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Dean’s latest obsession is the Weather app.
Granted, out of all the gross, devious things he could be doing with his phone (I mean, come on, the World Wide Web lives in his pocket 24/7, the possibilities are endless), he’s made a habit out of checking that little blue square at least four times a day. First thing when he wakes up, double-triple checks his messages, makes sure all his people are good—the ones who would even have the number to this phone, considering he’s at least up into the high hundreds for times he’s had to dump old ones—makes sure he hasn’t missed any calls or gotten any new voicemails, maybe checks one more time that Cas hasn’t left him a text he somehow missed or phoned him when he was dead to the world for four hours, then he’s onto the damn Weather app.
56 degrees in Lebanon. Partly sunny. Chance of showers in the late evening, but pretty unlikely. The rest of the week looks about the same, save for a particularly warm day with a dose of cloudless sunshine expected. Cool. Maybe he’ll finally get that baby pool he keeps talking about and put the damn thing on the roof, bring a couple six packs and finally look a little less like the ghosts he hunts.
He scrolls over. North Cove, Washington. 48 degrees. Showers expected on-and-off throughout the day. Looks pretty dismal. Two days in a row like that of gray mushy rain, then three solid days of partly cloudy mid-50s weather. Cas has been trying to fix the shutters just outside Kelly’s bedroom, the rain will probably put a damper on that. Maybe he’ll tinker with some shit inside; lord knows that kitchen outlet isn’t going to fix itself. Jack sent the sad report to both Dean and Sam a few weeks ago that no matter how many times he hit reset, the outlet would stop working halfway through his bread toasting. He’d resorted to using the oven every morning until Cas got wise and finally started asking questions. Good kid that he is, Jack felt bad even bringing it up, not wanting Cas to think it was his problem to fix (or like he was somehow failing them by not keep the damn toaster going).
He thinks of Kelly and her paint samples. Thinks about that awkward trip to Home Depot (only awkward for him, really, third-wheeling around while the happy Not Couple chose between semi-gloss and high-gloss). Thinks of Cas in his painting clothes, already marked up with splatters and excess wipes from his own hands, plotting around that living room and laying down sheets of plastic to keep the floor covered while he worked away at the ceiling.
Dean shuts his eyes. Closes out of the app. Considers throwing the whole damn phone at the wall, but goes against it.
The dumb little ‘chirp’ sound brings it back to life. He really needs to fucking change that sound. “MESSAGE: JACK KLINE
Cas found some old fishing poles last week at Goodwill! Maybe we can use them next time you’re here?”
He shoots off a quick “sounds good buddy” before he has to think about it any harder.
Somehow, his stupid traitorous fucking brain decides to imagine this scenario of him and Cas fishing off the side of the little wooden dock behind the Kline house, beers and sandwiches and sly little smiles back and forth, and if Dean has to deal with himself and all the dumb things he wants for one more second he might hurl.
“Okay. Alright, yep, that’s enough of that,” he says to no one in particular, and reaches for his robe. He leaves his phone there on the bed.
The baby pool ends up being a whopping $45 bucks because Dean opted for Target instead of Walmart (who the fuck even IS he now?) and he only stopped to look at the candles once, which he’ll take as his victory for the day. The beer isn’t as cold as he’d prefer, but he’d also prefer to just be drunk at this point so a warm Budlight won’t kill him. The sun is harsh, which is sort of unavoidable, but he found some 50 SPF that smells a lot like coconut and strippers, so all in all? Not a bad day.
“Are you serious?” Sam’s head pokes through the roof access looking pissy. “I’ve been stuck in my room listening to the same piece of audio over and over to mangle some kind of translation and you’ve been—what, day-drinking in a kiddie pool?”
Dean takes a very audible sip of his beer. “I’m sorry, all I could hear were the jealous ramblings of a man who doesn’t know how to relax and enjoy life,” he spreads a hand out and gestures around them. A single crow lands nearby, looking mildly inconvenienced.
Sam huffs and lugs himself the rest of the way up the ladder. “Right, okay.” He reaches down into the mini-cooler and snatches up a can before Dean can properly swat at him, sitting cross legged next to the pool. He eyes the fold-out chair that is currently being used to seat Dean’s phone, knowing it would be a lost cause to try and argue his way into taking that particular throne. For a minute, it’s just the two of them, quiet except for the crooning of Robert Plant.
