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There’s been times that he’s wanted to wring every last damn memory out of his brain like it’s a sponge, like if he squeezes in all the right places, he can drain his thoughts.
This is not one of those times.
Right now, Dean clings to every hazy memory that his brain throws in sharp relief, one after the other like developing photos. It’s not immediate. When he tells Sam that he’s okay, the major events of his life have puzzle pieced their way back into place, but the details remain lost on him. As he sits in the Impala, the cracks fill.
Sitting in the backseat with Sam nodding off against the rattling door, watching streetlights make patterns on the leather. His first few hunts, all shaky trigger fingers and stains he couldn’t work out how to clean. Cooking endless TV dinners and boxes of mac ‘n cheese. Sam and Dad’s voices, raising in volume with every shouted word. The empty backseat after he left. Hunt after hunt alone. A bullet straight between Azazel’s ugly eyes. A deal, a kiss, a howl. Unpleasant flashes of hellfire from the little of his time there he wasn’t able to stow away in a box somewhere in his head.
He’s amazed by how much Cas there is.
The exact fold of his old, ill-fitting trench coat, down to how many buttons chased each other up and down the flaps. The gummy crinkles of his first-ever smile, and how much bigger it’s been growing over the years. The warm steadiness of his hand on Dean’s shoulder, resting where the scorching red handprint used to lay.
Dean’s lived a long life—most of it, admittedly, dead. But Cas takes up so much more than his share of space.
“You okay?” Sam asks as they pull on to the highway that leads home.
He’d had to remind Dean which road to turn on to, which wasn’t exactly a good sign. Dean has a patchwork map of the United States stitched into his eyelids, overlaid with the best radio stations for every far-reaching corner of every state; he knows the places that you can’t get a single station, too, the ones where blasting a cassette fits, the ones where silence is better.
“It’s patchy, still,” Dean admits. “But it’s coming back fast.”
“Good,” Sam says with a smile. “Because I’m almost out of sticky notes.”
They don’t talk for the rest of the ride back to the bunker. They’ve already had this particular conversation what feels like a million times—hey, man, glad you’re not dead. Once you do that song and dance once, you’ve done it more than you should, and they certainly have. At this point, they have it down to a look.
Man. What a way to go. Dean’s still reflecting on it when they pull into the bunker’s garage. After everything, it’s weirdly fitting that he’d go down in a simple hunt, but he’s not sure he wants ‘riding Larry’ to be one of the last things he ever does, even if it was kinda awesome.
Sam would probably put it on his tombstone.
“I’m going to go grab a shower,” Sam says. “That motel was way too grimy for me.”
Ew. “You got that right. I’m gonna call Cas up, see if he’s got anything on Kelly.”
They need to find her. Even if they can’t convince her that the Nephilim is going to bring nothing but trouble, they have to be able to keep a tab on her. Dean’s no longer sure that they have the guts to take the kid down, but the least they can do is make sure it doesn’t grow up evil.
As Sam ambles towards the showers, Dean taps Cas’s number into his phone, just to see if he can. Oddly, it was one of the first things to come back to him after he started remembering again. Okay. Maybe not oddly. He knows every one of Cas’s numbers by heart.
He hears the phone ring.
Brow wrinkling, Dean follows the noise, only to find Cas sitting at the kitchen table, frowning down at his phone. There’s a book beside him, along with a cup of tea. Dean smiles at the image.
“I thought I heard you in the garage. Are you okay? Sam said the hunt was hard.”
Before Dean really processes what he’s doing, he’s closed the gap between him and Cas, placing his hand on Cas’s shoulder like his so many memories of Cas’s on his. It’s reassuring beneath his palm.
“Dean?”
It feels like he remembers—it’s good material, as much as he prefers the other coat, the one Jimmy had worn.
“Yeah, I’m good.” He tries to draw back, but finds that he can’t. It’s like something is gluing him to Cas.
“What happened?”
Dean explains—leaving out both Larry and the waitress. Cas watches him carefully, not commenting on the fact that Dean’s hand is still clutching at his jacket. When Dean describes staring into a mirror and not recognizing what he saw, Cas stands up. They’re practically nose to nose, now.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Dean finishes.
Until the words leave his mouth, he hadn’t really realized what his greatest fear had been. In the moments when he still had his wits about him, he’d been desperately trying to cling to the memories slipping away like water.
Cas offers a weak smile. “You would have seen me again. But you wouldn’t have known me.”
And that was the worst part, wasn’t it? Dean still remembers staring into the face of a man who called himself Emmanuel, how it felt to search for any trace of Cas in his eyes. Seeing him like that had been gutting. He’d never want Cas to suffer the same.
Dean doesn’t really know how it happens, but the next thing he knows, Cas is wrapping his arms around him and pulling him a step forward. Dean rests his head in the crook of Cas’s neck.
It feels just like he remembers.