesn’t know who he is without it.

He wants to find out.

(The calm rumble of Bobby's voice echoes in his thoughts. “It ain't just Heaven, Dean. It's the Heaven you deserve. You got everything you could ever want, or need, or dream. So, I guess the question is… what are you gonna do now?”)

Something tilts, near imperceptibly, like the world’s axis has shifted gears. Dean feels it in more ways than one, within and without.

He thinks of what he’s accomplished, a weight lifted in just being. The thought sparks a memory: of those same words in another’s voice, and the feeling that accompanied them, equal parts cleansing truth and crushing despair. Dean closes his eyes, allows it to crest over him, and completes the inexorable slide into the thought’s final resting place.

It’s him. Of course it’s him.

“Cas,” he whispers. He weighs the familiarity of the name against the knife’s-edge of pain it stabs him with and finds it wanting. No amount of soul-searching can divorce it from the last time he saw the angel, the Shadow coalescing like misshapen wings on either side to steal him away. Not to the Empty, as Dean had first believed, but to Heaven.

It feels like a revelation, though it really shouldn’t. Castiel is here, on the same side of eternity as Dean.

Has been all along.

The restlessness returns in full force beneath his skin, zero to a hundred in an instant, like he’s hit the accelerator without ever even moving his foot to the pedal. The ache in his blood is so strong it’s palpable, pinpricks of heat emanating from his heart’s center, only this time it doesn’t feel like he’s running away, but toward.

Dean takes a steadying breath, opens his eyes to the sun-soaked road before him, and puts his car into drive.

*

It takes no time at all for Dean’s senses to lead him where he needs to go. There’s no second-guessing his direction, he just feels when he should turn and does it. It’s freeing in a way he hadn’t considered before; at any other point in his life, ceding control would have felt like a violation, the next in a long line of no-win ultimatums. Now it’s a choice. His choice.

Dean Winchester has faith.

The strangest thing about it is that it isn’t strange at all. Faith isn’t something Dean has ever really lacked, not where it counts. He had faith in his father when John’s word was all he knew, a pillar of strength in his formative years despite how troubled those memories are now. Faith in his brother to have his back come hell or high water, that raising Sam was the one thing he knew he did right. Faith in Bobby to keep him in line, not to the letter of the law but to the word of his heart. Faith in Cas to walk the hard path with him, to fight alongside them, and to keep the most precious parts of Dean’s soul safe. Faith in Mom to return to them no matter how long she’s gone, to remind him that now is always better than before, that what’s real are people, families, them. Faith in Jack, for as short a time as they’d truly had him, to know that family doesn’t end in blood and there’s no limit to the amount of good he can do if he tries.

The only difference now is that Dean’s faith is in himself.

That his ending has not yet been written.

He’s writing it now, with every turn of Baby’s tires against the asphalt and every mile he closes between him and his goal.

He feels the gap before he sees it. He pulls over, kills the engine and opens the driver’s side door, boots crunching against gravel as he steps outside for the first time in a long time. He stretches, marveling at how his body is only just stiff—the type of discomfort easily fixed by moving.

The gap acts as a makeshift entrance through the copse of trees, a hole in an otherwise uniform line spanning the left-hand side of the road. There’s no real path for him to follow, but the same impulse that brought him here urges him forward, so he goes. The sun sits high in the sky, beating down heat. The light is filtered by the high canopy of leaves above him; the resulting warmth is just enough to make him sweat. A gentle breeze caresses the back of his neck like a kiss.

Compelled by an instinct he trusts but can’t quite understand, Dean walks.

And walks.

And walks.

And walks.

And slows.

He’s on the outskirts of a glade, bisected by a stream. The water burbles pleasantly, offset by the slow sway of trees as they’re rustled by the wind, which is stronger now. It reminds him of Purgatory, in that it is different in every conceivable way, except how his actions are underpinned by the same need: to find the angel.

Dean follows the stream for a time, watching the forest floor turn from patchy brushland to long blades of soft grass. The terrain levels out, lending him greater visibility to the far-off reaches of the glade. The area is bordered by trees, but there are only a few studded in the clearing itself. It makes the object that much more of an outlier when Dean lays eyes on it.

At the far edge of the clearing, tucked into a quiet corner. Right in the beating heart of the world: a tall, narrow marker.

Monolith, he thinks, pulling the word from the same nebulous something that led him here.

