Chapter Text
Dean collects the ashes, after.
He does it alone, the same way he wraps the body on his own. Dean would never describe the dead as peaceful—seen too many, maybe. Vampires choking on the blood clogging their throats; shapeshifters with silver knives driven through their chests; vic’s of the week holding their intestines in their arms and Dean standing over them without a single damn way to stop it. But like this—his eyes closed, eyelashes shadowing his cheeks—Dean might be tempted to use the word “serene” if it weren’t for how pale Cas looks in the muted light of the lakehouse.
(He thinks about kissing that soft, cold, blue mouth, or at least going to the Impala and grabbing something better to wrap Cas in. Something that isn’t a gauzy curtain or a scratchy bundle of sheets, but if Dean steps out of this room, he’ll bite a bullet before he walks back in.)
He builds the pyre, eases the body gently on top, and watches the flames burn as bright and hot as a grease fire. When it’s over, all that’s left is a scorched spot of dark, dead earth.
So Dean gets the ashes. Then he takes the bundle of hastily wrapped blankets—the same shade of blue as the walls of the nursery, the only room in the entire house Cas and Kelly put any effort into decorating—from Sam’s arms, tosses him Baby’s keys, and climbs into the passenger seat.
They stop at a KwikTrip before leaving North Cove. Dean hands Satan’s spawn to Sam before he gets out, muttering, “Gotta piss,” and heading inside. He bypasses the bathrooms, hooks around the chip and candy aisle, and pushes out the back exit into an empty lot.
It’s stupid. This always makes him feel stupid—it’s never done anyone shit, doing this, but Dean is fresh out of options.
“Okay, Chuck or God or whatever.” He casts a quick, furtive glance over his shoulder. He starts again, swallowing his pride, and tries to make his voice sound the way it should, soft and pleading and desperate. That should give Chuck enough of a hard-on to fucking listen. “I need your help. You left us. You said everything would be fine, but it’s not. We’re not. We’ve lost everything, and now you're gonna bring him back. You're gonna bring back Cas, you're gonna bring back Mom, you're gonna bring 'em all back—all of them. Even Crowley. ‘Cause after everything you've done—you owe us, you sonofabitch. So you get your ass down here, and you make this right. Right here. Right now.”
He waits. For what, he hasn’t the faintest. A flash of light, an earthquake, a storm—but nothing comes. He takes a breath, ignoring the jackrabbit of his pulse, and forces himself to look around. The staticky sound of some pop song peters out of the speakers overhead. A gust of wind blows past, warm from the lake, and rustles the empty chip bags littering the ground. He takes another breath and smells the sour stench of gasoline, hears the faraway ding of a new customer.
Nothing.
The welcome sign on the exit door splits under Dean’s hands. He slams his fist into it again one, two, three times, until it’s nothing but splintered chunks of wood at his feet. He kicks it aside and puts his head against the bricked wall, swallowing the pathetic sound that attempts to crawl out of his throat. What did he expect? Elvis has left the fucking building. God’s never listened, and he’s never given a damn anyway.
*
The days blur into one another. Time is all disjointed, ticking by too slowly or too quickly, backward and forward. He feels concussed. He stops leaving the bed after he accidentally steps on an empty Jim Beam and it shatters under his weight. The Antichrist wakes up when Dean shouts out a curse but doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t even cry, just blinks slowly at him as Dean picks the shards from his foot.
One morning—or night; gun to his head, Dean doesn’t have a clue—Sam corners him in the kitchen and says, “Dean, second shift.”
Dean doesn’t look at him. He scoops a spoonful of formula into a bottle and squints at the digital clock on the microwave, but the numbers are indecipherable.
He hears the soft footfalls of Sam inching from the door to the counter, as steady and slow as a hunter not wanting to scare off game. “You need to eat something. Sleep. Take a shower.”
Dean’s voice is thin and brittle when he says, “Leave it alone.”
Another step. “Just let me take him.”
“No.”
Dean closes the microwave door and punches in one minute. The Antichrist stirs at the sound of the whirring, watching the bottle rotate under the yellow-orange light. Dean watches the Antichrist. It’s only a few days old, head all misshapen, toes and fingers kinda blue, and all slobbery. In the blurry hours after they left North Cove, the weight of the Antichrist in Dean’s arms briefly reminded him of Sam as a newborn. Dean had the good sense to cut off that train of thought before it could make it far from the station.
