Archive of Our Own

 Heaven was...awesome.
 What other word was there for beers on the porch with Bobby, or for the happy crow of delight that Charlie gave when Dean first rapped on her door, the way she knocked the (nonexistent) breath out of Dean's chest when she threw herself into his arms? What other word was there for family dinners, him and Sammy and Mom and Dad all sitting together, for the way John would put his hand on the table and Mary would reach out to take it, the wry, almost disbelieving grin Sam would shoot him each time it happened? Not to mention the Roadhouse (which Ash seemed to be running, or, at least still lived at), and the endless, perfect roads, where the landscape could either stretch on unchanging for what felt like forever, or shift like a kaleidoscope between the mundane and the freaking fantastic. And the way time seemed to move in loops and retrograding lines, so that what felt like a couple of hours to Dean might feel like a week to Sam but either way they still somehow saw each other exactly when they wanted to. 
 And don't even get Dean started on his house.
 Granted, it was basically the bunker. He wasn't a damn architect. But all in all, Dean thought he had made a pretty neat little job of it.
 "So, what, you just wished it into being?" He had asked Sam, standing in front of the low brick building that Sam had, apparently, created in the span of an hour. Behind the house, a huge pine forest stretched away as far as the eye could see. From where he stood, Dean could make out more than one narrow path winding through the trees, probably jogging trails, because even dead Sam was somehow still worried about his health. "Like a dream board?" 
 "Seriously, Dean?" Sam ran a hand through his hair, clearing it away from his face; apparently the dork had decided to hold on to that hairstyle the rest of his life. "You've been up here for decades, how have you not figured this out?"
 Dean shrugged. "Hasn't felt like decades. Feels like it's been a couple of days."
 "Wow." Sam frowned as he mulled that bit of information over. "That's going to take some getting used to."
 "Not like heaven comes with an instruction manual. Just," he lifted his hand, thumbing the bill of an imaginary ball cap, "'It's the heaven you deserve,' and then they turned me loose." 
 "They?"
 "Okay, obviously it was Bobby. I'm just saying, this place?" He lifted his arms, gesturing around them both. "Your guess is as good as mine."
 "Well." Sam gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Guess we've got the time to figure it out, right?"
 "You bet." An eternity of time. A weird feeling started to creep up on him, something restless and leery, and Dean shoved it away.
 "Come on," Sam said, motioning with his head and making his way toward the side of the house. "This is one of the best parts." Dean followed him around back, where a patio extended out nearly to the tree line. A large firepit sat in the center of the space, a chair on either side.
 "Not bad, Sammy." He turned one of the chairs around and sat down, propping his arms along the back, watching Sam as he fussed with the firewood, stacking it in neat squares like a boy scout. "There a story behind all this?"
 "The patio? Yeah, I guess so. Not much of one." Sam pulled a lighter from his back pocket, leaning down to hold it to the tinder. "Eileen and I built something similar in the backyard of our first house."
 Dean grinned, a warm shot of delight moving through him. "Eileen, huh?" Sam rolled his eyes.
 "Yeah, Dean. I thought that was pretty obvious."
 "I mean, I figured. You're not a complete moron, after all." Sam pulled the second chair around to sit beside him, and Dean leaned over and clapped his shoulder. "Congrats, Sammy."
 "Thanks," Sam said, grinning too now, first down at his hands, then at the house. 
 "So, uh." Dean cleared his throat, drummed his hands against the back of the chair. "It was okay?" Sam glanced over at him, raised a questioning brow. "Your life?" Dean elaborated.
 Sam smiled again, softer now, something wistful, incomplete. "It was really good." He aimed one of his patented, too-sincere expressions at Dean. "I missed you, though. Every day, you know?"
 "Okay, Samantha," Dean scoffed, looking away, because even in heaven he wasn't capable of returning that kind of immediate honesty the way that Sam deserved. He should probably work on that.
 They sat side by side in front of the fire as the dark fell around them, a small, comforting source of light and heat against the chill snap in the air. Dean tried to remember if they had ever done anything like this back on earth, sat and stared at a fire that didn't have the body of a friend or hunter in the heart of it, or a ghost's salted bones, or wasn't powered up with holy oil in order to hold an angel captive. There had been those camping trips that Dad had taken them on, but those fires had been more along the lines of wilderness training. They hadn't felt like this. He and Sam exchanged a look, and this Dean could handle, this not-talking, the silent acknowledgement that this whole situation, i.e., the afterlife, was more weird and wonderful than either of them had imagined.
 Sam cleared his throat. "You know, there's a spot down the road that I think you might like. For a place of your own."
 "What, you didn't make a room for me in this house?" Dean said, only half joking. He didn't know any version of a good life that didn't include Sammy down the hallway.
 "There's a guest room," Sam answered. "And you know you can stay here as long as you want. But seriously, it's right down the road and I think you'd like it. There's this big field, and a bunch of birch trees lining a creek." He shrugged. "Just saying. You should take a look sometime."
 "Huh. Maybe." He had been sleeping on Bobby and Karen's couch for the most part, not that sleep was something that any of them needed anymore, but it still felt natural, if not strictly necessary. The days still followed the same general pattern as they had on earth, and Dean still found himself wanting those four hours of oblivion. But, considering he didn't actually need to sleep, or eat, or even take a piss for that matter, he wasn't sure he wanted a house. He had Baby after all, and more than enough places to crash at if he felt the need, between Bobby's place and Charlie's, and Mom and Dad, and now Sammy. Besides, home didn't seem like something that even heaven could give him. Home had been Lawrence, the faintly herbal smell of Mom's hair as it fell around him when she tucked him in, Dad standing in the doorway and flicking the light off, the dark of his room that had only ever felt familiar and safe. Home was the bunker, cooking breakfast in the morning that Sam refused to eat half the time, because it was 'too greasy', Jack and his bowls of cereal, Cas invariably declining and then wearily accepting whatever drink Dean shoved into his hand. Heaven couldn't give Dean his childhood back, or that unexpected oasis of domesticity that he and Sam had inherited and held on to. 
 But Sammy was giving him one of his hopeful looks. 
 "Guess it wouldn't hurt anything to drive by," Dean finally said.

 
 So yeah, heaven was generally awesome, and so was his house, once Dean eventually worked his way around to deciding it was something he wanted. Nobody had to do shit in heaven that they didn't want to do, but there was something about taking care of things the old-fashioned way. A thing wasn't really yours if you didn't sweat and bleed on it some, and so what time wasn't spent with friends and family Dean mostly gave to tooling around the place, waxing the wooden floors until they gleamed, cleaning leaves and detritus from the gutters, checking the windows and chimney for cracks or gaps, and having to remind himself every fifteen minutes that routine home maintenance in heaven did not include devil traps and Enochian sigils.
 (But he still drew a couple here and there: a devil trap on the underside of the deck, a banishing sigil on the inside of a closet door. Nothing extravagant.)
 He really got into mowing the lawn, for a while there. When the weather was just right (which, no surprise, it was most of the time), just the other side of too hot, there wasn't anything more satisfying than going to the shed that he didn't remember building, pulling out the push mower, and firing the sweet little thing up. In all honesty, he just liked being able to move with some purpose, liked patrolling every inch of the little corner of heaven that he had staked for himself. He liked it so much, he ended up mowing just about every day, which Sam apparently found interesting enough to grill him over.
 "I don't know Sammy, the stuff just grows back that fast."
 "Because you want it to, Dean. Don't you have other stuff you'd rather be doing?"
 No, Dean didn't. What was the big rush, anyway? Didn't he have a mind-numbing amount of time to kill? So what if he spent the next decade or two mowing the damn grass? 
 But Sam's words stuck with him enough to make him pause the next day, after he wheeled the mower around to the front of the house, where he liked to start. Dean propped a boot up on the engine and stared out across the lawn, scrubbing his hands restlessly against his pant legs. Maybe it was getting to be a little boring, mowing the yard each day like clockwork. The problem was that there were no real problems in heaven. And not problems like gateways to hell blasting open, or the four horsemen of the apocalypse rolling out onto the world, or angels falling to the earth. Just normal problems, like a pipe busting, or a board coming loose on the steps, or even a goddamn mole moving into his yard.
 Here he was, with just about everything he had ever wanted for himself and more, pouting because he didn't have any problems.
 Dean huffed, and yanked the mower to life.
 The next morning he poured himself a cup of coffee, black and hot enough to scald his tongue, and stepped out onto the deck. It had rained overnight, which meant the creek was probably running high and swift, which meant it would be the perfect day to do a little bass fishing. Dean started making his way across the backyard, heading toward the grass prairie, the golden stalks of hip-high wild wheat, dotted all over with flowers, drops of white and winking yellow, and the occasional deep purple globes, that surrounded the house and rolled away down to the creek bed, and immediately tripped over something and fell flat on his face.
 "The fuck?" He growled, or tried to growl, but it was hard to say anything while simultaneously spitting grass out of his mouth. His coffee cup was lying on its side a couple feet away; Dean snatched it up and climbed to his feet, turning around to glare at the ground behind him. 
 Last night he had sat on the deck and watched the sun set, bigger and warmer and...deeper somehow than it had been on earth. It had turned the sky over the prairie violet, had tinted the distant birch trees pink and made the wheat glow orange, all the colors melding together into a blur of beauty. Dean had tried and failed to swallow past the lump in his throat, and had watched the way the light seemed to catch and hang on each individual blade of grass, mini wells of shadow cupping that swathe of green. Last night, his yard had been perfect.
 Not so much this morning. Now there were rivulets of moved earth cutting across his grass, like someone had tried to map the course of a river with the contents of Dean's lawn. It was one of these earthen tunnels that Dean had tripped over, and they were fucking everywhere, all soft and unstable where he had expected it to be firm. Dean watched his footing as he paced the outer edge of the yard, measuring the damage, which was fairly fucking extensive. It was all across both the back and front yards, and Dean, admittedly, hadn't had any kind of a lawn to maintain when he had been alive, other than that one year he spent with Ben and Lisa, but even he could recognize this damage for what it was.
 It was a goddamn mole.
 "Oh, hell no," he said, and stomped inside.
 When Sam stopped by a couple hours later, all kitted out in his ridiculous jogging gear, his hippie hair held back from his face with a freaking headband, it was to Dean posted up on the back deck with a beer in one hand and the iron fire poker in the other.
 "Hey, Dean," he said, more than a note of caution threading his voice.
 "Morning, Sammy," Dean grunted, eyes locked on the yard. Sam joined him on the deck, pulling up a chair to sit beside him. 
 "What're we doing?" He asked, his tone so carefully modulated that Dean couldn't possibly miss it, like he was on a case or something, approaching some traumatized victim. Dean didn't scowl, but it was a near thing.
 "Mole messed up the entire yard." He hefted the poker. "I'm gonna kill the fucker." 