It’s old. Made of dark stone, worn and cracked in places. Dean’s drawn to it like iron filaments to a magnet, drinking in each line and plane as they come into sharp relief. The moment he’s within range, he’s reaching for it. In the split second before he makes contact, Dean wonders if it will feel warm, but the stone is cool to the touch and slightly dusty. He presses his entire palm to the surface to wipe away the grit, startles at the feeling of something etched into the underside.

“Enochian,” Dean murmurs, tracing the sharp swooping lines of the celestial language as it comes into view beneath his fingers. He’s unable to discern the meaning of the symbols, only that they aren't any he's ever seen.

As he clears the rest of the dust from the monolith, revealing row upon row of ancient text, an understanding of a different kind begins to form.

Dean knows, intimately and inexplicably, that this is a place where no one ever goes. A place no soul in Heaven has ever seen. It’s easy to overlook. Easier to forget it’s even there. He’d wager thousands pass by it every day, travelling the great road to more familiar sights.

Except for him. He was called here.

He was invited in.

Dean knows something else too. Imparted not by a sixth sense, but good old hunter’s instinct:

He isn't alone.

He stands to attention—one hand flat on the rock, the other curling to a fist at his side—but doesn’t turn. Not yet. The anticipation that stirs in his belly laden not with dread but something sweeter, something thrilling.

“Dean.”

That’s all it takes. One word, in that voice. His name. Dean turns, heart pounding hard in his chest, and sees—

Nothing.

Fear lances down his spine, ice cold and biting. He’s reminded of the last time he was in Purgatory, clock ticking down with no Cas in sight. The rational side of Dean knows that isn’t the case here—in Heaven, there’s nothing but time—but it doesn’t stop the panic from mounting inside him, crushing hope beneath its bootheel as it climbs. Everything else has irrevocably changed, but he'd been holding out hope that maybe, maybe, Cas might be the one thing to stay the same.

Instead, Dean’s alone when every instinct is pinging to say he isn’t, in a litany of: not alone, not alone, not alone.

He can’t tell if it’s the truth or wishful thinking.

Either way, it’s too much.

He leans into the monolith, unable to bear the weight of his own body and the despair welling within. Another echo of Purgatory clings to him like a cobweb—Dean leveraging himself against a tree he had to have passed a thousand times over, knees slack at the thought of Cas dying at Eve’s hands, never knowing Dean already forgave him. His prayer had been a desperate bid to right that wrong before it was too late, the words leaving his lips like a tired exhalation.

Against all odds, Cas heard his prayer; he said as much once they reunited.

And just like that, Dean knows what he needs to do.

Slowly, purposefully, he lowers to his knees. His body doesn't protest like it would on Earth. The only agony he carries here is of his own making—the ghost of his guilt clawing down his back.

It’s time to let it go.

“Cas,” he says, and the familiar blade of pain slides home between his ribs. The sick loop of those final moments threatens to play out behind his eyes so Dean opens them, roots his gaze to the roughhewn face of the monolith. Tries again. “Cas, I’m no good with words and I am straight-up bad at praying. But I’m gonna give it a shot. You better have your ears on, man, ‘cause there’s something I need to say.”

“You died. Again.” Dean grits out. “You died right in front of me, and I—I had to find a way to live with that.” He swallows around the sandpaper in his throat, his breath a jagged, wounded thing. “I tried. You have to know that I tried. To make all that sacrifice mean something. To be everything you saw in me. I tried so damn hard to live, and I couldn’t even do that.”

Dean's eyes sting. “Me and Sam, we always keep fighting. Even after we lose someone. Especially then. But when you—”

He cuts himself off. Breathes through it, or tries to. The words gum up his throat.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Dean confesses. His voice is a choked whisper, awash with misery. “Every night, I’d hear you. Talkin’ to me. Saying that you… what you said. I couldn’t forget it. And I couldn’t move on. And I knew, deep down I knew. It wasn’t anything you said or did that cut me up so bad. It was what I didn’t do. You left and I didn’t stop you. I didn’t try hard enough to fix it.”

Dean feels like he’s coming apart, slowly then all at once; not the flash-bang of his earlier explosion, but a controlled demolition. That he chose this doesn’t make it any easier. Either way, he's undone.

“All those years, Cas. Believing you didn’t feel the same—that you couldn’t, or weren’t equipped to.” He bows his head, feeling the hot track of tears down his cheeks. “I should’ve just asked. I should’ve told you anyway. You deserved that much. Hell, you deserve so much more. So much better.”

