Fic: Lost My Way (But Haven't Forgotten My Way Home) Part 2
Continued from here. The division exists only from LJ's 64Kb limit to posting, the fic in itself was never written as multi-parts.
+++
They both know Castiel will end up in hell.
Whether he dies tomorrow or in forty years' time, from a hunting gone wrong or from old age, Castiel will end up in hell. It's inevitable, it's the punishment of the banished angels. The pearly gates are locked, the keys have been thrown away, and there's an arrow pointing the way downstairs.
It's a knowledge they live with everyday of their lives, every minute. If they aren't careful, late at night, when they're waiting to fall asleep, the fact will slip back in their minds, dreaming of the moment of death.
Would Dean die first? If he avoided cirrhosis and clogged arteries, maybe not. Or Castiel would be the one to go first, victim of some illness they never thought to vaccinate him against, something Dean and Sam, as ‘proper’ humans, have antibodies to spare.
They try their best not to think about hell, and sometimes they succeed. Sometimes.
+++
On the same day that Dean breaks a leg, Sam meets Erika.
Erika is a doctor at the local hospital near Bobby’s. She is blonde, tall, gorgeous, and totally the kind of girl Dean would’ve gone for before Cas. As it is, she’s making googly eyes at Sam, not his brother.
Luckily - if such a word could ever be used in regards to a broken bone- Dean didn’t break his leg on a hunt (which would’ve forced Sam to lie to Erika or to tell her about their job sooner than he’d want) but rather in a genuine car accident.
Dean has half a mind to sue the idiot who ignored the red light and crashed the Impala until Sam and Cas remind him that making too big a deal about this means cops running the Impala’s plates, and they’re sort of false, remember Dean? Not to mention Sam and Dean Winchester have been dead for, oh six or seven years now. Dean grumbles and relaxes himself by focusing on the fact that the damage on the Impala is reparable.
They end up at Bobby’s for two months so Dean’s leg can heal. Two months is enough time for Dean to carefully and annoyingly closely supervise Cas while he repairs the dented Impala. Two months is also is enough time for Sam to fall head over heels for Erika.
Erika is sweet, a good girl, and she gains points the first time she meets Bobby because he ends up liking her, but she has rather fixed ideas about marriage, children and the married home. She might’ve made Dean’s leg better - three months and it was as good as new - but it is painfully obvious that Dean doesn’t like her, one iota.
Cas mostly ignores him because this isn’t not liking a person in the sixth-sense way, where part of you knows there’s something shady. This is your normal, run of the mill, purely human feeling.
On the night Sam tells his brother he’s going to tell Erika what they truly do for a living, six months after meeting her, Dean stops holding it all in. He says congratulations to Sammy (in the Winchester family, revealing the Big Bad Secret is bigger than marriage), wishes him good luck and threatens to steal his computer if he makes Cas the best man.
But late at night he voices what he never did: Dean doesn’t like her. It’s not news to Cas, but hearing it obviously is. “Cas, she’s trying to change him!” he whines at the end of a tirade that lasted a good solid five minutes, a tirade that was full of Erika’s beliefs on what job Sam could get, and what house they could buy.
“Sam isn’t stupid, he won’t let her,” says Cas quietly from his spot on the bed, letting Dean pace himself to exhaustion all about the room.
It’s true, and Cas has evidence to back it up. The first time Erika met Cas, and found out he was Dean’s (for lack of a better term) life partner, she giggled and looked at Dean as if he had just grown another head. “I never would’ve thought you were -”
She had stopped then, not knowing how to say it. But she had no need to search for it anyway. Sam had lost all joy in his face and had said, “this is my brother and the man he’s lived with for the past five years. Is that a problem?”
Erika had apologized to all three, swallowed, and from the on, always watched herself in regards to that topic. So, Cas was feeling pretty relaxed about the whole thing, knowing Sam knew how to take care of himself in more ways than one.
Dean is still pacing about, punching random things. “Sam hasn’t considered settling down for years, and now -”
Cas sighs. “Since Jessica. He’s in love, people sometimes do change when they fall in love.”
Dean stops and looks at him. “Is that your way of saying I’m the insensitive prick in this relationship?” Cas simply grins and Dean throws a comb at him. “Is it too complicated to understand that I just don’t like the girl?”
“You’re entitled to that. Everyone is. But you are the most important thing in Sam’s life,” says Cas, making Dean stop and look at him. “You always will be. Even now, with Erika, you’re still the most important thing in his life. If you say anything negative about her -”
Dean sits down besides Cas. “- he’ll fight me tooth and nail.”
“Yes. But you’ll have -” he chooses his words. “He’ll feel stuck between his brother and the woman he loves, and that isn’t a good place to be.” He touches Dean’s arm. “This is the first girl Sam has truly loved since Jessica.”
“He loved Madison, too,” adds Dean.
“That was still a long time ago. Let him have this,” Cas says gently, making Dean feel like a heel, but he knows defeat when he sees it, and he’s lost this one.
In any case, Sam is happy, and that is always a good thing. Sam returns happy in the morning: Erika is slightly freaked out, but she knows Sam wasn’t kidding her - more than one injured hunter had ended up at her hospital at one time or the other, with injuries that defied all logic. Everything Sam had told her had brought sense to all that.
Erika doesn’t join them on the hunts, being of weak stomach for that sort of thing, but she respects the job they’ve got, and knows its importance. Still, Dean knows the days of hunting with his brother are counted.
He trudges on, and pretends not to be affected, and enjoys the last days of hunting he’ll have with Sam.
+++
Before Sam can even think of proposing, Bobby dies.
He gets a hunter’s farewell, and they brothers get a scope of how many people knew Bobby when so many of them turn up for the time when Dean and Sam light the fire. Everyone is treating them as if they were Bobby’s sons, and the boys don’t know if that makes them feel better or worse.
They stay at his house for a month, not knowing if they should clean it up and sell it or keep it, keeping his bedroom untouched as if it was a shrine. They try telling themselves not many hunters have this end - to go in his sleep, peacefully, like Bobby truly deserved.
It doesn’t work, of course, because it’s like losing John all over again. Sam spends every night with Erika and all day with Dean. Dean says little to nothing, which suits Sam just fine, boxing things and throwing away others. The only time Dean lets himself go is at night, in the dark, when he holds on to Cas harder than he’s used to, his face rigid from the strain of not crying.
Cas holds him back and says nothing either. The next day, he hangs Bobby’s blue and white cap in the hat rack on the wall, and it stays there for years and years to come.
Dean starts believing in God three days after Bobby’s death.
He has to, he says, because he has to believe someone like Bobby will end up with the Big Guy. He can’t live in a universe where Bobby ends anywhere else but Heaven.
+++
Sam gets married on November 2nd. Dean gets chills up his spine, his brain suddenly forming a whole story with Erika being a demon that plans to kill Sam on their wedding night.
Sam rolls his eyes and tells Dean he picked the date. That day has made them so unhappy in the past, what with mom and Jess, it’s high time something good happened. Dean nods, and understands the reasoning, but still isn’t 100% percent behind the idea.
Sam gets married and despite Erika’s subtle suggestions otherwise, he buys the house that’s closest to Bobby’s house, literally next door neighbors. He knows Dean and Cas will go on hunting, and he knows they’ll fall back to Bobby’s whenever they’re done with a case. And as much as he loves Erika, he knows from experience he can’t live without Dean.
+++
Sometimes, they fight.
It’s Dean and Cas, of course they butt head at times. The fights are usually resolved by the end of the day, in a few hours’ time - the hunting life teaching them not to prolong silly fights for longer than necessary, because huntings can go wrong any minute of any day.
There’s a werewolf once. Her name is Kelly and they discover her, miraculously enough, before she’s even killed anyone. Having killed the werewolf who had turned her in self defense, Dean and Cas suddenly are faced with a scared twenty-year-old girl who would turn into a monster that very night, most probably to kill her first victim.
And if don’t make a decision soon, it will be one of them.
It’s the evening. The sun is going down, Kelly is tied to a chair and Cas and Dean are butting heads about what to do about her. Before the fight can escalate and the moon shows its face, Dean walks into the next room, sends Kelly to sleep with chloroform, and kills her. It’s the most humane thing he could think of.
They ride in silence, getting out of town before anyone discovers Kelly’s body. Once they’re well out of town and near Bobby’s house - always Bobby’s house, never theirs, even after all this time - Cas speaks.
“She didn’t have to die,” he says.
Dean grips the wheel tighter, he knew this was coming. “Excuse me?”
“That was murder,” says Cas, turning to look at Dean.
Dean eyes are still on the road, trying not to miss the turn onto Bobby’s road. “That was a hunt. She was a werewolf!”
Cas frowns. “And she was also a human being. Scared, alone. She hadn’t killed anyone yet.”
