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Dean doesn't know what the fuck to do with his hands.
Look, Sam's always told him that he has trouble sitting still. But it just ain't true. Dean knows he can sack out just as hard and just as relaxed in front of the tube as anyone else. Stick him in a movie theater, he won't come out until the sun goes down. But when there isn't time set aside just for R&R—and in their world, how often does that shit happen?—yeah, Dean stays a bit on edge. Him not being on edge is how people get dead. Nearly 40 years of living that life, well, it gets down into you—all the way into the bones and the guts and the sinews.
So yeah, Dean taps his toes on the floor and his pencil on the table when he's doing research. He sings in the car and drums his fingers on the wheel. He bobs his knee up and down when he's watching shit, and he doesn't see why Sam has a problem with that, since it's not like he’s had to share a sofa with Dean while watching TV in a long time.
(All right, in his heart of hearts, Dean will maybe admit that the pencil thing can get a little annoying.)
Was.
All of that is a 'was.'
'Cause Dean...
Yeah.
Dean’s dead.
But there’s no pain. There’s no pull in his side where he’s broken the same rib so many times that if he stretches just right and runs his fingers over it, he can feel where the callus has built up on the bone, that same weak spot. His knee doesn’t pop as he brakes gently just to hear Baby purr and growl, and as he keeps going, he doesn’t need to shift hips he’s worn out and twisted a few too many times, just to keep comfortable.
He watches the road spread out in front of him and drums his fingers on the wheel as AC/DC croons, not too loud—never too loud. He watches the years tick past like miles, and wonders if he’s ever gonna run out of gas. If he’ll run out of years first.
If there’s such a thing as running out of time, even here in Heaven, because whenever Dean was on the road, it was never just about the music, and it was never about the drive, it was always—it was always—
His fingers tap, tap, tap harder. Faster. Out of rhythm, then back into it, because not even he can stand to disrespect Bon Jovi when he’s livin’ on a prayer. Dean’s foot tips, and then flattens the gas to the ground, and he’s not going any faster, he’s not—
There’s nowhere to run, here.
He pulls off the road and onto a bridge before he knows he’s going to. Baby’s tires cry a little protest, but she gives to him; she always gives for him. The flat, featureless, red-brown stretch of what his brain vaguely identified as somewhere in New Mexico, sometime in the last few miles (years) turned green-edged, blustery with wildflowers in a way the desert only gets after a rainstorm. There’s the impossible sound of a waterfall—except is it impossible? Water carving through rock got them the Grand Canyon, after all, and who the fuck knows what’s going on with Heaven now?
It's beautiful, though. Dean doesn’t have any memory of getting out of Baby before he’s leaning on the edge of a railing and watching the water fall, fall, fall.
Cas helped, Bobby said, and Dean didn’t know what to say to that.
‘Cause the shotgun seat’s been empty as Dean’s been driving. All by his lonesome. And when he’s glanced up into the rearview, over and over, the back seat’s empty, too.
That’s the thing about it, right? The passenger seat, it’s always in his peripheral vision. He can’t not know when someone’s there. Sam’s absence is his phantom limb.
But the back seat? He has to check. He has to look. He has to keep checking.
There’s no one there either.
But the years have run up the odometer as he’s been driving. They must have, because there’s no rapids in the river underneath him as Dean rests his elbows on the bridge railing, the water flowing smoothly as the silks that witches wrap their athames with, and it’s been years since anyone’s really been able to sneak up behind Dean.
Plus Sammy’s goddamned size 13s always did make too much noise for the hunter he is.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says.
“Dean,” Sam says, and that’s all that’s ever needed to be said. His eyes are tired. There’s nothing young about the way Sam’s looking at him, not anymore.
But there’s nothing unfamiliar about that, either.
Dean wonders what Sam sees when he looks at him. He wonders how many years it’s been. Because if Sam is really just the age that he looks like—the age he was when Dean bit it—then Dean’s punching him in his fucking puppy-dog face.
(Why, no, being a hypocrite doesn’t fucking bother him. I’m not a hypocrite, you’re a hypocrite.)
“Oh, good, you’re both here,” a too-familiar voice asks, gruff and dark, and Dean’s whole body does this… thing. This jump. This restless little jerk, neither towards nor away. “Are you ready?”
