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They sit side by side on the stairs that lead out to the backyard. In front of them is a lake, deep and still, their silent witness, and they watch as it swallows the shadow of a sun.
it is a lovely sight, despite everything.
It is a lovely home, too, this place crafted with wishes and hopes and dreams. Castiel is almost sorry to see it go. Almost.
Heaven is...different now. It's freer. livelier. It feels whole in a way Castiel doesn't quite remember it ever feeling. But changing the very atoms that build up a world takes time. Takes work. Jack had done a good job. He had done so, so well.
But, still, they had left the souls to themselves for a while. Perhaps for too long.
Castiel's thoughts are interrupted by a soft whistling that the breeze carries to them from inside the house. Inside where —
"Dean!" the man calls, and Castiel feels a sense of unreality wash over him at the deep tenor of his voice, both strange and familiar, all at once. "The popcorn's ready!"
"Be right there, sweetheart," Dean calls back, and Castiel feels something twist in his gut. He isn't sure why he feels that way.
It's still him. It's Cas. A Cas.
Heaven was once only memory, and memories are sometimes wishes. Dean says he thinks he just wished really, really hard.
Says, I don't know. It just happened, and I — Cas, you — that's all I've ever —
And now they're here. And there is Cas — a Cas — waiting for Dean in this house of wishes. A Cas who wears his shirts, and eats his food, and kisses his mouth, his skin. Who knows what it is like when Dean calls him sweetheart.
Who is not him.
"What'll happen to him?" Dean asks.
Castiel doesn't know what to say.
What happens to wishes that blow into the spring wind on dandelion fuzz? To hopes cast into the night sky on the backs of falling stars?
What happens to a memory that never really was?
"He's not real," Castiel says, and really, he doesn't mean for his words to hold the bitterness they do, the bite.
"You left me," Dean says, matching bite to bite. "You never showed, even after I got here. You just -- you left."
Castiel can feel Dean's eyes boring into his temples. Can almost see the way he clenches his fists. The way he breathes through his nose, runs a palm over his mouth.
That mouth, that palm. That is how he hides from the world. From himself. From Castiel, this Castiel, the real one.
Still, somewhere, something inside him feels tight, like the press of a hand on his chest, a push. The sudden paralysis of his lungs.
Dean's not entirely wrong.
There had been time, for him to find dean, before now. For him to face Dean. After Jack had pulled him from the Empty, after he'd restored his grace, and his soul, and everything else that had been lost to him over the past decade.
But the thought of seeing Dean, it had been....terrifying. He had expected Dean's heaven to be many things — had even expected that Dean would have lost himself in the memories of a life like this, of the year he had spent with Lisa, perhaps. Had not wanted to intrude. To confront the truth of his own parting words.
But this? This wishbone memory of himself, a paper-thin imprint that shared in this dream of Dean's, that was his companion, that he had never seen coming.
"He will fade, with the rest of this," Castiel casts a hand towards the pier, a couple of lawn chairs still on it, another soft imprint of this wish left for him to see. "There will be something else here for you. Something real."
The sky is a painting of oranges and blues, but to Castiel, it is all flimsy watercolor. Cracks everywhere. To Dean, he knows, it's different. It's....well, it's heaven. It's home.
"And you. Where are you going to be?"
Castiel turns to look at Dean, after all this time. He looks unhappy. But there is something else warring with sorrow on his face, something Castiel cannot put his finger on. Something he worries is anger. His eyes are glassy, a tremble on his lips. His cheek. Castiel wants to press his thumb to it. To the corner of his mouth. Wants to say, here. here. here
But this air, this place, this pocket of his world that is as much his wish as it is Dean's, it doesn't let him. He folds his fingers in his lap.
"Here," he says anyway. "I'll be here."
He means it, too. He hadn't — It was never supposed to go the way it had. They were never supposed to lose each other like that. Castiel — What would he even do, without Dean? Where would he want to go??
Dean looks at him for a long moment, holds his gaze with those green, green eyes.
Castiel loves those eyes, loves them enough, he thinks, that that love stretches into forever, from the birth of him, to the distant future where he will be given back to the stars. Loves them so much, it almost hurts when Dean looks away.
"Right," Dean says, and his cheeks are red, as are the tips of his ears. "Right. Okay. I want to say goodbye."
Castiel wants to remind dean that it would mean nothing, this goodbye, not really. He knows, though, that sometimes, farewells are not always for the benefit of the ones being left behind. He knows better than most.
"Of course. I'll be waiting."
"Alright." Dean stands, and brushes his hands on his thighs, once, twice. "Alright. Okay." With a final glance his way, he turns around, and heads in.
Castiel could watch, but he doesn't want to. So, he walks down the steps, and across the yard to the pier. He stands there, on the wood, in the middle of the water that whispers soft, soft secrets, and watches the stars appear in the darkening sky.
He wonders if Dean is kissing Cas — this other Cas — right now. He wonders if he would ever kiss him. He wonders if Dean will ever even forgive him. If Dean is angry. If he is only hiding behind it, like he has all his life.
He sometimes thinks, for all that he is an angel, he doesn't know how to soothe the hurt in Dean. He doesn't know if he even can.
He just — he wants to try, though.
He wants to be there, for better or for worse.
He wants a shot. At all this.
He just — He wants.
An eternity yawns, and darkness falls, before Castiel feels Dean's presence at his back getting closer. He lets Dean walk the path he'd taken himself, across the yard, onto the water.
They stand there, shoulder to shoulder, for a moment, breathe in the air they do not need. Watch a moon that is always full dance in the water.
