Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

March, 2070

Somehow, he winds up in a ditch.

He’s not really sure how the hell it happens, cause it’s the same damn grocery store, same car, same awkward turn that he’s done a thousand times over, except instead of stearing round it like always he winds up with his front wheel in it and then… then there’s some fifty something year old woman asking if he’s okay and he’s actually not even though he’s fucking fine, really, except for feeling this raw vulnerability that comes out of nowhere and slaps him round the face, and next thing he knows someone’s bought him a cup of tea and is asking if there’s anyone they can call for him.

The word Cas nearly falls off his tongue and out of nowhere he wants to fucking cry. He hates goddamn tea and he hates being treated like some old man and he wants Cas and he wants this stupid fucking day to go away.

“Sir?” The woman asks, sat next to him on this bench outside the grocery store. She’s just trying to be nice and he gets that, but he hates being called sir. He keeps looking at his hands, trying to work out how his instincts went all wonky. John Winchester believed in teaching lessons the hard way, so he used to take him out driving in crappy conditions to make sure he knew which way to turn if he started to skid, or lose control. Ice, rain and crappy roads. He was a bit of a bastard about it, obviously, but it sunk in, deep. He was always a better driver than Cas, who learned in a nice, controlled environment in his fancy school. He’s always felt safe and whole behind the wheel, too, and then he was skidding into that ditch and he didn’t do anything at all, except white-knuckle grip the steering wheel and fucking panic. And now he keeps looking at his hands. Stares at his damn wedding ring and feels the raw grief of it slicing the back of his throat, again, and she says “sir” again and he should probably answer her and drink his damn tea like a good old man, because she's only trying to help.

“My brother,” Dean says. It’s… well, honestly Dean’s got no damn idea what day of the week it is, but Emma’s probably navigating after school clubs and freaking teenagers and he… he’s pretty sure one of the things he’s feeling right now is shame and he doesn’t want to deal with that in front of Emma. Doesn’t want her worrying about him. If he can help it, he doesn’t want the kids knowing about this at all.

“Your brother,” The woman says, nodding, and then something of the foggy panic shock shifts and Dean registers that he needs to get out his damn phone if anyone is gonna call anyone. It’s a little fucking patronising that she offers to take it out of his hands —- he is a grown ass man and he can make a damn call himself — but, actually, he doesn’t really know what to say, so he lets her have it and he drinks his crappy tea and stares at his wedding ring and aches.

“Hey,” One of the store clerks says, heading his way from the car park. He’s probably only just out of his teens, tall and a little gangly. “It’s your impala, right?”

“Yeah,”

“Got her out of the ditch for you,” The kid says, handing the keys back to him and god it’s fucked up that he apparently let some random kid drive his baby. “Sweet car. Don’t worry about it —- people do it all the time.”

And yeah, Dean knows that because this has been his milk run for longer than this kid has been alive. He and Claire used to play ditch-bingo whenever they did the grocery run together. Hell, Cas did it twice, both on bad days where he had other crap on his mind and Dean had mercilessly mocked him for it. The second time he came home and told them he’d done it, with this frown creased into his forehead, Claire had laughed hard enough that she actually cried. They’d been slap bang in the middle of some week-long curfew negotiation and the comic relief had broken their stalemate, actually, and Dean kept smirking at him when they finally went up to bed, and Cas said ‘it’s not funny, Dean. It was humiliating. I had to be rescued by a security guard’ but he’d been smiling and he was smiling when he told Emma about it the next weekend and she agreed that it was fucking hilarious and Claire mentions it whenever she’s home and they go to the grocery store together.

This doesn’t feel very funny.

“Thanks,” Dean says, curling his fist around the keys.

“Your brother says he’s on his way.” The woman says, sitting down next to him and passing him his phone. He’d changed the background to be a picture of Ben and Amelia because it was fucking killing him staring at that picture of the last Christmas they had all together, but it’s been a really bad week and yesterday he changed it back to this selfie he took with Cas on his seventieth birthday. He wishes he hadn’t, right now.

“Okay.”

“That him?” She asks, because Dean’s staring at his damn background picture still.

“Oh,” Dean says, and he doesn’t know why she’s still talking to him. He does because… because he’s vulnerable and alone and she’s trying to be a good citizen, but he really doesn’t wanna talk. They don’t look very brotherly, either. He’s seventy whatever and the heteronormativity is still haunting him (Cas would say ‘it gets everywhere’ with this sage nod and then he’d press a kiss into the bolt of his jaw). “No, that’s — my husband.”

“Has it been long?” She asks gently, “Since you lost him?”

“Three years, nearly,” Dean says. He doesn’t know if that counts as long. It feels long. He’s felt every second of it like an ache, but there’s no real indication that it won’t get longer.

“I’m sorry,” She says, resting a hand on his arm and, god, but he doesn’t want to be here, talking about this with some stranger, with his grief apparently stamped all over his face. “Can I get you another drink?”

“No,” Dean says. If … if Cas were here, he’d find a way to make it feel funny. He’d say ‘old age comes to us all Dean’ and kiss his forehead, or ‘there’s still incontinence and dementia to look forward to’ and if Dean was still hung up on it he’d crowd up next to him on the sofa and say ‘I don’t believe that you’re past anything’ and give him a suggestive look until it all felt okay. Or, he’d say ‘need I remind you I did this at fifty three’ and Dean would add in ‘and forty something’ and tell him that he was always a shitty driver. None of it felt all that terrible when they were facing it together. Like when Dean got back from the doctors with a diagnosis of arthritis and he went on this big rant about his ‘useless fucking fingers’ and Cas made this big show of putting them in his mouth with a smirk like a fucking pornstar till Dean couldn’t keep hold of his anger or his fear anymore and then they were laughing and kissing and it felt like it would be allright to slowly fall apart together. Or, when Cas came back from the hospital after the first heart attack and Dean said ‘guess it’s time to slow down then, buddy’ and Cas said ‘I’m not your buddy’ and didn’t let go of his damn hand all evening as they sat there and talked about their new, slower dreams, and they were both scared, but they worked it out. The next day they chucked out all the red meat and the bad stuff on the doctors list— or Dean did, cause Cas was still on ordered bed rest, so he watched him from one of the kitchen chairs and provided a hilarious commentary about it— and they picked out half a dozen TV shows they wanted to rewatch. They never even had to talk to Emma about pulling back on the childcare stuff in the end, because the next week she slipped in that stuff about wrap-around care and an uncharacteristically insensitive comment about neither of them really being up to running around after kids, anymore (she didn’t put it like that, but the subtext felt pretty clear). It didn’t feel cruel either, then, to have people slowly writing him off for things: assuming parts of his life away. Dean said ‘our kids think we’re old and decrepit” and Castiel shrugged and said “they also think that about Star Wars, it doesn’t mean they’re correct” and put on the tv. He thought he maybe wouldn’t mind wandering slowly into that dark night, holding hands, as their world got smaller and slower and more full of pills and stiff joints.

Dean was wrong, though. Aging is terrible. It is cruel.

Sam turns up fifteen minutes later, with his mane of grey hair and his fancy ass coat that kinda makes Dean think he should be on a detective show. Dean tries to find his way to the usual Dean-Winchester special dumbass, dorky and/or inappropriate joke to lighten the mood, but he loses it before it comes out and just nods at him instead.

He doesn’t even get asked if he wants to drive himself home. The woman walks him to the damn car and Sam takes the keys to the impala and drives him home.

*

The thing is, he knows the house is a bit of a mess, but it’s just been a really bad week.