“If Jack was going to sock-puppet us, he would’ve done it by now.”
“How do you know it hasn’t? We don’t know what’s on second, who’s on first—“
“I know,” Sam cuts in, “but if you keep going like this, Dean, you’re going to crash—“
“I’m not letting you hold it. No way.”
(Paradise, Cas said to him. He showed me paradise.)
The microwave beeps.
“Just—” Sam sighs. “Put him on your bed. You can take my room. Dude,” he says, “you look like crap. You’re not up to snuff to fight a puppy right now, much less a baby god.” He shakes his head. “Dean, you haven’t even changed clothes.”
Every instinct in him screams that this is a stupid idea. They’re square in the middle of No Man's Land. The Antichrist could be some kind of supernatural radium. Prolonged exposure could be slowly killing them both. It might not even be a baby at all; maybe it chose this form because it knows they would hesitate at the thought of hurting it. But Dean also knows Sam’s right.
The smell of ash and smoke clings to Dean’s clothes, even now. It’s caught him off-guard twice already, in those fragile moments between consciousness and sleep when Dean thinks if he’s just quiet enough, if he doesn’t move too fast, the world will resolve itself. And then he’ll smell the smoke, feel the weight across from him on the bed, and it’s like he’s back on that beach, watching it happen all over again.
“Trust me,” Sam says.
“Ain’t got anything to do with trusting you.” He takes the bottle out of the microwave. “I’ll take my own room.”
*
When Dean dreams of Cas, he dreams of him alive.
After the shitshow with Ramiel and the Lance of Michael, Cas stays at the Bunker for a week. An entire week of Dean gorging himself on Cas. Taking him to Goodwill to shop for new shoes, experimenting with recipes for Cas to try, and doing surgery on the pimpmobile when Dean notices the weird sound it makes whenever Cas uses the accelerator.
“This thing is a pile of crap,” Dean says, closing the hood with a dull thwump as he cleans the oil off his hands. Cas is leaning against the rear, trenchcoat rucked up against his back, and staring up at the sky, the few stars that wink in and out of sight. The car is still warm under Dean’s hands even though the sun set half an hour ago. “Couldn’t you have at least bought it in a different color?”
Cas frowns. “What’s wrong with this color?”
“It’s gold.”
Cas’ eyebrows dip like he still doesn’t get it. Dean wants to kiss him.
He throws the rag aside and gulps down the last of his water. He’d kill for a cold beer right now, but he tries to lay off whenever Cas is around. “Forget it. Hey, you know what we should watch later? Life As We Know It. It’s a bunch of feel-good corny shit, you’ll love it. What’dya say?”
“Whatever you want, Dean,” he says in the way he has. The Cas voice. It lets Cas say things that would sound sarcastic coming from anyone else, but from his mouth, sound like simple truth. Like he really doesn’t care what they do as long as they do it together.
*
Dean wakes up with a blinding headache. His brain feels like it’s trying to pop out through his eye socket. The bedcovers are a tangled heap at his feet, and there’s a spot of drool on his pillowcase. His bandaged foot throbs hot and sharp. He scrubs a shaky hand over his face as he pats blindly around for his phone only to find it wedged between the bed frame and his nightstand, dead.
Then he remembers: Sam.
The floor is formless under his feet when he tumbles out of bed. He half-stumbles, half-limps his way out of his room and down the hall, checking his pockets too late for an angel blade or his gun. He rounds the corner and makes it to the library, bracing himself for the worst, and is met with the sight of Sam, absently rocking the Antichrist as he scrolls through something on his laptop.
He says something to Dean when he sees him lingering in the doorway, but Dean doesn’t hear a word of it. He’s too busy studying the shape and color of his eyes. Brown irises, round pupils; the same eyes Dean’s been looking into his whole life.
“Dean,” he repeats, not for the first time. “How often do babies cry?”
Dean pulls out a chair and sits down, the nausea that accompanies a bad hangover catching up to him all at once. “Hell, that’s all babies do. Shit and cry.”
“Jack hasn’t cried once since you fell asleep.”
Dean nods and doesn’t mention that the Antichrist didn’t cry when he was awake, either. Not once. “How long was I out?”
“Almost two days. Do you think that’s normal?” he goes on. “The crying thing?”
“What about any of this seems normal to you?” Dean evaluates him. “How’re you feeling?”
“Fine. Sleepy, I guess. I set up an alarm to feed Jack every four hours, and I picked up more diapers yesterday.”