Sam turns slowly. Dean turns quickly.
“Cas,” Sam says. There’s nothing uncomfortable about the smile that spreads across his face; all of a sudden, he’s younger. Not a little younger—a half-dozen apocalypses younger, all limbs and hair straggling around his face, wide-eyed. The look of a kid who just found out that angels were real, and hadn’t learned they were dickwings yet. “You’re here!”
Cas’s smile is all for Sam. It doesn’t make it out of his eyes and the corner of his mouth, restrained, but still goddamned cute as a puppy in a pen. “So are you,” he teases.
Oh, so now you’re here? Dean wants to demand. His chest shivers and jumps, and this is Heaven; why’s that still so goddamned uncomfortable? I missed you. Where’ve you been? What the fuck, Cas.
Only the last intention of all of those comes out, and it comes out harsh and sharp as the sound of an engine misfiring.
“Nice to see you too, buddy. Thanks for rollin’ out the welcome wagon when I got here, twenty-one gun salute and all,” Dean growls. “What’s shakin’?”
“Dean,” Sam repeats. Or, well, no, it doesn’t count as a repetition. This time, it’s not a greeting. It’s the auditory equivalent of Bitchface Number 12.
“Is something supposed to be shaking?” Cas inquires, and this time, Dean’s chest doesn’t just shiver, it twists, hard enough to catch his breath if he still needed to breathe. Cas’s voice is so neutral, so fucking pleasant. “And I would have thought you’ve had enough of guns.”
But there’s a pearl-handled Colt stashed in Baby’s glove compartment, even here. Dean knows: he checked. He flicked the safety and sighted down the barrel as Kansas crooned about wayward sons.
“Ignore him. I’m planning to. I’m so glad you’re okay. That you made it out,” Sam says, his earnestness so targeted it’s like goddamned cricket wickets or whatever.
Dean snorts. Not ten minutes into the afterlife and Sam’s already bitchfacing him verbally and visually.
It brings a smile to his face—reluctant, but still a smile. But before he can think of something to say—maybe even something that bears a passing resemblance to an apology, because he is glad to see Cas, glad with a terrible pinch in his throat that turns into things that are harsh and sneering and full of references he knows Cas couldn’t possibly have context for—Cas tucks both hands into the pockets of that familiar, ugly, baggy trench coat. “Let me show you to your house,” he invites solemnly. “Since you’re both here.”
A house? A what?
“Wait. Not the bunker?” Dean asks, frowning. That doesn’t make any goddamned sense at all. The Roadhouse was just as he remembers it. Even the roads he was driving down were all compilations of things that Dean’s seen on the trail.
“Not unless you want it to be,” Cas answers, cryptic as ever—hands still tucked away, arms still held close to his sides like he’s afraid he’s going to elbow someone if he doesn’t hold himself carefully. He only meets Dean’s eyes for a second before he turns towards Baby and slips into the back seat like that was where he came from originally.
“Some things don’t change,” Sam muses.
“What’re you talking about, Sammy?” he demands. “Cas is being a weirdo.”
“Like I said,” Sam says, and snorts. “Come on.”
Once they get into the car, the space is smaller now. Warmer. There’s movement out of the corner of Dean’s eye; Sam shifts in the shotgun seat, peering over towards the box of cassette tapes. Unlike Dean, he doesn’t check the glove compartment.
“You can pick,” Dean says, gesturing towards the cassettes.
Sam smiles and shakes his head, just the faintest flick of his chin. “Driver picks the music,” he reminds Dean.
They listen to Marvin Gaye and a bit of the Pretenders before they pull up in front of a house. “Turn here,” Cas says, and “not this left, the next one,” in a quiet, even voice that leaves Dean’s back itching against Baby’s vinyl through his flannel and undershirt. The directions are all he gives, even when Sam starts talking about Eileen, about Little Dean, about how he could sign before he spoke aloud and never really did take much liking to verbalizing.
“So nothing like me, is what you’re saying,” Dean answers, grinning, his tongue in his cheek and his heart so full he thinks he might hear it thumping in his ears. “You gotta tell me all the stories, man. Fuck. You spawned. I don’t believe it.”