He cries freely now, body shaking, breath hitching.

“You—You told me that everything I did, I did for love. And you were right. Cas, you were right. But I didn’t just raise Sammy, or fight for the world. I did something else too. I fell in love with my best friend, and I—I let him down, and I’m praying it’s not too late to fix that.”

Dean closes his eyes, intent on speaking to the presence he knows is there, just beyond his reach. These words belong to him. Only him.

“I love you. Of course I love you,” he utters, breathlessly. “I know you don’t need to hear it. That your happiness wasn’t in having it, but I want—I need to say it. It’s you, Cas. Has been for a long time. Years, maybe. And I—I didn’t know I had it in me. To love someone the way I love you. Soldiers don’t, and that’s what I was, but I guess that’s what you were too.”

The last pieces of him billow out like a dust cloud, debris falling where it may. But Dean isn’t done.

“This world, this paradise. It’s amazing. It’s so much better than I could have ever hoped for. But it ain’t my Heaven, Cas,” he admits. “Not without you in it. So I'm asking you, I'm begging you—hell, I'm even praying to you. Come back. I don’t want to do this on my own.”

Dean drops his head into his hands, dizzy with emotion. He tries to pull it together when it occurs to him, like a bolt from the blue, that he has no reason to. There’s nowhere else for him to go, no other place he has to be.

So he lets go. Of all of it. Weeps into the dark hollow of his hands, coming apart completely. He’s tired and he’s burnt out and he’s shaking, not from the crying this time but from release—the sheer emotional upheaval of the day manifesting like a concussion wave following detonation. He’s not okay, not in the slightest, and there’s catharsis in admitting that. There are no secrets inside him, not anymore. He spoke his truth to Sam before he died, to himself and Castiel after.

For once, there’s nothing more he needs to say.

*

“Dean.”

He's picking himself up from the forest floor when he hears it again.

One word. That voice.

His name.

Dean flinches. God, but it sounds so real.

“I can’t—” he breathes, voice hitching on a sob. “Cas, if I turn around and you’re not there, I’ll lose my damn mind.”

There's no response, and Dean sucks in another pained breath. He's about to relent—to turn around anyway, no matter how much it hurts, so at least he'll know—when a hand falls on his left shoulder. His gut clenches with recognition; the palm rests in the exact same place where, all those years ago, a soldier of Heaven pulled Dean out of the Pit and remade him by the atom. The physical mark of that transaction has long since vanished, but its essence remains branded on his soul. A permanent claim.

His body shudders beneath the weight of it, separated only by a few layers of clothing.

The grip is firm, and familiar.

“Dean,” he hears again, right behind him.

He staggers, saved only by the blind stretch of his fingers along the monolith and the hand anchoring his shoulder, which tightens to steady him. Dean grits his teeth, muscles tensing like a bowstring pulled taut. He breathes into the hollow he’s made between the bend of his body and the stone, in and out and in and out, trying in vain to slow the rabbit-fast beat of his heart.

It doesn’t work. Not that it matters. No amount of slapdash composure could ever prepare him for the sight when he turns.

Castiel looks like he always does: handsome face lined with age, pulled into a gentle smile that wrinkles the sides of his eyes; hair slightly mussed, deceptively light in the noon-day sun; blue suit and tie beneath a dusty old trench-coat that’s weathered apocalypses (plural); and the hint of something eldritch about him, like the heaviness in the air that precipitates rain.

It hits Dean like a battering ram. So much has changed in such a short period of time, but not this. Not Cas.

Dean closes the space between them before he knows what he's doing, pulling Cas into a bone-crushing hug. He shuts his eyes, body draining of a tension he hadn't even noticed he'd been carrying. When Cas’ arms wrap around him in turn, Dean presses the curve of his smile to the warm juncture between neck and shoulder. Cas smells like the aftermath of a thunderstorm, earthy and voltaic; Dean breathes him in unabashedly. 

When they separate, he’s unable to look away, transfixed by Castiel’s very presence. It reminds him of their early days, back when Cas was full angel—all grace-blue eyes, magnetism and undivided honesty. Dean had been riveted, forever trying (and failing) to understand why something so powerful would choose to sully itself with the likes of him. Then it became he as Dean dragged Cas down to his level. As Cas decided, inconceivably, that he liked his place in the dirt. As he proved, time and time again, that he belonged there with them.

“It’s so good to see you,” Cas says with easy sincerity.

