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Cas pulls him off that rebar. Puts the hole in him together, puts his hands on Dean and looks at Sam while Dean looks at anything else, while Dean is still mumbling tell me it’s okay, tell me it’s okay, tell me that it’s okay, Sam, tell me I can go now, tell me it’s okay—
He closes his mouth. Swallows back the words. He ain’t dying anymore. God help him, he ain’t dying anymore.
“Cas,” Sam is saying, breathless, “holy— Cas— Dean, Dean, ‘re you—”
“Yeah,” Dean croaks out, ‘cause he can’t stay quiet when it’s Sam talking at him like that. “Yeah, m’fine.”
“Fuck,” Sam gasps, and then curls right over, hands on his knees as he puts his head down. “Fuck, God, shit, fucking— goddamn— son of a bitch.”
“Cas,” Dean whispers, turning his head to the left just to catch him in his line of sight. There he is. There he is. Cas is looking at Sam but he’s got his arm around Dean’s waist, his palm warm against Dean’s side, his chin— oh God, he’d missed him. Dean can’t stop looking at him. The cleft in his chin, the soft jowls which in ten years might pillow over the edge of his jawline, the high curve of his cheekbone and the ruler-straight line of his nose. His eyes. Those bags under his eyes, his eyelashes, his eyebrows always furrowed and his mouth, his mouth—
“Dean,” Cas says quietly, and then releases him. No, don’t go, Dean thinks. Cas takes a generous step back and puts his hands at his sides, the way he— the way he always does, the way he did when he said all those things and brought the Empty to him. “I— you’re—” and Cas turns to go and Dean finally opens his fucking mouth.
“Don’t leave,” Dean says, and Cas turns back to him and finally meets his eyes and there— there— blue as anything, Christ, Dean almost died and Sam is still swearing under his breath and Cas is alive. Cas is alive. “Shit, man, you just— stay, stay awhile, dude.”
“Well,” Cas says, a small smile at the corner of his mouth, and Dean looks at it and looks at him and he cannot for the life of him stop thinking: Cas is alive. “All right.”
Sam insists on driving back from the vampire nest.
Dean sits in the passenger and Cas slides into the backseat like it’s normal, like they did every time they worked a case together. Dean looks at Sam the whole drive home just so he can keep Cas in his peripherals.
About twenty minutes in, on a nowhere highway with the same empty country Dean spent his whole life growing up and fucking and hating himself in, Sam clears his throat, and he says, “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Dean focuses. He’d kept Sam in his gaze but now he really looks, and he sees the tightness of his face, the clench of his jaw. He’s— he’s angry. “Yeah, all right, won’t get fucked up on a hunt again,” Dean tries.
“No,” Sam grits out, “you— don’t you ask me to tell you it’s okay. Don’t you do that to me.” Dean watches his hands grip the steering wheel, tighten and release like he needs something under his hands before he starts throwing punches.
Dean finally, finally looks away from them both, out through the windshield in front of him. He can’t see Cas anymore but it’s worth it, just to escape Sam’s rage. “I thought,” Dean starts, and then swallows. The Impala has seen it all, every last part of him, but he still— he still feels exposed, somehow. “I just. I thought I was done.”
“It’s not— okay, with me, for you to be. Dead,” is what Sam bites back.
Yeah. All right. Dean lets that one lie. The road curves on for another ten miles, clouds scudding overhead as the grass stays the same.
“You know that I love you,” Cas says eventually. Dean tenses. Is he— in front of Sam— but then Cas continues, “Very, very much. Sam loves you much the same.”
“God, I hope not,” Dean snorts on instinct, and then freezes.
Cas’s hand comes up to the seat next to Dean’s shoulder, and Dean succumbs, finally twists in his seat, looks at Cas in the backseat — how hurt he is, that old pain furrowed in every part of him suddenly visible — and Dean thinks, I didn’t say anything. He said all that when he went, when the Empty took him, and I didn’t say a thing.
He looks back to the road ahead. He doesn’t say anything aloud, but he hopes Cas can read the apology in him, the way Cas always seems to know him better than he knows himself.
Cas leans forward, both forearms on the seat. “It. It worries me that—”
“Look,” Dean interrupts, “I was on my way out, all right? Just— I made a bad call. I was just tryin’ to make it easy on— on you, Sam. And I didn’t make the right call on that. It wasn’t— wasn’t anything else.”
“It’s not your job to make your own death easy on me,” Sam says, hoarse.