Sometimes, it’s okay. He has dinner with Emma and Jake and the grandkids twice a week and Claire calls him every Friday and he goes to visit Benny and makes jokes with him about breaking him out of his home. Since Sam retired, Dean spends a lot more of the days over at Sammy’s place, which is usually half-full of grandkids, or at least the dog and the cat, and at least less gapingly empty all the fucking time, and he calls Gabriel and watches shit daytime TV and he likes all of those things. They make him tired sometimes, but they’re good. He has a lot of good things.

It’s just this week has been hard.

Everyone’s so fucking careful around him about the big stuff --- birthdays and anniversaries and christmassess -- but sometimes it just hits him out of the fucking blue and he sits there and he thinks and he remembers and he talks to Cas in his head and he wonders if that’s normal of he’s finally freaking losing it, and then he doesn’t sort out the life stuff.

This week got on top of him and now Sammy’s putting his groceries in his fridge and that probably means they’re going to have a fucking talk about it, because it’s a mess. He was gonna sort it today, which is why he’d dragged himself up and out of the house to the grocery store before he, well, lost concentration, or lost something and ended up in a goddamn ditch.

“Gabriel said you didn’t call on Thursday,” Sam says, shutting the fridge and bringing through two cups of coffee -- thank fuck -- and Dean really didn’t expect him to start with that, but he also doesn’t know how to defend himself without admitting that he has no freaking clue what day of the week it is. Emma swapped round the days that he came for dinner last week for some reason -- something to do with Mia and a date, he thinks, but he lost the thread of the phone call because she was halfway through cooking and Ben was yelling at his gaming-thing in the background -- and he sort of lost track from there. It doesn’t actually matter, because his days are not all that distinguishable from each other.

“Yeah,” Dean says, wrapping his fingers around his cup of coffee, “Didn’t feel much like talking.”

“Okay,” Sam says, “Dean, come on.”

“Just having a bad week, Sammy.”

“Clearly,” Sam says, and Dean’s not looking at him. He can guess what expression he’s wearing anyway. “I thought --- I thought you were doing better.”

“M’ just,” Dean says, “Just getting old.”

“Aren’t we all,” Sam says and… that helps, actually. Sam isn’t exactly a spring freaking chicken anymore, either, even if he carries his age very well (‘a silver fox’, according to Mary’s friend, which Sam reported to him with far too much freaking glee). He still goes for runs every morning like a first class freak, but he’s still past seventy and creaks when he stands up too fast. Dean’s not alone alone, even if it feels like it.

“So,” Dean says, “Can we not tell the kids about the ditch thing?”

“What happened?”

“Honestly -- don’t know,” Dean says, which is terrifying, “Sam, they’ll just --- worry.”

“Okay,” Sam says, evenly, “It’s just, Dean, I’m a little worried.”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “Except --- there’s a letter next to the coffee machine about you missing your check-up. The one that makes sure the prostate cancer you had hasn’t come back.”

“Federal offence to read someone else's' mail, Sammy.”

“No it’s not,”

“Well okay, but it’s a little impolite,” Dean says, “I called them back about that. Rescheduled.”

“It said you missed it twice.”

“Yeah, I…”

“Dean,” Sam says, “Be honest with me here --- are you doing this on purpose?”

“No,” Dean snaps, because the accusation is gualling. It’s not completely off-base because he doesn’t actually give a shit if he does or does not have fucking cancer -- except for that part where treatment is a bitch and he’d probably need help and he doesn’t want to be a burden on his kids -- but he had to make the decision a long damn time ago that he had to nut-up and act like he gave a damn about staying alive and healthy because it was damn selfish not to. He doesn’t wanna be the one to break Emma’s heart. He knows how fucking guilty Claire would feel for being far away if he just sacked off the fight, so he hasn’t, even when, mostly, what he wants is to go upstairs and curl up in their bed and not do anything except think about Cas. “Look, they sent me a letter, I didn’t get it till I’d already missed the damn thing and then yesterday was a really bad day, Sam, and I just couldn’t.”

“Didn’t get it, or didn’t read it?”

“What do you want from me here, Sammy?”

“I don’t know, Dean, I just want to know what’s going on,” Sam says, “You’re not doing well here,” Sam continues, like Dean doesn’t know. He… the ditch-thing is bad timing, because if he’d known that Sam, or anyone, was coming over he’d have tried to sham everything being a little better. He’d have moved that stack of mail that he hasn’t opened (straight into the garbage, probably) and he’d have washed up and done some laundry and… and he couldn’t do the big empty bed thing, last night, so he slept on the sofa and it’s… He was going to sort it out today. He knew he couldn’t stay in this rut. “At the funeral, you said ‘I’m not going to do that whole Romeo and Juliet dying of a broken heart thing like those sad old couples people write news articles about’ and I just ---”

“Well maybe it was never about the broken heart thing,” Dean snaps, “Maybe that’s just what happens when you don’t have someone to look after you anymore.”

He regrets the words as soon as they’re out his mouth. They’re not helpful. They don’t make anyone any fucking happier and he doesn’t really know where they came from, except this stuff has been bubbling up in his windpipe all week and he doesn’t know why, he just knows that he’s tired and he’s scared and he wants Castiel and he can’t have him.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me, Sammy,” Dean croaks out, then the words are just coming. “Woke up on Monday and I --- I thought he was just downstairs, making coffee and that any second he was gonna walk in and then it all hit me again and I don’t know if I’m losing my fucking mind, Sam, or if I just miss him so bad that I ---” And then he’s crying, big ugly tears welling up from his gut, “--- and he used to do half this stuff, with the laundry and the doctors appointments and reminding me to take my damn pain medication and I’m just lost, all the time, and my joints hurt and I let some pimpled fucking kid drive my baby and I --- I don’t know if I should be driving anymore and I --- was gonna sort all this out today ‘cause I know it’s a mess I just --- I don’t know how to do it on my own.”

Sam doesn’t say anything for a long time, as Dean cries himself out, face buried in his hands. It’s cathartic, in a way, but it doesn't really change the raw root of it, because it never does. It’s not the first post-Cas crying jag he’s had about being lonely and scared and not having anyone to make decisions with, anymore, and that’s not changing, so it’s never going to go away. It’s just one of the things he has to live with, now, like the arthritis; this constant, gnawing, pain.

“Do you want to be here?” Sam asks, after a while.

“What?” Dean asks, the word a little hoarse.

“In this house,” Sam says.

“You’re not shipping me off to the fucking pound, like Benny’s kid did.”

“Literally not what I was going to say,” Sam says, standing up to grab a box of tissues and offering them up to him. Dean takes one and tries to wipe away some of the indignity of grief. “Look, I’m not --- you can’t do this,” Sam says, gesturing vaguely to Dean’s duvet, which is still bunched up at the end of the sofa.

“Emma’s got her own life.”

“I know,” Sam says, “And believe me, I get it. But you’re crap at being alone, Dean, you always have been and I can’t, in good conscience, pretend this isn’t happening. So I’m saying --- let’s do it together, okay? You and me. Live together. Look after each other. ”

Dean blinks at him.

“Where?” Dean asks.

“Up to you,” Sam says, sitting back down again and giving him this look. It’s not pity which -- he’s had his freaking dosage of that today -- and that somehow makes it easier to drop his knee-jerk reaction and just think for a moment. “I --- this place has a lot of memories for you, Dean. Right now, not sure whether that’s good or bad, but you definitely need to work that out yourself.” Sam says, evenly.