“Every time I go away and leave you, darling
You send me the blues way down the line, ohh”
“Hear anything from the Klines today?”
Dean tips his beer back and drinks. “Jack said something about fishing poles this morning.”
Sam hums in response. “Cas? Kelly? Anything from them?”
Oh, yeah, Dean’s going to need to be a lot less sober for this conversation. He reaches over the three foot plastic wall of his pool and flips the cooler open. The plastic makes a loud “thwack.”
“Nope. Nothin’.” Clean, crisp crack. Damn near downs the whole thing in one go, except now of course the beers are actually cold and the whole things goes straight to his head. Dean throws the empty can onto the growing pile he’s made for himself, like a shitty little tower of bad decisions just waiting to judge him later when he’s too drunk to find his way back down into the bunker, forced to make friends with the birds since his supposed “best friend” is off playing house a couple hundred miles away.
“Cool. So that’s why you’re day-drinking.”
“Fuck off Sam.”
“What? Oh, am I supposed to pretend to be oblivious or something? No one sent me the script for this week’s tantrum, should have sat down with the director and asked for some character notes—“
“You’re such a little shit, you know that?”
“Why don’t you ever just...oh, I dunno, call him yourself? Instead of waiting around by the phone like this is a John Hughes movie and you’re Molly Ringwald?”
Dean sits in the water and doesn’t say a damn word.
“I should have quit you, baby. Oh, such a long time ago, I wouldn't be here with all my troubles. Down on this killing floor”
“Look. I don’t know what you’re thinking or why you’ve taken this so personally. But you need to just call him, okay? Pick up the phone and talk to him and just tell him what’s going on in your head. He might be able to read minds, but he isn’t looking around inside yours anymore so you’ve gotta just come out with it.” Sam finishes his beer and sits it down next to his thigh. “He seems happy. Hell, Jack and Kelly are over the moon having him around. And I’m not trying to be...a dick about this or whatever, but—Cas is his own person. This isn’t just about some duty he thinks he owes to them. He wants to be there. But that doesn’t suddenly mean he doesn’t wanna be here too.”
Dean’s phone beeps from the chair. 2 pm. Heavy showers are rolling in along the northwest coast, possible thunderstorm today.
He really, really, really doesn’t want to talk about this.
“Just because he’s a Kline doesn’t mean he’s not a Winchester anymore.” Sam offers, like it somehow fucking helps. Rationally, Dean knows that this is all actually very true and his brother is coming from a logical place of thinking. But Dean’s heart is hammering away in his chest, and the head rush of cheap alcohol isn’t helping him to stop thinking in overdrive.
“Well, if he wanted to be here then he’d fucking be here, wouldn’t he?” Dean spits out. “He wouldn’t be building bookshelves and making dinner for two people he barely fucking knows, and just ditch us like we’re old news. He’d be here, but you know what? Funny as it is, I’m so used to him never being here anyway! He’s never wanted to be here Sam! Always had something better waiting for him around the corner, didn’t even pick his own goddamn bedsheets because he wasn’t here long enough to give a shit!” His shouting scares the crows away from where they’d gathered on the corner of the roof top, fleeing to the nearby trees.
Sam looks tired. Dean can see there’s not any fight in him, at least not for this conversation. It doesn’t stop him from feeling the self-righteous anger bubbling in his chest and rolling down to his belly. He watches his brother deflate.
“Enjoy your kiddie pool Dean.” Instead of dropping off his empty with the rest of the pile, Sam takes it with him to go dispose of it like a real adult into the recycling bin he bullied Dean into getting for the bunker. He pops the top off the access again and steps inside to the first rung of the ladder before turning back to his brother once more.
“Kelly calls, sometimes. When she’s worried about him. Maybe talk to her too, instead of pretending like this is her fault. Because you’re not her favorite person right now either.”
The roof access door slams down tight.
For good measure, Dean throws a crushed can at it.
Next to him, Robert sings:
“Tangerine, Tangerine, living reflection from a dream”
Sunburnt and a little more than tipsy, but not really drunk, Dean makes himself a pathetic sandwich.
