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The air is dense and cold as Dean speeds down the highway. It's as if the clouds specifically descended to isolate him and the Impala from the rest of the sleepy town. But that kind of thing doesn’t happen any more.
He doesn't know what he expects to find, but he has to make sure that a person supposedly killed by a bear in the middle of the town was actually killed by a bear in the middle of the town. Six months ago, he would have been sure that it wasn’t a bear. Sam and Cas would have come with him and ganked the son of a bitch that did this to a poor pregnant lady. The papers said that there were claw marks on the body. What’s weird is that there were no bite marks anywhere on the body, and no bear attacks had been noted in the area for… well… ever. But who’s Dean to judge? Maybe there’s a stray bear roaming the empty plains of North America.
Dean grips the wheel and steps on the gas. He wants music, but all the gods of rock sound false. Hollow, even. He hopes to God (that bastard) that whatever killed that girl isn’t a god. He doesn't know what happened to the lower case gods, and as long as they stay out of his way, he doesn't particularly care. Sam is happy. That's what matters, right?
He tells himself that it is.
Dean eases off the gas. He's getting near Sheffield anyway. Usually Sam navigates, but this time it's his phone that says, "Turn left in three kilometres." He hates his phone.
He'd hated it when he got it legitimately registered to Dean Winchester. It had originally had female voice, but Sam had gotten in and changed the voice to a British man. Now, not only does it read the miles in completely idiotic terms like "kilometers," but it doesn’t respond to his voice commands unless he fakes a British accent, too. It was kinda funny at first. Now it just reminds him of seeing Sam in the library checking out college information guides.
He turns left when the voice starts to sound panicky about it and finds himself driving through the quaint little town of Sheffield nestled in among the tall brown grasses and few big green trees that loom suddenly out of the fog. In this little place, it was pretty reasonable that a bear could actually have gotten her. But Dean's not about to leave that up to chance.
The station is not terribly hard to find. The lights in the windows create halos in the fog. It’s small, like many local stations, with only a few squad cars parked out back and an oak tree leaning over the roof like a proud parent. Dean pulls up and rifles through the glove compartment until he finds one of his old FBI badges and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. He thinks briefly of stocking up on the supplies that are still in his trunk, but he’s not sure they’d work now. If any monsters are left, do the same rules apply to killing them? It's been so long since he's done this that he's not sure he knows.
The place is so small that he almost hits the front desk with the door as he swings it open. It smells of bad coffee and old paper and desperation. That speaks to Dean’s soul. The lady at the desk smiles at him. "Hey there. What can I do for ya?"
Dean flips open his badge. "Agent Aarons. I'm here to look at the body from the bear attack."
"Danielle Stockton. You’re FBI?" she asks politely. She's cute. Blonde with a soft Southern accent. Must have relocated to the middle of nowhere. He can’t think why it would be on purpose. She tips her head to the side a little, an affectation that usually would charm Dean except for the sickening flutter in his gut. “Are bears part of the FBI’s jurisdiction?”
"Budget cuts," Dean says, trying to look long-suffering. "My caseload is pretty light, so they sent me over just to check it out. Make sure it was actually a bear, you know. Never been any bears in the area until someone dies from a bear attack. Kinda suspicious.”
"You must have pretty low staff, since you seem to be missing a partner.”
“He ate some bad clams,” Dean says, dredging up a familiar lie.
Her mouth drops open in sudden sympathy. “MacHale’s?”
“What?”
“MacHale’s down the road, right? They keep getting sanitation violations and cleaning up, but they always go back to their old comfortable ways. If I was you, I’d put the fear of God into them before you leave town. Maybe they’ll leave, too!” She laughs out loud at the thought. “It’s kinda funny but it’s really no joke, Agent. I ate some bad shrimp there last year. Big mistake. I was out for a week! I don’t understand how they can still be in business.”
Dean makes his mouth twist into something similar to a smile. “I’ll make sure to stop by and scare them a bit.”
This seems to satisfy Officer Stockton, and she leads Dean into the back where two bodies are stretched out under blue sheets in an area that’s about the size of his bedroom. She tucks back the covers around one of them to reveal a stunningly beautiful dead woman. Everything below her face is torn in great red stripes. "This is Lily. She was pregnant, too. First one. She was so excited."