And… Sam and the kids moved a lot, really, so they don’t have a childhood home in the same way that Emma and Claire did. After getting here from California, they moved three or four times while Sam tried to figure out all that solo-parenting stuff, so it’s… it’s good of Sam to offer that up. It’s…

It’s a good idea, really. He thinks, maybe, he’d do a little better with another person in the house. A house.

“Claire might still want her room,” Dean says, mouth a little dry.

“Dean,” Sam says, “You know the last few times she’s come home, she’s stayed with Emma, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean exhales, even though it’s the kind of thing that makes his throat tight. It was another decision that was made without him, really, even if Claire was clearly hyper-sensitive about it (‘that’s okay, right, Padre? I thought --- that it would save you the effort, you know?’) and… and he doesn’t know. He figured that they’d live there forever, him and Cas, nestled up there with their memories all around them. It’s hard, now, to walk around and see Cas everywhere. Feel him everywhere. Trip over his stupid trench coat when he tries to get his own shit out the closet (like Cas would ever have put it there).

He got rid of some stuff last year. It felt like it might help but it didn’t, really. It was nice to sift through some of their memories, but he wound up not wanting to throw anything away.

If he moved, he’d have to go through all of it, and… that sounds difficult, but good. It would feel like cutting out his intestines with a butter knife, but there’d be moments of feeling close to Cas, too, and Emma and Claire would help which means they’d get to talk about him (lately, Dean feels like Cas is the only thing in the whole world he wants to talk about and that nobody else wants to, anymore). He’s not sure if it’s better than the option of them having to do it on their own, after Dean’s gone, but thinking about it as preparing the universe for him being gone is just…

It’s not as unpleasant as he thinks it should be.

“Not like I’m not gonna think about him all the time, wherever I am,” Dean says, because he doesn’t know. He’d need to think about it all.

“I know,” Sam says, sitting down next to him, nudging him with his arm with this unending compassion that loosens something in Dean’s chest. He’s been drowning in it, this week, and he’s been trying to get to the surface and breathe, he just didn’t know how. “I know, Dean.”

The night after they moved in, Cas whispered ‘this is our forever home, Dean’ into his ear. ‘We are not moving ever again.’

He was right about that, anyway.

“This isn’t just for you, you know,” Sam says, voice lower, “I’m --- been feeling pretty lonely myself.”

“Figured,” Dean says, voice still thick. “When you adopted the cat.”

There are worse things in the world than growing old with Sam.

It --- that’s what he probably would have asked for, when he was a kid, if he was ever to think beyond his glamorised-ideas of dying young because he had no idea what it was like to be happy. He wanted different things for Sammy, because Sam’s no stranger to grief. He lost Jess, then Eileen, but they’re ---

He knows they’re lucky. He knows that Sam has brilliant kids, freaking five (questionable) grandkids and that Dean has two beautiful, fucking wonderful daughters that make him really happy, it’s just hard, too when his hands hurts and, apparently, he can’t drive his fucking car and he misses Cas more than he’s ever felt anything ever and Dean keeps gettings older, and foggier, and less ontop of it all.

He was worried about Sam being lonely, before. He talked to Cas about it constantly and Cas would cradle Dean’s face in his hands and say ‘how could anyone be lonely when they’re loved by Dean Winchester?’ but he hasn’t been paying much attention, recently. It’s been hard enough to deal with his own shit, so he turned all his attention inwards but he’d… he’d like to look after Sam, a bit.

He’d like to do something for another person, because he’s felt growingly like all he does is burden others because no one depends on him, anymore. It was easier to remember to take his stupid pills when he was remembering for Cas, too, and they’d cheers their glasses of water to wash the drugs down like it was funny, not depressing as fuck. He’d like to have another person to cook for, clean up after, and make coffee for. He’s always found it harder to look after himself than other people.

(‘You like to be needed’ Cas said once, on the drive to Sioux Falls, and he does. He doesn’t like to be irrelevant. Irrelvance chokes him up, sometimes, when he watches his beautiful family getting along without him, just fine).

“You know that doesn’t mean you get my car,” Dean mutters, leaning back on the sofa and shutting his eyes, some of the storm of panic grief fear loneliness quietening, for a while. “Promised Claire a long time ago.”

“I figured, jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean says.

“And Dean,” Sam says, fixing him with those too precious for this world eyes. “I think you should talk to them. Emma and Claire. I --- I know it’s not easy but… I think they worry about you, either way. You might as well be honest.”

If he's really considering this whole living-with-Sam thing, then he's going to have to, anyway. If he sells the house or moves Sam in (with his fucking pets which, god, Dean can live without a freaking cat in his face all the dame time), they're going to have questions and he's going to have to talk about how crappy he feels, all the damn time. It might be a good thing.

“Supposed to be the other way round,” Dean says.

“I think we’re over that hill,” Sam mutters, darkly.

“Am I losing my mind?” Dean asks, dredging up the words from that pit of fear that’s been haunting him. It’s fucking horrible to have no one to check with and to navigate this foggy-overwhelmed-confusion with no map, no guide. It’s been grief and it’s been fear too, because he doesn’t know if he should know what day of the week it is, and he’s lost the thread of if-and-when he took his pills and he… he didn’t mean to miss that freaking appointment, or let the milk go off and he still talks to Cas in his head he can’t remember the name of Sam’s fifth grandchild for shit, but he doesn’t --- he doesn’t know if he’s just tired and overwhelmed --- and he thinks, if Cas would there, he’d know and he’d notice and he’d be lovely and reassuring and they’d work out what to do -- and then he thinks that he just needs to snap out of it, for the kids and the grandkids, and then he’s wheel-deep in a fucking ditch, being given cups of sympathy-tea.

“Don’t know, Dean,” Sam says, with a half-smile, “Your mind was never in much shakes to begin with. It’s hard to tell.”

“Asshole,” Dean smiles, lungs loosening slightly so that some real life oxygen gets into his lungs.

“Come on,” Sam says, standing up with this look that says ’I’ve got you’ that he didn’t know he needed but, god, he does. He needs it. “Your kitchen isn’t gonna clean itself.”

It's a little easier than he expected to put on a smile and follow his little-brother into the kitchen.

Chapter Text

“You ever think,” Dean says, watching Sam try and battle it out with their TV (Emma and Claire bought it them for Christmas four years ago and it has so many damn features that it’s basically fucking magic, except for the part that it never does what you want; Cas used to bitch at it something stupid). It’s currently stuck on some of the back catalogue of millionaire pensioners, which Sam hates. “That you’re never gonna have sex again.”

Sam turns around and blinks at him.

“That one day you had sex for the last time, ever, and you didn’t even know.”

“No,” Sam says, owlish. “Now I am.”

“You’re welcome,” Dean says, cheerfully, as Emma snorts in the doorway with two big bowls of popcorn and some drinks top up.

“Thanks for that, Dean,” Sam says, abandoning the remote on the table to sit back on his armchair and look vaguely constipated. To be fair, it could happen for Sam — he’s dated a bit since Eileen, but not loads, clearly enough that he hadn’t written himself off the game entirely in the aftermath — and he’s handling it better than when Dean realised it, a whole six months after Cas when the thought dropped into his head while he was making breakfast.

