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Sunlight gilds the edges of kitchen table, fills the chip in his coffee mug golden. Warmth seeps into the wooden walls of his home. It is under his feet, and he scratches at the floorboards with his toes. On the table, a rolled-up newspaper that he doesn't quite care to read, fine china from the dollar store streaked with the remains of runny eggs, dotted with crumbs, a half-eaten peach bleeding into the center. Quite the spread, really, if he says so himself. This house, this table.
Dean Winchester brings a hand up to scratch at his stomach, shudders when his blunt nails scrape the soft, sensitive part of his belly. He looks out at his garden, light blanketing his flowers, the sprouts from his vegetable patch peeking out of the ground. Things grow here, and well, despite the weather, and the water, and what his neighbours call the acid rot. Dean supposes there is someone keeping an eye on it, despite everything.
He has little to do this morning — he has little to do most mornings, these days — and so the indulgences. The eggs, and the peaches, and the newspapers he doesn't read. He presses his palm flat against his stomach. Too many indulgences, if he is to be honest. Still, he does not quite have the mind to stop. The world has taken its fair share from him, and then some. He does not have the strength to fight the want in him anymore, what little of it there is left.
From somewhere beyond the kitchen, a song. It is soft, and jazzy, and unlike the music that Dean used to think of as his. He thinks of this music as his, now. Things are different from how they used to be. It is all so very sad. Or so very good, depending.
He wipes his mouth on a napkin, grunts as he heaves himself from the chair. On the phone, his brother. Dean's eyes dart to the clock he hangs on the wall over the television, noting the time. Always on schedule, the kid.
"'Morning, hotshot," he says in greeting when he picks up. "Everything alright in Kansas?"
That's not quite the joke that he means to make, but it makes him laugh anyway, and so he does.
"Ha-ha," comes his brother's response, sardonic, but fond. Dean can hear it now, that fondness, and always, when he talks to Sam, and that's good, too. He never does get tired of hearing it. Then, soft, "Everything's fine, Dean. Same as always. And you?"
"I'm peachy, Sammy. Same as always."
"Right."
"Mmm."
A pause, and this, too, is routine of a kind. His brother searching the silence for Dean's grief, for a sign that he is falling to pieces, as good as a world away. Dean, searching the wood grain of his coffee table for words that will reassure him enough, that will ease his worry.
Dean clears his throat after ten seconds that stretch the length of their lives. Says, "How is Eileen?"
"She's great. In France, for the week." Sam laughs, but it's happy, this laugh, and not strained like it used to be. "You know how it is."
Busy is how it is. After — well, after. Things were different and the same everywhere. Magic has a way of righting itself, but the arcane balances of power are delicate, and even though it had only been for a short while, there had been a vacuum where there was once the light that made the world. Even with balance restored, with Jack corralling the erratic strength of what had once been Chuck's power, had once been Chuck…things needed tending to. Things always need tending to. The world needs taking care of, and Dean's glad that it is resting in the hands of people well-suited to be its carers. Dean never was. But he doesn't like to think about that too much.
"She won't be there for long though. Some shit going down in a small town somewhere in Spain — kids having strange visions, myths and legends coming to life, that sort of thing. We've got a few local agents on ground, but it looks messy enough that Eileen and I are thinking of joining them."
Dean nods at his brother's words, drags a fingernail along his jaw. Waits.
Sam clears his throat. Dean can almost see it, his brother fidgeting on the other side of the line, tucking his long hair behind his ears.
"You could — you could come with. We could use the help. There's — there's always —"
Dean smiles. God, but he wishes it were all that easy. He lets his head fall onto the flat of his palm, lets the world tilt sideways.
"Sam."
Sam stops in his words, almost chastised. Almost hurt.
"Right. Yeah. Okay."
"I am good. Really."
"I know. I — I think I do, anyway. It's just — I worry, okay? You're my big brother, and I worry."
Dean feels something tight and hot in his chest. He watches himself on the blank screen of his television, blurring in the light. God, all this light.
"There's too much damn sunlight in this town," he says, "but it makes the garden look like it's out of this world. I'll send you pictures."
There's breathing on the other end, and Dean thinks about landlines and static and the irritating buzz of electronics. How much he misses it all.
"Okay."
"Sometimes I think —" Dean almost hesitates, but his mouth is faster than his mind, and the thoughts of the morning spill from him before he can truly stop himself. "I think maybe Jack makes time for my stupid fucking backyard. I think maybe he makes time to zap the acid out of the soil and soften all that light just enough and make the water sweet for my flowers. Maybe I'm going crazy, but I was looking out the kitchen window today, and I thought it was him."
