Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And it rings in the day and it rings in the evening
Oh, I could pray but it won't stop you leaving
Shadow in black, you are grim from your reaping
Oh, can't you spare just a day for the weeping?

- Funeral Bell - Phildel

***

Dean does double-time on the five stages of grief by speedrunning denial and anger together. Triple-time, maybe, since there is literal bargaining involved. For the first six months Post-Chuck, Dean barely eats or sleeps. He keeps himself alive on bottom-shelf whiskey and whatever food Sam bullies him into eating when he's actually at the bunker. If Dean was in a better space to see the irony in this role reversal, he might have gotten a bitter chuckle out of it, but he didn't notice any more than he noticed the food itself. 

Dean drinks himself to sleep every couple of nights, when he gets so sleep-deprived he can't read anymore. He spends a lot of nights in the Impala, on the road, passed out in a parking lot, pulled over to the side of a crossroads. The spells don't work, the demons aren't biting, and anything with more juice than a standard vamp seems to have crawled underground. Jack's not answering Dean's prayers - he prays anyway, usually at the end of the day when he is drunk and desperate and begging on his knees, or else shouting and swearing at the sky. 

Sam tries to talk about it. Every time he says "Dean," in that voice of his, Dean leaves the room or turns up the music or once, memorably, runs away from his brother into a haunted wood. There isn't much Dean won't do to keep from talking about it. He'd do anything not to think about it if he could. He throws himself at every lead he can find, every text, every contact they've got. He doesn't hunt except as it relates to his all-consuming pursuits. He doesn't call back Garth or Jody when they reach out. Dean thinks if he has to politely stomach their sympathy, he'll be sick. 

At the end of six months, Dean wakes up one morning from his alcohol-induced stupor. He's still mildly intoxicated, which is a pleasant surprise. He sits up in a pile of dirty sheets and clothes, books and beer bottles, and looks around his trashed bedroom. There are books and printouts everywhere, bits of spell work, several spots of drying blood from whatever he'd cut his hand open over last. His memory is fuzzy on that one; he thinks it might have been some sort of communication spell. It doesn't matter, it didn't work. Nothing has worked. 

It hits him all at once, pushing into the hazy torpor he's been projecting all these months, too terrified to feel what's coming if he pauses. Nothing is working because nothing is going to work. That's the whole goddamn point. 

They fought and killed and died for this, for a life where the Winchesters didn't get every exception in the book, where they were neither blessed nor cursed, where there were no Big Bad Evils, but no miracles either. No more Chuck, no more insane deals, no more bargaining their souls away for each other, no more fighting for their storyline above the fate of the world. 

That's the point . 

Cas isn't coming back. And there's nothing Dean can do about it. 

The realization settles over him, an icy sensation in his stomach that pricks at his eyes and pulses in his chest. It's over. Done. No more prayers, no more deals, no more exceptions. 

There's nothing particularly poignant about this morning. It's simply been long enough, or Dean is just sober enough or his room is enough of a desperate depression pit for him to open his eyes and see what he's been putting off. 

Despair clutches him for a moment, rolls over and over him like waves, like drowning, like probably he'll die. For a few seconds, it's a comforting thought. He's not sure what's happening with the afterlife at the moment, but maybe there's a chance that he could get into the Empty. Not to rescue Cas, not in exchange for him, but just… just know he's in the same place. To rest there together for eternity, together in oblivion. 

Dean shuts his eyes and scrubs at his face. His cheeks are dry, but he's realizing he doesn't remember when the last time he shaved was. He runs a hand through his hair and - yep. Shaggy enough for Sam. He doesn't have a mirror in his room, but he thinks he must look a little wild. He can taste his own heavy breath, whiskey soured by sleep, and for the first time in months he's properly disgusted with himself. 

Dean fights his way out of a tangle of sheets and miscellaneous debris, and groans as somewhere in his body several bones crack. He hobbles on out to the bathroom and takes his first shower in… well, truthfully he can't remember how long it's been, but it takes several rounds of scrubbing before he feels like the alcohol and general malaise aren't leaking out of his pores. He concentrates on the warmth and pressure of the water, on the solid task of washing himself down. When he steps out and wipes away the steam on the mirror, his reflection blinks back at him with a hard expression. Dean leans closer. This is the longest his facial hair's been in ages and there are a couple of silver hairs he's never noticed before. 

"Huh," Dean huffs to himself, staring at them. Not long ago, he would probably have pulled them out, but he finds he can't bring himself to care beyond a slight morbid curiosity. He's getting old. There's physical proof of it building up there on his face and in the popping of his knee. 

He's lived nearly twice as long as most hunters, lived almost half a regular lifespan. And what has he got to show for it? 

Dean turns away from that thought and the mirror. He doesn't shave or get out the clippers for his hair. Just the shower was exhausting. Mostly sober, he goes back to his room and dresses on autopilot. He's deeply hollow. 

Cas isn't coming back. 

Dean punches the nearest wall, just once, in a burst of sudden rage that vanishes as quickly as it came. His knuckles sting but the skin remains intact. The dull bloodless ache expands from his knuckles into his chest and looks around automatically for the nearest thing to distract him. But Dean's hit the fourth stage depression, if he wasn't there already, and there's nothing left. No more looking, no more spells, no more wild goose chases after straw leads. 

There's no… there's no body to burn this time. Nothing Dean can even do to honor Cas' remains, no way to say goodbye. Last time, Dean had taken his ashes to a meadow, spread him out near the windmill because it was peaceful. Because he thought Cas would have liked it. Because Dean had wrapped his best friend's body by himself and it had been unbearable, because the solitude of his grief had settled over him like his own funeral shroud, because Dean had taken his ashes and driven there alone. He'd made the drive in silence, the horrible ziplock baggie on the passenger seat beside him, and he'd been so full of the awful weight of death that it had just about choked him. 

At least he'd laid Cas down in a beautiful place. At least he knew where to put him to rest. 

Dean sniffles, alone in his dark and grungy room, and looks around again. His eye catches on the jacket hanging on his closet door. His body stiffens in anticipation of the rush of guilt and self-hatred and keening bereavement that he's been drowning for six months with work and booze. Something softer comes in its place, a bittersweet understanding of what comes next. The blood on the shoulder of Dean's jacket is all that's left of Cas. It's all Dean has left of him. 

Dean runs into Sam on his way to the garage, because of course he does. He feels a new swelling of guilt in his chest, because he doesn't know how long it's been since he really looked at his brother. He feels like he hasn't really been awake these past months, even in his moments of unwilling sobriety. 

Sammy looks okay, though. Well, maybe not "okay", but whatever the equivalent is for them. He looks normal, somewhere between sleep-deprived distracted academic and annoyingly fit yoga instructor. 

"Dean," Sam says, looking up from a pile of papers and a suspiciously green smoothie. "Hey. Where are you -" 

"Out," Dean says, speedwalking by. He's clutching a paper bag to his chest in a way that he knows is conspicuous, but he can't help it. He's clinging on for just these last few moments. 

Sam catches up to him in the garage as Dean is gently sliding the bag onto the passenger seat. He has the insane compulsion to buckle it in, but resists. It's just like last time, really. How many times has Cas died for them? For Dean? 

"Dean," Sam says again from behind him, and he sounds worried now. Dean glances over, already tucked into Baby with the driver's side door still open. 

"What's going on? You alright?" 

It's June. Summer, birds, pollen, all that shit. Six months and a spare few days since Cas died. Since everything else. Since Dean had his fucking heart ripped in half in a way that was familiar and somehow unlike anything he'd ever known. 

"No," Dean says flatly. 

Something twitches and shifts in Sam's face. His shoulders drop. He almost looks relieved, like maybe Dean hasn't worked up to admitting even that much since it happened. 

"Yeah," Sam says, all gentle about it. "I know. Are you… what are you doing?" 

"Personal," Dean says, sticking to his one-word answers but throwing Sam the bone of three whole syllables. He starts the car. 

"Dean -" Sam starts to complain, then stops. He looks at Dean's face, then away. "You're not doing anything stupid, are you?" 

Dean thinks about that for a moment, then shrugs. "No." 

"Okay. Will you be back tonight?" 

Dean looks at the bag on the seat next to him and hooks a finger in it, brushing the fabric inside. He thinks about getting a hotel room somewhere, the loneliness of his grief screaming from the kind of off-white walls he's been staring at his whole life. 

"Yeah." 

"Okay. Okay. Call me if you need me." 

Sam steps back out of the Impala's way and Dean nods at him, slamming the car door. As he leaves the garage, he thinks about how he could have invited Sam to come along, how Cas was his friend too and he deserves to mourn, how Cas deserved more than one broken little human at his last memorial. 

But Dean can't. He can't do this with Sam watching. It's too intimate, too vulnerable, too needy. 

Dean drives a little ways out from the bunker, still in the heart of Kansas, to this little copse of trees off a backroad. There's a strip of grass out there that is green and dotted with wildflowers, buzzing with spring and insects. 

With his hands, Dean digs a hole in the cool earth just at the edge of the trees and grass. He has to stop once to get a grip on the feeling threatening to overwhelm him. His fingers are dark with dirt, his hands just like they were twelve years ago after Cas dragged him out of hell and plopped his ass back in his grave. 

"You stupid motherfucker," Dean says to the sky, to the hole, to nothing. "Why'd you bring me all the way up from the pit just to make me dig myself out of my own grave, huh?" 

There's no answer. 

Dean sniffs and runs the cleaner part of his wrist over his nose. He tries to wipe the dirt off his hands but they stay grimy, and anyway, it doesn't matter. Everything's going back in the ground after all. He lifts the jacket out of the bag, careful with it. 

In the past, Dean kept Cas' stupid trenchcoat. He'd tucked it into his car, trying to give Cas a home in Baby, and tried to forget about it. His best fucking friend in the world, and Dean was always left with nothing more than a scrap of cloth. Sometimes less. 

"You were so stupid," Dean says to the jacket, to the handprint. His eyes are full of tears and his voice is throaty, and this is why he couldn't have Sam here. He'd have to be someone else for Sam, have to be something at all, and alone he's just… this. Guilty and crying, broken and empty. His stomach is all jumbled up - it physically hurts all the way to his center. His goddamn bones ache with it. "I was… we were so stupid. I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry." 

Dean would have liked to give more of a speech, but he's crying too hard, and what else is there to say, anyway? 

Dean lays the blood-stained jacket handprint up in the hole, dumps salt and a little kerosene on it, and kneels there for a moment before he drops in the match. 

"Bye, Cas." 

The jacket goes up quick with the lighter fluid. When it's down to ash, burning itself out, Dean dumps the dirt he dug out on top of it. That's it. 

Cas is gone. 

The wave of denial and anger that Dean has been riding for six months crests and crashes, bringing him tumbling down into the riptide. Grief seizes him and buckles him over. It winds him, leaves him gasping like a blow to the stomach. Everything is blurry, everything aches, and Dean grips his fists into his own hair and sobs. 

It's the first time he's cried over it sober since he'd been left alone in the storage room. There have definitely been drunken bouts of sobbing, at least one night when Sam found him heaving over the toilet with tears all down his face, but that's the point of alcohol - if it can't actually numb the emotion then at least it's an excuse for the way you go about expressing it. 

The day is warm but the shade is cool, and Dean stays there bent double on his knees while this untameable loss wracks his body. It hits him over and over again, letting up just enough for him to gasp in breaths in intervals before he's submerged again into something that racks his body so hard it ceases to be sobbing so much as as quaking. 

Dean shakes and gasps and gives in, because there's no alternative, because he never gave in when Cas was alive, and now all he can do is this. He stays until he's so low his forehead is touching the ground and he's reduced to periodic muscle spasms. Until everything in him is quiet and spent. Until the suns starts to dip in the sky and the light turns that golden liminal shade that makes everything a little more beautiful, a little more calm. 

Dean sits up, rubs at his face, and places one hand in the patch of upturned dirt where he's made one last symbolic burial of his angel. 

Dean's throat is tight. He looks at the little strip of grass that isn't enough, isn't what Cas deserves. It's all Dean has left to give though. 

"I love you," Dean says. It comes out quiet, ripped from a jagged place inside him. "I loved you. I love you. You dumb son of a bitch. If you can hear me… Cas, if you can hear me at all, you gotta know… I do. I do. Fuck you, I do." 

Three days later, Dean comes upstairs with his duffle bag slung over his shoulder. It's still morning and Sam is freshly showered from his run, reading a book in the kitchen while he waits for his coffee to percolate. He looks up when Dean enters and frowns at the sight of the duffle bag. 

Dean beats him to it before he can open his mouth. 

"I'm done." Dean lets the bag drop to the floor for the moment. It ain't that heavy, but he's expecting a fair amount of resistance here, maybe even a physical fight. 

Sam's frown only gets deeper. "What?" 

"I'm done," Dean repeats, gesturing a hand to take in the bunker, themselves, everything. "I'm out. I quit." 

Sam blinks at him. He sets his book aside, looking down at it for a moment before he speaks. "Okay." 

Dean snorts. "Don't 'okay' me. Let me have it, get it out." 

Sam's frown is back, but it's annoyance this time more than concern. "I'm not your boss, Dean. I don't need two weeks' notice from you. You want to stop hunting? Okay. Freaking Hallelujah, I say. Just… talk to me. What's going on? Where are you going?" 

"Wisconsin," Dean says. "Got a house showing tomorrow morning. Look, you're welcome to come if you want, or not, but I'm going. Don't really want to talk about it." 

"Dean-" 

"There's nothing to say, Sammy. I'm… I can't stay here, man, not after…" Dean swallows and shakes his head. "I'm just done. Ain't like there's much left to hunt these days, right? I'd… I'd like it if you came too, okay? I want you out. But I'm… I'm not gonna try and make that choice for you anymore. This is just what I'm doing." 

Sam stares at him. Dean stares back. 

Finally, Sam says "If you just slow down, and give me a few days to -" 

"Nope, sorry, little brother. Can't slow down. Can't stop, won't stop." Dean picks his duffle bag back up. "So if you're not gonna fight me…" 

"Dean, Jesus, just -" 

"Look, you're right, take a couple of days. I'll be up north. Join me, or visit, or I'll come visit you, you know. Maybe this'll pass, but I just gotta… I just gotta move, man. I can't…" Dean closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. 

"He's not coming back." 

Sam is looking at him with pity when Dean opens his eyes again. 

"I know," Sam says softly. 

"If I stay here, I'm just gonna keep…" Dean waves his hand loosely around his head. "And he didn't want that. I don't know much, but I know he wouldn't want that. And I… I'm not leaving you, okay? I just… I'm gonna go look at a farm, that's all." 

Sam blinks at him some more and then he stands, and in a few short strides he's crushing Dean into a hug. 

"Yeah," Sam says. His voice breaks. "Go look at a farm. He would've liked that." 

It isn't like Dean woke up with the ability to just walk away from his brother for the first time in his life. He knows if Sam doesn't follow him, he'll probably end up back in the bunker in a few months. But in the moment, Dean has to get out. Has to be anywhere else. He browsed through houses for sale across the Midwest, just scrolling until something popped out at him. The first picture sort of took his breath away. 

The property listing is actually two buildings on 5 acres of land. The first picture that caught Dean's eye is of a renovated barn, the upper story one large room of glistening hardwood and exposed beams. The giant windows and sloped ceiling make the place look like a cathedral, and Dean is instantly in love. 

Dean has no attachment to Belleville, Wisconsin, but he also doesn't have any ghosts there waiting for him. Or, if he does, they're literal, and he can deal with that. 

So, Dean sells three of the antique cars wasting away in the bunker's garage, puts down a cash payment, and closes in three weeks. He spends the time puttering around the area, staying at an AirBnB in an actual house, and drawing up plans for the biggest semi-legitimate purchase he's ever made. He makes one trip to South Dakota to pick up Miracle, who Dean had dropped with Jody six months back when he was in no place to be taking care of a dog. 

