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There’s no peace like the open road. Like a steering wheel in Dean’s hands, the sun streaming through Baby’s windows and Bob Seger’s crooning keeping him company.
Heaven’s Highway reminds him of Route 169, grass stretching along a windy two-lane road, rosy maples fluttering under silver skies. Frosted blue mountains wink in and out of sight. If he keeps driving, will he zip past cabins and spruce forests blanketed in snow? Will he stop at a frigid gas station with microwave burritos that taste way better than he remembers?
Will the empty passenger seat ache any less?
A white house flashes by. Dean pumps the brakes and looks over his shoulder, but trees block his view. He swings Baby around, drives back, and stops in the road, engine rumbling.
It’s a quaint little house with a gnarled tree out front. Dean parks in the driveway and climbs the porch steps. He raises his hand to knock but stops. Somehow he knows. This place belongs to him. His hand falls to the doorknob and it turns without a key.
A refrigerator stands beside the door, a sink under the window and a granite island opposite. A couch and flatscreen TV fill the living room and an oak table and chairs fill the dining room, half-open doors leading to a bathroom and bedroom. It’s small, but cozy. Comfortable.
He wanders past the couch and finds a sliding glass door with a view that steals his breath away. He opens the door and steps outside.
Hills swathed in gold stretch into the horizon. An old windmill creaks nearby, its broad sails rotating in the breeze. It looks quite a bit like the windmill he once spread Cas’s ashes near. In fact, the field looks similar too. Dean walks through it, grass shushing against his jeans and folding under his boots. Bees and dragonflies skim past. The sun blazes but doesn’t burn.
The murmur of a river rises above the wind and Dean approaches the windmill. A dark-haired figure stands beside it with his back to Dean, trench coat fluttering.
Déjà vu darts through him. “Cas?”
Cas turns, the line of his nose and the curve of his lips lining in gold, his eyelashes flashing blonde above shifting eyes, and Dean starts walking, striding, running.
Cas faces him, blue eyes burning with bottomless sorrow, and Dean bowls into him, burying his face in Cas’s neck and digging his fingers into Cas’s back, squeezing so hard his muscles shake. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he breathes, eyes stinging.
Cas’s arms circle atop Dean’s shoulders.
He’s thought of Cas every day since his confession, every day roaming Heaven’s lonely roads.
Dean pulls back. “I’m so sorry, Cas. You gave that whole speech and I couldn’t say a damn thing.”
Cas smiles sadly. “I didn’t need you to say anything.”
Because Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being.
“So that’s it? You were okay to die and spend forever in the Empty?”
Cas blinks. “I did it for you-”
“You deserve better than that.”
Cas’s eyes drop. “I couldn’t expect you to feel a way you don’t-”
Dean grips his arm. He can’t keep inside what he couldn’t say before. “I love you, Cas.”
Cas looks up, eyes wide. Dean regrets everything he ever did to make Cas feel so sure Dean doesn’t love him.
Dean cups his cheek. “I should’ve said it then.” He shakes his head. “I should’ve said it a decade ago.” He kisses Cas with all the love he can muster, all the love he battered and buried for fifteen years. It only grew with time.
They kiss in the sunlight, in a golden field beside a windmill Dean once chose as the resting place for his angel. Cas leans into him, his hands gripping Dean’s waist. Cas tastes like honey, like home, like everything Dean’s been missing.
They part and Dean holds his forehead against Cas’s. Their breaths puff together and Dean aches to kiss him again, to make up for all the years he didn’t.
Cas’s breath escapes in a laugh. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can.” Dean kisses him again. “We’re a pair of thick-headed idiots.”
Cas laughs, bubbly and criminally infectious. Dean smiles. He wants to hear Cas laugh like that every day.
Cas sets a hand on Dean’s shoulder and looks past him. “Why don’t you show me around your house?”
Dean slips his hand into Cas’s and turns, eyebrow raised. “You mean the house you and Jack designed?”
“Influenced.” He gestures at it. “Your subconscious made that.”
Dean frowns. “Why’d I make it so small?”
Cas smiles. “You can change it anytime. Come on.”
Dean follows him inside. “I see it now.” Wooden flooring like Bobby’s, beige walls and antique lights like the bunker, big sunlit windows like his childhood home. “Kinda weird how well it fits together.”
Cas opens the fridge. It’s empty. “The human imagination is remarkable.” He closes it and glances at Dean, opens it again.
A raspberry pie and a six-pack sit on the bottom shelf.
“Okay, that’s freaky.”
Cas plucks out two beers. “You’ll get used to it.”
Will he? Does he want to? “Cas, how long have you been out of the Empty?”
Cas finds a bottle opener in a drawer and pops the caps off. “A couple weeks. I was helping Jack reorder things.” He slides a beer towards Dean. “When I heard you’d died, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t expect it so soon.”
Dean touches the cold glass. “Yeah. I guess there’s no epic finale when Chuck stops writing.”
Cas leans against the counter. “Or maybe we haven’t figured out how to pick up where he left off.”
Dean tilts his head.
“Write our own story,” Cas offers.
Is he suggesting…. “I thought Jack was going for a hands-off approach.”
“We’ve talked about it. He saved me from the Empty. He restored the angels’ wings-”
“Hold on, you got your wings back?”
Cas straightens. Dean expects a shadow to fall across the wall, but his wings bloom in wisps, feathers glinting in ghostly lines.
