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There is a long moment of stunned silence.
Dean can’t understand what’s going on; he can’t think, he can’t speak. He can’t get up. He can’t even look at his brother, but Sam’s presence is familiar and comforting by his side - the only thing now telling him the world has not (yet) ended. No, all Dean can do is stare at the body in front of him - because no matter Amara said, it is a body, an empty, disconnected thing no longer brimming with power and life. Whatever the thing is now (an actual dead human, a discarded vessel, a trick of the imagination), it’s no longer God, that’s for sure. It may not even be Chuck at all. Just a layer of cheap clothes and -
“Hey, you okay?”
Dean blinks, tries to sit up.
Sam sounds - hoarse and weary, but normal.
Thank God.
Or, well.
“I - yeah.”
He tries to add something to that, but his brain is completely empty. He feels Sam looking at him; he doesn’t look back.
“I’ll take care of Chuck,” Sam says, after a while. “Go check on Cas.”
Sam’s voice has gone all soft, but Dean barely notices it, because - fuck.
Cas.
It’s not like Dean’s forgotten, or anything, it's just - hell, when Amara had turned against Cas, Dean had -
Seized by a sudden fear, feeling like he’s going to be sick, Dean tries to stand up, ends up taking a few steps, then collapsing, crawling towards Cas on his hands and knees.
“Cas?” he calls, feebly, and he tries to ignore that black thing inside his heart which is beating and beating and repeating the same, useless word over and over again (dead - dead - dead). “Cas?”
Cas doesn’t move.
Without even thinking about it, Dean reaches out, cups Cas’ face. Cas' skin is cold and clammy, and, of course, he doesn’t breathe, never has, so Dean has no way of knowing if Cas -
“Can you wake him up?” Sam asks from behind him.
Dean lets his hand drop, turns around.
Sam is checking on Chuck’s pulse, and, judging from his half-worried, half-exasperated expression, he’s not finding one (he’s not sure there is one to be found).
“I don’t know,” Dean says, and, again, there are more words after these ones, but he can’t find them.
He passes his tongue on his lips, as if looking for them, and the room spins around him.
“Dean.”
Sam’s voice is coming from far, far away.
“Of course you can. Cas is fine. Right? Just -”
With a huge effort, Dean brings his hand up, presses it against his mouth - he doesn’t know if he wants to cry or to be sick, but neither is happening, because fuck it, he can do this - then focuses on Sam again, hoping his brother has some clever idea, some way to -
But Sam only makes a vague gesture, and Dean shakes his head at him.
God, every time he thinks things can’t be any worse - every damn time he thinks he’s given enough and there is nothing left for anyone to take - if they make it out of this, he’s going to stop hunting. For good. It’s not even about -
Hell, he just can’t take it anymore. He can’t -
Swallowing what tastes like a curse but was probably a sob, he turns back towards Cas, places his fingers, lightly, on Cas’ hair.
“Cas. Come on, buddy. Wake up.”
Nothing happens. Behind him, he can hear Sam getting to his feet, Sam speaking to someone.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, thing is - I don’t care if your mom can fucking fly. We can’t. Can you get us a fucking car or not?”
It’s not like Sam never swears, but it doesn’t happen all that often. Dean glances back at him - sees Sam has succeeded in getting Chuck to his feet - the guy is very nearly unconscious, but fuck, Sam is strong (Dean has a sudden, unwelcome impulse to laugh, because look at him owned and done for - all those times he’s made fun of Sam for his girly obsession with fitness and crunches and pull-ups, and now -): he’s easily holding up Chuck’s weight as he curses at the phone, hangs up, hisses in exasperation.
“I swear - once we’re done, I’m fucking gutting him,” he says, but there’s no conviction in the words.
How can there be?
It’s not about Crowley, because there is no love lost between Sam and Crowley. It’s just -
Once we’re done - yeah.
Dean is sort of surprised they’re not dead already.
“Come on, he said he’ll have a car outside in ten minutes. Do you need help with Cas?”
“I - no.”
That is a lie, because Dean can barely stand on his own two feet, but at the same time - this is something he owes Cas. The guy almost died for them, fucking again - almost died, because Dean won’t believe Cas is gone - will never believe Cas is gone - the least Dean can do is carry him out of this place. Help him to get back home.
(Can they get home, though? Is the Bunker safe? Is anywhere safe?)
