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Dean flails in bed as he’s abruptly woken from a deep sleep.
His knee narrowly misses his face before his mind recalibrates and he gradually calms down. His eyes flit around the dark room, sleep swollen and blinking blearily as he settles on his side, left elbow holding his weight. The panicked heaving of Dean’s chest slows as he takes control of his breathing. A navy blanket is tangled around his feet, his hands fisting the comforter below him.
Before Dean can even begin to wonder what had woken him up so suddenly, a cry sounds a little ways away. Dean sags, his shoulders drooping and his chin dropping to his collarbone. Loosening the death grip he has on the thick material below him, Dean raises a hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut.
Sucking in a shaky breath, Dean sits up the rest of the way, shuffling over to the edge of the bed. Something inside him immediately softens as his gaze lands on the small sniffling child, tears dampening the sheet of the bassinet. Blue eyes blink up at Dean, red and tear swollen. His cries have quieted now that a familiar face is hovering over him, little hands reaching up for Dean’s face.
Dean huffs, complying with the boy and reaching his own hands into the bassinet, scooping the infant into his arms. Just one of Dean’s hands spans the entirety of the kid’s back. Those tiny hands immediately find their places on either side of Dean’s face, fingers digging lightly into the skin. A small smile crosses his face.
The boy babbles, head tilting. The motion is so sickeningly familiar Dean has to fight against the sudden sting in his eyes. Fuck. Not today. Not right now. The man takes a breath, sweeping a single finger through the downy golden hair growing atop Jack’s head.
For a few quiet minutes the child seems to have forgotten why he was wailing in the first place. That is, until his tiny fingers fall from Dean’s face and the tears begin to gather again. This is what often happened. It didn’t take long for Jack to realize that Dean wasn’t who he was looking for (or wanted, which Dean was determined to ignore because the hurt, regret, and helplessness was better avoided than considered) and started crying again.
Dean shifts Jack to the crook of his elbow while his hands fumble, his fingers tangling. A second later, a smooth cylindrical piece of metal is pinched between his fingers. Jack hastily snatches the ring from Dean’s grasp, his shrieking finally ceasing. For a little while Dean was worried the infant would try to teeth with the metal, but Jack only ever held the ring in his chubby hands, content with just holding it.
Dean didn’t blame him. He himself often found himself twisting the ring around his finger, always absently touching it. Pulling it off each finger to gently push it on another, experimenting to see what he liked. It somehow always ended up wrapped around his left ring finger. It was never off his finger for more than a second. Well, except for when Jack used it as his own personal stress ball.
Most of the time it really didn’t look like anything special, a plain silver metal band with a thin strip of blue-stained glass-looking material in the middle. Most of the time. The thing reacted to emotions. Like right now, for instance. The strip in the middle was glowing a pale blue, the light illuminating the soft curves of Jack’s skin, reflecting off the blue of the boy’s eyes. He coos happily, fingers curled around the ring as he simply stares.
It wasn’t always a ring. Three years ago it had been a simple crystallized stone; carefully connected to a thin metal chain. Unimaginable power formed into an innocent looking necklace. A gift that Dean had insisted he hadn’t needed in return for the mixtape that he had thrown together in a moment of weakness. It was a mixtape, for fuck’s sake. It definitely was not worthy of a piece of- of an Angel’s mojo.
Now it’s all he has left. Dean smiles something small down at Jack’s wide eyes. All they have left.
After… after everything, Dean had locked himself in his room in the bunker for weeks. Curled tight into a ball, on the edge of his bed, eyes staring unseeingly at the bland grey wall. His stomach was empty but he wasn’t hungry. His throat was dry but he wasn’t thirsty. His mind was functioning but wasn’t present. His heart was beating but wasn’t alive. Dean was a catatonic mess that couldn’t be bothered to live anymore. He was just… surviving.
Sam tried his hardest to get him to move, even if it was just to walk to the shower. Claire was pissed off. She’d lost him too but she wasn’t moping around doing nothing. She didn’t stick around very long. The not talking was another thing. Eileen helped Sam understand why Dean had stopped using his voice entirely, even when it sometimes looked like he was trying to.
And then Jack came back.
Dean had slowly started to move around the bunker (meaning the kitchen, the bathroom, and his bedroom) on his own when Jack made his return. As it turned out, the boy hadn’t enjoyed being away from his family. Leaving the responsibility of being God to Amara, Jack moved into the bunker. Having the kid around surprisingly brought a little more light to the darkness he was struggling in.
It was a rainy day when Dean decided to finally clean his room. Clothes were hiding the floor, trash was piling next to the can, and all in all it just looked and smelled awful. It was a slow process, Dean still wasn’t keen on moving very fast, but it made that hole in his chest feel just a little smaller. It wasn’t until he had begun folding freshly washed clothes into his dresser drawers that he found it.
Buried underneath an old pair of jeans that definitely didn’t fit him anymore, was the necklace. Dean had stared down at the little stone lying innocently in his drawer for what felt a little too much like forever. It wasn’t glowing anymore, just a dull baby blue crystal, forgotten and found.
The folded clothes having been dropped from his hands a while ago, Dean reached a trembling hand into the drawer. The moment his fingers brushed the necklace, the stone began to pulse. He yanked his hand away, staring at it with wide unbelieving eyes. It glowed a bright white before dying back down.