Dean doesn’t know how to reply. He doesn’t know how to walk it back; how to say, all right, yes, I lied. I wasn’t makin’ it easy on you. I was makin’ it easy on me. Dean doesn’t know how to say that he wanted— because, fuck, he doesn’t want anything. Hasn’t wanted anything since— since—
He was just tired.
“All right,” Dean says, because no matter what he feels about it, he ain’t dying anymore, not anytime soon. And Sam settles, and Cas leans back. Dean thinks, suddenly, of Bobby and coming across that ruined scrapyard and yelling into his voicemail if you’re gone, I’m gonna strap my brother in the car and I’m gonna drive us off the pier, and he thinks: if I can’t want it for me, then I’ll stay alive for them.
“Hey,” Dean says, knocking Sam’s shoulder. Sam jerks, as he always does, and pulls out an earbud. “Whatcha watchin’?”
“Ever hear of minding your own business?”
“Library’s a communal space, man.” Dean peers over Sam’s shoulder. “The hell is this?”
“It’s— it’s, it’s a—” Sam huffs out a breath. “S’just part of a service.”
Dean pauses. He looks at Sam. “Like.” What. “Like a religious service?”
Sam shrugs. “You wanna…?”
“Yeah, sure, all right.” Dean pulls up a chair as Sam unplugs his earphones. There’s some kid on the screen — or, hell, maybe they’re not even that young, but everyone looks young to Dean these days — wearing some kinda robe and standing at a pulpit. Dean would say they’re a picture of Christian devotion except for the fact that half their hair is shaved off and the other half is dyed into a rainbow. “What kinda denomination is this?”
“Non-denominational, I guess,” Sam says, scrolling back a few seconds and hitting play.
Dear lord whose spirit heals through queer love, the pastor or whatever starts, and Dean jerks in his chair, the feet scraping against the floor. Sam doesn’t say a word. Small mercies. Whose spirit is in the exploited and oppressed, the abused and forgotten.
“What,” Dean breathes, as the pastor says Remember us in life as you hold us after death— let us be joyful in our true selves, let us be whole in our true bodies, let us take pleasure in our own holy names, let us name you as we take communion at the altar of our lovers’ touch. “Sam. What the fuck.”
“I— I mean, it’s, just— if you’re gonna watch it just listen to it, man—”
Lord whose spirit heals through queer love, whose spirit is in our hallowed elders and our welcomed children, remember us in truth as you carry us in despair—
“What did you even look up?”
Let us be free in our true paths. Let us be loved in our true desires. Let us make refuge for our sacred siblings. Let us honor you by honoring the love in our precious, queer souls.
“Just, ah.” The pastor finishes, In the name of the elder, the child, and the holy spirit, amen, and Sam says, “S’just a— a prayer.”
Dean is going to have a heart attack. Whose spirit heals through queer love. Whose spirit heals through queer love. Who writes this shit. “A prayer.”
“I—” Sam scratches the back of his head. “Honestly, man, I. I looked up… I looked up prayers for. For, for gay— or, queer, I guess, men.” Dean watches Sam’s slow and careful blinks, the way he looks at his computer screen and hasn’t faced Dean once, and thinks, holy fuck. My brother is coming out to me.
“Wow, uh—” Dean clears his throat. “I mean. Obviously, you’re— you’re still— you’re my brother.” How did he not know? It’s— it’s surreal, to think, and considering, and what with Dean, and— this is insane. “I mean, it ain’t— I mean, thanks for, uh. Telling. Uh. Me, I guess.” Jesus Christ. He’s doing awful. Someone put him outta his misery.
“What?” Sam finally looks at him and must take in some of the panic because he says, “Shit, no, I didn’t— I’m not, or, that’s not the point of this—”
“What?” Dean has no idea what the fuck is going on here. “What do you mean you’re not—”
“I mean, I don’t really know, maybe, it’s not— s’not something I think about, really—”
“Sam—”
“For you.” That shuts Dean up. Sam looks at him, and says, “I— I— I looked it up for— for you.”
Dean swallows. He looks at the pastor, with their robe and their hair, and he wonders, how did they do it? How can they stand there like that, as if— as if— how could they put both parts of themselves in one body? He asks, eyes on the computer screen, “For me?”
“Yeah, you, uh.” Sam laughs, but it doesn’t sound like he’s happy. “You really. You really scared me last week.”
Dean snaps his eyes back to Sam.