“She was a monster!” he says as he turns into Bobby’s road. “She’d have had no qualms in turning us into dinner. Better before some innocent shmuck gets his heart ripped out.”
Cas’ voice is quiet, calm and collected, and it makes Dean even more irritated. “You know there have been rumors of an ancient cure now, we could have -”
“What, look into it? See if she could have been saved?”
“Yes!” he says, raising his voice for the first time. “That woman -”
“This isn’t about her at all,” interrupts Dean, and it’s the quiet tone of his voice that makes Cas stop rather than the words.
“What?”
Dean parks the car at the entrance of Bobby’s house and gets out, waiting for Cas to do the same. “This isn’t about her, not completely. Sure, you liked her. You both had that whole kicked out of your family thing going on,” he says as Cas rolls his eyes, “but it’s more than that. This is about heaven. You’re still trying get back up there.”
Cas looks at him confused, as if the answer was obvious. “It’s my home. They’re my brothers and sisters.”
“Who treated you like shit!” yells Dean, his voice loud enough for Cas to worry Sam will hear him over in his house.
“They’re everything I’ve ever known,” says Cas softly. “I care for them.”
“Sweetheart,” says Dean, managing to make it sound like anything but a term of endearment, “Considering we’ve been screwing every which way for the past seven years, I’m not too sure they’d be happy with the kind of action you’ve been getting down here.”
“That’s of no matter. Love is love to God,” shrugs Cas.
“God wasn’t the one to banish you Cas!” his blood all but boiling now. “The people you’re trying to get back to did!”
Cas shakes his head. “Many of them tried to intercede for me, and they weren’t allowed to do a thing. I need to believe I still have a chance to get back home. Why am I still here then?”
Dean nods, swallows. “You know, I have no fucking clue,” he says, getting back in the car and driving off into the road.
+
Cas doesn’t know why he ends up at Sam’s house, but he does. Presumably, he’s there because, after spending over a week at a hunt, everything in the house that was once edible is now on its way to become penicillin.
He takes the key out of the hideaway and opens the door, and he hasn’t managed to even close the door back when Sam’s entering the room, the light of the hallway spilling into the dark kitchen.
“Cas,” says Sam, obviously surprised seeing him entering his house just like that in the middle of the night.
Cas closes the door. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“No, no Erika’s not back yet,” he says hastily. On any other night Cas would’ve noticed this is Erika’s night off and she should be home. Today, he doesn’t. “What’s up?” asks Sam.
“We’re out of, um,” he says, and he can’t remember what they’re out suddenly. Food, but that’s too broad a word.
Sam is still staring at him. “You okay, man?”
“We just came back from a werewolf and there’s nothing in the house to eat.”
“Yeah, I didn’t have time to get you anything. You two really starve when Erika or I don’t buy you proper food, don’t you?” he says, amused. Cas is still non-responsive, as passive as back when he was an angel. “Are you alright?”
Cas sits down at the kitchen table and talks. He talks and talks and Sam sits down and lets him talk, because in the eight years he’s known the guy, he’s never said so much in such short space of time.
Cas gets the core of the whole thing, of course. “I know he has abandonment issues,” he says.
Sam nods. “The size of Texas. I think I’m responsible for about half of those, actually.”
Cas smiles softly at that. “But he needs to understand - the same way he would go to you every time, no matter the circumstances - that’s how I feel about my brothers and sisters” Sam nods, it always troubled him to think of the other way around - what he would do, what he would feel like if someone banned him from seeing Dean.
Cas goes on, “You’re his priority and I understand it. I also know that it doesn’t mean he loves me any less. Why can’t he understand that?”
Sam shrugs a bit. “Because he’s human. Because he’s Dean,” he says, eliciting a small smile from Cas. “I know he doesn’t like the - chick flick moments. And, I know you two don’t say much to each other, but - sometimes, Dean needs to hear these things. He’ll mock you, even fight you, but sometimes he needs someone to yell things at him.”
“I’m not much for yelling,” says Cas, and if Dean were here he’d have snorted at the understatement.
“To get through that thick skull of my brother’s? You’re gonna need a freakin’ megaphone held to his ear.”
Cas grins and stands up. “Thank you, Sam. I should go.”
Sam jerks a thumb towards the fridge. “Haven’t eaten anything yet.”
Cas dismisses the matter, suddenly not hungry. He says goodnight to Sam, goes back home and takes a shower. He stands motionless under the spray for a solid two minutes, intent on not going to sleep until Dean comes back home.
He’s got hours ahead before Dean even thinks of being back, he presumes, and hopes he won’t fall asleep - maybe he’ll read, try to find a new case, maybe make - but as he steps out of the bathroom he hears the front door and the sound of Dean’s boots going about the ground floor.
He dumps the towel on the hamper, puts on pants and pads downstairs - silently, just in case. If there’s anything being human and living with Dean Winchester has taught him, it’s paranoia.
But it is Dean. He’s slumped on the couch, his coat still on, looking remarkably sober.
“Dean,” says Cas softly, because startling a hunter in the middle of dark house isn’t a particularly wise thing to do.
Dean can’t help but make a slight pause at the sight - Cas is wearing pants and not much else, hair still wet from a shower. “Hi,” he says a second later.
“I thought you’d be out for longer,” he says, entering the room.
“Yeah, so did I,” says Dean. Cas sits on the other end of the couch, looking at him. Dean is sober and calm, and after barely an hour since he drove off in a fury, seeing Dean like this is atypical.
“I hate it when you go like this,” says Dean suddenly, “when all you can think of is what they did to you and how to undo it. Like you can only ever be something good if you have their approval.”
“That is not true,” says Cas after a moment, because it isn’t. He doesn’t want to see them again for their approval or their attention but simply because they’re his brothers and sisters.
Dean sighs. “I hate it that you made me feel like these seven years were a placeholder for the moment you get your wings back.”
Cas moves closer to Dean, resting an arm on the back of the couch. “That isn’t what I meant. That isn’t what this is.”
Dean leans back on the couch, unwittingly trapping Cas’ hand between the couch and his body. “And even when I hate you… when I go to a bar and pick up a girl,” he says, as Cas slowly withdraws his hand, “all I can think of when she tries to take my shirt off is how she’s doing it all wrong, because you rarely pay attention to buttons and she was just -”
Cas swallows once, “Dean,” he says sternly, not wanting to hear more, the bitter sting of jealousy - one he’s known both as human and as an angel - creeping up and making him feel cold all over.
“I didn’t fuck her, Cas,” Dean says hurriedly, turning to him, before Cas gets the wrong idea. “I didn’t, I couldn’t.”
“You were barely gone an hour,” says Cas, changing subjects. “Why -?”
He doesn’t have time to explain he means Dean’s sudden change of heart before Dean says, “Sam called.”
Seems like Sam did the yelling all on his own. “Oh,” says Cas.
Dean winces, which makes Cas smile in spite of all. “Yeah, he - had a few choice words. I take it you talked to him?”
Cas nods. “There isn’t any food in the house, he was up…”
“Good thing I stopped for food then. Brought you that salad you like from McDonald’s,” he says casually.
It’s only now that Cas notices two brown paper bags at Dean’s feet, and Cas feels a wave of warmth inside, like when you drink something hot immediately after having something cold. “Thank you,” he grins.
“I still think killing the girl was the best course of action,” says Dean, turning to him so they’re even closer. “Werewolves can’t be contained, and that cure is a rumor at best. The moment she killed her first victim she would’ve hated herself. There was nothing we could have done.”
“I disagree,” says Cas amicably. “And I’m sure it won’t be the last time.”
Dean grins at that, because that is a fact.
After a while he says, “She was hot and funny and clever… And I couldn’t fuck her Cas. I didn’t want to. I didn’t even kiss her,” he says softly, as if he’s just now coming to terms with the fact that he’s been in love with a dude for the past seven years.
Cas grabs the bags from the ground, the smell of deep fried things filling the air around them. “Good,” he says, bringing Dean even closer to him. Dean leans in and kisses him, the odd angle eliciting a moan from both of them. Dean turns so he’s resting on top of Cas, not breaking the kiss. Cas starts getting Dean out of his jacket and Dean tugs Cas’ sweatpants down, smiling for the first time in hours.
The food is cold by the time they’re finished, but truthfully? They don’t mind much.
+++
This small spat between Cas and Dean - trust him, it’s small, he knows his brother and how high can his stubbornness escalate - this small spat triggers a little troublesome question in Sam. He’s gotten into his mind the question of why they’re together. More often than not Sam wonders if they're together out of loyalty and guilt, or because save from each other, they're lost. Sure they like each other, they love each other even - Dean couldn't have been this long with someone without loving them in some way or another. But sometimes, some things Sam sees...
