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It takes a few 'days' for Jack to come and visit him, but eventually Jack turns up in his little slice of heaven to see how he’s doing.
Now they’re seated out on Dean’s porch, just the two of them drinking crap beer side by side like Jack isn’t the ‘New God’ and Dean isn’t dead, and he’s doing his best not to say anything but he can feel his poorly-constructed will slipping away pretty damn fast. Sammy is off somewhere—he’s not sure where but Dean doubts it’s very far—and Dean wonders if he can hold onto this teeth-gritting silence until his little brother gets back. He’s dangerously close to bringing the whole fucking wall down when finally Jack speaks.
“Well, Dean?” Jack asks him, “How do you like it here?”
Dean looks down into his beer with a furrowed brow that brings the lines of his forehead crashing into the bridge of his nose. He’s about to punch the gift horse in the nose it’s possibly the shittiest thing he’s ever done, actually.
“You know, Jack, honestly?” Dean looks up at him and hesitates. He hates to say it, but Jack will know if he’s lying. His eyes flicker away, then back. “You know I…I kind of hate it.”
Jack tilts his head to the side in a way that hurts because it reminds Dean of the glaring emptiness that’s been eating away at him this entire time. He hasn’t seen a tail feather of Cas since he arrived in ‘Special Heaven’, which is something like three days or three hundred years—Dean can’t fucking tell. Time is screwy here, but either way it’s been an eternity too-fucking-long.
“Really?” Jack responds, “I thought you would be happy here.”
“I know that, and it’s not terrible, it’s just…” Dean trails off, and he looks out at all the green around his cabin and he can’t help but remember that none of it is real. He hangs his head. “This is gonna make me sound like an ungrateful piece of shit, but…no offense but it’s just a cheap imitation. I mean, none of this is what I really want.”
“What do you want, Dean?” Jack asks him.
“Come on, man. You’re omnipresent, right? You know what I mean,” Dean says.
“Well…yes. I do know what you mean. But I wanted to hear you say it.” Jack looks straight at him and leans in a little. “You can’t get what you don’t ask for,” he says.
Dean gulps, because he’s suddenly thinking about the first time he met the Nephilim-turned-God, and what he almost asked for. He was going to ask but then Jack had said…
“I thought you didn’t meddle,” Dean says. His voice is hoarse, and damnit—it’s almost like he’s trying to get a no here.
“You and Sam and Cas are my family Dean,” Jack says, “I want you to be happy.” He shifts in his chair and peers at Dean intently. “What would make you happy, Dean?”
Dean looks down at his beer, silent for a long time. It could be a minute, it could be ten years. He’s given up trying to figure out how time works in this place.
“I never thought I would hear myself say this, but…I wish I could go back,” Dean admits. He sighs and runs a hand along the back of his neck, letting it fall back to his thigh. “To the way things were. It was hard and…yeah, a lot of it sucked, but…but I miss it. I want to live, Jack. With you and Sammy and…and Cas…”
Dean trails off. That’s his biggest regret, really. All the time he wasted keeping the angel at arm’s length when he could have…
He feels his throat growing tight so he clears it.
“Anyway, what’s done is done, right? It’s not like you can undo the past.”
Jack says nothing at first, just looks at him with this smile that seems to say, if I can stitch the multiverses back together, then I can certainly do this.
“Everyone deserves a second chance, Dean,” he says at last.
Dean is just opening his mouth to ask what he means when Jack snaps his fingers.
Dean blinks and suddenly he’s in the barn again, machete in hand. He glances behind him and sees the rusty nail that was his demise sticking out of the post and thinks, yeah, gonna watch out for that this time, before he really even registers what just happened. Before he can, there’s a vamp running at him, pushing him back.
Dean feels the nail pierce through his back. “Son of a bitch!” he curses, shoving at the vamp and swinging the machete like a pro. The vamp’s head goes rolling across the floor and its body tips over, falling limply to the ground, and Dean slumps back against the post in defeat.
“Jack, you ass, you couldn’t have sent me back a little further?” Dean complains.
His back is killing him—literally—and let’s just say dying isn’t any better the second time around. Or the fiftieth? God, he’s lost count how many times it’s been. Dean closes his eyes. Silence and pain stretches for a beat—long enough for Dean to decide that when he does get back to heaven, he’s totally sucker-punching Jack in the face for this bullshit, God or no God.
Then suddenly there’s the sound of wind and rumpled clothing.
Dean blinks his eyes open. Cas is standing there in front of him looking sad and defeated, and Dean briefly wonders if this is real.
“Cas..?” he says, hesitant, because if it isn’t real then he’s going to have to deal with the fallout before he dies again.
“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, like nothing is changed, like Dean didn’t just get impaled on a nail for the second time and the angel didn’t confess his undying love and then get sucked into turbohell.