It had been a bad one, actually, because it had been both about-Cas and not-about-Cas and back then he hated grieving any losses that weren’t specifically about trench coats and blue eyes and snark (he’s accepted it, now, that he misses Cas-things and general-couple-things and that’s okay). When you look at his life as whole, most of the damn sex he ever had was with Castiel, so in a lot of ways the two are intrinsically interconnected. It’s not like he’d want to sleep with anyone else and he… he doesn’t exactly feel sexy, in himself or at all (probably grief, maybe age), it’s just one of those things, but he’d really gone down the rabbit hole with it. He’d started with the dumb base realisation about sex and then he thought no one’s ever going to kiss me again and then no one’s ever going to hold me again, ever and then he could almost feel the phantom-touch of Cas wrapping his arms around him in bed, except he couldn’t, and he didn’t know how a person was supposed to live knowing that no one would ever touch them again and he’d had an honest-to-god panic attack in their downstairs bathroom. A week later, he was sleeping over at Emma’s because something broke — his heating, or a pipe, or something — and for whatever reason Mia, who was told old for it really, climbed into his bed on top of the sheets and tucked herself against his side with a hushed whisper about a nightmare. He’d lay there with her cuddled up next to him and thought about tiny baby-Mia sleeping on his chest and the way she used to grab fistfuls of Castiel’s hair, and it had rolled over him, slowly, in a wave that it was going to be okay. He could survive it. He’d be okay.

“So, when was the last time?” Dean says, cheerfully. “Good final harrah?”

“Yeah ——that is so none of your business,” Sam says, accepting the bowl of popcorn and handing Emma the remote.

“This is a safe space, Sammy.”

Sam flicks a piece of popcorn at his head.

Emma slips next to him on the sofa and does some freaking wizardry with the remote —- she has taught him at least half a dozen times and, last time, wrote out some honest to god instructions that she’d printed out and stuck to the coffee table, because apparently he’s officially old enough for this level of patronization under the guise of being ‘helpful’ is acceptable — and puts on the movie.

“It’s a sequel to that one you like, padre,” Emma says, settling back and, for some reason, resting her head on his shoulders. Maybe she saw through his comment, a bit, or had been more aware than she’s been letting on that he hasn’t been doing very well, lately (when he said that Sam was temporarily moving in while he got his house redecorated her mouth had gotten all soft and she’d said ‘I think that’s great, Daddy’; Claire just made a derogatory comment about the cat). Or she might just want to, because Mia is going through “bit of a phase” right now and Dean remembers what that was like. Either way, it’s fucking glorious to have his lovely daughter close and resting on him and then he thinks fuck it becuase he’s old and maybe that means he’s allowed, and he takes Emma’s hand in both of his, threads their fingers together and rests his other on top.

Her hands are cooler than Cas’ ever were, with long, thin fingers and white-tipped nails. She lets him, though. Squeezes his hand and keeps hold of it, tight.

And he couldn’t give up this voluntarily. Not really. Not having glorious, grown-up Emma let her tea go cold to hold his hand and watch some dumb movie she thinks Dean would like, with Sammy’s gigantor legs falling off the edge of the armchair and the knowledge that Claire’s coming home tomorrow. It’s just hard, sometimes. It really fucking hurts, but Cas didn’t get to see Mia be a teenager and he won’t meet Sam’s sixth (!) grandkid, so he’s gotta… gotta do better. He’s gotta stay in this for moments like this.

Fifteen minutes in, Sam’s stupid cat climbs up on Dean’s lap and starts purring because the damn thing fucking loves Dean (and hates Sam, as far as Dean can work out), so he lets go of Emma’s hand and throws an arm around her shoulders instead, and stokes the cat, slowly, as the movie jolts around three different timelines.

The movie doesn't make a lick of sense. He can’t remember liking the prequel, either. Can’t remember the prequel, period, but he’s watched a lot of damn movies and Emma snuggles under his arm like she’s nine and that’s enough for it to be a really good way to spend his time.

Obviously, he falls asleep.

“Hey, Padre,” Emma says, nudging him awake however long later with a soft hand on his arm.

“Hmm —oh.”

“I’m gonna take off in a minute,” she says, and Dean stands up quick enough that the cat launches itself off his lap and gives him the side-eye (from the armchair, Sam snorts).

“Damn cat,” Dean bitches, as Emma smiles and picks up her mug and the popcorn, wandering back into the kitchen. “Did you —- Claire’s coming in tomorrow?” Dean asks, following her.

“Yeah,” Emma says.

“Dunno why I thought it was today.”

“Sometimes she comes on a Friday,”

“And —- she’s flying, right?”

“Yeah,” Emma says, with a kind of deliberate patience that would irritate him on a worse day, because he’s just trying to get it straight in his damn head. The plan. “Is it nice having Sam here?” She asks, loading the dishwasher.

Dean makes a half noncommittal noise. It is, obviously, but he said he was gonna talk to them both about this tomorrow. Or, he was going to do it tonight when he thought Claire was supposed to be here, but now he’s doing it tomorrow.

It’s great, actually.

Sam’s objectively shit to live with, because he comes with a whole freaking menagerie and the dog smells because it’s a hundred years old, and he leaves his books everywhere and is way more anal than Cas ever was about the dishes, but…

He was going to take some more time to think about it. Actual, proper thought, and then before Sam left on ditch-day the damn doctors called him back and said he hadn’t picked up his last two prescriptions — news to Dean — and he’d copped to having not gone upstairs at all, yesterday, and Sam fixed him with this look and said ‘no wonder your joints hurt. Yeah, no chance in hell I’m leaving you here alone’ and Dean had wanted to dredge up some indignation about it, but mostly everything in him was screaming thank god, so they’d made up the ruse about the re-decorating and Sam moved into Emma’s old room while they worked the rest out.

“When’s the house going to be finished?” Emma asks, still pottering around.

“Don’t know,” Dean says, “Soon, I think.”

“Maybe you should keep the cat,” Emma says, “She likes you,”

“Fuck off,”

“Love you, Daddy.” Emma says, which means she is worried. She only calls him that when she’s upset about something. He hadn’t heard it for decades before Cas died.

“What time tomorrow?”

“We’ll be here at ten,” Emma says.

“Okay,” Dean, forehead creasing. “She must be getting an early flight, then.”

“Yeah,” Emma says, “She want to see you, but Kaia had —“

“—- art exhibition,” Dean nods, because he remembers that. Claire told him. They talked about it on the phone the last time they spoke, which was probably last Friday even though it feels like an age ago. “Yeah, okay. Don’t worry ‘bout cleaning up --- I got it.”

“Okay,” Emma says, setting down the plates and turning to look at him. She’s so freaking grown up, these days. A mother of teenagers. Freaking teenagers and here she is having movie-night with Dean and Sam like she doesn’t have a hundred other better things to do.

“Kick ass movie,” Dean says, even though he couldn’t tell you a single fucking thing about it, but Emma smiles and pulls her coat out of the closet. She’s starting wearing this bright blue trench coat which is pretty bold for Emma, who always stuck broadly around the neturals, and it both suits her and makes Dean want to curl up into a ball and sob. “Let me know when you’re home.”

“It’s a twenty minute drive, Padre,” Emma says, as Dean reaches forward and straightens her coat. “But -- course. See you tomorrow, okay? Ten AM.”

“Yeah,” Dean nods, as Emma kisses him on the cheek and heads out the door.

“You have any clue what the hell that movie was about?” Dean asks, hovering in the doorway as Sam prods angrily at the remote. He’s gotten them both another beer and perched them on the edge of the coffee table.

“Nope,” Sam says, “But what do I know? Can’t even work out how to put on the freaking news on your demonic TV.”