 "A mole," Sam said neutrally.
 "Yeah."
 "In heaven," he said, not so neutrally any more.
 "Yeah, Sammy, a mole. There's a mole in heaven, okay? What, you think I should alert the angel brigade, get them to fly in here and start smiting?" 
 "No, it's just - "
 " - It's just a damn mole, is what it is, I think I can handle it."
 "Alright." Sam held his hands up, a baring of palms. "It's weird, is all, but you're right. It's just a mole." Dean scoffed and drank his beer, barely mollified. Sam obviously thought he was cracked; it was bizarre, having a little brother who now had decades more experience at living than he did, who seemed so unchanged one moment and so strangely beyond Dean the next. But then, Sammy had always been leagues beyond him. "Mind if I hang out for a bit?" Sam asked now. Dean reached into the cooler and handed him a beer in answer.
 The mole didn't show, and Sam took off a while later, after finally convincing Dean to hold off on filling the tunnels with gasoline and lighting them on fire. Dean watched him jog away, then cracked open another beer and glared out at the still, silent yard. Make a move, you son of a bitch, he thought grimly.
 "What's wrong?" A voice said from directly behind him.
 Dean yelped (manfully), and jumped up from his chair, spinning around.
 "You're not happy," Jack said, staring at him with that mildly direct gaze of his. "Did I not get the beer right?"
 "Huh? The beer?" Dean stared down at the bottle in his hand, then back up at Jack. "No, the beer's fine." The beer, as a matter of fact, was a mini-miracle in itself. It tasted like cool relief on a hot, clinging day, tasted like the clink of glasses, the small vibrating contact of a toast between friends, like Sam's bleary voice that one time he had drunk too much at a party in high school and Dean had picked him up, and Sam had mumbled on and on for hours about a paper he was writing and about how he and Dean should go on a road trip, right now, tonight. But Dean wasn't going to try and explain any of that.
 "Then what is it?" Jack asked. His brow was furrowed with concern.
 "Nothing, man." Dean couldn't even remember what he had been thinking about, he was that damn happy to see the kid. He stepped forward and clapped Jack on the shoulder, gave him a little shake. "How've you been, huh? You got some time?"
 "I - " Jack looked away, his eyes seeming to scan the prairie, although Dean knew it was a safer assumption that he was actually checking something else entirely; the tally of souls streaming into the afterlife maybe, or the cosmic balance of light and dark. Jack smiled and looked back at him. "Yes. I do have some time," he said.
 "Awesome." Dean shifted his grip so he could pull Jack after him with an arm around his shoulders. "Big storm last night. I was thinking about doing some fishing."
 "That was mine," Jack said proudly. "I like making thunderstorms." His smile slipped a few degrees. "Nothing was damaged," he added hastily, throwing Dean an apprehensive look.
 "Course not," Dean said dismissively, which was somehow enough to restore Jack's expression. "So, what do you say? Wanna go fishing?"
 "Yes." Rods appeared in both their hands at the same moment that Jack spoke. It didn't escape Dean's notice that they were exact replicas of the ones they had fished with back on earth.
 "Alright, let's go. Grab the cooler." Jack obediently bent down to retrieve Dean's cooler of beer, and Dean hopped down off the deck. "Watch your step, got a bit of a mole situation going on right now."
 "I know," Jack said, sounding just as proud as he had about the thunderstorm. "I made it for you."
 "You what?" Dean stopped in his tracks, turning back around in time to catch Jack mimicking his jump off the deck, the cooler clutched in one hand, the rod in the other. It wasn't adorable or anything. "You wanna try that one again?" 
 "You were displeased with how easy it was to maintain your home," Jack said, all simple and chirrupy as he parroted Dean's own stupid thoughts back to him. "You wanted a challenge, and then you distinctly remembered a conversation you had with Sid at a party you and Lisa had gone to. He was complaining about a mole in his yard." His smile faded again, in slow motion this time, as he looked at Dean. "Did I do something wrong?" He asked.
 "For the love of - you - " Dean groaned, his anger flagging and faltering before it could even get off the ground. He dragged a hand down his face, Jack disappearing behind his palm, reappearing again as concerned and trusting as he had always been. "Okay, first off, nobody wants you listening in on their thoughts, alright? And I get it, you're God now, you probably can't help it, but at least don't go around talking about all the shit you hear." He gestured between them. "If it was something I wanted you to know, I would've said it out loud to your face."
 "Alright," Jack said, frowning softly.
 "And secondly, a mole? Really? I mean, don't you have more important stuff to be doing than making a mole that I didn't even want?"
 "No," Jack replied unhesitatingly. Dean made a gargled, wordless sound of disbelief. "There's still a lot of work to be done in heaven, Dean. I'm still learning, trying to make it into the afterlife that the souls here deserve. And if I'm going to make it perfect for anyone, it's going to be for you and Sam."
 And wasn't that something. The kid was just too good for this world. Any world, really.
 "Okay, so." Dean clapped his hands together. "Let's brass tacks this. I was feeling bored - " Jack's mouth opened, and Dean hastened to speak over him " - or something, and you decided to throw a wrench in the works to keep things interesting. Am I getting it right so far?"
 Jack nodded. "Heaven should be a source of happiness and peace. But it should also be a place where its residents can safely change and grow, if that's something they desire. I don't want you, of all people, to feel..." He drifted off, as if searching for the right word.
 " - Meaningless?" Dean suggested.
 " - stagnant," Jack said at the same time. The worried crease between his brows deepened. "Meaningless? Is that what - "
 "No. No, no." Yes, a traitorous little voice tried to say, but Dean squashed it, pushed the conversation forward. "But why a mole? What's killing some dim-sighted rodent got to do with anything?" A new thought occurred to him, and he recoiled slightly. "Hold up, that thing isn't actually alive, is it? Like, alive, alive?" 
 Jack nodded solemnly, clear-eyed and sincere.
 "Well, that's just - " Dean sputtered, " - I mean, c'mon - how?"
 "Heaven is alive," Jack answered simply. "I exist, you exist - " he gestured past Dean's shoulder, " - these trees and this sky exist. Why wouldn't the mole also exist?"
 "Well, hell, man." Dean threw his arms out helplessly. "I can't fucking kill it now!"
  "Why not?"
 "Because it's, it's...wrong!"
 "Hmm," Jack said, nodding again, smiling faintly as he looked out across the yard, as if Dean had given him something very interesting to think about, and wasn't it all so nice? "So what should we do?" Like he wasn't God or something. Like he was still just Jack.
 "I'll tell you what we're gonna do, we're gonna go fishing." Dean jerked his head in the creek's direction. "C'mon, the bass are biting."
 "Okay." They started out across the yard, stepping over the tunnels of torn earth. "Would you like me to get rid of the mole?" Jack asked.
 "You mean like - " Dean made a slashing motion with his thumb at the level of his throat, but Jack just stared at him. "Like - " He stacked his hands on top of each other, torqueing them in either direction in a wringing motion, but that didn't seem to help either. "Like ganking it?" He finally said, exasperated.
 "Oh," Jack said, his expression clearing. "No. I would just send it down to earth."
 "Huh." Dean thought about it a minute. "You know what? Leave it. I think I've got an idea what to do with it." It sure as shit didn't have anything to do with peace or personal growth, but he figured it would be pretty freaking hilarious all the same, when he finally caught the thing and set it loose in Sam's house.

 So yeah, heaven was weird as fuck, heaven didn't make much sense if he really thought about it, but that didn't mean it wasn't awesome. Sammy right down the road, Bobby and Mom and Dad and the Roadhouse a little bit further down a couple other roads, Charlie in the nearby metropolitan area that she claimed to have largely built herself, with minimal angelic assistance. The way she and Ash told it, Jack and Cas had provided the outline and the raw power, and the two of them had done the rest.
 "Same as it's always been," Ash said, popping back up from behind the bar with two cans of beer in either hand. He kept two for himself and slid the other two along the counter to Charlie and Dean. "Since the beginning of time, man. All the innovation happens down here in the trenches, you know? Where people are thirsty." He ripped his beer open and drained the can, then crushed it on the counter. "Then the big man comes in, a little pressure here, a little tweak there, and what're you left with?" He threw his arms out and looked at Dean, like he actually expected an answer.
 "Heaven," Dean said, smirking and finger-gunning with more assurance than he actually felt. At least, they had been talking about heaven, he had no idea what the fuck they were talking about now. Charlie leaned in toward him, her elbows propped on the counter.
 "What he means is, we were already running the basic framework. I mean, yeah, it's kind of like comparing Java to Prolog at this point - " Dean frowned " - or a Fiat to your Impala," Charlie tried. "The bottom line is, we could only generate so much 'oomph' on our own."
 "People wanted to get out of their boxes and move around, and we were getting them where they wanted to go," Ash said proudly. He made a fist and held it out to Charlie, and she grinned and bumped it with her own. 
 "So heaven's very own speakeasy, and you two were running it?" Dean clarified.
 "More like a whole network of speakeasies," Charlie said. "But, yeah, pretty much."
 "And the angels never gave you any trouble?"
 Ash snorted. "Shit, they could barely keep up, even back when it was just me."
 "That and they had their own problems," Charlie added. "I mean, you know what was going on. There were so few of them left, they were mostly worried about keeping the lights on." She tilted her head, gesturing toward Ash. "We were seriously debating whether or not we should break into their offices and offer to help out."
 "Almost joined the corporation," Ash said, tugging at the ragged edges of his open vest, then running his hand down his chest, smoothing an imaginary tie. "Can you believe that?"
 "But then Jack came," Charlie said. 
 "Scared the shit out of us, man," Ash threw in. "Walked through a door that hadn't existed a second before, and just freaking stood there, waving at us." He raised an arm to demonstrate Jack's dorky handwave.
 "Then he introduced himself, and told us how he wanted to break down all the walls, rebuild heaven from the ground up." Charlie sighed, dropping her chin into her hand. "It was so cool. Best. Job. Ever."
 "The Dream Team," Ash said, opening his second beer. He and Charlie tapped their cans together. They held them there, turning to look at Dean expectantly.
 "Dude, come on," Charlie said, motioning with her eyes. "Don't leave us hanging here."
 "Hey," Dean said, knocking his beer against theirs, cold foam rising up and spilling across their fingers, "Here's to the two of you." He wasn't surprised at all that the two of them had teamed up to subvert heaven, but he was damn impressed. Charlie and Ash were two of the smartest people he had ever known.
 So naturally they were the ones he went to when he couldn't find Sam.