Maybe it's like those couples who've been together for so many years, that it's just easier to stay together than to go through all the hassle of ending the relationship and starting life anew. You're just too old for that or too tired, and this is just easier.
Sam thinks that, ponders about it when they're all together and his brain is disconnected from whatever's happening around, throwing at him these kinds of things: Dean is watching TV on one corner of the couch, while Cas reads on the other side of the room. Cas makes himself some soup, and Dean eats a burger. Dean prefers showers, Cas likes the tub.
They've got the routine down pat, moving around each other without bothering, without interrupting this incessant stream of nothing in their lives, as if doing something different might jolt them enough to realize something is wrong.
Sam stares, and worries, and goes home to Erika, who arrives home late, hours after dinner on her days off, when Sam is still worrying about his brother.
+
When Sam turns 36, his wife asks for a divorce.
He's known it was a long time coming. It's been cold, and distant. In the previous month, he'd spent more time with Dean than he did with his own wife, and she hadn't minded. She wasn't even there to actually mind, she'd been gone too much.
It ends rather swiftly. One night, after a day that had nothing peculiar in and of itself, just before going to bed, she says, "Maybe you should sleep in the guest room."
Sam frowns and wonders if he did anything wrong, but simply gathers his stuff. It's easier than fighting. While he's grabbing an old pair of sweatpants, he frowns at them, understanding, and asks, "Do you want the house?"
She looks relieved that he understood.
And the thing that scares him the most now is losing the house, which is right next to Dean and Cas, because he can't tolerate the idea of moving away from them, or being on the other side of town and losing the daily contact with Dean he's had all his life. He’s not about to impose on Bobby’s old house, however much Dean and Cas would welcome him there, because he’d feel like a third wheel all the time.
The worry about his marriage ending comes in second, and he suddenly can't remember the last time Erika came in first. If she ever did - everyone always comes in second after Dean.
Erika shakes her head, because she knows that taking the house from him is literally upraising his life more than she's currently doing. She's a decent human being, and mentions something about going to her sister's.
Sam sleeps in the guest room, and for the following months, misses laying down next to somebody, the warmth and the companionship, but doesn't miss Erika. He misses the time he did love her, but he doesn’t miss Erika herself.
+
When Sam is 37, he meets Sarah Blake again.
Good Sarah Blake, still as gorgeous at 34 as she was when he met her on that old, distant haunted painting case back in '05 when she was 19. Hair still jet black and her smile still lighting up the whole place.
Sam falls for her faster than he ever thought possible, and this is how he discovers that Dean and Castiel aren't together out of habit.
Sam sees it now. The way they look at each other even when they're doing completely opposite things. Dean buys Cas his favorite salad and Cas takes a bite out of Dean’s favorite burger of the month and still fights him that his ‘rabbit food’ will always taste better. Sam sees the way they hold each other, the way they are around each other, and the way they silently keep tabs on the other even when they're not around. They're the air the other one breathes, and they almost literally hold their breath when they're not together.
Just like him and Sarah. A week after he and Sarah start discussing whether she should move in with him, Sam sits her down and tells her the truth about everything that’s been going on with him since 2005. He tells her, mostly, who Cas really is (was), because now he’s going to be a part of her life. Sam is nervous, wondering if she'll run away, if it'll be too much to take.
Sarah looks shocked at first, and Sam can’t blame her. But then she smiles at Sam, she kisses him and tells him he’s an idiot for being so worried. Although she’s still sort of nervous around Cas the following week.
Fourteen months later, Dean becomes an uncle. Sarah suggests they name the baby John Robert Winchester.
+++
For years, Dean had a burning question in his mind.
He’s always known hunting would be the thing to kill him, it’s what the job does. Not many hunters reach the age Bobby was when he died, and he has no hope to ever reach it. Once, he’d have said he had neither hope nor desire to reach it, but that changed years ago, with Cas, and with Sam’s son and daughter.
Still, he always knew it was hunting that would do him in.
So when he hurts his back while disposing of a nest of vampires, he’s really not that surprised. He simply lies there, motionless, and wonders if this is finally the thing that will end up killing him - he’s nearing fifty now, an age he never dreamt he’d reach. He lies there and thinks of a lot of things, and maybe the fall knocked his head about too, because Cas has been left alone to dispose of three vampires and he’s barely paying attention to it.
The fact that Dean isn’t moving at all seems to give Cas the drive necessary to kill the vampires and call 911 before he even reaches the place where Dean was thrown. Dean is alive, breathing shallow, awake, and looking up at the ceiling and not much more.
That’s how Dean stops hunting.
Dean injures his back so badly that he’s confined to the house, painkillers and physical therapy for months. They modify Bobby’s house to be wheelchair-friendly and invent an elaborate car crash story to explain to Sam’s children why uncle Dean is suddenly irritable and in pain.
Sam feels as guilty as hell for not having been there. He says once and again how maybe, if he’d been there, everything could have been prevented, how things might have gone different, how -
Cas stops him. Dean is alive and with excellent chances of recovery. He was there, and there was nothing anyone could have done. Besides, adds Sarah, Dean is being irritable enough for everyone in the family, he certainly needs no aid from Sam.
Dean is in a wheelchair for six months, and impossible to be around for almost every minute of those months. A glimpse of the old Dean finally emerges when the doctor deems him worthy of leaving the wheelchair in lieu of crutches. He still hates it, but now with the crutches he can knock Sam’s butt when he’s four feet away from him, making Johnny and six-year-old Ellie grin and think their old uncle is back.
Eventually, Dean progresses, but it’s clear his hunting days are over - the big stuff anyway, he can always do an exorcism, a salt and burn - the light stuff. But the big guns? Vampires, werewolves, ghouls, high level demons? Those days are gone.
Still, Dean’s mood doesn’t get much worse when faced with this future.
One day, after nine months and seven days of walking aided, he takes a step all on his own, the first of many to come, every single one of those future steps as unaided as before the ‘accident.’
Little Ellie is the only one to witness that first step. The little girl jumps all around her uncle and helps him walk about, squeeing with joy as if Christmas had come early. Even Dean can’t be grumpy after that.
Cas keeps on hunting sometimes, of course. Sometimes the case is too big to ignore - or it’s small but the victims’ suffering beckons him forward to help. Sometimes, when the case will require no running or climbing or anything of the like, Dean goes with him, with knives and painkillers packed in the same bag as his ever changing mood and innuendo-filled conversation.
When the case is too big for Dean to go on, Dean forces Sam to go with Cas. It’s not like Sam needed any ordering about, because you don’t let your family go on a hunt on their own. Sarah isn’t too happy with Sam hunting, but she understands; Johnny and Ellie are told that daddy goes on conferences and meetings and whatnots every time there’s a new case, and everybody is happy with the arrangement.
Well - ‘everybody’ is happy with it.
Dean misses hunting. He misses the shooting and the stabbing and the running and the time where he could drive for miles and miles with nothing hurting. But he’s not dead. He can still drive his baby (albeit not all day long as before.) Cas, Sam and his family are all safe. His own dad had already died when he’d been the age Dean is now, Dean himself has a family.
Dean repeats this to him every single day, and accepts it for a fact, even though he still misses the adrenaline of a good kill, and the open road in front of him for miles and miles and miles.
Sam, being the awesome brother he is, takes particular care to kill whatever vampire crosses their path.
+++
One day Anna appears in the middle of the sitting room.
Cas might’ve been human for more years than he cared to admit, but he still could feel an angel in the room without needing to see it. He turns to face the visitor.
“Anna?” he frowns.
Anna had, of course, not aged at all. Where he was wrinkled and his hair had gone salt and pepper, Anna was still beautiful and young, her red hair looking even redder in the dusty sitting room. “Hello, Castiel,” she smiles.
Castiel. No one had called him that since - “It's Cas,” he says.
“I see,” she says carefully.
“Why are you here?” he frowns.
“I had some free time,” she shrugs, looking about the sitting room. “Wanted to check on you”
Cas’ eyebrows go up. “Twenty five years later?” Cas forces himself to lean on the doorway and cross his arms - human things, human body language - but his instinct still screams at him to stand straight and motionless - like an angel.
Anna, who had been looking at a bookshelf turns to him. “You used to not care about time.”
“I used to be an angel,” he says.
Anna picks up a portrait from the bookshelf, one that had been taken when Ellie had been born, a nurse photographing all six family members. Sarah is in bed holding Johnny and little Ellie, Sam on one side of the bed, while Cas and Dean are on the other. “Now you have a nephew and a niece. A human life.”
Cas’ hands involuntarily fist. “You of all people shouldn't -”
Anna sighs and leaves the portrait back on its place. “I'm not here to judge. I simply missed my brother.”
Cas relaxes his hands, letting them drop to his side. “I've missed you too, sister. All of you,” he says sincerely.
