Chapter Text
Everything is back to normal, well, as normal as it can be.
But Cas is gone.
We are here, but Cas is gone.
That’s the first thing that comes to Sam’s mind when he gets into the car after Jack leaves, and sees his brother’s hands hovering over the steering wheel, shaking.
Dean was holding it together pretty well even thirty seconds ago. But now that everything is set to order after defeating Chuck, and they have to drive back to the bunker, maybe it’s hitting him in full force at this particular moment- Sam thinks. He looks at his brother’s face, and all he sees is sheer panic and helplessness- things that rarely ever make their way onto Dean’s features, no matter what type of apocalyptic event they are bulldozing through.
Now things are finally calm, and the only one among the three of them to take the hit this time was Castiel. He sacrificed his life for Dean, cause that’s what he does, and this is probably the point where Dean finally breaks.
Sam reaches out and carefully places his hand on Dean’s shoulder, trying his best to keep his touch gentle, as if he’s offering his hand to a feral cat to sniff. His brother still doesn’t stop shaking, the horrified look in his eyes still doesn’t go away, so Sam speaks up.
“Dean, you alright?” Sam knows it’s a dumb question- of course, Dean is not alright. But he has to ask. The sound of his voice seems to drag Dean out of his trance. He startles a little, turns his head to stare at Sam with a blank look in his eyes. He looks down and doesn’t say anything for a good minute. When Sam decides to say something again, Dean lets out a barely audible whisper.
“Can you drive, Sammy? Please?”
Sam feels like his heart just broke into a few thousand pieces for ten different reasons, but he manages to mutter a simple ‘of course’.
During his drive to the bunker, he keeps glancing at Dean, whose eyes and face are blank, but the hands on his lap don’t seem to stop trembling like dry leaves in a winter breeze.
After arriving at the bunker, Dean goes straight to his room and doesn’t come out till it’s morning, that too around thirty minutes past eleven. Last night, Sam had thought about asking him if he wanted something for dinner, but decided against it. Truth be told, Sam simply didn’t know what he could do. In the past, he had tried to give Dean space to talk about his feelings, which never went well. And now, Sam himself doesn’t know how to deal with this- Cas being gone. Yes, he has been gone before, but judging by Dean’s behavior, this time it seems to be a permanent goodbye. Sam still doesn’t know exactly what happened as he was too scared to ask Dean. All he knows is that Cas is gone, who was one of the people closest to himself, and his older brother is broken because of it, and Sam didn’t even get to say goodbye to the angel.
So, last night, despite being hungry and making a sandwich, Sam couldn’t bring himself to eat it for more than two bites, and had fallen asleep after crying in exhaustion from the loss of one of his closest friends in his entire life.
Now, Dean is sitting at the kitchen table with his mug of coffee wrapped in his palms, staring into the coffee as if it holds answers to questions that he can’t begin to ask himself. Sam notices his swollen, bloodshot eyes and the same broken look plastered all over his face from yesterday. His mind oscillates between asking Dean how he’s feeling and just leaving him be while he heats some leftover meal- and that’s when he hears his brother sniffle, as if he’s crying.
Sam turns and sees the devastating helplessness clouding Dean’s face. He’s full-on sobbing by now with his head down, his body shaking, and trying his absolute best not to make a sound. Abruptly getting up and going to another room would alert Sam just as much, so he sits there and tries to control his tears, failing miserably.
It breaks Sam. Again. He can’t see his brother suffer all alone like this. Not when Chuck isn’t controlling the narrative anymore, and they have a choice in everything they do. So, Sam chooses to sit by his brother and pull him into a hug by wrapping his arms around Dean’s shoulders.
Dean leans into Sam’s shoulder, surprising Sam, and doesn’t hide the fact that he’s crying anymore. He weeps into Sam’s shirt and holds onto him as tightly as he can with his shaking hands. His sobs start pouring out of him like blood from an open wound, and the sound of his cries renders Sam helpless. Not knowing what to do, Sam just holds Dean for the time being and lets tears slip from his eyes as well.
There are so many questions to ask, and so many suspicions to confirm as the truth. But Sam doesn’t want to take apart this fragile thing. The walls around Dean’s years of repressed feelings have finally crumbled, he’s letting Sam see his tears and even hold him- so Sam just hopes, he really hopes that with time, Dean would tell him everything- things that Dean himself kept trapped in the deepest corner of his mind, things that would not have come to the light without a dead best friend between them.
Sam might be four years younger than his brother, who practically raised him, who had to be his father and his mother, but he wasn’t born yesterday. If there is one person in the whole world whom he understands and can read, it’s Dean. He had noticed all the stolen glances and lingering stares between Dean and Cas, the way Dean would smile at Cas as if he was feeling the first ray of sunshine on his face after days of gloomy rain. The fact that Dean sometimes doubled down on not feeling a thing whenever he became too obvious didn’t escape Sam’s notice either.
The biggest proof was how excruciatingly miserable Dean would get every time Cas supposedly died. Sam has seen his older brother succumb to that pit of endless despair far too many times, but none of those even compares to how Dean is faring this time.
So, for now, Sam just holds Dean close, hoping that this utter helplessness that he feels can be cured sometime soon.