Sam is quiet for a moment. Dean can hardly see himself in the reflection. His eyes are wet. He bows his head over his hand, catches his tears in his palm. Fuck.
"Maybe it was," Sam says, all sincere, and Dean loves his brother so much he hurts with it.
"Yeah?"
"He loves you. And Cas —" Silence again, for just a moment, and that static that is only a memory filling all that space. "He —"
"I know." Dean rubs a hand over his chest. "He — he would've — yeah."
Dean looks at his television, the console it sits on. All the things he has now. Pictures and trinkets and a vase full of flowers and hippie incense sticks, and he doesn't quite know how he got here. Soft golden light is still spilled over the floor, encroaching on his grief, almost demanding. There really is so much of it here.
He clears his throat. A weight slips off him, slow and easy, and Dean lets it. The curtains on the windows flutter, like the house has been holding its breath, too. Like it is sighing with him. There is no dearth of things to talk about with his brother, and so Dean shifts on the couch cushions and leans back. He pulls a leg up under his thigh, and asks Sam about the people he knows don't live in the bunker anymore, and books he can't remember the names of, and all the things he left behind. Sam will talk to him, because Sam always talks to him, because he doesn't know how else to remind Dean that there are people who need him, still, who love him, and want him around. And Dean listens, something like ease setting the muscles in his calves loose.
He is aching, but he is not all ache.
He looks at the kitchen window, the dirty dishes on the table, still, and all that colour crowding the space between the grass and the bright blue of the sky.
~
That afternoon, Dean thinks about a meadow. He is weeding the flowerbed under a sun that seems intent on boiling the world into a blurry mess, and he looks down at the grass staining his shorts at the thigh. The mud on his gloves. Green — bright, fresh, spring-green — and so much of it, that vignettes his vision. It feels familiar, somehow, and Dean sits back on his ankles and looks up at the sky.
Bright, blue, beautiful.
The sky was beautiful that night, too, he remembers. Clear, like this. So many stars, it looked like someone had spilled sugar on velvet, had stuck a square of it under a magnifying glass, turning the sugar crystals diamond-bright. His fingers were cold as he scraped the pyre and the sand that had blackened by the lake. Ash, all that was left of his best friend, and Dean thinks now — he thinks —
He pulls his gardening gloves off, and tosses them somewhere towards the house. It is alright, he tells himself. He can find them on his way back inside. He can find them a week from now when he sees them poking out of the ground, in the shadow of the porch railing. He can find them — later. He runs a hand through his sweaty hair, scratches the scalp at his crown.
Breathes.
The meadow was somewhere in Missouri, and it was a few days after they'd made it back to the bunker. Dean's insides had spilled out of him, and he was attempting to fill all that empty space with the good liquor the men of the letters had hidden in the wooden globes scattered across the main rooms. It was nice, but not enough, and there was the boy he had not yet learned to think of as his son, and his brother whose heart beat so loud with hope that it hurt Dean to be near him, and Dean had not been able to look at his hands, his fingertips which were not ash-stained but felt like they were even though he had scrubbed them clean,and he had not been able to think, and he had not been able to breathe. He thinks he might have been drunk, still, when he slid behind baby's wheel with a jar of sand and ash in his lap.
Dean's looking up at his blue sky now, and he is thinking of the blue sky in Missouri, and the sound of a babbling brook, the scent of wildflowers in the air. A windmill turning lazily in the distance. He is looking up at the blue sky, and thinking of eyes bright as the sky, and just as blue. Or maybe bluer still, like the ocean, or the soft petals of cornflowers he had seen growing along the I-15 one summer. Dean is thinking about the ache lodged in his chest, tracing its origin into the past.
"Five," he mutters to himself. The sun brightens, the light around its core pulsing in a spiky corona, like the drawings children make of it in yellow crayon at the community center. "Goddammit, Cas. Five years."
The cost of all that time, on his skin. In the grey that had begun to wind into his hair. The ache in his bones. He hangs his head, presses his palms to his eyes, sees the imprint of the sun in the pink skin of his eyelids. It's just — it's a long time, is all. Dean had not been sitting around counting the days, because that was dangerous, and it was painful, and he had to live. He was alive, and he had to live.
And so, there had been the town, and the house, and the job at the community center, and the kids, and coworkers who were something that resembled the silhouette of friends, and distance that put strain in the bonds of family, and a life, of some kind, with light, and food, and even laughter. But Dean's here, and he is thinking about the meadow from near a decade ago.
He is here, and the ache that had not been everywhere is starting to spread. It is beginning to catch up to him. He is beginning to unspool.
He bites his lower lip, tries to pull himself together. He is not particularly successful.
