The Last Guys on the Bench // Part 6

[inplayruns]

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Sam pokes his head into Dean’s cabin one day when Dean’s half-asleep, and tells him, “We’re going on a scouting trip.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You wanna come?” Of course, that had been the real issue. And Sam looks almost wounded, like he’s prodding skin that’ll break open and reveal the ugly, bloody redness inside, but he’s gotta do it.

“Sure,” Dean responds, throwing a smile across his face. It’s not very genuine, mostly because he’s awfully fucking tired and there have been so many other times when Sam could’ve asked, but it’s there.

A bunch of them crowd into a big SUV, of all things, and Sam dares to blast his stupid girly music like it’s as awesome as anything Dean would listen to. Tamara sits shotgun, and Dean is absolutely not sulking about crowding into the backseat with a skinny redhead in a black polo shirt and Castiel and Inais, who look absolutely miserable about stuffing themselves in a car, Inais with a big exaggerated frown and Cas totally bitchfacing.

“Hey, crankypants,” Dean says to him, cheery as possible even though he’s still kinda sleepy, tapping his fingers along the back of Cas’ head. Cas just swivels his head and half-glares in confusion, though the look’s more blunted than his usual expression.

“Flying is much more useful than this,” he grunts. “And more efficient.”

It’s only now that Dean notices that Inais has crooked his head in their direction, too, examining them as if there is an obvious answer to what’s going on there. And then he notices the way his own fingers curled into the hair at the nape of Cas’ neck, and he’s practically yanking them away.

The redhead’s looking at them too, but not the same way Inais is; her expression is open human curiosity. “You were at the hospital too,” she tells Cas, her brow knitted. “Emmanuel, the nurses said, right? Seemed out of it at the time, though. You’re… not human.”

“That was me. My name is Castiel, and I’m an angel of the Lord.”

“Okay.” She laughs, and it’s sorta shaky, like she can’t quite trust him yet. “I’m Marin.” When she holds out her hand, Cas just stares at it, and she pulls it away. “You must be Dean. Heard a lot about you.” Her smile’s wobbly, but she’s cute.

“Better’ve been all good stuff, Sammy,” Dean calls out to the front of the SUV.

Marin’s smile straightens itself out a bit. “He really missed you.” Her voice sounds tinny and high, and very far away. Dean’s learned enough in this strange new world not to ask unless people want to tell you their stories.

They drive on, and it’s disturbingly normal outside except for the fact that they never see any people, or any other cars. They’re in the kind of pretty little suburbs that Sam and Dean never got to spend any time growing up in, either, so it’s doubly weird to see the houses lined up neatly, painted yellow and off-white - only the paint’s fading and chipping away, and green slashes of ivy crawl up the front of the houses.

“Here,” Tamara tells Sam, after a while, and they stop the car. The two of them move to the back and pull out thigh harnesses equipped with guns, and water guns too, dark with the laundry detergent inside them. (It’s a weird world, man.)

It’s only when Dean notices Marin, who’s pretty fucking tiny, buckling up her own straps that he realizes he doesn’t have a gun. “Sam?” he asks, holding his hands up.

“Guess we’re one short,” he replies, but he doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes.

All Dean can do is glare, and watch Sam hitch up his own water gun after strapping the real thing into his thigh. “Did you not bring me one on purpose?”

“Yes,” Tamara butts in, before moving away.

Dean opens his mouth to sputter a complaint, when Sam interrupts him. “Dean, I… this is about the baby steps, okay.”

“I don’t need them, I’m fine,” Dean grunts, fumbling through all the crap they packed into the back of the SUV like there’s a hidden holster and gun in there for him, too.

“Look, Dean, I’m not trying to like - emasculate you or whatever -” and Sam hands over his water gun, like that’ll do anything - “I just, right now? You need someone to look after you a little. You do, Dean. It’s not a bad thing to need help.”

Dean knows it’s not, he really does, but he still wants to lash out at those words as they hang there, heavy, between himself and Sam. No one looks after him; he looks after them. It’s not just what he does, it’s what he is. If he can’t do that, it’s just all the shit inside him and nothing else.

“Let’s go,” is all he grunts out. As he turns around, Cas is right there, space between his eyebrows furrowed. Dude probably heard the whole thing. Great.

Still, Dean heads off with Sam and Cas, totally not dragging his feet the whole time. “Wouldn’t let you have a gun, either,” he says to Castiel, elbowing him in the ribs a bit.

“There would be no use for - yes.” And huh, is that tact from Castiel? At least the guy’s trying.