"What was it like?" Castiel asks, turning to Dean, cracking the snow-globe silence that had fallen over them. "This — just, all this? What was it like? With him? With. With me?"
Dean looks at him, soft and sad, and Castiel wonders, impossibly, if he might still be a thing Dean loves. Dean shrugs, then. His breath breaks on a laugh. It sounds like the breaking of a heart. It sounds like terrible, foolish hope. It makes him want to hold Dean's hand.
"I don't know, Cas," he says, after a moment. "It was....It was good. It wasn't always easy. It was just a life. That's all I wanted, you know? Just this...simple, boring life."
You can have that, still, Castiel thinks. You can have anything.
"Okay," he says, out loud.
The release of pressure, the scent of rain in the air. The bright moonlight, and a soft grin on Dean's face. Almost real. Almost everything.
"Where to, now?"
Castiel turns, and where there was a house, a home, where there was a shadow of him, and a dream, there is only a road.
(And a car, of course. That much, at least, will never change.)
Dean laughs again, and it feels more sound this time, more like joy.
"Follow the road, huh?"
"Mm."
"You wanna join me or —?"
He can fly here. He has his wings, his grace. More strength than he'd felt in his bones in years. But—
God, but, he'd missed this. He'd missed Dean. He'd missed Baby.
"I'll go with you," he says.
Dean smiles wide, and Castiel watches the way the corners of his eyes crinkle with it. Thinks of what it means that this is who Dean chooses to be, even in heaven.
What it means that he makes Dean smile like that.
"Okay," he says. "That's. That's good. Come on, then."
Dean gets off the pier, and Castiel follows him.
They walk down the to road that curves away into nothing beyond, to the car parked at the shoulder. On either side are the grassy plains of the Midwest, landscapes that have defined the borders of Dean's life.
Dean skips the last few steps towards his car, and greets her with an enthusiasm that softens something inside of Castiel. That makes him feel fond.
He fingers the cassette tape that's in his pocket, swallows against the thing lodged in his throat.
"Wait," he calls, and Dean turns. Castiel pulls the tape out of his pocket, holds it out to Dean between his fingers. "Here. for the drive."
The label on the cassette is a little worn, edges brown and peeling. The writing is a little duller than it used to be, but clear enough to still make out the ball-point scrawl.
Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx
Dean moves forward, but doesn't take the tape.
"You still have this?"
He sounds incredulous, like he didn't think Castiel would have wanted to keep it. That he would have cared enough. Or at all.
"Of course. You gave it to me. You told me to keep it."
"Cas—"
Dean looks up, a breath somewhere in his throat. A strange, charged look is all the warning Castiel gets before his fingers close around his wrist and pull.
(And Castiel goes. He always, always goes.)
Dean holds him close, and hard, fingers digging into his shoulders, the back of his neck. And Castiel thinks that if he had a body that could bruise, it would. It is a moment before Castiel is able to free his hand from where it's lodged between their bodies, is able to wrap his arms around Dean's waist.
Is able to hold him the way he's wanted to, forever.
"Dean," he starts, face tucked into Dean's shoulder, but Dean cuts him off by pulling him closer still, close enough to rid them of the air between their bodies.
"Just," and his voice is syrupy, thick and sweet and sticky, "Cas, shut up. Just shut up for a minute, alright?"
"Okay," he says, and presses his forehead into Dean's skin, breathes in the scent of him, feels that wild, human heart beating against his lips. "I'm sorry. Okay."
Castiel feels the rush of prayer, an electric pulse that runs up his spine, that sets his blood fizzing. He gasps, moves to pull away, but Dean holds him in place. Holds him right.
Listen. Just. Listen. Don't go. Okay? Don't pull away. I just. I love you. I love you. I miss you like crazy. And I'm so fucking mad at you. I don't know what to do anymore, but just. Just don't go. Don't leave. Don't keep leaving me. Be here, for a second. Be with me. Okay, Cas? I love you. Just stay.
Angels don't cry, Castiel tells himself, even as he feels the wetness on his cheeks, the sting at the back of his eyes. The heat that burns his throat, his neck, his heart.
"Okay," he says to Dean, out loud, "Okay. I love you, too. I'll stay."
~
Dean drives. Robert Plant croons from the impala's speakers, and underneath his voice, Castiel can hear the comforting purr of Baby's engine.
At their backs, the world is melting, fusing into the heaven, the one heaven, that is home to all the souls now. Dean's wishes disappear like stars blinking out.
Castiel watches them go in the rear-view. Wonders what they will do in this new forever that stretches before them. He knows it will not be easy. There is too much broken between them for it to be. Sometimes, he thinks, it might all just be irreparable.
But then he looks down at the bench seat, the scant space between their bodies, at Dean's hand in his, their tangled fingers. The lazy smile on Dean's face.
"Dean," he says, and there is a storm in his chest, a churning sea. "Dean. what are we going to do?"
Dean's smile falters for a second, returns twice bright. Like the sun after summer rain. Like hope.
"I don't know," he says. "But I wanna try. I wanna figure it out, man. With you."
Castiel thinks he might be smiling, too. There is a sweet ache in his cheeks, his chest. the world feels bright — honey-sweet and golden, golden, golden.
There is a road ahead, that will end somewhere, and the song of earth in his ears. There is a lightness in him that feels unreasonable. that knocks against his throat, wills him to fly. He squeezes Dean's fingers, once, twice, and thinks, perhaps, that having is not too bad, after all.
Says, "Alright. We can do that."