His hand moves again, and before Dean can think better of it, he’s carding his fingers through Cas’ hair.
“Come on, buddy,” he says, softly. “We’ll fix it, okay?”
I’ll fix you, is what he thinks, but the words won’t come out.
“Just hang in there.”
Dean brings his other hand up, but what started as a perfunctory, instinctive gesture he’s done a thousand times - on himself; on Sam - a way to check for injuries, for blood and bumps - suddenly makes his whole skin react, and Dean burns hot and cold as he kneels in front of Cas, cradling Cas’ head between his cupped hands, and now his own face is much too close to Cas' - he can see all the tiny details that make up a man’s imperfect beauty, all at once: those slight lines on Cas’ forehead, the soft creases at the corners of his eyes, his chapped lips; how his stubble shifts from brown to light brown, and even, perhaps, to grey.
Nothing you could have done would have saved me, because I didn't want to be saved, says Cas’ deep, sensible voice inside Dean’s brain, and Dean almost recoils from the force of the memory because he knows, on some level, that this is what hurts the most. He can deal (just barely) with Cas going back to Heaven (with Cas walking away; with Cas not wanting him), but Cas wishing for death - Cas not valuing his own life at all - Cas not fucking understanding how fucking important it is that he should live - that’s where the line is.
Dean lets his right hand fall a little - passes his thumb, only just, on the line of Cas’ jaw; then he shakes his head, stands up, walking on the spot to test his strength and balance. His legs are still not working properly, but fuck it.
“We’re getting out of here,” he says, in what was supposed to be a sunny voice and ends up being a broken, defeated thing; and then he squares his shoulders, kneels again, adjusts his grip around Cas so he can lift him up.
Cas’ weight is not more than Dean can carry (will never be more than Dean can carry), but it’s heavy, because it’s a dead weight.
There is no sign of life at all.
Still, Dean walks, his left hand gripping the light cotton of Cas’ slacks, his right closed firmly around Cas’ left forearm.
“I always told you angels don’t walk enough,” he says, when he has to say something because he just stepped over that Enochian spear Lucifer used on Amara and the blade is red and shiny and something awful inside Dean is aching for her and Dean wants to die of shame and fury. “I’m going to cut off your honey and burgers supply, you hear me? You’re getting fat.”
Cas, of course, doesn’t answer. Dean can feel Cas’ head drooping a bit with every step he takes, and has to check himself not to stop and make sure, quite sure -
Because, well, there’s no way of knowing.
And even if things go well for fucking once - even if Cas does wake up - how long do they have before Amara does whatever she’s been planning to do and the whole world blows up?
How long until they lose everything?
(It’s not like Dean had been imagining it - long days - hell, years, even - of lazy conversations and long drives and Lost marathons, Cas’ head on his lap; and maybe, one day, he and Cas fishing on the shores of a purple river, in a place where colours and sounds have no meaning but Cas’ wings can shine brighter than any sun.
No, Dean hadn’t been imagining it at all.
And if his eyes are a bit wet when he walks out of the old plant, it’s because the light is too fucking bright. No other reason.)
Dean sees the car first, because it’s an awful thing - a huge black Escalade with tinted windows (or, well, the passenger’s window is tinted: the driver’s window is busted open), the sort of thing the real FBI uses, right when Dean’s never felt less like an FBI agent in his entire life. Jesus, even that first time he’d used the con - and he was twenty-two and his suit was itchy and the pants were a bit too long and God, a whole lifetime has passed since then - even then he’d felt more like an FBI agent, or even more like a human being, than he does now.
Sam’s legs are only just visible under the open car door, which means Chuck may be alive, but he’s also unable to sit up by himself. So, yeah, he’s been pulling their strings his entire life (“I'm definitely a god. A cruel, cruel, capricious god,” he’d said, the very first time they’d met him, and why the hell hadn’t they listened?) and now look at him - he’s not even conscious yet, and Sam has to help him with the seatbelt like you would a child.
Honestly, Dean could laugh at how fucked up it all is. But, yeah.
As he adjusts Cas’ weight more firmly on his shoulders, his eyes finally land on Crowley, who’s standing by the driver’s door. When Dean looks at him, Crowley looks back levelly. His fingers don’t stop playing with the keyring, but those words he’s clearly itching to say (“Have you tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”) never leave his lips, for which Dean is grateful.
“If you think I’m letting you drive,” Dean says, taking another step forward, “think again.”