Miracle goes absolutely mad with joy, jumping up on Dean until he gives in and plunks down in the grass to let the dog hop all over him and lick his face. It's first real feeling of warmth he's experienced in a goddamn while, to be remembered and loved and instantly forgiven. 

When Miracle calms down a bit, Dean clambers back up to his feet and sheepishly returns Jody's hug. Claire and Kaia are on a road trip, she informs him over a beer, but she promises to send his regards. She doesn't chastise him for not picking up the phone for six months, just ruffles his hair and offers him some potato salad. 

Four weeks later, Dean has a room in an old farmhouse that's way too big for just him and Miracle, and a barn renovated for commercial licensing that already features a modern bathroom and a small bar space. He's got five acres of land he doesn't know what to do with, and an extra cottage that probably belonged to a groundskeeper at some point at the edge of the property that's falling into ruin. It's all a bit extravagant, really, but Dean's committed, so. 

He buys furniture at restores and secondhand shops, gets some new clothes from consignment and thrift stores, and fills a few shelves haphazardly with used books he picks out at random. He makes himself deal with a couple of rooms in the house first, because he knows if he leaves it alone too long it'll never feel right. Even if all he wants to do is spend his time working on the barn. 

It's kind of fun, actually. The bunker was the first home Dean had known since he was four years old, and he'd loved it there, had loved finally having a place to call his own. But even so, there was only so much sprucing you could do to an underground secret society's barracks. Dean liked it, but he knew Sammy never really felt at home there, and part of the reason Dean had to get out is that he feels like he's carrying Cas memory around with him - and Cas didn't belong there, languishing underground with no sunlight, no plants, no bees. 

Dean is making a kind of shrine, and he knows that, he understands what he's doing when he brings home some potted plants and rearranges them nervously on various windowsills. He reads the instructions they come with painstakingly - he's terrified of killing them, scared that if he can't even keep a plant alive it will say something fundamental about him as a human being. Plus, Cas would be so disappointed, he just knows the guy would get way too attached to his succulents, and Dean doesn't want to have to mourn some damn plants on his dead best friend's behalf. 

Dean doesn't really know what he's doing or what he likes in terms of interior decorating, so he just does some sort of hodgepodge of crap that catches his eye. There's work to do, too, the kind of construction projects he's itching to get started on in the barn. The farmhouse has been well-maintained, but it's like a hundred years old, there's bound to be a few oddities. Dean strips off wallpaper and repaints the walls, rips out the tile around the shower and replaces it, calks the tub, and scrubs down every room he goes into. Miracle follows him from room to room, whining when Dean won't let him while he's drilling into the walls in case there's lead paint the dog might breathe in. Dean buys a dog bed for the living room, but Miracle cuddles up with him at night, stretched out beside him like a little spoon or curled up in a ball at his hip, just within petting reach. 

Dean tries out a few of the rooms before settling on one upstairs. There's a water stain in the ceiling just above where Dean puts his bed that kinda looks like a wingspan. He knows he should probably fix it, but instead Dean lies on his mattress and stares at the shape when he can't sleep. 

Somewhere along the way, in fixing up the house and buying plants and all this domestic shit, Dean starts talking to Cas. He tells himself it isn't that weird. After all, he used to pray to the guy all the time. And yeah, Dean knows that probably Cas can't hear him anymore, but that's not really the point. Cas never really answered his prayers in words before either. 

It starts with Dean imagining dragging Cas along to Ace Hardware, getting into a fight in the middle of the paint aisle, bickering over color swatches until one of them gives in and then - 

Dean's brain stalls out there in the paint aisle between eggshell and cream. Because here's the thing: Dean spent six months aggressively Not Thinking About It. He drank every time those thoughts started creeping closer, every time the echo of you changed me, Dean started ringing too loud in his head. He drowned it out with alcohol and a desperate promise that he'd deal with it when they got Cas back. No point in handling all that pain if he was going to pull Cas out of the empty. He'd been operating in a semi-fugue state, carefully grounding his thoughts in dead best friend and keeping them there. 

But Dean woke up a month ago and realized he wasn't getting his dead best friend back this time, and that meant that if this time was really sticking, if this was really it, then those were really Cas' last Last Words. And that had to mean something. Dean had to let it mean something. 

So Dean had spent three weeks cobbling together a business plan and some half-assed thoughts about a future because apparently he was going to have one of those. Because apparently, all those years Dean had spent hating himself and burrowing deeper into the familiar crevices of his negligible self-esteem, Cas had spent all those same years loving him. It had to mean something, because Cas had used his dying breaths to tell Dean, had been so damn happy to die just to say it. 

It meant everything. 

It is everything. Dean is carrying it inside him everywhere he goes; Cas and his love. 

It's one thing, not to fight it (or at least try his damndest to believe it). It's a deep sadness, a terrible ache right in his bones, because it is both the best and worst thing anyone has ever said to him. It's beautiful to be seen and known and loved. Of course it is. Even Dean "Intimacy Issues" Winchester can feel that. It's equally horrible that Cas died believing Dean could never love him back. 

It's one thing to accept that they were in love with each other this whole time, because of course Dean was in love with the stupid bastard. He's known that for a long time, he just never thought it was possible. But it's another thing entirely to actually imagine what that means. 

Dean stands there frozen in a hardware store and thinks about ending the fight by - what? Grabbing Cas' hand? Kissing him on the cheek? Full-on kissing him there in the paint aisle in front of the construction workers and old ladies who patron the store in the middle of a work week? 

Dean's cheeks are heated just thinking about it. He wanted to touch Cas so many times over the years, to slam him up against walls and kiss him silent when they were fighting, to grab him and tell him with his body please don't leave me , to just fucking hold his hand when they watched movies together on the couch so torturously close to each other. He wanted it so bad sometimes that he had to clench his fists and grit his teeth and think about whatever apocalypse was on its way just to stop himself from lingering too long with a hand on Cas' shoulder. 

Those thoughts always left Dean feeling guilty and a little ashamed. He'd always tried to quash them, always told himself he wasn't allowed. 

"Can I help you, sir?" 

Dean startles, shaken out of his reverie, and finds a store employee standing in front of him. The kid's gotta be like half his age and she speaks with a Minnesotan accent, all Midwestern politeness. 

"Uh," Dean says, and quickly shoves one of the paint swatches at her. "Can I get two gallons of that, please?" 

The young woman smiles at him. "You sure can! I'll have it mixed right up for ya. Anything else you might be looking for?" 

Dean had a list, but he shakes his head. He's feeling sort of weak-limbed again, and he's learned in the past few weeks that this physical sensation tends to be a warning sign of an impending emotional breakdown. 

Dean gets in his car with his two gallon bucket of cream-colored paint and a new roller brush. He's feeling a little lightheaded, but it's possible that he just hasn't eaten enough. He's… working on that. Jody had looked so concerned for him when he'd showed up in South Dakota, a good fifty pounds lighter than the last time she'd seen him. Dean doesn't want to make anyone worry anymore. He just forgets sometimes, gets sidetracked staring off into nothing and feeling the tempo of his grief beat on the inside of his skull. 

Dean turns on the car and keeps the radio on low. Grief rackets around his ribs. It’s always there, ping-ponging back and forth all over his insides. Dean’s never taken Cas’ deaths well, of course, and the finality of this one is brutal. But on top of all of that is the grief for what could have been, what they could have been. 

Dean has been working it over and over in his head these last few weeks. Maybe longer than that, but in a part of his subconscious that he couldn’t readily acknowledge without having a major fucking breakdown. Thing is, Dean’s never been allowed the time and space to have a proper breakdown. Not really. It usually just comes bursting out of him in a wave of aggression, all that suppressed hurt shooting out in a hunt or directed at the people around him. When things were too big to handle, he tucked that shit away and didn’t deal with it, because there was never time. The world was always ending or someone was dying or trying to kill them. There was always something else that needed to be put first. Dean’s fragile little feelings didn’t matter. 

Like how it hadn’t mattered that Dean’s chest got all tight and he went a little bit breathless around Cas in those early days, because it was the apocalypse and Dean was fresh out of Hell and Sam was maybe going darkside and Dean was supposed to let some other angel crawl inside his skin. 

Like how it hadn’t mattered when Dean finally opened his damn eyes and realized well fuck, I love this stupid son of a bitch , because Cas was acting weird after purgatory and Sam was maybe dying again and all of the shit with the tablets and Cas had broken Dean open on the floor of that old crypt. And it kept not mattering - because Gadreel, because Lucifer, because Amara and Chuck, because, because… 

Most of all, though, Dean thought it hadn’t mattered because he’d convinced himself in the very beginning that it could never happen. Not because Cas was a guy, or close enough - Dean’s still not sure he understands the whole angel gender thing if he’s being honest - but because he was an angel, and not like Anna was an angel. Anna was already fallen when Dean met her, graceless and living as a human for years. Dean had convinced himself that no matter how much he corrupted Cas, he was still an angel. He’d never grown up as a human or had a real mother or father. He’d never seemed interested in romance, even if he’d shown mild curiosity in sex once or twice. Cas was always a holy mission unto himself, and Dean just… Dean told himself that Cas couldn’t feel that way, that it wasn’t in his programming. He loved the Winchesters, yes, like family, but that didn’t mean he understood or wanted any other kind of love. 

Dean raps the back of his fingers against the steering wheel. “Stupid,” he mutters aloud to himself. The sheer calamity of it is almost funny. Dean spent twelve years pining over the guy, and now he’s trying so hard not to fall apart everyday to the memory of Cas saying “I love you.” 

And what does that mean, anyway, if they were in love with each other the whole damn time? 

Dean takes one hand off the wheel and slides it slowly across to where a passenger’s hand might sit if there was someone else in the car. He feels abruptly idiotic and snatches his hand back, like someone will look over and notice him fondling an empty seat. Just as abruptly, Dean puts his hand right back where it was. Not like anyone is going to know that he’s imagining lacing fingers with his dead best friend. 

Dean pulls up the long driveway to his new garage, but he sits there a minute parked outside with the car off, thinking. 

So what if Dean and Cas never… So what if they never held hands or kissed or fucked or whatever. Dean never would have understood it when he was younger, but that’s not all love is. Cas knew every inch of Dean from the inside out. Technically speaking, Cas had touched Dean more intimately than anyone else ever would. Cas had gripped him by his fucking soul. And even after that, he’d still loved Dean. Still thought Dean was worthy of that kind of love. 

Dean’s crying again, there in his driveway. He finds himself doing it fairly regularly. Not sobbing or anything, just a few quiet tears that spill out when he’s not present enough to hold himself back. 

So what if they never said it out loud, never even knew it was reciprocated? Dean and Cas had been loving each other in feeling and action for a long time. It was obvious, now that Dean knew how to interpret it. 

That was the other reason Dean had always told himself it could never happen: he thought that he’d been so painfully obvious. Dean’s not exactly subtle in his love language. He figured if Cas was at all interested, if he even comprehended that kind of thing, he’d have known how Dean felt. 

Dean looks over at his empty hand and the can of paint sitting next to it. He feels like Cas probably would have had strong opinions on the precise shade of white Dean paints their home. Because that’s what this would have been, probably, if Cas had lived after that confession. Dean would have found his tongue eventually, when he’d calmed down and Cas wasn’t about to die. Dean would have said it back. They’d be here or somewhere together. They’d be… what? Boyfriends? Husbands? 

Dean’s stomach twists with a fresh stab of impossible wanting. He didn’t think he’d ever have that with anybody again, anything beyond a quick fling covered up by a bunch of lies. He’d told himself a long time ago that he could never bring anybody else into this life. 

But god, he’d wanted it. He’d wanted it with Cas, to the extent that he allowed himself to ever acknowledge his own desires.

There’s things, there's people, feelings, that I want to experience differently than I have before. 

Dean sniffs and wipes his face off on his sleeve. Cas said that happiness wasn’t in the having, it was in just being, and mostly that sounds like a lot of bullshit to Dean, but then again… Maybe they didn’t know what the other one was feeling all these years, but they still had each other. They were in love. They were with each other in every sense that really mattered, weren’t they? Maybe they never said it, but they’d been it. They’d lived and breathed, fought and died for each other. For love. 

Dean unpacks the last of his belongings that night. He’s already put his photos out on the nightstand he found at a thrift store, although he’s planning to find frames for them this time. All that’s left are some clothes in the duffle bag, but as Dean is digging them out he feels something in the corner underneath the stiff bit of plastic canvas that makes the bottom flat. Dean digs his fingers under the flap and feels cold metal. When he pulls his hand out he’s holding his old ring. 

Dean can’t help huffing out a laugh and grinning to himself. He thought he’d lost this old thing forever, somewhere between crawling out of his grave and the first apocalypse. He runs his fingers over all the old nicks, the familiar groove in the middle. He could use any old thing to open a beer - the butt of a lighter, the rim of a table, the cap of another beer bottle, a knife. All anyone needs is the right angle and pressure, but this ring had been his go-to for a long time. He’d kind of had a thing for jewelry for a while. It was like keeping pieces of home strapped to him - this idea of home that didn’t really exist outside the Impala. 

Dean turns the ring over in his fingers a few times. Miracle is already curled up on the bed, eyes half-lidded. In quick succession, Dean slips the ring onto his left hand, turns out the light and flops down on top of the covers. Like if he moves quick enough, his sensibility won’t catch up to what he’s doing. 

Miracle shifts to curl up closer to his side, and Dean gives the dog a few pets while his heart rate slows down and his eyes adjust to the dark. He’s probably imagining it, but he can feel the weight on his left ring finger. He hugs one arm around himself, lets his other hand twist into his dog’s fur and stop moving. He lays there, staring up at the shape of wings on his ceiling, feeling wide awake with a lump in his throat. 

“Hey Cas,” Dean says quietly when he can’t stand the feeling any longer. He swallows, shuts his eyes for a moment, and looks back at the old water stain. “Dunno if you can hear me. Probably not. But. In case you can, I miss you, man. I… I might be going a little crazy. I think about you all the time. Think about you being here with me. I think you’d like it here. Not like you ever complained about the bunker, but… Well. Maybe you just didn’t know any better. Guess you never really had better, unless you want to count that time you spent as Emmanuel. But anyway. I think… I really blew it with you, huh? You were the goddamn love of my life, and I just… Ah, it doesn’t matter. Not now. 

“I’m thinking of turning the barn into a bar. Just what I always wanted, I guess. Figured maybe I’d start a garden or something out here too. It’s more land than I really know what to do with, but I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can talk Sammy and Eileen into coming up here. Probably not to stay - I mean, Eileen’s a proper normal adult human who probably doesn’t want to get stuck living with her cracked up old maid of a brother-in-law. I mean, they’re not married yet or anything, but you know Sam. I think she’s really good for him, so that’s… It’s good, I mean. I’m not jealous or anything. 

“Okay, I mean, I’m happy for him - for them. I’ve always wanted Sam to have a real life beyond all this shit. And it’s not like I ever thought I would. But yeah, I just wish… Seems like I’m going to have to have some kind of life now, and I want…” 

Dean trails off and doesn’t speak again for a long time. Miracle starts to snore. 

“You wanted me to live. I get that. Like, I know, Cas, I do. So I’m gonna try, man. I swear I’m gonna try, but I don’t want to do this without you. I don’t want…” 

Dean breaks off and sniffs, not bothering to wipe his face off. 

“Guess I just wish you were here. I… I always wish you were here. Felt that way when you were alive too, so maybe it’s not that different. You were always leaving, and I was always letting you. I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m so sorry, Cas.” 

Dean cries himself to sleep after that, lulled faintly by Miracle’s steady breaths under his hand. 