"Five fucking years," he chokes out, and it feels like prayer, the way the words spill out of him, the way they break on a sob.
~
It's all the sunlight, really. Drives you mad, that.
The jar is still there, upturned, stuck in the soil. His makeshift grave marker. Muddy, and cracked, and crawling with slime and heaven knows what else, but it is still there. Dean crouches by it, brushes dried leaves off its base. There is overgrowth nearby, and vines crawling all around it, and blue, blue, blue cornflowers growing at its mouth. Dean can hear the brook, still, from where he is, tucked away from the noise of the rest of the world.
It is the next day, and the world is just as bright, and the sky is just as blue. He settles down in front of the glass jar, dangles his clasped hands from his knees. The sunlight reflects off its dull surface, and Dean shifts on the grass so he is not blinded by it. He looks at that old, dirty, glass jar and imagines a respectable gravestone in its stead, like the one his mother's uncle had sprung for all those years ago. Father, he thinks it would say. Friend. Brother. Soldier.
Even in his imagination, Dean is no good with words. How could you sum up a life like Cas' in a handful of words, anyway? He was here before the sun and the stars. He was here when everything was just Hydrogen and the universe was a dense atom, waiting to burst open. To begin. What could anyone possibly say about an existence like that?
Dean sighs. He doesn't know why he is here, only that he couldn't think of anything else to do. The light has followed him, all the way from home, stubborn, and even fading into night, it spills all around him, buttery and yellow and soft. He picks at the inside of his chin with his teeth.
Says, "Hey, Cas," and finds that his mouth is filled with cotton. There's nothing else on his tongue. He pokes at his teeth. Thinks, what the fuck is wrong with me?
The horizon is far away, and Dean lets his eyes go unfocused as he looks at it, lets the world blur into splotches of colour. He should've brought beer. And food. A blanket, too, maybe. Driven his car into the meadow so he could leave the radio on. It's quiet, here. Makes the space around him feel endless. Like he could run screaming for the world and never find it. He could get lost in this quiet. He could lose himself.
It occurs to him that it wouldn't be so bad, all things considered, if he just dissolved into the blurry world in front of him. It occurs to him that it is probably not good that he feels this way. It occurs to him that he should probably call his brother. But he can't, and he doesn't, and he thinks about the sun and the stars and the universe and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. The taste of a storm on his tongue. The colour blue.
He clears his throat. Says, "I miss you, is the thing. All the time."
Hurt festers, and Dean knows this better than most. But this isn't like that. It feels fresh, like someone's punched him in the sternum in the last minute. Like he'd bruise his insides by just breathing.
"I think I was waiting for you, and I think I will keep waiting forever if I have to. Don't you fucking think I won't be here when you come home. But — I don't know. It was just so beautiful yesterday. I thought you would have liked it. I thought you would have liked to sit on the back porch and watch the sun set. Stupid, yeah?"
He wipes at the tears gathered in his eyes, spilling over his cheeks. Laughs at the way he feels stripped down, young. It's silly. It's just — silly. He's nearing fifty now, nearing the age his father was when he went missing all those years ago. And god. God.
"I'm tired, sweetheart." And it's strange how it's not very strange to call him that. To think of him like that. Has he, before? Dean doesn't know. He rubs the fingers on his left hand, like he's missing a wedding band he never had. Like he's remembering a marraige that never was. "I'm achy, and old, and tired. I wish you'd stop taking your sweet-ass time with this. I wish you'd come back now."
The sun is gone, and the light with it, and the world looks like it is ringed in fire. Maybe it is. Maybe it would keep Cas here, with him, if it was. Dean thinks he would let the world burn, really, if it came to that. If that was all it took. What does that say about him? It's terrifying, how that desperation is still inside him, swimming just underneath the surface of his skin.
How it makes his throat burn now, makes his stomach cramp with thirst. He curls his itchy fingers into fists, and tries to remember the morning that was not so long ago, and the taste of the bacon he gets from the butcher in town, the taste of fresh peaches, ripe, and sweet.
He scratches the length of his nose, sniffs. Says, "I have to go soon," and makes no move to leave. Says, "There is a job. Can you believe that, Cas? I have a job. Respectable, and everything. I spend time with kids. I teach them how to play the guitar. I teach them to read. They seem to like me, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something right after fucking up everything for so long. You would love them, if you met them. I know they would love you. I tell them about you, sometimes. Sometimes — Yeah." Says, "And the house, it's by the woods, but we can move, if you don't like it. If you want to live somewhere else. Maybe up north. Maybe by a lake or something. We can go anywhere you want." Says, "Sammy's always worried about me, and he keeps sending people over. He won't come, though. I think he's scared it will be — I don't know. There's stuff we don't talk about. He's happy, though. Seems like, anyway. And I think that's enough, for now. Yeah. I think that's enough."