Anna walks to him, staring at him. “You've aged,” she says as he studies his face. “Your eyes are still the same but you have wrinkles,” she smiles, as if finding the wrinkles amusing.
Cas shrugs. “It happens when you hit sixty.”
Anna nods. “You've also acquired some of Dean's expressions, I see. How is Dean?”
Cas loses a bit of his good mood. “I know you well enough to know you've been keeping tabs on us,” he says, sitting on an armrest of the couch. “You know how he is,” he says.
Anna sighs again and looks uncomfortable. Before she can say anything Cas winces and stops her. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Time feels different now, Anna. I may have been turned human only a while before to you, but for me - it's not the same when you're an angel.”
“I know that,” she says, touching one of his hands.
He looks up at her. “No, you don't. You were human for barely more than twenty years, most of those years as a happy child. I am sixty,” he says, getting up from the couch with difficulty, accenting his words. “I have an age now, Jimmy Novak’s age. I feel time pass more quickly than I ever thought possible. I am old, Anna.”
Anna frowns and takes his face between her hands, looking intently at him. After a while, she smiles. “You're not old. Not really. You're simply human.”
“Dean keeps me young enough, anyway,” he says as Anna withdraws her hands from his face.
Anna simply smiles which, in turn, makes Cas himself grin and say, “And I see you've spent enough time on earth to know the meaning of double entendres.”
She touches his arm. “Is he okay, though? I know he's in pain, but -”
“He manages,” he says shortly. Some days his back hurts too much, and some days, like today, it’s like nothing ever happened. “He's fine. Even if he was in pain, he wouldn't -”
They hear the yelling before the door behind them opens, rattling off its hinges, and a thirteen year old girl whose similarity to her uncle could make her Dean’s own child enters the room. “Uncle Cas! Uncle D says where the hell are you!” She stops short when she sees her uncle isn’t alone. “Oh, hi.”
Cas brings the suddenly shy girl next to him. “Anna this is Ellie, Sam’s daughter. Ellie, this is Anna, she's a, um, friend of mine,” he says, because Anna looks like she could be Cas’ daughter now, not his sister.
“Hello,” smiles Ellie. “I didn’t hear you arrive,” she frowns, because everyone who went into the Singer Salvage Yard usually did so by car, the road too long for anyone to just walk there.
“She walks, she doesn’t drive,” whispers Cas as Anna takes Ellie’s hand and shakes it politely.
“Hi, Ellie.” She looks up at Cas. “I should go anyway,” she says.
Cas nods and turns to the door, subtly telling Anna to feign humanity. “Will you come back to visit?”
Anna smiles, sincerely. “Of course.”
Cas watches her walk away, and waits till she ducks behind an old Ford Escort to blink away. He turns to Ellie, who’s watching him curiously. “Let's go see what your uncle wants,” he says, a hand on her shoulder as he climbs down the steps. “And don't repeat every single expression Dean has.”
+++
Anna returns ten years later, a blink of the eye for her, one hundred and twenty months for the rest. She stays for a whole day, making Dean and Sam uncomfortable at first. But she’s there out of genuine nostalgia for her brother, and Dean and Sam ease down a bit when they see she really is still the same old Anna, the same scared girl who turned out to be a goddamn Angel.
She’s smart enough to choose a moment when Ellie, twenty-three now, isn’t home. Ellie could’ve very well remembered her and thought it strange that this girl hadn’t aged one bit in ten years.
Cas misses Anna the moment she’s gone, and Dean can’t really say a thing against it. He knows he’d miss Sam with every bone in his body if ever they were separated for as long as Anna and Cas have been, so the only thing he can do is hold Cas, late at night when Cas has been struck by insomnia and thoughts of his eternity in hell again.
He holds him and pretends he isn’t having the same nightmares. Cas knows he is but, for once, Dean’s pretense that everything is alright is exactly what he needs.
+++
When Cas nears 80 years old, he falls ill. And that is it.
There is no doubt about it, at least among Dean, Sam and Cas himself. Sarah holds hope, Johnny and Ellie promise him he’s going to get better, but the old hunters know better. This is it.
Sam has a lot to say, though he doesn’t use as many words. Sarah and Ellie talk until exhaustion, Johnny is too upset and decides the best course of action is to go around the house and fix things that are broken.
Anna shows up at dusk, and says nothing. She sits at the edge of Cas’ bed, her red her in deep contrast with Cas’ white, her soft and little hand swimming in Cas’ own hand, spotty with age and wrinkled. She pays no attention to this, seeing the brother she’s always known, not even seeing Jimmy. She’s remembering his old form, his angel form, and she smiles wistfully when Cas wishes he could see her one last time.
Dean says nothing, lying in bed next to Cas all day and night long, getting up only to go to the bathroom, not even to eat. They’re old, and tired, and feeling more human than any of them want to feel right now, and words would be silly at this point.
At half past four in the morning, Dean gets out of bed to go to the bathroom. As he’s flushing, he hears Cas calling him quietly. Cas has somehow managed to sit up in bed. “Dean,” he says.
The weirdest thing ever comes to Dean’s mind. He’s suddenly seeing Cas as he looked on that night all those years ago when they had first met Chuck, back when Sam was supposed to sleep with Lilith. Cas was young then, looking mischievous at helping Dean with Sam.
“What is it, Cas?” asks Dean, coming to stand next to Cas.
Cas looks up at Dean, takes one of his hands… and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Dean stands there, holding Cas’ hand, and is suddenly filled by a dread he hasn’t let himself feel for days.
“Alright,” says Dean as he gets back into bed. He holds on to Cas by the waist, one arm beneath Cas’ neck to support him up. Cas is flushed, face red, yet cold to the touch. Before they fall asleep, Cas turns and kisses Dean. Their position means that Dean’s neck is the closest thing Cas has but he purposefully searches for Dean’s mouth, mashing them together as if they were still in their thirties. They explore each other as if they were kissing for the first time ever, getting to know spots they’ve been familiar with for the past forty-five years.
They fall asleep at some point, though neither could really pinpoint if the kissing had stopped at that point or not.
Cas is gone by morning. For good, forever. Whether he went up or down is anybody’s guess now, but that, surprisingly, is the last thing on Dean’s mind now.
+++
Sam falls ill almost a year later. As with Cas, the end is inevitable, and certain. Sarah and Dean move him back from the hospital to his house. Dean leaves Sam and Sarah as much time as he can alone and with the kids, but by seven in the afternoon he can’t hold himself anymore and asks Sarah a moment alone with his brother.
Sam is lying in the middle of his bed, the covers all bunched from where Johnny and Ellie lied down next to him - both are well in their thirties now, yet still retaining the amazing ability to act as kids. Dean straightens the covers and sits down next to Sam, bunching up a pillow behind his sensitive back.
After a while of silence, Sam asks. “Do you ever wonder,” he coughs, “what he would have done, back when he was still an angel. When he was taken?”
Dean almost never talks about Cas, certainly not about angels, because Anna never came back to tell him if Cas was with them or not. Today, he makes an exception. “Done about what?”
“If he had been given the chance to go back to heaven if he never saw you again or some shit like that?” Dean smiles, Sam’s taken to swear a lot in his old age.
Then he says, “He would’ve taken it.”
Sam frowns and sits up in bed a bit. “You asked him?” he says, because it doesn’t sound like Dean at all.
Dean shakes his head. “No. But he misses his brother and sisters,” says Dean in the present tense, never speaking about Cas in the past. He looks at Sam. “If the roles were reversed, I would’ve taken the chance to be with you, little brother.”
Sam grins at him, coughs again several times, and then says, “I think you’re wrong. Maybe I’ll ask him when I see him.”
Dean gets stern for the first time in days. “You’re not going downstairs, Sam.”
“I know,” says Sam firmly, with the certainty of the moribund.
Dean frowns. “Cas is -” he says, because it’s what they always feared, what they knew would happen their entire lives. Hell, the punishment of the banished angels.
And with the same certainty that he knows he’s not going to hell, Sam says, “I don’t think he is.”
Dean dismisses the matter. “Well, maybe I’ll join you and find out myself.”
Sam grins. “It’s not something you can decide for yourself, Dean.”
Dean sighs. “Oh, I think someone’s already made that decision for me,” he says, looking at the pretty brunette standing in the corner. Tessa looks forlorn as Dean says, “Knew you’d be the one to come to fetch me.”
Tessa only smiles and offers Dean her hand.
Dean’s never been one to hand hold and all that stuff girls like to do. But for Tessa, he’s willing to make an exception. Dean takes one last look at Sam - always Sam first, his priority, his love, always checking on his little brother, even now. Sam’s got his eyes closed, quiet, sleeping the sleep that you never wake from.
