Archive of Our Own ^beta

Colorado, 2019

The house that Dean, Cas, and Jack are supposed to start calling home sits high and lonesome in the Colorado Rockies. Here in the full swell of summer, the barely-visible dirt tracks that serve as their driveway are fine under Baby’s wheels – bumpy and overgrown, but fine. Once winter hits, though, Dean’ll have to tuck her away into the detached garage that he’s been promised. He clenches his jaw just at the thought. This isn’t shaping up to be a very good first impression.

Since sure, Dean hasn’t actually seen the house yet. It was picked out by Cas and Jack, and Dean found himself turning down all offers of photos. He didn’t see the use then; he was always going to be tagging along regardless of what the thing looked like. But this – seeing it for the first time, after the 8-hour drive from Lebanon with his meagre belongings in the backseat – sets a stone at the bottom of his stomach. His mouth feels dry, suddenly, watching Cas and Jack climb out of Cas’ truck.

The house doesn’t look like anything special, a simple two-storey with dark wood panel siding and a chimney sticking up from the back. It’s edged in close by the forest. The driveway, though calling it that feels generous, ends with a one-car detached garage, and there’s a little pond on the opposite side of the house. It’s not like Dean knows much about houses but sure, it’s fine, and he can do it. Living here. He can try, at least, because it’s not like anyone else is willing to–

Well.

He unclenches his fingers from the steering wheel and soothes a palm over the top of it in apology. He climbs out and tries to act like the drive hasn’t tightened his bad knee; he takes a second to lean against Baby as he stretches it.

Jack has wandered over to the pond – he’s bent his newly-little body over so far to look down into it that a soft breeze would send him toppling – so Dean makes his way to Cas, who’s rifling through a duffle that’s perched on the truck’s tailgate. For having just driven eight hours with the kid, he doesn’t look very ruffled. He looks good, really; soft, in a t-shirt and jeans. He looks less and less like an angel every day. Dean figures that’s a good thing.

“Need some help?” Dean asks as he approaches. Cas lifts his gaze and his eyes immediately fix on Dean’s knee. An unpleasant something sparks in Dean – at being known so well, or at being caught so quickly.

“No,” Cas says eventually, turning back to his bag. “I’m just looking for the – oh, here.” The unpleasantness fizzles out of Dean as quick as it came.

Cas pulls the house keys out of his bag and calls to Jack as he heads to the front door of the house. Dean follows and the three of them converge on the front step, a crooked and cracked slab of concrete.

“Welcome home,” Cas says with a barely-there smile when he gets the door unlocked and open.

There’s a decent amount of space inside, and the previous owners have left the odd piece of furniture sitting around. The walls are uniformly covered in a horrific floral wallpaper straight from the eighties, stained with the stink and discoloured grip of cigarette smoke. Dean’s fingers itch.

He spends the evening setting up his bedroom, not that there’s much to do, or much of a room to do it in. He took the smallest and it’s more of a closet than a living space, but that’s fine – it fits a bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and a bookshelf, and that’s about all he needs anyway. He gets his boxes into the tiny space and starts sorting.

A few photos get carefully arranged on the dresser: his mom; him, Sam, and Bobby; Sam and Eileen; Jody, Donna, and the girls. His books go in the top of his bookshelf, alphabetical by author, and his DVDs line the bottom few shelves. It’s hard fitting himself into the cramped space, and he ends up on the floor as he organizes the cases.

“Dean?”

He jumps, but it’s just Cas in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his corduroy jacket and looking so natural about it that it makes Dean’s brain spin a little.

“Yeah, man?” he says, awkwardly aware of how he let the silence hang a beat too long.

“Are you hungry? Jack and I were going to go into town and pick up dinner.” Cas’ eyes land again on Dean’s knee, where he’s got his leg stretched in front of him on the floor. It’s almost a good enough excuse for why anger rises sharp and acidic in Dean’s throat.

“Uh, yeah, sure, just get me whatever,” he says.

Cas nods. “We should be back in an hour.” He turns, leaves, and everything else fades back into focus.

Dean keeps his eyes fixed on the empty doorway. Six months. There are six months festering under his skin – six months of frenzied, desperate research; of drinking himself to sleep; of shutting out everyone and everything in response to the six months of radio silence he’d gotten from Jack. Six months to the day between an empty dungeon and a knock at the bunker door, when both Jack and Cas showed up good-as-new and human – and, in Jack’s case, kid-sized. Sam had all sorts of questions but the answers were vague so eventually he stopped asking. Dean didn’t have any, still doesn’t, but what he does have is the rot that seeped in during those six months of nothing.

Dean checks his phone. There’s a text from Sam – settling in ok? – that he swipes away the notification for. An hour, Cas had said. Dean grabs a handful of DVDs from the nearest box and gets back to sorting.

Kansas, 2013

In some ways, Dean feels blindsided by the bunker. To spend thirty years on the road, only for a home to just happen to them – it doesn’t feel real, still, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to take full advantage of the benefits to having his own room.

Tonight, this means stovetop popcorn and a cold beer, getting comfortable on his bed with his laptop open on a pillow in front of him. It means cracking open the case of a DVD he’d had to dig out of Baby’s depths and suppressing the instinct built up over a lifetime that tells him to keep the volume low, the walls are thin, there’s someone in the next room. Fuck that – there’s nothing but solid concrete between him and the rest of the world, right now.

He hits play when the DVD menu comes up, and lets the familiar opening music take him to an old Hollywood backlot vision of Broadway.

Colorado, 2019

Dean inspects the TV one last time – he can level and measure all he wants, but he won’t really accept that he’s done mounting the thing on the wall until his eyes can tell him that it looks fine. And it does; it’ll look better framed by the bookshelves Cas picked out, but there’s nothing that needs adjusting. With the TV set up, and with the only-slightly-lumpy couch parked in front of it, the room is easier to tolerate. Dean itches less from the light ballet pink Jack chose for the walls, at least.

He finds Jack in the kitchen – itself freshly dandelion yellow – looking over paint swatches. Cas gave the kid free rein for the house, bedrooms included, and Dean would have felt like an asshole to exclude his own from that. He just hopes Jack stays near the male end of the colour spectrum for him.

“Hey kid,” he says. Jack’s head swings up. “C’mere a sec, I wanna show you something.”

Dean leads Jack into the living room, counting on the slap-slap-slap of little feet on hardwood behind him. None of them have really been able to nail down exactly how old Jack’s supposed to be, but from what Dean remembers of Sam growing up he’s probably around seven. When they reach the living room, Dean takes a little pride from Jack’s amazed gasp.

“Wow! It looks so cool!” he says, peering behind the screen where the back is connected to the wall and all the wires are neatly tucked away. “We have to watch something!”

“Yeah, we could get a movie night or something going.” Dean says it casually, but it makes Jack turn back to him with shining eyes and a gap-toothed smile. Ah, shit, Dean thinks.

So it’s his own fault, ultimately, that he spends his evening parked in front of the TV, watching La La Land, of all things.