The night is a soft thing. It comes over the world, a blanket of dark, and folds into the emptiness left behind by the light of day. The sky stretches overhead, infinite and velvet, and Dean is still close enough to the smoke and noise of the world that the stars stay mostly hidden. A few peek through though, winking at him, and he looks up at them, and wonders about angels and gods and grace and magic.
"I love you, too." It is easier, somehow, to say it to the dark. "How did you not know? That I did, I do. That you could have me. I love you, too. I've loved you forever, for so long. Cas, how did you not know?"
Somewhere, a bird calls, and he thinks it could be an owl, or a lark, and he thinks Cas would know what it was. Cas would tell him. In the dark, like this, Cas would hold his hand.
Dean is aching, and he is all ache, and he doesn't know what to do with it.
"I have to go, now, really," he says, and he doesn't know why he won't leave, won't move. Doesn't know what he's waiting for. Why he is still here. "I do. I have to go home."
A sharp tug, in his chest, and he winces, curls on himself, presses his hand to his chest.
"Fuck," he swears. "God-fucking-dammit!"
Maybe he will end up asleep on the grass. He is cold, so maybe he will crawl into Baby, make do with the backseat like he used to all those years ago. It's stupid, the way he feels like he will lose something —something, something, something — if he leaves here.
There is a rush of wind, like the coming of a storm, and the scent of rain in the air, the taste of thunder on his tongue. He is looking up at the moon, and the cloudles sky. The stars, which are winking, blinking. Moving.
Dean straightens where he is, eyes widening. Holy shit. Holy shit!
It is a meteor, and looks not unlike the one he had seen in a grainy footage of a dashcam on the internet. Like molten silver streaking through the sky. Dean gets to his feet, and keeps looking at this — this wonder of a thing. He remembers Kansas, more than a decade ago now, his brother dying on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, and all those angels falling to the Earth. He feels his heart kicking up in his chest. It knocks against his ribs, like it is trying to get out. Like it knows something.
Dean doesn't know what comes over him, but he is sprinting towards his car, his neck snapping between the ground in front of him and the sky above. He throws himself into the driver's seat, twists the keys in the ignition.
"I'm losing my damn mind," he mutters to himself, as he peels out of the shoulder of the dirt road. The star is streaking north-east, and Dean finds his way onto a road that curves the same way. The signal is spotty when he turns the radio on, so he switches it out for a tape, not bothering to look at the title he'd once scratched onto it in sharpie. The opening riff of a Zeppelin song, and he finds his over-stretched tendons releasing some of that tension. This is familiar. It's good. And that thing that is coursing through his blood now, that is pushing him to this madness, ends up in the back of his throat with his heartbeat. It tastes like loss, like hope. He is suddenly terrified of it, all alone on the blacktop, following a meteor out of the sky.
He fumbles in his jacket pocket for his phone, dials with one hand on the steering wheel. Time is collapsing around him, into him, and he is twenty, twenty-four, twenty-six, and every other age in-between the home in Lawrence and now, and he is waiting for his brother to answer the phone.
"Mmf — Dean? 'Time is it?"
Dean checks the screen, sees that it is well past midnight. The night got away from him. He hadn't even realized it.
"Fuck — Sammy, I'm sorry I didn't mean to — "
"What's wrong?" A pause, a grunt, like he's getting out of bed, like he's stretching his feet, like — "What the fuck? Why are you driving around in Missouri in the middle of the night?"
"I'm — Are you tracking my fucking phone, dude?"
"Of course, I'm tracking your fucking phone!" Dean shouldn't be laughing. He really, really shouldn't. "Dean, what's going on, man?"
"You remember Washington, Sammy? what was it — 2017?"
"2017? You mean when Jack —?"
"Yeah. Yeah. I had his ashes, then. Cas'. Did you know that, Sam? I scraped them off the cooling pyre in the middle of the night. I kept thinking — I was thinking I should have kept something of his. Like his trenchcoat. But it was all bloody and I couldn't — I couldn't look at it. I couldn't even look at him."
"Dean —"
"I went to scatter them later. After we came home. I drove around for hours, and I found this meadow, somewhere along the I-44. Just this little piece of green tucked away from the road, but it was nice. Like it was someplace else, like it was out of a story."
"You said you were doing okay. Dean, you told me you were good." Rustling on the other end, and breath, heavy. "Is — Are you — are you drunk? Are you driving drunk right now? I need you to pull over if you are. Please."