Only then does Dean takes Tessa’s hand, intent on finding out who’ll be on the other side.
+++
Fin
+++
They both know Castiel will end up in hell.
Whether he dies tomorrow or in forty years' time, from a hunting gone wrong or from old age, Castiel will end up in hell. It's inevitable, it's the punishment of the banished angels. The pearly gates are locked, the keys have been thrown away, and there's an arrow pointing the way downstairs.
It's a knowledge they live with everyday of their lives, every minute. If they aren't careful, late at night, when they're waiting to fall asleep, the fact will slip back in their minds, dreaming of the moment of death.
Would Dean die first? If he avoided cirrhosis and clogged arteries, maybe not. Or Castiel would be the one to go first, victim of some illness they never thought to vaccinate him against, something Dean and Sam, as ‘proper’ humans, have antibodies to spare.
They try their best not to think about hell, and sometimes they succeed. Sometimes.
+++
On the same day that Dean breaks a leg, Sam meets Erika.
Erika is a doctor at the local hospital near Bobby’s. She is blonde, tall, gorgeous, and totally the kind of girl Dean would’ve gone for before Cas. As it is, she’s making googly eyes at Sam, not his brother.
Luckily - if such a word could ever be used in regards to a broken bone- Dean didn’t break his leg on a hunt (which would’ve forced Sam to lie to Erika or to tell her about their job sooner than he’d want) but rather in a genuine car accident.
Dean has half a mind to sue the idiot who ignored the red light and crashed the Impala until Sam and Cas remind him that making too big a deal about this means cops running the Impala’s plates, and they’re sort of false, remember Dean? Not to mention Sam and Dean Winchester have been dead for, oh six or seven years now. Dean grumbles and relaxes himself by focusing on the fact that the damage on the Impala is reparable.
They end up at Bobby’s for two months so Dean’s leg can heal. Two months is enough time for Dean to carefully and annoyingly closely supervise Cas while he repairs the dented Impala. Two months is also is enough time for Sam to fall head over heels for Erika.
Erika is sweet, a good girl, and she gains points the first time she meets Bobby because he ends up liking her, but she has rather fixed ideas about marriage, children and the married home. She might’ve made Dean’s leg better - three months and it was as good as new - but it is painfully obvious that Dean doesn’t like her, one iota.
Cas mostly ignores him because this isn’t not liking a person in the sixth-sense way, where part of you knows there’s something shady. This is your normal, run of the mill, purely human feeling.
On the night Sam tells his brother he’s going to tell Erika what they truly do for a living, six months after meeting her, Dean stops holding it all in. He says congratulations to Sammy (in the Winchester family, revealing the Big Bad Secret is bigger than marriage), wishes him good luck and threatens to steal his computer if he makes Cas the best man.
But late at night he voices what he never did: Dean doesn’t like her. It’s not news to Cas, but hearing it obviously is. “Cas, she’s trying to change him!” he whines at the end of a tirade that lasted a good solid five minutes, a tirade that was full of Erika’s beliefs on what job Sam could get, and what house they could buy.
“Sam isn’t stupid, he won’t let her,” says Cas quietly from his spot on the bed, letting Dean pace himself to exhaustion all about the room.
It’s true, and Cas has evidence to back it up. The first time Erika met Cas, and found out he was Dean’s (for lack of a better term) life partner, she giggled and looked at Dean as if he had just grown another head. “I never would’ve thought you were -”
She had stopped then, not knowing how to say it. But she had no need to search for it anyway. Sam had lost all joy in his face and had said, “this is my brother and the man he’s lived with for the past five years. Is that a problem?”
Erika had apologized to all three, swallowed, and from the on, always watched herself in regards to that topic. So, Cas was feeling pretty relaxed about the whole thing, knowing Sam knew how to take care of himself in more ways than one.
Dean is still pacing about, punching random things. “Sam hasn’t considered settling down for years, and now -”
Cas sighs. “Since Jessica. He’s in love, people sometimes do change when they fall in love.”
Dean stops and looks at him. “Is that your way of saying I’m the insensitive prick in this relationship?” Cas simply grins and Dean throws a comb at him. “Is it too complicated to understand that I just don’t like the girl?”
“You’re entitled to that. Everyone is. But you are the most important thing in Sam’s life,” says Cas, making Dean stop and look at him. “You always will be. Even now, with Erika, you’re still the most important thing in his life. If you say anything negative about her -”
Dean sits down besides Cas. “- he’ll fight me tooth and nail.”
“Yes. But you’ll have -” he chooses his words. “He’ll feel stuck between his brother and the woman he loves, and that isn’t a good place to be.” He touches Dean’s arm. “This is the first girl Sam has truly loved since Jessica.”
“He loved Madison, too,” adds Dean.
“That was still a long time ago. Let him have this,” Cas says gently, making Dean feel like a heel, but he knows defeat when he sees it, and he’s lost this one.
In any case, Sam is happy, and that is always a good thing. Sam returns happy in the morning: Erika is slightly freaked out, but she knows Sam wasn’t kidding her - more than one injured hunter had ended up at her hospital at one time or the other, with injuries that defied all logic. Everything Sam had told her had brought sense to all that.
Erika doesn’t join them on the hunts, being of weak stomach for that sort of thing, but she respects the job they’ve got, and knows its importance. Still, Dean knows the days of hunting with his brother are counted.
He trudges on, and pretends not to be affected, and enjoys the last days of hunting he’ll have with Sam.
+++
Before Sam can even think of proposing, Bobby dies.
He gets a hunter’s farewell, and they brothers get a scope of how many people knew Bobby when so many of them turn up for the time when Dean and Sam light the fire. Everyone is treating them as if they were Bobby’s sons, and the boys don’t know if that makes them feel better or worse.
They stay at his house for a month, not knowing if they should clean it up and sell it or keep it, keeping his bedroom untouched as if it was a shrine. They try telling themselves not many hunters have this end - to go in his sleep, peacefully, like Bobby truly deserved.
It doesn’t work, of course, because it’s like losing John all over again. Sam spends every night with Erika and all day with Dean. Dean says little to nothing, which suits Sam just fine, boxing things and throwing away others. The only time Dean lets himself go is at night, in the dark, when he holds on to Cas harder than he’s used to, his face rigid from the strain of not crying.
Cas holds him back and says nothing either. The next day, he hangs Bobby’s blue and white cap in the hat rack on the wall, and it stays there for years and years to come.
Dean starts believing in God three days after Bobby’s death.
He has to, he says, because he has to believe someone like Bobby will end up with the Big Guy. He can’t live in a universe where Bobby ends anywhere else but Heaven.
+++
Sam gets married on November 2nd. Dean gets chills up his spine, his brain suddenly forming a whole story with Erika being a demon that plans to kill Sam on their wedding night.
Sam rolls his eyes and tells Dean he picked the date. That day has made them so unhappy in the past, what with mom and Jess, it’s high time something good happened. Dean nods, and understands the reasoning, but still isn’t 100% percent behind the idea.
Sam gets married and despite Erika’s subtle suggestions otherwise, he buys the house that’s closest to Bobby’s house, literally next door neighbors. He knows Dean and Cas will go on hunting, and he knows they’ll fall back to Bobby’s whenever they’re done with a case. And as much as he loves Erika, he knows from experience he can’t live without Dean.
+++
Sometimes, they fight.
It’s Dean and Cas, of course they butt head at times. The fights are usually resolved by the end of the day, in a few hours’ time - the hunting life teaching them not to prolong silly fights for longer than necessary, because huntings can go wrong any minute of any day.
There’s a werewolf once. Her name is Kelly and they discover her, miraculously enough, before she’s even killed anyone. Having killed the werewolf who had turned her in self defense, Dean and Cas suddenly are faced with a scared twenty-year-old girl who would turn into a monster that very night, most probably to kill her first victim.
And if don’t make a decision soon, it will be one of them.
It’s the evening. The sun is going down, Kelly is tied to a chair and Cas and Dean are butting heads about what to do about her. Before the fight can escalate and the moon shows its face, Dean walks into the next room, sends Kelly to sleep with chloroform, and kills her. It’s the most humane thing he could think of.
They ride in silence, getting out of town before anyone discovers Kelly’s body. Once they’re well out of town and near Bobby’s house - always Bobby’s house, never theirs, even after all this time - Cas speaks.
“She didn’t have to die,” he says.
Dean grips the wheel tighter, he knew this was coming. “Excuse me?”
“That was murder,” says Cas, turning to look at Dean.
Dean eyes are still on the road, trying not to miss the turn onto Bobby’s road. “That was a hunt. She was a werewolf!”
Cas frowns. “And she was also a human being. Scared, alone. She hadn’t killed anyone yet.”