Last week. One week ago, he’d told Sam to tell him it was okay, and— and Cas showed up, out of the blue, and he’d said not yet, Dean Winchester as the white glow of his grace sped through all of Dean’s body like a lightning rod. And suddenly, with Cas there in front of him and that trembling resonance in his fingertips, he hadn’t been certain anymore that it was okay at all.
“So, I, uh.” Sam’s mouth twitches. “Stupid to do it out here, I guess. I just, I wanted… I dunno. It seemed like that… like that was something, maybe, that— ’cause Cas was gone, and it was… it was so much like, like last time, with the, after Jack was born— when you put that, that needle in you…” Sam shakes his head, inhaling sharply as if to clear his head. Dean feels absolutely fucking untethered. He has no hope in hell of keeping ahead of this conversation. “I couldn’t bring Cas back. That time, or this time. And I couldn’t— I couldn’t make the world kinder to… Anyway. I just thought I’d. Maybe I’d pray.”
Dean slumps back in his chair, stunned. He looks at Sam. His brother. His baby brother. He raised him, raised him up good and right, more of both than Dean ever was.
“You pray to Jack?” he asks, because he can’t touch the rest of it. He can’t hear Sam say you and queer in the same breath. He can’t hear Sam finish his sentence about the world being kinder to—
He just can’t.
“Nah,” Sam says. “I just— I dunno. Maybe it’s… it’s comforting to think that there’s… something. Maybe just other people. The universe.”
“Every drop of rain,” Dean says, like it’s something nice and not something that’ll always be broken inside him, the way things went with Jack at the end. His kid. And the way he treated him— it was like he didn’t know himself.
“Yeah,” Sam echoes, looking about as cut out and raw as Dean feels. “Yeah.”
Cas has a fucking bizarre relationship to his garden. Theoretically, everything should be going wrong. He overwaters all of his plants and puts tiny buds next to giant ferns that by all accounts should take all the sunlight up. Dean’s pretty sure Cas doesn’t even know what fertilizer is. The temperature drops at night are enough to kill anything more delicate than an oak.
But it’s like the plants can’t help it, growing to him. Like Cas just stretches a hand out and they want it, want him, want to be the fullest versions of themselves. They want to survive the night so they can hear Cas, in the morning, crouching next to them and saying in his deep and serious rasp, “Hello, babies.”
Dean doesn’t know what that’s like, of course. But he leans against the doorframe of the greenhouse Cas made him build out back of the bunker and watches Cas examine the leaves of his hedges, picking dead leaves off of green stems.
“Question for you,” Dean starts, because he’s been thinking about it ever since that disastrous whatever the fuck that was with Sam. Cas turns to look at him, and Dean asks, “What do you think about praying?”
Cas stills. He brushes his palms off on his knees and stands up, and Dean looks at the broadness of him under the T-shirt Dean bought for him in a 12-pack at the Walmart in Lincoln on the way back from a case. Even as a human, Cas could probably beat the shit out of him. “I don’t hear prayer anymore.”
“Well, yeah, I—” Good going, Dean, remind the guy about losing his wings. He tries, “I mean. Do you pray?”
“Ha,” Cas exhales, walking closer to stand next to Dean. It’s warm in here, in the greenhouse. Dean shifts and puts his hands in his pockets. “No.” And he looks Dean in the eyes — the way he always does, yeah, Sam calls them out on it now but where else is Dean supposed to look, with those eyes cutting through him crisp and clean?
“I’m not opposed to worship,” Cas says, low and warm and intimate, “but I’m not sure about supplication.”
Right. Right. “Uh,” Dean says, because he isn’t really sure how to recover from the shape of Cas’s mouth around the word worship. His gaze dips down to Cas’s throat, the stubble along his jaw and the tight line of his shirt neck framing his Adam’s apple, his broad chest, the barest hint of a nipple through his shirt— Jesus Christ.
“Anyway,” Cas says, dropping onto a bench while Dean tries to look at anything other than Cas’s body, holy fuck, “it seems disingenuous to pray when I know there’s no one to pray to.”
“Yeah,” Dean says hoarsely, scrubbing a hand over his face. Get your head in the game, Winchester. “Yeah, I get that.”
Cas looks up at him from his seat. “Did something happen?”
“Nah, nothin’— nothin’ serious, just.” Dean breathes out. He’s fine. Everything’s fine. And the memory of Sam saying You really scared me last week is enough to get him back to level. “Sam was lookin’ up some prayers yesterday. Kinda interesting.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he, uh.” Dean laughs, almost, or breathes out fast enough to count it as laughter. “Looked up prayers for, uh, queer— queer men. Is what he said.” He shrugs, keeps his eyes on the dirt. “Thought that was— wasn’t somethin’ people did.”