“Should keep your TV instead.” Dean says, taking the remote out of his hands and, somehow, stumbling across the right combination of buttons for Sammy’s crappy news-show. Muscle memory, and a real freaking win at that. He chucks it back in Sam’s direction, after, and Sam doesn’t even bother to try and catch it. He just watches it fall into his lap.

“Yup.” Sam agrees, then they settle into silence for a while. They’ve spent a lot of time quiet, but it’s a less suffocating, oppressive kind of quiet than it was when Dean was here alone. “Sarah Blake, June 2068. The day she told me she was moving to Minnesota to be near her grandkids.”

It takes Dean a minute, then his mouth softens into something like a smile. Figures Sam’s too much of a damn prude to talk about sex infront of Dean’s kid, like Emma didn’t have Dean and Cas as parents. And... he liked Sarah, actually, the whole twice that they met, because Sam can be pretty cagey about his love-life sometimes. She was a catch. Not bad for a last hurrah.

“Castiel Winchester-Novak,” Dean throws back, “2nd August, 2068.”

“To the rest of our sexless existence,” Sam says, holding his beer aloft.

“Cheers,” Dean says, clinking their beers together, then settling down for another evening of Sam’s long, winding commentary about the news and, okay, it’s not perfect, but everything physically hurts a little less since Sam’s been reminding him about taking the pills for the arthritis and his antidepressants and… and he doesn’t want to face up to the The Conversation with his kids tomorrow, and fuck he wishes Cas was here, but there’s a certain-something about their grumpy old man club.

*

Sammy’s already up when Dean comes down the next morning, drinking one of his horrifyingly green health drinks by the fridge and he immediately gets the damn dog sniffing at his ankles, out of breath, tongue lolling out like some deranged hellhound. It’s a big damn change from three weeks ago when Dean stumbled out from the living room to sit in the shell of his home to marinade in the silence and think himself into circles and hurt and ache and stare at the walls and panic about what the hell is happening to him.

“When you gonna put that poor dog out his misery and stop dragging him out for a walk every freaking mornin’?” Dean asks, bending down to ruffle his ears. Sometimes he thinks that when the dog dies that might be the thing that breaks Sam, after all of it. He got the dog after Eileen and Dean’s always thought it saved him, really. He’s glad they’re gonna be together, when he thinks about that. “That decaf?”

“Nope, regular.” Sam says, pulling out a mug and passing it to him.

“God bless you, Samantha.” Dean says, getting his coffee, sitting down heavily and stretching out his fingers, because they hurt today. The damn dog puts his paws up on Dean’s knees and gives him that look, so Dean abandons his efforts to make his fingers hurt less to scratch him behind his ears.

“He wouldn’t do that if you stopped feeding him bacon,” Sam says, sitting down opposite him and looking at him, “You doing okay?”

“Hm,” Dean says, because … yeah he is okay. He’s not great because he knows, really, that today is gonna suck and… it’s sort of the first time he’s done the big serious conversation with his kids about stuff on his own. Kind of, anyway, cause he was the one to call them and tell them the Cas was never gonna make it out of the hospital, but he’s pretty sure he was in shock, and it wasn’t one of those conversations he got to work up to. It was happening so he had to say it, but with the other stuff, when they told them about the whole prostate cancer thing, or about Jess getting a terminal diagnosis, or about how they were gonna retire, or talking to Claire about her mom, it was all… team work. They didn’t always talk about it beforehand because they were pretty good at being in rhythm with each other, but… United front. “Been better.” He settles on, taking his coffee. “Ten thirty.”

“Ten,” Sam corrects, as the dog tries to entirely climb on Dean’s lap and lick his face. “Bones, down.”

“You’re headed to Mary’s?” Dean asks, scrunching his face against the onslaught of dog tongue.

“Bones,” Sam hisses again, which achieves absolutely nothing. “Yeah. I can stay, if you want?”

“Nah,” Dean says, rubbing his forehead with his hands. It’s tempting, but he can’t use Sam as a security blanket forever. They’re Dean’s kids, so he… he can do this (and if Cas were here he’d look at him with that piercing blue stare and he’d say ‘do you remember when you changed their diapers?’ and Dean would say ‘vividly’ and Cas would say ‘do you remember googling the answers to Claire’s homework?’ and Dean would you say ‘you getting to a damn point, asshat?’ and then Cas would crowd up in his personal space and say ‘you are their father and you have earned their respect, Dean, and there is nothing you can do or say that will change that fact’.) “I’ll be okay. You gotta tell your contingent, anyway, before they all start gossiping.”

“It’s a good comms plan,” Sam says, “Pills taken?”

“Yep,” Dean nods, flattening his hands again and frowning at them. They’re all puffed up and useless. “Fucking aging. Biggest damned con ever.”

“You sound like Bobby.”

“Well. Turns out he had a point.”

“Yep,” Sam agrees, with this half-sympathetic quirk of the eyebrow.

Dean feels another painful spark of gratitude and swallows back saying something stupid like thank you so much for clogging up my kitchen with your stinking dog and your long limbs because Sam keeps saying he’s not doing this for Dean, even though he is.

And ---

He didn’t really realise how fucking terribly he was doing until he wasn’t, anymore.

It’s still not freaking great because he still doesn’t know what the hell is happening to him, or if anything is, but Sam has been a goddamn saint. Patient and honest. Made him go to the doctors. Not just his check-up (still no prostate cancer), but he made him book another one to sit there and ask if he’s actually losing it (“Dean, I’m taking you seriously here, okay? But I’m not a medical professional. I can’t give you any answers, so we need to do something”.) The evening before, Sam sat down and they wrote down all the things Dean wanted to talk about and a couple of minutes into his damn appointment, the doctor suggested Sam should come join them, and that was better, and the appointment was okay, even if he doesn’t really have any answers.

(As it turns out, he’d been completely fucking up his meds. It took some logicking, but they backtracked and worked out that he’d mixed up the ad-hoc arthritis painkillers with the anti-depressants and even then hadn’t been taking them when he was supposed to, which pretty much totalled the concept of either of them working. And that might be a point in the ‘losing the fucking plot’ column or it might be why he’s been feeling so stretched-thin with grief-pain-foggy-overwhelmed-panic. He doesn’t know. Sometimes he thinks he’s just so damn scared of slipping down the rabbit hole that he’s just overthinking it, because he didn’t used to get flawed by turning the oven on wrong, or not being able to work that dumbass TV, or forgetting what day Claire was visiting, and now it chills him to the bone. And then he thinks about finding himself in that ditch and still not knowing the name of Sam’s fifth grandkid and taking the wrong drugs and he’s sure that he’s going to lose all of it if he doesn’t keep shrouding himself in his memories and on really, really bad moments he’s glad that Cas isn’t here because he thinks watching Dean turn into some empty-shell would probably be Castiel’s worst nightmare and Dean would never want him to be in that kind of pain).

“You want breakfast, Sasquatch? I got veggie bacon.” Dean says, standing up and stretching out his back. That kind of hurts, too, because of course it does.

“No you didn’t,” Sam says, a suggestion of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “And no -- gonna hit the shower.” He finishes, standing up, tipping out the rest of his coffee and setting it on the side, leaving Dean alone to cook himself breakfast.

(And, obviously, Dean gives the stupid dog some bacon because he really believes that if you don’t have a lot of time left, you should definitely eat bacon.)