“You know what I meant.”
He shrugs, shoulders strung tight. “Haven’t been mind-controlled into assassinating the governor yet.”
“Exactly,” Dean says. “Yet.”
A muscle tics in his jaw. “Right.”
“Okay.” Dean holds out his arms. They still feel heavier than lead. “Hand it over.”
“Nah,” Sam says. He gestures vaguely. “He’s finally comfortable. You go make yourself some breakfast. Take another shower.”
“Sam—”
“Dean. A couple more hours won’t do anything. You might as well eat something.”
A skillet does sound amazing right now, Dean thinks. The only thing sloshing around in his stomach is some cheap booze. And he probably reeks.
“If anything happens—”
“Yeah,” Sam says, hand cupped protectively under the dip of the Antichrist’s skull, “I know.”
*
The CDC waits at least 24 hours before declaring a zone non-radioactive. Dean waits 72 before admitting that the Antichrist doesn’t pose any immediate threat. Not to them, anyway. At the very least, it probably sees them as its only source of food and shelter. Maslow’s hierarchy and all that. It must’ve done the math and realized it wouldn’t last long without them, but just because trouble comes a-knocking doesn’t mean they should give it a place to sit down.
Sam has taken a shine to it. He’s gung-ho at the idea of playing house with the Antichrist, scouring the internet for mommy forums and parenting books. Over breakfast, he tells Dean about different powders and formulas they should try, what soaps they should avoid in case the Antichrist has allergies, and important stages in child development they need to keep track of since they can’t exactly go to a pediatrician.
It kinda goes in one ear and out the other, for Dean. Sleep and food have helped, but Dean still wakes up cradling empty bottles of liquor in the mornings, feeling like something crawled into him in the middle of the night and died. He tries to occupy his time with things he knows. He goes out and buys diapers, a baby monitor, bottles, and clothes. On the first of these trips, Dean deliberates in front of the shelves of formula for too long. Ultimately, he opts against buying one of the cheaper ones even though it means ditching their credit card faster. Those cause baby cancer or some shit.
At first, he drinks. Kind of a lot.
A trick he learned in his early 20s: a bad hangover guarantees a dreamless sleep. He drinks like he’s trying to burn a hole through his gut, mixing tequila and Bud until he’s dizzy and stumble-y and numb. One night, he gropes his way out of the Bunker and out into the dark, hopping from tree trunk to tree trunk to keep from landing on his face.
He hears something behind him. He stops. Listens, and hears it again. This time, he recognizes the sound.
“Fuck,” he says, with feeling, and tries hopping a bit faster. Not his best plan. Four trees down, he lands wrongfooted on a clump of roots and overbalances, tipping over onto his shoulder, but the bottle of tequila tucked under his arm survives unscathed. Yahtzee.
“Dean,” and there’s Sam’s voice, his face, right above Dean, staring him down, “you gotta slow down.”
“S’fine,” he says, leveraging himself onto his elbows. He gets the spins and flops back down. “I’m just gonna stay down here for a bit.”
“Not that.” Sam yanks the bottle from Dean’s hands. Dean makes grabby hands at it, but Sam puts his muddy boot on Dean’s chest to keep him down. “This. I get that you’re grieving, but I’m not gonna let you kill yourself.”
“A drink never hurt anyone.”
A baffled pause. “I don’t even know where to begin with that.”
He sighs. “Can’t be in there, Sam. Just can’t. I can’t fucking, uh. Sleep. Every time I sleep, I—“ dream of Cas, and wake up and remember he’s dead “—just makes it worse, y’know?”
“Yeah,” Sam murmurs. “Yeah, I get it.” Dean hears the sound of something dripping, like the soft fall of water from a faucet. He realizes it’s Sam dumping the rest of the tequila into the dirt. What a waste. “But I can’t watch you like this. You need to do something else.”
Dean snorts. “Do what? Go on a hunt?”
“No,” Sam says, but doesn’t give any suggestions on what that something should be. “What’re you doing out here?”
He was heading toward the clearing near the pond, where Dean first taught Cas how to shoot a gun. Newly human, Cas had been a lousy shot. Couldn’t hit a soda can from ten meters to save his fucking life. He’d been different then, more irritable and prone to impatience. He didn’t know how to be bad at something, but he’d sure been giving it one hell of a shot that day, missing can after can, one after the other, until the gun got so hot he’d had to drop it.