Jack, at least, seems to be having a great time. He sings along to all the songs as best he can and laughs at all the jokes – he turns his head every time to check that Dean’s laughing, too. Dean pretends not to notice, just laughs along, and it feels pretty worth it for the glimpses he catches in the corner of his eye of Jack’s pleased smiles. It’s a better sight than anything that’s happening on screen, that’s for damn sure.

Cas had begged off joining them, saying he was too tired from painting (the downstairs hallway; robin’s-egg blue). Which had been fine at the time, but now, it leaves Dean on the spot with no one to deflect to when Jack scrambles for the light switch, jumps back onto the couch, mutes the credits, and goes, “So? Did you like it?”

It’s obvious that Jack wants Dean to have loved it, but – well it’s not like Dean would feel great about outright lying to the kid.

“It was kind of sad, wasn’t it?”

Jack frowns. Shit. “What do you mean?”

“Well it’s – they had all this passion for each other, and what, it’s years later and they’re total strangers? They push each other, and keep one another moving towards what they want, and after all that...” Dean shrugs, suddenly self-conscious. “I just think it’s kind of sad.”

Jack tilts his head, thinking, in the exact way Cas does, and looks so much like him for just a second. “I never thought about it like that. But isn’t it happy, if they got what they wanted?”

“Sure, maybe, but I don’t know. I guess some people would be happy with just that.”

Jack nods thoughtfully, which makes for an almost comical expression on a face still round with baby fat. He turns back to look at the screen, at the still-rolling credits. It’s not even a minute before he’s smiling again, looking back to Dean. He’s almost bouncing with excitement.

“Did you like the dancing? That’s my favourite part, I think it’s so beautiful,” Jack says. Dean nods along.

“Oh, yeah, the music and dancing were fun,” he says. “You want good dancing, though, no one can beat Fred and Ginger.”

“Who?”

“You know – Fred Astaire? Ginger Rogers?” There’s absolutely no sign of recognition in Jack’s eyes. “The greatest dance partners in Hollywood?”

“I’ve never heard of them,” Jack says, shrugging. “Are they good?”

“Oh, they’re better than good. Next movie night, I’ll show you something of theirs.” The promise comes out of Dean’s mouth before he has a chance to think about it, but he can’t regret how Jack brightens up at the idea.

“Okay! Deal!”

That night, as he tries to fall asleep to the wind rushing past his window, Dean almost wants to take it back – any of it, all of it, the suggestion he made so casually then now leaving him feeling open, exposed. He didn’t expect to reveal so much of himself tonight but it’s done. He rolls to his side and looks in the direction of the bottom shelf of his bookcase. The wind whips across his window pane, but Dean’s mind is lost in song and dance as he finally drifts off.

Hell

Alastair knows Dean. He sees every softness, on his body and his soul, and leaves him bare. He works methodically – precisely, artfully – as he peels Dean’s skin away, in thin layers that he presents to Dean then discards, lets gently float down to the ground.

Dean is flayed open on Alastair’s rack and laid bare; there’s nothing he can hide, no gentle memory he is allowed to keep for himself.

Alastair’s touch corrupts, and his touch is total.

His voice cuts alongside his knife and it echoes down, down, into the marrow of Dean’s bones, above and below and through any of the wretched screams Dean still tries to make.

“Heaven, I’m in heaven...”

Colorado, 2019

From the view out the kitchen window, through the frilly curtains that seemed to just appear one day, the backyard doesn’t look like much. Dean downs a glass of cold water and fills the cup again. There’s a lot of work to do still, but the firewood rack he’s just finished building against the old shed had been the first thing he’d wanted done.

Now that he’s still, and inside where Cas and Jack have fans strategically placed in the windows to generate cross-breezes, Dean can feel his sweat drying sticky and uncomfortable against his back and down his chest. He has half a mind to take his shirt off right there – it’s not like he’s not about to shower anyways – but Cas walks into the room the moment Dean’s fingers close around the hem, and suddenly it doesn’t feel right to do anymore.

Cas offers Dean a distracted smile and grabs his own glass from the cupboard. There’s an awkward moment when he pauses in front of Dean, who takes a second to remember he’s leaning against the sink. Dean scoots over to stand against the counter and tries not to watch the way Cas’ fingers cradle his glass while he drinks.

“I – finished the wood rack,” Dean says. “So we should pick up some firewood, sometime.”

Cas’ face lights up and he twists to look out the kitchen window, then he turns his smile back on Dean. There’s a spot of paint on Cas’ cheek – a splash of blue against the rise of his cheekbone.

“Thank you, Dean. It looks wonderful,” Cas says. “You should show Jack. He’s very excited to use the fireplace this winter.”

“Sure,” Dean says. He’s not certain he means it, but it satisfies Cas, who nods. Dean opens his mouth to say something more, but his phone rings at the same moment. He checks the caller ID and sighs. “I should take this.”

“I’ll leave you to it.”

On his way out of the room, Cas almost brushes his arm against Dean’s, but that ‘almost’ is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting. Dean can’t tell whether or not he’s imagining that the sleeves of their shirts drag against each other. He can't tell whether it matters, either. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and swipes to answer.

“What?” he snaps.

There’s a grainy pause. “Bad time?” Sam asks, and fuck, he needs to keep it together better than this. Dean squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“It’s fine, man, what’s up?”

“Well, we’re having a quiet afternoon in, so I thought I’d check up on how things are going out there.”

“Yeah, they’re – we’re all good. Peachy.”

Another pause. “Uh-huh. What are you all up to?”

It’s unnatural to Dean, still, to have to describe the minutiae of his life to Sam like this because he’s not here to see it all for himself. Some of that must come through on the call, because there’s only so many of Dean’s stilted pauses it seems like Sam can take at once before he says his goodbyes, at the same time passing on Eileen’s hellos.

After he’s hung up, Dean starts to feel suffocated by the kitchen, with its cheery walls, its flouncy curtains and warm light. He pushes out the back door and marches across the yard to stand, uselessly, beside the shed, his hands clenching into fists only to release and clench again.

His brain is static, radio dead air for a moment, and the first thought that makes it through is, ‘I wish we had some fucking firewood.’ Something for the toxic buzz of energy to work its way out through, whether with an axe or his bare fucking hands if he had to. What is he doing here – here in the yard, or at the house, or in fucking Colorado–

Distantly, he hears the back door slam, then the thumping of shoes on grass and finally Jack’s little-kid exclamation of, “Wow!”

When he looks, the kid is grinning wide, easy. “You made this all by yourself?” He walks to the wood stand and runs paint-flecked fingers over it, tapping his fingertips against nail heads and bending around to peer inside.

“Yeah,” Dean says. It comes out kind of rough, so he clears his throat. “Yeah, you know, I followed some plans I found online.”

Jack still looks amazed. “Cas said you’re gonna put up a deck next. Can you show me when you do it?”

“Uh, sure,” he says, scratching the back of his neck, “and you can help out, too. If you want.” The deck hadn’t been a sure thing yet, but with the way Jack brightens at the offer, Dean knows there’s no way he’d feel right about backing out of it now.

They start picking their way back to the house together, a little slowly since Dean forgot his shoes inside and he doesn’t exactly feel keen on the number of rocks that litter the too-long grass. When they’re back at the house, Jack pauses, looking inside through the screen door.