*

Because Claire knows how to make him, briefly, feel like the luckiest man on the universe, her opening gambit is to tell him that she and Kaia are gonna be goddamn foster parents (if this was before, Dean would turn to Cas and say ‘how fucking awesome are our kids and Cas’d smile that gummy-parent smile that Dean had never seen before they’d adopted Emma and hold his hands) and then she presented him with a framed picture of her and Kaia because ‘we’re so never getting married, but we gotta fix the symmetry of these photos’ and then hung it up next to Emma’s wedding pictures.

“Got something for you, too,” Dean says, standing up and heading for the kitchen. That’s generally been code for ‘something that belonged to Cas or your childhood’ lately and he’s never really sure how much they want that stuff (he has this gnawing suspicion that they’re just humouring him and he never wanted to be that kind of old man… it’s just he feels better when he wraps himself in the past and it’s hard not to keep talking about it), but Claire jumps up off the sofa anyway and follows him.

Once he decided, he put the impala keys in the odds-and-ends drawer in the kitchen and didn’t look at them again, because it’s one of those painful shit-but-right decisions that makes his arthritis hurt.

But… they tried it. He went out again with Sam after the freaking ditch thing and the first time Dean just got so clogged up in this stress-fear-panic and then the second time he got out of his head a bit more, but then Sam reached over and switched off the engine and Dean realized his hands were shaking. “I’m gonna be honest,” Sam said, fixing him with this painfully sympathetic look, “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Dean, but I don’t feel safe with you driving right now.” And that was that. He’s not — he’s not gonna push it, because it’s not worth it, and Dean didn’t feel particularly freaking safe, either. He was jittery and slow and kept thinking he was gonna forget how his damn car worked. He made some dumb comment about Sam being his chauffeur from now on, then, and Sam clapped him on the shoulder like he was proud of Dean for not being an idiot about it.

“Here,” Dean says, dropping the keys into Claire’s hand with a weak smile.

“I,” Claire says, blinking at the keys, “Padre.”

“She’s yours, Claire Bear. You —- don’t have to drive her back this weekend but I thought, cause you flew out here...”

And then Claire looks like she’s going to cry and Dean doesn’t know what the hell to do with that.

“Claire?” Emma asks, coming through to the room with a couple of empty mugs, glancing between them, eyes sticking on the impala keys. “What’s happening?”

“He’s —- no, Padre,” Claire says, trying to push the keys back into Dean’s hands. “You can’t. You can’t give me your baby.”

“Excuse you, princess, I can do what I want.” Dean says, shuffling away to get himself some coffee, because he thinks he’s gonna need some damn coffee. “She’s yours. I don’t want her.”

“Daddy,” Emma says, gentle. “Let's talk about this.”

And —- fuck.

He doesn’t want to do this.

“I don’t wanna fucking talk about it,” Dean says, grip tightening on his coffee, squaring his shoulders (and god, he wishes that Cas was here; he’d know what to say, he’d know how to do this: he’d send him the ‘you’re the parent so you have to be a grown up look’ and then he’d tell them both off for not listening to him. He always, always made it all better). “I always told you I would.”

“When you’re —- over my dead body, you said,” Claire says, “And we’re not doing that, Padre. You’re not — I’m not having you be an ornery old man talking about waiting to die. It wasn’t cute when Bobby did it and I’m not —- ”

“—- you don’t know jack shit about being an old man.”

“—- I know it’s hard, Padre, I — we miss him, okay? All the time —”

“— this isn’t about Cas,” Dean says, which is stupid, because everything is always about Cas. “I can’t,” Dean says, the words sharp in his throat, because they’re awful. He is trying to accept his limitations with grace because -- because that’s what they always tried to do together, him and Cas, and raging against them doesn’t change the fact that he can’t do this on his own. He knows that, now. He needs help because he’s not coping and he hates that, but… Accepting it and telling his children are very different things. “I can’t drive anymore.”

“Daddy,” Emma says, quiet, “Let’s sit down and talk about this, okay?”

“Okay,” Dean agrees, except his fingers won’t cooperate properly and then Emma picks up his coffee for him, resting a hand on his arm and offering this little nod.

“What do you mean,” Emma says softly, once they’ve all sat back down in the living room and she’s gently passed him his coffee and Dean can feel all their eyes on him. “That you can’t drive?”

“I’m,” Dean begins, staring at his wedding ring. It’s humiliating, actually, but it’s been muted a bit by the string of other humiliating things that he’s been subject to the last couple of weeks. It’s like he’s past that point, now, where he gets to keep his pride, or his dignity. It’s all slowly being added to the crap-heap of things that he doesn’t get anymore, just like sex and being held, like driving, like someone assuming he can call someone himself in a parking lot, like having confidence in his ability to figure it out on it’s own.

It's one thing talking to Sam about this. Even being a freaking health-nut with his smoothies and his decaf coffee (that Dean’s actually thrilled about, really, because the second week Sam was staying he had this crippling foggy-anxious-panic about what if Sam goes next and then the aloneness was just freaking crushing him until he remembered that Sam’s probably the healthiest seventy-something in the universe and it’s probably not gonna happen and he can’t think like that, and that’s when he realised how freaking bad it had gotten and how he really needed help), he’s also facing down the cruel reality of getting old. He’s a little behind on the track, but he’s at least on the same damn field.

“I drove into the ditch.”

“The ditch?” Claire asks. “At the grocery store?”

“Yeah.”

“Padre,” Emma says, “Dad did that once —”

“— twice,” Claire corrects.

“It doesn’t mean --”

“— it was this whole thing,” Dean says, interrupting her with his chest hurting, running a thumb over his wedding ring. “I don’t know what happened and I — I was pretty shook up about it and they --- they had to call someone for me to take me home.”

Claire glances at Emma, sharply. It’s a ‘you didn’t tell me about this’ look. He doesn’t want them to argue about it. That would be a shitty outcome and he knows that it’s hard on both of them, with Claire being so much further away and Emma right on his doorstep; the push and pull of responsibility and guilt.

“Stand down, Claire,” Dean says. “They called Sam. Didn’t want you worrying about me.”

“You should have called me.”

“I know, princess,” Dean says, and takes her hand again and squeezes it for strength. “Here’s the thing, I’m —- I’m getting old.”

“You’re not that old,” Claire says, like she’d know anything about it.

He —- he didn’t feel old, before Cas. Not really. There was the arthritis and they had to do the diet-shift thing after Cas’ heart attack and, yeah okay, it took a lot less persuading than it used to get someone in to fix things when they broke (“this is not an assisination attempt on your masculinity, Dean, this is a plumber” ) but he didn’t feel old old, but — lately, it’s crept into his bones and settled under his skin and his new-limitations are making themselves pretty fucking obvious and —

He can’t fight it.

He just doesn’t know how to talk about it.

“Not doing that great, honestly,” Dean says, the words scraping out his throat. He flat out refuses to cry because he already cried in front of Sam and in front of the doctor and sat in Cas’ study looking at his stupid books that he can’t even dream of throwing away because he knows that dreamy-look that Cas got when he was buying them, so he’s not going to cry anymore. It is what it is. Life is hard and it’s long and sometimes he wants to nudge Sam and say ‘let's Thelma and Louise it, okay?’ because all of it is only going to get worse. Then there are other days, where Emma shows him pictures of Mia’s school formal and Claire says she’s gonna be a foster mom and he thinks it’s all worth it. He’s scared and he’s in pain, but he has a lot of good things and he has to fucking do this. “Haven’t really been driving since then and Sam… Sam agrees with me that I shouldn’t be driving anymore. So. I want you to take Baby.”