“Pray for queer men?” Cas’s brow furrows. “Dean, men — people — of all genders and sexualities have been involved in religion since… since time immemorial.”
“Yeah, I know, I just. Didn’t seem like something people would actually talk about.”
“Hm.” Cas considers it. “Yes, I suppose that’s fair. But there are groups who are… open to these discussions.” And Cas looks at him. “What was the prayer about?”
Oh, Dean could recite the whole thing word for word. He ain’t even into that kinda thing, not really, s’just… the wording of it struck him so bad. Our precious queer souls. Precious and queer, good God.
But Dean just says, “Love, between, I mean. Y’know.”
Yeah. You know. The two of them sit there in the garden, a sapling branch of Cas’s latest orange tree bending down towards him. They still haven’t talked about what Cas said, when he died; Dean was half-certain they were just never going to mention it at all. And what does want mean, anyway, to an angel?
“I never thought of it consciously,” Cas says, thoughtfully, like he’s just working it out as he speaks, “but I chose this body for a reason. It was… it was meaningful to me, to fall as a man. A man who…” Cas’s mouth twists, and Dean watches Cas watch his own hand curl into a fist. “A man who loves other men.”
“Shit,” Dean says, and then he thinks, that’s two for two, idiot, you’re lucky Jack never came out to you and scrambles to add, “I mean that’s. That’s. Great.”
Great. Great. Yeah, Dean’s all sensitivity and eloquence.
“There’s a holiness in it,” Cas continues, looking up to survey his garden like Dean didn’t even say a word, which is probably for the best. “The truth of it in me. That I was nothing, as an angel, and then when I fell I became… or, perhaps, to say it better: I came to know myself as a gay man.”
All of Dean’s air comes out of him in one breath. A gay man. There’s a holiness in it. A gay man.
“That’s,” Dean says, mouth dry.
It’s unbelievable. It’s absolutely unbelievable. What does that even— what does it— what the hell does he even mean. Knowing you has changed me. Castiel was a creature of Heaven and then he put his grace inside of Dean’s rotting soul in Hell and now he’s a— a gay man sitting in an amateur greenhouse in Kansas.
“That was— too much,” Cas says, stilted, and he stands up. “But to your question. I don’t really pray.”
“Wasn’t too much,” Dean says, even though his brain is fully experiencing a blue screen of death. “It’s— interesting, s’great— I mean— it’s— good for you, man,” he finally settles on, feeling stupider and stupider the longer he keeps his mouth open.
Cas nods, like that settles it. Clearly done with the conversation, he stands up to get some tools out of the box near the bench, starts clipping dead branches off his orange tree or whatever, and Dean finally makes his way over to sit next to him, on that bench, under the shade. Cas catches the pruned leaves before they can hit Dean where he’s sitting, tossing them onto the soil next to the roots.
It becomes almost meditative, in a way. Dean just looks at Cas — alive and strong, with his biceps cut by the sleeve of his shirt as he reaches up to check on the taller branches. That weighed down stem arcs towards Dean’s shoulder, two oranges heavy on it.
“Do you want one?” Cas asks, nodding towards the oranges.
Dean considers. “They ready to pick?”
“Yes,” Cas says, turning back to the tree, “if you want them.”
So Dean picks an orange off the tree, and peels it in his lap, tossing the pith off the sides of the bench. Cas looks down at him, and Dean looks up, watching the shape of his mouth curl into a smile as Dean takes a bite.
Dean’s putting a loaf in the oven when Sam comes bouncing in like he’s on two lines of coke. “Dean,” Sam says, hyper like he hasn’t been since— Christ, since Dean doesn’t know when. “Hey. Dean.”
“Yes, Sam, Jesus, what?”
“I got a tattoo.” Dean whips his head around so fast, and there Sam is, standing in the doorway, a six and a half foot tall puppy. He doesn’t see a tattoo. “Wanna see?”
“Yeah, man.” Dean closes the oven door on his loaf — sourdough, yeah, like all the “cottagecore lesbians” (Claire’s words) and “survivalist queers” (Charlie’s words) — and walks over. “Where is it?”
“Here.” And Sam lifts the hem of his shirt up, and there’s. It’s.
It’s beautiful. That’s all Dean can think. He hunches over to peer at the tattoo through the clear plastic wrap. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And the second word Dean thinks about it is: strange.