Crowley looks away, smiles.
“Nonsense. Karl Benz was a dear friend. Taught me everything I know.”
The light is all wrong - there are big, pink clouds, but the air is cold, with that sense of danger you get just before storms.
“A right old grouch, dear Karl. His wife, though? Lovely thing.”
Dean is barely listening to Crowley; then again, he’s always got trouble keeping up with Crowley’s web of tall stories and harsh truths, and why should today be any different?
“Place for one more?” he asks, coming to a stop next to the passenger’s door, and Sam turns around on the seat, reaches out to take Cas’ weight from him.
And Dean grits his teeth and allows Sam to take it.
He can’t stay there and watch, though. Not when he doesn’t know if Cas is even -
No.
“Keys,” he grunts, taking a step back towards Crowley, but Crowley shakes his head.
“Love, that’s not happening. I can smell the lack of sleep on you, and it stinks. I'm not dying today.”
“Crowley -”
“Dean, do as he says,” says Sam, wearily, and then the passenger door closes with a thud and Sam’s pale face disappears behind the black window.
It’s not fair, really, that Sam should have the last word on anything; not when his plan of obedience and mercy and self-sacrifice got them into this mess in the first place - trusting God, as if, thinks Dean, viciously, choosing to forget his own awe and his own wish to just give the fuck up - that mixture of fear and shock and gratitude he’d felt when he’d realized his stupid necklace was glowing and burning in his hand - when he’d seen Chuck turn around in the middle of the road, a hint of power and storms extending over his shoulders like outstretched wings.
But, as it turns out, Crowley is a surprisingly smooth driver, and the radio doesn’t work, which means no fighting over music and no landing on news channels announcing some other city has been flattened because Dean and Sam don’t know how to do their fucking jobs.
“Where are we going?” Dean asks, listlessly, after ten minutes have passed and the silence is just this side of unnerving.
“I have it on good authority Amara has breached the Bunker’s defences,” Crowley says, glancing at him. “But luckily for you, I have a safe house in the area.”
“Yeah? Is it full of dirty, dirty demons?”
“It is. Just the way you like it.”
Sam huffs from behind them, but doesn’t say anything.
“How long?”
“A few hours.”
“Can you be more specific?” Sam asks, and Dean feels him moving forward and hopes Sam will remember Crowley is actually driving fifty miles an hour here, so stabbing him would be a BAD IDEA, all capitals.
“I was saving this for a special occasion, but, well, beggars and choosers and all that. See, the thing is - some prick wanted to knock down your old house,” Crowley says, looking up at the rearview mirror. “So I bought it from him.”
“You -”
“Had the gall to get greedy. Made me a price well above market value.”
"You can't mean -"
“What?”
“So then I ate his heart and liver.”
Dean stares at Crowley.
“What?” he asks again, even if, really, the whole thing makes perfect sense, because their lives are just that fucked up.
He glances back at Sam, finds Sam staring at him, and something passes between them before they both look away, because, yeah, they probably couldn’t kill Crowley even if they tried, and what would be the point, anyway? It’s very likely they won’t even make it to Lawrence; that the road will simply collapse in front of them - that the concrete will split open and release a burst of - hot lava, or darkness, or motherfucking flying monkeys, because Amara is batshit insane and it’s beyond unfair Dean can still feel her pain and her grief deep inside himself, and he won’t have it, and he can’t bear it and he wants out -
“This crush you’ve got on Dean is getting out of hand,” Sam says, relaxing back into the seat. “There are laws against stalking, you know.”
Crowley smirks.
“I’m the King of Hell, Moose. The only laws I care about are the ones I write.”
“Okay, that was - do you practice this stuff?” says Dean, and he was going for bad-tempered, but he’s too tired even for that.
Crowley ignores him.
“You should sleep,” he says instead; and then, before Dean can even react, Crowley takes his right hand off the wheel, touches Dean, once, on the side of his neck, and the whole world goes black.
Or, not black.
Just darker. And lonely.
Goddammit, this is why he doesn’t sleep. Fuck.
Dean looks up at the starry sky and shivers.
He’s seen so much fucked-up shit in his life, and yet this place still gives him the creeps, always did, even if he knows, on some level, that it’s not real (not anymore).
He tries to stand up, but, of course, he’s fucking chained to the ladder, so that’s not happening. Looking down at his handcuffed wrist, he notices that he is, again, fifteen, because his arm looks pathetically thin and weak and childish.