 He wasn't freaking out. Dean curled his fingers tight around Baby's steering wheel and tried to convince himself that it was true. He was not freaking out, because this was fucking heaven, and people didn't just disappear up here in fucking heaven, there weren't any monsters lurking in the shadows to drag them away. Wherever the hell Sam was, there was a rational explanation for it, and for the fact that Dean couldn't find him for the first time since they had arrived. Most of the time he found Sam at his house, stepping outside to meet him like he had already known that Dean was there. The rest of the time, finding Sam had been as simple as getting in his car and driving. He would find him at Bobby's, or geeking out with Kevin, or just strolling around, like the giant weirdo that he was. 
 But not today. He wasn't at home, and Dean drove through pinwheeling scenery for what felt like hours looking for him, and the goddamn road, the stupid Axis Mundi, kept bringing him back to Sam's empty house. 
 But this was heaven, and Jack was the new Chuck and basically thought of Sam as Dad Number Two, so there wasn't any reason to panic. And so Dean wasn't panicking, and the only reason the door flew open so hard when he pushed through and entered the Roadhouse, slamming into the wall and bouncing back against his hand, was because it was a plywood piece of shit and Ash should fucking replace it with something sturdier.
 "Oh," Ash said, looking up from behind the bar counter where he was pouring drinks for a couple of hunters that Dean didn't recognize. They were dressed like goddamn Davy Crockett, so it was a pretty safe bet that they were from before Dean's time. "Hey, Dean. What's shakin', bacon?"
 "Need your help with something," Dean grunted, striding up to the bar and leaning his torso across the counter, groping blindly along the shelving until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out Ash's clunky, souped-up laptop and thumped it down on the bar.
 "Whoa, whoa," Ash said, dropping the whiskey bottle with a clatter and quick-stepping toward Dean, "Careful with the hardware, man."
 "How fast can you locate someone in heaven?" Dean asked, ignoring him and opening the laptop, then spinning the screen around to face Ash. "Any person."
 "Probably - " Ash looked up for a moment, calculating Jack-only-knew-what, " - thirty-two seconds, give or take."
 "Okay, good." Dean knocked his knuckles impatiently on the counter. "Fire it up, then."
 "Yeah, well, how 'bout we start with a little backstory here." Ash pulled the laptop closer but didn't make any further move to start searching. "Hate to be that guy, but if there's somebody up here you can't find, it's 'cause they don't wanna see you, you know?"
 "That ain't possible." But the words still hit him straight in the gut. The people he couldn't find, even in the places where they used to belong. It made sense.
 "That's the design, man. Gates are open, walls are down, but we're all - " Ash curled his fingers, tapped them lightly against his bare chest, " - keyed to each other. If there's someone up here you want to avoid, they won't find you. They could be sitting on the next stool, and neither of you would notice. Reality would split around the two of you, then come right back together after one of you left. It's this sweet little quantum trick that Jack and I - "
 "Ash!" Dean said, slapping his palm down against the counter. "Focus. That's not what this is, alright? Now, just - " He motioned at the laptop, " - do your thing already."
 "Dean." Ash twitched in place, tapping his knuckles together restlessly. "You know I love you, man. Brothers-in-arms, right? I don't wanna have to throw you out."
 Dean was still gaping over that one when the door swung open again, and Charlie breezed through, smiling sunnily, speaking over her shoulder to someone behind her. " - So there I am, with a huge d20 rolling toward me like the boulder from Indiana Jones, and I'm just like - Dean?" She stopped in the doorway, her gaze moving back and forth between Dean and Ash. "What's going on?"
 "Sam's missing, Charlie." The words burst right out of him, a levee breaking. Charlie wouldn't stand around and give him a goddamn physics lesson, Charlie would do something.
 "Sam?" She repeated, mystified. "No he's not, he's right here." And she stepped to the side, and there he was coming up behind her, all lined in sunlight. Dean didn't so much walk across the room as fly across it, pouncing on Sam and yanking him down into a tight hug, never mind how he had to stand on the toes of his boots to get a good hold on the gigantic freak.
 "Errmph," Sam said. Then, prying his face off of Dean's shoulder, "Dean, what the hell? Calm down."
 Dean shoved him away, not too far though, just an arm's length, keeping a hard hold on either shoulder. "Where the fuck have you been?" He close to shouted, looking him over. He didn't seem hurt, didn't seem scared. "I've been looking all over for you." Sam was staring at him, that same mildly exasperated, assessing stare of his. He glanced to the side, where Charlie was still standing.
 "Hey, um. Maybe I can take a rain check on that drink?"
 "Yeah, sure, Sam," she said uncertainly. 
 "Screw that," Dean snapped. "Tell me now." Sam huffed, looking pointedly over Dean's shoulder at the handful of day drinkers currently scattered across the tables. 
 "Not really something I want to advertise to everyone in heaven, Dean," he said. Dean felt his heart sink in his chest, felt it all start to fall back down across his shoulders. He should've known it wasn't done. Should've known it had all been too good to be true.
 "Fine," he managed to say, dropping his hands. Sam motioned toward the door with a jerk of of his chin, and Dean recovered enough to mutter a quick apology at Ash as he all but shoved Sam out the door and toward Baby. "Okay," he said, once he had Sam back in the passenger seat where he belonged. "Start talking."
 Sam waited until they had peeled away from the Roadhouse, watching it grow smaller in the side mirror. Then he turned to Dean. "I was visiting Rowena."
 "Rowena?" Okay, that was pretty much the last fucking thing he had expected Sam to say. "She's in heaven?" Sam rolled his eyes.
 "No, Dean, she's still ruling hell. I went to visit her."
 "How the - why - we can do that?"
 "Why not?" Sam said, like it should be obvious. "The whole point of heaven is to be with the people we care about. She's a friend, and I hadn't seen her in, God. Decades."
 "Okay. How the hell does that work? I'm pretty sure people can't just up and leave heaven, Sammy."
 "Like I said - "
 " - No, because I listened to Ash and Charlie explain heaven's whole 'open floor plan', and, yeah, maybe I only understood half of it, but I'm pretty damn sure the system don't work like that."
 "I don't know, Dean, maybe Jack gave me a pass or something," Sam said, evasive as shit, looking away, out the window where a desert was unfurling like a thrown open scroll around them. 
 "Sam," Dean said, hard, the next thing to a barked command. 
 "Look, can we talk about this later? I want to get home." And because this was heaven, just like that the landscape changed again, the desert petering away as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by familiar pines and a known road. 
 "You bet your ass we're gonna talk about it later," Dean said grimly as they pulled up to Sam's house. Sam sighed, like Dean was the one being ridiculous and sketchy as shit right now, and opened the door. "Sam, wait."
 "What?" Sam said, half in, half out.
 "How is she?" Dean asked, because he missed her, and he knew, he knew, that he wasn't going to see her again. Sam smiled, small and crooked.
 "She's good. She's in her element, you know? She made me drink tea with her."
 Dean snorted. "Yeah, sounds like Rowena." He craned his head down and to the side to watch as Sam climbed out of the car. "So. You're gonna come by tomorrow and 'fess up to whatever the hell it is you've got going on, right?"
 "Yeah, I'll be there," Sam said, with fatalistic resignation.
 "Good. I'll grill up some burgers, you bring the beer."
 "We're in heaven Dean, the beer will literally appear in your fridge if you want it to."
 "Don't be lazy, Sammy, bring the damn beer." 
 Sam rolled his eyes and shut the door, and Dean drove home, taking the long way, driving past buttes striated in every shade of red, shimmering in the heat, and along the edges of an ocean crashing so violently against the rocks that Dean could feel the cold salt spray, and through steep hills dotted with white jutting stone and a profusion of wildflowers. It helped settle him, just enough to keep him from driving back to Sam's house, breaking down his door and demanding some answers. 
 Just barely.
 But he still wasn't in any kind of good mood, pretty much the exact opposite in fact, and so when he finally made it home and stomped in through the door to find Cas sitting on the couch watching television, he didn't bother with niceties, just shut the door two decibels too loud and turned around and said, 
 "Did you fucking know about this?"
 Cas didn't pay any attention to his tone. "Know about what?" He asked, scarcely sparing Dean an upwards glance as he flipped through the channels. He had taken his coat off, which wasn't new, but Dean was surprised to see that his shoes were off as well, set tidily along the railing, the shoelaces tucked away into the shoes. He snuck a peek at Cas' socks as he came down the stairs, paced around the couch as he ranted.
 "Oh, so you don't know? The father of God over here, and you didn't know that the residents of heaven can apparently just go popping off down to hell to have high tea with the Queen. I mean, you helped fucking build the place, and you're gonna tell me you didn't know?"
 "I assume this is about Sam," Cas said, still more interested in the television than Dean and his (completely warranted) freak out. Dean stretched his arm over the back of the couch and snatched the remote from his hand. 
 "So you knew."
 "Dean," Cas sighed heavily. "I've already told you, we don't need the remote." He gestured at the television, still obeying his will and cycling through channels, to prove his point. "It's just a physical symbol of intent." The television winked off, and he stood up, circling the couch to stand by Dean. "And I didn't know that Sam had left heaven, but I also doubt that you would have this reaction to anyone else leaving."
 "So it's true? People can leave?" Dean leaned away, dragging a hand across his jaw. "Holy crap, dude. How does that even work? Souls gotta put a request in with the office? Get some sort of travel permit?"
 "No," Cas said, casting a longing glance up toward the door, like he was seriously regretting coming by. "Under normal circumstances, a human soul cannot leave heaven."
 "So how the hell did Sam do it?"
 "What did Sam tell you?" Cas asked in turn.
 "A whole lot of nothing, man. He said he would come by tomorrow and explain."
 "He's conferring with Jack," Cas said, muttering the words under his breath, addressing them more to himself than to Dean.
 Dean gave serious consideration to picking the couch up and hurling it across the room. "Cas," he said tightly, his whole body vibrating with foreboding, "if you don't tell me right the fuck now what the hell is going on - "
 Cas' hand came up, finding its place on Dean's shoulder. "Nothing is wrong, Dean, I promise you," he said, staring into Dean's eyes, unblinking, unwavering. "Sam is perfectly safe, and so is heaven."
 "Then what - "
 " - I know it's not right to ask this of you, but I think that you should listen to Sam. This should wait until tomorrow, when we can both explain in person."
 Dean stared at him, torn between grabbing him by the lapels of his suit jacket and giving him a good hard shake, or storming out the door and back to Baby, or clutching Cas to him and babbling out every terrible, looming, shapeless fear that had been bouncing around in his head all day. And yeah, it sure as shit wasn't right, keeping him in the dark like this. He had thought they were past that, thought that being in heaven would have put an end to the need to keep secrets. But that bullshit aside, Cas was still here beside him. Cas had just promised that he and Sam would both be here tomorrow. 
 Cas dropped his hand from Dean's shoulder, turning toward the library, and Dean caught on to him by his belt-loop, halting his motion. Cas glanced down at the hand at his waist, then up at Dean.