“What do you mean, not great?” Claire asks, taking his other hand, and that’s good. Great, actually. Having one daughter in each hand. He can live with that. It’s not the warm, steadfast weight of Cas’ hand — ‘united front, Dean’ —but it’s certainly something. “Padre.”

“Wasn’t really keeping on top of things.”

“What things?”

“Uh,” Dean says, blinking. Cas would say ‘there’s strength in vulnerability, Dean’ but he always meant vulnerability about emotions and depression and Dean’s not really sure it applies when he’s talking about forgetting things and not having the physical energy to keep on top of basic household tasks. He doesn’t have a whole lot of choice, though, because the doctor’s general advice was ‘if you’re genuinely worried about dementia, then the best thing to do is get your loved ones to keep an eye on any changes in your behaviour or memory’ and that she wanted to see him in six weeks, after getting the medication stuff under control. Sam had given him the same look he had after he stopped him driving: the ones that’s a mixture of sympathy and uncompromising-steeliness, that said ‘are you going to talk to them or am I?, so he’d called Claire and asked when she could come visit. “Life things. I’ve --- I’ve been having a hard time.”

God, he hates this.

“Missed a couple of doctors appointments and I, uh, haven’t been taking my meds properly and I was letting things get on top of me, with the house. With missing Cas. Not… not on purpose. I lost track. I’ve been --- foggy.”

“Padre,” Claire says, squeezing his hand tighter.

“It’s been getting better. But… I can’t --- I can’t do it on my own. Not anymore.” Dean says, through the lump in the back of his throat. “So, Sam is going to help me out.”

“I can help out more,” Emma says, blinking up at him, with those wide brown eyes. There’s guilt there, which is the exact opposite of what Dean wants. He hates the idea of causing her any kind of pain and it’s not like she hasn’t been looking out for him. She’s Emma, so she’s pretty much the nicest person on the damm planet. She’s had him— Sam too, now— for dinner however many times a week and she patiently organised Claire coming and comes over to watch movies and holds his damn hand, because she’s glorious and she’s perfect, but she also has two teenagers. “Me and Jake can do more. We didn’t know you were struggling. We would’ve --”

“I know, Em,” Dean says, offers her a weak smile, and there’s strength in vulnerability. “I know, princess. Didn’t talk to you because I was scared shitless. And I’m --- well, I’m still feeling pretty messed up about it, but I, uh… been doing better, with Sam here.”

“You mean Sam’s going to help you full time,” Claire says, her forehead creased as she looks at him. Emma’s eyebrows shoot upwards, her frown deepening, like she’s catching up that he’s serious about this.

“Yeah,” Dean says, “He dropped me back off here after the ditch crap and he --- he could see I wasn’t doing a great job at looking after myself, so… one of us is gonna sell our house, and we’re gonna have our grumpy old man club together and I… I think it’s gonna help.”

“You need to recruit Gabriel,” Claire says, because she’s the one who inherited Dean’s knee-jerk reaction to always make a dumb joke.

“No chance in hell I’m living with Gabe,” Dean throws back, but he needs to talk to him, actually. Give him the cliff notes (he knows the same version of the story he told the kids and probably read between the lines because he spent most of the update mocking Dean about the cat). “So that’s --- that’s the deal. Sam’s talking to Mary et al today.”

“What did you mean, foggy?” Claire asks, cradling his hand on her own, with this perfect care and tenderness. Claire doesn’t give that kind of affection away easily— she went to sleep one day as a cuddly tween and woke up this fierce force of nature who didn’t let people fuck her around—- so he must have gotten some things right. “Have you spoken to the doctors?”

“Claire,” Emma hisses.

“No it’s cool, we should talk about this stuff,” Dean says, because he didn’t know how to bring that up but it was always part of the plan. Sometimes he needs Claire’s bluntness, especially as that used to be a Cas job. Emma is so damn sensitive to his feelings that she gives him too much room to bury his head in the sand. “Was being pig-headed, keeping you out of it. Yeah, I --- yeah, they’re gonna do some tests in a few weeks. Don’t think they’re worried-worried, but they wanted Sam to keep an eye on stuff, but if it is… bad then we’re gonna need to keep talking about it. All of us.”

“And you will do that?” Claire asks, blue-grey gaze fixed on him. “Actually talk to us?”

“Pinky promise, Claire bear,” Dean says, letting go of her hand to hook their fingers together and smile at her, dumbly. “You’re probably best asking Sam about the details.”

Emma does this unhappy-nod thing and they exchange a look. There’s part of them that wants to say are you worried? Have you noticed anything? and he probably will, at some point, because he’s not ignorant to the creased frown in Emma’s forehead when Dean got mixed up about the day Claire was coming —- like he hasn’t had six thousand other things in his head — and that resigned-sadness when he didn’t show up for dinner last week (he’s pretty sure that one was Emma not telling him the switched date, but what the hell does Dean know anymore?)

“And… selling the house?” Emma says, her voice still quiet. “Padre -- that’s, that’s huge.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, “I haven’t decided yet.”

“It’s your decision?” Claire asks, “Uncle Sam giving you free reign?”

“Yep,” Dean says, which is nice. Making his own decision is one of those things that he can see becoming a bit of a rarity, depending on how things go. Even if he’ll be okay after enough time of someone keeping an eye on him, people have been slowly taking his decisions away for years and he doubts the trajectory of that is going to change. It’s another crappy old man thing. Another thing younger men get.

(“They have your best interests at heart, Dean,” Cas would say, and Dean would say “don’t mean it’s not damned annoying and patronising as hell” and Cas would tilt his head and say “yes, true” and it wouldn’t change it but it would make it feel easier to accept).

“If he’s just re-decorated, then…”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean says, forehead creasing. There’s logic in it. He thought, maybe, that Sam picked that as a ruse because he expected Dean to want to stay and they’d need it painted-up to sell, but it’s jarring as hell to sit in the room he ate a thousand breakfasts with Cas, talking about fake-bacon with his brother. Not bad, exactly. He just gets this longing, sometimes, and that’s not fair to Sam. He doesn’t want Sam thinking he’s sat there wishing he was someone else, because that’s not it, exactly and… and he thought that he was done with new starts, now, but maybe it would be good. It might help or it might break his heart again. He needs to work it out.“But it’s ... hard being here, sometimes. I… I miss him, you know?”

“Yeah,” Claire nods, eyes dropping to the picture on the far wall. That one of her college graduation where Cas’ tie is wonky and he looks every fucking inch the proud dad. She hasn’t been here that much since Cas and whenever she has he always notices her eyes catching on the differences and the things that Dean can’t bring himself to change and he always feels too-seen in it. He thought Claire started staying at Emma’s because he didn’t think he could hack playing host, but maybe it just makes her sad to sit in the midst of all of their joint memories with someone missing.

“And --- gonna need to change things up a bit, if we stay here. Needs to be Sam’s home too. Gotta make some room for pictures of Robbie’s hell spawn on the wall.”

“Oh god,” Claire mutters.

“Stop it,” Emma chastises, “You know Eleanor is sensitive about her ears.”

“Sorry, mom,” Claire says with an eye roll. “What if we moved some up into your room?” Claire asks, standing up and running a finger over the corner of the frame of one of their Christmas pictures with a lovely-reverence. “You’ve got that big empty wall.”

“Cas doesn’t like pictures in the bedroom. Says he doesn’t need an audience.” Dean says, before he’s really thought about it. It’s the wrong tense, but neither of them look at him funny, so maybe it’s fine.

“Gross,” Claire says, wrinkling her nose, “I mean, fair, but gross.”