Sam finally arrives two days later. He'd been calling Dean twice a week in the meantime, but Dean told him not to bother coming up until he had a place for him and Eileen to crash. Dean set up a guest room in the downstairs bedroom farthest from his, because the floors in the farmhouse are magnificent old hardwood and they creak like Dean's joints. He does not need to hear his little brother banging it out with his girlfriend. 

Eileen is first out of the - Jack help him - Prius that pulls up Dean's driveway. She leaps out and barrels into Dean for a hug, which he returns with pleasant surprise. He's not used to touch like this. 

"It's good to see you, Dean," Eileen says, letting go and stepping back so that she can see his face. She's smiling, eyes gently crinkled at the corners. "Sam's been moping since you left." 

"I have not been moping ," Sam grumbles, coming up behind Eileen with their bags. He shifts to give Dean a quick one-armed hug. "I was worried about you, that's all." 

Eileen raises her eyebrows behind Sam's back and rolls her eyes. 

Dean grins. "Come on in, let me show you around the place." 

Once Miracle has had the chance to lick everyone's faces, Dean gives them a tour of the house, then the barn and the rest of the property. He's nervous in the house, but Eileen compliments the vintage lasso he found at an antique store, and Sam makes fun of him for the potted plants, so everything seems normal. 

"The place looks really good," Sam says over pre-dinner beers. He sounds mildly impressed. "Is there anything you need help with?" 

Dean's prepping the ingredients for the meal he wants to cook, pleased to have Sam there, excited to be cooking for someone other than Miracle. "On the house? Not really. I've got a bunch of projects, but it's all stuff I can handle. Actually, though, I could use you for something. I've got some paperwork for licensing to turn the barn into a bar. It's all filled out and everything, think you could look it over?" 

Having drafted his brainiac little brother into proofreading his binder full of paperwork, Dean and Eileen play a game of cards before she heads off to "shower off the drive." Dean sequesters himself in his room. As good as it is to see them, and as lonely as Dean's been, he's grown used to having space to breathe and be alone with his thoughts. 

Dean lies across the width of his bed, feet on the floor and puts on his headphones. That's how Sam finds him sometime later, when he comes upstairs with the binder and a weird look on his face. At first, as Dean pulls the headphones off and cuts the cord on AC/DC, he thinks the look on Sam's face is because Miracle is flopped across Dean's bed too. 

"Hey," Sam says, eyeing Dean up in a way that makes Dean immediately nervous. "So this all looks pretty good. You forgot to initial in a couple of places so I put those in for you. I'd recommend you go with the next highest liability policy, to be honest. I know it's more expensive upfront, but it's way better coverage. So if you want that, just redo that page." 

"Okay, I'll think about it. Thanks, Sammy." 

"Uh," Sam says as Dean takes the binder back from him. "Just one other thing. I noticed in your personal info that in the relationship status question you checked "widowed." Was that a mistake or are you angling for some tax thing I don't know about?" 

Dean can feel the heat rushing to his face. He looks down at the binder, fingers tapping nervously against the hard plastic. He hadn't really thought this through. 

"Uh," Dean stalls, not meeting his brother's eyes. 

"Dean, you've never even been married." Sam sounds mildly exasperated. "Unless there was a wedding invitation I missed." 

Dean rubs at the back of his neck, cheeks burning. "No," he mutters. "No wedding. But… Twelve years is long enough for common law to kick in, isn't it?" 

Dean makes himself glance up. Sam is staring at him with a small confused frown. 

"What are you talking about? Twelv-" Sam breaks off mid-word, mouth clamping shut and eyes going wide. 

"Oh," Sam says softly. " Oh ." 

"Yeah." 

"Dean." 

"Sam." 

"So you were…? You and Cas were..?" 

It's not lying. Dean thinks he's entitled to this one thing, to this validation of what was always between him and Cas. 

"Look, it's not like we… We never called it that or went to a courthouse or whatever, but he was my…" Dean trails off, the lump in his throat too hard to speak around. 

Sam's eyes are as wide as Dean's ever seen them and his apparent shock makes Dean feel vaguely annoyed. 

"C'mon, Sammy. Spit it out. Are you pissed I didn't tell you about Cas? Or you are upset that your brother is into dick after all?"

Sam's face twists and he makes a sputtering sort of noise before literally throwing his hands in the air. "Oh my god," he mutters to the ceiling before he levels his glare back on Dean. " Oh my god. I cannot believe that this how you're finally fucking coming out to me! Do you know how many tabs of porn I have had to close and pretend not to know about over the years?! And Cas! I'm not pissed that you didn't tell me - everyone could see the two of you were stupid over each other, I just didn't think you knew! And this whole time, this whole fucking time, you two were together?!" 

Dean tosses the binder aside and flops back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling before getting self-conscious and worrying that Sam will notice the shape of the stain up there. Some things are too pathetic to share with your younger brother. 

Dean waves a hand vaguely in front of him. "We were in love. What more can I say?" 

Sam sinks down on the bed next to Miracle. He's squinting at Dean suspiciously. 

"Are you… are you purposefully misquoting Avril Lavigne lyrics at me right now?" 

"The point," Dean says hastily. "Is that even if we never made it legal, we were… I mean, we were basically an old married couple. If… if things had ever calmed down, maybe we would have… But yeah. We were in love, and now he's dead. So. I figure common law works for widowship or whatever, right?" 

Sam puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. His voice has gone steady and soft. "Dean, I'm really sorry. I'm… I loved him too, in a very different way apparently, but I'm so sorry he's gone." 

"Yeah," Dean says again. He shuts his eyes for a moment. 

"But, uh, that's actually not how common law marriage works." Sam sounds apologetic. Dean cracks one eye open and looks up at his brother's big dopey puppy-dog eyes. 

"Huh?" 

"You don't, like, just trigger a common law marriage by being in a relationship for long enough. You have to consider yourselves married and refer to yourselves that way to other people. Basically you have to be seen as a married couple in every way except legally. And even then it varies by state." 

Dean huffs and closes his eyes again. "Okay, law boy." 

"Sorry." 

Dean gesticulates vaguely again. "It doesn't matter. I don't care if it's legally recognized or whatever. But I just… I had a - a bond with him, you know? He was… I really loved him. I should've… should've told people that while he was alive. But maybe it's something if I - if I tell people now." 

"That's something, Dean. That's real." The hand on Dean's shoulder pats him a few times. 

They're both quiet for a minute, Miracle breathing loudly into the silence. 

"How did you first get together?" Sam finally asks. 

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose. "Look, Sammy, sometimes when a daddy and another daddy love each other very much…" 

"Okay, okay, fine! Fuck you," Sam says. He jumps up from the bed, but he's laughing. 

Late that night, when everything is dark and still and quiet, Dean lies awake and stares at the ceiling. 

"Hi Cas," he says once again. "I, uh, I told Sam about us. I guess maybe I lied about it, made it sound like we were a couple. I don't know, maybe that's crazy and you'd think I'm absolutely insane, but you're not here, man. How do I tell people who you were to me? 'Oh Cas? He was the great love of my life and I was his, but no, we never touched each other like that, and also I didn't know he loved me until he died and he died thinking I could never love him.' So can't I just say I'm a widower? I never got to… never got to be your husband, so…" 

Dean breaks off and breathes. He pets Miracle. He twists the ring on his finger. 

"I don't even know if you would have wanted that. Seems crazy, to think you could ever want to marry me, but, I guess we're both kind of crazy. I'd probably be a terrible husband, but hey, you're the one who dropped the L-word, you knew what you were signing up for. 

"All that shit you said about me, Cas… Jesus, man. I don't know what to do with that. What am I supposed to do with that? I want… Maybe it's selfish, but I want to believe you. Want to believe I could be that person. I'm gonna try, Cas. What you said to me, it's… it's so much. Did you know that? Did you know how much love you were giving me?" 

Dean breaks off sniffling again. At this point, it barely registers. It feels good, talking to Cas, even though it cuts him open. He even thinks he's telling the truth here. He knows that he has to try and live some kind of life now. Sam and Eileen have been talking about stepping back from hunting too and are going to look around the area, maybe settle in Madison. Sam and Dean didn't have to say it to understand that they both still want to be near each other. Maybe not right on top of each other any more. There's room, without Chuck, to make a little breathing space between them. It's not going to be easy, but Dean thinks he'll be able to handle it, and Sammy will be alright. Sam has Eileen, and Dean can't find it in him to be too bitter about that. 

"I love you," Dean whispers to his ceiling, and rolls over to sleep on his stomach with one arm thrown over Miracle. 

Dean has something too. It's caught in his chest, wrapped up inside and around him. It's partly grief, yes, but it's also love. Dean has been loved, really loved, for years. Cas gave Dean his love for more than those few heartbreaking seconds - he recolored their entire past with it, shoved so much of into Dean in that moment that it goes on spilling out into Dean's future. 

Dean is loved in a way that he never really let himself believe he could be. It doesn't take away the deep sadness and frustration he feels, but that love is mixed in there too. For the first time since he was a little boy, Dean feels like this is a love he gets to keep, whether he's earned it or not. 

Miracle shifts closer in his sleep, and Dean smiles even though there are still tears wet on his pillow. 

Chapter Text

"Your wife is a lucky woman," sighs the lady two scotches and a hard cider deep into a Wednesday evening. 

Dean gives her the usual smile and nod, busy mixing up a whiskey sour for one of the regulars. "Thank you." 

The lady is good looking, and she's not too drunk yet, just friendly. She cups her face in her hand and leans her elbow on the bar. Dean ignores her and adds an extra cherry to the drink before sliding it across to Old Ed - one of the truckers who comes through on his way to Madison and from Omaha. Old Ed rolls up his flannel sleeves and winks at Dean before taking his drink back to one of the pool tables. 

"Been married long?" Overly-friendly lady asks. 

Dean shrugs. "Not so long." He wipes down the bar and starts stacking dirty glasses. 

"Oh do spill, sugar. Does the missus help you run this place?" 

Dean takes a breath, pulls together all the willpower that he had forgotten went into customer service, and gives her a little lopsided smile that he hopes says he's already forgiven her. "I opened the bar after my husband passed away," he says, doing a passable job of delivering this sentence like it isn't a combination of alien concepts to him. "But I think he would have liked it." 

The lady blinks at him with suddenly awake, wide eyes. "Oh," she says. "Oh my gosh. I'm… I'm so sorry for your loss. So sorry for prying. You should just spritz me with a water bottle like a misbehaving cat!" 

Dean gets out a chuckle, turning away to tetris more glasses into one of the dirty dishes buckets. "Don't worry about it. Not your fault for makin' conversation." 

The lady laughs nervously. She finishes her drink quietly, and when Dean ducks into the back for a moment to pull another bottle of Tito's, he finds that she's vanished before he returns. 

Someone whistles behind Dean, and he turns his head as one of his employees - another concept he'll never get used to - comes back behind the bar. Sal is a slip of a thing, but Dean would never dare say it to her face. Her arms and what her neckline reveals of her chest are covered in tattoos, and she's got that septum piercing everyone under thirty seems to have these days. Sal keeps her long brown hair under a baseball cap, and constantly looks about three minutes away from plotting your murder. 

"Did I hear you using your sob story to get extravagant tips again, boss?" Sal slings herself up on the one stool they keep behind the bar, taking advantage of the lull. 

Dean tucks the very generous tip left by overly-friendly lady into his jeans. "You can go get yourself a dead spouse any day if you're jealous." 

"Hmph." Sal snorts. "Next thing I know, you're gonna tell me I should try smiling. " 

"I'm not here to tell you how to do your job." Dean scans down the bar, but the handful of occupied seats look settled with their drinks. Past the bar stools, half of the great open floor of the renovated barn has been taken by pool tables, one air hockey table, and a jukebox valiantly cranking out Billy Joel. 

The other half of the floor is a cluster of small tables and chairs that can be easily cleared to make a dance floor if absolutely pressed, or rearranged for Thursday movie night special when Dean hauls out a projector for the giant back wall. 

Everything seems in order. Dean goes back to fidgeting around behind the bar and starts cutting up limes. 

"Actually, I'm pretty sure that is literally why you're here, boss ," Sal says, with a little wry huff of a laugh. 

"Okay, then try smiling." 

"I'll put a horse head in your bed. I know where you live." 

"Everyone knows where I live," Dean mutters. It's true. He hadn't really thought through the potential downsides of having his house on the same property as his business. Not that it's been much of a problem in a little town like Belleville. Dean's put up fencing and a couple signs that make it clear where the business begins and ends, and the worst that's happened in the four months since opening is a couple of unwanted vendors showing up at Dean's house to try and sell him shit he doesn't need. Still, it's a far leap from a secret underground bunker, and sometimes it leaves Dean keyed up and on edge, feeling exposed in his own home. 

"And yet it's the only thing we know about you." Sal wiggles her eyebrows at him. "Weird little mystery man." 

Dean is saved from having to reply to this by a raised hand at the end of the bar, and by the time he's poured a couple of beers, a fresh wave of customers has arrived to keep them both busy. 

The Bar(n) is open Wednesday through Saturday nights. It's only been a couple months, but it's become something of a local hotspot. Truthfully, the hours and reasonable traffic wouldn't be enough to keep a new business afloat, but Dean's not really in it for the money. Dean, Sam, and Eileen decided that, as the last legacies they knew of, it wouldn’t hurt anyone to sell off the more innocuous artifacts from the bunker. They kept all the weapons and magic and shit, left the bunker in pristine position for the next supernatural war in case… well. In case. But they sold off the rest of the cars, the motorcycles, some old computer equipment that Sam wiped and assured them were now harmless relics. They split the money three-ways, and left a small pool of cash locked up in the bunker… in case. 

Dean’s pretty set for the moment. He can take a loss on the first couple years of the business if he needs to and still have the money to buy spare parts for Baby. He probably couldn’t go on without some sort of income indefinitely, but he made Sam run the numbers with him, and then had his newly hired part-time accountant Diana check them, and both of them agreed (Sam with mild surprise) that Dean should start turning a profit by year three of his little enterprise. 

Sam and Eileen have settled in the nearby city of Monona. Sam hangs around more than Dean was expecting. He takes a shift from time to time, and it's been on the tip of Dean's tongue to ask if he wants to run the bar with him, be a real family business, but he never gets the words out. Things are... weird. It's the most space they've ever given each other without one of them being dead or missing or not speaking. Dean still wakes up in a cold sweat sometimes with Miracle licking his ear and whining, and Dean knows he was probably calling out his brother's name. But Sam's there. He chose to follow Dean of his own free will for once, without any threat of death to either of them, and now they show up at each other's houses for pizza and movie nights.  

This week after their Friday night dinner, Eileen makes them watch Legally Blonde , which Dean pretends he’s never seen before. Eileen is snuggled up under Sam’s arm on one side of Dean’s couch, Dean on the other, while Elle Woods, on screen, opens her LSATs. 

“179,” Dean muses, taking a pull from his beer. He waves his hand to get Eileen’s attention too. “Hey Sammy, what was your LSAT score again?” 

Sam glances over and glares. Eileen hides her grin into his shoulder. 

“174,” Sam says. 

“Huh.” 

“Shut up.” Sam takes a prim sip from his gross kombucha. “She’s a fictional character.” 

“Yeah, well, so were you.” 

Eileen laughs and repositions herself so that she is leaned into Sam with her legs stretched over the couch and her feet in Dean’s lap. Dean feels a weird sort of flutter in his stomach. It’s not a flirtatious thing from Eileen, obviously, it’s just an intimacy that he’s not used to. He’s not used to casual touch, and he’s only really noticed how it unbalances him over the last few months, now that there’s time to pay attention to his own internal mechanisms. 

It’s these tiny things that are hardest to adjust to, in some ways. 

Eileen found part-time work as a translator at University of Wisconsin-Madison, but what she really seems passionate about is volunteering at the local high school. Dean is a little unclear on what exactly she does there, because when Eileen gets excited she starts signing very quickly, and Dean’s been practicing but he’s still slow. Whatever it is she does to help “at-risk” youth seems to give her some sort of meaning in life. It’s nice to have Eileen around, anyway, and it’s good to see her smiling. 