"And the baby's father?"
"He’s out of the picture. We’re questioning him, though. He’s a nice guy, but that’s what everyone always says about murderers." Officer Stockton sighs over Lily’s body. "She was in knitting club. She made baby hats for preemies." Her voice wobbles for a moment and then she gets herself back under control. She shoots Dean an apologetic look. "I'm not actually the officer assigned to the case, you know. That’s Officer Jones. He’ll be in tomorrow if you want to talk to him.”
"It’s okay," Dean says. "I just need a short look." He moves to the other table and flips the sheet back to see an elderly man’s face. "Hey, did-- uh--” Dean checks the toe tag, “Tommy di Marco die from a bear attack, too?"
Officer Stockton shakes her head, her eyes watering up. The towns where everyone knows everyone else are the worst. "I almost wish it was. He would have liked to go out that way. No, just a heart attack." She gives him a sympathetic smile. "Feel free to let me know if you have any questions, honey. I'll help if I can."
And then Dean is alone with the bodies.
Lily Frank was young woman with short hair and incredible cheekbones. Mid-twenties maybe. She'd already been cleaned, the wounds standing out with severity on her skin. There's a uniformity to them that troubles Dean. One part in particular is pretty ravaged, as if the bear (or whatever) was aiming for one spot over her sternum. For a moment, he feels a sick sense of relief, thinking it’s a werewolf.
He picks up a couple of implements and begins digging. He wonders, briefly, if she had been anything else before the human apocalypse. Was she a demon? An angel? A shifter? A ghoul? Had she ever eaten another person? Or maybe she was just a human trying to live in an unsafe world.
Unsafe. That's what it feels like now. He could protect himself from anything before. He could protect other people just because they were human .
There's a hole there, underneath all of the scratches. A tunnel in her flesh that makes him feel nauseated. He keeps going, despite knowing almost certainly what caused this.
A human.
It's a gunshot wound. He’s seen them before, and he knows what this is. Her killer wore some kind of claw shaped weapons and dug at her like a deranged Wolverine to hide the bullet wound. Dean wouldn't put it past someone who really hated her-- probably the ex-- to put on actual bear paws over his hands and then go for it. Humans are monsters. But still he digs around in this poor dead woman's body for any sign that it might have been a mistake. Maybe he’ll find a werewolf claw or a broken vampire fang. Maybe, just maybe, it was a monster.
He doesn’t know why it matters so much. It shouldn't. A woman is dead. This case is over, but he still has to find out what caused this. Then he sees the telltale gleam of a bullet fragment. It’s lodged further up than it should be, so it might have been missed.
Dean is willing to bet actual FBI agents don't have breakdowns over people killed by human beings instead of monsters. But he’s not actually FBI.
There aren't any tears, because it's not that kind of breakdown. It's just a slow panic that spreads over him, tingling in bizarre patterns across his skin until he's short of breath. Spots cloud his vision. He’s not sure that he can move his limbs. And then he's sagging against the body storage unit and trying to get some air because the world is squeezing down to a tunnel. He tries to think about the way the metal is cold against his back, the way that the handle is digging into his side. He thinks about the floor under his feet and wonders if he's going to have to sit down. He doesn't want to, but he does anyway. His eyes are drawn to the cleaning supplies over the metal tub sink, and he wonders if he’s going to throw up or faint.
In the end, God and Amara had saved the world by turning everyone human.
Everyone. Angels, demons, Leviathan, reapers, shifters, ghouls, djinn--- everything except ghosts who got a pass to their afterlives.
It was because of Sam. God likes Sam in a way that Dean thought only he liked Sam. When they finally saw Chuck and Amara again, they’d been generous, and so strangely harmonious it was like talking to one person. Dean and Sam were given one wish to save the world. Just one time that Deus would Ex Machina for them. One wish to split between the two of them. Dean wanted the dead to come back and fight alongside them. It had been perfect-- better than perfect-- with their mom. Wouldn’t it be great if Dad and Bobby and Ellen and Jo and Ash and Rufus and Kevin and everyone they’d ever lost came back?
But Sam beat him to the punch. He asked for everyone in the future to be safe from monsters.