“Great. Just great. Thanks a lot, asshole,” he says, but he knows Crowley can’t hear him, so he sits back down, passes his eyes over the silent, empty pool.
Dad and him, they hunted a dozen ghosts here. An entire swimming team poisoned by a wrong dose of ‘roids. It hadn’t been the most challenging hunt Dean had ever joined Dad on, but, fuck, those kids had been vicious, and, of fucking course, he’d ended up making a mistake, missing a step, and falling back into the pool.
And the fact it had been empty - yeah, not good news, because Dean had landed headfirst on the concrete, and the rest of it - Dad had said, later, that he hadn’t noticed, and Dean had wanted to believe him, but it’d been hard to shake the feeling Dad hadn’t cared at all. That he’d just left him there for an hour or more as Dean stared up at the dark sky, unable to move, cold fingers grabbing at his skin, cold voices laughing and yelling at him. He’d even fallen into a kind of hallucination - had been sure, somehow, that the pool was about to be filled, that he would just drown there, unseen and unnoticed and unremembered, and that Sammy would never even know what had happened.
He’d never told Dad, of course. He’d told the lady doctor at the ER, because she was nice and because she’d asked, but Dad -
Dean had fucked up badly enough by falling and giving himself a concussion and passing out in a place full of ghosts. No need for Dad to hear any more of his whinging.
And God, the place looks just the same. The bright blue bottom (looking much darker under the night sky, of course); the handful of lazy graffiti on the sides (Die, reads the one Dean can make out, and it’s spelled in big disjointed letters, a skull on the inside of the capital D). The four ladders, rusting slightly. The wild lawn, the tower blocks in the distance.
Yeah, Dean has dreamed of this place so often he could draw a perfect picture of it if his brain and his hand were actually connected to one another and he could draw anything at all.
The chain, though, is new. That appeared a few months ago, and now everything is even shittier, because Dean can’t even try to walk away - he can just sit on the side of the pool, his feet dangling over the edge, and rest his forehead on the cold metal and breathe in the faint smell of copper and rust and -
“Dean?”
Dean’s head snaps up. He turns around, and when he realizes what he’s seeing, he tries to stand up, the handcuff searing into his skin because of the harsh movement.
“Cas?”
And, yeah, it is Cas, and he looks surprisingly normal. Not dying. Not hurt, even.
“Cas, are you -” starts Dean, straining against the cold metal holding him down, “Are you here? Are you real?”
Cas frowns.
“I’m not sure that’s the most useful question to ask in a dream,” he says, slowly, as if he’s really thinking about the matter, and this seriousness of his (endearing; beloved) is what tells Dean this is actually Cas - the real Cas - and the sense of relief is so powerful Dean takes a step back, ends up kneeling down on the tiles.
“Are you okay? Is Lucifer gone?” he asks, and Cas nods.
“He - I think he’s dead. I can’t feel his presence at all.”
“So today wasn't a complete waste, then,” Dean says, noticing his own voice for the first time, and how weird it sounds.
He clears his throat, tries to ignore the momentary flash of pain and grief on Cas’ face.
“Are you really here?” he asks, trying to distract Cas from this huge, world-changing thing that must be pressing down against his very soul (the death of the last archangel; the end of the order God had created when he'd first separated light from dark).
“I woke up five minutes ago,” Cas nods. “We considered waking you up as well, but Crowley is right. You need to rest.”
Dean shakes his head, laughs.
“Yeah, not doing much resting in here,” he says, waving his chained hand as far as the handcuff will allow, and Cas takes a step closer, then stops, looks around.
“Is this Albany?” he asks, a bit diffidently.
“You know about it?” Dean asks, surprised, and then he rolls his eyes. “Of course you know about Albany. You know everything, right?”
There was another question in those words, but Cas ignores it. He takes another step forward.
“I never meant to pry. I simply - I saw your memories when I put you back together.”
It’s like he thinks Dean will be angry at him, and the closed-off expression on his face (the look of someone who expects a blow) would break Dean’s heart if Dean still had a heart to be broken; if the whole thing hadn’t collapsed on itself and burned to ashes a long, long time ago.
“I don’t mind,” he says, and it’s the truth. “Come on. If you’re not going to wake me up, keep me company. I’m getting a stiff neck here.”