There’s a grunt from the back seat, but all Cas says is, “That’s not very nice. Sam isn’t a fish,” Cas answers—goddamned politest little angel in the garrison, except he’s really, really not. “Or a frog,” he continues, like this makes a big difference to him.
“Frog, fish, or whatever, Sam’s an idiot,” Dean announces, gleeful at getting Cas into this conversation. “He named the kid after me. Couldn’t you have given him a better-luck name, Sammy?”
Dean really thinks that that’s going to be the lure that drags Cas the rest of the way in, but after a second soft grunt, Cas turns his head and looks out the window. “Once we get out of the trees, take the first turn right,” he says instead.
The house is a house. It has skylights in the bathrooms. (Dean really wants to know why the bathrooms still have toilets, but he’s afraid to ask.) There are bathrobes hanging on neat little hooks at the back of each closet. The house has four bedrooms, each queen-size bed spread with comforters that are thick enough that Dean’s hand disappears in the fluff of one down to his wrist, and the pillows piled on them aren’t the stupid little throw pillows, but the elongated, chunky hotel pillows that are big enough that even Dean, tall as he is, would be able to wrap his arms and legs around one at the same time. He’s never seen one except in pictures of fancy hotels.
He doesn’t have to touch a mattress to confirm that they’re memory foam, but, of course, he does. Maybe he even throws himself down on top of one. Just for a second.
Dean thinks that Sam’s honest-to-god gonna Beauty and the Beast that shit when Cas shows him the library, because it’s definitely too big to actually be inside the house they’re standing in.
Dean’s chest does the thing again when Sam disappears into the stacks—they have stacks, they have fucking library stacks in their house in Heaven—and leave him and Cas standing in the foyer (because the library has one of those, too).
Alone.
They’re alone. It’s been hours (decades) and they’re in Heaven and Cas is alive, he’s fucking alive, and there aren’t any tears on his face and sorry in the pink line of his mouth, but there isn’t anything else either.
Maybe this is worse than never seeing him at all. Maybe Dean should have been happy with the “Cas helped.” ‘Cause he clearly fucking did: just look at this place, this fucking Winchester mansion that’s all light and air rather than World War 2 dust and dead guy bathrobes, and extra-large mattresses for tall guys, and every window open to let in the day, the evening, the breath of Heaven around them.
But Dean opens his mouth anyway, because he never once did learn to leave well enough alone.
Cas cuts him off. “I have something for you, too,” he says, and turns his back on Dean—walking out of the library with his trench coat jerking dramatically around his legs, his stride just a little too long for someone his height and proportions as he leads the way just fast enough that Dean will have to hurry to catch up, or else get left behind.
Again.
He hurries. It’s fucking pathetic. He does it anyway, winding their way through the kitchen—but Cas stops to point out a set of knives with blades folded in beautiful, rippled patterns, and one of those little garlic squashing devices that Dean’s always secretly wanted to try. The kitchen has its own windows into a back yard that’s vibrant with weedy, unruly, flowering plant life, and a smaller, less finished door than the one they walked in through.
But the moment they step out of it, Dean stalls.
It’s not a garden. It’s not a garden anymore. It smells wet and quiet, and the lake spreads out in front of him, cut delicately by a small, bare, wooden dock. The opposite bank is far enough away that it’s the thin shadows of a tree line rather than anything so distinct as shapes.
“What?” Dean asks blankly, and takes two fast steps back into the house, peering suspiciously through the window.
“What are you doing?” Cas asks, right through the—still-closed—window.
Dean does not jump, dammit. Even though it looks for all the world like Cas is standing on a little wooden back porch with two Adirondack chairs that Dean can see the outlines of sitting on either side of the porch—just two. A dragonfly flits over and perches on his hair for an instant before it tremors its delicate jewel-colored wings and flies away.
“Heaven physics are fucked up,” Dean grumbles. But when he backs away from the window and steps out the door again, there it is: the lake, the little pier. No dragonfly.
“Do you want Sam to be able to come out here and bother you while you’re fishing?” Cas asks irritably, crossing his arms. “I’ll have you know that the engineering of this was very complex. Not everyone gets their own secret lake with an overhang dock.”