People say to be careful what you wish for. They don’t say that the worst part is when your brother wishes for something wonderful and altruistic. They don’t tell you that you’ll be left standing there feeling like the world’s biggest douche because you didn’t think of it first. And the worst part of that is that you’re so goddamn ungrateful to the God who damned you to live in the world you helped make.
Sam has a place. Sam’s found a job. Sam’s thinking of going back to school.
Cas has a garden and his blog that reads like an insane conspiracy theorist’s view of history.
Sam is leaving, and Cas is incomprehensible. Go Team Free Will.
He still remembers the gentle look on Amara's face when she and Chuck changed everything. Like she wanted to make things right. Maybe she thought they were doing the right thing. Maybe she didn't understand what it meant to change the world like that. What it meant to change Dean's world like that.
Suddenly, he can't be here any more. The morgue feels tight and airless. Dean strips off the latex gloves and drops them in the trash.
He tries to leave without alerting Officer Stockton to his presence, but it's impossible in a station as small as this one. "Find what you were looking for?" she asks, a worried smile on her face. She reminds him of Donna. It makes him sick thinking of Jody and Donna and the girls, their perfect little hunter's home turned lost girl rescue. Even though Claire had already begun hunting, the girls had both adjusted quickly to the human world. Cas even said that Claire was training to become a cop. Officer Stockton probably never even knew about monsters.
Dean's stomach gives a threatening twist, so he croaks out, "Bullet. You're looking at a murder," before bolting out of the station. She can hear him calling after her, but he has to breathe .
The damp, foggy air doesn't make him feel any better. He looks out into white rolls of cloud that have settled over the town and thinks that the best thing to do would be to get back in Baby and head home.
He does get into Baby, but he doesn't go home. Instead, he drives, turning when he feels like he can't stand to be on a road any more. Fog and headlights, houses looming up like threats and then disappearing harmlessly behind him, the ceaseless sound of engine and tires and wipers. It's mind-numbing enough that when he has to stop for gas, he decides to stop for the night.
He doesn't feel hungry, but the motel vending machine only has Good n Plenty's and he's feeling masochistic. He buys two boxes and takes them upstairs to the second floor where he throws everything on what would have been Sam's bed. There's a 24 hour marathon of the X-Files movie on, so he watches it. The candy sticks hopelessly in his teeth until he feels like a child gumming his way through stuff he doesn’t even want to eat.
Right now, Sam would be off work and would be making a salad before cracking open the latest bestseller in an attempt to better know his library’s patrons. Cas would be out in back, working on his garden, or he'd be on the phone with Claire, or on his blog posting the truth about the French Revolution. Cas would be in sweatpants, understanding finally what it means to be in comfortable clothes. He’d maybe have a movie on in the background, just like Dean does. Or maybe music. He hasn’t caught on to what’s good or bad yet, he just seems to latch onto things randomly. There’s a lot of stuff Cas likes that Dean didn’t think he would. And so Dean thinks, at last, of what made him leave.
Cas’ breath had been sweet from fresh mint when he leaned so close to Dean that Dean had thought they were going to kiss. The neck of his shirt had been pulled to the side, revealing the line of his shoulder. His hands were still dirty from the garden. He’d been warm. Dean still doesn’t know what Cas wanted. He’d been saying words that Dean didn’t hear-- but he was so human that it felt stifling. The air was sucked out of Dean’s lungs.
On screen, a bee crawls under the collar of Scully's shirt.
Cas started a garden in November. They'd had to scramble to grab seeds at Home Depot because he wanted to pour the last teaspoons of his grace into something worthwhile. The plants had lived in pots in the bunker for months. Cas would stick his fingers into the dirt, watering them and letting the last dregs of his grace pour into their little green leaves. It had smelled like summer all winter, with the fresh, sharp scent of tomato plants, strawberry leaves, onion shoots, thyme, basil, mint. They’d taken over armloads of zucchini and potatoes and apples and flowers to his mom who made them pie and lasagna and soups. Dean had used the plants to cook burger after burger, pasta after pasta, eggs, pancakes, everything he could think of to use up the bumper crop.
He’d been trying to recapture a flavor he’d half forgotten from a diner he couldn’t remember. What he could remember was that burgers created before the age of mankind tasted different. Maybe angels and demons and ghosts and everything that wormed into the souls of humanity had something to do with the way stuff tasted. The way that the air felt. The way the sun looked. The way that Dean felt.