Sam took his sweet time picking some direction in life. He spent all summer poking at old half-forgotten dreams, becoming downright whiny about being unsure what to do next. Dean had to bite back his “Welcome to the club, buddy” comments for months, because Dean was, after all, running a business. 

Sam talked about going back to school - for law or social work or to become a librarian. He ditched each of these ideas in turn when they failed to “spark joy.” Instead, he started volunteering at the local animal shelter and the university’s zoological museum. He seems very happy there, among the live animals and the dead ones, and it reminds Dean in a gut-punching kind of way just how weird his little brother is.  

The only person Dean tells the truth to is Claire. They end up spending a lot of time together, with Claire showing up in Wisconsin on random nights and crashing in Dean's guest room. They never quite name the bond of grief that's grown between them in Cas' absence, but Dean is always aware of it, can feel it in his bouts of deep sadness and Claire's spikes of anger. 

"That's fucked up, dude." Claire somehow manages to sound both pitying and impressed when Dean awkwardly confesses about the ring and the fact that he had not, despite what Jody might have told her, actually been banging the image of her dead father. 

"Yeah, I know," Dean says. It's been a month since that conversation with Sam, and already he's had to field calls of renewed condolences from Jody, Garth, Donna, and Jesse and Cezar. Dean had been surprised but a little pleased to hear from the last two over speaker phone. 

"I mean, on multiple levels," Claire goes on, waving her beer around. Dean tries not to worry about it spilling all over the couch. "It's a little fucked up that you're calling a dude you never even kissed your late husband, but like, whatever, I get that. He was your emotional partner, like your spiritual husband, fine, cool with me, I'm not gonna tell anyone differently. But it's fucked up that you… that you didn't get him back." Claire breaks off for a second, and she doesn't look pitying anymore. She looks pissed. "It's not fair. I don't fucking care what this Jack kid of yours said - Chuck is the reason Cas is dead, and if he righted one of your deadbeat god's wrongs, it doesn't make any sense that he wouldn't do this. You deserved it. Cas… Cas deserved it. This is so pointless. I hate this story." 

Dean lets out a bitter laugh. "That's the whole point, kid. We're not in a story anymore. It doesn't have to have meaning or closure. This is just… life." 

His throat tightens even as he says it. He's been managing days at a time by not thinking about the rest of his life stretched out before him, a lifetime of this ache in his chest that he's pretty damn sure is never gonna go away.

This is just life, and Dean made a promise, so he tries. He really does. He buys a second hand guitar and learns to play a few simple songs. He figures when Miracle stops running out of the room every time he reaches for the guitar, it’s a good sign that he’s improving. 

Dean watches movies on his nice TV, and he reads on the old porch swing that came with the house. He takes Miracle for long walks around the property, and draws up plans for a garden he’ll never plant. He realizes halfway through some initial measurements that he’d like to see a garden out there, but it would break his heart all the time to see it empty. 

Dean goes to work and makes conversation with his customers and shoots the shit with his employees. He drives out to Wisconsin’s state parks, and takes Miracle to South Dakota to see the girls. 

As the months go by, they're all a bit hazy. Dean's cut way back on drinking, so the blurred feeling of time isn't him intentionally drowning himself out - it's that the ache in him is so deep, so distracting, that it takes up huge chunks of time and energy. Either he's quietly, internally mourning - not just Cas, but in a morbid sort of way, the loss of structure in the only way of life he'd ever really known - or he's expending a tremendous amount of energy not thinking about it. Either way, the days sort of run together. Dean is not so much living through them as he is letting them pass him by. 

Dean talks to Cas most nights. He doesn't call it praying, even if he knows that's what it is. He lies there, listening to Miracle snore, and it's the one part of his day where he can crack open, where any of it feels real.   

"Hey Cas," Dean says to his ceiling, sometime in mid-October when the leaves are aflame and the air smells like fall. "S'funny, I always wondered about what you looked like. What you really looked like, y'know, outside your vessel. 'Tall as the Chrysler Building' you said once, and I used to look at you and think Jesus, he'd never fit. " 

Dean laughs softly and rubs a hand over his face out of habit. "I don't… I don't know if you wanted… I thought you didn't really want in that way at all. All those girls I tried to throw at you, and - and the way we used to be in the beginning… Guess I thought you just weren't interested in all of that. So. If you were here, I'd… I guess if you didn't want sex, I could live with that. But buddy, I can't believe you didn't know I wanted you. Fuck, Cas. What did you think Purgatory was about, huh? What any of it was about? I… Okay, sometimes I didn't know either. But I… I loved you for such a long time, man." 

Dean takes a few stuttering breaths until he gets his voice back under control. “Jesus Christ. Did you think I couldn’t because I… because you didn’t think I could love a man, or did you just think I couldn’t love you? ‘Cause I… ‘Cause I treated you bad sometimes? ‘Cause I got so angry?” 

Dean’s fingers tighten in Miracle’s fur. He can feel the dog’s belly softly rising and falling and that helps somehow. 

“When you became human, all those years ago now, I wanted… God, Cas. I thought if there was ever a time for us, that was it. I wanted so badly to take care of you. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I never said it enough. I never explained it right. Know you forgave me and all, but I messed it all up. I wanted to be there for you, I wanted to be the one to…” 

Dean puts a hand over his eyes and cries for a while. In the dark of the room, nothing but Miracle’s snores and the creak of the trees outside in the wind to interrupt him, it feels safe somehow. It feels like prayer, like confession, like the space made for seeking absolution. 

“I wanted to show you what it was like, wanted to introduce you to so much. I… Dammit, Cas, but I wanted you then. It killed me to make you leave, and when I thought you were dead, I couldn’t… It should have been me.” 

It’s something Dean has carried for years and never acknowledged, never let himself think into one coherent thought because the bitterness of it left such an acrid taste in his mouth. 

“It should have been us. I would have taken care of you, would have shown you what feels good, would have made your first time something fucking cosmic. That’s what you should have had. Not sex with someone who hurt you. I didn’t want that for you. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay. I’m sorry.” 

“... So even people who are otherwise ecologically friendly are still letting their cats roam outdoors because they don’t understand the scale of the problem. Half the people I talk to in Madison are liberal hippies with compost in their backyard who won’t consider bringing their cats inside because they think it cages their spirits or whatever. And sure, there’s something to that, but that’s kind of a larger scale question on the existential nature of pets or domesticated animals as a whole. The fact is that so many species are going extinct at an alarming rate and no one is listening to how big of a factor outdoor cats are playing in widespread bird death. Of course, this whole thing is a human problem, but it’s the problem we have now and one means of addressing it is curbing the outdoor cat population.” 

Dean squints up at his brother when he finally pauses for breath in what has surely been a fifteen minute long diatribe. 

"Are you… getting a cat?" Dean hedges, having tuned out of this conversation after the third sentence about Wisconsin's bird demographics. 

Sam, leaning against the Impala while Dean fusses with the engine, huffs out an impatient breath. "No, I'm just saying, I wish cat owners would be a little more responsible. You should see some of the specimens we get called about man, it's gruesome." 

Dean considers asking how the mangled corpses of Sam's beloved black-capped chickadees, or whatever, hold up against decapitated vampires, but he bites his tongue and leaves it alone. 

Sam seems happy in his weird little world of dead birds and bones. He talks about it eagerly, as if it has meaning for him, like it all matters. 

Dean can't fathom how quickly Sam seems to be letting go of their old life. It makes him feel an immense sadness. It's an old feeling, weighted down with guilt. He dragged his brother through so much shit, pulled him back into the fire again and again, whether on purpose or not. Seeing Sammy existing outside of hunting again brings up all the old memories of Stanford. The hurt of abandonment, but also the pride Dean had felt, and somewhere under it all the relief in knowing that Sam was going to get out. 

Dean just didn't think it was going to take another sixteen years to do it. 

 "Ohh-kay," Dean says, dragging the word out. "You got it, birdbrains. If I ever get a cat, I'll keep 'em locked away." 

 He shuts the hood of the Impala, giving Baby one last distracted pat. "What do you say we fix up some grub before I head in to open up the bar? You sticking around tonight?" 

Sam hands over the beer Dean left on the roof. It's luke-warm. Dean pulls a face but drinks it anyway. 

"I'll stay for dinner if you're offering and I can help you open, but I gotta head back early. Eileen and I have plans in the morning. One of Eileen's friends has a local honey stand at the farmer's market and we promised to help set up tomorrow." 

Sam's eyebrows crinkle toward each other as he notices Dean's face. "What?" 

"Nothing." Dean crumples up his empty beer can and looks down at his hands, lightly patterned with engine grease. His ring sits there mostly unscathed. 

"Did you want me to stay? I can if you really need the help." 

"No, no, it's nothing. Don't worry about it. Let's, uh…" Dean flounders and points back at his house, awkwardly backing away a few steps before turning abruptly and power-walking away. Miracle lifts his head from where he'd been napping on the stoop and gives a little wag of his tail as Dean steps over him before appearing to conk back out. 

Dean's messy deflections are moot, anyway, as Sam follows him a minute later. But it gives Dean a moment to collect himself, to gather an onion and a sharp knife, to give himself something to do with his hands. 

 "Everything reminds you of him, huh?" Sam sits down at the little kitchen island and watches Dean chop. 

Dean gives a tight twitch of his head that could probably be interpreted as a nod and Sam sighs. 

"It… it gets better, Dean. I know it sounds callous now, but it does get easier." 

"Right," Dean says shortly. He wipes his face on his sleeve, but it's just onion tears. He's pretty sure it's just onion. "Easy for you to say." 

Sam looks genuinely puzzled by this comment. Dean has to bite back the diatribe always waiting on the tip of his tongue that Claire was right, that it's not fair, that of course he's glad Eileen and everyone else is back and it isn't about him anyway and that's the point but it does feel somehow unjust that his brother gets to go through the rest of his life with a woman he loves while Dean is left with ghosts. Or rather, it so neatly fits the narrative he's told himself his whole life, that he doesn't deserve anything more, that he doesn't need anything more. Dean has lived with that idea for so long, but he wanted so badly for it not to be true. For this to end some other way. 

I know how you see yourself, Dean...

He's trying, really trying, to prove (to himself or to Cas, he's not really sure) that he is both capable and worthy of an alternate narrative. 

"Not really," Sam says slowly. He's watching Dean carefully. "What do you mean?" 

"Nothing. I didn't mean anything." 

Sam watches him for a little while longer. Dean heats a pan and starts frying the onions. They sizzle in the silence. 

"You're thinking of Eileen," Sam says at last, like he's just worked through the problem. It's a voice of his that has often made Dean feel like an idiot, but perhaps never more so than in that moment. "But I was thinking of Jess." 

 Dean shuts his eyes, glad his back is already turned to his little brother as he hovers over the stove. He's struck again with what would, just months ago, have been a helpless rage, but is now something deep and aching and directionless. It's Jess and Cas, mom and dad, Jack and Bobby, Ellen and Jo, Benny and Charlie. All that death, and for what? 

"Sorry," Dean grunts down to the frying pan. 

"No, it's… you don't need to apologize. All I'm saying is… Dean, I'm sorry. It isn't fair. But it's never been fair, and now… You can grieve as long as you need, but it does get easier. I promise." 

Some weeks later, Claire stops by with a vague excuse about drinking Dean out of business, which she then proceeds to do as he works closing shift. Dean notices Sal eyeing Claire up from behind the bar and he scowls at her. Sal just laughs, like she's never been less intimidated in her life, but she doesn't make any moves. Dean is pretty sure Claire and Kaia are still together, and that Kaia is now in college in South Dakota, but he's not willing to raise the subject. 

Claire hustles some unsuspecting local boys at pool and Dean grins down at the drink he's pouring as he hears them grumble on the way out. 

Dean lets Sal leave early, and Claire helps him lock up after closing. They work in silence before heading back to the house, and even though she's about young enough to be his daughter, Dean can't help but realize Claire is one of the few people he's felt comfortable with since Cas died. She reminds him too much of himself sometimes, but he can still see hope in her, even after all the tragedy in her life. Like maybe what he'd have been like if he'd never gone to Hell. Damaged, but still fully human. 

"Alright, old man," Claire says, plopping down on the floor between couch and coffee table and grinning up at him over a deck of cards. "Let's see what you've got." 

Dean sinks down to the floor with an exaggerated groan, setting a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers between them. Miracle comes over to sniff the glasses and backs away, offended, to curl up on the empty couch. 

It seems somewhat ironic that Dean has only started to notice his joints now that he's settled down into a normal, soft job. It's not like he's ancient or anything, but his knee twinges every time he climbs The Bar(n)'s stairs and he has a feeling that it'll get worse with the cold. He hasn't mentioned it to Sam because, besides telling him to go see a doctor, he knows what Sam will say: That this is the first time Dean has ever slowed down enough, come out of survival mode enough, to deal with the little aches and pains of growing older. 

Dean loses track of time as they play cards, drinking and smack-talking, getting up to fetch snacks or throw a treat to Miracle on occasion. It's later than Dean's usually up these days and he drinks more than he would usually let himself. 

"Hell yeah!" Claire whoops, putting down her last card. "You can put that in your pipe and smoke it." 

Dean pushes the pile of secondhand poker chips he found at a thrift store at her. "It's a stupid game," he says. "There's no skill." 

"That sounds like loser talk, buddy." Claire grins at him. "War is totally a head game." 

"Hmph. That's what you think. I've met War, he's a punk-ass bitch." 

"Ooh, you kiss Miracle with that mouth?" Claire shoots back the last of the whiskey in her glass and grins at him with a sloppy kind of smile. 

Dean almost never thinks that she looks like Cas - or rather, like Jimmy - but then there are these moments when the light hits her eyes and Dean feels like he can see how the line of Cas' true vessels runs through her. 

He looks down at his own glass, suddenly feeling like he has drunk too much. It's so much work to keep in all his passing thoughts about Cas. 

"Hey," Claire says, and when he looks up she's no longer loose-limbed with laughter and alcohol. "Hey, can I ask you something?" 

Dean nods. He doesn't know how to say no to Claire - this girl so angry and wild and familiar, whose parents he might as well have taken away from her and yet who has such a capacity for forgiveness and love, after everything that had been done to her. Dean sometimes wishes she would ask for more from him, and knows she never will. 

"Do you think… Do you think if he had another vessel he could've come back?" 

It takes a moment for Dean to work out what she's asking, to understand that her thoughts too had turned to Cas. 

"Claire…" 

"I know," she says quickly, waving one hand in the air as if to motion him away. "I know that he wouldn't, not now, but that's why I'm… Do you think he could have and just wasn't willing to?" 

"Claire, no." Dean shakes his head. "You know that, um, that he wasn't… Cas wasn't using Jimmy as a vessel in the end. He just… he was him. Himself. His body was…" Dean flounders, unsure how to make it any less morbid. "I don't know if he could have ever been in anyone else again. And you're right, he wouldn't have. He would have never asked you for that." 

Claire nods down at the coffee table. Her knees are drawn up to her chest and she's folded in on herself but she's not crying. Dean kind of feels like he might. 

Instead, he asks her something he promised himself that he never would. “Can I ask you something?” 

She nods at him, both of them drunk and feeling small in their grief. 

“What… What did it feel like?” Dean wants to take it back; it’s selfish and cruel. There’s something inappropriate about it too - an innuendo that isn’t what Dean wants to ask but that can’t quite be carved out of the question. 