Dean feels himself slowing down at the tone of his brother's voice. His throat is all tight, so he clears it. Swallows. Says, "No." Then, softer, "I mean — I'm not drunk. Sammy, I swear I'm not. I was just —" Just what? "I just — missed him."
"Okay. Fuck. God, okay."
"I drove over because I missed him."
"Dean."
"I think — I've been waiting, and I just — I love him. You know that, right? I love him, Sammy."
Sam sucks in a breath. "Yeah." Dean thinks he's nodding, the way his voice moves in his ear. "Yeah, I know. I mean, I figured you did."
"Yeah. I did." And Dean's still got that discomfort under his skin, wriggling snake-like, but it's nice. To be able to say it out loud. To have someone hear him. "I do. I'm following a shooting star." His voice breaks on a laugh, sweetbitter, because it's ridiculous, and he's going to end up driving to the east coast if he keeps going, and he can't even see it anymore, the star, not even a streak in the sky, but he can't stop. He can't stop. "I'm — I'm going east."
"What?" And because it's Sam, and he's Dean's smart baby brother, it only takes him a moment to understand. The wind rushes out of him in a sigh, and Dean feels it like he would have if Sam was in the passenger seat. It calms him down, that. Makes him feel less alone. Less like he's losing control of everything. "Jesus — just. Hold on. Just stay on the line."
"Okay. Yeah, Okay."
He wipes at his eyes with the back of his fist, takes a breath, then another, and another. He can hear footsteps on the phone, and with the sound comes the phantom feeling of concrete under the pads of his fingers. The memory of tile and the smell of old wood. Relics of another time that had become the truth of his, and for so long. Dean thinks he misses it, sometimes, the certainty that came with life in the bunker. Everything's different now. He's different.
When Sam speaks, he sounds small, like he's trying to say the right thing, not knowing what it could possibly be. Like he's young. And he is, still, isn't he? He's so damn young. "Dean… there's nothing…I mean, I don't see…none of our alarms went off, man. I don't think…"
Dean's heart is thudding, still, even as he feels a sinking in his stomach, the all-consuming pull of grief that he has been keeping at bay all these years. He sees himself as if from above, twitchy fingers drumming the steering wheel, wet eyes ringed red, trained on a near empty highway in the middle of the night. There' a tremor in his breath, and he can't — he can't catch hold of his thoughts fast enough, can't string them into coherence if he tried.
It would be the right thing to do, turning back. The smart thing. He has a life. He has a life. He worked at it, the way Cas would have wanted him to. He has a home, and a job, and everything else he could have thought to ask for not a handful of years ago.
Still. Still.
"I think. I think I'm gonna keep going anyway." He will stop for the night, somewhere along the way. He will drive to the coast if that's where he is meant to go. It's not like he could get lost on these roads — they're home, too, in their own way. He could trace the length of them across this continent in his sleep. "I think I have to."
Memories are scattered on the tarmac his wheels ride on, and Dean feels himself picking them up with the breeze that blows in through the open windows. His father, driving, and Dean, with his lap full of squirming baby brother, and a song his mother adored playing in the wind.
Jack, with his hands clenched over the steering wheel, proclaiming that it was the best day ever! and something that felt a little like pride, a lot like love, bubbling up in his sternum.
Cas, his Cas, so many times, in the passenger seat, a single hand dangling out the window, like he was measuring the movement of the world with the wind. He smiled with Dean, and often, and Dean knew to tuck that smile in his chest, keep it safe.
Is it so bad that he wants it again? The night, and the stars, and that smile. He is content, yes, but is it so terrible that he wants to be happy?
Sam has been speaking to him, and Dean has not been listening, and then his brother, in a voice heavy like a cloud, its belly full of rain, says, "What do I do, Dean? Tell me what you want me to do."
He is afraid, Dean thinks. Something in the shape of it. Afraid for Dean, maybe even of him, a little bit. He reminds Dean of himself, not yet a decade on his skin, and the soursweet scent of his father's breath, the texture of cotton bunched up in his fingers, words still ending in a lisp in his mouth, scraping against a chipped tooth. Dad, he used to say, Dad. Sammy won't stop crying. What do I do? Tell me what to do, Dad. Dean used to be afraid, too. For his brother, and of him, in the way that people can be afraid of their young, their capacity to hurt themselves. He never meant for Sam to repay the favour, not like this.
"I'm sorry," he says. Then, "Hey. Don't worry, alright? I'll go home. Tomorrow. I promise. I just — I didn't want to be alone tonight. On the road. It — It got to me."
"You're not," his brother says, all the stubborn conviction in his bones punched into the two words. "Alone, I mean. I got you, okay?"
"Yeah," he says, and then, to just be a son-of-a-bitch, adds, "bitch."