Cas hesitates for a second, then he steps forward and - even if that isn’t exactly what Dean had meant - he sits down on Dean’s left, dangling his feet over the edge of the pool and frowning at the graffiti as Dean turns around and sits down beside him.
“So, are you really okay?” he asks, and Cas frowns again.
“I - yes. Amara’s blow wasn’t meant for me. It never touched me.”
Dean leaves out a long, shuddering breath, and feels like he could laugh.
Of course, the end of the world is still on, but Cas - Cas is okay, and that is -
“In fact, when God healed Lucifer, my wings were restored to me.”
“That’s - wow. That’s great, Cas.”
And Cas must hear the genuine joy in Dean’s voice, the touch of awe, because he smiles a little.
“Thank you,” he says, simply. “I am very happy.”
They sit side by side for a moment. Dean is itching to ask Cas what the hell was he thinking, and he also wants to tell him how scared and lost he is, because Cas is the only one he can tell this stuff to - not that Sam wouldn’t understand, but Sam has his own shit to deal with, and it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn’t be -
(And also, Dean wants to tell Cas those other things - that Cas should never have said yes to Lucifer, because fuck it, if he’d died - Dean can’t lose him, because -)
But Dean doesn’t say anything. He’s never been good with this - understanding what’s going on inside his own head, force this stuff out before it burns through his heart and lungs - and apparently being a fifteen-year-old kid in a dream doesn’t change anything.
“This is why I haven’t been sleeping,” he says instead, gesturing at the open space around them. “It was always bad, but since Amara -”
His voice trails off.
Since Amara what? Since Amara decided she loved him and tried to claim him for herself? Since Amara got free? Since Dean set her free so she could destroy the world?
“I know,” says Cas, looking at Dean, then away. “This is the first time you truly feared you were unloved. It stands to reason you would dream about it when you feel -”
This time it’s Cas who doesn’t finish his sentence. Dean has a whole list of words of the tip of his tongue, and he wants to deny what Cas just said, because it’s not true, and who cares, anyway? - but there’s nothing he can really say.
Because it is true. Dean’s never seen it until right now, but Cas is right.
It’s not like his life never sucked before - Mom dying, and Dad hitting him, and all those teachers telling him he wasn’t good enough, and Sammy who always needed something and Dean never, never managed to take care of him, not properly - but as he was lying down at the bottom of this pool (Dean can still taste the strong, coppery smell of his own blood in his nose and mouth) - Dean remembers staring up at a sky of distant lights and flickering ghosts and thinking - no, being sure, dead certain - that Dad had given up on him. That Dad had simply left, because Dad didn’t care at all.
(Because Sam was the one Dad cared about, and Dean -)
“Great,” he says, trying, and failing, to cross his arms on his chest; and, again, the cuff grazes his skin. “Can you do something about this?” he adds, pointing at it.
Cas reaches out, and his fingers pass on the metal before falling back to Dean’s wrist.
“No,” he says. “This is how your subconscious understands your connection to Amara. I cannot act upon it.”
His fingers hesitate, then ghost over Dean’s skin, healing the angry red burns which had started to bloom there.
“Fuck - Cas, I know Lucifer said - it’s not a connection, okay? It’s not - I don’t -”
Dean doesn’t know how much Cas knows about this, how much he’s seen, but suddenly it seems very important, absolutely paramount, that Cas should know Amara means nothing to Dean. Nothing at all.
“There is no shame in it,” Cas says, neutrally, starting to take his hand back, but Dean stops the movement, closes his left hand around Cas’ right wrist.
“I am ashamed,” he says, softly. “This thing, I don’t - I never -”
Again, the sentences trail into nothing.
Cas doesn’t say anything. He looks down at Dean’s thin fingers, then moves his hand, only just, until Dean lets go. Before Dean can put his hand back on his own thigh, though, Cas grabs it, laces their fingers together.
“I know you don’t. There is no shame in it, Dean,” he says again, very firmly, and Dean exhales, squeezes Cas' hand.
“Thanks,” he says, a bit gruffly.
“I know you feel trapped,” Cas says, looking down at the graffiti again (Die). “Everything seems out of your control, and you’re a child all over again, unwanted and left behind.”
Suddenly, there is a bright light in the sky, like a flash of fireworks. Dean wonders idly if those were the lights of a car in the real world before letting the thought float away.
He doesn’t need the real world. This place may be creepy and sad, and it always scared the hell out of him, but with Cas here with him, it’s not so bad.