And that’s more like it. That’s Cas.
The sand that isn’t sand stops shifting underneath Dean’s feet. "You could have come to say hello earlier," he retorts. “’Stead of letting me tool all around Heaven like an idiot who lost his wallet.”
"You were driving," Cas says, like that's the only explanation anyone will ever need. "You love to drive. I didn't want to bother you. You were enjoying your ‘tunes.’"
Cas doesn't get it. How come he can't get it? Yeah, Dean loves his Baby. Yeah, Dean loves to drive. The road told him more bedtime stories then either of his parents ever got the chance to.
But when he drove alone, the only places he ever drove to were death and violence and destruction. Dean went towards loneliness, and beelined for the little moments of pleasure he got and hung onto because he didn't get to have human connection. He kept driving because he thought if he didn’t, he’d sink and drown like a shark that’s stopped moving. (There was a while in the last few years that Dean got really into National Geographic, okay?)
Since the chance of Dean saying anything like that is somewhere in the narrow range between ‘winning the lottery’ and ‘the first of Fuck No ,” he shrugs and shakes out his shoulders instead, gesturing back towards the house. “Nice place. You couldn't have shown up in the backseat, at least told me this was waiting for me? Pit stop and pee break before the big meetaroo?
“I don't understand why anyone would want to urinate if you no longer have to. I can say from experience that the necessity of micturition is really rather unpleasant. People no longer have body functions in Heaven unless they desire to have them. ” Cas pauses, and in that thoughtful little tone he must have learned from Sam back in the day, muses, "Though I have discovered some interesting things in the process of rebuilding Heaven. Did you know that there are some individuals who include the experience of urination as part of their sexual—"
Now Dean really doesn’t want to know why there are toilets in the bathrooms, okay, what?
"Okay!" Dean yelps. "But—that’s not—that’s really not—” He gets his train back on the tracks with a heave. “You could've still showed me the digs beforehand."
"No," Cas says.
And that’s it. Nothing more than that. No comments on how Dean’s a greedy, needy, selfish little bastard who’s acting ungrateful for their fucking mansion.
"They weren't ready yet? Had to update the plumbing, do the final inspection?"
"You wouldn't have considered this a home until Sam arrived," Cas says. There's a terrible, quiet certainty to his tone. It's a little sad, but only for a moment before he straightens again.
He’s wrong. He’s wrong.
Isn’t he?
Cas would’ve been here—he’d have stayed—if only for a bit.
Wouldn’t he?
Of course he wouldn’t have. What the fuck is Dean thinking? Of course Cas has better things to do than babysit one damned hunter, even one he told—he said—
"That how it is, huh?” Dean bites out. “You're that sure of it."
"Yes," Cas says simply. "But he's here now.” Dean doesn’t have he chance to get a word in edgewise—he’s angry; he doesn’t know why he is, not this time—when he adds, “I put a lot of work into it. Do you like it?”
“’Course, Cas,” Dean says, his throat sticky, unpleasant as that time he swallowed a Sour Power belt whole and felt the acid crystals bite their way down his throat. The anger goes down with the same scratchiness. “Yeah, it’s… it’s pretty amazing. Worthy of a damned prince. You didn’t… you didn’t have to go through all this trouble, not for us.”
“Of course I did,” Cas says. Not gentle. Matter-of-fact. “You deserve all this, and so much more.”
Cas has ways of saying things that just aren’t true like they’re the fucking laws of the universe. It’s not sincerity, it’s certainty. He’s wrong, but he’s still so goddamned sure.
For a moment—just a moment—his eyes flick to Dean’s. Catch; hold. Like fresh Velcro before it gets that fuzz on it, softness and hooks turning into a tangle.
God only knows they’ve got enough of the hooks, and never enough of the softness. No wonder they all just about scraped each other raw when they were alive—all the time.
“I’ll leave you and Sam to catch up,” Cas says softly.
And then, while Dean’s still catching his breath, he turns to go. The wingy bastard actually turns to leave.
Dean almost lets him. There are things that Dean still knows to be afraid of.
"You're really not gonna say anything about it, huh,” he blurts before Cas has managed to give him his back. “Not one goddamned thing."