A chuckle tumbles out of Sam, and he says, "Jerk," because he loves Dean, and he knows to say it. "Where will you go?"
"I don't know, Sammy," Dean says, turning into Illinois. He remembers Rockford, from years past, and Chicago. Joliet. God, Joliet.
And Pontiac.
His pulse begins to race. Pontiac. Jesus Christ. Jesus Fucking Christ.
He clears his throat. Says, "Not far."
His brother keeps him company as he cruises along the I-55, and talks to him about the cases they used to pick up, and the troubles of managing hunters, international now, and the way he misses Dean's cooking, and then he tells him, a yawn in his mouth, "I love you, okay? This stuff — all this. And Cas. And I know you used to be fucked up about it, and it seems like you've made peace with yourself. You don't need me to tell you that you're not wrong for being who you are, but I just want to tell you that I love you anyway. And I'm proud of you, for what it's worth."
It's worth a lot, but Dean is Dean, so he clears his throat, and mumbles, Yeah, alright. Thanks. Love you, too. And then, Go to bed, kid.
And Sam, with a sigh, hangs up.
~
Sleep sets the back of his eye itching, sets his pulse throbbing at his temples. Dean isn't twenty anymore. He isn't even forty anymore, and the muscles in his back ache from the abuse he has put them through. Still, he is a scant few minutes from the edges of Pontiac, and the abandoned barn that Bobby and he had turned into a fortress against all things supernatural. Well, all things that they had knowledge of. An angel! God! Dean still doesn't believe it, sometimes. That all of it happened at all. That an angel of the Lord walked through those doors, and looked him in the eye and told him he was chosen by heaven. That time would chip at the edges of that angel, would turn him something adjacent to it, something still powerful, but accessible now. Someone he could touch.
God, he thinks. God, Cas. What a wild ride, huh?
He wonders, as he drives, if it is still standing , the barn. He wonders if anyone ever replaced the lightbulbs that hung from the rafters. If the bullet holes are still burnt into the wooden walls.
Much of the area around has changed in the past decade and change, and Dean isn't surprised to see the plains swallowed by brick and mortar buildings, and the narrow blacktop widened three times over. The farmland that they had made camp in that night, though, is miraculously unscathed. With dawnlight licking the horizon and oozing a dull orange onto the ground, Dean can see the contours of it — an acre or so of what was once crop of some kind, now overrun with mayapple, and coneflowers, and coreopsis, blanketed on either side by the inevitable tide of civilization, but untouched by it, like the currents of time had bent around it, protective almost.
Dean's mind is whirring. He slows baby's wheels to a crawl as he nears the narrow path leading to the barn doors. A part of him knows he is going to end up collapsing on the barn floor, comfort be damned, when the wild adrenaline keeping him going abates in an hour or so. And he will wake, and the world will be quiet, and he will cry, maybe, and call his brother again. He will go to the bunker, or he will go home, and he will curl up on the mattress he had delivered by special order, on sheets he bought because he thought they were beautiful, and he will wait for the light that loves his home to swallow it once more. He will go back to the guitar lessons, and the full pantry, and it is this, perhaps, that gives him the courage to see it through. To push his feet against the gas pedal.
He will keep living after this, same as he was before. He will tend to the terrible wound of his hope, and he will keep it from festering. He will find a way to wait for Castiel, like he has waited for him these past five years.
But — and God, there it is, that wound, gaping, and bleeding hope into his veins — but.
There, in the dawnlight, the barn. Its grey paint peeling, and rusted nails hanging from a few slats, crooked. The doors are pushed close, but Dean can see that they are not repaired, still hanging from their hinges. Through the gaps in them, he sees a slice of the rafters, dull streaks of something that could be paint, or could be something else. Toes curled into his boots, he turns off the engine and steps out of his car.
And stares. And stares. And stares.
~
It is no crater, barely more than a groove, really, the dirt kicked up on either side of a narrow track that disappears into the land behind the far side of the barn. Char, in the dirt there, dotting the brown and red, almost invisible in the weak light of the morning. The scent of an oncoming storm in the air.
Jesus. Jesus Christ.
Dean doesn't hear the half-a-dozen steps he takes to cross over to the barn doors, doesn't hear the creak and drag of them as he pushes them open.
The first thing he notes is that there is glass on the ground, still, scattered like old confetti left to brown and curl and rot. He sees that the runes are intact, for the most part, if buried behind a decade's worth of dust, broken only where the wood has rotted away or fallen apart. The metal tables that became altars for their rituals are all still there, too. Dean can make out the dull outline of the bowls and a pestle. Something rectangular that could be a journal, a spellbook, maybe just a slab of nothing.