“She was a monster!” he says as he turns into Bobby’s road. “She’d have had no qualms in turning us into dinner. Better before some innocent shmuck gets his heart ripped out.”
Cas’ voice is quiet, calm and collected, and it makes Dean even more irritated. “You know there have been rumors of an ancient cure now, we could have -”
“What, look into it? See if she could have been saved?”
“Yes!” he says, raising his voice for the first time. “That woman -”
“This isn’t about her at all,” interrupts Dean, and it’s the quiet tone of his voice that makes Cas stop rather than the words.
“What?”
Dean parks the car at the entrance of Bobby’s house and gets out, waiting for Cas to do the same. “This isn’t about her, not completely. Sure, you liked her. You both had that whole kicked out of your family thing going on,” he says as Cas rolls his eyes, “but it’s more than that. This is about heaven. You’re still trying get back up there.”
Cas looks at him confused, as if the answer was obvious. “It’s my home. They’re my brothers and sisters.”
“Who treated you like shit!” yells Dean, his voice loud enough for Cas to worry Sam will hear him over in his house.
“They’re everything I’ve ever known,” says Cas softly. “I care for them.”
“Sweetheart,” says Dean, managing to make it sound like anything but a term of endearment, “Considering we’ve been screwing every which way for the past seven years, I’m not too sure they’d be happy with the kind of action you’ve been getting down here.”
“That’s of no matter. Love is love to God,” shrugs Cas.
“God wasn’t the one to banish you Cas!” his blood all but boiling now. “The people you’re trying to get back to did!”
Cas shakes his head. “Many of them tried to intercede for me, and they weren’t allowed to do a thing. I need to believe I still have a chance to get back home. Why am I still here then?”
Dean nods, swallows. “You know, I have no fucking clue,” he says, getting back in the car and driving off into the road.
+
Cas doesn’t know why he ends up at Sam’s house, but he does. Presumably, he’s there because, after spending over a week at a hunt, everything in the house that was once edible is now on its way to become penicillin.
He takes the key out of the hideaway and opens the door, and he hasn’t managed to even close the door back when Sam’s entering the room, the light of the hallway spilling into the dark kitchen.
“Cas,” says Sam, obviously surprised seeing him entering his house just like that in the middle of the night.
Cas closes the door. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“No, no Erika’s not back yet,” he says hastily. On any other night Cas would’ve noticed this is Erika’s night off and she should be home. Today, he doesn’t. “What’s up?” asks Sam.
“We’re out of, um,” he says, and he can’t remember what they’re out suddenly. Food, but that’s too broad a word.
Sam is still staring at him. “You okay, man?”
“We just came back from a werewolf and there’s nothing in the house to eat.”
“Yeah, I didn’t have time to get you anything. You two really starve when Erika or I don’t buy you proper food, don’t you?” he says, amused. Cas is still non-responsive, as passive as back when he was an angel. “Are you alright?”
Cas sits down at the kitchen table and talks. He talks and talks and Sam sits down and lets him talk, because in the eight years he’s known the guy, he’s never said so much in such short space of time.
Cas gets the core of the whole thing, of course. “I know he has abandonment issues,” he says.
Sam nods. “The size of Texas. I think I’m responsible for about half of those, actually.”
Cas smiles softly at that. “But he needs to understand - the same way he would go to you every time, no matter the circumstances - that’s how I feel about my brothers and sisters” Sam nods, it always troubled him to think of the other way around - what he would do, what he would feel like if someone banned him from seeing Dean.
Cas goes on, “You’re his priority and I understand it. I also know that it doesn’t mean he loves me any less. Why can’t he understand that?”
Sam shrugs a bit. “Because he’s human. Because he’s Dean,” he says, eliciting a small smile from Cas. “I know he doesn’t like the - chick flick moments. And, I know you two don’t say much to each other, but - sometimes, Dean needs to hear these things. He’ll mock you, even fight you, but sometimes he needs someone to yell things at him.”
“I’m not much for yelling,” says Cas, and if Dean were here he’d have snorted at the understatement.
“To get through that thick skull of my brother’s? You’re gonna need a freakin’ megaphone held to his ear.”
Cas grins and stands up. “Thank you, Sam. I should go.”
Sam jerks a thumb towards the fridge. “Haven’t eaten anything yet.”
Cas dismisses the matter, suddenly not hungry. He says goodnight to Sam, goes back home and takes a shower. He stands motionless under the spray for a solid two minutes, intent on not going to sleep until Dean comes back home.
He’s got hours ahead before Dean even thinks of being back, he presumes, and hopes he won’t fall asleep - maybe he’ll read, try to find a new case, maybe make - but as he steps out of the bathroom he hears the front door and the sound of Dean’s boots going about the ground floor.
He dumps the towel on the hamper, puts on pants and pads downstairs - silently, just in case. If there’s anything being human and living with Dean Winchester has taught him, it’s paranoia.
But it is Dean. He’s slumped on the couch, his coat still on, looking remarkably sober.
“Dean,” says Cas softly, because startling a hunter in the middle of dark house isn’t a particularly wise thing to do.
Dean can’t help but make a slight pause at the sight - Cas is wearing pants and not much else, hair still wet from a shower. “Hi,” he says a second later.
“I thought you’d be out for longer,” he says, entering the room.
“Yeah, so did I,” says Dean. Cas sits on the other end of the couch, looking at him. Dean is sober and calm, and after barely an hour since he drove off in a fury, seeing Dean like this is atypical.
“I hate it when you go like this,” says Dean suddenly, “when all you can think of is what they did to you and how to undo it. Like you can only ever be something good if you have their approval.”
“That is not true,” says Cas after a moment, because it isn’t. He doesn’t want to see them again for their approval or their attention but simply because they’re his brothers and sisters.
Dean sighs. “I hate it that you made me feel like these seven years were a placeholder for the moment you get your wings back.”
Cas moves closer to Dean, resting an arm on the back of the couch. “That isn’t what I meant. That isn’t what this is.”
Dean leans back on the couch, unwittingly trapping Cas’ hand between the couch and his body. “And even when I hate you… when I go to a bar and pick up a girl,” he says, as Cas slowly withdraws his hand, “all I can think of when she tries to take my shirt off is how she’s doing it all wrong, because you rarely pay attention to buttons and she was just -”
Cas swallows once, “Dean,” he says sternly, not wanting to hear more, the bitter sting of jealousy - one he’s known both as human and as an angel - creeping up and making him feel cold all over.
“I didn’t fuck her, Cas,” Dean says hurriedly, turning to him, before Cas gets the wrong idea. “I didn’t, I couldn’t.”
“You were barely gone an hour,” says Cas, changing subjects. “Why -?”
He doesn’t have time to explain he means Dean’s sudden change of heart before Dean says, “Sam called.”
Seems like Sam did the yelling all on his own. “Oh,” says Cas.
Dean winces, which makes Cas smile in spite of all. “Yeah, he - had a few choice words. I take it you talked to him?”
Cas nods. “There isn’t any food in the house, he was up…”
“Good thing I stopped for food then. Brought you that salad you like from McDonald’s,” he says casually.
It’s only now that Cas notices two brown paper bags at Dean’s feet, and Cas feels a wave of warmth inside, like when you drink something hot immediately after having something cold. “Thank you,” he grins.
“I still think killing the girl was the best course of action,” says Dean, turning to him so they’re even closer. “Werewolves can’t be contained, and that cure is a rumor at best. The moment she killed her first victim she would’ve hated herself. There was nothing we could have done.”
“I disagree,” says Cas amicably. “And I’m sure it won’t be the last time.”
Dean grins at that, because that is a fact.
After a while he says, “She was hot and funny and clever… And I couldn’t fuck her Cas. I didn’t want to. I didn’t even kiss her,” he says softly, as if he’s just now coming to terms with the fact that he’s been in love with a dude for the past seven years.
Cas grabs the bags from the ground, the smell of deep fried things filling the air around them. “Good,” he says, bringing Dean even closer to him. Dean leans in and kisses him, the odd angle eliciting a moan from both of them. Dean turns so he’s resting on top of Cas, not breaking the kiss. Cas starts getting Dean out of his jacket and Dean tugs Cas’ sweatpants down, smiling for the first time in hours.
The food is cold by the time they’re finished, but truthfully? They don’t mind much.
+++
This small spat between Cas and Dean - trust him, it’s small, he knows his brother and how high can his stubbornness escalate - this small spat triggers a little troublesome question in Sam. He’s gotten into his mind the question of why they’re together. More often than not Sam wonders if they're together out of loyalty and guilt, or because save from each other, they're lost. Sure they like each other, they love each other even - Dean couldn't have been this long with someone without loving them in some way or another. But sometimes, some things Sam sees...
Maybe it's like those couples who've been together for so many years, that it's just easier to stay together than to go through all the hassle of ending the relationship and starting life anew. You're just too old for that or too tired, and this is just easier.