The movie starts over.
Dean watches and understands Mulder in his endless quest to get Scully to see the truth. When it starts again, he sees things from Scully's point of view. The third time he wonders what he would do if he was one of them. If aliens and government conspiracies had been more real than demons and ghosts, he thinks that there would be a lot more dead FBI agents and a lot more dead aliens too. He thinks he would have become an outcast. A terrorist for the side of good. And then he realizes that's exactly what he is. What he was.
Dean starts laughing. He laughs until his sides ache, thinking of their bunker and Sam's insistence that they stay within the limits of the law. They have jobs and loans and credit cards in their real names which they actually try to pay off. He laughs thinking of Cas applying to a job with absolutely no references or work history. He laughs at his own attempts to work construction, and then he stops laughing and falls asleep with burning eyes while the movie starts again for a fifth time.
When he finally, finally checks his phone, he has 43 messages. Five texts are from his mom, asking where he is and reminding him to be safe. Ten increasingly irritated texts and one voice mail are from his brother. There are 27 missed calls from Cas.
In the morning, even though he doesn’t want to, he sets out for home.
--
Cas answers the bunker door when he knocks.
He’s like a cliche TV parent who waits for their kid to come home. He stands squarely in the door until Dean shoulders his way in. For a moment, it's like old times where Dean stares at Cas, and Cas stares back at the incorporeal part of Dean that only angels seem to be able to see. Dean knows he can't see his soul anymore. He doesn't even know if there is such a thing as souls now. He wonders what Cas’ human soul looks like, or if he even has one.
"You're an idiot," Castiel snaps, stomping down the stairs.
Dean gapes after him for a moment, and then barks out a harsh laugh as he follows. "Like you told me every time you were going to flap off!"
Cas glares at him, but it's somehow less menacing when he's barefoot in sweatpants and a t-shirt from Sam's library. Try Summer Reading today! Cas' shirt says cheerfully, while Cas himself growls, "You left your bunker keys." He smells like sweat, and Dean wonders if he planted anything new and why he still has the exact amount of stubble that he's always had.
"Where's Sam?" Dean asks, ignoring the comment.
"Working late." Cas won't stop staring at him like a cop trying to intimidate a suspect. It doesn’t work. Dean’s been a fake cop for too long to let Bad Cop boss him around. "Sit," he says, pointing to a chair. "You're going to explain to me where you went."
“I left because there was a case,” Dean protests, going to stand next to one of the bookshelves. He’s been sitting all day to drive back. He can’t stand the thought of sitting now, especially if Cas tries to loom over him.
“There are no more cases, Dean,” Cas says, moving closer. He’s pulling out that sharp Angel of the Damn Lord voice, which makes Dean want to hit him. “There will never be any more cases. There’s nothing to hunt any more.” There are explosions going off in Dean’s head. Little grenades of their new reality. Dean suddenly hopes that Sam is going to walk through the door, because Cas hates personal space limitations and they’re both too human for what’s going on in Dean’s heart. “But that doesn’t mean you can just run off without telling anyone!”
He tries to focus on what Cas is saying and not the fact that he’s close enough to touch. “What? Why?”
Cas draws himself up like some barefoot bird and says, “What if you got in an accident and no one knew where you were?”
“Are you saying I’m a bad driver?” This is not what Dean expected, and he started heating up with anger.
“I’m saying you should be careful. What if someone else hits your car? What if you ran off a cliff? What if someone attacked you? What if you have a heart attack? What if you become seriously ill?” He starts ticking these things off on his fingers like they are demonic weapons. He’s so serious that it’s almost laughable. Dean would be laughing, but Cas is just too close for laughter.
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
“I can’t heal you any more, Dean!” Cas says furiously. He’s still pressing his right forefinger into his left ring finger. His knuckles are white. “I’m not an angel. There are no angels left . There are no demons, no werewolves, no vampires, but there’s nothing good left, either. Your current life is the only one you have left. You have maybe fifty years. Maybe!” And then he slumps, deflating like a human-shaped balloon and stepping back. “Fifty years,” he says again, like he’s saying fifty seconds.
