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He should’ve seen it coming, what happens then, because it’s been a long time that Cas has been saying these things, a long time that Dean’s watched him silently suffer but not speak up, and when Cas finally does say it—when he finally verbalizes what’s been implied for so long with a clench of his jaw and those eyes—those bright, bright eyes, Dean thinks—Dean feels his whole form shake, a shudder that goes through him that leaves his body chilled, that leaves his mind frozen (it scares him more than death).
“You think I deserve to die?” Cas says and Dean feels himself shatter.
He tries to tell him. Hell, Dean tries so hard to tell him that he matters, that “I’m worried, Cas,” and that he didn’t mean those things that he said while he was busy bickering, and Cas pretends that yes, yes, he knows that he matters, he knows what Dean means, but when Cas acknowledges it, there’s a smile on Cas’ face, a smile that’s so automatic and Dean knows that it’s not real because Dean’s spent so long sporting ones just like it (and he was hurting then, Dean remembers, and now Cas is hurting, too).
After they finish their beers, Sam’s gone, says he needs an early night but he gives Dean a meaningful look before he leaves, a little jerk of his head in Cas’ direction—Cas who’s sitting there looking at the beer in his hands, picking at the label with small slow movements, sad movements.
So “You wanna go to bed, Cas?” Dean asks.
Cas jerks—no, flinches, Dean thinks, and then Cas is looking up at him, biting his lip, just aggravating the injury there that hasn’t healed because Cas is still too weak.
“Damn it, stop doing that, Cas,” Dean snaps because goddamn it, there’s worry, so much worry inside of him, and he just wants to make sure Cas is okay.
“I don’t sleep,” Cas says and he lowers his eyes again, to the bottle in his hands, and he starts picking at the label again the same way that he won’t stop picking at his bottom lip (and Dean wants to reach out and stop him from hurting himself).
“Come on,” Dean says, because Cas is tired, it’s true and Cas’ eyes keep fluttering every few seconds. “Come on now,” Dean says and he gets up out of his seat and pulls Cas to his feet. “You’re tuckered out. Time for bed.”
They walk slowly, footsteps echoing in the hall, the drip of water running through the old bunker pipes following their journey, and then Cas is unsure and he’s stopped walking, just standing there and fidgeting because they’re outside Dean’s room now and Cas doesn’t know where to go.
Dean doesn’t know where to put him.
(But he knows where Cas should go).
Dean pushes inside, door creaking open slowly, and Cas follows him, hesitant, dragging his feet, and “Just a minute,” Dean says as he heads over to the little wardrobe that he’s made into a linen closet. “Just gotta grab a few things.”
(What am I doing? Dean thinks).
Cas waits, not moving an inch, waiting dutifully like he does all things dutifully, and then Dean’s grabbing Cas by the arm, nudging him out (and what am I doing? Dean thinks. What the hell is he doing?).
He prods Cas all the way down the end of the hall, to the little room that he’d prepared for his mom, who in the end hadn’t wanted to stay more than three minutes, and that’s where he puts Cas, where Cas waits for him to change the sheets of the bed, and where Cas curls up tentatively and says, “Thank you.”
Quietly.
(But Dean knows where Cas should go).
Dean makes to leave, has a foot out the door but he turns back around and looks at Cas, looks at Cas curled up, tired, under the blanket, and damn it, damn it, Dean knows where Cas should go.
(It’s not here).
“Dean,” Cas says, a murmur, and he closes his eyes and he falls asleep.
Dean swallows and leaves. He shuts the door.
It seems okay for a while, Dean thinks, because they hunt and Cas comes with, and they’re back to digs and insults and it’s all in good fun, Dean thinks—really.
There’s a while there, where Cas stays after Dean gives him that little room, where Cas is there every morning for coffee, and he seems a little lost and Dean wants to tell him something, but he stays clear and he lets Cas wander around the bunker and have his own space (but Dean’s not really good at that).
Instead Dean’s always itching, fingers reaching out to brush Cas’ shoulder, his back, his arm. Dean’s uncontrollable, and he knows personal space, he knows what it is, but he can’t seem to want it, not in the mornings where he’ll bump up behind Cas in the kitchen, wrap his arms around that waist and say, “Hey, honey,” and it’s just a jest, Dean tells Sam (but he’s not sure that it really is).