He remembers this place painted in stark colours, but now it is a pool of grey, lightening with the spill of light at his back. It is a pool of grey, and he doesn't — he can't —
His heart thumps along in his chest. He pulls his lower lip between his teeth.
Come on. Come on. Where are you?
The barn is empty, just like he'd left it, all those years ago, rousing Bobby from the ground with his shaking hand, bundling him in his car, burdened with knowledge he didn't want, couldn't understand how to utilize. He steps inside, careful, one foot in front of the other. Then again, and again. The barn is not very large, and seems smaller still, with the light seeping into its corners, and Dean sees that there is nothing here. Not a strip of cloth that wasn't here a decade ago. Not a stray feather. Nothing.
Dean feels the strength in his knees giving out, and catches himself on one of the tables. Hisses at the knit of his skin tearing open against the edge, cracked open into sharpness. The swell of his warm blood is oddly comforting, even as it pools in his palm, slides down his skin towards his wrist. He looks at himself, the wreck he has made of it all. That wound in his heart bleeding, and smarting, and aching. And God. Good God.
His brother was right, because his brother is often right, and Dean needs — he needs a bed. And a bath. And something warm in his belly. He needs to make it to his car.
Cradling his arm against his his chest, he stumbles out of the barn into the light. It is bright now, the sun having risen right, and the sky is a pale blue, and leaning against his car is a man in a tan trench coat, his arms crossed over his chest, and his head turned away from the cracked doors.
The world stills, for a moment, and there he is, mop of disheveled brown hair, tipped in the light of the spring sun, and there he is, turning his head towards Dean, and there he is, blue eyes, bright, and beautiful, softening, as his lips lift in a smile.
Cas. Oh, God. Cas.
They're looking at each other, and Dean is counting the seconds, afraid of this moment, of everything in it. It feels fragile, like a glass plate that could shatter with a loud breath. His palm smarts, and he winces, looks down at the mess of red that is his hand. Cas is moving, the flutter of the fabric of his coat loud in the still morning air, his sure feet slapping the ground, and Dean missed him, he missed him so damn much.
Large hands cradle his ruined palm. Uncalloused, long-fingered. Healing.
Cas says, "You're bleeding," and Dean hears the frown in his voice, is glad to know that he can still understand the language of his tone and tenor, that time has not robbed him of this.
"Yeah," he says. He lifts his eyes, blinking to keep the moisture from escaping. To make sure that this isn't a phantom of his imagination. Cas is bent over his hand, and he is close, close enough that his hair would brush Dean's nose, if he leaned forward. Dean wants to cup his face, to make sure that he is real. He wants — he wants to —
He swallows. Tilts his head back at the barn. Says, "You let me root around in there."
Cas' eyes flick to his briefly, but before Dean can make sense of the shape of them, they dart away, and alight on the barn at his back, its ruined doors.
"I…" He sighs, ducks his head. Says, "I'm sorry."
"Hey." Dean crooks his finger, sets it under Cas' chin. He feels the scrape of his stubble on his skin, as he lifts Cas' head, tries to meet his gaze. "It's only a scratch, Cas."
(That name, in his mouth. How he missed it, the shape of it, the taste.)
Cas smiles at that, small and fond, and presses his thumbs to Dean's palm on either side of the wound. Dean is watching the lines in Cas' face. He is watching the flutter of his eyelashes, as Cas slips his eyes close, and furrows his brow, summons his grace to the surface. Dean thinks there is light there, behind those eyelids, silver-bright, like lightning. A chilling thread of grace slips under his skin and knits it close. He shivers at the sensation, the reminder of the sensation. Curls his palm to trap Cas' fingers underneath his.
"Was it you?" He asks, and if there is desperation knocking his teeth together, cracking his voice open, he doesn't notice it. "The star, last night. Was — was that you?"
"Yes," Cas breathes, then frees his fingers from under Dean's, steps back, still close enough to touch but no longer touching. Dean is cold. There's that tug in Dean's chest again, that thudding that won't stop. "You must have questions."
Dean does. And so many. But all he can think about is that Cas is here, and he seems to be moving away, uncertainty painting his voice a colour Dean doesn't yet recognise and he missed him, he missed him, he missed him so much, he thinks his heart might have cracked open the Empty for all that it matters, in this moment.
So. He chases after Cas, nearly barelling into his body. Fits his palms to the planes of Cas' jaw, feels the tips of his fingers skim the hairs at the base of his neck. They're soft, he thinks. So damn soft. And then he kisses him.