Cas pushes the door open on the closest house. There’s a nice entryway, all deep brown wood with the slightest layer of gray dust clinging to it. Sam stuffs a hand over his mouth, probably to stop any coughing, as they walk through to the living room. The television’s still on. Food Channel, of all things, and Dean is trying not to laugh.

“C’mon - oh,” Sam orders, as he opens the door to the kitchen. A guy’s still in there, his hand going back and forth in one constant movement from the bag of cookies he’s got open to his mouth. The entire front of his shirt is strewn with dark crumbs, and the sides of it are starting to split open at the seams. He doesn’t even seem to notice the three intruders into his kitchen, two of them with giant neon water guns and the other in badly mismatched clothes and practically radiating not human. “I’m -”

“He doesn’t notice, Sam,” Cas intones, going to the fridge, opening it up, and starting to dump whatever he finds inside into his bag. Once, Cas used to use his grim determinism to tell Sam and Dean they had to get out of a town before they destroyed the whole damn thing, and everyone in it; now, he’s glowering at jars of pickles and old deli meat as he crams it into a backpack that he can’t carry like a normal person. “Let’s go?”

Most of the other houses are the same. Some of them are unoccupied, but too many of them have the friggin’ grotesque ruins of humanity just kind of hanging out, still watching television or standing in their kitchens or at the foot of the stairs.

A few people are flopped on the floor, mouths open and eyes glassy, and Dean’s got no idea if they’re alive or not. Might as well not be, poor suckers. His fingers itch to help them, somehow, even though he knows he can’t. Still, every time his gaze lingers on them too long Sam casts a look backward at him and all Dean can do is keep walking. Bitch.

When they get back to the van, the other three are already there, still holding their water guns like they’re preparing for an attack. “Ran into a Leviathan going through one of the houses,” Marin tells them. When Dean looks closer, he sees that her black polo’s splattered with black goop, too. “Took care of it.”

“They don’t work alone, not usually,” Tamara says, jaw set hard and still looking out into the distance. “We were waiting for you three to come back so we could get the hell out of here.”

They crowd back into the car and open up all the food bags. Half of them stink to high hell, and Dean starts tossing the rancid crap out the windows despite Sam whining at him when he does it. There’s a Hershey’s bar buried in Inais’ backpack, and yeah, Dean’s eyes totally light up when he looks at it.

“Check it,” Tamara tells him, tossing the scanner into the backseat.

It’s good, apparently made before the wrecked corn syrup shit got into everything, and wouldn’t you know it, the expiration date’s only three days from now. They all split the bar into little pieces and pass them along; Dean makes some frankly gross noises when the chocolate starts dissolving under his tongue, but no one says anything. Cas even grumbles something at Inais when the other angel looks over at Dean, all wide-eyed.

Marin’s still got her holster strapped to her thigh, but Dean honestly isn’t even mad when he sees it. He’s just happy enough that everyone made it out, and they even kicked some Leviathan ass along the way. They’re gonna find a way to help everyone stuck in this awful world, ‘cuz that’s what they do.

Dean doesn’t understand this burst of optimism. Maybe it’s the chocolate. Cas holds his hand out to Dean, offering his squares to him wordlessly. His palm’s warm when Dean’s fingers scrape against it.

“I can’t enjoy it like you could,” he explains. He doesn’t look away for a while, and neither does Dean.

*

It snows a few days later, heavy. Dean tried to stick around the hotter states during the wintertime when it was just him and Sammy out on the road - last thing he needed was the weather or the ice or salt tossed on the roads fucking with the Impala - so he hasn’t seen anything like this in a while. Everything’s white and still and creepy as hell.

Cas, being Cas, stands out in the middle of the camp for a while, letting the flakes dust right off him. Secretly, Dean thinks the guy looks almost as badass as when he starts smiting shit with all the snow and wind whirling around him, the trenchcoat loud with every gust of wind, only he’s got some doofy navy-and-red striped shirt on and these lame-ass all-white sneakers he wears all the time. Plus, he’s probably out there to absorb the dynamics of the movement of cirronimbus clouds, or whatever shit he’s always going on about. Worse than Sammy with the nerd shit.

“You should make a snow angel,” Dean tells him, calling out from the porch of his cabin.

Even from here, Dean can see the deliberate blink Cas gives him in return. The snowflakes fall off his long lashes, and fuck that’s some romance novel shit to be thinking. Cas just keeps on being Cas, though, and distracts Dean by reaching down to the ground and pulling up a handful of snow. He holds out his open palm to Dean. “Is this sufficient?” he asks.

The wind’s really picking up now, and the snow’s gone icy; it’s like little needles are constantly buffeting Dean’s face, scraping it with every gust. Risa got more dumplings, and he’s cradling the bowl in his hands to stay just a little bit warm. He stays outside anyway, though, smiling even. “Yeah, sure.”