Dean held his breath as he reached for it again, hesitating a moment before scooping the crystal and chain into his palm. The glow started again, brighter than before. It released a warmth that seeped into Dean’s skin and immediately made him feel safe. His heartbeat (that had started palpitating wildly sometime in the past few minutes) slowed, the voices were silenced, his mind felt clear. Clearer than it had in months.
Dean continued to stare down at the necklace in wonder, the glow settling to where it wasn’t painful to look at. He was so lost in himself that Dean didn’t hear the running footsteps outside his door. Not until his door was thrown open and a wide-eyed Jack was staring at him. “Castiel,” the boy breathes, eyes a little wild. “I- I felt him. I felt his-”
Jack’s eyes dropped to the crystal in Dean’s hands, his lips still parted. Grief and disappointment contort his expression, a silent ‘oh’ falling past his lips. Slowly, the boy draws closer, gaze remaining fixed on the necklace. Dean tenses when Jack reaches out, ready to tear his hand away and hold the necklace out of reach, suddenly feeling very protective of the gift. Jack only presses the tips of his fingers to the crystal though. He must feel the warmth too, his face softening and his blue eyes flashing a warm gold.
“His Grace,” Jack murmurs. He looks up, nothing but curiosity in his eyes. “How did you get it?”
Dean opens his mouth to say something along the lines of ‘it was a gift’ but his vocal cords ultimately end up failing him and he drops his gaze in shame. Jack rests his other hand on Dean’s shoulder reassuringly. He doesn’t remember now, how long the two stood there, holding the necklace in a bittersweet yet peaceful silence.
He doesn’t remember when it changed. He does remember when he realized it had. It was after. After Sam and Eileen said their vows, after Jack admitted he wanted a second shot at a childhood (Dean had cried when the boy had asked him to take care of him), after Dean took his adopted son and moved into a quiet rural house somewhere close to nowhere. It wasn’t too long after they’d moved in. Sam and Eileen had said their ‘see you later’s’ and had already left for the bunker.
Despite being a rural home, there was still a miniature neighborhood. One of the women that lived a little ways down the road had showed up on his doorstep, a basket of fresh farm food in her arms and a welcoming smile on her face. The woman, Leerie, as Dean soon learned, was understanding of his silent situation (her late husband having been a veteran) and instantly took a liking to Jack, who at the time resembled a three month old. It was sweet.
He should’ve expected the questions.
“Is his mother in the picture?” It was a simple question, really. Yet the answer was complicated. Jack’s birth mother? No. Kelly Kline hadn’t been in the picture for quite a while now. His birth father sure wasn’t either. There was no foster mother. Foster father? There were two. One of which… well.
Dean had simply signed ‘adopted’, pulling both his downwards facing open palms up into fists (thank not-God Eileen had taught him to sign half-way decently). Leerie nodded in understanding, looking back down at a now yawning Jack. She was facing away from him when she asked her next question, so she didn’t see him pale or freeze; not right away. “Is your husband home?”
His- his what?
Leerie finally turned, remembering she needed to see him to receive his response, then startled at the utter despair on his face. The woman immediately rushed to apologize. “Oh Lord- I’m so sorry! I just- I saw those wonderful photos along the fireplace and- well. There’s really nothing I can say to make up for it now. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Dean somehow is able to nod in acknowledgement, albeit numbly. He hadn’t realized she had noticed the photos lining the ledge above the old fireplace. Sam, Eileen, and Jack were the most recurring faces. Dean was sprinkled in a few. The man Leerie assumed was his husband was in just one, standing next to Dean in a surprise photo Jack had taken. Leerie shuffled awkwardly in the living room, face red from embarrassment. A pregnant silence fills the room for a couple moments before the woman speaks again, quietly. “Your ring is beautiful.”
That’s when Dean’s grief had dulled just slightly and confusion had pushed its way forward. His ring? He didn’t have a ring. Hadn’t had one since he wore Mary’s old ring back when he was younger. His bewilderment must show on his face because only a second later Leerie gestures to his neck. “Your ring.”
Dean’s chin dropped, eyes instantly landing on the necklace settled near the base of his throat. The woman was right. It wasn’t a crystal anymore. There was a ring looped onto the metal chain. He wrapped a fist around it, heartbeat panicking in his chest. Had he lost the crystal? Where the hell had this ring come from? As soon as his skin touched the metal though, Dean knew the crystal hadn’t been lost. It was just reformed. The ring still gave him the same sense of safety.
Dean had half a mind to sign ‘thank you’, staring dumbly down at the now glowing ring in his palm. He vaguely remembers Leerie apologizing again and giving an awkward goodbye, claiming her wife needed her help with getting dinner ready. He thinks he waved but he couldn’t be sure. It didn’t hit him until later, after settling into bed with Jack in the bassinet beside him, that he hadn’t corrected Leerie on the term ‘husband.’
And that’s how that started. The news spread quickly in their quaint little neighborhood and soon everyone knew about the widowed father and his little boy that lived in the little house at the end of the road.
A tiny hand fisting the front of his t-shirt brings Dean back to the present. Jack is working his jaw, opening and closing his little mouth; a tell, Dean has learned, that means the boy is hungry. For only being about a year old, the kid is creepily smart. The nephilim in him, Dean supposes.
He carefully shuffles to the end of the bed, taking back the ring (not without protest), and settling Jack on his shoulder. Dean stands and pushes through the bedroom door, the ring returned to its place on his left ring finger. And for now, at least for a little while, he can pretend that the Grace fixes everything.
That the constant feeling of yearning buried beneath his ribs isn’t there.
That Cas is here.
Somewhere down the road, wings flutter.