“Can we – do you want to have movie night again tonight?” he asks. His eyes meet Dean’s. “I really want to watch one of the movies you told me about last time.”

“Oh – sure, yeah.” Dean attempts a smile. “I think you’ll like it.”

That evening, post-shower and post-dinner, Dean walks into the living room where Jack is already waiting. He holds up the DVD case for The Barkleys of Broadway, letting Jack get a good look before he opens it up.

“This is actually the last movie Fred and Ginger made together, about ten years after the others, but it’s the only one in colour so I thought it’d be a good place to start,” he says as he feeds the disc into the player.

“Is this one your favourite?” Jack asks. His mouth is half-full of popcorn already so it’s kind of gross but hey, it’s not like anyone’s ever accused Dean of having good table manners.

“Nah, we’ll work our way up to that one. We can’t start with the best or all the others will be disappointing, you know?” Jack nods thoughtfully, and Dean takes his seat.

When he hits play from the menu, he finds himself getting nervous. He’s never done this before, never gone and purposefully shown these to someone with– with premeditation. He knows it’s a pretty safe bet that Jack’s going to enjoy it, but what makes his skin itch is the thought of what these movies say about him. Is that another safe bet, that that’s going to go over Jack’s head? He’s not entirely sure.

He thinks he’s gotten away with it, in the end. Jack loves it, he gushes about the costumes, the dancing, and they end up staying up for half an hour after the credits end, just talking about it. When Jack does go to bed, yawning wide and unselfconscious through his smiles, Dean lingers for a while. He pours himself a glass of whisky and fails in all attempts at not thinking about the open childish wonder in Jack's eyes.

Indiana, 2003

There’s something eerie about a Wal-Mart in the hour before closing.

Dean wanders the aisles, following a plodding course that takes him on a meandering route around the store. He starts in the pharmacy and spends some time idling in front of the painkillers. The salt and burn he's just wrapped up went a little sideways when the ghost made a last–minute appearance, and he thinks he may have cracked a rib getting flung into a gravestone. Cracked or not, the bruises are coming in ugly and the spot smarts something fierce. He moves on anyway; he hasn’t got the spare change and it’s not worth the hassle if he gets caught pocketing a bottle.

Pharmacy takes him to grocery, which he ambles through without stopping; same as home goods, sporting goods, and pets. At this point his dinner of gas station jerky is rioting in his stomach and the pounding in his ribs has started riding his veins up into his head, but he’s not quite ready to leave.

In electronics, Dean takes a second to lean against an endcap stacked with DVDs. He faces a wall of plasma TVs – they just keep making ‘em bigger and bigger, these days. It takes a moment, for Dean to focus on the picture repeated on every screen, a wall of whirling greyscale.

When his brain catches up to the movements on screen – to the way Fred and Ginger float across the set, the way Ginger’s dress twirls in an echo of her last step – something in him quiets, settles. He loses time, watching the carefree way they move together, trusting and responding to one another. Her dress sways and spins as she twirls, his hand sits strong and steady on her waist to lift her, and Dean can almost imagine how warm and firm his grip is.

“Uh, sir? Hello?”

Dean startles, and the sudden tension in his muscles pulls at his ribs. He barely suppresses a wince as he turns to face the wide-eyed, blue-vested teenager that managed to sneak up on him. “Yeah?”

The kid makes a vague gesture behind himself. “Uh, we’re closing, so if you want to buy something I can...?”

Dean shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good. I’ll get out of your hair.”

The guy mumbles a thanks and wanders off, and Dean takes his weight off the shelves behind him. It takes him a moment to shift his weight in a way that keeps his side as still as possible. He shuffles out of the store and skirts the edge of the parking lot. He makes his way towards the darkened back corner of the asphalt where his Baby waits for him, and he carefully climbs into the back seat.

Dean shifts, twisting and folding himself to lay down across the bench, his head pillowed on an extra sweater that needs washing. He pulls his jacket tighter around himself against the chill. His head throbs, in time with his ribs, in time with his heart, and in his dreams that night he dances.

Colorado, 2019

When Dean first made the offer to replace the borderline-unsafe concrete front step with something a little nicer, he hadn’t anticipated the idea getting bounced around in the Cas-and-Jack Home Improvement Echo Chamber, and while he did talk them down from a full wraparound deck, the porch design he’s been left with is still a lot more involved than he’d originally planned.

Dean wakes early. He has a quick breakfast of toast and coffee, standing in the kitchen and staring aimlessly out at the backyard bathed in the colours of dawn. For just a moment, everything is still, and he feels utterly alone in the world. Dean brushes the crumbs from his face and hands and gets to work.

Up here in the mountains, it takes summer a while every day to catch up to the sunlight. The morning starts out cool, but by mid-morning approaching noon Dean works up a decent sweat that has him tossing his flannel into the grass. Figuring Cas and Jack are awake by now, he turns on the little bluetooth speaker Sam gave him at some point and lets Steve Miller undercut the birdsong and insect buzz sounding from the forest around him.

Dean’s taken a second to wipe the sweat from his face with the bottom of his t-shirt when he feels a tap on his shoulder; dropping his shirt, he spins so he’s face-to-face with Cas, who’s holding a water glass up between them in a paint-flecked hand.

“Sorry to startle you,” Cas says. “It’s important to stay hydrated, especially at these altitudes.”

Dean clears his throat. “Uh, yeah, thanks, man.” He takes the glass and downs it in one go. He ignores the knowing look Cas gives him to focus on handing the glass back; drops of black are crusted to Cas’ fingers and under his nails, and the sight makes Dean queasy.

“So – how’s painting going?”

“It’s going well. We should be finished today.” In an instant, Cas’ expression softens and lifts into the same smile he always wears when any conversation turns to Jack: it’s proud, and awed, a little, and altogether gentler than Dean can ever recall him being before. “Jack has been enjoying having the opportunity to paint his room however he chooses. I think you’ll like what he chose to do with yours, as well.”

Dean’s heart all but jumps into his throat because – well sure, he’d given the kid creative freedom with it but maybe he’d assumed that Cas would stop him from getting too creative, or something. Dean wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Cas still has just a shred of his mind-reading mojo sticking around, because as soon as the thought tumbles through his head Cas squints at him, all concerned.

“Awesome! Yeah, that’s great, I can’t wait to see it,” he says, all in a rush before Cas can say anything else. “And thanks, man, for the water,” he adds with a lame little flap of his hand towards the empty glass.

Cas nods. “Lunch will be ready in about twenty minutes,” he says. He offers one final little smile before he leaves, and Dean can’t stop himself from watching until he disappears around the back of the house.

Dean ends up spending a while tossing things around in a half-assed effort at tidying up the front yard a bit before he heads inside. In the tiny bathroom on the main floor, he washes his hands and scrunches down to dunk his head under the tap to get some of the sweat off. When he walks into the kitchen, Cas looks at him like he’s going to say something – he looks just a beat too long, just enough that Dean gets an itchy feeling at the back of his neck, before turning away again.