*

When the weather gets a little better, to pass the time, Dean tries to teach Cas to drive. It’s a terrible idea and he knows it, but he doesn’t stop. It’ll be useful eventually, is his excuse. Cas gets behind the wheel and huffs that there is no point to these infernal metal prisons when he could just transport them anywhere they wanted.

He makes Cas practice on some of the other mostly rusted trucks and cars because no way he trusts the guy with his baby. Plus, if Cas is going above, oh, forty miles per hour, that’s when he tends to start rambling on about ant mating habits and not paying attention to the road, and Dean’s real grateful for Cas’ angel powers; it’d suck to make it through Purgatory and this fucked-up brave new world only to die in a giant fiery wreck.

Still. Dean gets a big friggin’ kick out of it, watching Cas’ hands flutter over the steering wheel until they find just the right place to grip, and all the expressions his face goes through. It’s like he just realized, after all this time, that he’s all alone in his body without Jimmy’s soul nudging up against his Grace, and he can experiment with wrinkling his nose up or running his tongue over his lips in curiosity. Dean just hopes Cas doesn’t start watching the soap operas Inais does to learn how humans truly react, is all. The acting’s awful. (He has a lot of free time, okay?)

They’re driving in exaggerated loops around the chainlink perimeter of the camp. Dean’s laughing his ass off, basically, at the look on Cas’ face every time he works the gear shift. It helps him ignore the funny tug in his gut when he watches Cas’ fingers curl around said gear shift and stroke once, firmly. Not like Dean doesn’t like hanging out with everyone else in camp, but sometimes he needs to get away with Sammy or Cas for a couple of hours.

Speak of the devil. (Which is just a bad choice of words for anyone in Dean’s life, now that he thinks about it. Especially when you shot the guy in the head and saw him stand up again.) Sam’s standing at the entrance to the camp, this obnoxious little I know something you don’t know expression on his face when he catches a glimpse of the two of them in the car. Dean would like to not be so nervous over that, thank you, considering he has actual potential-end-of-the-world shit to worry about.

“Can’t catch us, Sammy!” is all Dean does, sticking his neck out his rolled-out window and grinning wider than he can remember in a long-ass time. He adds a woo-hoo for extra super obnoxious emphasis.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Sam calls back.

In the car, Dean taps Cas’ thigh. He’s not gonna get the guy’s attention otherwise. “Hey, stop the car,” Dean tells him. Cas is getting better at this; Dean’s head doesn’t nearly go through the window and there’s no ungodly screech with Cas’ foot jamming on the brakes, at least. Together, they walk toward Sam. “About what?” Dean asks, smiling.

At their stride, Sam’s know-it-all smile fades. Well, shit, that can’t be good. “Uh, just some mission strategy stuff?” He’s totally trying not to side-eye Cas, too, Dean can tell.

“I believe Gabby wanted my help at some point,” Cas murmurs, after a long while where the three of them just stand there very pointedly not staring at each other. Honestly, Dean wants to applaud, because the guy’s not human but he’s getting a whole lot better with this humanity thing. Before Purgatory, Cas would’ve never left, not if they’d stood there for three hours. “I’ll be seeing you later, Sam, Dean.”

“Seeya later,” they both say, at the same time, and watch Castiel’s retreating back.

When he’s fully out of earshot - well, Dean isn’t sure if angels really ever are, but Cas doesn’t strike him as the nosy type - Dean turns to Sam. “I’m guessing this isn’t about strategy stuff.”

“No.” It’s like Sam can’t meet anyone’s eyes today, and there are a few more seconds of truly awkward silence, which is fucking weird with Sam, of all people. “Okay, um, so I figured I’d give you the grace period of a couple of months and everything.” His mouth twists into a sort of dark, amused smile. “Really, it’s been a bunch of years, but, uh, Dean. What happened with you and Cas in Purgatory?”

Dean - is not sure how to react to that, but he feels the expression on his face shift to something like purposefully annoyed bafflement. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what happened.”

“Nothing,” Dean protests, but it sounds real lame even to his own ears.

Sam gives him a look that says as much. “C’mon.”

“C’mon, what?”

“I wasn’t there, but I know that’s not true, Dean.”

He’s got no clue how to answer. There’s no way to take every endlessly black day there and explain it away. Dean loves Sam more than the world itself, but Sam wouldn’t be able to understand the way the underbrush always growled, waiting for him to screw up, at the same time it was dead silent. And he definitely can’t explain all the shit that happened with Cas there. It’s like explaining fire that leaves you all twisted and burnt, but clean again, like he’s never felt it before.