“Cas, how…?” Dean starts to ask, but he’s not sure how to end that sentence.
“Jack told me where to find you. Hold still.”
Cas moves closer, grips the edge of the nail where it meets the post and grunts as he rips it from the wall, bringing Dean along with it. He falls forward into the angel’s chest and is caught by a pair of strong hands that grip him tight.
“This is going to be unpleasant,” Castiel says in apology, seconds before he yanks the rod out of Dean’s back.
“Jesus fucking—”
“Language, Dean,” Cas scolds lightly, holding him against his chest. Dean groans and breathes through the pain. Then suddenly there’s a warmth at his back and his ears are ringing faintly. When Cas pulls away, the pain is gone, and Dean knows the angel patched him up good and new like he always does.
There’s a flighty look in his eyes when Dean looks up into them. He grabs Castiel just under the knot of his tie and growls at him.
“If you flap away before we get a chance to talk, Cas, so help me,” Dean warns him.
Castiel looks uncomfortable but the flighty look eases away. His hand covers the one Dean has gripped around the base of his tie. Dean swallows and readjusts it.
“Come here,” Dean says when he can’t think of anything else to say.
He yanks and pulls the angel down to meet his lips.
Castiel gasps and yields his mouth open, making a small strangled noise as Dean presses in closer. He braces his other hand at the back of Cas’s head, threads his fingers through his hair, and sighs into the angel’s mouth. He feels it when Cas relaxes against him, melting against the hard line of Dean’s body. The angel’s hands come up to cup the sides of his face, and this, Dean thinks, this is heaven, right here.
He pulls back when he hears a shout, and it occurs to him that Sam’s still in the barn finishing off the last of the masked vamps, and he really ought to help out with that.
“Sam,” he croaks, hands still gripping the angel, and it’s enough that Cas knows what he means.
“I believe your bother has things under control,” he says, and pulls Dean back in.
There’s a solid thump a foot away from where they’re standing, and Dean breaks the kiss just in time to see the last vamp’s head roll lazily across the floor and come to a stop next to his boot. It’s bloody and disgusting, but what else is new, right? Sam is standing there heaving and taking long gulps of air to recover from the fight, the bloody machete dripping from his hand.
“Cas?” Sam blurts out when he sees the angel. It’s clear by the look on his face that he has seen everything. “Dean? What the hell, man?”
He’s confused, and with good reason. Dean feels a headache starting to creep up behind the hand Cas still has at the back of his neck. He pulls away completely from the angel so that he can face his brother fully.
“Yeah, so…maybe we can have this conversation on the way back to the bunker?” he says.
Sam nods, and minutes later they’re climbing into Baby like it’s the end of just another run-of-the-mill hunt. Dean tells Sam about dying, about going to heaven…everything. He tells him about Cas, which is awkward as hell with the angel sitting directly behind him in the backseat because they haven’t had a chance to talk yet, but god damn if the timeline of Dean’s life could in any way run straight. It’s always been twists and turns and backwards loops, so really, why should today be any different?
“I guess the short version is I just wasn’t happy,” Dean finishes. He readjusts his grip on the steering wheel and catches Cas’s gaze in the rear-view. “I mean, it was nice, don’t get me wrong. But I wasn’t happy with it. So, Jack sent me back.”
“Just like that?” Sam asks, surprised.
“Just like that,” Dean shrugs.
Sam looks confused.
“But I don’t get it. Why not just save you to begin with? He must have known…I mean, he’s omnipresent, right? He had to have known you wouldn’t be happy there,” Sam says.
“Yeah, I dunno,” Dean says, shaking his head, “Maybe he thought it was important for me to see it. Who knows.”
“I believe I can shed some light on the matter,” Castiel speaks up. He leans forward from the backseat and grips the headrest, close enough that Dean can feel his breath on the back of his neck. Dean glances over his shoulder and watches as the angel hangs his head in shame. “I was the one who created that heaven for you, Dean. I thought…I thought it was what you wanted.”
Dean twists back to look at the angel, and it’s probably not the safest thing to do in a moving vehicle, but hell, if they die in a car crash right about now he’ll chalk it up to cosmic irony.
“What the hell, Cas?” he says.
He wants to be angry, but really all he feels is sad and hurt and betrayed.
“I didn’t think you felt the same way,” Castiel says quietly.
Dean turns all the way around to face the angel.
“Dean, seriously, eyes on the road—” Sam starts to say.
“Shut up, Sammy,” Dean snaps at him. He glares at Castiel. “You could have asked,” he says, bitingly. And yeah, now he’s angry. “But no, you thought—hell, I don’t know—but you jumped to conclusions and—seriously, Cas? After all we’ve been through?”
“I was…afraid,” Castiel says.