For a second—one terrible second—Dean thinks Cas is going to fucking play dumb. He’s going to turn around and just leave so neither of them have to deal with the oncoming catastrophe.
Instead, Cas’s "No," comes out quiet, but steady. Firm. He raises his chin, so damned proud. He doesn't turn around to look at Dean. "I've said everything I needed to. And your life was saved. Through it, everything was." This time, the smile barely leaves his lips and develops engine failure before it gets any altitude. “I knew you could do it, Dean. I always knew you two would be able to do it. Together.”
"That was the only reason you threw your whole life away, huh?”
"Yes," Cas says simply. His hands go back into his pockets. They’re deep enough that Dean wouldn’t be able to see him clenching his fists, even if he were. "What point would there have been to saying those words otherwise?"
‘Those words.’
I love you.
It’s in just saying it.
Well, clearly that was utter bullshit.
"Whatever happened to 'Good things do happen,' Cas?" Dean spits, his chest one punched-out bruise. He has a hand resting on his own side that he doesn’t remember putting there, but no matter how much he presses his own knuckles against his ribs, he can’t feel the spot where he broke the lowest one over and over again.
Cas pauses. “It’s very obnoxious when people repeat your own words back at you,” he complains, frowning.
“That’s me.” Dean thrusts both his thumbs towards himself. “The king of obnoxious.”
Cas considers this for so long that Dean doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or smack his smug angel face or just shove him into the water.
But after a moment, his eyebrows furrow. “Oh. Of course you’re annoyed,” he decides, and takes one careful, deliberate step closer to Dean. Another. Another. His Chelsea boots tap delicately against the dock with the light nose of well-sealed, well-seasoned wood. It’s meant to hold.
Tha-dump, drums Dean’s heart, loudly, behind his eyeballs. Tha-dump.
“Here,” Cas says, and offers Dean a bright yellow tackle box in one hand, and the fishing rod in the other. This time, his grin defies gravity. “I almost forgot.”
Dean shifts from foot to foot. He clenches and unclenches his hands, and lets his nails bite his palms.
Cas looks so damned proud of himself.
He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand at all.
Dean doesn’t take the fishing pole. “Does this mean I’m going to catch something every time I cast a line?”
Cas frowns slightly, his clear enjoyment dimming. Well, honestly, now it looks a little bit more like a pout. But Dean’s sure it’s supposed to be a disapproving frown. “No…” he says slowly. “My understanding of the extinction of the serotonergic release reflex in humans is that if you catch something every time, the emotional reward for it extinguishes slowly with each successive occurrence. It stops having meaning. It becomes something that you expect, rather than something that is a reward.”
Something to take for granted.
Well, maybe Dean knows a little bit more than he likes about that. Maybe he has a little more guilt than he likes about that, too.
“I don’t know about that,” he argues, instead, because fuck if he’s going to admit that. “Like, what about those machines they have in supermarkets, you know—the ones you put quarters into. You get a prize every time, but you don’t know what prize you’re going to get. Sometimes you get a little plastic ring, or sometimes it’s one of those awesome high-bounce balls that you can annoy your little brother with all over the inside of a motel room.”
Cas’s dark eyebrows beetle together in the middle of his forehead, a line appearing between them with the force of his frown. “Oh,” he muses. “I didn’t think of that.” He scratches at the edge of his own jaw with two fingers. “Do you think you would prefer that option?”
No. Yes.
Sure, there might be lots of fishes in the sea. But what about the birds? What about the first time a stupid little fish pokes its head out of the water and there’s a bird circling overhead, dizzyingly high, the curves of his wings silhouetted against light bright enough to make the eyes water? What happens when that bird gets in the way of the hawk plunging down upon them both, just so that fish, that stupid, insignificant fish, can dive down into the water, deep, deep in its own cowardice, because it never told that bird how much it liked watching it fly?
Do other fish ever really look the same, after that?
Yeah, this metaphor’s getting pretty tortured even inside Dean’s own goddamned head.
He knows what he’s supposed to do here. He should take the fishing rod, the tackle box, the house that Cas built just for them, this pocket dimension that he gets to have because Cas thinks Dean deserves things like privacy as well as companionship.