Humor blunts down everything, he’s found, so he just smirks and tells Sam, “What do you want me to say, Sam? Oh, yeah, we held hands and cuddled and talked about our feelings.” It takes the words about three seconds to settle in and that’s when Dean realizes that well, yeah, they did exactly that. “And made out,” he adds, kinda feebly. Well, at least it’s part lie now. “Angel tongue tastes like apple pie.”

That last remark gets an awesomely disgusted bitchface from Sam. “Gross, Dean.”

“You asked!”

“Yeah, because I wanted answers.” Sam crosses his arms, and fuck, Dean isn’t joking his way out of this one. Or not-joking, or - whatever.

“Fine,” he grumbles. “I - a lot happened. That’s really all I can say about it, Sammy.” Dean offers Sam a half-cringing shrug, because it’s true. He can’t fold all that happened in another fuckin’ dimension into a few easy, and easily explained, words.

Judging by the giant pout on his face, like they kicked him off the chess team or some shit, Sam’s obviously not pleased by this answer. “Are you two together?”

“What?!”

“Are you together? I mean, not to make this all about me, but everyone always asks me about, you know, your brother and his weird boyfriend…”

“I’m not gay,” Dean huffs out. A little voice in his head chimes back just bisexual, but he slaps it away.

“Sexuality isn’t as easy as gay or straight, Dean!” Sam practically shouts, and Jesus, his little brother is such a dweeb.

Dean opens his mouth to tell him as much, but he falls silent. After all the shit they’ve been through, Dean all but raising Sam and going to Hell for him, through one extremely imminent end of the world into another - it’s not about Dean being gay. Who’d care at this point? Like, okay, at first Dean was a little freaked that he woke up remembering the way the dude-shaped laser beam of doom loomed over him and it gave him a hell of a boner, but that was years ago. He wouldn’t give a shit if Sam was gay, or in a relationship with a dude, or whatever, as long as he was happy.

It’s not that. It’s everything else.

“I don’t know,” he answers, truthfully.

Sam pulls Bitchface #14, Your Lies Are So Awful I Don’t Believe You At All, at him for that one. “You don’t know?”

“I don’t,” Dean admits, and Sam’s expression turns to something more sympathetic at his tone. “We’re not together, but it’s not like I can think about being with anyone else - like, Risa! I’d be all over that in any other situation, you know that,” and he winces because he remembers he was in like the ugliest way possible in the alternate future Zachariah sprung on him, “And there are so many other chicks here and it could be nothing, just stress relief I dunno, but I just can’t do it, Sam. If Cas wanted anyone, like, God knows Meg is out there -”

“I really don’t think she wants him, Dean, I think she just likes teasing the guy -”

Dean snorts, because if you can actually get him to talk feelings, don’t interrupt him with any goddamn logic. “Fine. Inais?”

“Weird hero worship. I know the angels aren’t actually brothers and sisters, but they still grew up way too close for romance to come into it. Cas was like, his overlord for ten thousand years.” Sam is chewing down a grin, Dean can tell. “The fact that you’ve noticed all this stuff though, Dean, I mean…”

“What?”

“You could talk to the guy instead of peeing in a circle around him.”

Dean wrinkles his nose. “And you call me gross,” he whines. They’re both laughing now, though, and Dean thinks that if he wanted to, he could leave this conversation right here. “Look, I don’t know. It’s complicated. You could put that down on your little Facebook page, right?”

Sam is still glaring.

“I can’t - I don’t open up easy for anyone, Sam, you know that. Cas is already as far as you’re gonna get with me. This ain’t just friendship, anyone can see that -” Dean’s not so blind, and he knows how the ridiculous drawn-out glances between himself and Castiel must come across - “I don’t need to make anything official, and if I did…”

Sam’s brow furrows. “What, Dean?”

Dean barks out a laugh, because in the end, this is what’s held him back the entire friggin’ time. “He’ll leave, right? Everyone leaves.”

He’s totally not offended by Sam’s snort in response. “No, I really don’t think Cas, of all people, would leave you. I mean - look at the situation he’s in now, Dean! He could get out if he wanted to, but you know he won’t.”

“Well, it’s not like he can go home -” and it’s stupid, but that shouldn’t make Dean’s guts clench up in sympathy.

“He could go literally anywhere else -”

“And he’s a soldier. Like us. He’s got a cause. That’s it.”

“Yeah, you,” Sam jabs back at him. “And I mean - Cas isn’t running around singing about his desire to be one with the land and the butterflies this time, or whatever, but he doesn’t really fight any more, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Dean just folds his arms. “He cares because he’s the one who brought the Leviathan to Earth. So what, he doesn’t wanna fight, he’s helping out how he can -”

“Why are you denying all this? Dean, look, I’m here for you and I always will be. You know that. But so’s Cas, and don’t pretend that’s not like, the number one thing you want. He really cares about you, Dean.”