“Well no shit—”
“Dean!” Sam shouts, grabbing the wheel. Dean looks back just in time to swerve back into his lane, narrowly missing the car that blares its horn at them. Sam lets go and glares at him. “Pull over. I’m driving,” he says.
Dean does so, and when he gets out of the car, Sam practically shoves Dean into the back seat.
“Sam, what—?”
“Shut up,” Sam snaps at him. “You’re gonna end up back there anyway once the two of you finish making up like a bad teen movie and I’d rather not get elbowed in the face while I’m driving.”
Sam glares at him pointedly, and okay, it’s really unfair and embarrassing but he has a point.
“Fine,” Dean snaps at him, and climbs into the back seat.
Castiel is pressed up against the opposite door, as far away from Dean as he can get.
“Cas, dude, seriously? Come here,” Dean says, rolling his eyes. He grabs the angel by the upper arm and pulls him closer so that they’re seated right next to one another. He catches Sam’s eyes in the rearview and narrows his own, daring Sam to comment. He doesn’t, thankfully, just turns over the engine and pulls them back onto the road.
Dean takes a steady breath and grips Castiel by the back of his neck, bringing his face in close to his. He notices the angel’s eyes go wide and hears the breath Cas sucks in between his teeth.
“Cas, I love you too,” Dean tells him, without pretense. Because really, they’ve wasted so much time already.
This time when he kisses Cas, it’s accompanied by his brother’s exasperated sigh and exclamation of “Thank Jack, it’s about time.”
Dean flicks at his ear blindly while he’s got his lips firmly pressed against Cas’s mouth and receives a smack in the head from Sam. He grins into Cas, feels the rumble of laughter in the angel’s chest, and somehow the moment is perfect—he doesn’t know or understand why, he just knows that it is.
“This is my heaven,” Dean tells Cas when he pulls away, “Right here, with you and Sam, doing what we do. I wouldn’t change that for anything.”
He smiles, and blue eyes look into him, lit from behind and practically glowing. There’s a smile on Castiel’s face of a caliber that Dean hasn’t seen before, and he’s happy, Dean realizes. Really, truly, happy.
“Really, Cas, it ever occur to you that my happiness is with you too?” Dean tells him.
“I…hadn’t considered it…” Castiel admits, looking down between them.
“Idiot,” Dean says, but the insult is said with warm, honeyed affection. He twists to where he’s seated facing front and pulls the angel into his side, looping an arm around his back. Castiel’s nose buries itself in his neck and as he hums against Dean’s skin, Dean can feel the smile on his face.
“I love you, Dean,” the angel murmurs.
“Love you too, Cas,” Dean responds.
“I love you too, even though you’re both the biggest morons I’ve ever met,” Sam cuts in. Dean glares at him, and gets a shit-eating grin in the rearview from his brother in response.
“Just drive the fucking car, Sammy,” Dean snaps at him.
The drive dissolves into silence. Dean and Cas snuggle in the back seat, sharing small touches and kisses frequently enough to where it’s really starting to make Sam uncomfortable, and it’s about the best payback Dean could have asked for. They reach the bunker in record time, probably because Sam knows they’re close to just doing it in the backseat with him right there, because Dean’s never been great at restraint when it comes to his dick.
He practically shoves Cas through the front door to the bunker and then drags him down the hall to his room with a hand firmly wrapped around his tie.
“Dean, aren’t we going to talk about this?” Castiel asks at one point.
They’re halfway to Dean’s room and the only reason they’ve stopped is so that Dean can shove the angel up against the wall and get his mouth on him because, really, ten more feet is way too far away.
“Time for talkin’s over, Cas,” Dean tells him in between sucking at his neck.
“I—ahhnng—Dean!” Castiel moans. He shoves his hips forward and catches Dean off guard with the delicious slide of his cock against the hard-on Dean has trapped in his pants.
“F-fuck, Cas,” he breathes, hot and wet into the angel’s ear. He moans and grabs at Castiel’s hips, dragging him forward. They stumble down the hall to Dean’s room. Castiel’s hands are frantic, grasping at Dean’s shirt, at his ass—he’s desperate, they both are, and it’s wonderful, it’s glorious, it’s—
“Heaven,” Dean breathes, lips brushing once more against Castiel’s own. “My one-winged heaven. It’s you, Cas, you know that? My heaven is with you.”
“As is mine,” Castiel responds. He gasps and sucks in a breath as Dean bites down on his neck, and then they’re falling into Dean’s room. He shoves Castiel up against his door and grinds against him, tearing yet another moan from the angel.
“I want you, Cas,” Dean whispers in his ear, hot and heavy. “You okay taking this to home base, sweetheart?”
There’s a sound in Castiel’s throat that gurgles with need.
“Yes—Dean—please, I—I want you too,” he pleads.