“Woah.”
They disappear. “Jack’s strengthened Heaven and rewritten its operation, which inevitably impacts the universe. He’s already involved. Why not resurrect a single human?” He picks at the label of his beer. “That is, if that’s what you want.”
Dean rounds the counter. “What about you?”
Cas’s eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not going back without you.”
He softens. “If you return, I’ll go with you.”
“Good.” Dean sips his beer. What will it be like? To be truly free? What will he and Sam do? Dread settles in his chest. “How’s Sam?” What if these weeks have been months, years for Sam? “How long have I been gone?”
“Sam’s okay. Time moves differently in Heaven. Lifetimes here can be moments on Earth.”
“Sam’s lost all of us. Is he hunting anymore? Is he even sober anymore?”
Cas sets his hand over Dean’s. “Sam’s hurting, but he’ll be okay without you. I know that hasn’t been true in the past, but…”
“We won.”
“Yes.”
Dean releases a breath. “Then why does it feel more like a cop-out than a victory? Without the kid, we’d be royally screwed.”
Cas’s fingers curl around Dean’s. “Dean, what is it you want? If you could have anything.”
Dean looks at him. For the longest time, he didn’t know. I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I wondered what it could be. What my true happiness could even look like.
He doesn’t know if he wants to go back, or even if he wants to stay. He takes Cas’s hand. “I know I want you.” He kisses him again, savoring his lips, his heart under Dean’s hand.
Cas smiles and taps his beer to Dean’s. “Should we take these outside?”
Dean winks. “And the pie.”
——
Dean carries the beers and Cas carries the pie. Cas packs the grass under his shoes and Dean spreads out a blanket he wished into existence. They sit and break into the pie with forks.
“Wow,” Cas says around a mouthful. The sun slants lower, casting his back in gold.
“You can taste now? Is that only in Heaven, or…”
“Jack gave angels the ability. Chuck withheld it without reason.”
Dean shakes his head. “What a douche.”
Cas takes another bite, eyebrows scrunching. “It’s like PB&J but better.”
Dean chuckles and cuts another bite. “How’s the kid doing?”
“He’s stressed, but that’s to be expected. He’s handling his responsibilities exceptionally well. He’s wanted to see you.”
“I’ve missed him.”
They talk until a sliver of sun remains. Dean pushes the pie tin and beer bottles aside, drawn to Cas like a magnet. They kiss in the fading light, Dean’s thumb circling into Cas’s ribs and Cas’s hands on his shoulders.
They lay together and watch stars break through the twilight.
Dean interlocks his fingers in Cas’s. “How do you feel?”
Cas’s eyes glow in the growing starlight. “Complete.”
Dean’s heart swells until it aches. He squeezes Cas’s hand and looks at the stars. This is what Cas deserves. Peace. Love. Happiness.
Cas’s thumb brushes his wrist. “What about you? Have you given more thought to what you want?”
Dean shrugs. “I wouldn’t mind another adventure. It doesn’t have to have monsters, it can just be… life. Maybe Sam’ll finally be a lawyer, if we can scrub his extensive criminal history.”
“And undo the multiple times he’s been pronounced dead.”
Dean chuckles. “That too.” He shakes his head. “Man, we’ve lived crazy lives.” He looks at Cas. “What would you do?”
Cas thinks. “I liked working at Gas n’ Sip-”
Dean groans. “If we go back, you are not working at a gas station.”
Cas rises on one elbow. “What’s wrong with working at a gas station?”
“You know what, I bet you’d make a hot professor.”
Cas rolls his eyes.
Dean smirks. “The ladies’ll be all over you.”
“There’s only one man I want ‘all over me’.”
Dean bites his lip. “Kinky.”
Cas rolls his eyes again, but he can’t help smiling. “What would you do?”
He hasn’t asked himself that in decades. When he was little, he wanted to be a firefighter. Which was totally a choice that didn’t stem from childhood trauma.
The only marketable skill he has has to do with Baby. He sits up. “I figure I’d make a decent mechanic. But only for vintage cars. None of those electronic Hondas and Teslas.” He nudges Cas. “We could finally take that trip to the Grand Canyon you always wanted.”
“I’d like that.”
“Jack has to visit too. We should have burgers every Wednesday, or movie night-”
“Thursdays.”
Dean smiles. “Okay, angel of Thursday. We’ll have badass day jobs, dinners on Thursdays, and if any monsters show up, if any hunters need our help, we’ll be there.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Damn right.”
Cas sets his head against Dean’s shoulder and Dean curls an arm around him.
The sky darkens to a rich purple. Moonlight streaks across the field, turning the windmill a soft gray, the grass a rusty orange.
The house grew a second story. A new window reveals a King-sized bed.
They can take their time here. Dean’s never been one for peace, but he can feel it settling. He needed Cas to stop him driving, stop him plugging on.
He wants to stay here for a while. He doesn’t know how long. It doesn’t matter how long if he can live a lifetime with Cas before Sam starts his.
He’ll get bored at some point. Hunting’s in his blood, but he knows now it’s more than that. Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love. That is who you are.
Dean will return, hand in hand with Cas, ready to write their own story.
But for now, he wants to know what it feels like to stop looking over his shoulder, to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. He wants to discover who he is with Cas.
Dean rests his head against Cas’s and closes his eyes.
There’s no peace like holding the love of his life close.