~~~~~~~~~
“He told me that he loved me.” Dean randomly announces one afternoon, after a few days of consistent crying and nightmares that Sam had held him through. The nightmares were more difficult to deal with. Sam couldn’t simply hold Dean close to break him free from it; that would have prompted Dean to unknowingly hit his younger brother in his sleep. So, Sam had to wait by the door and scream and beg Dean to break out of his horrible dreams. The feeling of powerlessness only intensified day after day. Asking Dean to disclose what actually happened was out of the question at his current state, which is why Sam tried his best to be patient.
Maybe now, Dean is finally ready to talk.
“What? Who?”
“Cas. Before the Empty took him away, he said he loved me. In fact,” Dean let out a bitter laugh, harshly wiping at his teary eyes, “it took him away because he loved me, and- and said it out loud.”
Sam stays silent for a moment, hoping Dean will elaborate on his own.
“He- he had made a deal with the Empty in heaven when we were trying to save Jack, that it would spare Jack, but take Cas away as soon as he felt a moment of true happiness.” Dean’s voice breaks, and he can barely keep it above a shaking whisper, yet he continues, “Sammy, he said that he would be truly happy only by saying it, that he’d never be able to have what he really wanted. He believed that. He wanted me, Sam. He said- he said he learned to care, to love, because of me.”
Choking on a broken sob, Dean leans in to rest his head on his brother’s shoulder, hiding his face. Sam wraps him in a tight embrace, one of his hands gently cradling the back of Dean’s head. For a moment, he thinks back to when they had just lost their mother. Dean had held him, comforted him like this for years when he was just a baby. Perhaps the embrace helps his older brother relax a bit, as he stops sobbing for just a moment, and whispers, “Cas said he loved me, Sammy. He loved me. It got him dead.”
For the next few seconds, Sam can’t move or say anything, so he just holds Dean close. He always had a strong suspicion that his brother and Cas had feelings for each other. It was as clear and bright as daylight- the loyalty, devotion, and pure, unadulterated love between them. Sam never did say anything, knowing how repressed Dean was about his own feelings, how their father was. He knew about the ghosts of the lesbian nuns, that John had sent Dean to salt and burn their bones all by himself. Those spirits were not even causing any trouble, and mentioning that they were lesbians in his diary entry was unnecessary, as it carried no importance to hunting itself. Unless it was about making a statement, a glaring warning for Dean, and Sam was smart enough to realize that. It was just another reason why Sam never pushed Dean to express his emotions about this specific topic. Sam cannot even imagine the amount of internalized homophobia, self-hate, and shame Dean had to let go of just so he could openly break down after losing his best friend, to even have this conversation right now.
John had brought up Dean (well, more like commanded over him), so it’s recognizable that he had instilled this deep fear in Dean instead of accepting his own child. Sam, on the other hand, was brought up by Dean; perhaps that’s why Sam never struggled with shame about this. Well, he has his own fair share of dealing with the shame and fear of being the other, being different (again, a big thanks to John Winchester and his awesome parenting skills), but Dean has always accepted him.
While Sam was lost in his thoughts, Dean had composed himself a bit. Now he speaks up again, this time with a hint of frustration in his voice.
“I love him too, Sammy. I love him so much, and I’ve always loved him. For years, I fought this feeling, thinking it was wrong. I felt so fucking ashamed for all of it. Took me a long while to accept myself, to get it into my head that there was nothing wrong with loving him, or any other man, for that matter. There was nothing to be ashamed of. Then, for a while, I thought he didn’t love me the same way; he was an angel after all. I thought, maybe angels didn’t feel love the same way as humans.” Dean pauses, takes a deep breath, and wipes his tears away. He doesn’t look Sam in the eyes all this time, but he stays put and doesn’t hide his face either.
“I was wrong, again. I guess I knew that he had feelings for me, but I kinda assumed it was my own wishful thinking. And somewhere along the line, I started telling myself that it won’t work out. If I ever lost him after…. after being with him, I couldn’t live. So, I just stayed quiet about it. I wish I had told him, Sammy. I wish he knew that I love him too. Even when the Empty was taking him away, I just couldn’t say anything, I just listened to him, standing there like a fucking statue. I- so much was going on in those few seconds, and after saying that he loved me, Cas pushed me away. The Empty- it poured through the frigging walls and I couldn’t- I couldn’t say anything out loud…. I just kept saying ‘I love you, I love you’ in my head, hoping that Cas would hear me. I don’t know if he heard it, Sam. I don’t know. I just want him back, please. I need him back.”
Tears keep falling from Dean’s swollen eyes, uncontrolled. He just bared his heart to his brother, revealed all the secrets he had kept hidden for all these years. Sam just reaches out to pull him into a hug again. He is crying too, his body shaking with muffled sobs.
What can he say? ‘Don’t worry, Dean, we will get him back’?! It seems like this time it was final; Cas is not coming back again. Sam will not stop trying, though. Maybe one last time. He has to. For his brother, he has to try, at least.
Sam doesn’t voice his thoughts or determination to try to bring Cas back. He can’t upset Dean further with any false hope. He doesn’t know what he can say to his brother to bring him even a sliver of solace; no word can help; Sam knows it to his core. So, he simply holds his brother close, cradles his tired head resting on his shoulder, and kisses the side of his head.
They stay like that till both of them can’t cry anymore. Dean’s head resting on Sam’s shoulder feels heavier, so Sam helps him to his room to get some sleep.
Sam sits on his own bed after making sure that Dean is asleep.
Then he tries, one last time.
He prays to Jack.