Dean couldn’t remember the last time he laughed so hard. It’d pissed Cas off so royally that he’d shot at Dean. It was only when Dean shouted, “God fucking dammit! What the hell, dude?” that Cas cracked a smile, and Dean thought to himself that Cas was such a dickhead, proud and reckless and just a little bit beloved.
“Don’t know,” Dean says.
*
Evening sky, his hands slick with oil, and Dean says, “This thing is a pile of crap. Couldn’t you have at least bought it in a different color?”
This time, Cas is wearing the clothes they bought him. A t-shirt that’s just a touch too big around the shoulders but jeans that hug his thighs in a way that’s been making Dean’s brain scream LEGS all day.
Cas shrugs. “I like it,” and adds, “give me that,” as he plucks the rag from Dean’s grip and takes his wrist in hand. Dean’s oil-stained fingertips brush against the milky inside of Cas’ wrist, leaving little muddy smears. His heart jumps to his mouth.
“Cas, I’m all dirty,” he says, trying to pull away. He can’t stand the thought of getting his mess all over Cas. This close, he can smell him, freshly-cut grass and ozone. Dean can’t be trusted this close to him in the best of times. Like this—Cas’ hands on him, Cas dressed in the clothes Dean picked out for him—Dean is hanging on by a thread.
“I don’t mind.” He brings Dean’s hand up to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. Stray bits of oil leave a faint, charcoal-colored smear on Cas’ chin, like a paint stroke on canvas. Dean shivers, helpless and tingly because this wasn’t how it went down. Cas never touched him like this, but fuck, he’d wanted it so bad. Even his teeth had ached with it.
When Cas kisses him, Dean digs his fingernails into Cas’ shoulders, hoping that if he holds on tight enough, this time he might stay.
*
Sam hoards the Antichrist to himself like a doting and neurotic first-time mother, refusing to put it down even when his arms go staticky and sore. Dean finally buys him a carrier just to keep his fucking arms from falling off. Dean doesn’t like having to leave the Antichrist in Sam’s custody for hours at a time. He saw what it did to Cas and Kelly. It screws with your head, he knows it, but he can’t stand a spoon in it yet, and bringing it up to Sam will just cause a blow-out fight that Dean doesn’t have the energy to deal with. Instead, with the liquor cabinet pillaged and thoughts of Cas’ mouth crowding his skull, he goes a little insane cleaning the Bunker. He deep-cleans the kitchen, completely reorganizes every hallway closet, and dusts the entirety of the library.
Sam catches Dean in the middle of him reading one of the million random-as-shit papers they have lying around in the archives (He-wolf, she-wolf: A study in werewolf transgenderism) to ask, “Are you using hot water to do the laundry?”
Dean casts him a dark look before pointedly pausing the cassette player in the middle of “Ramble On.” Interrupting Zep is strictly for life-or-death emergencies. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“All of Jack’s clothes shrunk.”
“I’ve been doing laundry since before you were born.”
“At four?” he demands. “You were doing laundry at four?”
He makes to leave, but Dean gets up from his chair, sets the paper aside, and says, “Hey, hold on. I got something to show you.”
Sam catches the phone that Dean tosses him and thumbs through the article Dean’s read about five times already. It’s from a local news channel in Topeka; three dead after being set on fire in their own homes. There were no signs of forced entries in any of the three cases. Authorities have made no obvious connections between the three vic’s, found no motive, and have no leads. Anyone with pertinent information is encouraged to call the hotline at the bottom of the page.
“Uh, okay,” Sam says with a frown.
Dean claps his hands together impatiently. “Well? What’re you waiting for? If we leave now, we can be there before noon.”
“Dean,” he says slowly, “we can’t. What about Jack?”
“I think we’ve given Lucifer Jr. enough time to adjust to the world. It’s about time we get back on the saddle.”
“Dude. Do you really think it’s a good idea to take a baby with us on a hunt? We don’t even have a car seat.”
“You can play babysitter. Stay behind in the motel room. Finish the next chapter of The Conscious Parent.”
Sam shakes his head. “Dean,” he sighs, sounding disappointed, and it makes Dean bristle, suddenly furious.
“What?” he snaps.
“I can’t believe you’re suggesting we do this.”
“Do what? Our jobs? The job that saves people? Crowley’s dead, Kelly’s dead, Cas is—“ his throat closes up before he can finish. He swallows the rest of that sentence down like glass. “And now, what? You’re suggesting we sit here with our thumbs up our asses?”