Dean’s still staring. “You too,” he replies hoarsely.

He can scarcely believe it. Cas is here, right here, in Heaven. With him. There are no big bads, no world-ending stakes; there’s nothing and nobody standing between them now. They’re safe and they’re here and they’re in love with each other.

Oh.

“Oh,” he says.

Cas’ soft expression shifts slightly, a small vee appearing between his brows. He tilts his head just so and god, Dean loves him. It's a feedback loop he can't seem to switch off now that it's on, repeating ad infinitum: I love him, I love him, I love him.

Cas asks, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he breathes. “How—” He swallows thickly. “How much did you hear?”

He doesn’t elaborate, but Cas doesn’t need him to.

“Everything,” he admits. “This place, it’s… significant. Part of my awareness is always here.”

He shoots Dean a rueful smile. It does nothing to calm the thunder-clap of nerves in his chest.

Dean’s quick to realize it’s one thing to hope Cas could hear him and another entirely to have it confirmed right in front of him—a mountain of his own making, but it’s grown so much bigger than him. He doesn’t know where to even begin climbing it, so he deflects.

“What is this place, exactly?”

“A relic,” says Cas, “of a bygone age.”

Dean perks up. “Like Indiana Jones?”

“Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid,” Cas says wryly. “Prior to the restructuring, this was the closest thing I had to a personal Heaven. Now, it serves as a reminder.” At Dean’s blank look, he adds: “When I arrived, every wall of every room was torn down to allow souls free reign in Heaven. Except this one. It's the last true partition.”

Dean nods. “And this?” he asks, turning to the monolith, rapping his knuckles along the stone.

Cas looks past him to stare at it, the air around them filling with undefinable pressure. Dean watches in stunned awe as the Enochian text reacts to his presence, glowing the familiar blue-white of angelic grace.

“A chronicle,” he says. “Of my time on Earth, and the events leading up to the change. There are more, stationed in various parts of Heaven. Markers to remind us of what we became under subjugation of an absent God, and to stop anything like it from ever happening again.” Cas pivots, reaching out to graze the symbols with his fingertips, body limned in their gentle glow. “This one is personal. It tells a particular story—” He glances at Dean. “—of the Righteous Man, and the Angel that raised him from Perdition.”

“So what, it’s your autobiography?”

The question earns him one of Cas’ exasperated sighs, which they both know was the point of him asking. Dean grins wolfishly.

“It’s a touchstone,” Cas explains, obliging him like he always does. “It isn’t enough to scribe words on the monolith’s surface—a portion of my grace is embedded in the stone. It is, quite literally, a part of me.”

Dean looks at it, glowing like a beacon at the heart of the forest, old and strange and ethereal; then back at Cas, the lone point of familiarity in an otherwise unfamiliar world, just as old and strange and ethereal. He gets the distinct sense he's glimpsing something he shouldn't—a realm of existence so far beyond his own he can barely comprehend the shape of it, let alone the sum of its parts. It would drive him mad if he let it.

So naturally, the only thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Kinky.”

Cas rolls his eyes.

“My turn,” he says, seizing the lull in the conversation with a tone that brooks no argument.

He steps away from the monolith; the glow of the symbols fade, but the underlying pressure remains. Dean feels it crackle between them as Cas moves—purposefully, almost predatory—toward him. His voice is hard and basal when he asks, “Do you know why you're here, Dean?”

Mutely, Dean shakes his head.

“I once told Jack that you feel things more acutely than any human I’ve ever known,” Cas tells him. “That your way of processing is to one day explode, let it all out, breathe deeply and move on. I like to think I know you well enough by now to see it coming, so I waited. I trusted that once you had that moment, you would know where to find me if you wanted to. And you did.”

He taps Dean’s chest, just above his heart. The brief touch is electrifying. “That’s what you need to understand about this new world, Dean. It’s all on you. I didn’t bring you here, I didn’t have to. You brought yourself.”

He smiles. It’s wide and fond and beautiful. Dean feels it like a gut-punch.

“You tapped into the intrinsic network of information offered throughout the Heavens. You asked it a question—where to find me—and you found your answer,” he says. “Nobody controls you here, Dean. No God. No angels. Nobody. I need you to understand that.”

“I do,” Dean utters.

He does. He feels the truth in the statement the same way he felt his way here. It soothes the part of him still chomping at the bit at how his story ended, the reassurance that at least here he’s the one writing it. He’s the one in control.