It suddenly strikes Dean that Cas hasn’t figured everything out. Sam might have, but Cas hasn’t. No amount of growing new plants can make up for the fact that he’s not an angel any more. He can’t heal any more, can’t fly, can’t travel through time like it’s just the next town over. He gets it. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, Cas.” Or at least, most of it.
This is when Dean moves forward to put his hand on Cas’ shoulder. But he can’t seem to stop there. He pulls Cas in for a hug. He doesn’t hug often, but this is Cas and Cas is family. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“I keep forgetting things,” Cas says into his shoulder. “Last week, I forgot the songs the laborers sang when they were building the Great Wall of China. This morning I couldn’t accurately picture an angel. It is so far above the understanding of a human mind that I can’t comprehend it any more.”
“You don’t need to remember,” Dean says, patting his back and wondering how long this torture of a hug is going to last.
“I forgot what I really looked like,” Cas says before squeezing Dean tightly. “That was important to me.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Dean says.
They step back before it gets gay. But then it really gets gay, because Cas says, “I may be in love with you,” with all the seriousness of a grave.
“I know,” Dean says. The real shock is that it’s not a surprise. He can feel himself going red, but it’s kind of nice. It’s nice. Being loved by Cas is the best thing that’s happened to him since Sam fixed the world.
“I can’t tell for sure,” Cas says frankly. He has this angelically clinical look on his face as if emotions are things to be broken down and discussed. “But if this is really love, then I may have been in love with you for a very long time. I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in love before.”
Dean reaches out and touches his shoulder. Tentatively at first and then more firmly. Three little pats and then he lets his arm fall down again, because if he doesn’t, he’s not sure what he will do. Probably hug Cas again. “It’s not bad.”
“It’s better than being an angel,” Cas says. The evaluating look of an angel melts like snow into the warm expressions of a human. And he smiles, a quick, sideways one that does funny things to Dean’s stomach. “Even if homoerotic moments make you so uncomfortable you have to make up a case to leave.”
Dean's ears suddenly start burning. "We didn't have a homoerotic moment ." The thought of having a relationship with Cas as an angel is laughable. The thought of having a romance with Cas at all is laughable. But looking at him standing there in that dumb t-shirt with sweatpants and exactly the same amount of stubble he's always had, Dean is suddenly conflicted. "Hey," he says. "I don't know... I'm going crazy or something. This world-- I’m still figuring it out." It’s as close to I'm sorry as he's going to get.
"Didn't you think about this before? About what would happen if everyone was human?"
"Nope," says Dean. It’s true, too. He’d thought about leaving the life. So many times that his plans became almost a memory. But then he’d also think about the stuff that would happen if he got out of hunting. About people being eaten, and souls being stolen, and the ugly machine of heaven versus the screaming chaos of hell. So he’d keep going. He never once thought it would end like this. Just a bunch of humans, and Cas confessing his love.
"I did," Castiel says, and makes his way over to the wide wooden table. He sits down and pulls out a chair for Dean. "I thought about it a lot. Mostly after I gave up heaven for you." After a moment he adds, "And for Sam."
Dean drops down into the empty chair and tries not to think about Cas' bare feet and soft pants. He wishes, not for the first time, that Cas still wore Jimmy Novak's clothes like a second skin, teleported them to breakfast, and forgot what a toothbrush was for. As nice as it is to be loved, it puts pressure on you. Dean has to decide what he wants to do now.
"When I was an angel I thought it was easier being a human. Because God loved you so much. It's evident in all he does. Sometimes I wished I could be a human. A hunter. I wished I could travel with you and be beloved by God." He was as big as the Empire State Building once, Dean remembers. And now his soul is small and bright like the rest of them. Something small enough to fit into a suitcase. Something important enough to power the wars of heaven and hell. "But when you're human you don’t know if God loves you. You can’t feel it. I thought you could.”
"I could have told you that," Dean said. "Actually, I think I did."
"I didn't believe you. Because as an angel I saw it so clearly. How God abandoned us after he was done making us. How much he loved you and your kind." And then Cas smiles, a sad half-quirk at the edge of his mouth. "Our kind.” He pauses for a moment, fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “But I think loving you is enough for me, now. Maybe God’s love is realized in each human love for each other.”