“We can pass off the hunt. Have Garth tell someone else to handle it.” After a strained silence, Sam asks, incredulous, “Do you seriously not care?”
“What do you want from me, Sam?”
“A little humanity, maybe?” At the noise Dean makes, Sam insists, “I’m serious. Do you think I haven’t noticed you carry angel blades around the Bunker? Jesus,” he says, “you moved the weapons bag out of the car and into your room.”
“We barely know what that thing is.”
“Yes, we do,” Sam cracks in. “He is a child.”
“It’s a monster,” Dean says with a swift kick to the chair beside him. It careens toward the wall, where it slams and knocks a table over, glasses shattering. Sam doesn’t flinch. “What the fuck is it going to take to get that through your head? Protecting that thing is gonna bite you in the ass.”
Sam’s voice trembles with the effort to keep calm. “I was a freak, too. Dad told you to shoot me, but you didn’t. Did that bite you in the ass?”
“That was different, and you know it.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he demands. “Because you’re family.”
Sam barks out a short, bitter laugh. He rubs a hand over his face, smiling grimly. “This is such bullshit,” he says. “I can’t believe I have to explain this to you. Cas was my friend, too, Dean. He was family, and we owe it to him to protect his son.”
Dean nearly kills him. He swears to God, Dean could beat him to shit—almost does it, has to hurl everything within arms reach against walls to keep from putting his hands on him. When he comes back to himself, he’s surrounded by bent lampshades and books with split spines, dimly aware of what he’d been shouting, over and over and over: “It isn't Cas' son, it's Lucifer's.”
And therein lies the crux of the issue. They can try to train it, dress it up, give it a name, but they can never change its nature. They’ll never erase its primal animal instinct to sink its teeth into whatever warm, quivering thing it can get its hands on, and all it takes is once. Once means letting it get a taste for it. One misstep means the difference between life and death.
Sam says, “You sound like Dad.”
That, he thinks, is what Bobby would’ve called a shot across the bow. It strikes him with all the shock of an arrow, pinning him where he stands.
Sam leaves without so much as another look at him.
*
It doesn’t take long for Dean to pack his things. Sam was right. As soon as they got back from North Cove, Dean moved the weapons bag into his room. He spent a lot of time that first week tending to his guns, soothed by the easy wash-rinse-repeat of the whole thing.
Dean grabs it from where he hid it under his bed and yanks a few shirts off their hangers on his way out. He doesn’t see a wink of Sam on his way to the garage and only stops looking for him once the Bunker is a speck in his rearview mirror.
You sound like Dad. Christ. Dean was just—he was trying to keep them alive. Not like Dad did. Dad’s solution to this would’ve been to eliminate the threat. Hell, St. Francis of Assisi would shoot that baby. But Dean isn't a psycho or a Catholic. He doesn’t blame a fucking baby for everything going pear-shaped. It’s just—for fuck’s sake, what was Sam fucking expecting? This is how every single one of their biggest mistakes has begun: putting faith in the wrong people and convincing each other to not judge how far the leap is before they make it. Dean knows how this ends, how it always fucking ends.
It’s a pretty straight shot from Lebanon to Topeka. He plans on following KS-181 for 80 miles until he hits US-24, but at the last second, he merges onto the right lane and takes the exit onto US-281. The car behind him blares its horn.
“Fuck,” he grits out, slamming the palm of his hand against Baby’s wheel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He fishes his phone out of his pocket, stewing in his frustration as he punches in the number and waits for the call to connect. He doesn’t have to wait long.
“Hey, Dean-o,” Garth says brightly. “Good to hear from you.”
“Hey, Garth. How ya doin’?”
“Alive and healthy, brother,” he says, and Jesus, Dean would say that the apple pie life has turned Garth into a suburban mom if he hadn’t always been like this, “so pretty damn good. Bess says hi.”
“How she doin’?”
“Good, but I don’t think that’s why ya called. What’s up?”
“I got a case in Topeka. I need you to find someone to get on it.”
“Topeka? That’s pretty close to ya’ll, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He works his jaw, sticking to the right lane so he doesn’t miss the entrance to US-36. “I’ll send you the details.”
“Okay,” says Garth, voice dubious. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Just get someone on it.” He hangs up before Garth can ask any more questions that are bound to piss Dean off. If he yells at Garth, he’ll just feel guilty later. Garth isn’t Sam. He won’t yell back.