“But you’re not that child anymore, Dean. You’re not unwanted and no one is leaving you behind.”
Dean pulls at the handcuff, sets his jaw.
“Yeah, well. I know she wants me, whatever that means,” he says, resentfully. “She told me I’m supposed to become boundless with her, or some shit.”
Cas sighs.
“You know that's not what I meant,” he says, and then he turns around, and his stupid blue eyes and his unfairly sandpapery voice become the only thing left in the universe. “I want you. And I’m not leaving you behind.”
Dean’s always been a dick, and this is something he could never do - accept this kind of girly talk at face value, admit he’s worth anything at all. So, yeah, he doesn’t.
“You said yes to Lucifer,” he says, and Cas pulls his hand back (Dean’s feel way too cold without it).
“I did it to keep you safe,” Cas says.
“Yeah, it still sucked.”
“It wasn’t fun for me, either,” Cas says, with a touch of his old dry superiority, but Dean won't have it.
“Fuck, why do you keep doing these things? Why do you -”
“I was given to you. My job is to watch over you -”
Cas is not shouting, or anything, but his voice is definitely much colder now, and if this were an actual human being, Dean would steel himself for a punch.
(Of course, he knows full well there’s no way he can prepare himself to have the stuffing beaten out of him by an actual seraph. No one could take that standing up.
Also, Cas would never hit him; would never hurt him.)
“Your job,” Dean says, interrupting the stupid bastard, and he knows he’s talking too loudly, but he doesn’t know how to stop it, “is to fucking stay alive.”
“Why?”
“Because I need you, you son of a bitch. Because I -”
Something changes in his own voice, and Dean stops talking, looks in wonder at his left arm - at his left hand, now gripping the lapels of Cas’ trench coat -
He’s himself again. He’s a grown man.
“What the hell?”
“I told you,” Cas says, completely unperturbed. “It’s a matter of will. Of control.”
Dean looks at him, then glances back. The handcuff has adjusted around his wrist, and all of a sudden, Dean hates it more than he’s ever hated anything in his painful, miserable life.
“I need you,” he says again, low and dangerous, turning to face Cas again, “so stop dying on me, and stop fucking leaving me, and stop -”
Before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s pulled at the cheap fabric and Cas is much closer now, still staring at him with those fucking blue eyes - Dean glances at Cas’ lips, sees they are open, only just, knows he will die if Cas ever gets the words out, if Cas says dying and leaving Dean is just stuff he’s got to do and cannot be changed -
(And also - and also -)
- so Dean dips his head forward, brushes their lips together.
At first, it’s not even a real kiss, just a way to carry out a conversation which was long overdue; Cas remains completely still as Dean licks and bites at his lips and curses at him when he comes up for air, because, fuck, Cas is such an idiot and a sorry son of a bitch and Jesus - but then Cas starts kissing back, and Dean realizes he’s never been kissed properly before, or maybe the rules have changed since he’s done it last, because God knows it’s been forever - when he feels Cas’ hands cupping his face he brings his right hand up, closing his fingers very tightly in Cas’ hair, and, God, the taste of Cas - the feel of Cas -
Dean doesn’t even know how much time has passed when he opens his eyes again and lets his fingers slide down Cas’ neck and to that secret, enticing place where Cas' skin disappears under the white cotton of his shirt.
“Fuck,” he says, completely and utterly shocked. “Fuck.”
Cas smiles at him.
“I always felt you were partial to this place,” he says, “but I never realized how much. Your memory skills are remarkable.”
Surprised, Dean looks around.
The pool is gone.
Instead, they’re in a bar - a friendly place with low ceilings and a jukebox in the corner and signed Johnny Cash photos on the walls.
It could be a bar like any other, but Dean knows it isn’t.
“This is that place in Rexford,” he says, and he wants to push back against it, but the truth is, he’s not even surprised.
He looks down at his right hand, but, of course, the cuff is no longer there.
The whole thing is simply - everything has changed, and it's like nothing else ever existed at all. He and Cas are sitting side by side on two bar stools, and as Dean takes it in and finally allows himself to look at Cas again, that song starts - Willie Nelson’s Always on My Mind.
Cas smiles again.
“Why are we here?”
“How should I know? It’s your dream, Dean.”