Sam’s got a sharp-eyed crow peering in on his right side and an elk on his left, looking at each other with Sam’s belly button between them. Prickly grass and a few leaves around his stomach tie it together, all in crisp black lines.
“Tough place to get a tattoo.”
“Yeah, hah,” Sam snorts, and, well, fair enough. Still. Dean might not have picked a stomach tattoo for his first big one.
“Looks nice, Sam,” Dean says, sincerely, and stands back up. “Mean anything?”
“Nah,” Sam says, lowering his shirt almost reluctantly. “Or, I mean, I just.” He shrugs. “I like the look of these animals, and it was… it was nice to, to do something with my— especially there, y’know, where—” and Sam’s smile, for the first time, wavers. “I mean, when, when Lucifer was in Cas and—”
Sam swallows. “I always kept thinkin’ of his— hand, in, when he put, when my soul, when he— my stomach— I dunno.” Sam shakes it off, and looks down at the place where his tattoo is. “This was nice. Like it was just… for me.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Dean says quietly. Sam grins, and Dean smiles back, helpless to it, to the joy on Sam’s face that he hasn’t seen for years and years and years. “Good for you, man.”
“I feel like— hah, I dunno,” Sam laughs, “I wanna show it off. Shoulda gotten one on the arm, maybe.”
“Start wearin’ crop tops,” Dean jokes, but Sam pauses. Dean says, “Uh.”
“I should.” Sam frowns. “There’s— there’s nothing stopping me. There aren’t any rules. Who the hell’s gonna— man, I should wear crop tops.”
“Okay,” Dean says, “that’s, uh. I mean, wear whatever you want, more power to ya. Just seems outta character.”
“I don’t have a character,” Sam says fiercely. “I’m just— I’m just me. I’m me. And this is my body now. I marked it up.”
Dean remembers— Dean remembers the way Sam had been, after Gadreel. After it was all over. Dean had walked into the library once, a few weeks after Kevin, and there Sam was, curled into a chair with a half empty bottle of vodka in front of him, hands over his stomach, staring out at nothing. Dean would bet money that Sam doesn’t remember it at all, but Dean— Dean can still see it, sometimes. He’d put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and Sam had slurred, eyes blank, I won’t say no, if you want it. It was the most disturbing thing Dean had ever witnessed.
“S’good, Sammy,” Dean says hoarsely, trying not to cry. His brother. “Shit, man, yeah, wear some— some fuckin’ crop tops then. Who gives a shit.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Hell yeah, man. All right. Gonna go— shit, I dunno, might chop some shirts up now. Just— just— just for the hell of it.”
“Eileen’s gonna love it,” Dean says, pretty certain he’s right, and Sam’s face lights up. “Aw, lookit you an’ your crush.”
“Shut up,” Sam says, face red as all hell, “I’m gonna— m’gonna call her.”
“Yeah, you do that, bud,” Dean laughs. He watches Sam go, and suddenly, brutally, thinks: I love that kid. Because hell. He really fucking does.
Sam parades around the bunker in his dumbass purple dog crop top (the crop top thing is fine, hell, Dean’s got his own tiny denim shorts for car washing and those are a lot more— well, more, than Sam’s shirts that ride up just above his belly button— but it’s the purple dog of it all, like fuck, where did he even get that shirt?), and it makes Dean think about what he might want. He’s free now, too. Chuck’s gone— they did that. They made it work. They got out of it, and—
And Jack is up in Heaven, according to Cas, and Eileen and Sam are sickeningly cute, and Cas is—
Well. Anyway. What does freedom look like for Dean Winchester?
Sam calls it a night after Under the Red Hood, but Cas sticks it out for the next movie in their DCAU marathon. Dean watches Darkseid whale on Superman and can’t stop fucking thinking about it, the heat of Cas’s body next to his on the couch, and Cas calling himself a gay man, and Sam looking up prayers for queer love, and Alistair calling Dean daddy’s little girl, and Cas saying you think you’re daddy’s blunt instrument, and liberation.
“Gotta tell you something,” Dean says, once the credits roll on Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. Cas hits the pause button and turns, obligingly, and Dean looks at the screen because half the time he looks at Cas all he can see is the absence of him.
Finally, when he gets tired of waiting, Cas says, “Yes, Dean?”
Ha. Yeah. Yes, Dean. He tries: “I, uh. Maybe it’s— maybe it’s for the wrong reasons but I.”
God. Cas is next to him and all Dean can think is, I didn’t say a word when it mattered, and now— now it’s nothing. Now he’s nothing. Now he’s some guy with his stomach turning over and a long history of killed things behind him, trying to be gentle. “Been thinking about— about doin’ somethin’ for me. Somethin’ I want. Like Sam’s tattoo.”