Lunch turns out to be sandwiches on crusty rolls stacked thick with deli meats and all the fixings, and tall, sweating glasses of lemonade. Dean ends up putting away two of the sandwiches amidst Jack’s thousand-and-one questions about the front porch, and polishes it all off with the slices of roast beef Jack picks out of his own. The kid’s got the whole rainbow flecked in paint across his little fingers.

Dean spends the afternoon hanging joists. Cas supposedly spends the afternoon painting, and Jack spends the afternoon running between the two of them. He brings Dean water at regular intervals and asks about a hundred questions each time; when he runs back into the house, if Dean listens for it he can hear the thundering of little feet up and down the stairs.

It’s getting on evening and Dean’s securing everything under tarps when Jack comes running out from the kitchen door again, calling Dean’s name before he’s even in sight.

“Dean! Dean!” he calls; he almost slams into Dean at full speed but catches himself just in time. “Cas said– said we can have pizza for dinner tonight, can we, could we watch a movie, too, please? Please?” He talks around taking in heaving gulps of air, and the words fall out of his mouth all at once like they’re racing each other.

“Whoa there, kiddo,” Dean says. He sets a hand on Jack’s shoulder to steady him a bit. His palm suddenly feels huge. “Sure we can watch a movie, how about Star Wars?”

Jack shakes his head rapidly and takes another few deep breaths. “No, I mean, I like Star Wars, but can we watch a movie with, with music and dancing? Like La La Land, and the other one you showed me?”

“Oh, uh, sure, kid. We can do that.”

Jack’s smile is incandescent. “Yay! Okay I’m gonna go tell Cas, he’s gonna be so excited!”

The kid’s gone by the time that sinks in for Dean, and he fights the instinctive pit of anxiety that forms in the base of his gut. It’s one thing admitting he likes these movies to Jack – he’s a kid, what does he know? But with Cas, it’s... Dean takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out. If there’s anyone who’s not going to judge him for this shit, it’s Cas.

While Cas and Jack are out getting the pizza, Dean takes a moment before he showers to snoop around upstairs a little. The hallway is light blue, like downstairs, and was the first part to get finished up here a few days ago. When he pokes his head into Cas’ room, he’s a little surprised by the deep sage green he finds there. It’s calming, though, and that fits Cas pretty well.

Jack’s room is, as expected, a burst of bright colours – tall green grass lines the bottom of the walls, underneath bright sky blue complete with clouds near the ceiling. There’s a sun behind the ceiling light, and a rainbow stretching across the room on one of the walls. He looks at the rainbow for a long minute, trying to place the deja-vu it gives him – when it comes to him all at once. A small house on a lake; a nursery that was never used. He shuts off the light and closes the door.

When he gets to his own room and turns on the light, he’s confused for a solid minute.It looks fine, nice even, but the gradient sunset – navy blue near the ceiling to purple, orange, red, yellow – doesn’t make sense until he follows it down to the baseboards, where someone has carefully painted black silhouettes of mesas, wrapping around the room. On one wall, near his bookshelf, is a small, delicately-painted silhouette of a cowboy standing next to his horse. All in black.

Dean is quick in the shower, and by the time he’s sitting on the couch with his bad leg stretched out in front of him, Cas and Jack are clanging back through the back door. He lets them bring the food to him – now that he’s sitting, his knee is letting him know that he really overdid it today and there’s no getting up anytime soon.

“Is this one your favourite?” Jack asks, when he’s comfortably squished in the centre of the couch with Dean and Cas on either side, plates on all their laps.

“Nah, not yet,” Dean says as he presses ‘play’ from the DVD menu. “It’s up there, though.” Jack nods and Dean pretends he doesn’t see Cas smiling at the other end of the couch.

By the time the characters are in New York, they’ve all finished their dinner – Cas quietly takes everyone’s plates and dims the lights on his way to the kitchen. Dean can hear him, if he focuses: the tap turning on and off as he washes the plates; the gentle clacking of the plates settling into the drying rack on the counter; clattering in the tupperware drawer; the fridge opening and closing.

“Dean? What’s your favourite song in this movie?” Jack’s voice drags Dean back to the living room, to the movie. On screen, Fred and Ginger are bickering over a photo in the newspaper.

“I’ve got a couple, actually. One of them’s coming up really soon.” Jack nods as though this is very serious information.

Cas joins them again, and when ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’ is about to start, Dean nudges Jack and says, “Here, watch closely.”

Dean gets a little lost in the movie himself for a moment as they sing, and when he sneaks a glance at Jack he’s not disappointed. The kid looks amazed as Fred and Ginger glide across the screen in roller skates – they alternate tight spins and tap sequences with wide circles around the stage, and make it all look effortless. Jack actually laughs at the end, when they flop together onto the grass.

When the next song comes up, not even ten minutes later, Dean turns to let Jack know and is a little surprised to see the kid completely conked out. He didn’t notice it happening, but Jack is leaning against his side, face turned into Dean’s arm.

Dean looks across Jack to Cas, who’s still watching the screen. He must notice the attention, because he looks back at Dean a few seconds later and a smile blooms on his face. For a moment, this is all there is: Cas across the couch, his smile gently illuminated by the glow of the TV screen, looking soft and warm as Fred Astaire croons we may never, never meet again on this bumpy road to love–

Dean grabs the remote and pauses the movie. He clears his throat. “You, uh– might wanna get this one to bed,” he says to the top of Jack’s head.

“Yes, I suppose so.” He hears Cas stand, and then his arms are gently scooping Jack off the couch. The kid hardly stirs, and Cas’ hands are sturdy and sure holding him. There are still flecks of black paint under his fingernails.

Dean pulls his eyes up to meet Cas’ again. “Night, Cas,” he says – softly, so he doesn’t wake Jack.

“Good night, Dean.”

Dean listens as Cas’ footsteps creak up the old stairs and over to Jack’s bedroom. He looks back to the TV. Ginger’s face is in full, still focus, with a single tear glimmering in her eye, frozen and waiting to fall.

Georgia, 1992

Summer sweeps in to meet them as they cross state lines, and the heat starts to feel like a monster there’s no escape from.

With school let out, Dad moves them around more – it’s almost fun for the first few weeks, but the farther south they travel the more unbearable the heat gets. This builds to a peak when they make it to Georgia, where the air sticks to Dean’s skin and presses down against him.

The one saving grace is that the motel he and Sammy have spent the week at has a pool. It soothes the ache in the daytime, keeps them from suffocating on the still air. But at night, with the windows flung wide away from the salt lines and their skin and hair smelling sweet and chemical like chlorine, the heat creeps back in, covering Dean and holding him down.

The family that runs this motel, a mom, a dad, and a boy Dean’s age called Terry – they’ve got an air conditioning unit in their apartment above the front office. Terry tells Dean about it, on the third day while they dangle their legs in the pool and Dean watches Sammy splash around. He says,

“It’s brand new, but it only really gets the living room, on the really hot nights,” and,

“Sometimes my mom and dad and I, we all camp out there, we sleep on the floor and tell ghost stories because our rooms are too hot.”

Terry talks kind of slowly, like the heat is weighing down even his words, pulling them round and out of shape. Dean thinks a lot about Terry’s accent, when the heat is pushing down on him in the windless night.

