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“Burn it down, till the embers smoke on the ground
And start new when your heart is an empty room
With walls of the deepest blue” — Death Cab for Cutie
Cas lives in all the nooks and crannies of Dean’s mind and body, and he is happy there.
It was the only way out of the Empty.
The only way out for either of them.
“You’re not here. You’re not supposed to be here,” Cas had insisted, groggy and disoriented. The last thing he’d ever expected was Dean’s voice and hands stirring him from his nebulous, endless dreams.
“I am, Cas. I’m here. I died. And when I did, I made my reaper honor Billie’s promise—threat, really—to send me here. Because I needed to find you. To be with you.”
“No.” He’d given his life to save Dean’s. To let him live.
Dean had shaken his head, equal in his defiance. “Ain’t no life for me back there without you. Because I love you too, you idiot, and you didn’t even give me a chance to say it back.”
“This is all very touching,” the Empty had said, still wearing Meg’s face. “But Clarence is right. You don’t belong here, Dean Winchester. This place isn’t meant for your kind.”
“Then I’ll leave, but only with Cas. Otherwise you’re stuck with me, and I hear you don’t like things that are loud.” Dean had stood tall and proud, unafraid of perhaps the most dangerous entity he’d ever faced. “Well let me tell you, asshole, I’m fuckin’ louder than The Who and Led Zeppelin combined. And I ain’t gonna shut up or go to sleep, ’cause I got the feeling you don’t have the power to do that to a human.”
The Empty had sneered and promised, “Then I’ll just make your precious little angel suffer more.”
Cas had screamed as the Empty tore at his grace, dug its oily tendrils into every shred of his memories and tried to rip them to tatters. Dean had belted out “Whole Lotta Love” and segued into “My Generation,” followed then by “Big Bottom Girls.”
Cas still cannot say how long this had gone on. He only knows that by some miracle Dean had been the last one standing.
“Fine,” the Empty had spat, seemingly more annoyed than defeated. “This one’s not nearly as much fun as he used to be, anyway. Where did all that guilt and self-loathing I used to love to play with go?”
“I set it free in the moment I found my true happiness,” Cas had said. Dean had smiled, suddenly shy and red-faced, and Cas had loved him even more.
“Hmph. Well, bully for you. Only one problem, Clarence. I kinda consumed your vessel this time around. You need somewhere for that ‘celestial intent’ to go if you want out through the in door.”
“Cas can catch a ride with me,” Dean had insisted. “Or in me, however that works.”
“What? Dean, no. No.” Cas had promised he’d never do that to another human again. Certainly not to Dean.
But Dean was not to be deterred. “Yes, Cas. Yes. I’m offering. I’m practically demanding it, okay? Whether it’s temporary until we figure something else out or not, we’ll make it work. We can share, y’know? Like Michael and Adam figured out how to share.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as anything, Cas.” And Dean had proven it with a kiss, clasping Cas’s face hard in his hands and not letting him go.
In a way, he hasn’t let go since.
In that moment, in that kiss, Cas had poured his grace into Dean. He filled him with his light and love and what angelic power remained within him. He used his grace to mend the ugly wound piercing clear through Dean’s body and mended blood vessels, nerves, organs and flesh.
Dean had then opened his eyes with a gasp, and found himself in his old room at the bunker.
“Huh. Good thing Sammy waited a bit before burning my body.”
He knows you’ll always find your way back to him. As you found me.
“Cas?”
Yes, I’m here. Thank you, Dean.
For if Cas thought he’d known true happiness before, it was nothing compared to residing in the space Dean had created for him.
They go driving a lot, in the days and weeks that follow. Dean always enjoys being behind the wheel. It’s a place where they can be alone together, where Dean can get used to not being alone in his own mind. Dean puts on his favorite music and Cas feels like he’s hearing it anew. All the memories and connections of each song light up parts of Dean’s soul, making it hum along in delight.
Cas’s grace sings with it, too.
Cas can manipulate Dean’s senses into thinking he’s sitting there beside him, instead of inside him. He can make it so that Dean’s fingertips feel the sensation of touching skin, much like they are holding hands. Sometimes he slips into the background of Dean’s mind and lets him have his peace and privacy until Dean calls to him, or he feels the ache of longing for company and union.
In Dean’s dreams at night, Cas finds other ways for them to be together. Maybe it’s not perfect, but Dean swears it’s enough. “It’s more than I ever thought I could have,” he says, his dream body wrapped tight around Cas’s in a motel room conjured from Dean’s memories.
Sam is still trying to deal with his brother and his best friend cohabitating in the same body. He says he’s working with Rowena on some way to get Cas a vessel of his own, perhaps a magical simulacrum of his previous one.
Jack remains silent and Cas hopes he is okay. Hopes he is not angry at Dean, at the both of them, for once again defying the natural order of the universe.
Today they drive to Dean’s favorite fishing hole. He doesn’t hunt that much, not anymore. Only when he hears of a particularly troublesome threat where “a little angel mojo” could help in the fight and keep some other, younger hunters safe.
Sitting on the rocks he’s quiet and content, listening to the stream rushing past them with a beer at his side. Cas lets Dean perceive him as if he’s sitting on a neighboring rock, while he enjoys the beauty of nature all around them. The warmth of the sun, the brilliance of the light dancing through the trees and reflecting off the running water, is still a glorious revelation after the all-consuming darkness of the Empty.
“Are you happy, Dean?” he asks, for he still needs reassurance.
Dean takes a moment to answer, to give the question the weight it deserves. “Yeah. Yeah, Cas, I am. I know it’s weird, but…I like this. The way it feels. Knowing you’re right here with me all the time. Never gonna leave me again.”
“That is a promise. Unless, of course, you choose to cast me out.”
“No way in hell.” Dean pauses as he senses a tug on his line. It passes, the fish not taking the bait. “D’you remember when we took on the Horsemen? During the first apocalypse?”
“Of course.”
“Famine said something to me back then. That I wasn’t hungry like everyone else because…because I was already dead inside. That I had a big nothing inside me that I could never fill with anything.”
“That’s not true.”
Dean shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe there was some kind of truth to it, if he could see it. All I know is…for the first time I don’t feel empty inside. I was meant to be a vessel, Cas, you know that. That was supposed to be my destiny. Maybe it wasn’t for Michael after all, though, but for you instead.”
And so Cas fills all of Dean’s empty spaces with grace and love and heart. For if too much heart had been his problem before, now he has heart enough for the two of them to share.