It’s way too early in the morning - even if it’s like one PM by now - and he was having way too much fun teaching Cas how to drive like just twenty minutes ago to be having a conversation like this, corkscrewing right into his guts and brain and heart at once. “So the guy cares, we’ve been through a lot of shit, of course he does. He cares about you too, you know -”

Dean tries not to be offended when Sam bursts out laughing. “Yeah, sure, Cas cares about me at this point. He does. But not like he cares about you, Dean! And in case you haven’t noticed, the way he looks at you is kind of…”

“Kind of what?” Dean is not planning on finishing that sentence by himself, no thank you.

“Like he knows you or something. Like when he looks at you, it’s okay that he had to give up Heaven, because he’s just got the - the - gigantic beauty of your soul, or something.” He’s still laughing as he says it, but there’s a serious undercurrent to his words. “Guess angels find cheeseburgers and whiskey real pretty.”

“Bitch,” Dean responds, automatically, smiling as he does it.

Sam grins back. “Jerk. But you get what I’m saying, Dean, right?”

Dean only sighs, and shrugs. He should do some nutting up of his own, and for a while now, it feels like he’s -

When Dean was maybe twelve, they stopped at a carnival. Dad was off getting info, so Dean had to drag Sammy along through the crowds. The kid had his hand clamped over his eyes because of the stupid-ass clowns, too.

There’d been a wide funnel, where you could toss coins down and watch them zip around in circles over and over again, before they vanished into the bottom forever. Dean tossed a couple of coins in there, not all of them because otherwise Dad would yell, and followed the path of them with his head and neck. Heck, Sammy got into it too, the long and inevitable swirl of the coin into God only knows where.

That’s what he’s felt like since he met Castiel. He’s just a little coin, kicked in by some outside force, circling around and around until he tips into something deep. For his own self-preservation, he’s trying to hold on to the sides, because that last leap is a permanent thing that’s going to take his whole existence and twist it, turn it on its head.

He’s out the next day still teaching Cas to drive, though. The angel’s hands stutter over the buttons and gear shifts, and even though Cas drives nice and slow and smooth and Dean claps a hand over his shoulder when they’re done, Dean still can’t help but shake the feeling that he’s massively screwed somehow.

*

One day, they wake up and Kevin’s gone.

“What do you mean, gone?” Sam asks, like he doesn’t know every single definition of the word that appears on dictionary-dot-com. Nerd.

“I mean he wasn’t in his cabin this morning when we had checks, and he hasn’t shown up all day,” one of the guys Dean doesn’t know yet yells back.

Gabby pokes her head out from her tent. “Um, I ran some video,” she offers. “There’s nothing. No one saw him leaving, and there’s no video of him leaving the camp. There one minute, gone the next.”

“Was it demons?” Dean snaps, turning his glare to Meg.

“Oh, bite it. The other demons that didn’t high-tail it home to Hell are just trying to save it like the rest of us poor suckers.” Meg sighs, and walks away into another cabin.

“Fine. Angels? This sounds like their MO, weren’t they trying to take Kevin off somewhere to learn the Word of God all those years ago?”

Dean whirls around to see Cas, who was way closer than he was expecting. “I believe I’d be able to sense my brothers and sisters if they’d been here,” he explains. “But no - there’s no sign of them, and I can’t sense Kevin anywhere.”

“And it can’t be Leviathan, because Gabby seriously wired this place up to let us know if any chomper figured out the cloaking system and gets within the perimeters,” Sam sighs. “So basically… we’re screwed until we figure this one out.”

“Kevin’s probably the screwed one,” Tamara points out.

Everyone’s got the good sense not to argue with her, mostly because she’s right.

*

So, Dean and Sam go out on tiny little compartmentalized missions for a while. Nothing too big a deal, even if Sam always brings the guns - the real ones and the garish Super Soakers loaded up with laundry detergent too - and machetes along. Grocery stores, eerily quiet department stores, shit like that. Cas tags along a good amount of the time, and there’s normally at least one other person too, but sometimes he stays behind with Inais or Meg to try and suss out info on Crowley.

Dean’s always a lot grumpier on those hunts, for whatever reason. Although, Sam’s long, meaningful, super girly pouting looks are still better than the looks he gives him when Cas actually does come on the missions, and Dean pulls the angel aside to ask him some stupid question about whether his angel knowledge can help them out.

What a little bitch.