The fifth day Sam and Dean spend in that room, in the pool, the fourth day without Dad there, Terry asks Dean in front of the setting sun,

“Do y’all wanna come upstairs for dinner tonight? My mom says it’s okay.”

Dean looks up at Terry from the pool, his eyes just above the waterline. Terry’s skin is tanned golden all over, from his toes in his velcro sandals and up, up, up, surrounding the easy smile on his face the same as his deep dark eyes. The sunset lights gold into his dark dark hair, messy from drying right out of the pool and already shining with sweat.

The thing is, Dean has been watching Terry. He doesn’t seem like anything evil, anything Dad has taught him to kill. The thing is, all Dean has in the room for dinner right now is a half a loaf of bread and a can of beans, so he lifts his mouth out of the water and says, “Okay.”

Terry’s smile shines across his face and he says, “Alright then. Just come up the outside stairs and knock on the door at the top, okay? I’ll let you in. Dinner’s in an hour but I’ve got some good movies we can watch, if you want to come early.”

Dean nods, says, “Got it,” and Terry’s smile grows again before he turns and jogs away, to the base of the exterior staircase leading up to the apartment. When he disappears inside, Dean says, “C’mon, Sammy, time to get out,” and corrals his brother into their room to get dressed. It isn’t ten minutes before Dean’s knocking on the door at the top of the stairs, and Terry opens it fast, welcoming them in.

The transition from outside to the cool, dry air provided by the small window unit is an immediate relief. Dean feels like he can breathe again, he feels the summer clear from his lungs and he can’t even bring himself to worry about how safe they are here, in the face of it.

“Are you thirsty?” Terry asks. “We’ve got Coke, milk, OJ, water...”

“Can I have some juice please?” Sammy pipes up from Dean’s side. He brought a book, the little nerd, a 25-cent paperback from a thrift store a few states back that he clutches to his chest.

“Sure thing. Dean?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Grab a seat, our tapes are right over there so you can start looking through them, see if there’s anything you wanna watch.”

As Terry disappears around the corner, Dean takes the room in properly. To his left is the living room, with a TV, an old couch, and a matching armchair, where Sammy’s already curling up with his book, under the window with the A/C unit. The room is otherwise cluttered with shelves and end tables, photos crowding the walls in mismatched frames. It feels lived-in. Like a home.

Terry comes back through the archway to Dean’s right with Sam’s juice. “C’mon over here, I’ll show you some of my favourites.” He hands the glass to Sam and beckons Dean to join him at a shelf behind the couch.

Terry has a dozen movies Dean knows and loves, Star Wars and Indiana Jones and even Batman , but the tape Dean’s drawn to has a black-and-white photo of a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a flowing dress. They’re in each other’s arms and looking in each other’s eyes, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

“Oh!” Terry says, when he sees Dean holding the case. “That’s actually one of my favourites, see here I’ve got the rest of their movies. I didn’t figure you’d like these,” he adds, meeting Dean’s eyes.

Dean shrugs. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen a whole one, but um – I think I’ve caught a few on TV before. I like them.” Something in Terry’s eyes pulls the words from deep in Dean’s chest; this thing he knows he’s not supposed to say feels safe here, with Terry’s dark eyes on him.

Terry smiles and it makes Dean’s throat go sticky. “Well here, here they all are, let’s watch a whole one together.” He gestures to the left side of the middle shelf and Dean scans the titles, hoping for – what, a clue? Something to tell him what the right choice is, here. As he’s looking, he sees – he does a double-take. His blood goes hot-then-cold, summer sun to air conditioning, and settles tingling in his fingertips.

“Oh – no, that’s –” Terry must have seen something in Dean’s expression, because his own dark eyes are wide. “These are real old, so it just means ‘happy’, you know? Here, I’ll show you, let’s put it on.” Terry grabs the tape and slips it out of the paper cover, and Dean takes a seat on the couch, in the closest spot to Sammy’s armchair.

Dean ends up watching Terry almost as much as he watches the movie. At a joke, he quickly looks to see how Terry’s face lights up. In a dance sequence, his brain spins between the whirling on screen and the wonder he sees in Terry’s eyes. Dean thinks he could watch the whole movie that way.

When the main character on screen says, “Men don’t pine,” Dean thinks about how they’re sitting so close that Terry’s arm is pressed against his own. When the main character says, “Girls pine. Men just suffer,” Dean is thinking about the feel of Terry’s golden skin against his, about the way Terry’s hair might feel under his fingertips.

They have to stop the movie halfway for dinner, a quiet meal of spaghetti and meatballs with Terry’s parents. Dean fields their questions, handles the yes-sir-our-dad-works-real-hard and the no-ma’am-I-don’t-mind-watching-my-brother. They finish the movie after, and Dean finishes a sweating-wet glass of Coke. The taste sticks sweet to the roof of his mouth.

“Did you like the movie?” Terry asks at the door before they leave. His hair is still sticking up from earlier. Dean has to clear his throat.

“Yeah, I liked it a lot. And, you know, thank your folks again for dinner.”

Terry smiles – he always smiles so wide and easy, carefree – and they say their good nights.

Dean lays in bed that night and the hot air pushes, presses down on his lungs; and the memory of the movie reflected in Terry’s eyes, against his skin, it makes something behind Dean’s lungs ache the same way it makes his fingers itch.

Dad picks them up early the next morning, when the light is still grey. Dean looks up at the door at the top of the stairs and wonders if Terry will forget about him someday.

Colorado, 2019

“A double feature, huh?”

“Please?” Jack’s puppy eyes are pretty good – almost as good as Sam’s were at that age, but Dean has practice under his belt this time.

“It’s up to Cas, bud. We’re pretty close to bedtime as it is.”

Jack turns the full force of his puppy eyes in Cas’ direction. Cas looks unmoved.

“Dean’s right, Jack. It’s almost your bedtime.”

“Please, Cas? I promise I’ll, I won’t complain when it’s bedtime, and tomorrow I won’t sleep in!”

Cas’ eyebrow lifts. For all the two of them are 100% human these days, they really must have kept some of the telepathic shit. They stare at each other long enough that Dean almost breaks the silence himself; thankfully, though, Cas does it for him.

“You’ll go to bed as soon as the movie’s over. If I hear one complaint tonight or tomorrow morning, you won’t get to stay up late for another month. Deal?”

“Deal!” Jack yells as he flings himself at Cas to hug him. Dean can’t help but smile at the sight the two of them make.

“Alright, looks like I’m getting another one, then,” he says, grunting as he stands. Jesus, he really is getting old if he can’t stand up without making some kind of noise about it. “You two get some more popcorn going, I’ll be right back.”

He grabs the DVD for The Gay Divorcee from the player and ambles up the stairs, still smiling as he listens to Cas and Jack bustling around in the kitchen. 

By the time the two of them are finished, Dean’s back on the couch with the menu screen ready and waiting. Jack bounces in with a bowl of popcorn that looks comically large in his little hands. He almost spills it three separate times before he makes it to the couch; by the time he’s clambering up into his spot, Cas has confiscated the bowl completely.

“Why don’t I hold the popcorn this time?” Cas says, with a look of infinite patience.