Dean hums against his skin and pulls him forward away from the door. He’s about to turn them and shove Cas to the bed when he finds himself falling back to the mattress instead. Castiel straddles him and crawls up on his knees, hands under Dean’s shirt. He pulls it up and over his head.
His mouth is on Dean’s as soon as it’s free, and as he grinds down with his hips Dean moans into it, wanton and torn asunder.
Christ, they haven’t even started on the good stuff and already he’s done, he’s ruined—Castiel’s long fingers digging into his wrists, pinning his arms above his head with one hand as he reaches down for the button to Dean’s pants.
He’s not sure exactly how Cas manages to get his pants around his knees with the one hand, but he chalks it up to angelic talent and groans loudly as hot fingers wrap around him.
“Uuuuhhh Cas—!”
He hangs his head back and pants, arching off the bed and into his angel’s touch.
“Do you like that, Dean?” Castiel asks him in a low, gravelly voice that’s pure sex. One hundred percent. And Dean’s gone. He’s done for, he’s—
Castiel wiggles a finger down lower and hooks it just right—
Dean loses it.
He comes hot and messy like he’s fucking fourteen again and fuck. If he knew this was what he was missing, he would have laid one on the angel years ago.
Of course their timing was always fucked to hell, but surely he could have—
Dean stops that thought abruptly as Cas pulls his finger out of him and kisses him like he’s tasting him molecule by molecule…
Castiel wraps Dean into the circle of his arms and as Dean pants and rides the last lingering tingles of the orgasm rushing through him, he murmurs nonsense into the angel’s skin.
He loses track of how many times he says I love you.
They lie entangled in the mess of Dean’s completion until things start getting uncomfortable. Dean’s pants are still around his knees. He kicks them the rest of the way off and grabs his t-shirt from the corner of the bed where Cas tossed it to clean up the mess. Castiel’s fingers press into his chest, eyes hazy and lust-blown. Dean slides a hand down the front of his pants and watches as the angel’s eyes flutter closed.
“Dean,” Castiel breathes.
Yeah, he likes that—the way Cas says his name like he’s breaking apart. He likes it a lot.
“You gonna come for me, angel?” Dean murmurs against his skin. He grips Cas through his pants and smiles as the angel whines and grinds forward against his hand.
“Yes—Dean, please,” he begs.
Dean chuckles and presses a kiss to his lips, loving how desperate and needy Cas is—this badass angel of the lord who could smite them all with a flash of white light—and thinks he loves knowing he’s the one doing this to him—turning him to putty and making him beg.
“Let me hear you say it, Cas,” Dean coaxes.
“Dean I want—I want you—ahhunng!”
Dean grips him tighter and goes for the zipper to his pants. He shoves them down around Cas’s thighs and scoots lower, until he’s facing Castiel’s red and swelling cock—
He doesn’t think, he just opens his mouth greedily and swallows him whole.
He’s never even done this before, but it’s instinctual and he wants it. Loves the feeling of Cas full in his mouth, precum and spit dribbling down his chin. He moans around Cas’s dick and there’s a fleeting moment where it registers with a jolt that he’s got an angel’s dick in his mouth—and fuck, that’s hot as shit.
Castiel moans and thrusts into him, and Dean gulps down his own spit, salty with precum, and does his best to match the rhythm Cas is setting for him. His fingers dig into the angel’s hip bones and anchors them together. Dean’s already hard again—he can feel his own enlarged cock rubbing between his thigh and the blankets as he continues to go down on Cas.
Then suddenly Castiel is jerking up into his mouth with a moan loud enough to pierce the veil. The lights blow out and they’re plunged into darkness. Dean feels something hot and thick rush down his throat and he nearly chokes on it. He pulls off and cum drips out of his mouth, pooling in the curly nest of hair above Castiel’s pulsating cock.
He strokes the rest of the orgasm out of him, loving the whiney, panting sounds that come from his angel’s filthy mouth and presses a kiss to the base of his softening dick, breathing out over its length. He feels Cas shiver and then there’s a tug at his arm. He looks up into wide, blue eyes that seem to light up the entire room, and he thinks surely that’s a trick of the light until he remembers that oh yeah, Cas blew out all the lights. This is one hundred percent him.
“Dean,” Castiel murmurs, tugging at him again. Dean crawls up to him and presses a kiss at the corner of his mouth. Castiel turns his head and captures his lips fully in a passionate display of lips and tongue, then buries his nose in Dean’s neck and wraps strong arms around him like they are his wings instead. “Dean, I love you. Please. Please, I want to stay here with you forever. As long as you’ll have me.”
Dean hums and grins with his nose in Cas’s hair. He presses a kiss into the dark silky nest of his head.
“I told you, Cas,” he murmurs, “My heaven is right here with you.”