They find themselves in Wal-Mart, another store that rises up on the horizon with signs neon-bright, oblivious to what the fuck is going on with the world. Some people in the camp don’t wanna go with them; they say that the place would be a perfect hiding place for the Leviathan, or any nest of demons or other nasty-ass crap out there. But they’ve had good luck there. Wherever the hell they get it from, every now and then they even have real beef, fat pink and real chicken breasts. Sometimes there are even vegetables, kinda droopy and sad, but better than nothing.

“Soulless corporate Wal-Mart douchebags don’t compare much once you’ve met Zachariah and Dick Roman,” Dean points out, cheerfully, dumping a few packs of socks into one of the backpacks they brought along with them.

It’s never gonna stop being fucking weird that no matter how much they take, no matter the number of people they drag along with them from camp, and no matter how many loud conversations they have while walking down the aisles, there are people all conked out on the corn syrup that just stare at them. Sometimes they stand stock-still in the middle of an aisle, but sometimes they’re already collapsed on the floor. Creepy as hell, whatever position the poor suckers managed to find themselves in.

They’ve had better Wal-Mart runs, but they managed to pick up some spare clothes and frozen veggies, so it’s not a total loss. Sam is animatedly telling him about how Claire and Sarah helped him take out a whole mess of Leviathan when they were out looking for some weird herb to help get Dean out of Purgatory, when Dean’s gaze happens, by accident, to slide over to one of the freaking zombies propping itself up against the door.

No. Not itself. Himself. Dean steps away from Sam mid-sentence because even though this one’s got the same glassy eyes and bloated limbs and belly as the rest of the poor suckers who ate too many - no, not even that, who just happened to eat the wrong thing - this one is different. Dean knows this one. There’s even a name tag on his stupid employee smock.

“Ben,” Dean croaks out, practically stuffing his fingers in between his neck and the dip into his shoulder, to check his pulse. It’s still there, thank God, but - “Ben, I - c’mon, man.”

He grabs onto Ben’s shoulders, not sure who is steadying who here. Truth be told, he’s terrified of gripping too hard, remembering the way his hand stung doubly hard the time he slapped Ben across the face, like the shame was another razor slice into his palm - and he’s sure it wasn’t anything compared to the way Ben hurt at that, either.

Dean’s not sure how he gets out of the store; he suspects Sam drags him, with his jaw and brow set hard even if his eyes don’t match the expression. Next thing he knows he’s pulled into the passengers’ seat of his own damn car, landscape going by in a rushed, wet blur as Sam drives them back to camp.

Eventually, he stops. Neither of them makes any sort of motion to move from the car, Dean’s head tossed back against the seat and his eyes squeezed shut so the fat tears behind them don’t come spilling out. Fuck. Fuck. He can just picture Sammy’s wide-eyed, stupid-ass expression of sympathy that he doesn’t deserve one bit, too.

As if on cue, that’s when Sam does say, “It’s not your fault, Dean.” Dean opens his eyes, and he’s glad Sam doesn’t meet them; Dean knows it’s not because he’s nervous, but because if he did, Dean would just glare at him until he shut the fuck up. “Just - everything’s not your fault. For your sake.” Now Dean looks at Sam, because what does his own sake matter. “For everyone’s sake.” It’s not rude, or pushy, or gruff like it might be if Dad ever gave him this speech. There’s just this funny pleading little furrow between his eyebrows, and somehow it cuts into his voice too.

Dean doesn’t say anything in return, just doesn’t move his gaze from Sammy’s for a couple of beats before he slumps back against the seat, closes his eyes again, and swallows hard. Ben would’ve - it’s very likely the shit the Leviathan pumped into all that food would’ve gotten him anyway, sure. It doesn’t have anything to do with him.

Except in the way that the entire goddamn situation has to do with him, and thinking that the Leviathan woulda gotten him anyway is a fucking cheap-ass, hollow thought that his brain must be offering up as some sort of mental survival mode.

“I know you’re not gonna… accept anything I’m saying,” Sam tells Dean at last. Dean’s not sure how long he’s been sitting there, eyes still shut to seal him off from the rest of the world; he only knows that it wasn’t close enough to sleep, or oblivion. “But if you ever want to, or don’t even wanna accept it, just talk about it, I’m here.”

As Dean hears the passenger door open, he wants to say something with bite, that’ll take the hurt from him and throw it on someone else. But he can’t even get that out, just stays in the car with his eyes squeezed so hard he’s seeing funny white spots dance in front of his vision.

Again, he’s got no idea how much time passes, but Dean isn’t surprised when he hears the heavy rustle of wings and there’s shifting in the seat next to him. “You were gone for a long time,” Cas says. “I saw Sam return, but not you. He told me you were here.”