Dean's breath doesn't seem to be able to leave his lungs. He only gets up half way from his chair, bending over as he moves forward. Cas' shirt falls open at the collar as he leans forward to meet Dean. Dean can see his throat, his collarbone, but mostly his eyes, his nose, his weird-ass mouth with the wide upper lip, the way his lower lashes are dark against his skin and then sight doesn't matter because they're kissing and all he can do is feel .
Cas tastes like mint. Dean wonders for a moment what it would have been like to kiss him when he was an angel. He decides it’s not important, because when he kisses Cas-- briefly, firmly-- Dean realizes just how scared he really was of all of this, how much all that doesn’t matter. Almost kissing Cas was worse than kissing him, because now he can just let things go. It’s done. Dean doesn’t have to worry about it any more.
And Castiel, former Angel of the Lord, former Angel of Himself, Castiel the human, Castiel the fallen angel--- he’s just Cas now. He’s barefoot in sweats and Sam’s library’s t-shirt, smelling like mint and growing things and looking at Dean with a weird kind of hope.
Dean has to swallow. “That was…”
“...a long time coming?” Cas finishes for him.
“Something like that, yeah.” Dean’s still bent over and he steadies himself not by stepping back but by bracing his hands on the arms of Cas’ chair. They share the same breath. He closes his eyes, just for a moment. When Dean opens them again, Cas is still staring at him. It feels so familiar that words start tumbling out of Dean’s mouth.
“I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be,” Dean says, finally. When Cas opens his mouth to say something, Dean holds up his hand. “Just let me finish, okay? You seem to think I’m someone else. Like I’m better or more… precious or something. I don’t know what you see when you look at me. I’m not… I’m not good.” This comes out wrong, so he tries again. “I’m not a good man. I’m not a righteous man. No matter what that stupid ass prophecy said. I’ve been a demon, Cas. I’ve… done stuff. As a demon. As a human.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t even know what to do now that there’s no monsters.”
It’s a long silence before Cas says, “Nobody does.”
“Sam-”
“Sam knew what he wanted to do before the world ended up this way,” Cas says. “You didn’t. You thought the fight would never end.”
It’s true. It hurts, and it’s true, and finally someone has said it. Someone else gets it.
“I know you,” Cas says before repeating, softer, “I know you .” He touches Dean’s chest lightly with two fingers, a parody of a healing gesture. “I’ve made your body again for you around your bright soul. It’s the last angelic memory that I’ll cling to. When I forget heaven, I will remember dragging you out of hell, and making you again in your own image. I think I’d know if you were good or not.” Then he smiles. Not a big one. Just a parting of lips and a quirk of the mouth that Dean now knows the feel of. “But I don’t just love people because they’re good. I love you because I know you. Because you know me. Because sometimes you’re kind of a dick and kind of a hero. Because you save people. Because you love your brother. Because you love me.” His smile is a little sad. “It doesn’t matter what kind of love it is you have for me. Love itself is enough.”
“Do you want to kiss me?” Dean says, not trusting himself to say more.
“Yes,” Cas says.
“And what else…” Dean can’t bring himself to say it.
“Everything,” Cas says.
“Okay,” Dean says roughly, and it’s the easiest thing he’s ever had to say in his life. “Come here.”
He finally moves from his position, his back aching, and holds out his hand. Cas takes it and stands. The walk to his bedroom is so embarrassing that Dean feels like his face could set the whole bunker on fire. When they reach his room, his heart pounds in his ears until Cas slips his arms around Dean and kisses him again. His lips are chapped, his technique is sloppy and Dean hasn’t felt like this in years.
Neither of them know what they’re doing, but they both know each other.
So when Dean kisses Cas and Cas kisses Dean it’s weird but it’s okay. And when Cas starts to get that pent up worry on his face like he’s a storm about to break, Dean knows to reach up and grab his chin. He knows to say, “Hey, stay with me.” When Dean starts to freak out, Cas stares him in the eye and that talks him off a metaphorical ledge of gay freakout.
It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, because it’s theirs. It’s theirs when Dean pushes Cas down and leans over him, still smelling of the car. It’s theirs when Cas reaches up and pulls on Dean’s shoulders, bringing their bodies against each other. They strip off clothes together, littering the floor like trees shedding leaves. They move together on Dean’s memory foam mattress, all soft sounds and gentle words. They guide each other through kisses and touches, and Dean forgets everything except the moment, and Cas, and how damn happy he is.