“Okay! But then you have to sit in the middle so Dean can have some.” Jack bounces to the other end of the couch, leaving a space between himself and Dean. By the time Dean thinks to react, Cas is already sitting. Dean pulls in his sprawl enough so that they’re not making contact, and keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead.

“So this–” Cas shifts beside him, getting comfortable probably, and Dean’s words stick to the top of his throat. He clears it. “This one’s my favourite, out of all of them.”

Jack gives a vague cheer, the specifics muffled by a mouthful of popcorn. Dean breaks his staring contest with the menu screen to look over at him; the kid’s a mess already, with popcorn pieces everywhere, it’s no wonder Cas took the bowl.

Dean starts the movie up, and he’s seen it a thousand times but hell if he could say what’s happening on the screen. His focus is honed directly and unerringly to his side and the scant inch of air between him and Cas. He dares a glance over; Cas is loose and relaxed and thoughtfully munching on popcorn, where Dean’s muscles are starting to ache from locking up so tightly. Slowly, Den rests his weight onto the arm rest on his other side, widening the distance between himself and Cas by a sliver.

He knows that as a human, Cas runs hot, and it’s all he can think about as he convinces himself he can feel the phantom of that warmth bridging the gap to his side. It’s well-trod ground to wonder how it would actually feel to relax, to let that carefully-maintained distance close. On Cas' other side, Jack curls up into him easy as anything and gets Cas' arm around his shoulders. Dean skirts the edges of the thought of how it might feel, might look, if he leaned into Cas as well. If he rested his head on Cas' shoulder, took his big, warm hand in his own, laced their fingers together.

Of course, all Dean does is lean harder on the arm rest.

Slowly, he lets the movie pull his attention, and he's pretty close to enjoying himself at one point. He hasn’t watched this one in– well, more than a decade, now, and it’s nice to fall back into, for a while. There’s a reason, though, that Dean has been avoiding it, and his gut starts to twist in anticipation of the song he knows is coming, is getting closer by the second. Then: the opening strains, Fred and Ginger gliding onto a dance floor. He thinks he's fine, he can get through it, as his muscles lock and stomach acid climbs his throat, but once Fred starts crooning, "Heaven, I'm in heaven," it's– 

It’s the scent of rot and decay, blood and burning flesh filling his nose and a voice breathing straight into his ear, “Dance with me, I want my arm about you...”. It’s the scrape of teeth against his neck and the scrape of his knife against bone, it’s a distant scream and a too-near chuckle, it’s a hand guiding his own and it’s his hand finding its home in the warm, the wet, the sticking and soft and gleaming–

Dean comes back to himself hunched and sitting on the edge of the front porch. His arms are covered in goosebumps, but it isn’t the mild summer night that has him shaking, tremors radiating outward from his core while a cold sweat gradually soaks his t-shirt. His trembling hands are clutching his jacket – he scrambles through the pockets until he finds his smokes, then he tosses the coat aside. Something about the move out here has had him pick up the habit again, and even though it takes him a half a dozen goddamn tries to light one, he's simply and wholly glad for it as he takes a long pull and savours the nicotine rush.

Eleven years. Eleven fucking years he’s been topside and this shit still gets to him. He takes another drag and doesn’t let the glow from the cherry remind him of anything .

Footsteps approach the front door from within the house. Dean curls in further on himself and when his socks catch on the wood beneath his feet he realizes that in whatever state– whatever rush he’d been in getting out here, his shoes had been forgotten. The front door opens and Cas’ voice carries out from it.

“Dean? Are you okay?”

Dean nods.

“What happened?”

Dean shakes his head and takes another long, deep drag.

“Will you be coming back to finish the movie?”

Dean doesn’t answer. He watches smoke dance upwards from between his fingers.

He can’t say how long it takes before he hears the door close again, and Cas’ footsteps recede. There’s a vicious little part of him that feels vindicated. Good, it says, not like you deserve his support anyway. Dean pulls from his cigarette again, down to the filter, and stubs it out on the porch. He built the fucking thing, he’s allowed to treat it however the hell he goddamn wants. He pulls another dart from the pack. Lighting it is easier than the last one.

By the time the front door opens again and boots thump across the porch toward him, he’s on his third. Cas sits beside him and Dean has to force himself to not even glance over. He doesn’t care what Cas thinks of him smoking – it shouldn’t matter to him beyond that Dean’s not doing it in the fucking house.

“Jack is in bed.”

Dean flicks ash into the grass.

“He was disappointed not to finish the movie, but he was more worried about you.”

Dean finishes the cigarette and stubs it out next to the others. He stops himself from grabbing another; he hasn’t chainsmoked in more than a decade, and even after three he’s already buzzing.

“I reassured him that I would comfort you, and he seemed to believe you would accept it, despite having known you his entire life. But we both know his optimism is misplaced.”

Cas stands, and Dean can’t or won’t wrap his brain around why he doesn’t want him to go, even after the silent treatment.

“Asshole,” he rasps, his throat parched from smoke. He withholds a cough, turns it into clearing his throat. “Asshole,” he repeats, louder, and Cas stops moving. “What, you want me to cry on your shoulder? Tell you some sob story about– about shit I can’t get over? Gimme a break.”

Dean finally looks up at Cas, who’s staring back, blankly. He almost looks like he did ten years ago – unfeeling, empty. Except this Cas here keeps clenching his hands and letting go in an even rhythm. Clench, release, clench, release, and Dean’s not about to cede higher ground, so he follows Cas’ lead and stands, bracing himself on the stair railing beside him.

“If it would help you, Dean, then yes, I would.” Cas is on the step above Dean, and looks down to make eye contact. “If it would help you to scream, I would like you to do that. If it would help you to weep, or rage, or even just talk – why would you ever think that I would prefer you to suffer in silence?”

Cas barely blinks, still. Or maybe it just escapes Dean’s notice, when all he’s ever been able to do in the spotlight of Cas’ attention is to gaze into it head-on.

“I can’t–” Dean squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. He turns and looks out into the front yard. “Whatever. Go inside.” Dean steps down and starts walking across the grass; the dew blanketed over the yard reminds him that he’s just in his socks, but like hell he’s going to turn around just because his feet are wet.

Not that it matters anyway – the second he stops, a few feet from the treeline, he hears the swish swish of footsteps in the grass behind him. For fuck’s sake. Cas is like a dog with a bone sometimes, relentless and bullheadedly stubborn. Dean sighs, turns, and drags a hand down his face.

“What am I doing here, Cas?” Dean barrels ahead before Cas even opens his mouth. “Seriously, why did I come here? I mean – yeah, okay, it was this or seeing how long I could last alone in the bunker before I blew my brains out, but – you shouldn’t want anything to do with me, man, God– fuck knows I shouldn’t be around Jack after all the shit I've put him–”

“Fuck you,” Cas says, interrupting him. Dean balks and Cas steps forward, pulls in so close that all Dean can see is the low-light grey of his eyes, his fury cut deep into his face by shadow. “Fuck you, Dean, for thinking that. Would I let you anywhere near Jack if I thought you were a danger to him? Would I love you if you were?”