 "I could make you tell me," Dean said, not even sure himself whether he was threatening the guy or flirting with him. Hell, why pick one, why not both? Cas smiled, one of those edge-of-his-mouth smiles, the creases around his eyes growing more pronounced. He reached out, copying Dean like he always did when it came to stuff like this, like he was never sure what precisely was allowed until Dean did it first, curling one long finger around the loop of Dean's jeans. 
 "You could," he agreed simply. Dean gave him a short tug, just to prove his point, then let him go, and Cas turned away, the heavy tread of his feet almost silent without his shoes.
 "I guess you're gonna want coffee," Dean called grumpily after him.
 "Yes, thank you," Cas answered without looking back. Dean huffed and stomped into the kitchen.

  
 Dean didn't try to see Cas right away, after he arrived in heaven. He couldn't really explain why, could only justify it to himself in terms that he would normally use to describe a fight. Don't want to go running in blind, and, Gotta get a hold of the high ground first. He was new to heaven, was still figuring out how everything worked and getting settled in; Cas, meanwhile, had helped rebuild the whole damn place. That wasn't any kind of equal ground. When he saw Cas again, it would be in a place he picked, at a time he chose. It would be on his terms, and only when Dean had something solid and real to show the guy. It was the only way he would be able to look him in the eye. 
 So, if he was being completely honest, Cas ended up being part of the reason that Dean finally decided to make himself a house. That and the fact that Sam had been right. It really was the perfect spot. Dean started dropping by every couple of days, walking along the prairie and under the trees hugged up along the water, taking it in, imagining himself there, the house he might build. Something with a low profile, something that wouldn't get in the way of the view. Maybe it would be mostly underground, like...like home had been. 
 That thought hurt, a sweet, stinging pain beneath his sternum. Dean distracted himself from it by pacing out from memory where each room should be, measuring their length in strides, building the bunker up around him. The earth fell away beneath him, dropping him down, and further down, in shuddering increments, like an outdated elevator. The floor spread out around his feet as he walked, the walls built themselves when he looked at where he expected them to be. It was a hell of a lot smaller than the bunker, of course; Dean didn't need a bunch of storerooms, or a med bay, or spare sleeping quarters out the ass. Come to that, he didn't need the war room either, so he turned that into a living room instead. He stuck a fireplace in the corner in place of the bank of blinking lights and spinning dials, and made sure that the coffee table was a reproduction in miniature of the war room table. The worst thing about the bunker had been the lack of windows, and this house was still mostly underground, so Dean fixed that by filling the roof with skylights. But other than that, he didn't change much. Why mess with something that had already been so near to perfect? He kept the kitchen the same, the library and Jack's bedroom the same. He made his room a hell of a lot bigger, but other than that it was basically the same too. Then he threw himself on his bed, which was significantly less lumpy than the mattress in the bunker had been, and stared up at the too-blue sky above him, the rolling clouds.
 Sam got a little...Sam-ish when he first saw it. He walked in, and looked down at the room below him, the entryways to the library and the kitchen visible from where they stood on the landing, and his face did a weird, convulsive thing that made Dean's heart squeeze in his chest. He followed after Sam as he walked down the stairs, as he climbed the steps to the library and put his hand on the wooden table there, his fingers tracing the smooth wood where their initials were supposed to be. 
 "You got a knife?" He asked, staring down at the table. Dean grinned and pulled it from his back pocket.
 He and Sam got roaring drunk that night, sprawled out in Jack's room of all places, Sam on the bed and Dean with his legs kicked up on top of the nightstand. Sam told him for the first time about leaving the bunker after Dean had died, about how he never went back again. Dean didn't get it, but then, Sam had always been like that. He wasn't the type to cling on to something after the life had left it. He had always been able to let go.
 "I gave the key to Dean," he said, staring down at the empty glass in his hands. "Gave him the Impala, and Dad's journal, and the demon knife." He shook his head. "I almost didn't give him any of it, other than the car. I didn't want him to feel like he had to be a hunter, or a legacy, or anything in between if he didn't want to, you know? But in the end, I guess it seemed like he'd be better off having the option."
 "You made the right call, Sammy. Besides, you never know. One of those things might end up making the difference someday. Might save his life, or someone else's life."
 "Maybe. I hope not."
 "Yeah," Dean said. "Yeah, me too."
 The next day Dean took Baby for a drive, then came home and made straight for the kitchen. He paced circles around the room for a bit, working up his nerve, then grabbed bread and peanut butter from the shelves, grape jelly from the fridge. He slapped together a plateful of sandwiches, took a testing bite.
 It wasn't good enough.
 So he fried up some bacon, nice and crisp, none of that soft chewy crap, not for a PB&J. He pulled the sandwiches apart and layered their centers with the too-hot bacon, then folded them back together, licking the grease from his fingers. He pulled two beers from the fridge and put it all on the kitchen table. Then he turned around, looking up through the window.
 "Cas? Hey, don't know if you can pick up on prayers that aren't coming from earth. Guess I never thought to ask that." He fucking hated this part, the not-knowing, the no-answering. The waiting. "If you can hear me, I just wanted to let you know that I'm, you know. Dead." He chuckled and looked down, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. "Sorry, man. You probably don't think that's funny. Anyway, I've been up here for, I don't know, either a couple months or forty years, depending on which end of the time-telescope you're looking through. I've, uh. Got a couple cold ones cracked open over here. Got some snacks. Thought maybe you could come by." He waited a moment, then huffed a breath, glaring up at the sky. "Let me try that one again: get your ass over here. We've got movies to watch." 
 And then he heard it again, that sound that he hadn't heard in years, the heavy rustling of feathers that never seemed to stir the air but seemed instead to press down on it, a massive, invisible force.
 He turned.
 Cas was standing in the doorway, his head swiveling slowly back and forth as he looked around. He looked at the table, with the stack of sandwiches and the two open beer bottles. He looked up, at the sunlight pouring in through the window. He looked behind him, at the television with the movie queued up and waiting. He stepped down into the kitchen and looked at Dean.
 "Hello," he said. 
 "Cas." That was all he managed to get out. He stepped closer, and Cas stepped closer, and they stood there with less than an arm's length between them and stared at each other.
 Back when they had been alive, Dean had gradually formed a weird suspicion about Cas. He did a little research one day, comparing the handful of pictures that he had of Cas from over the years, lining them up chronologically and studying his face. It didn't take very long to verify that yeah, Cas was definitely looking older. Dean didn't really know what to make of it, but it was obvious that Cas, for whatever reason, had been allowing his vessel to age. Since arriving in heaven, he had wondered (when he let himself think about it at all) what version of Cas he was going to see in front of him when they met again. Would it be Angel of the Lord Castiel, with the wild hair and the too-intense staring and the unlined face? Would it be post-Purgatory Cas, still just as young-looking but with something heavy starting to gather around his eyes and shoulders? Or would it be the Cas that Dean secretly thought of as his Cas, the Cas that stuck around, the Cas that Cas had grown into as they slowly fought their way clear of all the bullshit, the lies they had told each other, the walls they had thrown up.
 "Gotta say, buddy," Dean said to his Cas, his best friend, "I wasn't sure what I'd be looking at here. Thought I might be talking to some huge, rainbow-colored bird-lizard or something." But instead it was just Cas, with the same weary shadows beneath his eyes, the same somber mouth. The Cas that had stood in front of Dean and said...said all that stuff that he had said.
 "Well." Cas glanced to the side, almost like he was embarrassed or something. "You are, actually." He looked back at Dean. "To be clear, I'm not a 'bird-lizard.' But in heaven, reality is partially subjective to what you expect to see."
 "So, this," Dean gestured at the coat, the tie, the man in front of him, "this is just what I'm seeing, when in reality there's some gigantic fire-snake coiled all around my kitchen right now?"
 "I'm not a 'fire-snake', either," Cas said, with growing impatience. "And, no, I." He touched his tie gingerly. "I think of myself quite often in terms of this body. Both forms belong to me equally."
 "Huh. Okay, then." He thought about that a moment. "So what're you seeing right now?" Cas squinted at him, and Dean pointed at himself. "You seeing what I want you to see, or are you seeing me?" What a stupid question; what the hell was he even asking?
 "Both," Cas answered without hesitation. "The two aren't as far apart as you think they are, Dean." And that - that couldn't be true, but there Cas went again, saying things that made Dean's chest feel overstuffed, things that left him just standing there like an idiot. And how had that ended up for him the last time? He had stood there, and Cas had smiled, and died for him.
 It wasn't instinctual, or easy, or any of that trite crap that people liked to say about reunions. It was a choice, to take that last step, to wrap his arms around Cas and haul him in close. He felt Cas' arms come up, felt his hands on his back, and now, Dean knew, was the moment where they were supposed to let go again, step back a bit and try to start finding their way back to normal. But instead he clung on tighter, dropped his head down onto Cas' shoulder. 
 "I'm sorry, Dean," Cas said, his breath fanning out and tickling the hairs on the back of Dean's neck. Dean laughed shakily, incredulously.
 "Why the hell are you apologizing? I'm the one that's got shit to be sorry for, not you." 
 "I knew that you were dying. Jack came to me and told me. I knew it, and I had to let it happen." His voice was growing heavier, harsher; he wasn't trying to let go either. 
 "Yeah, you did, 'cause I had already gotten you killed." He pulled back just enough to look him in the eye, keeping his hold on him. "Me dying isn't on you, Cas, it's on me. You dying, on the other hand. That one's on me too." Cas shook his head, his lips pressed tight, his eyes pained. Dean shifted a hand up to grab at the back of his neck, cupping it, awkward and too rough. "Look, you're an idiot, I'm an idiot, and somehow we're both in heaven. Well, not somehow, it's 'cause of Jack."
 "No," Cas said, still shaking his head, but with a less distraught expression. "You're here because you deserve to be here, Dean. And you're not an idiot."
 "Yeah, well, neither are you," Dean muttered, looking down. They were still holding each other, it was starting to get ridiculous. Dean bought himself some time by adjusting his grip, like moving his arms around some might make this feel like something other than the weirdly long embrace that it was. He had never been able to lean on anyone the way he had always leaned on Cas, and now he couldn't even call it a figure of speech. "Are you even here?" He asked, propping his chin against the groove of Cas' shoulder. "Like, the same way I'm here, I mean. Jack brought you back to life, right?"
 "He did. And no, I'm not a true resident of heaven, although I do spend the majority of my time here. I prefer it."
 "Well, you're a resident in my slice of the pie," Dean said firmly. He clapped Cas on the back and forced himself to let go, clearing his throat and avoiding Cas' gaze by making a show of straightening his crooked tie, the crumpled line of his coat. "You seen Sammy yet? Or Mom?"
 "I thought it would be best to wait. I...wasn't sure you would want to see me."