After, Dean cries. He didn’t know how much like home this love- this intimacy- would feel. He doesn’t even mind when Cas, glowing with happiness instead of angelic light, sees. Cas whispers a few words in Enochian that Dean doesn’t understand. Something gentle and pleading.
They fall asleep in the same bed. Once, Dean wakes to find Cas with his laptop out, typing on his blog. The glow of the screen highlights Cas’ ridiculous cheekbones and studious expression. “Turn that off,” Dean says, his voice cloudy with sleep. He slings an arm over Cas’ stomach and tugs, tethering him like a string on a balloon. The laptop snaps shut and Cas presses his face into Dean’s shoulder until he falls asleep. Dean keeps his nose buried in Cas’ hair and finds that he can sleep, too.
--
Dean wakes up alone. Everything seems normal at first, but after a moment, he's reminded of how he fell asleep. The pillow next to him still smells like Cas' shampoo, and he considers sniffing it. Deciding that's too weird, he pulls himself out of bed and makes his way over to the shower. He's usually up before Sam these days, riddled with insomnia, but even while the hot water is pouring down his back, he can smell bacon cooking downstairs. It's not likely to be Cas (who doesn't like using the old open-flame stove), and suddenly Dean realizes he’s going to have to tell Sam about all this.
He's sore, too, and when he gets out of the shower, he rubs the mirror to look at his own reflection. There are more bruises than he thought he'd get, and for some reason he doesn't feel bad about it. He thought he would. He thought he'd feel like a whole different person. A gay person.
But he doesn't. He feels like a slightly banged up Dean Winchester. For a moment he wonders if it’s just because he’s always been like this.
He pads down to the kitchen in bare feet, hoping that someone has put the coffee on. There's a fair amount of light, and he wonders if Sam finally switched out the old fluorescents for those full spectrum lights he's been talking about.
Sam is making bacon in the kitchen, and Cas glances over from where he’s perched on a stool. He's wearing a pair of Dean's nondescript black boxers and the same shirt from last night. He's still barefoot which is beautifully human. Someone has made coffee, and Dean takes a mug without saying anything. Cas isn’t looking at him, which he’s surprised to find freaks him out a little. He thought it would be the opposite-- that he wouldn’t want to share meaningful looks with Cas over the breakfast stable. He finds that he does.
"Morning," Sam says, tossing the bacon onto a plate. He’s freshly showered, so he must have already gone out jogging. That heathen. "I'm going to make pancakes. How many do you want?"
"How big are they going to be?" Dean asks, moving to take a seat next to Cas. He wants to stare openly, to let his eyes linger over that spot just behind Cas' left ear that he now knows is sensitive. But Sam's here, and he's not gonna get into this with his brother in the room.
"About this big." Sam makes a gesture.
"Yeah, uh, three?" Usually Dean's the one making food and Sam's coming in from a run while Cas doesn’t roll out of bed until closer to noon. Dean feels like this is the first time he’s slept decently in ages. "You working today?”
"No," Sam pours some batter directly into the bacon fat. Heavy pancakes, the way Dean likes them. "I’m off because I have a program I can't miss tomorrow."
Dean frowns at him. "They don't let you do events."
" Programs , Dean. And..." Sam scratches the back of his neck, "they're going to. I’ll be working on an online degree." He turns around purposefully, looking at Dean with a guilty expression. “I got accepted to an Masters’ program that I can do from home. So you might get stuck with more of the cooking. Sorry.”
Something huge and dark breaks in Dean's stomach and suddenly he is grinning so hard he has to hide it in his cup of coffee. He hadn't known, until then, just how much he wanted Sam to stay. Maybe not even in the bunker, but in the area. He’d grown up scrambling over Sam for shotgun and flopping down in the same bed and sharing the same air for so long. And he didn’t want it to stop just because the world had changed.
"So the great thing is that if I push myself, my graduation will happen right when Helen's retiring. I've pretty much been guaranteed her position. It's a good deal for everyone,” Sam turns his spatula over a couple of times. “I meant to tell you sooner.”
“Sam, Sam, the educated man,” Dean says, unable to keep the sheer volume of pride out of his voice. “Probably the first Winchester to have a PhD.”