Cas makes a surprised sound against his lips, and he is still, for a second. His hands hover in the scant space between their bodies, touching, but not, and Dean is afraid, of pushing, of all the things the word love can hold, of his own selfishness changing the shape of it. But then Cas is fisting his hands in Dean's shirt, tight, and he is pushing him so Dean has to lock his legs to keep steady, and he is kissing him back, unpractised, and desperate. He parts his mouth on a gasp, and Dean swallows his breath, lets himself go, scrapes his teeth against Cas' bottom lip. Cas tastes like fresh snow, like sharp mint, and his scent is overwhelming, like Dean is in the eye of a storm, and if he lets go of what he is holding, it will tear him apart.
He shivers when Cas drags his tongue along the roof of his mouth, and shivers again when he pulls back to nip at his lips, and clutches Cas close until the breath in his lungs runs thin, until he has no choice but to pull back. He slows the press of his kisses, turn them soft, and quick. He kisses the corner of Cas' mouth, the hollow of his cheek. The corner of his jaw that curves down to his neck. And he stays there, panting into his skin, his forehead pressed to Cas' temple. Cas is panting, too, he notes, and his skin is warm, where it touches his, flushed.
A breath, and another, and another.
"I love you, too, is the thing," he says, and he feels the thud of Cas' heart under his palm, even through all those layers.
"Dean." Cas' hands tighten around his waist. Dean leans on him, into him. His name, in Cas' mouth, in his kiss-ruined voice. God.
"I missed you like crazy. I thought that I wouldn't make it, when all was said and done, and you weren't there, and Jack was gone. And then — and then I thought about how you made your way back to me. Before. Always. And I wanted to be there, for that. For you. I wanted to make you a home. With windows, and porches, and light." He's crying, and he doesn't care, and he thinks that it's alright. He presses his face harder into the crook of Cas' neck. "There's so much fucking light, Cas. You would — You —"
He cuts himself off, his throat narrowing, squeezing his breaths thin, and Cas brings a hand up to his hair, runs it through in a caress.
"It sounds lovely," he says, and his words are squeezed thin, too. "Your home sounds lovely."
Dean pulls back from where he had curled himself around Cas, and takes his face in his hands. He looks into Cas' eyes — blue, God, so blue, like the sky, this morning, like a gem — and says, with all that he is capable of feeling, "Your home, Cas. Ours, if you want. It was all — it was only ever for you."
Cas stares at him, wide-eyed, and open-mouthed, and angelic and human, all at once. And then he kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.
~
The sunlight has turned bright here, too. Buttery yellow, and golden, and sun-flower soft. Dean is leaning against Baby, his back pressed into the frame. Cas is wrapped in his arms, his chin on Dean's shoulder, his kiss-swollen mouth pressed to his cheek. They are catching their breath.
Dean is tired, and light, and happy like he hasn't been in a long time.
"Where were you?" he whispers to the sky, feels the light pinkening the back of his eyelids.
"Nowhere. Everywhere. It's — complicated."
"Mmm." Dean knows that it will eat at him, this question, but not yet, not just yet. "Will you tell me? Not right now — just, will you? When we go home?"
Dean feels the movement of Cas' mouth against his skin, the pull of his lips as he swallows. He says, "Yes. Of course. Yes."
He nudges Cas' forehead with his own. "You do want to — Come home? With me?"
Cas holds his gaze for long enough that Dean can read the intent behind his words, now. Can see the trust in them, the truth. The hope. "More than anything."
"Okay," Dean nods.
"Okay."
Dean looks at him. Dean keeps looking at him.
"Just — tell me again. I need you to just —"
"I love you." Cas says. "Is that it? I love you. I have always loved you. I don't know that I will ever stop."
There is a burr in Dean's throat, and it snags his breath, and tugs. He clears his throat. Tries to, anyway. Says. "Good. That's — that's good. Because ditto, sweetheart."
The light is all around them, and Dean is starting to go soupy in the head, and in his feet. He knows that he will shake himself off soon enough. He will press the keys to the car into Cas' hands and he will say Take me home, sweetheart, and Cas will probably kiss him for it. He will call his brother, and his friends, and the girl who inhabits the shape of a daughter for them both. He will stop half-way home, this time, and rest his head on a real pillow in a read bed, and eat real food, and fall asleep against the rising and falling of Cas' chest. He will ask him about all these years, and he will scream at Cas for taking so long, and curse him for that wound that bleeds in his chest, always, and forever, and then he will beg for forgiveness, for everything that he'd fucked up, for everything he will probably fuck up. He will do all that, and more, but for now. For now.
Dean breathes in the scent of the storm that clings to Cas' hair. He presses his lips to his forehead in a chaste kiss. He holds the love of his goddamn life close, and basks in the light.