Chapter Text
It started with a bang.
Why did it always start with a bang?
The world. Bang.
A gunshot. Bang.
The door. Bang.
His heart. Bang.
Then silence.
Silence. Which, in perceptive, was always louder than the bang. One was not without the other. The deafening, suffocating, nothing. The world, void of everything, was empty. The lack of sound, of hope, of everything. Even feelings were numb and maybe it was human error. Maybe it was loud and maybe there was a feeling. Maybe there was more than a broken door, a used sigil, a bloody handprint, a broken heart, and silence .
Dean Winchester’s world ended just the same.
Bang. Silence.
Empty.
And then his phone rang.
Which, unsurprisingly, he did not hear. He felt it vibrate and saw his brother’s name— his brother, goddamnit —and yet he did nothing. He couldn’t stop the overwhelming silence . It was too loud. His mind was doing laps around itself. He was half conscious of placing his phone harder than he should on the ground and running his hands down his face. He was aware of touch, which was good since he seemed to have lost his senses. The tears on his face, the quiver of his lips, and the brush of hot air that escaped as he gasped for breath. Dean knew he had to pick himself off the floor.
How the Hell was he expected to do that?
Priorities, Winchester. Start with the basics. Stand up.
He did no such thing.
Fine, dumbass. Then answer the phone.
It had stopped ringing. He didn’t touch it.
Come on. You have to take care of Sammy. What about Jack? Come on, the kid is in the middle of a shitstorm and he’s in the eye. Get your shit together, Winchester. Cas did not-
There it was.
There was that silence again. It consumed him and there was a cavity in his chest that seemed to get tighter. More tears fell and he hated it. He hated feeling weak and pathetic and hurt. He hated losing and that’s what he did. He lost. He lost hope in himself, humanity, and everything he stood for.
He lost Cas.
“You changed me, Dean.”
“Why does this sound like a goodbye?”
“Because it is. I love you.”
That son of a bitch. He had loved him—loved him . Destructive, angry, broken, and daddy’s blunt instrument. An Angel of the Lord, no matter how shitty of a Lord Chuck was, had loved him . It was irony, a cruel joke. One he had never let himself finish the punch line for.
The first words he had spoken in a long time came out rough and painful, “Damn it, Cas.”
“-it’s not. And everyone who knows you sees it. Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love.”
Love.
Dean Winchester was a stubborn man. One of the worst. He knew that. He was stubborn in the way that he couldn’t live without Sam, he refused himself happiness, and stubborn in all the ways he loved people. He was so closed and guarded and so damn stubborn . But he did. He loved.
He loved his Baby, the shiny black Impala, the only home he ever had. He loved his music, even if it was old and outdated. He loved the bunker in a way that it was a new home. He loved his father and mother, no matter how screwed up his childhood had been. He loved his little brother. He had always loved his little brother. Even when he left him and even when the world was ending. Hell, some of the disasters they got into was because of his love for his little brother. He loved the family he had built, lost, and gained over the years. He loved the kid in a way that almost scared him and he knew he was not always there like he should have been but… he loved Jack.
And he loved…
Of course Dean loved him. He thought he knew, he thought it was obvious, and he thought, he thought, he thought… He never thought that love—his love—could be matched. It had been slow and he’d been scared , but he thought he knew. He had wanted to tell him in purgatory, had tried too, but he didn’t and now… now…
Now he had to fix it.
He was a stubborn man, but he decided that it was time to listen to himself and the people he loved.
Dean Winchester stood up.