“It’s just a Masters’,” Sam protests, the slope of his shoulders betraying his embarrassment. “Look, I’m gonna go get that syrup Mom gave us. Make sure the pancakes don’t burn.”
When Sam steps out of the kitchen for a minute to grab the really good maple syrup from the industrial pantry, Dean turns to Cas. Cas turns to look back at him, and it’s exactly what he wanted. “Hi,” he says.
“Good morning, Dean,” Cas says.
Dean lets their knees touch. “Hey.” And because he can’t think of anything else to say, he asks, “What's so important that you had to blog last... you know... last night? Why'd you stay up?”
Cas tilts his head a little, lips twitching. “I didn’t tell you? I write it so I can remember even when I forget.”
Oh. That makes sense. “Huh,” Dean says. He scoots his stool a little closer. “So what are you going to say when you get to the part about me and Sam?”
“The truth,” Cas says.
“Which is?”
“That I thought I knew everything about humans. And then I found out I was wrong.” He smiles, then, bashful. “I was so happy to be wrong.”
It’s a good thing Sam comes back in then, because Dean would have kissed Cas there in the middle of the kitchen. Instead he just stares at him. This former angel of the lord, finally human as hell. A man who knows what God is, who knows who God is, who has seen the beginning of humanity as well as its near destruction-- this man changed because of Dean Winchester.
The line of Cas' neck is beautiful, the pink of his skin lightening just before it reaches the darkness of his hair. His eyes are a beautiful human blue that don’t flash with angelic intent. His face, his body, his soul, his voice-- Dean is overwhelmed with him. "I want two pancakes," Cas says to Sam, sneaking a piece of the bacon off a plate. He breaks it in half and hands the rest to Dean under the counter before shoving his part in his mouth.
And that's it. Dean's in love with a guy who will share his bacon.
He reaches for Cas' knee, puts a hand there.
This world isn't perfect. In a perfect world, he'd be hunting and Sam would be a Man of Letters and Cas would watch over them both from a heaven that was empty of manipulation (possibly with long hours making out in the backseat). Bobby and Kevin and Charlie and Ellen and Jo would be alive. Hell, everyone would be alive.
He still misses all of them.
But this-- this is good.
It's good because Sam’s at his side. And it’s good because Cas is here with him.
People are peaceful in a monster-less world with an angel-less heaven above and a demon-less hell below. Happy in a world where ghosts were stories and witches were spiritual instead of strong. Happy in a world where your soul was safe from everyone but yourself. Sam is happy in his little library teaching kids how to read and adults how to look for jobs while cataloguing the end of the world that was. Cas is planting things in his garden and saving his memories from their inevitable decline.
Dean will get there.
He doesn't know how, but he will. It might have something to do with his extraordinary talent with making burgers, or his love of cars, or his construction abilities. It might have something to do with his desire for kids, or his field experience in law enforcement. But part of his future is here. Part of it is Dean with the taste of illicit bacon in his mouth while Sam makes breakfast. And much of it is Cas-- sitting there beside him wearing boxers and watching Sam flip pancakes. This thing between them is new and bright and Dean finds himself feeling like a lovelorn teenager when Cas turns to look at Dean and hides a smile.
Cas drops his hand, lets his fingers fall against Dean's.
This is, of course, when Sam notices and subtlely freaks out. Dean can only tell because he knows what it means when his brother’s movements go all jerky and weird like literally the worst actor in the history of the profession. It reminds him of trying to be Jensen Arbuckle and Jared PolishLastName back when angels could do things like send you to different dimensions. “Sam--” he starts, but his brother interrupts him.
"Nope. No, Dean,” he says even as he hunches over the pancakes, his whole face going red in seconds. “I just... it's great. That's... not entirely unexpected. Congrats to you both.”
"What?!" Dean squawks just as Cas says, "Thank you, Sam."
It’s literally the most awkward breakfast ever, though Cas doesn’t seem to get the weird mood and starts in on a very serious one-sided conversation about the effect of real ghosts in Shakespeare's London. Dean will have to be careful not to check his blog later. But awkward as it is, it’s also great. It’s literally the best breakfast ever with Cas’s knee against his own and Sam trying not to look at either of them while still acknowledging the ridiculously boring conversation topic.
So this is the world now. Boring and embarrassing and wonderful .
And Dean gets to write his own future.