Claire looks at him, stares into his eyes, and she doesn’t have to ask what he means. “Like being chained to a comet,” she says. Her gaze goes a little glassy, like she’s seeing something beyond him. “Like being so full of light that you know your body is going to rip apart, that you’re overspilling with - with glory. The world was… It was all light. Mom and dad, they were just passing flashes. For years, I thought If that’s how they see us, of course we mean nothing to them, because I remembered how fleeting everything felt. I let him in for minutes, but to him, the time was so short it was incalculable. 

“But it was also…” Claire takes a deep breath and lets it shudder out of her, hugging her knees to her chest more tightly. “It was like being on fire. But it was also the most power I’ve ever had. And I remember his voice, his real voice - it was so beautiful I could have cried. There’s nothing to compare it to.” 

Dean thinks about his own time with Michael. He recognizes everything Claire is describing, but what he remembers most is the constant struggle, always trying to regain control of his own body, even after saying yes. He wonders what it would be like to wholly surrender. 

Claire curls up on the couch with Miracle shortly after that and Dean fetches the comforter from the guest room and tucks it around her before he heads upstairs. Miracle joins him eventually, but for a while he just lays alone in his bed and stares at his ceiling and thinks without speaking. 

Dean wakes the next morning to a symphony pounding in his head, and it’s only when he’s skidded down the stairs in his sweatpants and rattiest Zeppelin shirt, gun in hand, that he realizes it’s just Claire, playing music from her phone while she makes coffee in the kitchen. Dean hides the gun before she sees him, blinking the sleep from his eyes and feeling the first pang of the day in his knee now that the adrenaline has faded. 

Claire’s hair is a blonde rat’s nest and she’s wearing the Guns & Roses t-shirt he’s been missing for a month. As he watches her from the stairway, he feels a mild stabbing sensation somewhere in stomach. This is the closest thing he’ll ever have to a daughter, this fucked up thing between him and Claire, and he knows he’s the last father figure she’s got. Of course, she has Jody and Donna and Alex, she’s got other family, but somehow the fact that he is the last in line of the people who got her real father killed has put him closer to her. It’s messed up and maybe even wrong, and Dean thinks in explicit words for the first time that he loves her. 

It’s an astonishing relief, actually. Dean sort of thought he might never feel love again. Oh, he loves Sam and Eileen and Miracle and whoever. But he hasn’t really felt it since Cas died. 

When Claire turns around and finds Dean standing there, she does not startle, just takes a sip of her coffee and grunts at him in a very Sam-like way. Dean finds himself smiling and hides it from her so that he doesn’t have to explain. 

Claire drove down in a horrible 2001 Volkswagen that is basically peeling in front of them, and when Claire goes to leave after a late breakfast (Dean will not allow her to call it brunch), she can’t get it to start. 

“I’ve got it!” Claire snaps as she pries the hood up, slapping Dean’s hand away. “Just bring Baby out so I can jump this motherfucker. If I keep it on all the way to Sioux Falls it’ll be fine.”    

Dean holds up his hands in surrender and retreats to the garage but he hesitates in the dark and musty space, looking at the Impala sitting meek and too-long ignored in this mild midwestern town. 

“You’re gonna think I’m cazy,” Dean tells the car. She doesn’t answer, but Dean imagines her perked up like a dog who has just heard their owner say “walk.” Dean sighs, pulls out his phone, and dials Sam. 

“Hey,” Sam says. 

“Are you and Eileen gonna have kids?” Dean asks. 

There’s a sputtering noise on Sam’s end of the phone. “I - What?”

“I don’t have much time here, Sam. Are you and Eileen planning on having kids?”

“Dude. Not that it’s any business of yours, but why are you asking me this?” 

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and looks again at his car. He can’t decide if she looks excited or betrayed. 

“Because,” Dean says. “I always figured that when I died, I’d leave the Impala to you. Pretty much the only thing I had to leave you with, anyway, and, well, it’s the Winchester legacy. But now, I dunno, if I just keep on living and with us both retired, it seems a shame for her to just sit here. If you wanted to pass her down to your kids, then I’d save her for them, but otherwise…” 

“Otherwise?” Sam sounds suddenly alert - maybe even alarmed. 

“How would you feel if, uh, if I gave her to Claire?”

Sam is silent for a moment. “Dean,” he says slowly, carefully. “Are you… okay?” 

“What? Yeah, sure. Peachy.” 

“You’re not…” Sam clears his throat. “You’re not thinking about doing something stupid, are you?” 

Dean should have known what Sam was asking, but he was distracted by Claire yelling in the distance, asking him what was taking so long, and by his own surprise in himself that he was even considering this. “You think giving Claire the Impala would be stupid?” 

“No, I’m not…” Sam trails off and sighs. Dean can practically hear him running his fingers through the hair he still refuses to cut. “I’m asking if you’re thinking about killing yourself, Dean.” 

That gets through and Dean laughs, more out of habit than anything else. “Oh come on. What? No.” 

“It’s just… Giving away possessions is one of the signs, and I mean, the Impala isn’t even a possession to you, so this is… kinda unprecedented.” 

“Sam. Dude. I’m touched by your concern.” Dean puts on a dramatic voice, but he is a little touched in a morbid sort of way. “But no. I’m…” 

Dean doesn't know how to explain this. He can't really, because Sam is right, it's antithetical to Dean's character. That's who he is, Dean Winchester and his 1967 Chevy Impala, out on the open lonely road. It's all he's ever really known. 

Dean doesn't know how to start; with the way Claire had played music for him over coffee without speaking while he made them eggs that morning, with how he'd seen so much of himself in her and how determined he'd felt that she wouldn't lose the spark of joy and hope in her, how something about that determination had turned over a stone that people around him had been trying to flip for years and that on the other side of the rock was the first time he'd ever admitted to himself that maybe he hadn't deserved to lose that spark either. 

But then again, maybe it starts with his promise to Cas that he would try to live, and this is him living, this is him letting go of the framework that kept him boxed into his old life, the very vehicle by which he had hauled himself through the narrative. Maybe it starts with their dad, with John giving Dean the keys to the Impala and how excited Dean had been, how proud he had felt. Maybe it starts with feeding Sam off-brand Cheerios in the back seat, Sam's chubby little baby hands dropping as much to the floor of the car as into his own mouth, with dad laughing from the driver's seat, dad yelling from the driver's seat, dad crying silently, dad singing along to the same old cassettes that he'd give to Dean. Maybe it's home, and the deep down truth is that you can't go home. The time comes when you can never go back, when you aren't the person who left your childhood bedroom and so standing there everything feels unbearably nostalgic and there's so much love there but god, so much grief too, and you don't fit there anymore, maybe you don't fit anywhere, but there's some scar tissue that cannot be built over and so the only thing to do is shut the door behind you and leave the place as it has been and always will be in your memories. 

Or something. Dean never had a bedroom or a house or much of a hometown. He never wants to go back to Lawrence again. Sometimes driving the Impala feels like going back to everything he's trying to leave behind. 

"I want to do this for her," Dean says, because he can't put the rest of it into words. 

Sam is silent for a moment longer. "Then… yes. Okay. You know I love that car, but if you're sure, then yes. To answer your question, I don't know if Eileen and I will have kids. Maybe we'll adopt someday, but… also maybe not. If we do, yeah, it'd be nice to leave them the car, but I was never counting on it, Dean. If this feels right, then you should do it." 

"It does," Dean says. "Thanks Sammy." 

Claire is sitting on the grass with a pair of jumper cables in her lap looking very annoyed when Dean finally drives Baby out of the garage. 

"What the hell took you so long?" Claire asks, scowling at him. 

"Hey, don't be crabby, I got you a gift." Dean gets out of the car and tosses the keys at Claire. She catches them and gets to her feet, cables dangling loosely from one hand. 

"Oh yeah? Is it a barbie?" 

"No." 

"Whiskey?" 

"Nope." 

"I'm bored of this game. What is it?" 

"I just gave it to you." 

Claire frowns at him, then down at the keys. "What?" 

 Dean pats Baby's hood and leaves his hand there. "Look, she should be out in the world. She should be out with someone still young enough to look cool in her, someone still having adventures. You promise to treat her right, and she's yours." 

Claire stares at him, then at Baby, then back to him. "You're not thinking of offing yourself or something, are you?" 

Dean throws his hands up in exasperation. "Why does everyone keep asking that? No. Christ. I just think it's time that she gets handed down, and sorry kiddo, but Sam's an old man with no taste, so you're next in line." 

"You're serious." Claire actually looks a little pale. 

"If you wreck her, you have her brought back out to me and I'll teach you how to fix her up. I don't care if you break down in California, if you take her to anyone else for more than an oil change, I will hunt you down." 

Claire stares at him for a moment more, and her wide eyes look huge in her face. “I… thank you?” she says, somewhat hesitant. “Dean, I can’t…” 

“You can. It’s time she was on the road again.” 

One more moment of hesitation and then Claire flings her arms around Dean’s neck and tucks her whole body into him. Dean feels warmth in his face and chest, embarrassed but pleased with her show of affection. He holds onto her tight for a moment, wishing, as he always does, that Cas was there. 

“Okay, alright,” Dean says gruffly, stepping back. “Get out of here.” 

Claire’s sudden grin is wide and bright. “Oh man,” she says, bouncing a little on her toes. “Kaia is going to die. ” 

Dean laughs and backs away from the Impala. “I’ll take your heap of junk to the scrapyard. Just try to stay out of trouble, alright?” 

Claire gets into the car and starts her up. Dean could swear he hears Baby hum in anticipation. 

“No promises,” Claire says out the open window. She’d brushed and re-braided her hair at some point, but she’s still wearing Dean’s old t-shirt. Dean has a moment of something like deja vu, thinking of her driving all the way to South Dakota, thinking of the first solo hunt he’d taken in Wyoming, all that fear and freedom. He remembers himself at twenty-one, and for a moment the memory of himself is inseparable from the girl in Baby’s driver’s seat, the loss and pain and loneliness they share radiating across time. But then Dean blinks, and he’s forty-two, and the girl grinning up at him is beautiful and young and, while not whole, somehow unbroken.  

“Take care. Of Baby and yourself, you hear?” 

“Woohoo!” Claire screams without warning and presses on the gas. 

Dean laughs again and watches her peel out down the long driveway, waving to the car before she turns out of sight. 

Two days later, Dean gets a text from Claire with a Spotify link. He’s stubborn about how he listens to music - for him, vinyl will always sound better than anything, and he still prefers cassettes to CDs, but he has begrudgingly allowed Claire to sign him up for a music streaming service. She said there was no way she was physically making him a tape every time she had a song recommendation and he’d better suck it up and join the twenty-first century. He had responded at the time by forcing her to listen to two hours of Johnny Cash on his record player. 

Now, though, Dean is genuinely touched that she thinks about him enough to send him music. He listens to all of it, even the ethereal shit he doesn’t like. 

The latest link is for a playlist Claire has titled Power Ballads (and bops) for Your Independence . It’s over five hours long. There is a lot of Demi Lovato on there. 

“Jesus Christ,” Dean mutters to himself, but he puts the playlist on as he starts his dishes that night. 

The one year mark comes. Dean had planned to spend it alone, but Sam won’t let him. He makes Dean take off work and they go camping. 

“It’s November,” Dean complains. 

“Hell was colder,” Sam says with a shrug. 

So they load supplies into Dean’s new black pick-up truck and head out to the woods. When Dean turns the car on, Sam swivels around to stare at him, eyebrows raised to their full extent. 

“What?” Dean snaps, turning the heat up. 

“Uh. Dude. The music.” 

“It’s Lizzo,” Dean says defensively. It is, of course, Claire’s playlist that has started up on the bluetooth. Sam just blinks at him. “Everyone likes Lizzo.” 

“Ohh-kay.” 

 On the drive, past the farms of dead corn that Dean still finds creepy, out to a remote campground that allows dogs, Sam talks about his and Eileen’s lives, their overly friendly midwestern neighbors, and how his volunteer projects at the zoological museum have turned into a paid research position. 

“It’s only part-time,” Sam says, like he’s trying to curb his own enthusiasm. “But that’s fine, it means I still have time at the humane society.” 

Dean mostly grunts and says “Oh?” and “Mm,” during this conversation. He’s waiting for the hammer to fall. He’s also trying very hard to think of nothing at all. 

 They are, unsurprisingly, the only people at the campgrounds. It’s early November and no snow has fallen yet, but it’s getting cold. The last of the autumn leaves are falling, making a patchwork blanket of yellows and reds all around the spot Sam actually made a reservation for. Sam pitches the tent while Dean starts a fire and Miracle trots around the campsite, tail wagging. 

“I can’t believe we’re camping,” Dean mutters into the fire later that night, when the sun has set and they’ve eaten the potatoes and sausage skewers Dean fixed up for them. “Have we not spent enough of our lives without a roof over our heads?

“Just thought it might be nice to get out of town,” Sam says. He tips back, hands behind his head and looks up at the sky. The light pollution out there in the middle of nowhere is low; the stars are bright and numerous. 

Dean can tell the hammer is coming. “Because nothing bad ever happens when we spend the night outside with no defenses.”

“We have Miracle.” Sam pats the dog’s head. Miracle is lying between them, snoring. “He’ll sound the alarm.”

Dean snorts. He pokes at the fire with a stick he’s been using to stoke it. 

“Besides,” Sam says, and Dean can hear a change in his voice, subtle enough that no one else would ever pick up on it. “You know that there hasn’t been much activity since…” 

“Yeah.” 

“Look, Dean -” 

“Sam.” 

“I’m not gonna make you talk about it, okay? I promise, I’m not. But I thought, if you wanted to, maybe it would be easier out here. To talk about it somewhere else, somewhere you can leave it, like this is Vegas.” 

“Then why the fuck didn’t you take me to Vegas?” Dean watches a log burn and cave, watches the sparks rise up as the rest of the firewood shifts on top of it. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

Dean closes his eyes this time. He knows that a lot of people like the smell of a campfire, but he never has. Smoke has always meant something ugly to him. 

“I don’t know how, Sammy,” Dean says at last. 

“Okay.” 

“Maybe… Maybe someday.” 

“Okay. I’ll be here.”

“Yeah.” Dean reaches over Miracle and socks his little brother in the arm. “I know.” 

When Sam and Miracle are both snoring later that night, Dean sneaks out of the tent and goes for a walk. They’re camped on the edge of a state park, one of the ones he’s been to before, and he follows a little dirt path that takes him through some trees down to a lake. The water is black, the moonlight reflected on the little ripples that shiver through it in the wind. 

Dean shivers himself and turns away from the water, looking up instead. He hugs his jacket around himself and feels his eyes water in the sting of the cold air. 

“Hey Cas,” he says quietly, in the vague direction of the moon. “It’s been too long without you, man. It feels like… feels like this last year has lasted a lifetime. Sometimes I wake up and I don’t… I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day, just another day of this. I don’t know how normal people do it. I really don’t. 

"I'm trying to figure out who I even am if I'm not hunting. I think… you know, I'm still a hunter. The way you were always still an angel, through everything, grace or not. We were made to be soldiers, you and me. And I'm trying - I promise I'm trying, Cas, to end somewhere else. 

"Sam says it gets easier. Maybe I'm crazy, but sometimes I think I don't want it to get better. I don't want to accept it. You carved a piece out of me when you left and I don't think I'm getting that back, but you also… you gave me something too and I'm… I'm terrified, man, of losing that feeling. The fact that you ever loved me…" 

Dean's voice is shaky. "Cas, you rewrote my whole history. Did you know that? You changed everything, and I don't want that to fade. I miss you so much that I can't bear it, but I love you. I love you. I fucking love you, you idiot. God. I don't know what to do without you." 

At the end of December, in the weird post-Christmas but pre-New Year's Eve phase, Dean's working a slow closing shift at the bar. He lets Nick take off early, makes small talk with a couple of regulars, a woman from Maine in town to see her cousin, and a man in a red bomber jacket visiting his sister. Dean's not stupid, and his hypervigilance hasn't exactly died in the last year, so he notices pretty quickly that the guy from out of town is sneaking covert glances in his direction. He can feel the man's eyes on him as he fixes drinks, as he goes in and out of the back. 