Cas nods. “Good.”

His smile softens, almost shy. It sparks a kernel of joy inside Dean to see it, for this is Cas as his most unguarded, authentic self. The second-last time Cas smiled at him like that, Dean had just poured them a finger of whiskey in celebration of Jack’s return, and Cas being right about him.

(The last doesn’t bear thinking about.)

“There's something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Cas announces, stealing Dean from his thoughts. “If you’ll indulge me.”

Dean’s mouth runs dry.

“Of course,” he says.

It’s Cas, this time, who bridges what little space exists between them. He does it slowly, telegraphing his movements, giving Dean all the time in the world to back away if he wants to. He doesn’t. Cas reaches out with both hands, loops his fingers around Dean’s wrists and slowly, gently, cards them up the length of his arms, palms flat against the soft cotton of Dean’s shirt.

Dean stands stock still, his breath a fragile, trembling thing. His gaze is locked on Cas as he follows the path of his hands up, up, up Dean’s body—there's no tension on his face, just that small, shy smile and single-minded focus. Cas’ hands crest his shoulders, fingertips grazing Dean’s bare skin as they rake over his collar toward his neck. Dean swallows hard, throat working beneath Cas’ long and careful fingers.

There's a flicker of self-satisfaction in his smile now and Dean wants nothing more than to snuff it out, to trace that clever curve with his tongue.

Cas cups Dean’s face and oh, but this feels so much better when neither of them are dying. The pad of his thumb grazes the very edge of Dean’s mouth. Dean whimpers, a soft keening that darkens the blue of Cas’ eyes around the pupils. It’s the beginning of the end.

“Cas,” Dean begs, voice raw with need.

“I’ve got you,” he promises.

Dean’s gaze drops to his lips, wanting. Cas catches him in the act and his smile widens.

He’s still smiling when he kisses Dean.

The first brush of Castiel’s mouth on his is light and teasing, there and then gone. It barely qualifies as a kiss but it shatters Dean. His hands find purchase on Cas’ coat, gripping it by the lapels and using it to draw the hard line of their bodies together. Cas shudders beautifully at the contact, makes a sound deep in his throat that Dean can’t help but want to taste so he does, leaning forward to capture his lips in a searing kiss.

His wandering fingers slip past Cas’ trench and suit jacket to anchor at his hip. Cas is so damn warm, bleeding heat into Dean’s palm through the thin fabric of his dress shirt and the mouth gently probing his. Dean tilts his head to deepen the kiss, runs his tongue along the seam of Cas’ lips until they part for him. His petrichor scent explodes on Dean's palate, thick and heady. He drinks it down like it's ambrosia.

Dean's free hand buries itself in Cas’ unruly hair, fingers dragging gently at the scalp to elicit more of those delicious noises from him. It works; Cas gasps, low and delighted, and Dean licks into his mouth, reveling in the push-pull, giving as good as he gets.

And it is good. Hot and slick, the rasp of Cas’ stubble raising gooseflesh on Dean’s skin as they kiss and kiss and kiss. They’re close, but Dean wants more. He wants Cas everywhere, wants to drown in him.

Cas lifts his mouth from Dean’s, breath ragged. “You’re… very good at this.”

Dean chuckles. “So are you.”

His face is still cradled in Cas’ capable hands; Dean rests their foreheads together, chasing the ghost of Cas’ warmth on his lips.

Cas indulges him a last, lingering kiss and pulls away.

Dean closes his eyes, letting the emotions of the day swell inside him like the slow-roiling waves of an ocean as they crash to shore, crisp and cold and cleansing. When he opens them again, it’s to the sight of Cas staring at him in that preternatural way of his, eyes bright and so, so blue.

“Say it,” he pleads, and it is a plea. He looks wrecked in a way Dean has never seen before, and he’s seen plenty—Cas has been devastated, cursed, beaten, broken, tortured and even killed in front of him, but he's never been undone like this. From pleasure. From happiness.

Dean doesn’t need to ask him what he means. He knows.

It slips out effortlessly, in the end. Whispered into the hairsbreadth of space between their lips.

Easy as blinking.

“I love you,” Dean says, breathlessly. “I love you too, Cas. I’m yours. For as long as you’ll have me.”

Cas smiles.

“Then I’m never letting go,” he says.

*

“He was another knife, I could feel it.
A different sort, but a knife still.
I did not care. I thought: give me the blade.
Some things are worth spilling blood for.”

― Madeline Miller