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Dean had died so many times, he’d lost count nine or ten years ago. And those were merely the times he could remember. Demons and angels and other supernatural life forms had told him repeatedly that Dean and Sam had begun their so-called death spree long before they’d ever lost John.
However….this was the first time in which he could recall ever feeling quite so….alone. It wouldn’t be long now; Dean had felt how the unyielding metal crunched itself through the back of his ribs, which in turn speared his lung, only to lodge itself through the top right ventricle of his heart as his back slammed against the beam.
He told Sammy it was hopeless, asked him to stay with him instead, but….Dean supposed he couldn’t expect his baby brother -- someone who’d spent lifetimes triaging the dead and dying -- to suddenly act any different. It’s what Dean had always taught him, after all.
Dean blinked several times and with a touch of dread, realized he’d gone blind….and soon he couldn’t hear much of anything either. He supposed that’s what happened to one’s senses when gravity held you upright as you bled out. Though he could no longer lift his head without help, he still needed someone near him. Especially since this was it….his final goodbye.
"Sam...Sammy? Please come back…." A tickle hit the back of his throat. "Are you-ou st-still there-ere, Sammy?" Dean's voice sounded gravelly and quieter. He coughed timidly at first, covered his mouth with a hand, and then one enormous explosive cough tore painfully all the way through him. Dean felt flecks of something warm peppering his mouth and pooling in that one hand. The force of that cough was enough to snap back Dean's head like whiplash. First, his neck throbbed fiercely as Dean's skull struck the beam behind him only to again painfully loll against his collarbone. The cursed hunter had almost zero control left of his extremities. Dean's chest ached so damned much...he couldn't catch his breath anymore…..with a shock of realization in Dean's memory, it felt eerily similar to that one time when Billie had been trying to rip him apart from Cas...and send him back to Hell or even the Empty some years ago. Unbidden thoughts of Castiel's final moments made Dean's mortal wound that much more agonizing….and more than ever Dean wished he could just climb down, fall to the dirt, and die in peace, but the stupid rebar has him skewered like a giant fishhook. And to think he once believed as recently as 5 minutes ago that it was better for him to die on his feet. But not like this....not all alone. Not slowly, painfully, inexorably, with zero dignity....like bait on a hook. In a blaze of glory is how Dean knew his demise always had to be....not this gawdawful--whatever this was.
Now, however, Dean couldn't even raise his own head but he managed to drag that hand back over his chest, covering from the opposite side the approximate location where the rebar stuck him. For the first time in over five years, he gave himself permission to pray. "I'm-m so s-sorry, C-Cas -," he wheezed.
Now Dean knew he was hallucinating. He could've just sworn he heard the rustle of wings behind him, which would signify the arrival of -
"What the hell, Dean?" came Cas's angry-sounding gravelly voice. If he weren't seconds away from buying the farm, Dean would've jumped 10 feet from being so startled. It was so reminiscent of….
"Cas...w-what? You c-can't-be-be-here," whispered Dean breathlessly. He still couldn't see. "Unless I-I'm all-" he groaned piteously and tears began pouring down his face.
"No, you're not dead…yet," clipped Cas.
"B-but m' dyyying," Dean slurred as his eyelids drooped closed.
"Yes, I can see that." Cas's tone softened somewhat in spite of himself. "Hold still, please."
Castiel placed his hand against Dean's chest and it was exquisitely painful for the hunter, having his heart divinely mended in record time. Despite the fact he could still barely breathe, much less speak, Dean persisted in getting Cas to stay. "Cas."
The angel carefully anchored his feet for what came next. With Castiel's arms flexed, he staunchly positioned himself and raised Dean up and off the blasted rebar that had caused so much trouble. The hunter's eyesight was very gradually returning. But Dean still couldn't move independently since he required a lot more help and healing. Thus Cas gently braced his once-best-friend over his shoulder, wrapping his arm tight around Dean, bodily supporting him while saying, "I've got you." He didn't hear Dean's near-inaudible reply, "You always have." More than anything, the hunter wished he could just wrap his own arms around Cas in return and envelop him in a bone-crushing embrace. But….he simply cannot. Hell, he can't even truly see again at the moment. It's all Dean can do to hook his thumb through the belt loop of Castiel's trench coat, guided by touch alone. Dean's still far too weak...though at least he can finally feel sensation in his feet and legs again.
Castiel caught a peripheral glimpse of the rebar coated in Dean’s guts and was instantly consumed with irrational anger. The angel turned briefly toward the rebar that was the source of their current woes, allowing himself to build-up smiting energy from deep within. Castiel's eyes soon were aflame like a pair of aquamarine embers and the angel rightfully melted the jagged meddlesome thing into slag like it deserved.