Sam thinks that, ponders about it when they're all together and his brain is disconnected from whatever's happening around, throwing at him these kinds of things: Dean is watching TV on one corner of the couch, while Cas reads on the other side of the room. Cas makes himself some soup, and Dean eats a burger. Dean prefers showers, Cas likes the tub.
They've got the routine down pat, moving around each other without bothering, without interrupting this incessant stream of nothing in their lives, as if doing something different might jolt them enough to realize something is wrong.
Sam stares, and worries, and goes home to Erika, who arrives home late, hours after dinner on her days off, when Sam is still worrying about his brother.
+
When Sam turns 36, his wife asks for a divorce.
He's known it was a long time coming. It's been cold, and distant. In the previous month, he'd spent more time with Dean than he did with his own wife, and she hadn't minded. She wasn't even there to actually mind, she'd been gone too much.
It ends rather swiftly. One night, after a day that had nothing peculiar in and of itself, just before going to bed, she says, "Maybe you should sleep in the guest room."
Sam frowns and wonders if he did anything wrong, but simply gathers his stuff. It's easier than fighting. While he's grabbing an old pair of sweatpants, he frowns at them, understanding, and asks, "Do you want the house?"
She looks relieved that he understood.
And the thing that scares him the most now is losing the house, which is right next to Dean and Cas, because he can't tolerate the idea of moving away from them, or being on the other side of town and losing the daily contact with Dean he's had all his life. He’s not about to impose on Bobby’s old house, however much Dean and Cas would welcome him there, because he’d feel like a third wheel all the time.
The worry about his marriage ending comes in second, and he suddenly can't remember the last time Erika came in first. If she ever did - everyone always comes in second after Dean.
Erika shakes her head, because she knows that taking the house from him is literally upraising his life more than she's currently doing. She's a decent human being, and mentions something about going to her sister's.
Sam sleeps in the guest room, and for the following months, misses laying down next to somebody, the warmth and the companionship, but doesn't miss Erika. He misses the time he did love her, but he doesn’t miss Erika herself.
+
When Sam is 37, he meets Sarah Blake again.
Good Sarah Blake, still as gorgeous at 34 as she was when he met her on that old, distant haunted painting case back in '05 when she was 19. Hair still jet black and her smile still lighting up the whole place.
Sam falls for her faster than he ever thought possible, and this is how he discovers that Dean and Castiel aren't together out of habit.
Sam sees it now. The way they look at each other even when they're doing completely opposite things. Dean buys Cas his favorite salad and Cas takes a bite out of Dean’s favorite burger of the month and still fights him that his ‘rabbit food’ will always taste better. Sam sees the way they hold each other, the way they are around each other, and the way they silently keep tabs on the other even when they're not around. They're the air the other one breathes, and they almost literally hold their breath when they're not together.
Just like him and Sarah. A week after he and Sarah start discussing whether she should move in with him, Sam sits her down and tells her the truth about everything that’s been going on with him since 2005. He tells her, mostly, who Cas really is (was), because now he’s going to be a part of her life. Sam is nervous, wondering if she'll run away, if it'll be too much to take.
Sarah looks shocked at first, and Sam can’t blame her. But then she smiles at Sam, she kisses him and tells him he’s an idiot for being so worried. Although she’s still sort of nervous around Cas the following week.
Fourteen months later, Dean becomes an uncle. Sarah suggests they name the baby John Robert Winchester.
+++
For years, Dean had a burning question in his mind.
He’s always known hunting would be the thing to kill him, it’s what the job does. Not many hunters reach the age Bobby was when he died, and he has no hope to ever reach it. Once, he’d have said he had neither hope nor desire to reach it, but that changed years ago, with Cas, and with Sam’s son and daughter.
Still, he always knew it was hunting that would do him in.
So when he hurts his back while disposing of a nest of vampires, he’s really not that surprised. He simply lies there, motionless, and wonders if this is finally the thing that will end up killing him - he’s nearing fifty now, an age he never dreamt he’d reach. He lies there and thinks of a lot of things, and maybe the fall knocked his head about too, because Cas has been left alone to dispose of three vampires and he’s barely paying attention to it.
The fact that Dean isn’t moving at all seems to give Cas the drive necessary to kill the vampires and call 911 before he even reaches the place where Dean was thrown. Dean is alive, breathing shallow, awake, and looking up at the ceiling and not much more.
That’s how Dean stops hunting.
Dean injures his back so badly that he’s confined to the house, painkillers and physical therapy for months. They modify Bobby’s house to be wheelchair-friendly and invent an elaborate car crash story to explain to Sam’s children why uncle Dean is suddenly irritable and in pain.
Sam feels as guilty as hell for not having been there. He says once and again how maybe, if he’d been there, everything could have been prevented, how things might have gone different, how -
Cas stops him. Dean is alive and with excellent chances of recovery. He was there, and there was nothing anyone could have done. Besides, adds Sarah, Dean is being irritable enough for everyone in the family, he certainly needs no aid from Sam.
Dean is in a wheelchair for six months, and impossible to be around for almost every minute of those months. A glimpse of the old Dean finally emerges when the doctor deems him worthy of leaving the wheelchair in lieu of crutches. He still hates it, but now with the crutches he can knock Sam’s butt when he’s four feet away from him, making Johnny and six-year-old Ellie grin and think their old uncle is back.
Eventually, Dean progresses, but it’s clear his hunting days are over - the big stuff anyway, he can always do an exorcism, a salt and burn - the light stuff. But the big guns? Vampires, werewolves, ghouls, high level demons? Those days are gone.
Still, Dean’s mood doesn’t get much worse when faced with this future.
One day, after nine months and seven days of walking aided, he takes a step all on his own, the first of many to come, every single one of those future steps as unaided as before the ‘accident.’
Little Ellie is the only one to witness that first step. The little girl jumps all around her uncle and helps him walk about, squeeing with joy as if Christmas had come early. Even Dean can’t be grumpy after that.
Cas keeps on hunting sometimes, of course. Sometimes the case is too big to ignore - or it’s small but the victims’ suffering beckons him forward to help. Sometimes, when the case will require no running or climbing or anything of the like, Dean goes with him, with knives and painkillers packed in the same bag as his ever changing mood and innuendo-filled conversation.
When the case is too big for Dean to go on, Dean forces Sam to go with Cas. It’s not like Sam needed any ordering about, because you don’t let your family go on a hunt on their own. Sarah isn’t too happy with Sam hunting, but she understands; Johnny and Ellie are told that daddy goes on conferences and meetings and whatnots every time there’s a new case, and everybody is happy with the arrangement.
Well - ‘everybody’ is happy with it.
Dean misses hunting. He misses the shooting and the stabbing and the running and the time where he could drive for miles and miles with nothing hurting. But he’s not dead. He can still drive his baby (albeit not all day long as before.) Cas, Sam and his family are all safe. His own dad had already died when he’d been the age Dean is now, Dean himself has a family.
Dean repeats this to him every single day, and accepts it for a fact, even though he still misses the adrenaline of a good kill, and the open road in front of him for miles and miles and miles.
Sam, being the awesome brother he is, takes particular care to kill whatever vampire crosses their path.
+++
One day Anna appears in the middle of the sitting room.
Cas might’ve been human for more years than he cared to admit, but he still could feel an angel in the room without needing to see it. He turns to face the visitor.
“Anna?” he frowns.
Anna had, of course, not aged at all. Where he was wrinkled and his hair had gone salt and pepper, Anna was still beautiful and young, her red hair looking even redder in the dusty sitting room. “Hello, Castiel,” she smiles.
Castiel. No one had called him that since - “It's Cas,” he says.
“I see,” she says carefully.
“Why are you here?” he frowns.
“I had some free time,” she shrugs, looking about the sitting room. “Wanted to check on you”
Cas’ eyebrows go up. “Twenty five years later?” Cas forces himself to lean on the doorway and cross his arms - human things, human body language - but his instinct still screams at him to stand straight and motionless - like an angel.
Anna, who had been looking at a bookshelf turns to him. “You used to not care about time.”
“I used to be an angel,” he says.
Anna picks up a portrait from the bookshelf, one that had been taken when Ellie had been born, a nurse photographing all six family members. Sarah is in bed holding Johnny and little Ellie, Sam on one side of the bed, while Cas and Dean are on the other. “Now you have a nephew and a niece. A human life.”
Cas’ hands involuntarily fist. “You of all people shouldn't -”
Anna sighs and leaves the portrait back on its place. “I'm not here to judge. I simply missed my brother.”
Cas relaxes his hands, letting them drop to his side. “I've missed you too, sister. All of you,” he says sincerely.