 "Dumbass," Dean huffed, because he didn't know how else to answer something so monumentally stupid, and he wasn't hugging the guy again. Not yet. But he did pat the side of Cas' neck a bit, and that was a fucking bizarre thing to do. He dropped his hands. "I'll take you over there for the next family dinner. Bobby and Karen come sometimes, you been to see them?" 
 "Yes." Now he smiled, finally. "I visited Bobby shortly after arriving in heaven. I knew he would want to be caught up on everything that had happened with you and Sam."
 "So you'd come with me? To eat dinner?" Cas nodded. "And you'd actually eat?" Cas squinted, nodded again. "Okay, just checking. Didn't know how you felt about the food up here."
 "I've had little occasion to try it, but theoretically, I should be able to enjoy it as much as you do."
 "Cas, buddy," Dean said, smirking, folding his arms and cocking a hip out, "no one enjoys dinner as much as I do." That got him another fond uptick of the mouth.
 "As much as Sam, then."
 They smiled at each other. 
 "How 'bout we test it right now," Dean said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the table. "Got your favorite. PB&J with a kick. Also, gotta shake the dust off our movie nights."
 "It's daytime," Cas said, glancing up at the skylight.
 "Yeah, but you can fix that no problem, right?" Cas looked back at him, all dark-eyed, focused intent, that old stare of his that had never bothered Dean the way he knew it should. Dean winked at him.
 Cas looked back up, and Dean did too, tipping his head back and watching as the sky worked its way through every gradient of deepening blue, sinking swiftly away into inky black. The stars popped out like fireworks, the lights inside the house turned on and let out their own soft amber glow. 
 "Pretty neat trick, Cas," Dean said, looking back down only to find that Cas was already staring at him. 
 "You do it, too. You just don't realize it," Cas said gravely. "This world is yours, Dean."
 An entire world, a universe. What the hell was he supposed to do with all that?
 "Ours, you mean," Dean said, throwing an arm around Cas' shoulder and hauling him along to the table. He didn't want it anyway; he still wanted the same things he'd always wanted. Long, sun-drenched days, endless open roads and a home to come back to, Sammy and family and Cas.
 They watched 'The Thing', then 'Alien', which Cas had so many damn questions about that they went ahead and watched 'Aliens' just to shut him up. Cas ate more than his share of the sandwiches, grunting in surprised pleasure when he discovered the bacon. They eventually ended up sitting side by side with their legs kicked up on the coffee table, the movie paused and forgotten as they talked, and if the night lasted longer than it had any right to, if it stretched on and on beyond its typical span, well, so what? This was heaven.

 Cas was around more often than not, after that.
 He came and went, both under his own volition and whenever Dean prayed to him. Every once in a while he didn't come when Dean called, and it was annoying, but Dean knew that Cas had responsibilities in heaven. He wasn't the one running the place, he made sure to make that clear, but the angels still expected him to carry them along, same as they always had. Not that Cas had put it like that.
 "Long day at the office?" Dean asked him once, when Cas appeared on the grass beside him looking more worn down than usual. It wasn't even a joke, that was literally what everyone called the portion of heaven where the angels congregated. Bobby was the only one Dean knew who had actually been there. Buncha white, empty rooms, he had told Dean. Some of the walls flash funny colors. I don't got a damn clue what they do there.
 "It's the other angels," Cas said heavily, which, duh, who the fuck else could put that particular exhausted look on his face, besides the angels?
 "What'd they do this time?" Dean patted the spot beside him; he was sitting at the edge of the creek, cooling his feet off in the water. He had been taking a break from his newest project, building a car from scratch. No cheating allowed, other than getting a hold of the raw materials.
 "Just variations on the same topic," Cas sighed, sagging gracelessly down into the grass where Dean had indicated. "Jack hasn't abandoned heaven like Chuck did, but he does tend to disappear without explanation or warning, and often for long periods of time. The other angels find it...distressing. So they come to me, demanding answers." He slid a look at Dean from the corner of his eye. "They disapprove of his upbringing."
 Dean laughed harshly at that. "Yeah, I just bet they fucking do." He bumped their shoulders together. "Why waste your time on them, man? Just stay on this side of the fence. You know, the fun side."
 "I can't. Someone has to keep them appeased." He shrugged at Dean's disgusted look. "It hasn't been an easy transition for them, Dean. Jack didn't restore heaven, he rebuilt it. He's not interested in dispensing orders or receiving worship, and he's refused to create more angels."
 "He's just a kid," Dean said defensively. "He's way too young to be making babies."
 "Well, they wouldn't be babies," Cas said. "But I happen to agree with you. Jack should be enjoying his youth, such as it is."
 "Exactly," Dean said. He put a hand on Cas' knee, glad that they were on the same page. He knew Jack wasn't really theirs anymore, at least, not the way he used to be, but some things were hard to let go of. Some things he absolutely fucking refused to let go of.
 Cas was staring out past the trees, looking fixedly at some distant point on the horizon. The wind was picking up, making the leaves rustle and bending the tall prairie grass down in rippling waves. It had taken Dean a couple of weeks of having Cas back in his (after)life to figure out that Cas was the one responsible for the sudden change in weather around his house. The days were still hot and bright, the nights balmy, but now there was something pressing in along the edges, the air thick with the weight of the wind, the clouds streaking by. The prelude to a storm. Apparently Cas liked a blustery day, the promise of rain, and the weather around Dean's house was adjusting to his preferences, the same way that Sam's house always seemed caught up somewhere in the tail end of Autumn. Dean could work with that; a stiff breeze never hurt nothing. 
 Dean assumed that it was some far-flung storm cloud that had caught Cas' attention now. He started to lift his hand away, his mind cycling back to the bare metal frame currently sitting in his driveway, when the sudden press of Cas' shoulder stalled him. He glanced back over at him; Cas was still staring out at nothing, his jaw set all tense and square. The weight against Dean's shoulder increased.
 Dean cleared his throat, trying and failing to cover a smirk, and didn't say a damn word. Not one. He just shifted his hand to the inside of Cas' knee and encouraged him in closer, let the guy lean against him.
 "Thank you," Cas said quietly, his rigid posture slowly loosening.
 "Its nothing, buddy," Dean assured him, which was an outright lie. It was definitely something. He just wasn't entirely sure what.
 It almost felt like muscle memory, like long habit, but that wasn't right, because Dean sure as hell had never done this, whatever this was, with Cas when they had been alive. All this touching. Sure, they had been close, and obvious enough about it to have endured endless speculation and mocking comments about their friendship from angels and demons and pretty much everything in between. Back when they had been alive, Dean wouldn't have thought anything of pushing Cas down into a lawn chair, shoving a cold drink into his chest. But he definitely wouldn't have followed it up by, say, palming Cas' face with both hands, his fingers curling up into his hair, his thumbs settling along his cheeks, so he could tip his head back and settle a stern look on him, a silent order to just relax for a second and drink it, damn it. If going out to watch a friend perform in local theater (Charlie, of course) had been a thing that Dean did back when he was alive, he wouldn't have thought twice about standing up and shouting, "Cas!" over the heads and low chatter of the waiting audience when he saw Cas walk in, waving off Sam and Kevin's whisper-hisses to lower his voice, or of throwing his arm over Cas' shoulders when he made his way to Dean's side while haranguing the entire aisle until they all shuffled down a seat so they could sit together. But he definitely wouldn't have kept his arm there for the rest of the night. Honestly, he hadn't even noticed until the play (which was hilarious by the way, how come he and Sam never went to these things back on earth?) had ended and they all stood up and started filing out of the theater, and he only noticed then because he had to drop his arm to let Cas walk in front of him.
 They stood around on the pavement outside waiting for Charlie to join them, and when she did she was bubbling over, excited and energetic, accepting their congratulations with a wide grin. She mentioned something about an after-party, which Sam and Kevin agreed to easily, but Dean glanced at Cas' too-neutral face and went ahead and backed out for the both of them, giving some bullshit excuse. Charlie let them go with only a half-dozen arm punches and comments about their age, and Dean and Cas walked together back to Baby. 
 "You got somewhere you need to be?" Dean checked.
 "No," Cas answered. "We can go to the party if you want to. But I have several questions about Charlie's play."
 "Figured it was something like that." He didn't mind. Actually, he wanted some time alone with Cas. Everyone else in heaven Dean could see whenever he liked; Cas was the only one that he had to wait on these days, and it had been a while since he'd last popped in for a visit. It was cold out for some reason, snow falling in spinning flurries, their breath streaming out in front of them; Dean tipped his head back and blinked against the flakes that immediately began clumping along his lashes. "Let's go somewhere," he said impulsively. "I'll drive, you pick the place."
 "Alright," Cas said, and they got into the car and took off. They left the city behind, the lights and the cold, the lanes narrowing and falling away until eventually all that was left was the two of them and one dark, quiet road, winding through trees gone black with rain. Dean turned the radio on low and settled in, drumming his fingers along to Creedence as he fielded Cas' questions. Yes, he could walk him through the jokes, they were mostly blatant puns and blisteringly pointed innuendos. Yes, the costumes had obviously not been historically accurate, that was kind of the whole point. No, he hadn't thought that the play's underlying message had been that warmongering was just an elaborate substitute for sex, where the hell had Cas gotten that?
 Dean was half-convinced that they had sat side by side through separate plays by the time Cas told him to pull over. They got out and started walking, following a path through the trees. The snow had given way to a soft, misting sort of rain, the night had dialed backwards a bit and left them with the twilight. Dean wasn't cold, but he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket anyway, hugged his elbows in against his side. There was something depressing about this spot, something heavy and too-quiet, despite the sound of running water that seemed to surround them. 
 "Nice," he said (lying, mostly), when they stopped by silent agreement on a wooden bridge. He propped his elbow on the side and peered down at the water below them, hardly anything more than faint silver flashes of movement in the low light. "You been here before?"
 "Yes. Hannah and I came here, back on earth." 
 Dean waited, but Cas was quiet, turning so that his back was set against the bridge rail, his elbow bumping against Dean's as he squinted up at the trees. "Something special about the memory?" Dean prodded finally. He'd always sort of wondered about Hannah. Cas spoke about her in certain way, like her name had more weight than most. 
 "It proved to be an important conversation for us both," Cas answered, and didn't volunteer anything more.
 "Okay," Dean said slowly. Cas was so freaking weird sometimes. "Well, as much as I love all the - you know, the...damp, what do you say we head home?"
 "Yes, I'd like that," Cas said, and they turned and started making their way back to Baby, their arms swinging between them. "You don't mind this?" Cas asked suddenly. 
 "Mind what?" Dean asked. Cas stared at him, then glanced down. Dean followed his gaze, and realized with an inner jolt that they were holding hands. When had that happened? 
 "No," he said quickly, because he wasn't going to admit that he hadn't even noticed. "Why would I mind?"
 "It doesn't make you," Cas paused, his eyes rising back up to catch Dean's, holding them in that way he had, so dark and searching that Dean always found himself staring back, trying to root out what Cas was looking for. A feedback loop of seeking. "Uncomfortable?" Cas finished eventually, after so long a silence that Dean had nearly lost track of what they had been talking about.
 "Dude. No." Dean looked away, flustered and confused, because no, it didn't make him uncomfortable. Whenever he tried to think about it too much, this new thing between him and Cas, that somehow didn't feel new at all, that somehow just felt right, it wasn't discomfort that started to build up in his stomach, or embarrassment or shame, or even desire or longing. It was bitter, biting rage. It made him fucking furious. He took a breath, clenching his jaw and fighting the feeling back down. "I'm fine with it," he managed to grit out from behind his teeth. He could feel Cas staring at the side of his face; he trained his gaze resolutely forward and kept walking.
 Cas let go of his hand, and they drove back home and didn't talk about it again.

 
 Sam brought the beers like he had been told, along with a salad that he was perversely proud of having made, and Jack.
 "Do I look like a rabbit to you?" Dean asked, using the spatula to gesture at his face, hooking his free arm around Jack's shoulder to pull him into a hug. "Hey, kid. How's it going?"
 "You look like an omnivore, Dean, which means the big scary greens can't hurt you," Sam said. Cas came through the door, and Sam's sour expression brightened. "Hey, Cas."
 "Sam. Jack." His shoes were still off, and now his socks had disappeared too. Dean goggled, watching Cas as he padded barefoot across the warm wooden porch boards, stopping at Sam's side and lifting a hand out to take the bowl of boring salad. No coat, no shoes or socks, what was next? Strip poker? Skinny dipping? He looked away, turning back to the grill and listening with half an ear as the three of them talked. It probably didn't bode well for whatever it was that Sam was going to tell him, the fact that he had brought Jack along. It was going to piss him the hell off, whatever it was, but he was willing to let that simmer for now, leave it untouched for a few more hours. After all, when was the last time they had been together like this? Just the four of them, no one else but them: Dean's smallest definition of family outside of Sammy, undefinable and off-balance and perfect. 
 So they had a good time, passing plates and drinks and condiments back and forth, Bowie playing in the background, Jack beaming happily around at them as he told them stories about some of the things he had been up to. It ran the gamut, from hanging around in the center of a star while contemplating creation, to shooting craps in Reno with Amara, all the way down to sitting inside the spiral of a conch shell and letting himself 'be' the ocean, whatever that meant. Dean just grunted and nodded. It still didn't sit right with him sometimes, what Jack had become for their sakes, for the sake of the world, but the kid seemed content. And it wasn't like any of them had gotten the ending they wanted, but then, who did? Everything ended, and then apparently you went to paradise and none of it mattered anyway.
 Jack looked suddenly at him, his smile fading, as if he could feel Dean's abruptly darkening mood. He had been sitting with his plate balanced in his lap, dipping his burger in a well of ketchup like the child he was, but now he dropped it back to his plate, his expression sobering.
 "Could we go inside?" He asked. "I think it's time that we talked."
 "Sure," Dean said shortly. "I gotta clean up anyway." He jabbed a finger at Jack. "You're drying. No free passes just because you're God."
 That was how he ended up elbows deep in sudsy water, Jack at his side with a towel at the ready. Sam and Cas were sitting side by side at the table behind them.
 "Okay," Dean said as he handed Jack a plate, "let's hear it."
 Jack took his time answering, wiping the plate down in careful circles with the corner of his towel, starting at the center and working his way outward. "Aunt Amara and I have talked about it," he finally said, "and we both believe that my grandfather hadn't always been the way he was at the end."
 "We're talking about Chuck?" Dean clarified. Jack nodded. "Alright. Don't see what that's got to do with anything, but alright."
 "He was always restless, Aunt Amara says. Never content with her company, never satisfied with his creations. Always seeking something new. But he wasn't...manipulative, or driven by the search for the perfect ending. Aunt Amara says he used to enjoy creation for its own sake, not just for the story he could tell with it."
 "Would you stop with the 'Aunt Amara' crap? It's weirding me out."
 "Well, she's my great-aunt, technically, but I thought that made her sound too old."
 "She is old," Dean pointed out. "And I still don't get what any of this has to do with the three of you keeping me in the dark on shit, or how Sam somehow managed to leave heaven without breaking the - the balance of the universe or something."
 "My grandfather changed, Dean," Jack said soberly. Dean handed him a spatula, and Jack clutched it in his hand, his eyes and focus trained on the tiled wall. "I could change too."
 "Well, yeah, but - you wouldn't ever - " Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam and Cas, rolling his eyes toward Jack in a plea for back up. Sam widened his eyes at him; Cas gave him an encouraging nod.
 Absolutely no fucking help.
 "Jack, you aren't ever gonna turn into Chuck," Dean said, grabbing on to Jack's shoulder with a sopping wet hand. "We wouldn't let that happen. I mean, that's why you keep us around, right?"
 He'd meant it partly as a joke, the opening line to some comment or other about how between the three of them Jack had to have the equivalent of at least one decent dad, but Jack's eyes lit up at his words. He looked up at Dean with a small, bright smile.
 "Yes," he said happily. "Exactly. That's why I did it."
 "Did what?" Dean asked, lost all over again.
 "Made Sam into an archangel," Jack said earnestly.
 "You made Sam into what now?" His ears were ringing; Jack blinked and looked down at his shoulder where Dean's fingers were suddenly digging in.
 "No, that's not," Sam spluttered from behind him. He dropped his head into his hands, then lifted it free. "I'm not an angel, Dean. That's just the closest equivalent we have at the moment."
 "You - " Dean sputtered, his head whipping back and forth between Sam and Jack. "You're a - "
 "Aunt Amara and I decided that we should invest a portion of our power outside ourselves," Jack continued blithely on. "So that if a day came where she or I needed to be stopped, there would be beings in existence who were capable of doing so. Provided they worked together."
  "Beings," Dean said, latching on to the word. "As in more than one." He already knew, but he looked at Cas anyway. "You got anything you want to volunteer right about now, buddy? Any system upgrades you haven't gotten around to mentioning?" Cas didn't blink or look away, but he did dip his chin down in a clipped, resigned acknowledgement. "Fucking unbelievable. And when exactly were the two of you gonna get around to mentioning any of this to me?"
 "When it became important," Sam answered, entirely unapologetic.
 "Oh, I'm sorry, right, because it's not important for me to know that my little brother and my - " here he fumbled, like an idiot, " - my best fucking friend are moonlighting as archangels!"
 "Really not an archangel, Dean."
 "Whatever the hell you want to call yourself, then." He looked back at Jack, still holding the spatula and watching them, wide-eyed. "How many?" Jack tilted his head, a sweeter, less squinty reproduction of Cas' typical questioning look. "How many people are you and dear old Auntie Amara doing this to?"
 "Oh." Jack's expression cleared. "We thought that four would be sufficient."
 "Four, huh?" Dean threw Sam a pointed look. "Yeah, you're sounding less and less like an archangel every second, Sammy."
 "Dean - " Sam said wearily.
 "Anyone else?" Dean asked, ignoring Sam and turning his attention back to Jack. 
 "Well." Jack darted a glance toward the table. "Castiel suggested Naomi."
 "Naomi?" Dean said incredulously. "You're fucking kidding me." The angel who plucked Cas from purgatory for the sole purpose of 'fixing' him, reprogramming him back into a mindless, obedient killer. The angel who'd tried to force Cas to murder Dean. And now she was even more powerful than before.
 "Naomi's priority has always been the stability of heaven," Cas said. "Sam and I, our loyalty is clearly with the earth, and with heaven's human residents. We needed someone to speak for the other angels."
 "For fuck's sake." Naomi. Dean snatched the towel from Jack, drying his hands as he paced around the kitchen. He could see how it made sense, from a certain, stupid standpoint, to want to have someone with separate loyalties. Someone to balance the power out. But Naomi was ruthless. Naomi had hurt Cas, more than Dean suspected Cas would ever admit. So what more was there to think about? "That's three," he said, coming to stand back in front of Jack, his chest turning leaden, his stomach roiling with nerves and disappointment and love, "and now you got four." He huffed when Jack just stared at him, all puzzled concern. "Me, Jack. I'll be your fourth not-archangel."
 The crease between Jack's brows deepened. "Dean. Aunt Amara and I have already chosen Rowena."
 "Then undo it," Dean said, skipping past all the other shit he could potentially be saying in answer to that, like, for instance, Rowena?! Queen of hell and most powerful witch in existence? "Take it away from one of them and give it to me." Jack was shaking his head, his eyes dark, clouded with distress. "Why the hell not? Jack, don't tell me you trust Naomi, or even Rowena, more than you trust me." 
 "Dean," Sam said, pained exasperation. Dean waved him off, moving closer to Jack, leaning his head in to force the kid to look him in the eye.
 "Listen, man. This is...this is my job, you know? You can't ask this of Sammy and not me. You can't expect me to just sit up here on my cloud and, and - just drink beer and fuck around with cars for eternity while the people I care about are out there actually doing something."
 "You don't have to work on cars if you don't want to - " Jack began, like that was the important part. 
 "Jack!" Dean shouted. Jack jumped, his eyes dropping down. "That's not the point! Now, just listen to me for a second and - "
 "No, Dean," Jack said, with low, startling force. "I won't listen to you. Not about this." He looked back up; if he had been anything other than God, Dean might have described his expression as stoic, or maybe eerily calm. As it was, it was more than a little terrifying, to have that unflinching gaze levelled at him. Was it just Dean's imagination, or was there a yellow shine to his eyes, a faint shadowing of wings stretching up along the wall, like Jack had retreated into Godhood, or wrapped himself up in it like a blanket. "I'm sorry," Jack continued, in that same remote tone, "but this is my choice. I don't choose you." Then he blinked, and just like that he was Jack again, all clear, blue eyes, fresh-faced and young. "I'm...I'm sorry," he said again. "I think I should go."
 And then Dean was left behind, in a hell of a lot more ways than one, seething and miserable, staring at the spot where Jack had been, while Cas and Sam's silent disappointment pressed against his back like a weight.

 "Dean," Cas said, some indeterminable amount of time later (what did time matter, anyway, what the fuck did anything matter up here), "how long are you going to do this?"
 "Do what," Dean muttered, refusing to look back at him. 
 Cas was quiet a moment, then Dean listened to the groaning creak of the porch boards as he moved across them, as he settled in next to Dean on the steps. "Well," he said, all warm and weighted, his voice and his presence and the care he took to put himself precisely where Dean needed him, "I suppose I could say, how long are you going to stare at that patch of grass, or, how long are you going to keep wringing that dishtowel," (embarrassing, Dean hadn't even realized he was still holding it, the stupid towel that Jack had been drying dishes with) "but what I'm really curious about is how long you plan on keeping the sun from coming up."
 "Why, you got somewhere to be in the morning? Gotta go kiss more feathered ass? Or maybe you and Sammy have some special archangel shit to do behind my back."
 More silence. Dean bunched the towel up small in his hands, his fingers knotting around the thin fabric. He hadn't meant to do it, but somehow all the hand towels in the bunker had ended up looking like the ones his mom had used back when he was a kid. Blue and white gingham, gone all soft and threadbare at the edges. 
 "Can I ask you something?" Cas finally said. Dean clamped his teeth together and scowled out at the birch trees, jutting up slim and milk-white in the distance. "When you asked Jack to give that power to you, that responsibility, how did you feel?"
 "What kinda stupid question is that, how did I feel? I felt pissed off, how do you think I felt? Being fucking lied to, again, then getting told that Jack trusts that psychopath in a pant-suit more than me - "
 "You're evading the question. When you stood in front of Jack and told him you would be his fourth, what did you feel in that moment?"
 Dean breathed out harshly through his nose, turning away, glaring out at the darkness. He didn't have to answer shit. He didn't have to say one goddamn word.
 "Fine, alright? I felt sick, is that what you wanna hear? I felt - fuck." He dropped his head, pressed it against the back of his fingers, the towel. "I felt so freaking tired, man, you have no idea." He breathed in, back out, raised his head. "But that's just because I've been on the bench too long, you know? Been sitting around getting fat off cheeseburgers in paradise. I can shake it off."
 "Dean." Cas' hand settled on his knee, a surprisingly assured movement. "That feeling you had, that gut reaction? That's why Jack refuses to ask this of you."
 "What, that's not how you felt, when he asked you?"
 "No," Cas said, after a brief pause. A hesitation. There was something there that he didn't want Dean looking too closely at. Well, too fucking bad.
 "Well, what did you feel?" Dean pressed.
 "I...to be honest, I mostly felt relieved." Dean made a noise of disbelief and Cas' fingers squeezed along his knee in response. "It's the truth. After being in the Empty, dreaming about my mistakes, my failures, and there are many, Dean, more than you know, it - it was an incredible relief, to be able to have that."
 "And Sam? You expect me to believe that he was relieved too, when Jack asked him?"
 "You'll have to ask Sam what he felt in that moment. But I expect he felt ready." 
 "What the hell does that mean?"
 "It means, Sam had a long, fulfilling life on earth. It was imperfect, of course, and he was often very lonely, even when surrounded by friends and family, but he was happy, Dean. He had many years of peace, of healing. Something that you did not get the chance to experience."
 "Yeah, but I can't fucking do this, Cas." It left him oddly giddy, tight-chested and shaky, to finally admit it, say it out loud. That wrongness that had been crouching somewhere in the back of his throat ever since he'd woken up here. "I'm not cut out for this, and I know how fucked up that sounds, but if this is peace then I don't want it." Cas frowned but didn't speak, didn't look away or remove his hand. "I'm gonna lose it up here, man. I mean, I know I said this is what I always wanted, and it is, but that was when it was something that I could lose. Now this is it, and I've got it for forever, and don't even say it, you're gonna say the same shit Jack and Sam have been telling me, that I can have and do whatever I want. But it - " He rapped his fist hard against his chest, trying to find the words, "If nothing hurts, then nothing can feel good either, you know? How is that heaven?" 
 "You know," Cas said slowly, after a brief, heavy silence, "sometimes it amazes me, the things I've come to understand through knowing you, that you didn't even realize you were showing me."
 "Huh?" Dean managed.
 "You're not trapped here for eternity, Dean. Heaven is not a cage. If you choose to, you can end your existence here. Anyone can."
 "I can off myself?" Dean clarified, after a long, stunned moment. He pointed at himself, like there might be some kind of misunderstanding. Cas nodded. "And go where?"
 "Where did Death go?" Cas returned with a shrug. "Or, as I asked once before, what becomes of a monster killed in Purgatory?"
 "Where's Benny," Dean said thoughtfully, his gaze dropping down. 
 "And Billie," Cas added. "Where would Chuck have gone, if you and Sam had killed him? Some questions remain unanswerable, even to Jack and Amara."
 "So how come nobody told me any of this?" It shouldn't feel so damn good, to find out that he could die again. It was also more than a little mortifying, to have just babbled all that nonsensical crap out to Cas, only to find out that the guy already knew exactly what he had been talking about. How did he know, when Dean hadn't even known? Dean took refuge in annoyance. "I've been dicking around up here, feeling like the most ungrateful asshole in the world, trying to convince myself that nothing was off with this place, and this whole time you could've told me about the goddamn escape hatch."
 "Do you want to 'escape'?" Cas asked coolly, but Dean didn't miss the tension in his fingers, or the sudden tightness of his mouth.
 "Well...no." Hell no. And just like that, Dean let it go. He laughed, rough and relieved, and dropped the towel at his feet, wrapping an arm around Cas' waist. Holy shit, he'd taken his suit jacket off, this really was heaven. "Leave freaking paradise? I'm not in any rush."
 Cas' face was so near that Dean could track every minute shift in expression, could measure the upward curl of his lips as he smiled, even in the low dawn light. "Knowing that it could end is part of what makes existence meaningful. You taught me that." He looked away, his expression faltering. "I'm not sure that I should have told you, actually. It's not a secret, but Jack's hope was that the souls here would come to realize the truth on their own, as they explored and questioned heaven."
 "Hey, I was questioning. I just, you know. Didn't want to admit it."
 "I suppose so," Cas said doubtfully.
 "So, is that why - " Dean cut himself off, tried again. "You know, I haven't been able to find some people, and I figured it was just 'cause they didn't want to see me,  but - " and then his throat closed up and he had to swallow hard before continuing. "I mean. I've been looking for them, but I can't find Ellen and Jo."
 Cas nodded slowly, watching Dean. "Yes. Thanks to Ash, Jo and Ellen were reunited with Bill, and they spent the equivalent of hundreds of years together in a shared heaven. When Jack and I rebuilt heaven and the souls here were given the option to depart, the three of them decided to do so together." Dean nodded convulsively and looked away; he could feel the burn of Cas' eyes on the side of his face. "I'm sorry, Dean," Cas said eventually.
 "No, man," Dean answered roughly. "Don't be. I'm, uh. I'm happy for them, it's just - hell, I don't know." Gone. They were gone. He cleared his throat, glancing back at Cas. "What about you? Could you - " he drifted off, rolled his eyes significantly. 
 "End my existence? I..." Cas stalled, looking away, out across the prairie. "I could, yes. But I can't imagine it."
 "That's kinda the whole point, though, right?" Not knowing, being okay with not knowing.
 "But to leave Jack. To give this up."
 "Hey, it's good for the goose, should be good enough for the gander." Cas squinted his confusion at him, and Dean rolled his eyes. "Buddy, I'm not saying you should do anything in the next couple hundred millennia or whatever. But this," he gestured around them, the rising wind, the rising sun, the wide, endless road of a world, "it's about changing, right? Inner growth and all that touchy-feely crap. You could have that, too. Why not?" Cas grunted noncommittally, and Dean curled his hand in against his waist, bunching the fabric of his shirt into his palm. "Hey, maybe we'll go together some day," he said, and nearly swallowed his own tongue. Cas' eyes flew up to meet his. "Uh. I mean." Ah, hell with it. "Yeah, you know, why not? If I'm ever taking a nose dive off the edge of the universe, it's gonna be with you and Sammy." 
 Not that he wanted to do it anytime soon. Dean tightened his grip on Cas, dropped his chin down onto his shoulder. Maybe a long time from now, like, a long, long, super fucking long time from now, he'd reach a point where he could let it go. All this love, all the countless links of memory and identity that he knew himself by, that kept him tethered to Dean Winchester, killer, Dean Winchester, hunter, Dean Winchester, obedient son. Brother. Friend. 
 But not yet.
 "Maybe someday," Cas said hesitantly, hoarse-voiced and low. "When we're ready." And he lifted his hand from Dean's knee, sliding his arm slowly, carefully, around Dean's back, his hand fumbling along his side for a place to settle. They held on to each other, there on the steps of their back porch, and Dean watched the sun tip up over the horizon, his thoughts stretching out to meet it. He hadn't let himself dream or hope for much, when he had been alive. But up here...there might be enough space for it, up here. 
 So maybe someday...
 Someday, Sam and Cas might decide to hang up the wings and halo (not that Dean was sure that either of those things were actually involved, at least in Sam's case). Nobody ever said it had to be a permanent job, after all, hell, even godhood wasn't a forever deal, as they had proven with Chuck. So yeah, maybe they would retire someday, pass the responsibility on. Maybe Dean would take it up for one of them, but then again, maybe not, because if Dean was sure of anything it was the fact that he wasn't anything special at the end of the day. The world was still turning down below them after all, and every day someone brand new was born, someone with the potential to do the job a hell of a lot better than him. Maybe someday Dean would really believe that. Putting down a burden, even the idea of a burden, seemed impossible, but that, Dean supposed, was what heaven was for. A place where they had the room and time to let it all drop away.
 A place where he could test out Cas' happiness theory for himself.
 "You still should've told me, man," Dean said, keeping Cas close. "Told me what was going on with you and Sam. Talked to me about it." It was rising up in his chest again, the hurt, the fury that he'd spent his entire life feeding, appeasing. It hung there, all thick and knotted in his chest and throat, and he held on to Cas and pulled on one snarled thread, just one, freeing it from the rest. "We never talk about any of it."
 "It," Cas echoed rhetorically, his eyes fixed on Dean. "It didn't seem...you never mentioned it."
 "Well, what was I supposed to say?" Cas didn't answer, just stared at him, and fuck, Dean didn't know where to start. "You ever think about what our lives might've been like, if neither of us had died the way we did?" 
 "Not really. I..." Cas drifted off, shaking his head. "The longer I was with you, the more incomprehensible life on earth seemed to become. The idea that we might have a future at all was remarkable enough for me." His hand flexed along Dean's side, squirmingly warm against his ribs. "Did you?"
 "Maybe. I dunno." Mostly not. When he had been alive, Dean's limited imagination of the future had mostly involved half-formed fantasies of some sort of pseudo-retirement, one where he slowed down but never completely stopped, because deep down he was just self-aware enough to know that he couldn't give the life up entirely. "I've, uh. Been thinking about it more since I got up here, though."
 Cas's eyes dropped. "I'm sorry. I wish...you deserved to have that life, Dean."
 "Dude, stop." Dean snugged him closer, which was pretty impressive considering how tightly pressed along his side Cas already was. "That's not what I'm saying. I just mean, something about being up here, having all this - this freaking time, you know, I guess it's made me sort of realize what the rest of my life would've been like, what our lives would've been like, and it - " There was a helplessness to honesty, he had always been so fucking terrified of it. He wasn't that kind of brave, the way that Sam had always been, the way that Cas had proved himself to be in the end. But he forced himself to go on. "I wouldn't have ever said it."
 "Said what?" Cas asked. But he already knew.
 "That I needed you," Dean answered anyway, his voice an uneven scrape. "That I - long as I had Sammy, you know? That's what I always told myself. I didn't need anything or anyone else, long as Sam stuck with me. But then you, you were always showing up and disappearing again, and each time you came back I'd think, yeah, this is how it's supposed to be, and each time you fucking died on me I'd think, God, I'm alone, and - " Somehow, at some point, his head had dropped back down to Cas' shoulder, to the crook of his neck. Cas' hand had left his waist and was gripping him by the shoulder, hard, so hard. It had started and ended this way; it should always be this way. Dean gritted his teeth and forced himself to continue. " - And so I knew, somewhere in my goddamn head I always knew, but I still wouldn't have ever admitted it. How much I needed you. Fuck, Cas. How much I love you, too, I'm so fucking sorry I never said it back." 
 "Dean - "
 " - That's how it would've gone, if we had both lived. I wouldn't have ever told you." He wouldn't even have admitted it to himself, much less told Cas about it. He would have clung to the job, to the road, until Sam either dug his heels in and refused to keep going at it or, even more likely, until Dean had his own personal come-to-Jesus moment, some call to close dismiss. Aging reflexes making him too slow on the draw, maybe, or getting tossed across the room and breaking a freaking hip. And Cas would've picked him up, and patched him up, and followed him on to the next hunt or on into retirement, aging his vessel along with Dean, keeping pace with him through the years, and Dean would have just taken it for granted. Not Cas, exactly, but the idea of Cas in his orbit, like that was just where Cas was supposed to be. Like Dean wasn't the luckiest fucker on the planet, to have somehow managed to spend his life with the guy. "You're my...hell, 'best friend' can barely begin to cover it, and I couldn't even - "
 "Dean," Cas said, in that way of his, forceful and low, equal parts exasperation and endearment. When he pulled at Dean's shoulder, Dean gave in to the inclination, long resisted and railed against, and just went with it. He let Cas pull him back, let him shift them both so that they were facing each other, their knees turned in and pressed together. Cas' hand stayed in place on his shoulder; his free hand moving between them, reaching for Dean's. He tilted his head diffidently, watching Dean while he clasped their palms together, his brow crinkling in question. Dean watched him in turn, watched his eyes fucking shine with gratification when Dean twisted their fingers up tight. "Thank you," Cas said fervently.
 "Dude, stop thanking me - "
 "Not for this," Cas said hastily, lifting their joined hands. "Well. Of course for this, but this is...this is just a fraction of what I'm trying to thank you for."
 "Yeah, but seriously - "
 "Listen, please. When Jack and I rebuilt heaven, we did it for you and Sam. For humanity. This, all of this," Cas threw a startlingly lost glance at the house, the prairie, the world around them, "it's not meant for me, or for any angel. But you still choose to share it with me. I didn't think I'd have that again. I...you think that all you do is take from me, but you're wrong. You give me everything, Dean. Thank you."
 Dean had only felt so stupid stunned once before in his life, and that one had been Cas' fault too. "Uh. You're welcome," he managed hoarsely.
 They stared at each other for a long moment, then Cas looked away, his gaze dropping toward their laps. His hand slid from Dean's shoulder, down along his arm, around his wrist, until he was holding Dean's hand in both of his own. "I'd like to say it again, if you don't mind," he said, painfully sincere.
 "Sure," Dean replied gruffly. Like he hadn't been waiting on it, hoping for it, from the moment Cas first reappeared. "Yeah, okay." He scooted closer, squared his shoulders to meet it head on.
 "I love you," Cas said. Just like that, no buffering, no preamble or qualifications. Warmth bolted up Dean's spine, sent a flush along the back of his neck, the tips of his ears; he swallowed hard and held Cas' hand and didn't look away. Cas smiled, shook his head ruefully. "I spent so much time in misery over it. I tried to border it, contain it, but in actuality it was freeing me. I love you, Dean." He bent his head, pressed his nose and mouth against the back of Dean's hand, his wrist, and something in Dean's stomach began to burn.
 Was this what it felt like to want someone else, here in the afterlife? Physical sensation was more of a pick and choose kind of deal now that Dean was dead, just something to keep around out of habit. It was all reduced, or amplified maybe, emblematic instead of biologic. A symbol of intent, like Cas kept saying. Because honestly, if this was desire, it didn't seem much different from what Dean had felt when he had been alive. That same coil of feeling, that same sharp climb of awareness. It sure as fuck didn't feel very heavenly of him.
 "I - " Dean began, and then had to stop to clear his clogged up throat. He tried again. "Me too, buddy. I love you, too." And yeah, it sort of felt like a cop out, throwing the 'buddy' in there. A back door that he was too chicken shit to shut. But that was how it had started between them, right? In friendship, companionship. It hadn't made sense, but that had never lessened its intensity, and it had only grown from that strange beginning, had only turned denser, deeper. More and more impossible to describe. And Cas didn't seem to mind. Kind of the opposite, actually, judging by his expression.
  They stared at each other over their clasped hands. Maybe it was the sunrise, the way it was tinting everything in soft colors, but Cas looked beautiful like this. Glowing darkly, his eyes an unexpectedly light blue and so damn gentle as he looked back at Dean. Then Dean blinked, and Cas was beautiful. Like, a not human sort of beautiful. It was only an instant, and there was way too fucking much to take in, but the main impression that Dean was left with was of wings, and more than two of them, all feathered in fire. And not fire like Dean understood fire, something that needed to be fed, something that roared and consumed. This was the kind of living light that could guide or smite a guy, blind him or show him each individual color contained within. The wings were pulled tight around something beneath, obscuring it, keeping it contained, and as bright and burning as they were they didn't hold a candle to whatever they were wrapped around. It was like comparing a star to a firefly's ass. And Dean wanted - he wanted to reach out, grab hold of those blazing feathers, part them so he could see - see Cas - 
 Then it was gone, as swiftly and jarringly as he had glimpsed it. And it was just Cas again, and he was still so fucking gorgeous.
 "Dean?" Cas was watching him warily, almost bashfully. 
 Dean sucked in a slow, shaky breath, then leaned forward. Closed the distance between them.
 It wasn't bad, for a first kiss. There were a lot of firsts going on at the moment. His first time kissing an angel, for one, or at least, an angel with any mojo. And hey, Cas wasn't using said mojo to irradiate Dean's face, so that was a good start. Also his first time kissing a dude, and Dean was mostly just surprised to realize that the scratch of stubble wasn't putting him off any. Actually, it was kind of hot; a rough, scraping accompaniment to the feel of warm, pillowy lips. And the way Cas jerked with surprise, then went still, then made a soft, grumbling, loving sort of sound against Dean's lips, well. 
 That was really fucking hot. 
 But the only first that really mattered was that it was his first time kissing Cas. Everything else was just window dressing.
 They pulled apart, picking back up where they had left off with the staring. Cas was looking more than a little stupefied, his eyes wide and intent as they roved across Dean's face, searching for that elusive something that Dean had never been able to put the perfect name to. Whatever it was, Cas must have picked up its trail, because he smiled, sudden and startlingly large and sweet. "That was...unexpected," he said.
 "Yeah," Dean agreed huskily. "Uh. Hope you don't mind. Maybe I should've - " he shrugged awkwardly, " -  put some moves on first. Tried to throw you some warning signals or something."
 "I wouldn't have picked up on them," Cas assured him seriously, and Dean snorted a laugh, his stomach flipping and spinning with shock and glee, love and terror.
 "And, hey, look at that," he said weakly, gesturing toward the horizon. "Sun snuck up on us. Was that you or me?"
 "I think it was me," Cas said, squinting as he glanced up at the now-blue sky. He looked back at Dean, his eyes clear, as easy to read as words on a page, blaring it out like a neon welcome sign. "How could it not be me?"
 Dean wasn't so sure about that, what with the sunshine feeling currently shooting all through his body, rising and rising. But he kept that to himself, squeezing Cas' hands one more time before letting them go. "Well," he said instead, picking up the towel from where he had dropped it on the grass.  "Guess you should go try and find Jack, huh? Get him back here so I can eat a big 'ole helping of crow." Cas frowned, his head tilting sideways, and Dean rolled his eyes. "I gotta apologize, you know?"
 "Ah." Cas' frown didn't lessen, but it changed, shifting from confusion to consideration. "It's possible that he may have gone further than I can follow. He was very upset last night." Dean felt a stab of guilt, felt it shudder across his face. Cas' hand came up to grip his shoulder. "I'll look for him, Dean."
 "Okay," Dean said gruffly. "Yeah, do that." He stood up, and Cas followed after him.
 "Even if I can't locate him, he'll come back eventually," Cas said, obviously trying to reassure him. 
 "Yeah, but - but I still need to say it to him, you know?" He summoned up a paper-thin smirk. "It's in the saying it, right?"
 "It is," Cas agreed, with another slow tugging smile. He shuffled closer, and Dean leaned in, and kissed him for a second time. Castiel, angel of the fucking Lord, who had raised Dean from perdition and loved him beyond anything he had ever deserved. Cas, his best friend, and Dean got to kiss him a second time. Cas stepped away, the shadow of his wings stretching out wide and intricately fine along the grass. "I'll be back soon to let you know what I've found," he promised Dean solemnly. Dean nodded, and Cas disappeared with a whisper of sound.
 Dean turned away, shaking the towel out, hanging it along the porch rail. He didn't know how long it took an angel to search the universe for his God-son, but he figured it'd be a bit. Plenty of time to stop by Sam's, try and have an actual conversation now that he knew everything and had some time to calm down a bit. Or not talk about anything at all. But first...
 Dean propped his elbows along the rail, leaned against the wood. Felt his mouth curl up in bone-deep satisfaction, in joy, as he stared out across the yard. The heat had come up with the sun, was starting to hang thick in the air and cling to his skin in just the way he'd always liked, and with Cas gone there weren't any lingering, looming storm clouds to sweep it away. It was shaping into the perfect day for a long drive, or for getting under the hood of his latest car, or for just puttering around outside, enjoying home. It hadn't escaped Dean's notice that the grass had started to take a little longer to grow back than it used to, a slowed pace to match his flagging interest. So maybe it had been his doing, like Sam had said. Maybe he had needed it to grow, so he could cut it back, control it. But recently he didn't mind so much to let it be, to let it stretch and reach a bit. There was time, after all. All the time he'd ever wanted, and not a moment more.