Dean should say ‘thanks.’ He should be grateful for what he gets. He always needs to be so fucking grateful.
Dean lowers his eyes because gratitude comes easier when people can’t see the hurt in his gaze. He looks down at the tackle box in Cas’s hand, instead.
It’s bright yellow—the kind of yellow that would be visible through the surface of the water if it got dropped into a lake or a stream.
On the top, there’s a decal of cute, stylized, puffy cartoon bee.
Years (miles) later, Dean still doesn’t know why that did it. Why his fist is—roughly—gripping Cas’s tie. Why Cas collapses against his chest with a squeak, like the noise made when a Jenga tower finally goes. Why Cas’s lips don’t hit his quite right, and Dean doesn’t know whose fault that is—whether he aimed wrong, whether Cas dodged because he thought Dean was going to fucking headbutt him—because it’s a smoosh of a kiss, too sloppy and with an actual smack sound rather than the sexy little brush that Dean was going for.
Story of his life, really. Afterlife, too, looks like.
The second one’s better.
The third one is a tilt and a spin. It’s the Coney Island rollercoaster in the rain, rickety and wooden and ancient, exhilarating and dangerous. A little slippery. When Cas groans, they’re close enough that his voice rumbles through Dean like the feel of the track shuddering under the weight of the car. Around them, the world flickers a little, spinning, but when Dean opens eyes he didn’t realize he’d closed, it’s just the wind darting little circles in the leaves floating across the surface of the water.
They separate. Cas’s eyes are so wide that the whites around them are luminous. “Dean,” he breathes.
Then: “I dropped the fishing rod,” Cas continues sadly, his gaze drooping. He squints past Dean and towards the lake. “The fish are laughing at me.”
It’s such a bizarrely, uniquely Cas thing to say in the middle of something that should be breaking both of their worlds in two that Dean clutches at the lapels of his trench coat helplessly and drags him in again.
The world didn’t end. It hasn’t. Maybe it won’t. Maybe Heaven’s theirs to have—not just Dean’s, not just Sam’s, but all of theirs.
This time, they meet in the middle.
They’re right back to ‘terrible’ again. Dean can’t stop snickering enough to get any access, much less let his tongue out to play, and with his lips stretched in a grin Cas’s mouth is barely touching his, their noses sliding against each other more than anything else, and—and—
And, fuck, it’s the best kiss he’s had in a day. In an eon, in miles. In a lifetime. In an afterlife. Cas's lips are flaky and his jawline is rougher, and when he sucks at Dean's lower lip it makes the fucking worst sound. The absolute worst.
“Now you’re laughing at me,” Cas complains, and this time, he does headbutt Dean gently—an annoyed, delicate bonk.
“Yep, sure am,” Dean announces.
“Well, don’t stop,” Cas says.
Dean doesn’t. He doesn’t for a long time.
He laughs ‘cause he’s a fucking idiot. ‘Cause they wasted so much time. ‘Cause Cas thought he couldn’t have, and Dean didn’t know that having had ever been an option. He’s never gotten to keep before.
Cas isn’t wrong when he says that Sam is home for Dean. That’ll always be the case. Baby will always be comfort, and Sam will always be home, but Cas…
Cas is Dean’s.
And maybe, just maybe, Cas can get to have, too.
“Come fishin’ with me?” Dean says, breathless with the idea of it. “Come sit. Just… for a while. Sam’ll be busy for, I dunno.”
He adds it because he can’t say “Stay.” Not yet. Not for a few more miles (decades).
“Okay,” Cas answers, but he doesn’t separate them. He tilts his head enough to rest his temple against Dean’s. His eyes close like the weight of Dean’s gaze is too heavy for him—this angel, this infinite being who built a tiny pocket of a whole world for Dean and still thinks that Dean doesn’t love him, that Dean hasn’t been his for more of a human lifetime than Dean really wants to think about.
But they’ll have time, Dean thinks. They’ve got nothing but time.
And his hands, when he tucks them under Cas’s coat to rest them, shyly, interlaced, at the small of his broad, clothed back, are finally still.
~fin~
The art prompt, by the amazing JackieDee:
