#s15ep20

And suddenly, he was. Cas was sitting in the passenger seat beside him, eyes flaming with a divine rage Dean hadn’t seen alight there in years.

“You don’t get to give up like this,” he said, and, with no further warning, he leaned right over Dean to grab the steering wheel. Though Dean tried, there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop the strength of that grip. No warning placement of his hand on Cas’s arm was going to hold him back this time.

“Hey, watch it -”

Though his brain told him to watch the road, as Cas forced the car off the road and straight into a tree, all Dean could do was look at the angel’s face, and watch his lips as they curved into a wicked little smile.

Then things went black. Then there was pain, oh god so much pain, finally registering through the shock –

And Dean gasped for breath and opened his eyes.

“Dean,” Sam said, his tears dripping messily into his mouth as he pulled him close. Because he could do that. Dean wasn’t a wall ornament anymore, and as he reached for the source of the phantom pain in his side he found that though his shirt was ripped and wet he wasn’t even bleeding anymore.

Completely healed.

He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t driving. Sam wasn’t an old man dying in his sleep.

And Cas wasn’t there beside him.

“’M’okay,” Dean managed, choking the words out into his brother. “Cas – is he…?”

Sam laughed and pulled back a moment to wipe at his eyes. “He arrived just after you closed your eyes. He healed you – then he disappeared and then you – you woke up. Jack – Jack must have brought him back, just like we were hoping.”

“Right.” Dean sat down. His knees were getting too old to keep perching like this. “So…” he looked around the barn, empty but for them and the corpses. “Where’d he go?”

Roughly wiping his face again, Sam grinned and got to his feet. “I’m not sure. I guess he’s fully powered up again now – he’ll be hard to keep track of again.” He offered a hand down to Dean. “But he’ll be along I guess – he always is. I’m just glad he was this time.”

Dean took the hand. “Yeah…”

Sam grinned, looking almost boyishly happy again. “Alright, let’s go find those kids!”

“Great.” No peace, there were still people who needed him. “It’s just…”

Sam had already rushed to the barn entrance. “What? You alright?”

“Nothing. It’s just…” Dean took one last look around. Fully powered Cas had been able to spy on them unseen, once upon a time. Did he see anything worth watching here? “I had some things I wanted to tell him.”

*

They got the kids home safe. The local kid they’d left money to look after Miracle had overfed her again, but Dean would forgive them. His dog looked so damn happy about everything.

“Missed me, huh, girl?” he said, his voice muffled as he spoke into her fur while they bundled her back into the car.

Sam smirked and shook his head. “Can you imagine if you hadn’t made it home? Like if after everything, that was what got you?”

“Yeah.” Dean forced a laugh. It was fading, the odd contented peace he’d felt, but a part of him remembered. “Pretty lonely little funeral. One man and his dog.”

Sam looked at him strangely. “Did you…? How long were you out? Like… were you upstairs? Did you see Jack?”

“No. I mean – yeah, Heaven. But no Jack. I think I saw Bobby though.” Dean swallowed, doing his best to keep his voice casual. “He said Cas is helping with everything up there.”

“That makes sense. He’s been saying for years how few angels are left. They probably really need him – Jack probably really needs him. I mean I know he’s God and everything, but -”

Dean started the car, nodding along like he was listening. Cas was busy, Cas had places to be. He’d heard that before.

But Cas was alive, and that still meant the world.

Dean should just be content with what he got.

Right.

*

Sam joined Eileen on a hunt about a week after Dean’s death, leaving Dean alone in the bunker with just Miracle for the first time. Dean gave up on not letting the dog sleep on the bed by night two. By night three, because though they’d handled the banshee easily enough Sam had decided to stick around and celebrate, Dean took Miracle on a long walk in the dark and found himself in a patch of trees, almost as tall as the ones in Purgatory had been.

Cas had mused once that if they kept walking they might eventually find an ocean – that maybe Purgatory was its own functional dimension that mimicked the real world. Maybe they’d be able to cross the Purgatory-Pacific, or the Purgatory-Atlantic. Benny had given Dean a pleading look at that.

But Benny hadn’t been there the second time. It had just been the two of them. And Dean had prayed – he’d got down on his knees and poured his heart out. But he hadn’t said everything.

“Cas?” Dean’s voice made a cloud of mist in the cold air. This had to look ridiculous. Good thing no one was passing by.

“I – I hope you can hear me. I guess you can, if you’re all mojo-ed up again.” He swallowed, gripping Miracle’s lead a little tighter, dimly aware that his dog was looking up at him, expecting a treat for sitting so nicely. “We – I miss you, man. Be good to see you, to get to thank you properly. I mean you’ve done the whole set now, huh? Yanked me out of Hell, Heaven, helped me outta Purgatory, must have saved me hundreds of times on Earth…” Dean’s scuffed his boots roughly on the cold ground. “I know you’re busy. I know Jack needs you. But if you have a minute…”

Closing his eyes tightly a moment, Dean opened his eyes, only to find himself still talking to the empty woods.

“Alright,” he said gruffly. Then he gave Miracle her treat and kept moving.

*

The second time Dean prayed he was not sober. He was stumbling home from the usual place, knowing that again he’d be coming home to an empty bunker because Sam was slowly getting a life and a happy ending and that was so nice Dean was going to live to see it. And Dean was getting a life too, right. He started his new job Monday. When he remembered about it, he was nervous.

“Hey Cas – you still going to show up to heal me now I get my health insurance covered?” Laughing to himself, Dean struggled for his key to the bunker. “Would you show up if I broke something or do I actually have to die to get your attention?”

“People dying right now, everywhere,” Dean muttered as he opened the door. Which was bad. He knew it didn’t matter how loud he was when he prayed, but it still felt disrespectful somehow not to speak up. “Say they’re closing the bar next week. Might not have this job for long.” As he closed the door behind him, Dean clung to the bannister for support. “World just never stays saved, huh? All these apocalypses that Chuck wrote – none of them are going to kill as many people as this will. Jack really just going to let it play out?”

Inside the bunker, Dean’s words echoed uncomfortably loud. “Well. I guess I’m half a civilian now. You don’t need to tell me the management decisions.”

Dean had spent hundreds of nights alone in the bunker, but the sound of his boots hitting the steel stairs had never sounded so loud, or so easily able to trick him into thinking there was another pair of feet coming down beside him.

*

“Cas?”

Dean looked around his room, hopeful as always, stupid as always. Cas wasn’t coming. It had been months, and even when he’d been fighting Raphael he’d never stayed away so long. He just didn’t want to see Dean. He’d said his piece, he’d died, and maybe he wasn’t even the same Cas anymore. It wasn’t like it would be the first time he’d had a complete change in personality.

But even if it was just begging now, Dean had to keep asking. He just needed to find the right words.

“Cas – I -”

But he’d never been good with words.

“I need you here, man.”

That wasn’t it, he’d said that before. It was three in the morning, and Dean was begging an empty room with useless words that had never worked before.

“I – what you said. I wasn’t ready.” Dean bit down on his lip, shook his head. That just sounded ungrateful – like an excuse. “No one’s ever said that kinda thing to me before. Not like that.” He swallowed. “People don’t say that to me. Like I knew you… I knew you cared. But. I wasn’t even sure you could…”

He took a deep breath. Cas didn’t need to hear what Dean thought he meant. He should be hearing what Dean meant himself.

“I didn’t know what I felt either. I mean I did. But.” Dean balled his hands into tight fists and resisted the urge to start punching his leg. “I knew I wanted to tell you in Purgatory. But there was never any time. I guess that’s why Heaven looked like that for me. The idea of having just… endless time to just know everyone was okay and have time to figure this crap out – that was nice. But I don’t – I don’t want nice. I just want you.” He felt his mouth dry. “I love you, Cas. Even if you’ve worked out now that it was a mistake, that you don’t want me after all… I’ll still want you. And I know I don’t have forever to get over myself and figure out the best way to do this, but you saved me again, so I have time. You gave me that. And -”

“Dean.”

Half-believing he was imagining things now, Dean looked up.

Cas was there, no rage in his eyes now, only soft confusion. Slowly, Dean got to his feet.

“Well thanks for answering.”

“I heard you – I just…”

“Mad at me for dying so soon, huh?”

Smiling gratefully, Cas took a halting few steps forward. “Yes, and I wasn’t ready for rejection. I was at peace, I had new purpose.” He swallowed. “I thought you were happy.”

Dean shrugged. All of this felt surreal in a way that made him want to burst out into nervous laughter. “Been worse. But I thought you went and died for me, so, been better.”

There almost looked like hurt in Cas’s eyes for that. “Dean, you shouldn’t feel like you owe me.”

“C’mon, that’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?”

“Dammit, Cas,” Dean didn’t really notice himself move, or how his hands guided Cas’s chin towards him like that was the most natural thing in the world. It was something he’d quietly obsessed over for years and now he was all he could think was that with most people you kissed there was always some impression of whatever they’d been eating or drinking left behind. Not with Cas.

“Don’t go,” he said when he broke away for air, the words somehow harder to get through than the “I love you” had been. “I know you’re busy. But just… don’t leave.”

Cas was staring at him exactly like he always had, but it was different, now Dean knew he meant it. He could be happy if he did nothing else but stand in the way of that wide-eyed, admiring gaze for the rest of his life.

Well. Not that he didn’t have a few other ideas for how to spend his days.

“I got time now. You bought me that. Spend it with me?”

“You love me?” Somehow, Cas still sounded surprised by this information.

“You need me to keep saying it?”

Hesitantly, as though he wasn’t sure he had permission, Cas stroked a hand down Dean’s cheek. “I think I’d like that.”

They were kissing again and the bed was so close and Dean hadn’t even realised it was possible to be this happy – he understood, now, a little, how this level of happiness had been something Cas had been forced to die for – but this time Cas pulled away. Dean only just managed to stop himself from whining at that.

He’d wanted for so long. Surely now they deserved to have some reward?

“Just promise me one thing,” Cas said, suddenly all serious again.

“Yeah – ‘course.”

Cas took a grip of Dean’s tee and clung on tight. “No more checking out early. If you find yourself dying in another scenario a medical professional might have been able to help you with, you call me.”