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Closing the door behind the sleeping form of his blast-from-the-past self, Dean straightened his jacket and surveyed his petty little kingdom.
The camp was quiet, save for a few people on patrol duty by the fences, and Chuck, who was muttering to himself nervously while going over his inventory list by the light of the fire. Writing down supplies was the only kind of writing he’d done since this shit show began, and Dean could tell he longed for the days when he could use a computer to transcribe their lives.
Sometimes, so did Dean. He’d give anything to have a look at what might be coming, to know what he was ‘supposed’ to do next. But ever since the angels left, so had Chuck’s visions.
Speaking of angels.
Dean swiped a few beers from inventory and made his way to Cas' cabin. It was funny how out of everything, cheap booze was the easiest to find on supply runs. Necessities had been the first to go, leaving everything else to collect dust. Dean empathized with the abandoned bottles every time he rescued them from their stasis.
Surprisingly, Cas was not inside indulging in an orgy or stuffing himself with drugs in the hopes that he could get high enough to reach Heaven’s limits again. Instead, he was sitting on the porch with his hands loosely clasped around his knees, giving the stars a wistful look.
“Hey,” he greeted, tapping his knee with the bottom of a bottle.
Cas took it. “Thanks.”
Dean sat next to him, dangling his legs over the porch ledge.
They sat in silence, sipping and staring up at the night sky. For a moment it reminded him of how often he’d done the same with Sam in countless nameless fields, and the old song of loss began humming through him.
“So,” Cas began, breaking him away from the reverie. "Tomorrow we kill the devil."
“Yup.”
“No matter what happens, there’s probably no coming back from this one, is there?” he asked, though his tone framed it as more of a statement.
Dean wondered where he’d gone wrong in laying out his plan, where the cracks that exposed him had been. Or if it was simply Cas, and his ability to take one look at him and see him to his core. He looked over, stony-faced and ready to go on the defense. Cas held no hurt or fear as he met his gaze though, only acceptance and resignation.
“No, there isn’t,” Dean admitted.
Cas turned back to the camp. “Does ‘past you’ know?”
“Not yet, but he’ll prob’ly figure it out soon enough.”
“And you’re bringing him along to watch… because you’re hoping he’ll go back and do something to prevent all this,” Cas deduced.
“Yup.”
“So this endeavor is less about whether we’ll be able to kill the devil and more about trying to hit the reset button.”
“Got it in one. You wanna stay behind?”
“Of course not. I’ll go with you, Dean. I always will.”
He said it so plainly, like it’s a universal truth. The sky is blue. The grass is green. Lucifer took his brother. They’re going to die tomorrow.
Cas will always go with Dean.
“Yeah,” he whispered. He cleared his throat. “So smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.” Knowing Cas, he probably had a few tucked up his sleeve, in that secret space where his angel blade used to be.
“Last night on earth, huh? What do you want to do?” Cas asked.
Dean couldn’t help but laugh, his diaphragm rusty with the action. It sent him back.
“Remember when I first asked you that? Seems like a lifetime ago. Things were so… new, between us.” He remembered the brothel and how hard Cas made him laugh, after. He ached for just a taste of that moment, to go back to the beginning to do things right this time. To do things over— to experience that joy again, even if everything still went down the way it did. To go back to when they still had hope. “What the hell happened to us, man?”
Cas squinted in confusion, an echo of his former self flashing across his face. “You know what happened. You never said yes, Sam did, then all of actual Hell was unleashed upon the earth.”
“No, I know, I mean—“ he sighed. “I just wish we could start over. I wish we could be how we used to, you and me, you know. Before…”
“Before I became a powerless, drugged-up hippie?”
“No, that’s not what I— before I became an obsessed asshole! Before this world chipped away at us so much that our pieces don’t even fit together anymore,” he complained, his fingers twitching.
Cas glanced down at where their hands were placed on the porch boards, their splayed fingers close together but not quite touching. The distance was electric, like a building static shock.
“You know… despite burying myself in women the way you taught me to do— the last time we had a ‘last night on earth’, I might add— my feelings for you never changed. They only grew. I like the physical sensations of sex, whoever they’re with, as do you— but you know more than anyone that that doesn’t mean anything. You and I, we will always fit together,” Cas said, closing the distance and intertwining their fingertips.