“You know what you’re doing, right?” Sam says.
No, Dean thinks (but he knows where Cas should go).
They go on a hunt—many hunts—and Dean doesn’t like it when Cas is there, because Cas’ll get this look in his eyes, distant and sad and reserved, and it won’t go away, that look, no matter what Dean says (it’s been there since those words).
“Come on,” he’ll say, the day when they’re rushing through the woods running from a wendigo, the day where Cas falls down and doesn’t seem to want to stand. “Damn it, sunshine, get up.”
There’s a feeling after that, in Dean’s heart, a heavy feeling of foreboding, but Dean doesn’t know what to say.
At the bunker that night, Dean sits Cas down on his bed in that little room and lifts his shirt up and patches the wound there.
“You haven’t been healing lately,” Dean says.
Cas doesn’t say anything and Dean lets his fingers brush across Cas’ stomach and Cas shudders, pulls away then, buttons up his shirt, and curls up into bed.
“Tell me,” Cas says.
Dean rises to his feet, feels his heart work harder, and there’s blood rushing around in his head and fear crippling him and, “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Cas turns his back to him in the bed and he’s quiet but just as Dean’s reaching for the door, reaching to get out of Cas’ room and head to his own, Cas says, “Tell me what you never say.”
Dean knows where he should go.
(But he doesn’t go there).
Another hunt and a witch’s curse and then Dean starts forgetting everything. It doesn’t take him long, not even between mantras of “…and Cas is my best friend,” and Casti—Cas is my best friend, and Castiel is…
He doesn’t remember.
And after that it doesn’t take longer, and Dean’s gone, and he think he’s still young and he thinks his dad’s still alive, and he sleeps with a couple of girls too young for him, and then Rowena cures him.
When he’s been brought back to his senses, he finds himself sitting in the Impala with Cas and Sam and Sam says, “Thank god,” but Cas doesn’t say anything.
Cas stares out the window.
When they stop for gas and Sam’s inside paying, Cas hands him something—no, tosses it at the back of his head—and he says, “The hell, Cas?” but Cas doesn’t seem to be speaking with him; he’s just busy staring out the window.
Dean reaches and picks up what Cas has thrown.
It turns out to be a pair of women’s underwear.
“That’s not fair,” Dean says, and those words come out without thinking, and even more words, a “I was under a spell—I didn’t remember,” and then again, Dean says, again “That’s not fair.”
“Why’s it not fair?” Cas says.
Dean falters then, and he feels guilty, but why should he feel guilty because he slept with some women like he always does and “Tell me,” Cas had said once. “Tell me what you never say.”
He can’t say it so he says, “It’s fair.”
(But he knows where Cas should go).
Dinner’s awkward that night, because Sam’s squirming and that’s how Dean knows.
Cas is fidgeting with his food, pushing peas back and forth on his plate and honestly Dean doesn’t remember when Cas started eating and sleeping but now it scares him.
He reaches out then, grasps Cas’ wrist and Cas drops his fork and Sam sits there and coughs and Cas stares up at Dean with watery eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Dean says.
Sam’s mouth is agape in horror and their food has gone cold so long ago, and Dean’s hand is still firm around Castiel’s hand, in a damn death grip, and Dean thinks he can’t breathe.
Cosmic consequences.
“Damn it!” Dean says and he’s shouting like Dad, for god’s sake, he knows. “Damn it, Cas, why would you keep that from us? Why the hell wouldn’t you say—”
Cas has been dying ever since he killed the reaper, Billie.
There’s a frantic race for the books then, Sam and Dean, endless, endless reading as they try to figure out their mess.
“God, he’s so stupid,” Dean mutters to Sam, angrily one night when Cas sleeps but they don’t because they’re too damn afraid. “God, why would he—Cas, damn it. Damn it, Cas.”
“He’s been suicidal for a long time, Dean,” Sam says softly and that makes Dean get up and grab his book and he stumbles out of the library, walks to Cas’ room with his heart thumping in his chest.
Every night he reads sitting in Cas’ bed while Cas sleeps with his head next to Dean’s lap.
“Don’t try to save me,” Cas tells him one day, tiredly, when he’s been passing in and out of consciousness. “I…deserve it.”
“Damn it, you don’t!”