“Cas, please,” Dean tried again, before Castiel applied his hand to Dean’s back and finished mending his messed up insides, making sure nothing was leaking into his chest cavity. Next, he made sure Dean was fully supported against a post in the barn.
“Next time, be careful and make sure not to play around giant nails, Dean. Goodbye!”
“Goddammit Cas, WAIT!!!” Thanks to Castiel’s ministrations, Dean at last had some strength to shout again, although his body was still very much recovering. He slid, panting, down the wooden beam to the floor. Dean begged again, less forcefully, “Please wait.” Cas froze, his back still in Dean’s direction.
“I….I….” Dean stuttered. He tried again. “If...if you weren’t truly gone, how long have you been back? And why haven’t you ever come to see me?” Dean sounded like a weepy wounded child but at the moment, he didn’t really care. This might be his last ever chance to speak with Cas again.
“I didn’t think you would want that, Dean,” Cas replied simply.
“What?? Why not?” Dean demanded. Tears of frustration coursed down his cheeks. Cas slowly turned around and gave a heart-breaking explanation.
“That whole last year and a half between when…..Mary passed away because of...Jack....and when you and Sam finally vanquished, well, CHUCK,” Cas yelled forcefully into the air, “you kept telling me I was the one constant problem in your lives. Long ago, even before that, Dean, I realized that my mere presence with you and Sam and even Bobby was a liability. That the only justifiable reasons I should stay with you was as long as I could be useful and of help in some way. That I could be more of a blessing than a burden.”
“That’s really what you decided?” Dean was horrified that somebody he loved so dearly would think so poorly about himself. “That’s what I had you believing this whole time?” asked Dean, half in shock. Cas half-shrugged self-consciously.
“Geez, I am such a dick,” realized Dean, as he ran a hand over his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d never asked or demanded more of anybody than he’d demanded of Cas…..nobody other than himself, that is.
“I’ve never once thanked you for saving me, have I?” Dean had an almost sickening epiphany. “At the time, all those years ago, I was so busy being terrified of Uriel and Alastair and running from the God Squad that I…..I never…….Man, I am such a bag of dicks,” Dean fiercely shook his head and could no longer look up to hold Cas’s gaze.
“Please, come here, Cas.” Cas came over and carefully knelt on the floor of the barn by Dean’s shin. Dean still rested with his back supported against that wood beam with one knee drawn up, the other leg fully stretched out. “Uhm….so….Cas. I felt so undeserving of what you said right before you were taken, I could never forgive myself for being such an oblivious asshole for 12 godforsaken years. Not really. I tried….and now I've learned that I was worse to you than I ever thought.”
“Is that why you never prayed?” asked Cas with concern. “Is this the reason I’ve never heard you call out for me all these intervening years? Why you never once sought me out, even after Jack rescued me from the Empty? Why there was only silence.”
“M-maybe,” Dean’s voice wavered. “I….I also…..I knew the Shadow had taken you. I knew nothing of Jack’s rescue for you. But most of all, I thought it would be cruel and selfish of me to pray to you, especially on the off-chance that you might-could hear me in the Empty….but just not be able to answer.”
“So you…..you held all of this inside because you--”
“I figured I’d hurt you enough in your living life, Cas. I didn’t wanna torture you in death too.” Dean thought he heard Cas’s breath hitch. He inched closer toward Dean across the floor.
“But Jack told me…..during the times he checked on you, Dean, for the first few years, you drank a lot and...and….you nearly burned your coat with my bloody handprint on it multiple times.”
Dean blanched. “He saw that?”
Cas looked at the floor, crestfallen, as he nodded. “I thought it must be that my words had hurt you instead of helped. That you wanted nothing to do with me once I had gone.”
“Cas,” Dean grabbed his hand, as the angel had scooted barely close enough, “did it ever occur to you that a 5-year-old kid -- even one with godlike powers -- was capable of grossly misinterpreting the things he saw me doing?” Dean asked gently. Castiel’s eyebrows knitted together. “Well….no. I suppose not,” Cas replied, with raised eyebrows.
“Jack guessed wrong. But I wasn’t sure how to move on either. I guess I was just…..scared, Cas.”
“Of what, Dean?”
“Of just….being, I guess?”
“So you just decided you’d stop trying, instead? Give it all up and let Sam watch you die horribly, one last time?? Didn’t you remember a single word I told you?” Cas asked with mild exasperation.
“That’s the thing, Cas…..I remembered all of it. Word for word. And I’m completely screwed up. You telling me how much you loved me, knowing what would happen right after…..you have no idea the amount of guilt I felt. You dying right in front of me….based on….on….” Dean's eyes clamped shut briefly before opening again. “How badly all of that got to me. So what the hell yourself, Cas! Sometimes it got to the point where your words blocked out everything else in my head. I got mired. Like Baby in quicksand. So I had to put all of it away -- carefully block it out as much as I could -- in order to have any type of life. And I--I tried too hard to live the way you and the others before me would want me to live….but I guess I just couldn’t see out.”