Dean cracks an eye open at that, just to make sure his doofus of a little brother didn’t, like, give Cas some candy hearts to take to him. But no, it’s just Cas, the weirdo who walks around camp in thermal flannel PJs and clunky slippers, and the coat.

“Why are you here, Cas?” Dean asks. Again, there’s no bite stuck there. He might’ve done it in the past - fuck, he had done it in the past. That year after Lisa’s - and he forces that name out of his mind - but before Cas went Crazy Old Testament God, they didn’t so much talk as have a never-ending string of arguments. He’s seen Cas gone crazy and done nothing but snarl to his face in return. But this isn’t that, they’re past that. It’s a real question.

“I wanted to see if you were alright.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He lets his head fall back against the seat, and it lands on a funny spot and goddamn, his skull hurts now. He doesn’t even care. “I fuck up everything. I mean, I fucked you up.” Cas’ mouth pops open, like he’s going to refute it, only - the denial never comes. Ouch.

Something else does, though. “I said something similar, once. And you said you’d rather have me with you than not.”

“And?”

“And?” Cas raises an eyebrow, and lets a slight smile pass over his face. It’s kinda freaky human, enough to make Dean’s eyes open wide and him shift over in his seat to look at Cas. “I assumed it was understood that sentiment went both ways.”

He just nods in response, because there’s nothing else to say when an angel tells you that, that you’re something he needs in his life, and he knows all the fucked-up shit you’ve done and you’re capable of doing, and he just scoffs it off and draws you closer anyway. Dean lets his eyes slip shut, face slack. In this world, he’s never really relaxed, but he’s not so much on edge at least.

(Of course, Dean remembers that night. He remembers the two of them cramped inside the Impala while Dean went over attack plans, and Cas snapped back and forth between discussing them with him, and cheerily babbling about the biology of bees.

At one point, when he was disagreeing with Dean even over some point in the plan, Cas paused so he could… look at him, like he had outside the car, awe in his eyes and something else in the tilt of his mouth. Just - happiness, is what it was. At this point, it had been weird to see.

“Stupid plan, I know,” Dean grunted, looking away because he couldn’t meet that smile.

“Not stupid.” That smile wasn’t gone, and Dean - fuck, he felt it spread over his face too, not bothering to fight it any more.

“I’m gonna let Meg drive the car,” he laughed. “Tell me that’s not a stupid plan.”

Cas took a few beats to consider this. “Reckless, maybe.”

The use of reckless made Dean freeze, because he remembered the last time he heard Cas use that. Guy had been beaten down, a shell of his former self. That Castiel smiled too, but it was a bitter smile, one with all the hope leeched out of it.

Dean realized that it wasn’t the happiness that he saw in Cas’ smile that freaked him out. The hope and the utter faith there did him in, forced him to avert his eyes.

It was hard enough to recognize it in himself, that he’d kept Castiel’s coat despite the fact that it reeked and probably had Leviathan shit and plant scum all over it, even after all the shady shit Cas did, even after all the lying and manipulation, even after the year at Lisa’s when a little bit of optimism drifted away from Dean each day - and he didn’t have much to begin with. Even after all that, Dean believed Cas would come back, somehow, and they’d make everything as okay as it could ever be between them. Together.

That’s when Dean had cupped his cheek and kissed him, because he couldn’t not. Wasn’t gonna run out the last night on earth line, but he had to have this much. Cas’ mouth was rough and lush and inhumanly warm under his own, making Dean’s skin buzz where they touched. It’s like Cas hadn’t stuffed his screaming death ray angel self into Jimmy Novak’s body, but a subwoofer instead.

“Just… thanks for everything,” was all Dean could say afterward. His own face was hot, but it must’ve been because Cas’ skin was, or leftover from the stubble just under the skin. He definitely hadn’t fucking blushed, okay.

Neither of them ever said anything about that again, not even in Purgatory, but Dean had that memory of the way Cas’ bottom lip slotted so easy against his own, the way they had clung to each other for just that second after they’d both started to pull away. He thinks that could be enough, in this world.)

When he wakes up, Cas is gone, but Dean doesn’t feel lonely or abandoned. He just gets out of the car, shrugs his jacket closer to his body, and starts walking toward Sammy’s cabin.

*

Somehow, it’s not all that surprising when Chuck shows up at the camp. The place feels like an episode of This Is Your Life way too frequently when it comes to new arrivals and visitors; there are so many hunters, and some of them Dean worked with on some case back when he was nineteen and nearly got his stupid ass killed by a fire-breathing bird on a rampage or what have you, only way more depressing.

(And it was totally weird when Dean walked into Gabby’s tent to scan the news with her, only to find Sarah chatting away rather blithely with Cassie, of all people. Turns out her and her husband have another camp a couple of states away. It’s goddamn bizarre, is what it is, that it’s been almost ten years since they met Sarah and saw Cassie for the last time, and somehow they became friends in this crazy new world of theirs.