It’s less of a pathetic sandwich in nature, but more pathetic because he feels it. He feels pathetic taking giant bites and swallowing it down without so much as a sip of water, just letting it gather in his gut heavy as a stone.
5:30 pm. Light showers now, the majority of the storms pushed up through to Seattle. Enough rain to help the flowers grow, maybe even give the final push to Cas’s tomato plants.
Kelly had stood there at the end cap of the gardening section and rifled through seed packets with him, talking about the merits of each one. “Jack won’t eat cucumbers, but you and I will. I just doubt any of us will actually do anything with these peppers.” She had a fresh pair of gardening gloves tucked between her arm and ribs, face serious as ever. Dean kept looking at her profile, the way her hair pulled up into a ponytail proved the definition of her jaw and the softness of her cheeks. He kept looking at Cas leaning over her shoulder, his chest to her back every so often, sharing looks and inside jokes with their eyes that he would never be a part of.
“Tomatoes? I’ve heard they can be finicky,” Cas said, reading the back of the packet Kelly handed him.
“My grandma kept them in her garden. I think we have the right soil for them, we’ll just have to keep a close eye on these little guys while they’re growing.” Kelly’s words came out like a promise, and it made Dean’s stomach fall straight to his feet. Kelly’s words made Cas grin and put the seeds in their cart, all the while Dean contemplated which pair of garden shears would be sharp enough to cut his head clean off in one, solid chop.
Dean dumps the rest of his uneaten sandwich in the trash.
Kirk and the landing party have just made it down to the planet where the distress call came from when Dean’s phone lights up on the couch cushion next to him.
“MESSAGE: CAS
Do you know how to properly cook salmon?”
On-screen, a poor red shirt is killed instantly by a phaser. The music swells before Kirk finds his dead crew member.
Dean types quickly.
“Yeah, but you’re not gonna get it right the first couple of times. Kind of takes a few tries to get it perfect.”
Bones tells Jim to get it together, they have a mission here. They pan back to the bridge before Cas’s response comes through only seconds later.
“MESSAGE: CAS
Ahh. Well, at least the sides didn’t turn out disastrous.”
There’s a picture attached. Two bowls, one of fresh green beans seemingly steamed and sautéed with garlic and parsley. Another with mashed potatoes, creamy and buttery even in the poor light of the photo. Dean feels a childish bolt of anger, clicking his phone to sleep for a moment. He wanted to teach Cas how to cook, and now he’s getting a sneak peek into the Gordon Ramsay meals he’s whipping up for his new family. Dean wants to be proud of him. Wants to be happy for him too. Too bad he can only feel a sharp pant of jealousy and loss for something he’s too chickenshit to have.
“Looks good” is all he says in response, like a coward.
Spock is saying something profound but Dean can barely hear it. Another message comes through.
“MESSAGE: CAS
Maybe you could show me where I went wrong with the salmon. Jack has been asking when you and Sam are planning to come next.”
“MESSAGE: CAS
I’d like to see you soon too.”
Fuck. Fucking fuck fuck shit. Dean’s pretty sure the turning point of the episode is happening right now and he can’t even pay attention to what federation rule is being broken right now because he’s.
God.
If no one sees it happen, then no one can actually say he takes a straight shot of Makers before even touching his phone again.
He types out fifteen different versions of the same thing. “Just come home” back space “Yeah of course I’ll fill the tank up tomorrow and head out” back space “I fucking miss you asshole” back space “why can’t I ever be enough for you” back space “do you love them more than you love me” and then he’s—
“Hello? Dean?”
He pushes the heel of his palm to his eye. Cas’s voice is warm. He’s missed hearing his own name said like that. There was a time where Cas’s only vocabulary seemed to work like a solar system with “Dean” being the sun, keeping everything else in orbit.
“Yeah, uh. Hey Cas.”
“Is...is everything okay?”
Dean laughs, bordering on hysterical. “Yeah, yeah man, I’m fine. Just haven’t talked to you in a little while, that’s all.” In the background, he hears the light sound of rain hitting a window. Cas sighs, sweet and light.