He looks at Cas. He’s been looking at Cas for longer than he’s been alive, it feels like. “I want you,” he whispers, watching it hit him, hit Cas, and he adds, “You’re not something I ever coulda chose. Not with— with Dad, or with God. And.” He blows out a breath, chest all caved in and empty and angry and hating himself. “I just want something for myself, and goddamn it to hell, Cas, that ain’t—” Ain’t what you deserve.
But, incredibly, Cas is… Cas is smiling. “You want me?”
“Yeah,” Dean huffs out.
“Then what does it matter why?” Cas — Cas is too goddamn generous with him, Dean thinks, but he still lets Cas wrap his fingers around his wrist, still lets Cas pull him in until Dean is right in front of him, their knees knocking where they’re both half turned on the couch lookin’ at each other. “If you want me,” Cas says, the same way he said I’m not opposed to worship, “then…” Cas turns Dean’s hand over and puts his thumb right in the center of Dean’s palm, holds his hand like that, like he’s keeping it safe. “Want me.”
“Okay,” Dean says, leaning in, anxious and sick and in love and nervous over it all, nothing perfect or scripted to speak of. Just him, and Cas, and the TV rolling the postproduction team in the background. “Yeah.”
And Dean leans in, and Cas meets him halfway, the way he always does, and Dean— Dean kisses him and he tastes like beer and popcorn. And his mouth is on Dean’s and Dean breathes him in and tightens his grip around Cas’s warm and dry and callused hand and puts his other hand on Cas’s neck, to feel him. Oh, God. He wants him. He wants him so bad. Cas kisses him back and Dean hitches a breath, sensitive to it all, inhaling sharp through his nose when Cas’s thumb brushes quick and soft along Dean’s jawline.
The best part, though, is that they do it again the next day, and all the rest after that, too.
“Dad wouldn’t be too happy with us, huh,” Dean says over his beer. He steels himself, and looks at Sam, with his earrings and his enormous protect endangered animals T-shirt hacked to pieces and the tattooed pink heather peeking up around his collarbones, and says, “You wearin’— all that, an’ me a bisexual, shackin’ up with an angel.”
Easy. Nice and easy. Casual, even. Dean hadn’t even stuttered over it, and if he hadn’t downed half his beer afterwards no one would even have fucking noticed anything at all.
Sam gives him a small smile. “Yeah, he wouldn’t,” he says, “but we’re free now, right?”
“Yeah,” Dean croaks out, blinking.
“I’m happy for you,” Sam says gently. “I really am, Dean.”
Dean huffs out a laugh, and relaxes, all the tension coming out of him. Of course he is. “God, you’re so much better at this than I am.”
“At what?”
“Reacting when people, y’know. Say stuff.” Dean shrugs and hopes to God Sam doesn’t make him actually say the words come out.
“You get a lotta people coming out to you?”
“Oh God, don’t call it that,” Dean sighs. “And, I dunno. Like, when I thought you were— and Cas said some stuff, and I was totally hopeless.”
Sam shrugs. “Hey. You got a crush on the guy, can’t help bein’ a dumbass about it.”
“Shut up,” Dean mutters, but he can’t help smiling. Yeah. He has a— he has a crush. A goddamn crush. A goddamn crush on his gay— his gay boyfriend.
“Aw, hell, look at you,” Sam laughs. “Jeez, it’s nice to see you like this.”
“Yeah,” Dean replies. And he looks around at his home, and the long stretch of future ahead of him. Maybe him and Cas will get a house one day, when they start to want sunlight more than security. Maybe they’ll buy some fixer-upper and Sam and Eileen will come over and help them pull carpet up and replace windowpanes and move Cas’s sprawling garden to a new backyard, and maybe Dean’ll invite Jody and the girls over for a housewarming and maybe Cas will say some stupid thing that gets one of those real smiles out of Claire and Dean will only have one or two beers, max. Maybe Dean’ll spend his days lugging the garden hose out from their toolshed to hook it up to the water main, watching Cas commune with the bees and impersonating FBI agents over the phone and driving five hours to babysit Garth’s kids.
Maybe they’ll do all of that. Or maybe they won’t do any of it. No one to say one way or another, not anymore. No rules, no script, no story.
“Feels real good, Sammy.” And Dean thinks: it’ll feel good tomorrow, too, and the next day, and the next. And he’ll live to see it all.