That’s the moment there, Dean thinks, where he knows that he should say it, stop being a coward and tell Cas what he needs to tell him, what Cas already knows, but his lips are still sealed shut by the end of that night and he can’t say it, because Cas will just think that he’s telling him what he wants to hear now. But for a moment he can't help wonder if Cas kept his dilemma a secret because Dean can't seem to make his voice work.
For a moment he tries. He tries with, "Cas, c'mon, Sam and I...you're our brother, Cas. Why..."
Cas has a bitter look cross his face.
Dean reads his book in the library that night.
They know one morning, when both of them are busy in the kitchen, Sam blending his smoothie, Dean making Cas’ coffee. They know when Cas passes away because Cas doesn’t show up for breakfast.
Dean doesn’t go to see the body.
Instead Dean falls down right there, in the kitchen while he’s pouring the coffee into Cas’ cup, and then when he sees the time, his hand starts shaking and “Dean!” Sam says, when he sees Dean on his hands and knees on the floor, sees how Dean’s hands are bleeding with glass, burning with spilled coffee.
It’s Sam who confirms it.
“He—he’s gone,” Sam says.
Dean doesn’t go to see the body.
But he knows where he should have gone.
He’s pleading. With anything that moves at the crossroads. With any witch despite how much he hates them and he keeps asking them this one thing, the same one thing, just please, please, bring my angel back.
“About time Castiel died,” one angel tells him and Dean launches himself at her, weaponless, and she beats him to a bloody pulp.
Later, Sam tells him to stop.
“Let Cas rest in peace.”
(But Dean knows where he should go).
Dean stifles a scream, a wail, a—he doesn’t know. But it’s painful and it makes him clutch at his stomach, as if he’s dying, when Sam lights the funeral pyre and lets Cas’ body burn away (Dean’s spent long enough putting the funeral off).
“I know,” Jody murmurs into the top of his hair—she’s got her arms wrapped around him. “I know.”
Mary Winchester watches from the sidelines and for a split second, Dean wonders if he should’ve let her go to Billie.
He loathes himself for the thought later.
Eventually they start hunting again.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sam tells him suddenly, when they’re in the Impala and on their way to Pontiac, Illinois and Dean doesn’t know why Sam says that.
“Try to stop me,” Dean says and he shoots Sam a forced grin. “Just ‘cause you say I don’t get no more burgers don’t make it so, Sammy.”
“I’m not talking about your latest cholesterol levels, Dean.”
“I know,” Dean says and his voice cracks on the last word. “I know.”
And he shouldn’t be hopeful, in Jimmy Novak’s old town, but there’s been strange things going on, stirrings from the dead, and Dean can’t help it, not when everything seems so close.
“Whatever happens,” Sam says. “We have to return them to rest, Dean.”
But nothing happens.
It's just a hunt.
The drive back to Lebanon is more painful than anything.
It’s Lucifer, causing trouble, on the third anniversary of Cas’ death, and even though Dean always spends it praying, Sam won’t let him ignore the slaughter of an entire city’s souls as Lucifer searches for his long-lost Nephilim daughter.
They killed her daughter, the mother tells Lucifer. “A band of angels found us.”
Lucifer rages, throws a tantrum where he destroys all of the pews in the church where Sam and Dean have found the two, and Crowley’s gone while Rowena cowers by their side.
“Bind him!” Sam shouts amidst the chaos but Rowena vehemently shakes her head, tries to run and Dean grabs her arm (they need her to send the devil back to his cage).
Rowena shrieks then, a look of horror crossing her face and then Dean turns and he sees that Lucifer’s skewered the mother of his child, harvesting the blood, chanting something that’s making the room shake.
“What’s he doing?” Sam says and Rowena scrambles out of Dean’s grip, says that Satan’s opening a door to the Empty, the place that Billie had threatened Dean with for so long, and Rowena tells them to run because “it’s the place where angels go when they die.”
Sam sees it in his eyes, and he’s already making his way to Dean, knows that Dean’s looking at that strange shimmering grey portal hovering in the church, growing and growing and soon Lucifer’s going to have it big enough, and then Lucifer will go and bring back his Nephilim daughter from a place where nothing ever comes back.
“Dean!” Sam warns but Lucifer’s stepping through the silver mist and Dean’s sprinting.