“I was. Well. I was hoping you’d call. I would have called you myself but I—“ Cas stops himself.
Oh, Dean is feeling brave. “What, Cas? What made you not wanna call?”
“Its not that I didn’t want to call you Dean, I just—“
“No, just spit it out man. Don’t feel like you have to sugar coat it for me.” Something cold and coppery sits in Dean’s mouth, climbs up his tongue when he speaks. He’s being stupid and he knows it, but he can’t stop. Feels like he’s waiting for that knock out hit from a bar fight he doesn’t remember starting.
“Don’t do this.”
“What, do what?”
“Turn this into an argument. Turn this into something it isn’t.”
“Then why haven’t you called? It’s been radio silence for over a week, then you text me about cooking some fucking fish and expect me to just—“
“I’m not expecting anything from you Dean! I don’t want to bother you, or interrupt your life by constantly calling or texting—“
“Real clever excuse buddy, seriously. I expected better from you but—“
“What do you want from me Dean?” Cas is shouting now, drowning out the sound of the rain. It startles Dean into silence. “What do you want? I’ve never once, in our entire friendship, known what you want from me. It always changes. It’s never clear. There was a time when you wanted me around to fix broken bones and help you stop the apocalypse. There was a time when you wanted me nowhere near you. And maybe those were not the times I think back on fondly, at least I knew what you wanted from me. I knew where I stood with you. And now?” Dean hears the harsh breath of air, like Cas was holding it in until this very moment. “Now...I sit with this phone in my hand and I stare at it like I can will you into calling me and giving me the answers I’m looking for.”
The episode is over. Netflix is asking him if he’d like to continue watching. Dean breathes and holds himself rigid against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. He can hear the rain again.
“I don’t think I’ve ever known what I’ve wanted. From myself or anyone else, for that matter,” He says quietly. “Fuck, Cas. All this time...I was worried that I’d be bothering you, making you feel suffocated if I called too much or checked in one too many times. Didn’t wanna smother you...” he doesn’t really mean to trail off but the whiskey from earlier stops him from putting all his words together. On the other end of the line, there’s the scrape of a chair and the soft sound of movement.
“Even when you frustrate me to the point of insanity, I end up missing you even worse.” Dean thinks he hears a fridge door open and close, condiments rattling inside with each movement. The clink of a glass and the flick of a bottle cap.
He doesn’t really know what to say. There’s nothing that could come out of his mouth right now that wouldn’t embarrass him down to his core, true or not. He lets Cas drain a beer on the other side of the line. He lets everything simmer.
“How bad does Kelly wanna kick my ass?”
Cas makes a noncommittal noise. “I don’t know that she necessarily wants to kick your ass.”
“Probably cleans a shotgun every night and has two bullets with my name on ‘em.” It earns Dean a laugh.
“You’re very different people, yet there’s so much you both have in common. It’s frightening, sometimes. I think you both have a love within you that could destroy the world, yet you both choose to rebuild it at every opportunity you find.” Cas says so casually, like he’s talking about the damn—
Weather.
All at once, Dean’s hit with how much it’s hurt to long and fucking pine, just stew in all these made-up scenarios where he’s been cast aside like the dog with mange. He can feel just how tired he is. It’s a weariness that lives in his bones now, and every time he adds more weight to that, he feels himself get closer to the ground. And then there’s the stupid fucking weather app, the one he programmed to have North Cove’s seven day forecast ready and waiting for him. He just thought if he could keep track, if he could imagine what the wind whipping across the ocean would feel like or how heavily the humidity would sit on their back porch, maybe he wouldn’t feel so far away from Cas. Maybe he could just live in that moment with him from this far away. Some days, the same storm would travel from Washington to Kansas, and Dean could pretend that he was standing in the same rain that had touched Cas hours before.
“I miss you.” Dean breaks open. The dam walls were never meant to hold all this. “I miss you all the time. I wish I didn’t have to miss you. Wish I could be enough for you, that you’d stuck around and let me teach you dumb shit like how to cook salmon and how to separate your darks from your lights and how to change a flat tire. God, you know what I really fucking wish Cas?” It’s too late to stop himself when Dean realizes he’s crying, “Wish I wasn’t jealous of them. That Jack and Kelly get to have you and I don’t.” His face is wet, throat and nose closing up, making it damn-near impossible to breathe. There’s nowhere to go and run from this when it’s sitting out in the open. He let it free.