Numbness passes over Dean so fast it’s almost heady. “Don’t you dare,” he chokes out. “Don’t you fucking dare say that shit to me.” He lifts a hand to punctuate his words by stabbing his finger into Cas’ chest, but he pauses when he sees his hand shaking. He shoves Cas away instead, but Cas just steps back into his space again.

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s the truth."

“Right.” Tears rush hot, unbidden, down his face, the tracks rapidly cooling in the nighttime mountain air. He rubs them away with a still-shaking hand and breaks his gaze away from Cas’. A laugh bubbles up from his chest. “Yeah. Sure. I mean, it’s just enough of the truth for you to use it to fucking kill yourself.”

“I was saving your life!”

“You killed me!” Dean takes a shaking breath and sways on his feet, wanting to move back again but knowing Cas will always follow. “You might as well have killed me right then and there, Cas, I swear to G– to Christ it would have been better than living through the next six months without you!”

Silence falls between them, undercut by their breathing and the sounds of the forest around them. Dean’s feet are numb from the chill of his wet socks and his hands are numb from being clenched into fists. He resists rubbing at his chest – the ache blooming there is all too familiar, a simple echo of the fracture he’d lived with for six long, long months.

Cas whispers, “Dean,” and looks stricken. His eyes and mouth are soft – his face has lost the sharp edges of his anger. Louder, but just softly enough that Dean almost, almost wants to lean in to hear better, he says, “I never wanted that.”

“No, you could only nut up to say what you wanted when it meant you wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences,” Dean spits out. Bile rises high and sharp in his throat at how wounded Cas looks – but he can’t help enjoying it too, in the same place inside of him that never stopped loving the feeling of a knife sinking into flesh.

“Dean– I–”

“No, you know what, you said your piece. It’s my turn now. Did you even stop to think what it would to to me – to say all that and fucking– die in front of me? Did it cross your mind? Or were you too obsessed with your, your Spock moment for it to occur to you?” Dean steps closer into Cas’ space and shoves him again. “Did you ever think about what I wanted, you asshole? What would make me happy?”

He’s fucking crying again. Dean’s always hated how close to the surface his emotions are, how keenly he feels things. It’s a weakness he’s never been able to cut out of himself. “Didn’t you ever think that– that maybe, someday, we could have made it work?” he asks, hating how small his voice has gotten.

Dean searches Cas’ face for– something, some kind of a response, something to go off of, but Cas looks utterly blank. It makes him wonder just how many times it takes for a person’s heart to break in the exact same way before it stops hurting so goddamn much.

He closes his eyes and furiously wipes the tears away, presses a hand against his mouth to staunch the words that have been pouring out of his mouth. Like keeping pressure on a wound. His other arm, he wraps around himself, digging his fingers into his side. Dean’s breaths are shaking, still, his nose clogged from crying and the enormity of his grief pushing his heart to race – he’s never been very good at letting go of grief, no matter how many of his losses have been impermanent.

“Dean,” Cas says softly. Gently. The way Dean’s heard him talking to Jack when the kid’s half-asleep. Dean hears the shifting of fabric and then there’s a hand resting lightly on his shoulder, then gripping firmer when he doesn’t lash out. Cas puts his other hand on top of Dean’s wrist, of the hand he has over his mouth, and Dean finally opens his eyes. They’re close enough now that Dean can see the blue in Cas’, the soft curves of the lines around them, the sad tilt of his mouth.

“Dean,” Cas repeats. “I’m sorry. I can’t...” He glances down, briefly, then looks back up. “I won’t lie to you and say that I regret it. But I am sorry, to have caused you pain. And– thank you, for missing me when I was gone.”

All Dean can do in response is to kiss him.

They’re standing close enough that it takes barely anything – just moving his hand to cradle the curve of Cas’ jaw and a half-step forward and they’re pressed together, and Dean can fit his lips against Cas’. The hand on his shoulder tightens its grip then relaxes – the other stays curled around his wrist. The kiss itself is simple enough, just the gentle pressure of their lips together, but for Dean, the rest of the world has ceased to exist. There is no sound but the quiet current of Cas’ breath, no sensation except for where they’re touching – their lips, Cas’ hands, their chests. Cas starts to brush his thumb back and forth on the bone of Dean’s wrist and Dean feels like he’s only barely stopping himself from falling apart.

Dean’s nose, unconcerned with maintaining the romance of the moment, is still stuffed from crying, and he has to pull back to take a breath. He doesn’t go far; his exhale washes across Cas’ lips a fraction of a second before he presses back in. Cas welcomes him gladly, and moves his hand from Dean’s shoulder to the back of his neck, where his fingertips trace little circles. Dean hopes he never stops.

Dean feels the tentative tap of Cas’ tongue against his lips, and pulls back properly. Cas starts to look hurt so he rushes to say, “No, no, it’s not– my mouth just tastes like an ashtray right now, you don’t want that.”

Cas smiles, bright and wide, and kisses the corner of Dean’s mouth. “Weren’t we just arguing about presuming to know what each other wants?” he murmurs, his voice lower, softer, than Dean’s ever heard it. And holy shit, it’s all for him.

“I– well– I–” he fumbles. Cas lets Dean embarrass himself for a few seconds longer before kissing him again, and any attempts at forming a coherent thought fly from Dean’s head. When Cas presses his tongue against his lips again, and slides his hands to bracket his waist, Dean can’t help but open to him.

Between the slide of Cas’ tongue in his mouth, the heavy warmth of Cas’ hands on his sides, and the soft curl of Cas’ hair over Dean’s fingers when he reaches both hands up to hold him right where he is – Dean’s higher thinking takes an extended vacation. He comes back to himself some time later, when Cas ends the kiss to press their foreheads together.

“Dean,” he whispers. A shiver runs down Dean’s spine. “Dean.”

“Cas,” he murmurs back, making Cas laugh. Dean traces the shape of Cas’ smile with his thumb.

“Let’s go inside,” Cas says. “It’s getting late.”

“Wait–” he says, holding Cas steady where he is. “I just...” He clears his throat and whispers, “I need you to know, Cas. I love you.”

Dean doesn’t think he’s ever seen Cas full-on grin before, but– here it is, luminescent and warming, down to his core. “I love you too,” Cas whispers back.

They make their way back across the front lawn towards the house together, hand in hand. At the door, Cas turns and looks at him, and in the warmth of the porch lights he looks as close to something holy as Dean’s ever seen him. He smiles and kisses Dean’s cheek, and Dean can feel himself flush down to his toes. Cas’ smile widens.

Dean falls asleep that night in a green-painted room, curled against his best friend’s side in a wide, soft bed. Moonlight floods the room through the open window and the cool breeze whispers against the soft cotton pile of blankets Cas loves.

It’s the best sleep Dean’s ever had.

Missouri, 1986

Dean’s eyes are used to the grey half-light of the motel room, but all that does for him is give him a perfect view of hulking shadows, of the silhouettes of familiar furniture gone strange without any colour. He lays awake in the darkness of the room and tries to remember that these things aren’t monsters, but terror still drips through his veins and pulls him into the mattress like a stone.