Dean let out a shaky breath.
Cas scooted closer until they were thigh-to-thigh, and shook out a tightly rolled joint from his sleeve cuff. “Got a light?”
Dean pulled out his old lighter— somehow, he’d never lost it in all this mess— and lit it for Cas while he inhaled. He watched Cas expertly blow a plume up into the night air, the smoke disappearing like a dandelion wish in the wind.
Cas ashed the joint before taking another hit and leaned into Dean’s space.
Cas tugged on Dean’s short strands, coaxing his head back so that Cas could exhale into him. Dean took it, willingly. Yes. Cas was the only angel he wanted inside him, even now. The only angel he wanted to say yes to. Dean closed his mouth, holding his breath long enough to press his lips to Cas’ before exhaling.
He dove in for more, kissing him desperately, open-mouthed, hungry. Cas chuckled, rolling back on his haunches so he could stand up. “Let’s take this inside, come on.”
Dean let Cas lead him inside, the bead strings grabbing at them as they passed.
As they walked deeper inside, Dean shed his jacket, his shirt, his other shirt, and then— possessed by wild instinct, not even completely sure of what he wanted or what he was doing anymore, Dean dropped to his knees in the middle of the floor.
Prostrate, looking up at the only divine being in his life— even without his wings or mojo, Cas would always be so full of light to him.
“Please,” he begged.
Cas took another hit, the cherry hissing softly as it burned. “Please what?” Teasing.
Please forgive me for what I’m going to do to you.
“I dunno. I don’t— just, please. I need you, Cas. I need—“
“Shh,” Cas leaned down and quieted him with another lungful of borrowed smoke, cupping his face. “I’ve got you,” Cas said, straddling his lap. He placed his hand over the handprint on his shoulder. Although it faded with time, Cas’ hand still fit perfectly. “I’ll always have you.”
Dean nodded eagerly, blinking back tears.
He didn’t know for sure what would happen tomorrow.
Maybe the Colt would work and he’d have to live the rest of his life cleaning up the mess, living with the fact that he’d killed his brother only after destroying the world because he couldn’t do it right the first few times he’d been asked to.
Maybe Lucifer would smite the hell out of Cas in front of him for the fun of it before snapping his neck, and what was left of the world would crack open and collapse in on itself like a dying star.
Maybe his old self would go back and prevent any of this from ever happening, and he and Cas would never have been together.
Maybe his old self would go back and prevent any of this from ever happening, and they would still fumble toward each other in the dark.
Maybe his old self would go back and make the same mistakes again, and he’d be doomed to end up right back here, on the floor of Cas’ cabin with Cas’ warm weight on his lap, the world perpetually ending for a ‘tomorrow night’ they’d never see. An ouroboros, going round and round forever without the Michael sword to sever its head.
All Dean knows is that right here, right now, he wants his last night to be good. He wants it to be with Cas. He wants to just... be, with Cas.
And Cas has him.
Dean sank deeper and deeper into Cas’ mouth as the weed hit, joining the melancholic swan song inside his veins.
“Let’s move to the bed,” Cas suggested, breaking off. Pitifully, Dean whined at the loss of contact as Cas climbed off his lap. Cas held him by his shoulders and pulled him up, walking him backward onto the bed.
He flicked the spent joint to the floor, their boots and pants following suit.
Layers, peeled back, flung to the side.
All that remained was them.
Dean borrowed a pump of lotion from Cas’ bedside table while he worked himself open with one hand. Cas scratched Dean’s skin with his stubble as he kissed up and down Dean’s neck and under his chin, all plump lips and hot smoky-sweet breath and teeth dragging along.
Dean sighed, leaning into it, all of it, arching his back to get a better reach behind himself.
“Let me,” Cas ordered, reaching over for a handful of lotion and taking over with one hand while he stroked himself hard with the other. All the while, Dean pressed every spare inch of himself against Cas’ skin, hands grabbing hipbones and thighs and chest.
They rolled over so Cas could recline against his pillows, and finally, Dean sank down onto Cas’ dick.
When his ass was flush with the base of Cas' shaft, Dean closed his eyes, clenching around the full feeling and savoring it. He didn’t want to let go.