And, yeah, Dean was hoping for an out here, because he knows what they’re doing here - this is the moment he almost told Cas - the moment that could have changed everything. They’d been sitting side by side, like they are now, and suddenly Dean can’t bear it, because if he’d only said the words - if he’d been honest, for fucking once -
Maybe I didn't hold you all those lonely, lonely times, and I guess I never told you I'm so happy that you're mine, Willie rasps out, just as he did all those years ago, and Dean’s breath catches.
He stands up, almost falling off his stool, turns around - Cas’ knees open instinctively, and Dean walks between them, puts his hands on Cas’ thighs, humbled and amazed at how easy this is.
“I don’t know if we’ll make it out,” he says, a bit too low, “and it’s likely I won’t, and we’ll all blow up or some shit, but Cas -”
Little things I should have said and done, I just never took the time -
“That night, that was - God, you have no idea - I drove down there to apologize, to tell you -”
You were always on my mind.
“And then I saw how you were living. What I’d done to you,” Dean says, and his hands contract on the cotton of Cas’ slacks, and he looks down, because, really, he can’t -
Cas puts his hands over Dean’s, bows his head forward until their foreheads touch.
“But still, I was selfish,” Dean whispers, miserably. “And that night, in that bar - I mean, this bar - I really wanted to - Cas, I wanted to tell you -”
The words won’t come out, because Dean has never said them and meant them, and this right here is scaring the shit out of him and he's a fucking coward and he can’t take it.
“I would have been happy to hear it,” Cas says, just as softly, and Dean doesn’t notice he’s been crying until they’re kissing again and he feels Cas’ thumbs on his cheeks, wiping the tears away.
And when Cas smiles against his lips, Dean breaks the kiss, looks up.
“Cas, I -”
“OI! No drooling on my seats - they’re Smythson leather, custom-made.”
Dean wakes up with a jolt, almost smashes the back of his head against the car window.
“What the fuck?”
“Do you have any idea how much dry-cleaning costs? Oh, of course you don’t,” Crowley sneers, shooting him a disgusted glance before turning back to the road again.
Dean keeps staring at him, completely weirded out, barely catches the satisfied smirk on his face before the dream crashes down upon him - the pool, and the bar, and -
He whips around, finds Sam and Cas, and even fucking Chuck, looking at him from the back seat. For a second he wonders if the dream was just that - a dream - and then Cas smiles at him - a soft, loving smile of pure joy and happiness, and Dean -
“You were talking in your sleep. About doing things. With my son. Dean, that’s just wrong,” Chuck says, sounding pissed, and Dean stares at him, then at Cas (still smiling like a lunatic) and finally at Sam (who rolls his eyes, almost blushes).
“He’s a grownass angel,” Dean says, when he can speak again. “He can do what he wants.”
Chuck mumbles something which had free will in it and a couple of curses, and Crowley snorts in amusement.
“We’re here,” he says, pulling up in front of a house Dean remembers all too well. “Time to regroup and work out a way to win this thing.”
“Any chance we can have some real food first? Not, you know, a human liver, or -”
“Really, Sam, who do you take me for? Fridge’s all stocked. All of your favourite Moose things, and some pie for Mr Lover Boy here.”
“Shut up,” Dean says, but it’s half-hearted at best.
He stares up at the house for a second, and then, unable to help himself, he turns back, and, barely managing to avoid Sam’s ginormous legs (and what the fuck - did the bastard grow even taller?) he puts his hand on Cas’ knee.
“Listen, man, what I said in there -”
“You didn’t say anything,” Cas points out, and Dean closes his hand more firmly over the fabric, feeling the reassuringly human structure under his palm (skin and bone: something solid; alive).
“Okay, what I didn’t say,” he says, truculently, “Whatever. I still meant it.”
“I know,” says Cas, and his smile widens as he reaches out, places his hand on top of Dean’s.
And, again, Dean’s breath hitches as he gets lost in Cas’ blue eyes, because there’s so much love in there that Dean can’t bear it (that Dean will drown in it); and yet this is necessary, this is everything, and if the others make retching sounds and can’t get out of the car fast enough, well, that’s their fucking problem, not his.
Because he and Cas, they've been waiting a long time for this, and if Dean wants to be gross and disgusting about it and make cow eyes at Cas and cook him heart-shaped burgers and stick his tongue down Cas' throat in front of Sam and Crowley and the the fucking Lord of Lords before they're all blown to bits - well, he will fucking go ahead and do it. Just try and stop him.