He catches the last of rush hour before he takes the first exit to Smith Center, a podunk of fewer than two thousand people. It’s quiet and calm, especially this late in the day. A few seniors sit on their front porches, catching the last rays of the sun as they listen to the radio. Dean drives past a group of teenagers walking aimlessly down the sidewalk, emptying a pack of soda between them.
He parks in an empty lot near Wagner Park. The weather hasn’t improved much in the last few weeks. The chill bites at him, and when he walks through the grass, it’s still slightly wet from the melting snow. Dry, unraked leaves crunch under his boots.
It doesn’t take him long to reach the windmill, isolated by what, in the summer, must be lush trees and bushes. Not too far away, the stream’s waves lap softly against the bank. On warmer days, the grass will be greener, the water will gleam over jagged rocks, and the tree branches will cast a long shadow over where Dean stands beside it.
He untucks the box from under his arm. It used to belong to his mom, before the fire, and after she died, John squirreled it away in the Impala’s trunk. Inside were polaroids of Mary as a young woman, sometimes with a softer, alien version of John tucked against her side. It kept their wedding rings, Dean’s childish drawings, and Sam’s ultrasound pictures. He transferred all those things into the Bunker when they moved in, so the container itself has been collecting dust under Baby’s seats for years.
It made sense for Dean to put the ashes in it.
“Hey, buddy.” He grips the box tighter in his hands, needing to claw back some semblance of control from the sudden well of emotion before he goes on. “I, uh. Listen, I’m not great at this whole—I know this isn’t that conservatory in Brazil you liked. But cut me some slack. If I booked a plane, I’d have the government so far up my ass I’d be reciting Miranda rights in my sleep. This place has a fucking … old Dutch windmill or whatever. You like that old-timey stuff.”
A brisk gust of wind blows past, shaking the knobby branches above him. For a moment, the bare tree combined with the yellowed grass makes Dean wonder if this is a mistake. If he should keep looking for a better place to do this. Then he reminds himself that people will celebrate their birthdays here. Little kids will run around blowing bubbles and chasing dogs after school. He reminds himself of a time when he sat on a bench at a park just like this, and Cas, squinting at the kids swinging from monkey bars, told him that he'd prayed for the salvation of the town, not the seal. The first crack in his chassis.
“My dad, he—he used to look at Sam in this way, you know? Watched him like a hawk. Sometimes, when he was holding his gun, I swear, I thought he might—“ he breaks off. “He never did, but uh. I never got over it, you know? Think about it all the time. Always told myself I wouldn’t wind up like my old man. Almost did it with Lisa and Ben, but I fumbled that one, too. I couldn’t save Mom, couldn’t save you. I can’t even save a little kid. Sam keeps trying to fix it but I just keep dragging him down.” He admits, “I’m scaring the kid.”
“I don’t know if you can hear me through the Matrix or whatever but—fuck, I’m so pissed at you. You’re a stubborn asshole, you know that? I told you this would all come crashing around your ears, but you wouldn’t get your head out of your ass. You went behind our backs and lied to my fucking face. You’re such a pain in my ass. I miss you like hell.”
Dean’s never been one for heartfelt eulogies. He hopes it’s enough, ‘cause it’s the best he’s got. He opens the box and says, “Peace be upon you, you stupid sonofabitch,” and puts the idiot to rest.
Dean nurses a warm beer against Baby’s hood until nightfall. Hardly anyone is on the road by the time he leaves. Twilight squeezes in on all sides, and the quiet reminds Dean of the months he spent doing this with Cas. In those days, Cas might’ve been human, but his body didn’t know how to be. His stomach would reverse gears every time he ate because it didn’t understand digestion. Poor blood circulation meant Dean often sat Cas down by the stove when he cooked to keep him from shivering. His internal clock was all fucked, and it would take hours of driving in circles before Cas could fall asleep, his face pressed against the glass. Dean was glad they took those drives when no one else was on the road. He would fantasize about reaching out to touch Cas’ sleep-warm skin, only remembering he was at the wheel when one of Baby’s tires hit gravel.
He closes his eyes and imagines it again now. Cas curled against the door like a pill bug, neck twisted at an angle that would hurt like hell when he woke up. When he opens his eyes, the car is empty, and Dean puts Cas’ name up on a shelf with his parents and his friends and all the people he’ll never get back.