Dean’s stomach still does a funny lurch when he sees Cassie, and he’s never going to forget the way he felt with her, but that was a lifetime ago and she’s happy now. He’s - he’s not sure if happy is for him, but sometimes he thinks he’s circling his wagons in the general vicinity, as close as he’ll get.)

It is surprising that Chuck’s all cleaned up, neat suit and all, with Kevin in tow. The two of them look awfully Zen.

Sam and Dean rush out to greet them, and find out where the hell Kevin’s been and why Chuck’s here too, but before they can, Castiel appears. “I’m so sorry,” he starts, talking to Chuck, this manic glint in his eyes. “I didn’t recognize - ever -”

“Wouldn’t worry about it, Castiel,” Chuck responds, with a big benevolent smile. “Raphael was watching over me for years and never saw it, either.”

It’s never a good thing when conversations around the camp, especially with the angels, start going like this. “Uh, hi, Chuck,” Dean greets, and the smile just gets bigger. Okay, Dean’s officially freaked out, because the only smiles he ever remembers seeing on Chuck’s face were way too nervous, more suggestions of smiles than the real thing. “Long time no see?”

“I got a little busy around the time of the apocalypse,” he half-explains, and that smile really isn’t leaving his face. Cree-eeepy.

“That’s not Chuck - well, not as you remember him,” Cas butts in, and it’s not helping the sloshing in Dean’s stomach that Chuck or not-Chuck or whoever slides his eyes from Dean to Castiel and back again and the beatific smile just gets bigger. “Remember Kevin’s Word of God, and who recorded it?”

“Sure. That Metatron guy.”

“That’s me, as it turns out,” Chuck practically trills, even if his voice is much calmer than it had been before. “I Fell a long time ago. Guess I didn’t want to deal with Heaven’s crap any more. As the Apocalypse drew closer, I regained my memories and used them to cloak myself from anything angel-related; I was done with Heaven. They haven’t bothered me in…” He whistles. “Years. Still get visions, though.”

Dean wants to glare at him, but he’s too dumbfounded. “Do you still write?”

“The documents are password protected, I can promise you that much.” It’ll do for now. “I figured Kevin wouldn’t mind hearing this from another prophet.”

Now the glare settles over his brow. “You took him away?”

Chuck, or the Metatron or whatever, just shrugs. “Better than the other angels getting to him.” Dude’s got a point, but Dean still isn’t letting him off the hook.

“So why even bring him back here?”

“Hey,” Kevin butts in, and it’s as much grumbling as Dean’s ever heard from the kid. “I said I wanted to come back.”

“You got angel buddies now, though,” Dean protests.

Kevin gives him a - okay, it’s definitely a look, and that kinda freaks him out. “Well, I like it here.” And he might’ve been chatting with the angel who recorded the Word of God, but he’s still kind of that bashful kid. “Kinda - got something for you, too.”

“You and Castiel. Purgatory wasn’t scared of you because of what you did on Earth,” Chuck cuts in, arms folded, one of those wry smiles on his face. “Anyone else would’ve been torn to shreds and reduced to one of the things that lives there almost immediately on arrival. Lucky Sam didn’t get pulled in with you guys,” he explains, with a nod. “It’s scared because it remembers.”

Dean and Cas exchange a glance, because - what the hell is he going on about?

Chuck is obviously biting back a massive grin when they turn back to him. “These are for you,” he tells them, holding out two stone tablets. They’re smaller than Kevin’s Word of God, but in the same script.

“I’m a prophet?” Dean asks, glancing at the giant hunk of rock in his hand. “You’re not taking me to the friggin’ Sahara or wherever. Kinda got other priorities. And I’m so done with the God crap, sorry but -”

“No, you’re not a prophet. You should look at them, though. Think of them as… a prequel to Lazarus Rising. Which never got published, by the way, thanks for that.”

Dean’s got no idea what the guy’s talking about, other than his books. In response, he makes a noise that is absolutely not a grunt, because that would be rude. “I don’t know Enochian.”

But he takes a peek anyway, because why the hell not. When the voice of God tells you to do something, well, okay he’s one stubborn son of a bitch but it’s probably smart to do so. Even if he’s not expecting to see much other than a tablet in a whole lot of script he can’t understand, and he’s gonna have to ask Cas to translate this for both of them.

He’s definitely not expecting the hot flare that swoops up from his stomach to his throat, and makes him gasp out loud and stagger back. He’s so not expecting the world to go blurry and blaze up in gold, before -

Dean remembers. He remembers everything.

part 7 >>