“Oh, Dean, I’m so sorry. I never meant to cause you so much pain…!”
“No, no--don’t apologize-- that’s not the point I’m trying to make here! The point is…..ultimately, I didn’t know what to do …..I had no real purpose left. Especially when it got to the point where Sammy didn’t really need me anymore. The world didn’t need me anymore either. And I don’t know who I am when I’m not…..useful. Sound a little familiar?” Dean smiled ruefully and Cas pulled back, surprised at the comparison. “Everything I was trying to do somehow got hollowed out in the middle. It seemed so empty without someone to share things. So what’s the point in bargaining with death for something that doesn’t even feel right anymore?” Tears started falling from Cas’s eyes. Dean continued.
“When I allowed myself to think about you again, just a couple of months ago, I finally figured out what it was…..that the hollow, empty space was where a huge Cas-shaped hole had formed. My two biggest regrets have been that A.) I was so oblivious that I’ve kept you at arm’s length, not having known angels could feel that way and B.) it took capital-D-DYING for you to finally tell me how you felt. I’m such an asshole. I must’ve had you convinced…..and for that, I’m sorry…..” Cas has moved enough to where Dean has now grabbed both of the angel’s hands within his own. Tears fell from Dean’s eyes again too.
“But Cas…..how could you know unless you asked? How could you know for certain unless you’d tried? What made you so sure that you couldn’t ever have me?” Dean reached up a hand to softly touch Castiel’s face….something the hunter had only dreamt of doing for 5 long years.
“Dean.”
“I mean, I know it’s years after the fact and now I’m pushing 50, but if you still want this useless ungrateful broken guy, you can have him. You can have me.” And Dean carefully brought Castiel’s face to his own to tenderly kiss his angel on each cheek. “You’ve always had me, Cas.” Dean kissed the right side of Castiel’s mouth, and then the left. “I am yours,” and Cas’s lips parted in surprise as he silently gasped at the declaration, enough so that when Dean kissed him again, he carefully stroked the inside of Cas’s top lip with the tip of his tongue. Cas latched onto Dean’s jacket and smoothly tugged him closer, oh-so-lightly sucking on Dean’s tongue in his own mouth until both of them quickly felt the electrical current flowing between them. They parted and Dean said breathlessly, “I love you so much, man. I’m sorry it took so long--” And Castiel initiated this time, nibbling gently on Dean’s bottom lip….and then his top lip….and finally taking Dean’s mouth in his own.
“And I thought I was the dramatic one,” Cas smiled, after he pulled away.
“Ass!” exclaimed Dean, grinning as he blushed just a little.
“I love you too, Dean,” and Cas flashed a grin of his own as Dean finally got to put him on the receiving end of a bone-crushing Winchester hug. “No more holding back, Cas,” he vowed.
“In that case….” Cas requested wryly, “please don’t mention your age again in a self-deprecating way.”
“Oh yeah -- that’s right. Mr. Billion-Year Cosmic Being here, how could I forget?” and Dean waggled his eyebrows.
“Who’s the ass now?” smirked Cas.
“Guess that makes you a gold-digger, Dean,” came an amused, if water-logged deep voice off to the side.
For half a second, Dean tried to aim an incredulous scowl in Sam’s direction but he failed so spectacularly that he wound up laughing himself stupid in about 10 seconds. Dean’s joy at Sam’s wholly absurd joke was so infectious that all three of them laughed so hard they dissolved into tears (again) and Dean still couldn’t stop laughing. Not entirely.
“Yes, Sammy, I’m okay! You can stop crying,” he playfully shoved his gigantic little brother. “It’s just….been one helluva day, is all.”
“You’re telling me??” Sam asked incredulously. “Not 15 minutes ago, I thought I’d be losing you again. Yet you say ‘“Stop crying, Sammy.”’
“But it has been one helluva day,” Cas deadpanned with characteristic understatement.
Sam sat back on his long legs as he finished wiping the tears from his eyes. Resting his hands on his thighs, Sam quietly studied Cas and Dean glomming onto one another and said, “So. Guess that finally happened, huh?”
“Sheddap,” Dean mumbled under his breath as he smothered a grin. Cas looked away as he blushed and grinned like crazy. And Dean was unable to resist the temptation of giving Cas another smooch on the apple of his smiling cheek.
And Sam thought it was fun trying to embarrass Dean! If making Cas blush was this entertaining all the time, Sam was gonna have a field day reinitiating him back into the Clan Winchester. Five years without Castiel was five years too long.