The guy's hot, is the thing. Dean can feel an uncomfortable prickle of warmth on the back of his neck every time he feels himself being eyed up. Dean's been flirted with by lots of customers, mostly women, but the ring is usually enough of a deterrent to it ever reaching a point of actually having to turn someone down. 

The guy introduced himself as AJ when Dean fetched a second beer for him, and Dean had been too flustered to offer his own name. He’s roughly 80% sure the guy is interested, 20% suspicious that he could be someone dangerous.   

 “Someone told me this was the bar to go to for good music,” hot bomber jacket AJ says when Dean drifts nearby, collecting the glass and tip from Old Ed. The few regulars have trickled out, it’s just Dean and the two strangers - something that sets him suddenly on alert. But then as he’s thinking it, the woman from Maine gets up and starts putting on her coat. 

Dean relaxes a miniscule amount. “And? Your opinion?” He’s been playing the hits all night, mostly Zeppelin, a little Styx, a little Nina Simone to round things out. 

AJ grins at him. He’s got green eyes, mixed with more gray than Dean’s, curly brown hair, and facial scruff with a little bit of red in it. His shoulders are wide under the sleek shell of his jacket. “It’s like waking up in the eighties,” he says, tipping his almost empty glass in a cheers. “I dig it.” 

"You having another? I'm about to close up, but I'll give you a last beer grace."

  AJ shakes his head but he gives Dean a long look that makes his cheeks burn. 

"I'm good. I could stick around and give you a hand though… If you want any help closing up.” 

Dean thinks about it, for the first time really. Every time he even started the barest hint of fantasy in the last six months, it all came tumbling down in guilt and grief. It was just too much of a reminder of everything he’d never had, and never would have, with Cas. He was sick with the feeling. 

AJ looks like a good time. Like someone who wouldn’t ask too many questions, who isn’t worried by the ring on Dean’s finger. And looking at him, Dean thinks maybe someday.  

“Nah, thanks, I’m all set here.” 

“You sure?” AJ holds Dean’s gaze, fingers sliding back slowly across the bar top. “It’d be my pleasure.”  

Dean gives him one last grin and shakes his head. “Happy holidays anyway.” 

After AJ leaves the bar, Dean cleans up and puts everything into place. He turns out all the lights and then, glancing around one last time out of habit, he goes to the middle of the open floor space and lays down flat on his back. He can feel the planes of his shoulders protest against the wood, but he puts his hands behind his head and looks up at the high arch of the ceiling where light from the stained window filters in ghostly colors across the central beam. 

“Hi Cas,” Dean whispers to the dance of light, and feels his voice constrict in his throat. For a long while he can’t say anything, and he just lies there, staring up at the light and holding his left hand with his right, directly over his own heart.

Maybe someday walks into the bar six months later. 

Dean looks up from where he's going over the books at the bar. It's only 3:00pm and the sunlight from the giant windows spills across the floors in a way that makes the room feel like a chapel. Even Dean can admit it's pretty. 

"Sorry," Dean calls out as the door shuts behind a figure just entering the bar. "We're closed. Come back in two hours." 

"I know you're closed. I can read." A man perhaps ten years younger than Dean stomps into the room, his black combat boots loud in the relatively empty space. He's a head and shoulders shorter than Dean, with dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and an expression somewhere between pissed-off and condescending. "I'm Nick's roommate, I'm here to drop off his keys because the dumbass left them at home again and I don't want to be woken at midnight when he comes lumbering home." 

Dean takes him in. Nick has mentioned his roommate Noel in passing, and Dean hadn't spared him a thought, but if he had, he would not have been expecting someone quite so… 

Noel is the type of guy who's always made Dean a little uncomfortable. He's not proud of that, and he thinks he's gotten a better handle on it over the last decade of his life, but it's true. Noel's got a lot of product in his hair, making it look perfectly tousled, and Dean is pretty sure he's wearing eyeliner. He's also got on several mismatched gold rings, a golden necklace, a gold hoop in one ear, and a black leather jacket that looks like it came from the women's section. Under the jacket, a white button-down is tucked into the tightest pair of black skinny jeans Dean has ever seen. They do not leave much to the imagination. Not that Dean’s looking. Or imagining. 

He’s the type of guy who wouldn’t do well in prison, Dean thinks, and has to hold back a snort. Almost immediately, though, his stomach clenches and he feels an outsized swell of guilt. He knows where the thought came from, it was something John would have said, but he’s disgusted by his own knee jerk reaction to it. It’s not funny. 

Introspection is sort of new to Dean. He does a lot of it these days. Maybe too much. There are a lot of silences that need filling, and Dean’s tried guitar, he’s tried talking to Miracle, he even - briefly - checked out an online support group for people who’d lost their spouses (he’d gone to one meeting and couldn’t stomach it). But no matter how much he works at his business, or volunteers with the Wisconsin DNR hauling fancy science equipment or building fences or hacking through undergrowth to make new trails, no matter how much time he spends with Sam and Eileen, Claire, his co-workers, his casual friends from the brewery, there is still so much time and space for his mind to wander. 

It’s early summer. Wisconsin is alive with heat and wildflowers, bees and farmers markets, the fields of tan dead corn stalks sheared down to grow green anew. A year since Dean up and ran from Kansas. A year and half since… 

“Sure, I’ll go get him,” Dean says, and flees to the back to get Nick. He stays in the back among his bottles of carefully curated liquors for a little while, guilt making him defensive, making him even more guilty, making him moody. 

Dean understands the absurdity of the problem. How can he be uncomfortable around gay men when he’s spent the last twelve years in love with another man? Or man-shaped type person at least. 

Internalized homophobia, says Sam’s voice in his head, always more snooty than he really is in life. 

Dean misses Charlie, his Charlie, with a sudden deep and bitter throb. He suspects, only in retrospect himself, that she had known. About his feelings for Cas, even when he’d been burying them so deep inside himself that he’d barely known what they were, about his maybe not 100% bonafide heterosexual past. 

It was no big deal, really. Things happened. Dean liked women and sometimes he liked men. He had admittedly always had trouble imagining himself in a relationship with a man, but he’d also never imagined himself owning a dog. So. Things change. 

Back among the bottles, surrounded by things he sort of owns that make up something bigger, something he’s built here, Dean’s loneliness makes a sharp, keening return. He actually has to shut his eyes for a moment, leaning his forehead against one of the shelves and twisting the ring around his finger. 

I need you here, man, he thinks into the silence. 

Two days later, on Friday that same week, the door to the bar opens again at 3:00pm. Dean’s finished with his books, he’s just passing time doodling on an order pad, and he looks up to see Nick’s roommate once again stomping in wearing that same half-condescending, half-pissed off expression. 

“Hey,” Dean says. “Nick leave his keys again?” 

Noel shakes his head and comes over to lean against the bar, squinting at the light coming in through the giant windows. “You’re wasting this place as a bar,” he says without preamble. “You should host weddings here.” 

“Uh,” Dean says. 

“I mean, you’ve already got that kind of cathedral vibe going, you know?” Noel’s hand gestures are wide and expressive, his rings glinting as they catch in the afternoon sun. “Plus you’ve got the property to really be a venue for rustic farm chic. Zhuzh it up and you’d make a killing from midwest sentimentalism.” 

“Uh,” Dean says again. “I don’t think I’m cut out for the wedding industry.” 

Noel laughs, not entirely nicely, eyeing Dean up in his cuffed flannel and work boots. “No, I suppose not. It’s a shame, you could totally capitalize on that sub-agrotourism trend.” 

Dean’s not sure if he should be offended by this evaluation, so he decides to ignore it. “Other than hosting your wedding, what can I do for you? We’re still closed.” 

Noel rolls his eyes but he smiles a little. “Oh god, not my wedding. I’m just trying to point out a valuable missed opportunity. Anyway…” Noel sighs heavily and continues as if under mild duress. “I came to tell you that I have an extra ticket to the Brewers game tomorrow, if you want to go.” 

Dean was not expecting anything from this conversation, but if he had been, it definitely would not have been that. “What, to a baseball game?” 

“No, the Brewers competitive Pokemon Go tournament. Yeah, baseball.” Noel’s pissed off condescension is back. 

“Well, I, um.” Dean’s brain short-circuits a little bit and he can feel his cheeks getting warm again. Noel is wearing high-waisted floral pants, nearly as tight as his black skinny jeans, and a black button-down tucked into them. His black and gold belt is matched to a black tie with threads of gold in it. He is definitely wearing eyeliner. 

Noel sighs, long and exaggerated this time. “It’s just a game, relax, it’s not a date.” 

Dean makes a sort of protesting sound but that he doesn't even know how to translate into words and pivots. "Uh, look, not that I'm not flattered, but I don't even know you." 

"But wouldn't you like to?" Noel's flash of a grin is cutting. "Okay, look, I am here because a) you are the last viable candidate who might be interested in a sporting event." Noel holds up three fingers glinting with rings as he makes his points. "B) Nick thinks you need more queer friends, and c) he already told me it's your day off." 

Something inside Dean still curdles at the word "queer." He's heard kids (that is, people under 35) throw it around as a neutral term, but that wasn't how it used to feel, back when he was growing up. 

Dean is okay with it in the abstract - his employees all know about his dead husband by this point, and it's a small town so he's sure the rumors have made the rounds. He's never labeled himself in these conversations, it's never seemed necessary. Claire calls him "bi," and he doesn't stop her, so he assumes that's what everyone else thinks. 

Dean can't really think of it as more than a concept; the great love of his life is dead, so what does it matter? His sexuality, as far as he's concerned, is primarily widowed. Maybe someday, he'll flirt or have sex or something again, but he's certain there will never be anything deep enough to displace the core of grief and love where the memory of Cas still lives. 

"Uh," Dean says again, still thrown off-balance by Noel and queer and the fact that Nick worries about him. 

"I specifically told you to ask him in a way that wouldn't get me fired," Nick calls from the backroom. He emerges, looking completely unconcerned and shrugs at Dean's raised eyebrows. "Sorry, boss. But I do think you need to spend some time with someone other than that dog of yours." 

"Hey," Dean says, mildly offended. "I see plenty of people. I'm not a hermit." 

"Yeah, yeah. You work and volunteer and scope out new stock at the brewery." Nick waves a hand as if to brush this aside. "But do you ever go out to have fun? Meet some people outside work and your brother? Not that I don't like Sam," he adds. "I'm just saying." 

"So this is… what, a friend set-up?" Dean tries to sound offended as he works out how pathetic this makes him. 

"What do you say, closet-case?" Noel says, and actually winks at him. 

" Noel ," Nick says in mild reproach. 

"I think the Brewers are gonna kick Pittsburgh's ass," Dean says. He looks at Noel, self-aware enough to know that it's the very same annoying condescension that is making him agree to this. It's being lightly insulted that puts him at ease, which Dean does not feel compelled to unpack. 

Dean had only been to a handful of baseball games in his life. When he was younger, he'd desperately wanted to be on Little League, but they were always moving and he could never make practice anyway because he had to look after Sam after school. Bobby used to throw a ball around with them, and he'd made Dean feel like it was something he could be good at, something he'd had a natural talent for. In a half-jealous, half-self-deprecating part of Dean's heart, he thought that in another life he might have been just another dumb jock. He'd always harbored secret fantasies that he would have been really good at most sports if he'd ever had the opportunity to really play. 

Dean still remembers the fake Adam telling him that John had taken him to baseball games on his birthday. Ghoul or not, the pictures he'd had were real. Dean had wanted that kind of bonding outing with his dad even more desperately than he'd wanted to play the game. He'd wanted to feel like a son. 

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" Noel yells from the seat next to Dean, half-rising as one of their players nearly makes it to home base. Noel swears as the player is tagged out. 

It shakes Dean out of his little reverie and he pulls himself back to the game. Trips down memory lane aside, he's actually having a good time. The sun is out, but it's not too hot yet. He's got overpriced salty food and an overpriced ice cold beer. Noel, to Dean's relief, is wearing less flashy clothes than before. True, he's back in those absurdly tight black skinny jeans, and his gray and mauve baseball t-shirt is obviously in a women's cut, but Dean hasn't spotted any floral patterns in the outfit. 

 Noel, it turns out, is a vibrant trash-talker. "That kid runs like a drunk stork," he complains cheerfully. "Thank god the Pirates are basically a bunch of baby raccoons fresh out of the trash can or I'd be worried." 

Dean snorts a little in spite of himself. "Their pitcher throws like a frat boy playing beer pong." 

"Their pitcher bats like a toddler whacking a piñata." 

"No, no, a toddler might actually hit his target. He bats like the concept of the Ford Pinto." Dean makes a batting motion and whistles. "Big swing and a miss." 

Noel gives him a bit of a side eye, but his smile is friendlier. "You know, you're actually kind of funny." 

"Gee, thanks." 

Noel rolls his eyes and lightly punches Dean on the arm. "It's not my fault you look like a brooding lumberjack." He looks back to the game and doesn't notice the slight spasm in Dean's face or the way he twists the ring on his left hand. 

Dean drove them both to the stadium and they spend the drive back to Nick and Noel's apartment bickering amicably about music. Noel has unforgivable opinions about Led Zeppelin and keeps skipping tracks that Dean would have killed Sam for fast forwarding over back in the Impala. 

"Seriously?!" Dean says as he pulls up in front of the apartment building and puts the truck in park. "You're going to sit there and tell me you 'don't like' Pink Floyd?!" Dean throws the air quotes in for good measure. 

Noel makes a face. "Okay, look, we all had our little Another Brick in the Wall moment in high-school," he says in a long-suffering way. "But some of us don't resist change quite so emphatically." 

"What is that supposed to mean?" 

"Oh please. Zeppelin? Pink Floyd? Styx? Babe, you live in the past. And it's fine, you can keep your flannel-walled masculinity intact all you want, but the point of music is to live in innovation, to move with the times. I'm talking Janelle Monae, BTS, Lil Nas X, Lizzo…" 

"I like Lizzo," Dean says, a touch defensive, a touch thrown by the casual "babe." 

Noel laughs and pats him on the knee. "Sure you do." 

And he leaves his hand there on Dean's leg just a fraction too long. Dean looks down at it, then, as he pulls away, back to Noel's face in the shadow of the truck cab with just the lights of the dashboard and a flickering orange street light illuminating them both. The evening snuck up on Dean, between overtime and traffic. 

"Well," Noel says, looking back into Dean's eyes without flinching. "I'd invite you up, but I did say this wasn't a date." 

"I…" Dean flounders for just a moment.

Noel isn't even his type, Dean tells himself. If he has a type with men it would be someone more like Nick, someone broad-shouldered with big hands and a tough exterior. 

Butch , says the snooty little Sam voice in Dean's head, just the way he had when he'd more or less acused Dean of overcompensating all those years ago. 

"Plus Nick will be home later, so that's potentially awkward," Noel offers. 

Maybe someday, Dean tries to tell himself. The loneliness in him keens. 

"We could, uh, we could go back to mine. Have a drink." 

It's out there and it hangs a moment between them as surprise registers on Noel's face. Dean feels ready to melt into his own car seat when Noel smiles and rebuckles the seatbelt he'd removed. 

"Alright, bartender," Noel says. "Take me home." 

It happens fast, smoother than Dean was expecting. One moment he's pouring them both whiskey, sweating nerves as Noel greets Miracle. The next moment, Noel is grabbing Dean around the neck and kissing him hard. Noel climbs him like a tree in the hallway, legs wrapped all the way around Dean's hips. He weighs nothing, but Dean lets the momentum push him back against the wall for a minute as they make out furiously. He carries Noel into the guest bedroom and shuts Miracle out, because he can't help feeling there are some things dogs just shouldn't see. 