He tries to focus on the sound of Sammy breathing right next to him in the bed, soft and slow and regular. He sees monsters in every dark shape around the room, but Sammy still breathes in and out. If Sammy’s breathing, the monsters haven’t gotten to them. If Sammy’s breathing, he’s safe, and Dean is doing his job.

Darkness scares Dean, all kinds of it – the pitch black outside the car when they have to sleep in it, the fuzzy grey of the motel room, even the parking lot outside, with distant spots of light under the streetlamps separated by great big seas of black. Darkness can hide so many things, it’s where so many kinds of monsters like to hide and wait that Dean feels frozen just thinking about it. His eyes start to burn but he knows better than to cry. He wishes Dad was there, so he would know for sure that there aren’t any monsters waiting for him in the dark corners of the room.

He needs more light, but the fear keeps his blood cold and stops his arms and legs from leaving the blankets. It feels like hours and hours before Dean can pull himself out from under them and drop to the floor. The carpet scratches his feet and the gun from the bedside table is cold and heavy in his hands when he grabs it before slowly tip-toeing to the foot of the bed.

When he reaches the old TV set there, Dean has to feel around before he finds the button that will turn it on. He twists around as the screen lights up, his heart beating hard and fast in his chest, but Sammy hasn’t moved at all. Dean keeps on watching him to make sure, and after a while, Sammy still doesn’t even twitch, so Dean sets himself up sitting against the end of the bed, criss-cross-applesauce, with Dad’s gun beside him.

Lit by the soft picture on the screen, the room loses a lot of its scariest shadows. Dean watches commercials with the sound turned way down. The words on the screen flit past in a blur he can’t read, but the quiet sounds from the speakers announce everything in excited whispers. The picture is fuzzy, but Dean doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t mind so much, until suddenly the picture is in black and white, showing him a movie that looks really, really old.

On the screen, a man and a woman wearing fancy clothes sway back and forth in a dance. Dean has never seen anything so beautiful before. The man sings, “Heaven, I’m in heaven,” and Dean’s eye is drawn down the woman’s back, where the man’s hand rests. His hand looks so big, and Dean thinks that it must feel so warm against her skin. When the man takes his hand away for a moment, Dean almost misses it himself.

The two spin and glide to a large empty space, and Dean can’t focus on one part anymore because their dancing has his whole attention. The woman’s dress is like a cloud and she looks like she’s floating as she swirls and leaps, always held close by the man she’s dancing with. Dean wonders what it must be like to be so beautiful. He wonders what it’s like to fly through the air and be dipped down so low, trusting that he’ll be caught and held in safe, warm hands.

The music gets louder so in a rush, Dean turns the volume knob all the way down. As he does, the familiar rumble of Dad’s car sounds in the distance.

Quick as he can, Dean grabs the gun, turns off the TV, sets the gun back on the bedside table, and crawls back under the covers. He’s too close to the edge because he doesn’t want to wake up Sammy and he barely has his breathing under control when the now-very-close sound of the car cuts out. He fakes sleep the very best he can while Dad unlocks the door. Dean doesn’t dare move until the bathroom door shuts and he hears Dad start the shower.

Dean curls closer to Sammy and, in that renewed darkness, falls asleep wanting to dance.

Colorado, 2020

Dean’s in the middle of chopping potatoes for the stew when a warm body presses against his own from behind and icy hands find their way up the front of his wool sweater.

“Whoa, f– Christ, sweetheart, what have I said about warning a guy?” It takes a moment for his heart to stop pounding – time Cas uses to press his equally-icy nose into the side of Dean’s neck.

“I believe you said it’s required; however, this was an emergency.” Cas’ voice rumbles all down Dean’s back as he speaks, and he wiggles his fingers a bit against Dean’s stomach to make his point. Dean fights back an unmanly squeak.

“An emergency, huh?” he says, laughing when Cas nods and itches his scruff against Dean’s neck. “Say no more.”

This winter has been putting Dean into a sentimental mood lately, so it’s Karen Carpenter’s voice drifting out of the speaker he’s got set up on the shelf. He hums along as he continues chopping, and he must have started swaying along at some point because Cas is, too, still pressed as close even as his hands and his nose warm.

Dean finishes the potatoes and dumps them in the stew pot before sidling over to the sink to wash the starch off his hands. It’s awkward to do together, and both his and Cas’ giggles have barely subsided by the time he’s drying his hands and turning in Cas’ arms.

“Hey,” Dean says, stealing a kiss.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas steals one back, then another, then another. They start swaying together again, and Cas takes a few steps back from the counter, pulling Dean with him.

“Hey, I gotta–” Dean mumbles against Cas’ lips, laughing when Cas refuses to budge and he has to keep talking into the kiss. “I gotta finish this or dinner’s gonna be late.”

Cas kisses him one last time before pulling back to meet Dean’s gaze. “Dance with me,” he says with a smile like he hasn’t just made Dean’s heart skip a beat.

“I– yeah, okay,” Dean relents. He rests his hands on Cas’ shoulders as Cas’ hands settle around his waist, warm now even through his sweater and steady, sure.

They don’t go for anything fancy – they’re content to sway together, in each other’s arms, in their kitchen in their little house. Dean sings along a little under his breath, and when he sees how it makes Cas smile, he feels his face warm but keeps on doing it just the same.

A few songs later, there’s telltale thumping overhead, followed by the thundering of little feet down the stairs. Dean presses his forehead against Cas’ and smiles.

“Dad? Where are you?”

“In here, Jack,” Cas calls. And, “Don’t run in the house,” when the sounds of Jack’s approach are suspiciously rapid. Dean manages to hold in a snort when Jack audibly slows down.

“It smells really good in here! What’s for dinner?” Jack asks from the doorway, surveying the counters.

Dean sighs and finally stops his swaying. “Stew,” he says, then gives Cas a quick kiss. “I have to finish it, the leftovers are gonna keep us fed until Sam and Eileen get here this weekend.” After one more kiss, Cas finally lets him go. By the time he’s back at the vegetables, Jack is tugging on Cas’ hand.

“Dad! Come dance with me!” he says.

“Sure, Jack. We can show Dean what he’s missing.” Dean turns around at that, grinning and quickly giving Cas the finger when he sees Jack’s back is turned as he sets his feet on top of Cas’.

Dean is quick with the remaining ingredients, and he sighs as he finally sets the lid on top of the pot. He washes his hands again and turns to watch Cas and Jack, leaning back against the counter. Cas doesn’t swing Jack around the way Dean does, but he’s patient as he instructs Jack into following the beat.

As one song ends, Dean steps forward and asks, facing Jack, “May I cut in?”

The kid immediately gloms onto him, making him stagger. He recovers quickly, though, and as the next song starts up, Jack sets himself up with his feet on top of Dean’s and their hands clasped. Dean spares a glance for Cas – whose smile is so warm and gooey Dean feels himself melt, just a little bit.

Winter night falls dark and early outside the bright warmth of his little yellow kitchen. Dancing and laughing with this little piece of his family, Dean doesn’t even notice the darkness outside until he’s herding them into the living room to pile onto the couch for a movie while dinner cooks. Jack grabs a black-and-white DVD case from its place on the shelf, and as the opening music swells, Dean can’t help but smile.