“Dean!” Sam screams. “Dean! You’ll never find him—Dean, you’ll never make it back!”
But Dean knows where he should go.
It’s not grey like Purgatory. It’s darker than that, a black, black eternal night with no sound, but there are trees, just like before and one luminous moon, larger than he’s ever seen.
Lucifer isn’t anywhere to be found.
Dean moves forward.
It happens that he hears whispers, eventually a break to the endless silence, and then it grows into chatter, loud, loud excited conversation in Enochian. There are smatterings of light in places, flashes, and every flash illuminates a fearsome form, taller than mountains, some bodies with multiple heads, other with more wings.
Cas? he says.
The chatter dies.
An ominous silence drops.
When he keeps walking, when he doesn’t say another word, he hears the angels begin to converse again, and the longer they speak, the more he seems to know and understand.
Lucifer is dead, they say. He is in the Empty.
Rejoice in Father’s name!
Behind Dean, the portal hums.
He keeps trudging through the woods, breaks into a run and the angels seem to notice him and soon, they’re whispering about him.
Look at the human, they say. Look at what he does.
It’s not the first time that he’s done this.
When he calls out Cas’ name, relentlessly, relentlessly—when he’s stopped caring about the angels, some young, some ancient because they died first—when he doesn’t care for them anymore when they go quiet so abruptly whenever he screams Cas’ name, it’s then that they start talking to him.
Are you looking for the queer angel, human? they whisper. Are you looking for the strange one with the wild, wild eyes and the human body, whose vessel has become one with him?
Are you looking for the one who sits by the pool and never speaks? The angel who mourns his death and in death has become a portrait of misery?
Go. To your side, human, to find the angel trapped in his very own perdition. When you find the water, you will find him.
And he finds him.
He knows where he should go.
He finds him there, by the lake amongst the trees, and he looks the same as ever, his dark hair, his rough stubbly tanned face. Dean thinks he’s being silent, maybe even stealthy, but Cas suddenly stares right at him, and then Dean realizes that he’s been screaming himself hoarse, and he doesn’t know how long, but Cas’ name has been a prayer on his lips.
He thinks it’s been the same ever since he last saw him.
They don’t speak, not at all, and Dean knows that they should be speaking, that he’s got a lot to say (and he knows where he should go), but Dean just has Cas’ hand firm in his own, grips Cas tight, raises him from the ground by the lake where Cas must have been sitting since he died, and then he’s just running, dragging Cas along, desperate to get them to where they need to be.
When they pass through the portal, it shuts behind them and Lucifer’s not back and neither is the Nephilim but Sam’s standing in that church, pacing amongst the broken pews, and when he sees Dean and Cas, maybe his willpower leaves him because Sam doubles over himself and he’s on the floor, gasping with relief.
None of them talk in the car. Dean can barely drive.
“You tired?” Dean says, when they’re home, when Sam’s finished hugging the angel to death and has marched off happily to the shower for a much needed cleanse, even though Cas hasn’t spoken a word, but Sam seems to know that that’s fine.
Cas doesn’t answer Dean either but when Dean entwines their fingers and heads to his bedroom, Cas follows him easily.
(He knows where he should go).
Dean starts to worry again, wonders if he's done wrong bringing Cas back, if maybe Cas had been at peace, but when they reach Dean's room and the door shuts behind them, Cas' low rumbling voice says a broken-sounding Dean, and then Dean's pulled into Cas' arms.
Dean lets out a shuddering breath and maybe it's because he feels like he's been holding it in ever since Cas died.
"Let me tell you," Dean says. "Damn it, Cas. Let me tell. Let me tell you how much I friggin' love you."
They fall into bed, Dean's bed that's been so damn lonely, and he wraps an arm around Cas' waist, buries his face into Cas' neck and he's crying, for god's sake, he's crying.
"Don't ever do that again," he says and he can feel how wet Cas' shirt is, wet with Dean's tears. "God, Cas, never again."
He kisses Cas, leaves a smattering of them on Cas' chest, over his shirt, and he feels Cas running his fingers through his hair, kissing his forehead, kissing his temple and Dean leans into the touch. He's been starved for too long.
"I love you," Dean says again, "I love you, I love you, don't ever do that again."
"Never again," Cas promises, and when they press their lips together for the first goddamn time, Dean knows where he should go. Damn it, he knows.