“Come on, you gotta move, baby. I’m not going anywhere,” Cas murmured, nudging his forehead and stroking his hair back.
The gentleness made the floodgates break open.
Every pent-up repressed feeling, every regret, every unspoken fear, all his aching loneliness and hunger and guilt and want and loss from the last five years— from his whole life — rushed forth.
A sob tore through him, and he bit Cas’ shoulder, clutching desperately onto his back.
“Let it out, I’ve got you,” Cas assured as Dean rode him, holding him by the hips.
Dean shuddered.
As Cas pumped into him, he spoke with a soft ferocity: “I still think you’re a good man, Dean. I want you to know that. In spite of everything. What came to pass is not your fault, it just is. It’s how it was written.”
“No, no, I could’ve—“
“There are a million things each of us could have done, things we did do when we shouldn’t have. There’s no way of telling what choice is right or what’s wrong, not when..." he laughed. "Not when even God doesn't care anymore.”
“But I should’ve—“
“But you didn’t. And that’s okay. You had your reasons, and I know they were well-intentioned. You’re a good man,” Cas insisted.
“How the hell can you say that, when you know that I’m about to use you as bait? I’m no better than my fucking…” Dean slowed down, wiping away a furious tear. “I’m no better than my fucking Dad at this point. You deserve better, Cas.”
“We all did. But this is what we’re left with, and you’re… dealing, like all of us are. Even if you had told me your plan straightforwardly and had asked me to sacrifice myself, I would still do it. Neither of us has much faith in anything anymore, but I believe in you."
Dean turned his head, but Cas turned him back. “The lights were gonna go out for all of us at some point. If mine goes out in the service of potentially getting rid of Lucifer, or in preventing any of this from happening, then… well, that’s what you would call a ‘blaze of glory,’ is it not?”
Dean huffed, sniffing. “Yeah, I guess.” He hated how much of an influence he had on Cas sometimes.
“And you are certainly not your father. I would never want to fuck him, for one.”
Dean snorted, rolling his eyes. He had grown soft, so Cas stroked him and kissed him until he was hard again.
They broke apart. “Ain’t the road to Hell the one that’s paved with good intentions?” Dean asked, still unsure of Cas' acceptance.
Cas pressed his forehead to Dean’s, gripping his shoulder. “I pulled you out of Hell. We’ll go back together, too.”
Dean leaned in, pulling at his lower lip with his teeth, a few more tears slipping past his eyelids.
Cas wiped them away while he slid his tongue inside.
Hands, bodies, pushing and pulling; taking their jagged, jaded edges and slotting them together.
Even broken they were beautiful together, alight with what could have been.
“What if it doesn’t work and past me ends up right back here again?” Dean whispered.
“Then let’s give him a big finish to look forward to.”
Spurned on by the thought, they meshed into each other in a fury of canting hips and the slap of sweaty skin against skin, pressure building and building and rising to a crescendo—
“Cas!” He shouted, the two of them gripping each other tight as Cas filled him, and Dean came on that sensation alone.
Dean was suspended above himself, preserving the moment in amber.
He drifted back down, reaching his body with a sigh.
He rolled off and over, floppy-limbed and sated.
Dean watched, dazed, as Cas got up to pat through the pockets of their discarded clothes.
“How about some music?” Cas offered, arching an eyebrow, voice muffled as he lit a new joint.
“Hold this,” Cas let Dean take it while he rifled through a familiar box of stolen tapes, inserting one into a battery-run boombox.
“Well you’re dirty and sweet / Clad in black, don’t look back and I love you…”
“T. Rex, really?” Dean asked, the corner of his mouth pulling up a little.
Cas mouthed along to the lyrics as he crawled back into bed, taking the joint back and inhaling deeply before transferring his breath to Dean.
As Dean inhaled, he imagined Cas’ breath giving him new life. It tasted like undeserved forgiveness.
They still had no idea what was going to happen tomorrow, if it would change anything, if it would matter.
But for the moment they had each other, and it was enough.
Dean wrapped an arm around Cas, who settled his head into the crook of Dean’s neck. They held each other, trading hits, the smoke and music rising up above them to meet the heavens.
“Get it on, bang a gong, get it on…”