And fuck he hasn’t heard her say that for such a long time. The nostalgia of it is thick in his throat making it a little hard to breathe, but in a good way.

“I love you, kid.”

“You too, Padre,” Claire says, and her smile is a little watery as she turns back round to face him. Her gaze drops to the impala keys on the coffee table and then her smile grows in strength. “Oh my god, you’re giving me baby.”

“You look after her,” Dean says. “I’ll be pissed if you hurt her feelings. Even if everything else in my head rots, I’m gonna remember my car.”

“Yeah, I believe that,” Claire says, spinning the keys round her fingers. “I’m —- I’m really sorry aging is a bitch.”

“Snap,” Dean says, looking back down at his hands. His wedding ring. His stupid puffed-up arthritis fingers. The conversation went okay, he thinks. He laid it out there which is pretty much the only control he has left over it, so there’s that.

(He thinks Cas would say ‘you are remarkable’ with that aching sincerity, then cover his hand up with own to snap Dean out of it.)

“I’m sorry you’re scared, Daddy,” Emma says, in that same-small voice she did when she found Dean hiding in his room on his fortieth birthday, thinking about John freaking Winchester. She used to get nightmares, Emma. Wasn’t all that surprising after everything she went through, really, and Cas had been a total softie about letting her crawl into bed with them in the middle of the night. He asked her what the nightmares were about in his sleepy-deep-gravel and there were so many nights Dean fell back to sleep listening to them dissecting the monsters in Emma’s head. She looks pretty scared right now, too.

He needs to apologize to her properly for hiding this stuff, but he’ll do it tomorrow, when it’s just the two of them again.

“Why don’t we go through some of your stuff today?” Claire suggests and, god, he loves her. He just loves her for being this freaking-incredible woman, future foster mother (!), who knows him well enough to focus on doing something. He loves her for not questioning his decisions and for the way she’s gripping hold of the keys of his baby, tight, and reaching out for Emma with her free arm to nudge her and make sure she’s okay. “Seems like you’ll need to, either way.”

“Thought we had lunch with Jake and the grandkids,” Dean says, glancing back at Emma.

“Let’s cancel,” Claire says, exchanging another of those looks with Emma that means that they’re going to be talking about him after this. All the time, probably. He’s going to be hounded by people checking in, making sure he’s being a good boy and eating his wheaties and taking his pills. He’ll hate it, obviously, but he’s pretty sure it’s necessary, and it’s not something to shake a stick at. Being loved so fiercely. So practically. “Let’s spend the day with just us three, okay?”

“Yeah,” Emma agrees, standing up. “I’ll call Jake.” She says, slipping out, and Dean thinks that they all know that she’s going out in the hallway to cry.

“Not the study,” Dean says, because he can’t. Not yet.

“Roger that.” Claire says, pocketing the impala keys and smiling at him. “Where do you wanna start?”

*

They’re halfway through sifting through a box of Emma’s old homework (Claire had said ‘I can’t believe you kept all this crap’ and then her eyes fell on this family history project she’d done where Cas had slowly written out all the words Emma couldn’t spell and Claire traced out all the letters that Cas had written, once, with this aching-wonder and she hadn’t mocked him since), when Claire puts down her old school reports and blinks at him.

“I’m sorry I live so far away,” Claire says, her voice quiet and sad in a way that he hasn’t heard it sound for a long time. It’s her grief-voice and it’s weird hearing it from her as she’s sat cross legged at the foot of the sofa. Emma’s next door making another round of coffee (and crying again) and Dean’s holding Castiel’s childhood teddy rabbit that Claire latched onto, feeling the woozy-vertigo of memory and time hitting him in sixteen different directions. He can’t really remember Cas telling him the backstory, but he half-remembers digging it out of a box a few weeks after Claire’s first birthday when she first started getting into soft toys and saying ‘think it’s time for Rabbit to be reincarnated’, and he remembers patching up the damn thing’s ears after Claire chewed them to shit.

“You happy?” Dean asks, voice a little croaky.

“Yeah,” Claire says, taking the rabbit out of Dean’s hands and running a thumb over the ears. “I am.”

“Then you have nothing to apologize for,” Dean says, “That’s all we ever wanted for you two.”

“I know,” Claire says, something pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Do you know how great that is?”

Dean doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.

“That’s what we want to do,” Claire says, “With the Fostering stuff. I mean -- Kaia, she never had anyone who just loved her. Until Jody,” Claire says. Dean’s only met Kaia’s foster mom twice. They’ve only been back in contact for the last couple of years. He doesn’t have the whole story because Claire’s fiercely protective over Kaia’s privacy, but he filled in the blanks that Jody came into the picture a little late and Kaia ran out of the care system, hurting and broken from everything that came before, but never forgot how kind she was. Claire helped her track her down because Claire is fucking incredible and Kaia tried to apologize for all of it and Jody just held her and cried, because she never knew what happened to her. Cas had got all serious and quiet after Claire had told parts of the story and that night he’d buried his face in Dean’s neck and said ‘sometimes I hate the world’ because messed up kids always made him think of Dean at eighteen and what might have happened to Emma, or Claire, and Dean just held him because there was nothing else to say. “And if you hadn’t --- things could have been really different for me. With Amelia. My mom, I mean. I want … I wanna show someone that kindness that you and Dad always…” Claire cuts herself off and swallows. “This is getting to major sap.”

“Lieutenant sap,” Dean agrees. “Goes without saying that I’m so damn proud of you that it makes me sick, right?”

“Right,” Claire agrees. She puts Rabbit down and assesses him, looking soft. Younger. “Is it okay if I stay here tonight? In my old room.”

“Yeah,” Dean exhales, with this half smile.

“Kay,” She says, “I can go sort out the bed.”

“Allright,” Dean agrees, as Claire stands up and kisses him on the cheek and Dean’s not sure if maybe she’s retreating to have a moment and cry, too, because today is a lot and it all fucking sucks, but tonight his baby girl is going to stay in her childhood room and she’s going to spend her life loving broken-kids with a woman she pretty much saved and that’s awe-inspiring stuff. And they did this. Him and Cas. They taught her how to walk and how to write and how to be herself and love others. He never thought they’d get anything that good. He wanted them to have more of it, obviously, but they had a good life. The best. “And —- Padre,” Claire says, hovering in the doorway, “For what it’s worth —- I hate it when people say this shit, but I really think --- I think Dad would want this. You living with Sam.”

He remembers, vividly, one thanksgiving where Cas told Sam that he resented him (‘it was very cathartic’ Cas said, ‘he was very understanding’) and he remembers Cas pushing him to talk to Sam about his mental health the week before their wedding and he’s pretty sure that Claire is right, all in all. He… their relationship was always sort-of-complicated, because what relationship isn’t, but he does know that Cas has always, always wanted Dean to have good things, and this is a good thing.

He doesn’t know how many more good-things he gets, but it’s hard to feel so terrible about it when he’s surrounded by a big box of their memories with his kick-ass daughters pottering around the house, trying their best to look after him. And right now he doesn’t care if it means he’s going fucking insane, because —- because it’s been a long day and his joints ache and everything is so damn hard, some days, so he smiles at that stupid picture of Cas in his trench coat on the coffee table and he says ‘I love you, asshat’ --- and then the goddamn cat climbs on his lap and starts purring.

Dean buries his face in the fur behind it’s ears and exhales, just breathing, till Emma comes back into the room with three cups of coffee and re-tells him the origin story of the rabbit .