After, they lay together in silence for a long time. Noel stays collapsed directly on top of Dean, his sweaty face resting on Dean's sweaty chest. It's an oddly comfortable quiet. Dean strokes Noel's hair absent-mindedly, tired but not sleepy. 

Dean wouldn't have imagined it like this, couldn't have in a hundred years. But it was nice, and Noel's weight is comforting on his chest, his warm thighs still sprawled between Dean's legs, the rhythmic rise and fall of his breath a solid indicator that this is all real. This is Dean's life, somehow, against all the odds. 

 Eventually, Noel breaks the long drowsy silence. His right hand reaches up and tangles with Dean's left. 

"Do you want to tell me about them?" Noel asks quietly, not raising his face. 

It takes awhile for the words to register. 

"What?" 

Noel's finger gently touches the ring that Dean never even thought to take off. "Your spouse, I mean." 

Dean laughs, although it comes out a little strangled. "Oh. He's dead. I thought you knew." 

"No, I do." Noel's other hand traces along Dean's side and over his chest. It feels so incredibly good to be touched. Not just the sex, but this, the contact. "I mean, Nick said you were a widower. But I meant, I don't know, death is weird in our culture. It's vaguely taboo to ask about dead people and I get that, but I feel like it must be hard too, feeling like you can't talk about them. So, I just meant, if you want to tell me about him, you can."

 Dean doesn't answer. He knows he's stiffened a bit, and he tries to coax his body back into that post-orgasm relaxation. 

When Dean put on his old ring, when he committed himself to the memory of his dead best friend, committed to carrying on the love between them, he'd still been a little beside himself with grief. Sometimes he feels like he still is. He'd needed to keep the memory of Cas alive, wanted to honor the last and greatest gift Cas had given him. So he'd told people in vague terms about their love. He'd talked to Claire about the truth of it, sold a kind of truth to Sam and anyone else who had known Cas, and had left everyone new in his life with the half-truth of "dead husband." 

But Dean didn't talk about Cas. He talked to him, he talked around him, but never about him. Not his hard won smiles. Not the stupid way his hair stuck up. Not the way Dean could stand in his presence sometimes and understand that he had been alive before the birth of nations, and how other times he was so helplessly naive that Dean had to explain TV shows to him. 

"He was…" Dean stops, clears his throat. "He was a nerdy little angel. Both the biggest doofus you'd ever meet, and the last person you'd want to be on the wrong side of. And believe me, I knew that from experience. No one could piss him off like I could.

 "He was my best friend. My… my first real friend, I think. I don't think he… I don't think he ever knew how much I really loved him."  

Dean swallows and shuts his eyes for a moment. Noel doesn't say anything or prompt him to continue, just remains a reassuring weight on his chest. 

It's strange, but now that Dean has actually done it, he doesn't feel guilty about sex with someone else. There is a faint sadness to it, as there is with everything, frankly, but Dean made a promise to live. He’s certain Cas would want him to be happy, to at least find enjoyment and pleasure in life again. That's the whole point of his being out here, isn't it? That he's trying to live something more than his prescriptive ending? 

"He saved my life. In so many ways. Cas was always saving me. I don't know. I don't know how I got to be the person that he - that he loved. I never deserved that, never deserved him. But he was a stubborn son of a bitch; a weird, loyal, unfathomable, one of a kind bastard. I'll miss him every day of my goddamn life." 

Noel squeezes Dean's hand and nuzzles a little closer into his chest. "Thanks for telling me," he murmurs. "It must be an unbearable loss." 

Dean swallows again and squeezes back. It should have felt wrong, maybe, talking about Cas with another naked man draped over him in bed, but it didn't. It felt like a release. 

"Yeah," Dean says to the unmarked ceiling of the guest room. "Yeah. It is." 

There is no second date. There's no conversation about it being a one night thing, it's just clear to both of them in an agreeable understanding. Dean doesn't know quite what it meant, if anything, to Noel, but he doesn't ask. They go to more baseball games together, and Noel introduces Dean to his friend group, all of whom are some shade of queer. That’s how Noel describes them anyway, and Dean tries to let the word remain a word. 

Dean likes Noel and his friends. He doesn’t know why this surprises him, really. After Charlie, Claire, Cas… And yet, still, there’s some wall Dean has kept up, even if he long ago understood his own feelings for other men. He had never internalized an identity that encompassed that. Noel and his friends wear their little rainbow hearts on their sleeves, sometimes literally. 

The thing is, if there’s anything Chuck’s narrative never would have allowed for, it’s someone like Noel. Dean’s first impression of him, his first unbidden thoughts about the way Noel looks and talks and stands and dresses, he’d taken those to come from John. Then he’d started wondering if it wasn’t coming from Chuck, if that wasn’t just part of the script he’d been following, where sometimes people were character traits instead of personalities, plot devices or the butt of jokes instead of independant actors. 

Maybe it was the same, in the end. John or Chuck, father or Father. 

Either way, part of what draws Dean to hang out with Noel is his very unlikelihood, the teenage defiance of choosing who to be friends with. It might be childish, but it makes Dean feel free. 

Summer is long. The heat in the old farmhouse is oppressive, and Dean takes to sleeping in boxers on top of the blankets with a fan pointed directly at his face. Miracle gets in the way of the fan, but Dean figures this is fair considering their relative fur difference. 

Eileen and Dean start an action movie club that Sam is not invited to join. They drink beer and play cards and compare explosions in films. Claire keeps updating the Power Ballads playlist. It now runs over eleven hours long. Noel’s friend Cerulean invites Dean over to use her woodshop. Sam continues to try coercing Dean into birdwatching, Dean continues to employ all of his best diversion tactics to avoid it. 

Time drags on. There are brief stretches now where Dean almost forgets. It’ll hit him at odd moments, when he’s cooking in the kitchen and turns around to find that there is no one there waiting for him on the other side of the table. When he’s closing up the bar and remembers there is no one but Miracle waiting for him at home. When he’s driving along in his new truck, listening to Claire’s new music, and his hand finds its way onto the empty seat. 

Sometimes it strikes him anew, as raw as the day Cas died. Sometimes, the grief greets him like an old friend, an ache in his heart that is remembrance more than pain. It’s never gone, but time keeps moving, and Dean keeps living. Just like he promised.     

And then one day in September, two years, nine months, and four days after Cas died, it happens. 

Sam calls at 7:00AM, and he sounds predictably strange when Dean grumbles a bleary noise into his phone. 

"Dean," Sam says. "Are you working today?" 

"Sam, I love you. I'm happy for you and your new-found love affair with nature. But I swear, if you've woken me up again to go birding -" 

"It's not that," Sam says quickly, although Dean can hear a hint of sulking in his strained voice. "But I, uh. I need you to meet me somewhere. Don't freak out. You don't need to bring any weapons, alright? I just need you to come to Des Moines. Now. Meet me… let me think… You remember that old abandoned farm outside the city that we cleared of a wraith back in, what was it, 2012? Meet me there." 

"Sam, what's happening?" Dean is sitting up, pushing Miracle out of the way so he can swing his feet off the bed. He's taken to sleeping in sweatpants in colder months and sometimes he secretly can't believe he used to sleep in jeans for most of his life. 

"Look… just meet me there. Please. Find someone to cover your shift if you need to." Sam pauses. "Maybe, uh, for tomorrow too." 

"Sam…" 

"It's not bad, Dean. I can't explain over the phone. I gotta go, I'm driving. I'll see you in Iowa." 

"Sam!" 

But Sam already hung up and Dean swears into the static. 

The barn in Iowa looks worse than Dean remembers it, but it's still standing a decade later. Sam's stupid Prius is parked out front in the overgrown grass and Dean pulls up next to it, looking for clues. There's not much, just a Culver's burger wrapper sitting on the dashboard. 

Of course, Dean's nerves are all on edge. The chorus of voices that have been telling him this whole time that he's the worst kind of idiot for even trying to pretend he could have something like a mundane life are back at full volume. He doesn't know what's waiting in this barn, but he can't believe Sam's strained assurance on the phone. It's always something bad. 

There's not much choice in the matter, though. Dean walks in through the hole of the collapsed doorway and looks around. It's not really dark inside because a portion of the roof has caved in, letting the gray light of a cloudy day filter into the mildewed space. Sam is leaning against a long-abandoned stall, and he turns towards Dean at the creak of a floorboard with a worried look on his face. 

"Dean," Sam says, straightening up with one hand held up in warning. 

Dean barely hears him over the blood in his ears. He's drawing his gun before he's conscious of it, because of course he didn't heed Sam's directive about no weapons. There's that old tightness in his belly and his throat suddenly feels closed off. One of the first thoughts that makes any semblance of cohesion is the fleeting wish that he'd just gone and put a bullet in his own brain on any of those lonely drunk nights when the idea occurred to him in the last two years. It had been a mostly idle thing, something he was pretty sure he wouldn't do, but there in that barn with the reek of moldy hay and rotten wood, all he can think is that he wishes he had never lived to see this moment. 

Because Dean was almost there. He wasn't happy, but truthfully, it was getting easier to wake up each morning. He had a business and what felt like the start of a community. He had his own place. He'd sort of maybe started to think of himself as a person. 

And now, just behind Sam, this thing that looked like Cas was straightening up too. This thing that looked like Cas was staring at him with big, blue eyes, the corners around them wrinkled with a strange combination of worry and joy, just like the last time Dean had seen them, and Dean is going to have to kill him. Dean is going to have to gank this image of his dead best friend, the love of his life, because there's no way that it's really him. 

There is no version of this story where Dean gets everything he wants. 

"Hello Dean," this thing says in Cas' voice and Dean's finger trembles on the trigger. 

"Dean, put the gun down." Sam steps in front of Cas, hand still raised. "It's him. I checked everything. It's him, Dean." 

Dean shakes his head. "No. Step away from him, Sammy. It can't be. You know it can't." 

"Dean -" Sam tries, sounding long-suffering, but the image of Cas cuts in. 

"I woke up in Lebanon sometime after midnight," he says, gently pushing Sam's arm down and stepping around him. "In a little copse of trees next to a patch of grass with wildflowers just beginning to bud. It wasn't far from the bunker." 

Cas looks into Dean's eyes, and Dean thinks oh god, oh god, there's so much love there. 

Dean wanted to ask Cas the last time this happened if he liked the windmill and the field where Dean had scattered his ashes. He hadn't asked though, too afraid of showing how much he had thought about it, how he'd tried to find a resting place he'd hoped Cas would've appreciated. He doesn't ask now either, but he lowers the gun. 

 "It's me," Cas says, taking a step forward. 

Dean stows his gun back in his waistband, but he shakes his head, taking a step back. His throat is stuck worse than ever and that tight feeling in his belly has moved up to his chest. His eyes feel suspiciously moist. 

"You were dead." Dean works the words out as a rasp. He takes one more step back for good measure. There's a sort of high-pitched buzzing in his head and nothing feels real. Not like dreaming, but like his brain and body have disconnected. He is distantly aware that this is his response to pain that it is too extreme to bear, a physiological and psychological distance that keeps anything from reaching too deep inside him. 

It is too much to hope. 

If Dean has to lose Cas again, he won't survive it. 

"I was," Cas says with a shrug. "And now I'm not." 

They're colliding before Dean registers moving and it's real, it's real, it's real. 

Cas' form is solid in Dean's arms as Dean hugs him like he never has before. Cas smells like loam, like the woods, but underneath it all, still like Cas. Indefinable. Unreplicable. Completely unbearable. 

Dean crushes Cas in his arms and he prays with all his might and without direction: let him stay, let him stay, God, Jack, let him stay. 

Cas hugs Dean back, holding him in a way Dean has never allowed before, both of them suspended in the moment of resurrection, in the grief and gratitude of their bodies reaching for each other. 

Dean has spent a lot of effort since leaving the bunker trying to quash any hope or dream about this moment. The thought of Cas returning, the secret hope that the Winchesters might have one more miracle left in their miserable little lives, was too much to bear. And it is. It is too much. 

Dean pulls back, hands on Cas’ shoulders, inches between them and searches his face. Those eyes. Those wrinkles. The deep sadness and great unyielding love written in that face. Dean reaches for it without thinking, hand cradling Cas’ cheek. 

“How?” he manages. Cas’ skin is warm under his fingertips. He’s alive. Breathing. 

Cas blinks and drops his gaze to the ground, but he doesn’t pull away from Dean’s touch. “I… uh. Well. When Jack ascended, he found a way to pull me from the Empty. The technical details don’t really matter, I suppose, unless you’re interested in the quantum theorems…?” 

Dean shakes his head quickly. 

“No. Well. After he pulled me out, we spent some time rebuilding Heaven -” 

“Heaven?” Dean drops his hand and steps back again. Not far, but one indignant step back. “You’ve been in Heaven? This whole fucking time? So you… you knew…” 

The thought that Cas heard his prayers, that he chose not to answer… Dean is ready to throw a punch or disappear. 

“It’s not like that, Dean,” Cas says hastily, gaze coming back up, his eyes wide and earnest. “Heaven isn’t the way it was before. There aren’t any angels anymore. I helped Jack with the architecture, but not with grace. Jack is the only one hearing prayers anymore, the only omniscience. And he’s not intervening, not the way Chuck used to. He’s just listening.” 

Dean stares at Cas, his emotions ricocheting off every wall in his head. He wants to strangle Cas. To grab him and kiss him. To cry into those broad shoulders of his. 

“But why are you here?” Dean makes himself ask instead of doing any of those things. There’s always a price, might as well know what it is. “Why now? Not that I’m not glad as hell to see you, but it’s been two years, Cas.” 

“Uh,” Cas says again, looking distinctly uncomfortable. It’s only then that Dean realizes Sam hasn’t chimed in, and his face grows hot at how close he and Cas are still standing. Dean glances around and finds that Sam has discreetly exited the building. 

“It would seem that by a slight oversight in design, the cross-dimensional malleability of discretional happiness is subject to the relative architectural felicity in the foundational model of -” 

“What?” 

“Jack kicked me out,” Cas admits, passing a hand over his eyes. “The new model of Heaven adjusts itself within reason to a soul’s needs for contentment. Because I was an architect, my unmet desires were having an outsized effect on the rest of Heaven, causing disruption. You see, I couldn’t be happy if you died so soon, but I couldn’t be happy without you. Jack decided the simplest solution, the least interference for both Heaven and earth, was to just… send me back.” 

Dean stares at his best friend, newly undead, again. 

“You’re saying that you were ripping up the fabric of a new-made Heaven, because you… missed me?” 

Cas didn’t meet his eyes, but he nodded slowly at the ground. “More or less, I’m afraid.” 

Dean was going to have to process that one over a drink. “But then… So. You’re really here? For how long?”

“A human lifetime, I suppose.” Cas shrugs. 

Dean’s heart feels like it must combust at any moment. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that they’re not touching Cas. “You’re human, then?” 

Cas nods again, and Dean can finally see the nervousness in his eyes when he meets Dean’s again. “I’m human. I’m here.” 

Dean doesn’t know how he makes the drive back without crashing. He’s grateful to Sam for making him come to Iowa, for getting Cas to him as quickly as he could, but it is tortuous to have Cas next to him all the way home. 

More details come out on the drive. Cas tried to call Dean first, naturally, when he’d walked the few miles back to the bunker in the middle of the night, broken in, and found it empty. Dean had scrapped all his older numbers, but Sam, it turned out, had left just one on with a forwarding service to his new number. Sam had gotten the call and come out to Kansas without telling Dean because, Dean assumes, Sam knew the fragile hope of having Cas back could have killed him. 

Dean tells Cas about quitting hunting, about Wisconsin, and The Bar(n), and how Claire and everyone else is doing. Cas’ face lights up with one of those small little smiles, both sad and proud, when Dean tells him about Claire taking the Impala. 