Anna walks to him, staring at him. “You've aged,” she says as he studies his face. “Your eyes are still the same but you have wrinkles,” she smiles, as if finding the wrinkles amusing.
Cas shrugs. “It happens when you hit sixty.”
Anna nods. “You've also acquired some of Dean's expressions, I see. How is Dean?”
Cas loses a bit of his good mood. “I know you well enough to know you've been keeping tabs on us,” he says, sitting on an armrest of the couch. “You know how he is,” he says.
Anna sighs again and looks uncomfortable. Before she can say anything Cas winces and stops her. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Time feels different now, Anna. I may have been turned human only a while before to you, but for me - it's not the same when you're an angel.”
“I know that,” she says, touching one of his hands.
He looks up at her. “No, you don't. You were human for barely more than twenty years, most of those years as a happy child. I am sixty,” he says, getting up from the couch with difficulty, accenting his words. “I have an age now, Jimmy Novak’s age. I feel time pass more quickly than I ever thought possible. I am old, Anna.”
Anna frowns and takes his face between her hands, looking intently at him. After a while, she smiles. “You're not old. Not really. You're simply human.”
“Dean keeps me young enough, anyway,” he says as Anna withdraws her hands from his face.
Anna simply smiles which, in turn, makes Cas himself grin and say, “And I see you've spent enough time on earth to know the meaning of double entendres.”
She touches his arm. “Is he okay, though? I know he's in pain, but -”
“He manages,” he says shortly. Some days his back hurts too much, and some days, like today, it’s like nothing ever happened. “He's fine. Even if he was in pain, he wouldn't -”
They hear the yelling before the door behind them opens, rattling off its hinges, and a thirteen year old girl whose similarity to her uncle could make her Dean’s own child enters the room. “Uncle Cas! Uncle D says where the hell are you!” She stops short when she sees her uncle isn’t alone. “Oh, hi.”
Cas brings the suddenly shy girl next to him. “Anna this is Ellie, Sam’s daughter. Ellie, this is Anna, she's a, um, friend of mine,” he says, because Anna looks like she could be Cas’ daughter now, not his sister.
“Hello,” smiles Ellie. “I didn’t hear you arrive,” she frowns, because everyone who went into the Singer Salvage Yard usually did so by car, the road too long for anyone to just walk there.
“She walks, she doesn’t drive,” whispers Cas as Anna takes Ellie’s hand and shakes it politely.
“Hi, Ellie.” She looks up at Cas. “I should go anyway,” she says.
Cas nods and turns to the door, subtly telling Anna to feign humanity. “Will you come back to visit?”
Anna smiles, sincerely. “Of course.”
Cas watches her walk away, and waits till she ducks behind an old Ford Escort to blink away. He turns to Ellie, who’s watching him curiously. “Let's go see what your uncle wants,” he says, a hand on her shoulder as he climbs down the steps. “And don't repeat every single expression Dean has.”
+++
Anna returns ten years later, a blink of the eye for her, one hundred and twenty months for the rest. She stays for a whole day, making Dean and Sam uncomfortable at first. But she’s there out of genuine nostalgia for her brother, and Dean and Sam ease down a bit when they see she really is still the same old Anna, the same scared girl who turned out to be a goddamn Angel.
She’s smart enough to choose a moment when Ellie, twenty-three now, isn’t home. Ellie could’ve very well remembered her and thought it strange that this girl hadn’t aged one bit in ten years.
Cas misses Anna the moment she’s gone, and Dean can’t really say a thing against it. He knows he’d miss Sam with every bone in his body if ever they were separated for as long as Anna and Cas have been, so the only thing he can do is hold Cas, late at night when Cas has been struck by insomnia and thoughts of his eternity in hell again.
He holds him and pretends he isn’t having the same nightmares. Cas knows he is but, for once, Dean’s pretense that everything is alright is exactly what he needs.
+++
When Cas nears 80 years old, he falls ill. And that is it.
There is no doubt about it, at least among Dean, Sam and Cas himself. Sarah holds hope, Johnny and Ellie promise him he’s going to get better, but the old hunters know better. This is it.
Sam has a lot to say, though he doesn’t use as many words. Sarah and Ellie talk until exhaustion, Johnny is too upset and decides the best course of action is to go around the house and fix things that are broken.
Anna shows up at dusk, and says nothing. She sits at the edge of Cas’ bed, her red her in deep contrast with Cas’ white, her soft and little hand swimming in Cas’ own hand, spotty with age and wrinkled. She pays no attention to this, seeing the brother she’s always known, not even seeing Jimmy. She’s remembering his old form, his angel form, and she smiles wistfully when Cas wishes he could see her one last time.
Dean says nothing, lying in bed next to Cas all day and night long, getting up only to go to the bathroom, not even to eat. They’re old, and tired, and feeling more human than any of them want to feel right now, and words would be silly at this point.
At half past four in the morning, Dean gets out of bed to go to the bathroom. As he’s flushing, he hears Cas calling him quietly. Cas has somehow managed to sit up in bed. “Dean,” he says.
The weirdest thing ever comes to Dean’s mind. He’s suddenly seeing Cas as he looked on that night all those years ago when they had first met Chuck, back when Sam was supposed to sleep with Lilith. Cas was young then, looking mischievous at helping Dean with Sam.
“What is it, Cas?” asks Dean, coming to stand next to Cas.
Cas looks up at Dean, takes one of his hands… and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Dean stands there, holding Cas’ hand, and is suddenly filled by a dread he hasn’t let himself feel for days.
“Alright,” says Dean as he gets back into bed. He holds on to Cas by the waist, one arm beneath Cas’ neck to support him up. Cas is flushed, face red, yet cold to the touch. Before they fall asleep, Cas turns and kisses Dean. Their position means that Dean’s neck is the closest thing Cas has but he purposefully searches for Dean’s mouth, mashing them together as if they were still in their thirties. They explore each other as if they were kissing for the first time ever, getting to know spots they’ve been familiar with for the past forty-five years.
They fall asleep at some point, though neither could really pinpoint if the kissing had stopped at that point or not.
Cas is gone by morning. For good, forever. Whether he went up or down is anybody’s guess now, but that, surprisingly, is the last thing on Dean’s mind now.
+++
Sam falls ill almost a year later. As with Cas, the end is inevitable, and certain. Sarah and Dean move him back from the hospital to his house. Dean leaves Sam and Sarah as much time as he can alone and with the kids, but by seven in the afternoon he can’t hold himself anymore and asks Sarah a moment alone with his brother.
Sam is lying in the middle of his bed, the covers all bunched from where Johnny and Ellie lied down next to him - both are well in their thirties now, yet still retaining the amazing ability to act as kids. Dean straightens the covers and sits down next to Sam, bunching up a pillow behind his sensitive back.
After a while of silence, Sam asks. “Do you ever wonder,” he coughs, “what he would have done, back when he was still an angel. When he was taken?”
Dean almost never talks about Cas, certainly not about angels, because Anna never came back to tell him if Cas was with them or not. Today, he makes an exception. “Done about what?”
“If he had been given the chance to go back to heaven if he never saw you again or some shit like that?” Dean smiles, Sam’s taken to swear a lot in his old age.
Then he says, “He would’ve taken it.”
Sam frowns and sits up in bed a bit. “You asked him?” he says, because it doesn’t sound like Dean at all.
Dean shakes his head. “No. But he misses his brother and sisters,” says Dean in the present tense, never speaking about Cas in the past. He looks at Sam. “If the roles were reversed, I would’ve taken the chance to be with you, little brother.”
Sam grins at him, coughs again several times, and then says, “I think you’re wrong. Maybe I’ll ask him when I see him.”
Dean gets stern for the first time in days. “You’re not going downstairs, Sam.”
“I know,” says Sam firmly, with the certainty of the moribund.
Dean frowns. “Cas is -” he says, because it’s what they always feared, what they knew would happen their entire lives. Hell, the punishment of the banished angels.
And with the same certainty that he knows he’s not going to hell, Sam says, “I don’t think he is.”
Dean dismisses the matter. “Well, maybe I’ll join you and find out myself.”
Sam grins. “It’s not something you can decide for yourself, Dean.”
Dean sighs. “Oh, I think someone’s already made that decision for me,” he says, looking at the pretty brunette standing in the corner. Tessa looks forlorn as Dean says, “Knew you’d be the one to come to fetch me.”
Tessa only smiles and offers Dean her hand.
Dean’s never been one to hand hold and all that stuff girls like to do. But for Tessa, he’s willing to make an exception. Dean takes one last look at Sam - always Sam first, his priority, his love, always checking on his little brother, even now. Sam’s got his eyes closed, quiet, sleeping the sleep that you never wake from.
Only then does Dean takes Tessa’s hand, intent on finding out who’ll be on the other side.
+++
Fin