Cas is quick to speak, soft and full of something he can’t name. “I miss you too Dean. Every day. There’s so much about this place that makes me wish you were here, so many things I’ve wanted to show you but stopped myself from.”
Dean wasn’t even aware that he’d moved from the couch to the floor, but now his ass smarts from being pressed to the hardwood and his face feels rubbed raw from scrubbing his hand over his eyes, his mouth, his jaw.
”I’m going to say something that will embarrass you. Are you ready for that?” Cas says in a tone that implies he’s very serious but that he’s also definitely smiling across the line. Dean just groans like he’s been hit in the head with a baseball bat, because he sort of feels like that. Whatever Cas has to say can’t do any more damage than that.
“North Cove, the bunker, even heaven...nothing feels quite like home the way that you do Dean. Being with you, that’s my home.”
Dean was very wrong. He’d much rather take the baseball bat.
“Fuck.” He whispers.
“Mmm.”
“That, uh.”
“Yep.”
“Shit. Okay. Alright. Yeah, that’s uhm.”
“To be fair, I’ve already told you I love you. This shouldn’t come as too much of a shock.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for reminding me you’re a dick who did that with his dying breath. Asshole.” This time, Cas really laughs. It sparkles and makes everything around Dean feel warm. His laugh is like candlelight.
“I suppose we’ve never been great with timing.”
“We’ve been a shitshow train wreck with timing, actually.”
Cas hums. The rain has stopped for now, as far as Dean can tell. A symphony of crickets take it’s place.
Post-rain, Cas’s hair curls against his neck and around his ears. Dean’s seen it for himself, felt his hands itch with the overwhelming desire to sweep them away and put them back into place. He wonders now if the humidity has seeped into the house, put Cas’s hair flat against his forehead and flipped it up in short round curls everywhere else. He wonders if Cas would let him touch; let his fingers wonder from the back of his head to the plush of his lips. See what kind of shitty beer he buys for himself by tasting it there with his own mouth.
“I want to come out and see you. Can I? Please?” Dean feels his face flush. He knows he’s begging, but it’s all he can do—needs to see Cas like he needs air in his fucking lungs. He’ll let Kelly curse him out and let Jack ask him a billion questions about why things have been so weird lately, he just wants Cas. There are fishing poles and fresh tomatoes waiting for him, to hell with his dignity.
Cas sucks in a sharp breath, surprised. “Dean...of course. Yes, of course you can. Please. There’s nothing I’d like more.” Dean believes him, he sounds so fucking pleased. Makes Dean’s head spin in figure eights. He’s dumb and in love, has been for way longer than he feels he should verbalize in his current state, and Cas wants him there.
Cas wants him there.
“And just so you know...I want you here too. All the time, okay? All the fucking time as in ALWAYS. Whenever you want to be here, the door is open for you.” He has to make sure Cas knows that, because if Cas doesn’t know that Dean always wants him close more often than he’s ever wanted him away then what’s the point of anything? What’s the point of being each other’s homes?
Home is where you come and lay your head at the end of the day when the world fucking sucks and no one else gets it. Home is where you go when you got the shit kicked out of you and someone else is there to stitch you up, tell you it’s all going to be okay. Home is something safe and something you want to keep safe.
Cas breathes out the words “Thank you Dean,” says it more than once. It sounds like a prayer.
Dean tells him that tomorrow he has to meet Jody halfway between Kansas and South Dakota, but that the day after that he can have the car packed and ready to go. He even threatens to bring the stupid electric lawnmower that Sam bought on a whim so that he can earn his keep and make himself useful. Cas promises him that his presence will be good enough, all that Cas could ask for actually. (He still asks Dean about cooking the salmon).
Mentally, Dean’s already working through how he’s going to tell Sam about all this without having to hear his smug-ass “I told you so”s but he’s not too concerned about it. Not really.
All Dean really cares about right now is how he’s about to go home.
From 1700 miles away, Cas waits for him. Cas has been waiting for him for a long, long time.