Dean doesn’t catch the moment the smile fades, but when he glances over next - something he can’t help doing about every five to ten seconds - it’s gone. Cas’ face is a little blank and he’s looking past Dean at the steering wheel. 

“You… Did you get married?” Cas’ tone is careful, not accusatory or jealous or even pained. 

Dean honestly forgot somehow - about the ring on his finger, his half-lies, the whole charade. He wants to sink into his seat and never emerge.      

 "It… What? I. No." 

Cas waits, patient and eternal as ever. 

"It's for the bar, you know?" Dean collects himself enough to say, face hot, already wondering how the hell he's going to get himself out of this mess. 

The thought that maybe he doesn't have to get out of it is buzzing just on the periphery of his conscious, where he doesn't dare look. 

"It's good for business to flirt with customers," Dean goes on. "Bad for business to sleep with them. Or make them think they could sleep with you. So." Dean waves his left hand around in a slightly wild gesture. "Old faithful here comes in handy."

"Oh," Cas says. There is perhaps a minute of uncomfortable silence before he adds, quietly, "Of course I would have liked to see you settled down and happy." 

Happy, Dean thinks, damn near hysterical. He doesn't know what to say, what to do. Sam is somewhere in the traffic behind them, following them back towards home. His dead best friend, who he's been passing off as his sort of retroactive spouse, is not-dead again. The grief of the past two years is still heavy in his throat and it makes him desperate to cling to Cas, to pull over and launch himself at the bastard. 

The last time they saw each other… Dean still can't think about it. Even now, with Cas living and breathing and fiddling with the buttons on the truck's dashboard, it hurts too much to touch. 

I love you, Cas had said. 

So now what? Does Dean say it back, just blurt it out right here and now? Does he wait to make a gesture? Does Cas still want it, want him, the one thing he thought he could never have? 

"You really couldn't see us? Or hear us? Up in Heaven, I mean." Dean keeps his eyes on the road through sheer force of will. They're nearly at the Wisconsin state line. The closer they get, the harder Dean's heart seems to constrict. 

"No." Cas' voice is still quiet. He stops fiddling with the dash and puts his hands in his lap. Dean can tell that he's turned to look at Dean. "I'm sorry, Dean, that I couldn't answer your prayers." 

Dean swallows. He'd close his eyes if he wasn't driving. "Did Jack… did he tell you, uh, that I was trying to get through?" 

"No. I think he knew that… Well, that it would only have made me, uh, miss you more, as it were. He never mentioned it. What did you pray about?" 

"It doesn't matter now," Dean says hastily. Thinking of Jack hearing all of his conversations with Cas isn't much better, really, but Dean supposes he'll face that judgement when he's dead. 

"Alright." 

They lapse into silence again, and Dean resumes glancing over every few seconds. He keeps thinking that if Cas leaves his line of sight, he's going to disappear again. 

Cas asks to listen to some of the music Claire has sent, so Dean puts on the Power Ballads playlist. He's a little self-conscious about it, about what it says about him, but Cas smiles as they listen, looking out the window at the passing grasslands and nodding his head. 

It's the smile that does it. It's so real - small and genuine and something Dean didn't get enough of in their other life. It's so human. 

As they're passing Mt. Horeb, Dean does what he thinks might be the bravest thing he's ever done, and reaches over to fold one of Cas' hands into his. He feels Cas go still, then his hand squeezes gently back. 

They don't speak. 

Dean's heart is beating hard but with Cas' hand warm under his, he keeps his eyes on the road. 

Cas wanders around the old farmhouse, Miracle trailing eagerly in his wake. Dean watches him skim his fingers over surfaces and investigate the potted plants. 

"Are you okay?" Sam murmurs. "Are you guys okay?" 

"What? Yeah. Fine. We're all fine." 

Sam gives him one of those patented little brother looks that tells Dean he knows that he is full of shit. 

"Oh-kaay," Sam says. "Look, I gotta go do a shift this afternoon, then I'm picking Eileen up after work and she's gonna want to come straight over. Do you want me to delay so you guys can have some time tonight, or…?" 

Dean's cheeks are burning again and he wants to protest, but he's also willing to take the out Sam is giving him for one more night. "Yeah, sure, why don't you two come up for breakfast tomorrow. I'll make pancakes." 

Sam gives him a quick squeeze around the shoulders before Dean can stop him, then goes to ferret Cas out of the kitchen to say goodbye. 

Dean hovers by the door for a moment longer, listening to Sam's car rattling down the driveway, before he steels himself and heads after Cas. 

Cas is standing in the kitchen, staring out the windows at the front yard while Miracle sniffs around his shoes. He turns around at the sound of Dran's footsteps and he's back-lit by the late morning sun, haloed in it, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiles - like it's easy now, like smiling at Dean comes natural. 

Dean feels it punch into his gut. Cas, in his kitchen. Looking like that, like he always did, like the thing Dean thought he himself could never have. Like a goddamn angel framed in light. Like the love of his life back from the dead, like just like that, they're here and Dean could reach out and touch him and everything would be solid and real. 

Cas, Dean thinks, the beginning of a prayer. 

"This is a lovely house, Dean," Cas says, before Dean has fully recovered himself. "You could have a beautiful garden out there if you aren't using the lawn for anything else." 

Cas, gardening barefoot in the early mornings of spring while Dean watches sleepily from the kitchen over his coffee. Cas and Miracle tracking dirt into the house and Dean pretending to get mad, just to start and argument, just to end their petty bickering in bed or up against the wall. Cas, human and whole, spending a lifetime looking back at Dean like this. 

Dean swallows hard. "Yeah, I meant to put one in, just never got around to it. You'll probably have to wait until spring now, but I'll help you put one in if you want to start one." 

"Oh," Cas says, opens his mouth, then closes it abruptly. 

"Or, you don't have to, obviously," Dean says hastily. "You haven't even seen the rest of the property yet, there might be a better spot. Or not. We don't need a garden. You could take up something else. Sam and Eileen have a friend who sells honey at the farmer's market, you could talk to them about, uh, what's it called when you keep bees?" 

"Beekeeper is fine, the bee homes are called an apiary," Cas supplies, sounding bemused by Dean's rambling. 

"Right, okay. I mean, I don't know anything about it, but I could probably figure out how to build you one of those, if you want. Or -" 

"Dean," Cas interrupts. "I'd love to put in a garden." 

"Oh. Okay." 

"I just didn't…" Cas shuffles his feet and looks down at Miracle, who promptly licks his hand. "Are you inviting me to stay? Here? With you?"

"Oh," Dean says again. He feels wrong-footed, with a deep underlying desire to run. "I mean, yeah. There's plenty of space. But if you don't want to…" 

"No, I do," Cas says quickly. 

"Okay, awesome." 

"Thank you." 

"You're welcome." 

They stand there awkwardly, staring at each other from across the kitchen table. 

Dean's phone buzzes in his pocket, neatly making him jump. He pulls it out and swears. 

"Dammit. I gotta run up to the bar for a sec. Sal came in early to do inventory for me, and took the keys to the lock box home with me. Are you gonna be okay here for a minute? I'll be right back." 

"I'd like to come see your business," Cas says mildly, looking at Dean with what might be apprehension. 

Dean's too jittery himself to decipher it. He can't think of any argument to keep Cas from tagging along either, so they head out across the acre between house and bar, Miracle running free ahead of them. Dean's thoughts are racing, but there is an awkward silence hanging between them now and he doesn't know how to break it. The deepest, craven part of him wants to just take Cas' hand again. He wants to pin the asshole to a tree and kiss him until neither of them can breathe. This part of him, urgent and needy and reckless, terrified that if he doesn't take his chance right now after so many wasted opportunities he'll miss it forever, is at war with the self-deprecating, guilty part of him that tells him Cas deserves a speech or gesture as grand as what he gave to Dean. As urgent as it feels to make sure Cas knows this time, Dean is terrified that if he does it wrong, Cas won't want him at all. 

The Bar(n) is empty, most of the lights off, the chairs stacked on top of the tables. Cas looks around, and the light from the stained windows make his eyes an intense blue. Dean's stomach squirms. 

"This is beautiful, Dean," Cas says solemnly. "It's almost-" 

"Like a cathedral, right?" Sal's voice interrupts from behind the bar. "Nick's roommate is like an interior designer or something and he won't shut up about this being a perfect wedding venue. Personally, boss, if you start hosting weddings here, I will quit." Sal pops up out of the shadows, her eyebrows raised slightly as she takes in Cas. "I'm Sal, by the way." 

"We're not staying," Dean says, a trifle rudely, shouldering past his employee and disappearing into the backroom. "Just gonna unlock this and then I need to get back. Thanks for covering for me." 

"Any family emergency of yours is a family emergency of mine, boss," Sal calls after him cheerfully. Dean pulls the old-fashioned lockbox out from its hiding place behind the Crown Royal (he keeps a gun behind the Bulleit). 

As he's flipping through his ridiculous number of keys, Dean hears Sal saying "and what was your name?" and Cas replying "Cas." 

There's a pause, wherein Dean contemplates banging his head against the sturdy wooden shelving he built himself that first summer. 

"Cas," Sal repeats slowly. "What, not Dean's Cas?" 

"Uh, yes?" Cas' voice has a hint of a question in it. 

It's a train wreck, and Dean did nothing to stop it, does nothing now, hands resting on the unlocked box, straining to hear how it all unfolds on top of him. 

"Aren't you supposed to be, and I don't mean to be insensitive here, but, dead?" 

"Well," says Cas, clearly caught off guard. "I was, yes. I. Um. Got better?" 

"Alright, my dude. You're looking pretty good for a corpse. Your husband has got a hell of a lot of explaining to do." 

Dean shuts his eyes. The silence makes a roaring in his ears. 

"I'm sorry," Cas says slowly after a very strained moment. "What?" 

"Okay!" Dean's paralysis wears off, some primal fight or flight of mortification kicking in, and he barrels out of the backroom. He practically throws his keys at Sal. "All good here, why don't you just keep these? Lock up tonight, or don't, whatever. We gotta run. Thanks again." 

"But-" 

"Bye now," Dean says in his most Midwestern voice, and hustles Cas out the door. 

Dean switches tactics on the walk back and keeps up a steady stream of commentary - about what he's already done to the property, his thoughts for the rest of it, more about how Claire, Garth, Jody, and everyone else in their network has been doing in the last two years. 

"You should call Claire," Dean says as they enter the farmhouse again. "You can borrow my phone until we can get you a new one. Should have kept an old burner or two after all." 

"Dean," Cas starts, trying to get a word in - not for the first time. 

"Here," Dean says, shoving his phone into Cas' hand. "The longer you wait, the more pissed off she's going to be at the both of us." 

"Alright, I'll call her. But-" 

"And then, no offense dude, but maybe take a shower," Dean says, because he cannot shut up. "Coming back to life will do things to a guy. There's towels in the guest bathroom. Down the hallway to your left." 

"Thank you. I-" 

"I'm gonna go make a list while you talk to Claire," Dean says, kicking his boots off and fleeing toward the stairs. "Groceries and other stuff we'll need to get you. I'll take you into town after you've showered." 

"Alright. But Dean -" 

Dean pretends not to hear his name, already halfway up the stairs as he bolts. 

The water stain on Dean's ceiling still looks like wings. Dean sits on his bed and stares at it, holding over two years of grief in his hands. 

Dean grieved for Cas. He buried him, symbolically, but emotionally too. He'd buried the remains of their love in his own chest, and now that it is upright and walking around his house, he doesn't know what to do. 

The whole point, it seemed to Dean, was that he'd never realized what he'd had. That of course he could only come to terms with it after the fact, only allow himself the image of a partner in the abstract. 

Cas, his dead best friend, love of his life, emotional partner, retrospective husband. Dean buries his face in hands, aware of the metal band around his finger. He doesn't want to take it off. He doesn't know how to explain it, any of it. 

There's a gentle knock on Dean's door and Cas enters without waiting for permission. Dean heard the shower running earlier, and Cas apparently found the clean clothes Dean left in the dryer because he's wearing a pair of Dean's jeans and a MARINA shirt that Claire sent him for his birthday (which Dean only wears to clean in). 

Cas' hair is still wet and he looks so damn good . 

Dean doesn't even try to stop himself from staring. Cas stares right back. 

"Dean," Cas says, finally, taking one step into the room. "I don't understand." 

Dean looks up at him from the bed, looks and looks, drinks him in. He'd have died for ten more minutes with Cas, ten minutes to make sure Cas knew. 

"You were gone," Dean says. His voice is raw. "You were dead, and you weren't… I tried to get you back, Cas. I tried." 

Something in Cas' face falls, crushed under the weight that they piled on top of themselves for twelve goddamn years. He takes another hesitant step closer.

"I know. I never meant… I didn't want to hurt you." 

Dean shakes his head and he's almost beyond embarrassment that his eyes are welling up. "Cas." 

"Did you… did you tell people I was… that we were… together?" Cas looks so confused, apprehension mixed in as if he's afraid Dean will be offended by the mere suggestion. 

Dean nods, closing his eyes and letting the first two tears fall down his face. He hears the next two footsteps and reaches out, grabbing his own t-shirt in both fists, dragging Cas closer. 

"Dean, why?" 

Dean takes a deep breath and looks back up, takes in the living memory standing confused and still damp in front of him. How many nights had he said it to his ceiling? How many times had he pleaded with Cas silently to come back, just come back so Dean could make this one thing in his miserable life right? 

"Because you said you loved me," Dean says. He can hear how tortured his own voice sounds. "But I couldn't tell you that I loved you, too. How else could I explain it, man? How could I tell people what you were - what you are to me?" 

Dean is crying and he doesn't even care. "I love you, you stupid son of a bitch. You asshole. I love you. I've always loved you, and you died, and I didn't. What was I supposed to do?" 

There is a moment where Cas simply stares at him, grief-stricken, and then his hands are on either side of Dean's face, those large hands cradling him, tears and all. Cas kisses him, tender, not like the awkwardness of a first kiss or the desperation of a last kiss, but like they are meeting in the middle of their story, picking up where they left off. 

They're both crying by the time they stop, Cas stooping over Dean, Dean's ankles locked around the back of Cas' calves to keep him there between Dean's open thighs. 

"You can have it," Dean says, gripping onto Cas' borrowed shirt for all he's worth. "Cas, you can have it. You can have me." 

"Yes," Cas says wonderingly, staring at him with his own big watery eyes as his thumbs wipe Dean's tears away. "Yes. However you'll have me, Dean." 

With his hands and legs anchoring Cas to him, Dean feels mildly less frantic, and he pulls Cas back in, twelve years of physical intimacy to catch up on. 

Several minutes later, their mouths and hands still insistent on each other, Dean pulls away just enough to mumble "Cas, would you ever marry me?" 

"Yes," Cas says without a moment's hesitation, and goes back to kissing his neck. 

"Wait, but we haven't even-" 

"Yes." 

"But I didn't-" 

"Dean, yes ." Cas takes his face in both hands again. "Under any circumstances. Today. In ten years. In your bar, at the bunker. Yes." 

"In a box? With a fox?" Dean asks, grinning. 

"If that's what you want," Cas says seriously. 

"Yeah," Dean says, looking up at his one-time angel. "Yeah. That's what I want. Green eggs and ham me." 

"I don't understand that reference," Cas says, but he kisses Dean, and Dean doesn't try to explain. 

*** 

The first ten tracks of Power Ballads (and bops) for Your Independence 

1. Happy - MARINA
2. Tell Me You Love Me - Demi Lovato 
3. Piece by Piece - Kelly Clarkson 
4. I Love It (feat. Charlie XCX) - Icona Pop 
5. Soulmate - Lizzo 
6. Montero - Lil Nas X 
7. Girls/Girls/Boys - Panic! at the Disco 
8. Heterosexuality is a Construct - Onsind 
9. Wild Horses - Bishop Briggs
10. Hymn - Kesha